the understanding

taking care of what's Good,

shoved as it is up against Will and Greed,

does not have to be a matter of eeking out a life
in a tiny crack of light.

but there is that.
and one grows slitty-eyed at wondering
what to do with a conscience that knows
its own little accommodations.

as in, how can we let people live on the streets

covered up with cardboard

and drive on by

without smelling the reek of our own shame?

without feeling the pearls choking our neck?

 'they're underprivileged anyway, so this works well for them'...?

how can we not put the heads of british petroleum in public stockades 

for an ongoing kill in the open seas,

the appalling ten-mile death plumes still soundlessly suffocating the deep?

the barrier islands abandoned to their stained and putrid deaths,

the people of an entire way of life sacrificed,

and we do not hear the screams of these ghastly silences?

how can a president of conscience so dishonor himself,
transfixed as he is between starving his people with corrupted hope
and hand-feeding the corporate maw at the altar of power?
where is our holy anger?

 what is all of this love left undone,

  that we too would exempt ourselves from the work?

  from somewhere within the Deep Nudge,
dwelling in salty pools of Light shining behind the eyes,

  Knowing leaks out, as now, and flows along the mind
and pours out on this kitchen counter,

where we sit in our communal quiet, 

you spooning your coffee,

listening to Keillor and Paynter,

i keeping by, tapping out lines,
examining the quality of my fury at joining the collective tacitness
 wherein we have excused ourselves from dealing with reality.

we know that who we are here on this earth, in this kitchen,
is sacred,
and we know that who we are
in the extended consciousness happening out there
is as sacred to our life as our own heartbeat.
so if we do not do That Thing That Changes Us...
the Thing We Were Given To Do...
then
we must live with ourselves
inside.

he looked out from old eyes and a knit cap
in 95 degree humidity, in downtown Austin
standing on the median with his cardboard sign
a simple message to cars passing by ...  "need help"
and i was on my way to the vet to pick up the family dog
found so many years ago,
in the middle of another road and another life...
and it was going to be a hefty bill this time.
$398 for an ear infection and overdue vaccination.
so, how much for the man?
all i had was a twenty and change.
it seemed unfair, but he wouldn't know
that i would be paying more for the dog,
and i handed it to him out the window.
it was easier than holding on to the anger at reagan
for all of those he turned out on the street
in the 80's... the ones who can't hold a job
and can't afford to be poor and bipolar
all at the same time.
out on the street
we are all just people.
and we have to take care of each other.
because what else is there?

where the red dragonfly silently hangs over on a reed
preying the mindless mosquito,
and the stiletto gray cat waits underneath, still as death,
slitting her eyes at the silliness of blue jays...
the birdbath quietly holds its small dark mirror.

the dramas of a hundred toad lilies 

have been told and told and blown and bled out,
the sweet freckled blooms long since
cremated in the texas heat.
dust to dust.
all of it lies dirt still.

until dinner is served.
a suddenness of jaws and
tiny beaky screams
strikes a jagged edge to garden life
that even lightning could admire.

nothing compares to the local preds
with murder on their minds.

it's the best i can do. tell you stories
about what goes on in the garden.
in 99 years you've pored over that bible
until there's no good plot left to discover.
and the stuff that goes on outside the window
is still cracking new with possibilities
if i peer at it
with dragonfly detail
through half-closed cat's eyes.

i can do that
for you.

redwood

there is no pretense about 2000 year old trees.

they are what they are.

and they are magnificent. sacred. 

a presence beyond any words to dignify.

it burns a hole in me that only four percent 

of the original coastal groves of these giants remain.

four. percent. of perhaps the largest trees on earth. 

all the rest were cut down. 

all.

what is it about us that condemns greatness

and draws a crowd to watch it fall? 

our bland, middle class american 

stumbling around

wearies him.

he is so healthy, at 70 something,

and weary of his island life,

the years he drove the school bus,

and now the fund raisers for the library,

playing a clumsy lewis carroll 

to two rounds of applause

and a goofy jacob marley

delighting the kids.

he's tired of all that.

he wants monasticism and a woman in thrall.

he loves rachmaninoff and caol isla

finds great beauty in derelict merchants

hawking the boardwalk.

he rails at a gagged culture

that fails to nurture our nascent inner sweetness.

he doesn't see that he has it all.

doesn't know how to revel 

in the bounty of his own goodness,

the culture of his own soul.

the only culture we've got.

we don't just live out there.

we live in here, out there.

molar living on the cusp

all of my teeth are 64 years old
but tooth #19, a lowly molar,
is acting up... on account of there's
a dark hole beneath one of its roots 
big enough for even a musician to make out 
on a smoky xray that never fails to animate a dental type. 
and this one--an endodontist-- is lively about something 
where nerves and bone and tissue carry out their tiny lives in #19. 
i give in. just do it. and then everything fades to buzzy. 
i don't remember. it was the extra gas. i guess. 
he keeps talking through the haze, explaining 
what each new sound is about, as if it will reduce the anxiety? 
enhance the experience? 


there's a jaw expander holding my mouth open, 
and a sexy little blue spandex skirt stretched around #19. 
dental theater. 


later, in the afterglow, a new picture pops up on the screen. 
so many little white lines where the sleek hair-thin canal tool 
snaked in. 


the modern millie in me appreciates the irony:  
lighter by $740 and yet in more pain.


the pioneer woman in me, with 
native intelligence still intact, 
thinks snake bite and oblivion
could have been a reasonable alternative.

mid-dream,

the notes fly past the pillow

and hurtle down stairs

where the sodding proper manuscript waits

buried mid-mulch on the music shelves

by the bench.

i can make it that far with slits for eyes

enough to jot down the code

dit dit dash every good boy does fine

some wavy chordish looking blots for bass. 

harmonic hints. not much to go on.

but enough for trying it out. 

like riding a new trike.

you know how it's going to go but

there's no substitute for taking a spin.

and that's why the piano plays 

at dark forty around here.

it's not exactly because we can't sleep.

but the effect is the same.

i'd like to think there's genius 

in hearing notes and writing them down

but it doesn't take enough agony.

and no one will hear it, except the ones 

with pillows over their heads.

but when it all comes right--

when what is in play 

is what came to mind--

then what else is there?

other than other dreams,  of course,

and others' dreams...

and the rest of life, 

out there.

which is, still,  all of it, music.

ends is means

making good 

in the real world

is living in the how

                              

mother's day leftovers

i.

the savory pungence of the daughter's cooking

still lingers all over the house.
'faith of our mothers'
indeed...

most days faith has
nothing to do with it
and everything to do with just hanging on.

and here we were laughing

while so many dire things threaten... 

here i am, required to live
all the way through the smooth silky easy
minutes and hours and days

in a stone and mortar house
under the oak trees,
with these memories,

to make meaning
in the work of my soul

ii.

and across the way is another one like me

in the subsaharansomeplaceorother...

with no lesser thing to marvel, nor is

mothering any more or less poignant or beautiful, 

nor the smell of cookery by younger hands

a sweeter more savory memory

so i look far far far and

her look comes back

with the same knowing 

how it all just is
and the deep goodness of it
the way we are made

fairy and old blush and souvenir heavy and pouty with rain,
secure in the many blessings of being born roses...
this late spring day hangs low,
and drips,
and seeps into the soul,
a muddy balm for winter's rawness
and a momentary protection
against the summer heat to come
when even the the limestone will lose it's cool
and the garden abandons all restraint when the sprinkler turns on

golden calves

Episcopal Barbie. The new face of episcopal evangelism...with "black" Bishop Barbie and ''latino'' Deacon Ken coming soon down the diversity pipeline. Too sweet. 


It's surely a labor of love spending over 100 hours sewing her little mini-36-24-36 vestments, using fabric from an actual clergy shirt...BUT  I cannot for the life of me fathom a serious commentary--much less serious heads nodding agreement--that Episcopal Barbie is a sign of hope in what Walter [--. Russell Mead] calls a faltering, gasping, near-death church in his little debbie "Faith Matters: Will Barbie Save the Episcopal Church" ... 


"...This, frankly, is a tremendous relief.  Every now and then I am tempted to believe that the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States is in a death spiral ...  As it moves inexorably toward expulsion from the worldwide Anglican Communion,... I sometimes wonder just where it will all end.


But then I see something like this.  There is still hope; we Episcopalians still have a message to the contemporary world.  We are ‘fun’.  We dress up.  We are PC.  We have incense.  As a church which has borne Christian witness in this land for more than 400 years falls to pieces on our watch and around our ears we have hundreds of hours to spend making vestments for dolls."


THIS from a foreign policy guy at Yale who writes for the Wall Street Journal AND the New Yorker?  I thought he was someone with a little gravitas. Turns out he is a batterfried fluffball. 


Talk about lost opportunity. The new Episcopal Goddess is totally sans that ''bad'' kind of diversity --not one Transgen Ken or Bi Barbie anywhere on the horizon to muck it up. This baby doll is the perfect All American Alleluia. 

One week after Easter Jesus we've got Evangelist Barbie. I say, there musta bin a u-turn somewhere. We're back in the OT with the golden calf.  

the other easter

light is only light because there is dark
love is love because it perfectly repels fear

surely the spirit of christ risen 
cradled the soul judas sacrificed 

to become the darkest knife ever to trace
  a bright seam of blood on That Good Light.


and so we too are cradled in christ's love
when humility calls us out and forgives us our daily treacheries 

so this is what i learned at breakfast:
that the freakish zing of a very ripe strawberry
can break the flow of everything--
and to miraculously close the shocked eyes that  
so nearly electrocuted the brain  
reading the Baptist Standard about Ken Starr 
as a potentially great president for Baylor...
gawdamighty, what a fookin disaster.


mouth and mind agape, the strawberry as catalyst,
suddenly jumping up are letters in strings
spewing from some thin corner where sits
my muse of rare inklings and mystic wisdoms.


panic. no writing tools naturally 
habituate the kitchen bar,
so nothing comes to hand for catching 
wild tribes of raucous lines
racing like monkeys over the canopy of mind 
without a backward glance.


all gone, only the receding tails
of epic lines that came once, whole 
an english major's paradise lost 
for want of a pencil stub 
and the back of an envelope.


even tho i had been only 
a lowly music major, 
now i was mad,
so i ordered an ipad. 
and i think i'll name it 
the jabberwok strawberry.
and wouldna joyce be pleased?

the cameraman said 'think bliss'

i knew what he was thinking...a quiet room
misty fog lingering outside the window
enough wood to last 
no phone
a little ooolala...
and i was thinking
a quiet room
enough wood to last
misty fog lingering outside
...and writing, writing, writing
which made me laugh
which made him smile...
'perfect' he said 
to his laughing mary magdalene
for the vestry wall

song for a standupforjesus rallythesaints candlelitelovesongfest

we are made to be who we are
God's people, God's people.
only to be who we are
God's people. 
all God's people.
and like the stars we shine
and like the oceans are full of the heavens
we are God's people
and like the warm sweet rain gentles the earth
we are God's people. 
all are God's people.

safely made is the night's passage

borne on the iridescent wings of sleep

borne on the softly feathered air
of ten thousand breaths
taken, unearned
to arrive again on these bright steps of morning
an unrepentant thief of grace                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

whatcomes christmas is lightdream & ribbonweave

wondermussed & happy be

fete be yurs from goodnes borne

livly hopes & grandesprit

spin the orb & be lit inside
mak the darks' langor cease

wit briteng of sittng by th fire

wher sparks & min's fly yellowingd

& biddings come with gatherd warm

to fill th heart that cant be kept

& so was made for givn awee

yt such as He was no merely gave

but dreamd to us of God's mary

as breth to coal is leapt to flame

beckond spirit come livly agin

to shiverus gud, & shineus brite
as ribbns are weave to color th world

the way the parade used to be on tv

i guess what i want now, most of all, is the parade without the people

which is odd

i just want to see the balloons

please

but all of these talking people are in the way

their mouths

the dancing the singing

the selling, selling, selling

could we just have the balloons

please

spiderman and lucy and linus

and the ones i don't even know about yet?

OH LOOK

THERE'S ONE!

more please

night's bounteous song

the rain falling outside in the 3 a.m. dark

is so sweet on the mind

half-dozing, half-musing fingers move over the keys,

it is the slippery moment of reckoning.

whether to break for bed before the line bobs again in the wordstream,

or to abandon sleep altogether?

day 'comes precarious behind allnight bingewriting,

but sometimes merely to write up a thought

that was not born til the letters falling together

made it so

springs the soul from it's sinewy cage

and flings it up in the sky where it belongs

baker's man

well then.

that done,

shall we glance about at the world

outside these silly pleasures

and take in something for

the soul's humility?

perhaps to consider

the haitians starving,

eating mud cakes

of margarine, salt and mud?

or was that so last year?

oh yeah...that and a piece of fried chicken

i.

nothin prepares us so well for hope

than to breakfast on despair.

nothin prepares us so thoroughly for despair

than to eat bacon from high on the hog.

ii.

such relief finally to pull up a chair

to the kitchen table of heart and mind

to look at what we're serving up inside,

the soup du jour in the bowl of the soul...

then spoon and blow with delight

ah, my hat! my crow! my humble pie!

iii.

which explains so beautifully

the odd sense of well-being

to self-joust with

the right amount of cynicism

iv.

it's okay to observe these mastifications

and laugh as often as we find us sitting there

dipping snuff with such pleasure and thinking

my, my, what a nice coconut pie

held softly in the hand

hats

falling stars

dead birds

eucharist

picked flowers

humility

garden dirt

alms

tarantula

hope

time

mother's memory

rainwater

small moments

things left unsaid

your slow sweet-eyed candor,

glancing away to speak of things too close,

as in the way of strangers in a bar,

as in the way of a consciously unguarded heart,
is the unlooked for grace of shared soul

for chad and amanda

it is not lost on those of us who can still laugh

that God has successfully burgled you from our lives

and smuggled you off to a distant patch of red dirt...

with our help

but when i get over that, and myself,

i'll lift a glass looking eastward back at you

no regrets, no turning to salt

only this short time together as GodSpirits

in these bodies, our earthly temples,

our sanctuaries of soul,

wherein daily we lay down our shattered egos

and enter Her endless endless endless Grace

this slow rainy day

is slick with silver

sliding off the roof,

plinking and running

down the pane

in the eloquence

of nature's hand

what lives is what we feed

i.

all tucked in, neatly folded

between the cold sheets

of where i was last sunday

and where i am now,

safely home, absent the exiled heart

seeking solace outside somewhere

rafting on the river of this endless night...

it doesn't matter.

you are not here.

you are unable to make this journey.

ii.

eventually i will welcome the solitude

more as a corm for survival

than for relief from keeping up appearances.

and although leaving the conversation

works against me,

i'll journal on, writing exercises on the

flimsiness of hope in the spartan night

and parsing with care the

excellence of my defeat

while words still come

rather than submissively to lie down

on the daybed of despair

making love to the prideful muse of silence

iii.

i wonder what you think this is,

this not-saying-anything time,

this letting-time-pass thing

i wonder if you think i've moved on

and left it all behind.

vacated love.

i haven't.

that stuff lives inside me forever.

when we talked truth to his arrogance, and love to his vacant heart

i.

wasn't there a certain elegiac grace

in our halting voices, telling out our truths?

a room full of precious many-colored birds

of the same sacramental spirit...?

just so, love's bounty was slain by fear this night

ii.

spirit linger

until no sky is left that doesn't mourn the light

until nothing comes but the comforter's voice

to wash off the stink of my disbelief

and, replenished, to love wastefully the vacant heart

through a glass darkly

the face in the mirror, the one

that is hard to look at with it's
vague stepford smile, is not you.

your face is not you.

your fear is not you.

you are not your monkey.

you are in here. come inside.
look out on this day
with your feral child eyes.

look out from the warmth of your own true light,

the soft you that was made in the image of Love

Who made the first morning of the world.

you are not your legs.
you are not your painted fingernails.
you are not your borrowed face.

the courage required

smiley and rosey, her morning face on

and earphones, garrison keillor online

bananas, bluets and flakes, spoon by spoon

at the farmer's market, company face

primly erect in her jet black walker

as if pretty is as pretty just is

so much for the watchword of my childhood

how long does one fake it, and life is made?

what is the point if we don't find the point?

business face on, she's ready for heaven

but she'd hold up for crackers and cheese, and

a half glass of wine at 4 o'clock, sharp

credo

i believe God is the presence of Love

that animates the soul

and shines through the eyes of all whom we behold as loved.

nothing

and everything

is profound about that

i believe that we understand a little more each time our bodies die

and we take up life again in our spiritual home between lives...

i believe the enrichment of our own Soul enriches the Life of the Whole


i believe God's Great Risk was NOT

killing the Son to appease the Holy Split Personality--with Hate for some and unconditional Love for others ...living out the Eternal Snit: "They Done Me Wrong In The Garden"...


no.


i believe

Love's Risk was creating you and me

out of Their own Spiritual Image,

and then giving us Free Will

to grow, learn, and live our gifts forward through each life,

or to smash everything to bits and start over.

i believe we have a life lessons plan that we agreed to before we come into the physical world...each time...and that we return to be accountable for the gifts we are given and the goodness we came to increase in ourselves by living in the world for others.

i believe every path is made holy by love
and i believe

it is Good and Life-giving and Spirit-honoring

to love 

consciously, intentionally, freely, without expectation
so to live and breathe and mature in our Being of the Spirit