you take it for granted–
All those exes and the whys
Algebra–the reunion of broken parts
When no one asks how they got
So broken
We must all search for that
Ancient mathematician
His ability to see how
To…
Piece us back together
Bone by bone
Until every x is solved
And every y has its
solution
some stories hold
Such trauma
That in order to
Tell them
You have to use a Chinese box
What, you ask, is a Chinese box?
A Chinese box is a
Story
Within a story
Within a story
Not to be confused with
Chinese handcuffs
(Which is a very different thing indeed)
For example:
Once there were some children who lived in an apartment with their (biological) mother and father. They did not always eat. Sometimes they were left alone. The father beat the mother.
The loss was unbearable, said their foster mother. The boy was mute. The girl was cagey.
So small. So damaged. So angry.
They called her bad mommy, bad mommy, bad mommy.
Because there was only the one.
One room, one closet, one subterfuge, one million wrongs
In the circuits of his mind
He tells the story of the bad mommy, who was (he says) too much drama.
As she pieces together the past she neglects the symmetry of hearts, circles, and peanut butter sandwiches among the survivors
Because, as an ordinary prophet once said–every trauma has its own story…
Within these concentric
Chinese boxes.
the trees are animate
Watching over
Us
Towering water fowl and prehistoric raptors
They have been
Put.
Under.
A.
Spell.
For millennia
Slowed down so that
They must rely on outside actors to
Shake them free–
The wind or
Small children shimmying skyward
Begin to give voice, lend
momentary quickness
To these beauties
Tied to the wet, dark earth
Searching for treasure
So carefully, so slowly
Through the roots
Waiting for the Day
When we will all be
Set free.
Years ago I had my first encounter with the way the parable of the Good Samaritan might need to be imported to wake parks, or at least my home park at the time.
A young man dangled in the water at the point of the pond furthest from the dock. He cried out in pain.
I say this with no pride–I did not want to stop riding to help him. They were about to close…I would have to stop riding for the day…there were so many other riders, surely someone else would stop and assist him?!
I stopped and so did his friend. He had hurt his foot and ankle and he definitely needed help.
The first of many times that God would remind me that wakeboarding is not as important as your soul.
There were other ways to remind me of this–picking up trash along the shore, letting people cut in front of me even if it really bugged me, helping others to ride.
And after that first time it seemed good to just make the rule to stop and help anyone who needed help.
So when a Christian-labelled group started a Bible study at the Texas Ski Ranch, some of us discussed the way Jesus’ parable about an outcast who saves the day for a crime victim could be adapted for wakeboarders.
The guy who got beat up would be a new rider in need of help.
The priests and religious leaders would be the “really good riders” who become so focused on their tricks or their ride that they ignore the person in need.
But who was the Good Samaritan? Who would he or she be?
I am not going to fill in that blank. You should. If you are a wakeboarder you should find out who the “Good Wakeboarder” is. (Hint: He is much more famous as a Barefooter, doesn’t even need a rope.)
One day we will all need him, no matter how many trophies we have or tricks in our pocket.
And if you are not a wakeboarder you can pick your epithet for the good “guy” in Jesus’ parable.
The good reality TV star?
The good politician?
The good evangelist?
The good drug dealer?
The good alcoholic?
The good snob?
We get pretty hung up on our labels. Jesus knew that and exploited the discomfort of his listeners to force them to see Him differently.
No one can be good the way Jesus can–God in disguise.
some things remain dark
Obsidian dark
No matter how much you try to put distance between
The two of us
The video footage cannot, will not excise your presence
Obsidian dark
Is not your chicken-scratch handwriting
The horrible story I made you write down
Or the things you left out…
That so many people helped to…diminish
None more than you
The damage which will always be
dead dog on my chest
Ghosts of dogs should haunt us both
But let yours bark incessantly outside the grainy film of your transgressions
While mine
Returns whole, resurrected even,
To the cement driveway by the old house where the children played with the water hose and the blue plastic wading pool
Joy
They fill the screen with joy
For a moment even you could see
The way the thinnest layer of water poured out on rough cement
Reflects the sky
Reflects the light from the endless sky
Reflects the glory of this endless day we
…walk toward the sun, my one-time-child
Before the night
Falls forever
Words matter, mainly because they stand for something meaningful. For instance, if you call genocide “the great solution,” or “living space” it is still really just genocide, but the strange, deforming euphemisms you have thrown up in front of the horror of murder might confuse the dim or comfort the monstrous.
So, for instance, if you call an unholy mixing of embryo parts from two species, one human, one not, a chimera and you call the embryo parts gastrulation, and you leave out any issue of obtaining consent from the very small and then you leave out the part about keeping these living entity for endless experimentation then destroying them.
Even then it sounds unbearable.
Some things we should not do not just because they are monstrous and destructive. Some things we should not do because they make us monsters of destruction.
you must believe in
The invisible world–
Atoms, neutrons, quarks
And other molecular angels
These bits of light and matter
Swirl around us
Halos of an inevitable world
You bend to kiss his brow
No longer visible with naked eye.
But what of the others?
There to receive him
Just beyond the scrim
Clouds of witnesses
The insubstantial irreplaceable
Eternal us
Funny how often Lincoln shows up in our
Iterations of heaven
And how young grandma always looks
As though you and I could
Stand the light
Ten million stars are just
This single flickering candle in
A fleck of night
He dusts off his shoulder,
Strong right arm
Gathers our once-mortal hearts
Into immortal, imperishable we
We who will stand
Candidates for this eternal
Song sung loud
By our six year old selves
Forever
I find the sentences which include when I did the bikini contest or the bikini contest I was in require explanation.
Explanation because I do not believe in body image competitions.
Explanation because I am a round, soft, almost-50 year old mama.
So the fact that I participated in the Texas Ski Ranch Cablestock Bikini Contest of 2016 is as worth noting as are the varied consequences of doing so.
So first–why?
I had been going to TSR for several years and was acquainted with their bikini contest because they ran promos for it on an infinite loop. An avert your eyes kind of loop.
Efforts at dialogue seemed to be unproductive. Prayer, Bible study, and a remarkably specific fleece led to my reluctant decision to sign up for the bikini contest.
Much to my own consternation.
Weddings are such artificial confections, but all funerals have a unifying element of truth–we are all prone to die.
The manner and time vary, the seeming finality does not.
Unless…
Unless Jesus is right. Unless He is the resurrection and the life. In that case the things we take for granted about the finality of the grave may not be all there is.
I went to a funeral recently. An untimely one. The priest gave the family a final story from Acts 3–the silver and gold I have none story.
Only he did not tell it right. Instead of the healing of the beggar and his resultant joy–physical, exuberant, unmissable dancing and jumping! The priest says that Peter says he will be there and pray.
Don’t get me wrong–Christians being there and praying is getting to be miraculous and rare, it just isn’t what Peter said or did. At least not all he did.
The thing that Peter did for the beggar was public, miraculous, transforming, and unmistakable.
And powerfully reminiscent of his Master. When Peter heals the beggar he signals that we are in AD now. He lets us know that any narrative that portrays Jesus just another victim of Roman torture is incomplete.
He lets us know that the flood of the miraculous has gushed into the ordinary.
A flood that should wash through every wedding and every funeral with the insistent song of redemption and resurrection and eternity.
Nothing quiet here.
Carrying Light 