ABSENT AND WITH US

The sky was gray all day long on Friday, that's when I wrote most of my sermon. I finished it yesterday morning. The sun was out. I sat in the backyard and I prayed "Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your steadfast love."

In order to be at our best, in order to survive life's worst... sometimes we need a guide, someone to invite us in to show us how to do what we need to do... with that in mind I offer some of the words of Psalm 31 this morning... and invite you to pray along...

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away. I am the scorn of all my adversaries, a horror to my neighbors,
an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me. I have passed out of mind like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel. For I hear the whispering of many-terror all around!-
as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life. But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, "You are my God." My times are in your hand; deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors. Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your steadfast love.

Before he was crucified... Before Jesus echoed the psalmist's words from the cross "Into your hands I commit my spirit"... before they stripped him and beat him and crushed a thorny crown into his temples... and laughed and spit and mocked... before the disciples ran off... before one of his own betrayed him... before the crowds cried crucify him... they cried hose ana in the highest Blessed be the one who comes in a name of the Lord... before he entered that great city of Jerusalem among their praises and the waving palms... before he felt the dread of turning and traveling and entering that place, that hour... before his baptism in the Jordan River, before his ministry began, before the signs and wonders and miracles, before the parables, before all of his astounding teachings, before all of that -- Jesus learned the Psalms... He was brought up as a devout Jewish man was brought up. He learned about the law that was handed down to Moses for God's people, he knew their history, the places they had been, the things that had happened -- the covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David, he knew the words of the prophets, all of the lessons of the Kings... he knew about the 430 years that Israel waited without an answer from God to be freed from the Egyptian captivity... he knew about their many times and places of exile and dislocation... and he knew the songs and prayer's of his people. Jesus prayer life was shaped by the psalmist...Jesus knew their words... and most importantly he knew all of God's words that had been spoken, and he knew about all of the silences too...

The psalmist prays from a moment, a place of distress -- be gracious to me of Lord, I am in distress... is a problem named, a problem solved? -- -- Sometimes we are in distress... enemies of circumstance surround us, they whisper terror all around us, they conspire -- persons in our lives, problems in our family's, dark, life-threatening prognoses sometimes they conspire together against us, they do it in these ways and in countless other ways -- they plot to take our life and we are overwhelmed by fear... asking, where is God? He must know what is happening, he must care... and if he does surely he must act, he must want to... but so often he does not. We cry out from places of distress and despair and when we do we join the psalmist's... and we join Jesus too, we join the one whose choice was to join us there -- who knew to the most painful extent the experience of being abandoned by God.

We hear the psalmist pray from a place of deep sorrow, feeling the sting of betrayal from those who he loved, grieving the loss of relationship. Despised by his neighbors, shunned by his own, a broken vessel whose life is spent with unconsoled sighing... he mourns the loss of what was, the loss of what might have been, the psalmist mourns from a place of isolation and despair. Sometimes we do too... sometimes we take our wheelchairs down the streets of Saugatuck and people stare and well-meaning moms and dads pull their children back, away from us... sometimes those who see me in the street flee from me.... and sometimes they say hey aren't you Jill Smits husband? Sometimes we are blue... truly blue -- truly poor in spirit -- disenchanted, discouraged, overwhelmed -- and in those moments don't we sometimes have the wish that the whole world were blue right with us...

As a young man I remember holy week experiences... we celebrated Maundy Thursday Last Supper and for several years, when that evening came I can remember feeling like I wanted the weather to be miserable, I wanted it to rain, I even wanted it to storm, I had the desire for God to set the stage for grieving, for lamentation, for sadness so that as I tried to draw close to Jesus I had some help... to enter in to this much-needed connection with Christ... I wanted the world to become as troubled and abandoned, as God forsaken as I was... as Jesus was too...my God my God why have you forsaken me?

Sometimes we need a teacher, a guide... we need someone with us in those God forsaken places.

If you are uncomfortable with me saying that Jesus was forsaken by God on the cross?... you're in good company... we could talk about it in many different ways, as people have for centuries. We could talk about it as we do about the weather... the sun was out today, the sun was not out, I hope the sun comes out, the sun went away... have you ever spent the day under cloud cover -- a day from beginning to end where the sky was gray... on such days what you truly experience is the absence of the sun... where it really is dark, cold... hard to see... things are half lit, half dead ... that is what you experience... Now, some people, whether talking theology or meteorology, some people would like to get technical with us and would like to say "the sun hasn't gone anywhere, you just aren't seeing it... for different reasons they don't want to hear about your melancholy... your gloomy attitude... the sun is out, the sun is there -- you just can't feel it... to which any one of us, to my way of thinking, has every right to ask -- if I can't see it or know it or feel it's presence, does it really matter -- technically -- if it's their... you can imagine it's presence but you experience its absence -- and that experience is real and valid.

And people do this with God... especially Christian people. And I don't think they have to -- especially given the facts of our Good Friday history... the things that happened and became part of our salvation story...

The story in which God does his saving work arises among a people whose primary experience of God is his absence. And although that experience doesn't fit into what we would call a normal or understandable place in God's salvation plan, the more we look at the life of God's people and the deeper we search into the experience of Jesus, the more we discover that it is part of the plan and it is normal.

The teachers of prayer, the psalmist's and Jesus' guidance offer us this: Belief in God does not exempt us from feelings of abandonment by God. Praising God does not inoculate us from doubts about God...
Meditating on God's words won't always rescue us from the darkest and driest places of our lives... (Peterson)

As we experience God's silences in the stories of our lives, We need to name and to measure the significance of God's silences in the story of salvation. The silence of God while Christ hung on the cross. When we do, our experiences are made valid, we see that they are not exceptional or preventable or a judgment on our feelings or the way we are living our lives.

Sometimes we need a teacher, a guide, a real person... we need someone to help us cry and to be with us in those God forsaken places. Jesus is that person and in that connection lies the goodness of Good Friday... it's where our desire to be like Jesus... is eclipsed on the cross by his desire to be like us -- even to be forsaken -- truly and only... for our sake.

In the Spell

In the spell of sleep I learn to savor longing, or
maybe when I wake -- to dash the sweetest dream,
to find dark, real, outside of me, where
I offer God tears for a way back in.

I rose from a powerful dream.
Do not ask what it was about.

Would you believe that the curse feels
tender? That is, anyway, it's
guise in the daylight, its charm in
the woken wish to fall back in.

Would you ever think that you could fall
into it like I did, into the tumble of
a beauty-hum, into the smile you'd
tried to turn from,

Into the sofa, floors and walls,
a face, a kiss, a cure?

Would you believe that God had lips
or that a true Being would leave
you to your own laughter,
to your own life, to live awake
in disbelief, until you'd mastered yearning?

Rejoice my love and in your beauty see us both reflected(St John of the Cross)

God-Wolf

Haunt me, hunt me, have me God-gray wolf.
Snarl and sink into my foundering flesh.
Inhabit the forest of my dreams
and Prowl and stalk until you rest behind
the knowledge tree -- one eye on me, one set on deeper things.
Pursue until sated foreteeth find their moist home within your muzzle,
until reverie and lapping savor the last of me
and I have been devoured into the fur-clad heaven of your stomach.

March Moment

Half of the yard behind the house
is dusted with the cool sugar of mid-March;
the early talc prepares unpowdered earth
for vital spring and panting summer sweats.

From author Jim Harrison -- Marching

Marching

At dawn I heard among bird calls the billions of marching feet in the churn and squeak of gravel, even tiny feet still wet from the mother's amniotic fluid, and very old halting feet, the feet of the very light and very heavy, all marching but not together, criss-crossing at every angle with sincere attempts not to touch, not to bump into each other, walking in the doors of houses and out the back door forty years later, finally knowing that time collapses on a single plateau where they were all their lives, knowing that time stops when the heart stops as they walk off the earth into the night air.

Lost holy now

Late holy morning in February -- first, bright sunlight, a rare welcome and I do not strain to stay within the womb of sleep this time.

One click releases me from the white noise of a fan that blew in the cool room throughout the night -- it retreats and I am given to the sparkling silence, the holy now.

My dog is breathing beside the bed, she snores, knowing the rest that comes with perfect trust -- I practice it myself. I let my ears guide my painting mind to the cabinet I hear closing, the gentle drag of a kitchen drawer, the soft-shoe of a coffee mug across the countertop. The furnace breathes beneath the floor, the fridge opens and closes and with great intention I can hear the deep brown brew rising to its fullness -- I can hear the steam, the pot returned to its electric holster, the sound of a stirring spoon.

It is the stillness of Eden on the first day. It is what they heard before the whisper for more, before any of the conquering began, before the sly Self first performed.

Throughout the night God has placed a universe within. The holy now of first light is where I behold that glorious replacement and it is where I wait for trust to fade, for fear to return with waking. It is where I ponder whether or not I could actually live there, stay there; whether it could make here into a heaven, with sunbeams showering away the imperfection, with coffee warming up from slumber the gladness that longs to live outside. Perhaps I could hold it in the hands of my heart as I am held, perhaps I could live from the inside out.

But then, as a twitch, the new creation shrinks. The phone rings, I hear it from the bedroom and I do not anticipate what good old friend it must be, what communion we might have for a few moments over so many miles. The now being so holy, the quiet so soothing, I am sure it is a demon on the other end with just one quick question, not meaning to bother but ready to destroy what was boundless and so holy. Surely they are ready to set fire to the golden sprawl that was my soul for one late morning in February.

A Lighter Touch

Lord let me bring a lighter touch to the canvas of my interactions
that all may know who is the Artist, and who the brush.

Untitled

I have a friend who commits himself to one full hour of poetry writing every day.
I don't know who he thinks he is,
jerk!, early-riser recluse,
he's no religious realist.

I too would give myself away
if not held in by plans and a picture window pointing West
where the sky has lived throughout the day
without me noticing.

Letting me inside, the lovers eye will not release,
it presses warm upon the skin of poems within
while I in countless coming moments
will betray that touch and truth and beauty,

Feeling myself the worst of perpetrators
having turned from the purple dusk
to hear the sigh of God
wishing I had never glanced.

Every poem is provisional

There

There

There
I can hear the whisper of the breeze upon each leaf
I can count each one,
can paint with precision,
caress the naked fact of each one's color.
I can tell the story of each one's life.
I can tell the truth of every leaf on every branch on every tree --
tall, small and in between -- on every rounded acre
of the holy land of my inheritance,
where knotty logs raise high stories home,
so moist in the morning,
where the dung of my horse is fresh alive--
useful to the soil and to my soul,
where prayer at dawn is sighed
like the sorrel sway of a buckskin brother’s tale.
There, where still ponds of glass remind of world's past
and mountains keep a watchful eye
and cool quench the streams supply
I with cowboy-Christ can labor through the day
till dreams of moonrise and fire-dance
console the trees at sundown.

Red Christ

Clutter

Remnants of yesterday's hurry, and the day before,
called clutter fill our kitchen table where steaming coffee cups could be
and quiet conversation and meals with second helpings of memories
if we were only less successful.

Now and Then (in progress)

Now, watching light play along the edges of so many blank white restroom tiles before my eyes, I look through to see the leaves I saw dance back then, to see them sauntering to their death. Undressing trees made me pause to look and grieve and wonder at beauty that drew me in to stillness. Now I ponder where I put those words, that phrase that let the world capture me, that let me dance there and then. Then I felt its charms, the poetry of autumn, the sweetness of goodbye. Red-lit, golden treasures of the trees holding on and letting go, chanted "watch us now, now we fly, now we dance, now we burn, now we find our place in the long dream of winter." Then one of them fell on my lap.

Now I remember the offerings made in surrounding yards, the smoke I smelled encircling me, hanging in the air and creeping away slowly through tall fences, caressing bare limbs, sanctifying squirrels and crows and rakes and chatty neighbors, calling in the durge of dusk. Then there were snowflakes in the sanctuary. Now I try to recapture the line and verse, the surprise of white morning, the bright blanket of hope that touched my eyes made wide again. Now in silence waiting, I sit as I did there beside the window losing track, happily unable to count the sauntering manna seraphim, the treasures of the heavens sent down to sooth, to whisper "watch us now, now we fly, now we dance, now we melt away the pain, now we seep into the earth to cleanse the stain, now we find our place until the resurrected spring."
Then one called me out into the street, one teased and twirled refusing to fall. Then one uncounted, unnamed, unnoticed gave itself over to bring me life, the pure wet kiss of God to my lips.

Now I rest remembering. Then I spoke aware, as now, that speaking could not slow the breeze, could not restore the trees out of season, could not call back the incense, could not retrace the frozen angels whereabouts. I spoke with these same lips that do shrink dry again, and I worshiped then as now, in the rich dim glow of my study, drawing in slow deep breaths, now open as eyes traveling over heavens page, then in every place that I can be with Eternity looking through to find me -- flying, now dancing, now savoring my then, my now and all the treasures of my days, watching light play along the edges of my life.

A Good Morning

I woke after nearly 11 hours of sleep believing that all things are possible with God.

The sleep was put to good use, I thought. The coffee might have been a little extra strong that morning or see what a good breakfast can do... but what I tasted I could not account for, a hunger and a tasting at once. All things are possible. The world was radiating color and my marrow buzzed and tickled and I knew that I and all could be felt, I and all could be painted, all could be celebrated, all could be held or shared or consumed. I could eat my fill and later float with a belly full of pleasures knowing that what filled me and what held me were one and could never be exhausted. Did I hear take and eat? And would I...? as I sensed that everyone can do this, that no one ever does.

"It's madness or its joy, again or at last." I gave words to it within myself. Oil and mud slurred and seeping from a crack in the asphalt beneath me was beautiful, it echoed back the laughter I was sharing with my wife, the gasp of recognition and remembrance, the laughter of limitless possibility. There was Hope in the morning hours where art and living interpenetrate, where I was poured out in primaries, where beauty whispered my name, where God gave the world a showing and I could be revealed naked and unashamed. I was there with her in the parking lot, entering the store, entering the hope of morning where great books are written and poems unfurl and where we are attired such as to leave no doubt as to what it is we desire to express. That is where epic stories find us at the center and where acclaimed films are formed from our simple days and everyone sees them and feels the touch of God in them as we did when we first lived them. All scale, all cast, all colors of light, every hue, every texture and tingling dimension of life lives there with you and lives without limit in the hope of morning. That is where you see that You are the living breathing hope of the world because all things are possible with God.

And God is with you in that joy and madness; knowing their inseparability from the view below, knowing why and where and how to reach and resurrect you, knowing how to bring you morning's hope like your dearest brought you coffee. This is the reason that you sing throughout the day and later hear it as the song of God's enjoyment.

I woke desiring to write it in the sand of my soul. I woke discovered by the good morning, alive with health enough to dream, with God and all possible things.

Prayer after Ordination

You are still writing the book of my life, oh God, and I am still trying to be a faithful scribe. Many people are reading this book and celebrating what you are doing through it. Yesterday I felt the strange sense of knowing that "this is my life" and I joined them in looking at it, celebrating it and experiencing you magnified in the midst of it. It felt uncomfortable and wonderful.

You know the prayer, the song that sings within me. I am a mortal and cannot put words to it. Spirit of God, pray for me, sing the prayer of my life to the Father and let the Son teach me to hear it and share it. Let your creation continue in me, sing your new creation through my dreams and days... and as for those who gathered in ordaining celebration and for all they represented -- Let me lay down my life for these children, these towers and teachers, these priests and poets, these nourishing trees of life, these angels in robes and uniforms and jeans and gym shoes. Let me adore you by loving them. Let me, as fearless and as selfless as you, as fragile and discerning as you Lord Jesus... let me thank them by living a grateful, worshiping life with you.

Jesus -- you are my Lord and my King! Amen

Rumble, tumble

Rumble, tumble,shimmer in the mumble.
Role, reach, feel, preach
glory in the grumble.
Metaforest's rivers reeling,
truth of trees our terms concealing,
sense all healing life revealing
glimmerings bold, glistening humble