What God is not saying

Somewhere, somehow God is connecting everything --
can you hear the music?
even right now.

God is not saying: tell it, tell it, tell it
the words he speaks are heard
even if we are mute or sleeping

or stupid as usual.
Does the snow wait for you to fall?

Slumber, or get up to achieve
with something to show them all on paper,
prize your dust if you like

The big finish is already finished
enjoy, sing along
put on your headphones
and turn it up
you never wrote this song

Rejoice.

1001 Sanctuary Dreams

We bring in the college gospel choir, a few hundred strong -- faces shining like Mary on her big night -- like Moses on his way back down the mountain, irrevocably aglow, kids like 19, like 20, calling us into the harmony, into that voice that speaks it into being, draws us up and in younger and younger... and wow I can't believe what I'm hearing

We call in the dance crew -- their electric limbs, lightning-flash fast and flowing up and down the aisles all over the floor until it's pulsing through your own veins... the rooms full of peks and shoulders and stomachs and arms hands fingers feet thumping blood through your dreary, weary stone... let out a moan... from the heart you have not known... let them fly great fleshy distances, let life rush, radiant God all a - flush, oh what have I done, O beautiful for spacious skies and hips and thighs... boo-hoo for you if you miss this chance to be shaking with God inside the pants of the new creation... let all God's people say what on earth?

And please let me be the DJ... turn it up loud Capt. okay Bono will do until it's blaring... until no one can stand to sit any longer, until their all dancing, all looking and seeing there is no ceiling, there is no ground beneath their feet... there are no walls, there never ever were... let the open mouth of Eden sing... glory ring... dear God let me live only as a worshiping thing... there among the throng, inside your song... crying til we laugh how long how long how long...

Epiphany

An epiphany is... An appearance or manifestation of a deity -- God showing up out of nowhere.

A sudden, intuitive perception or insight into reality or the essential meaning of something usually initiated by some simple, commonplace occurrence -- something seemingly ordinary happens and then... pow!... you're never the same again.

A day -- January 6, 1929 - when Mother Teresa, a young compassionate nurse answers "a call," arrives in Calcutta to begin her work among India's poorest people.

A time when Magi, lovers of the stars, people whose wisdom consisted in their willingness to search, to follow their longings as far as they would lead them... Magi were led, known and found and given a light to pursue... the outsiders made their way in to show the insiders who and how to worship... they surrendered their careful thinking, fell on their knees, poured out extravagance and in the deep silence knew what could never be understood.

Epiphany is an opportunity for you, a searcher, my dear one, to rediscover the revelation that you are to this world... ordinary and magical... a chance to share the rarest, finest prize -- insert name here... to open the gift of the silent present... and See.

Sight and Silence, Randy

The Palomino Stallion -- Alden Nowlan

Though the barn is so warm
that the oats in his manger,
the straw in his bed
seem to give off smoke —

though the wind is so cold,
the snow in the pasture
so deep he'd fall down
and freeze in an hour —

the eleven-month-old palomino stallion
has gone almost crazy
fighting and pleading
to be let out.

Lioness

I found the perfect picture for my desktop. For the longest time it had been a brightly lit shot of a stream trickling through a snowy forest. I kept losing the icons among the frosted twine of twigs. It was at first rather soothing, an invitation to peace. But after a while I found that spring running contrary to so much transpiring.

But this one right here... She's a beauty looking out over the muted horizon... a vision of waiting, hunger, contentment, natural equanimity? It is one of those black and whites that is in no way black or white and all of it so soft and unassuming, the vast African prairie bone-dry-field far as far away... brushed near and drab and seamless in sky and cloud and sunray, soft as her fur, soft and nondescript enough to be real.

Whether at peace or starving, at rest or aching to the core, facing dawn or days ending, the approaching light of East, surrendered to the West, I do not know. Nor does she.

Alive as the indiscernible hum that animates the screen, she lives silently in front of me, a lioness.

For now, ready to pounce in the next moment or pine on for another 1000 years, stalking or stalked, shot sharp to the marrow of a vital kill or soothed to stay long again and still, for now this one will do... this creature, this vision, that is, until, until...

Prepare Him Room...

It came back to me this morning... just on the heels of telling Jill how, despite the delicious energy boost I get from morning coffee, it does pose a challenge at times. Before I "know it" I'm flying down the mental highway, completely in my thoughts, strapped in to the vehicle of an idea, a scenario... sometimes I love where these take me and then other times I find myself working ahead or obsessive about some potential problem or difficulty. The more clearly my mind paints the picture , the more I feel the pain, frustration, fear... Then, gratefully, I snap "out of it"... or back into the present. I shake it off wondering if we really need to have Starbucks every day of the week.
Well, anyway... it came back to me this morning, this invitation from Eckhart Tolle -- inviting me to listen to the quiet. The suggestion was to enter the present more fully by listening to silence, considering how despite its no-thingness... silence is a kind of fullness, a spaciousness that gives all other sound and stirring -- a place to be. To turn our attention into the depths of silence is to reach out for the presence of God -- the one whose present presence... envelops us, embraces us, offers a home in which to live.
What came back to me was this mantra... Silence without, stillness within.... each time I allow it to return me to the open spaces, it feels like a gift. I thought about that this morning and immediately felt like sharing it.
So, this Christmas -- to people like us and all those mired in the fears and frenzies of daily living, I commend this little mantra: Silence without, stillness within.... Silence without, stillness within.... may it help to create space for you, a place for peace and new life to be born.
I bless you all... with the kiss of Christ.
Merry Christmas

painful and glorious

How glorious it is - and also how painful - to be an exception.

--Alfred de Musset

"Prayer is dreaming in league with God..."

Thank you Heschel

open your present

... each moment is a gift

Open

Your

Present

(haiku)

If you think you can,
brace yourself against this Wind--
til foolish, you fly.

For my niece... Oh, That Kid...

Oh that kid...

Bring it on!...

complete dark unpredictable
unfathomable depth
cause I've got this
light...
she's a real being
just about 60 some odd miles away
with some pavement and stoplights, a Starbucks,
three or four towns, a speck on the map
a broad swath of land in between --

a surface I can move across
among a million trees with names, duney mounds
and sand, a lake to either side
and a river or 2 --
that's really all there is between us.

Soon she'll be getting into a car
maybe even barefoot on a summer day with just enough gas
winding along a prayer, a long boyfriend walk and talk for practice and a song
blinking a few times and pulling into my driveway
into my life with its

shadowy, cool constriction,
every offbrand sham
I've accepted as the prize --
till she rushes in with the bright smiling news
I've got it! I found it! Here it is!

... but for now I'll rest in the premonition
completely aware that

I've got this life -- in mine.
She's living out there ...
discovering, dreaming, putting it on pages for people to hear
my niece showing the world who knows what
opening hearts, hers first, stepping into the tall
timeless dance with God, swaying, saying
oh that kid --
bring it on, bring it on

It feels good

It feels good to feel good and
that is why I am feeling bad
about feeling bad when I do.

I'll be worried if you worry, my
own might even become a concern, because
I know for a fact that one
needs to feel free to feel free
and when we can or when we
do those around us feel free too
-- to feel good about feeling good, left
to wonder what wondering on that all
day long might do.

Cheese Please

Cheese please.

I've had my meat -- too bloody chewy, red death in a faraway
place, air freight made straight to the plate -- no thanks.

But Cheese, creamy life in wheels and shavings, oozing out
the sides, spread it on my days while I strain to hear that sacred mooing.

Cheese please, with a history of a life well lived one slice
at a time, that could've been curd, stayed cool in a cup all
clotted up -- plopped into the ripe-center of my melon
mornings or chilled in a glass, cold milk, that's class, drink
thick white love one sip at a time and leave it on your lip.

Cheese please... with the cow left in it and her long summer
day musings, the farmer with dreams of catnap's after lunch
and the sprawling yard with muddy clumps, the carpets of teaming
grass they lived on, the birds flying blessings overhead breathing blue
into their lungs, their lives, my cheese, my glorious cheese.

Big-city fun

ON THE BIKE PATH

Here is the message of evening in
early summer: watchful are those who see,
live as the Holy one you are.
Sunset comes early with a front
from the West.
I drive through the drying stream
of some old dogs urine --
some good mornings lappings
left over.
Weeds dry tawdry in tumbles,
flowers waft wild intoxication
and I notice to revere
the sweet attentive struggle
of an inchworm
on the bike path.

What holds us to the earth?

Waves

Innumerable,
hushing in soft -- I see that
giving is God's way

Green

Spring field rising up
with a spirit hand, waving
light in shades of green

Parting

Let these be my parting words: I hated loving you.
Always have. Always will.
I'm not going to say it hurts, not going to talk
about feelings -- never had a feeling in my life actually.
Goodbyes just as good as hello.

And this partings got me thinking about all
of those unfortunate people with their
connection, affection,
finding, binding, bonding, losing, grieving, mending, moving on.
Nine ways at least to waste one's vitality.

I'll loath the silence before the last words
we say to each other, and all of the predictable tears
over limits and why can't things last
and I'll never be the same and it's forever I promise.
I've no use for statements about what things meant,
no patience for what some say they'll always mean
-- in fact, who's got energy for everlasting anything?
Feel it and fling it, I say, I'll not wring out every drop for meaning.

Along the finest stretches, enjoy the road if you must,
look out the window, count the hilltops, kiss the breeze
but handle the brunt when the bend comes.
Wave a hand at what's grand and let go;
permanence is a brand of perpetual boredom.

MY FACE

I have never seen a face more beautiful than my own --
like it was in the restroom just after noon where I stopped to look,
where I reached for my own eyes
those dark wonders calling out
"come inside, dive in where it's warm and real,
you can stay here."

Those same eyes have traced the lines of lips, the ones
she said once were nearly perfect -- she was almost right --
the ones that live soft around my language, that form words,
that get bit by furious fangs, that hold in what can stink
and soothe and save the souls of millions each of whom have lips --
should I apologize for loving mine most more than any other anywhere?

Sure -- the mirror masks what's pimply inside,
a countenance that's clear as sand, man,
or the sea touched by the light just right revealing glory.
And woe is me, indeed and yes and how, till
Wow and radiant here I am --
in a glance, for a moment,
Sent with moist mouth, deep loving eyes to the mirror
where you and I collide and twirl the blushing world.

Take-home: Every person on this earth should love their own face most and first.