having an ordinary name
(Think cow or child’s toy)
Means misnomer–
Betty, Becky, pieces left out
Or added
My favorite-gleanor
So close
To gleaner
I ask myself
What if it was George? Harold? Londerson? Jamal?
Would I still
Recognize your voice
Trace the familiar
Lines along
Your hands, your face?
Your gaze holds firm
Your love unswerving
Written, Word
come to the dark
stones skipped along the surface
will sink into concentric ghosts
these stars
hard to measure
Line up–
School girls in bright
White dresses
Wade in
knees, waist, chest
As if they had forgotten
They are luminous,
formed of fire and light.
these interlocking pieces-
a woman in the crowd reaches out to touch
Slowing down motion
to Jairus’ daughter
Take this stranger by the hand
(For science, of course)
Blindfold emotion
-While the girl lies dying-
Somehow temporarily
All of us
nailed to this single day in history
When you let go of
Everything you had a right to hold
Go where we never
want to go
Then tell Mary
Don’t touch me
Last trace of hell still on my skin
You draw us to your
Broken.
Make us whole again
With this system of touch.
I am a big fan of Jesus, even though he is a little scary.
Why? Well, there is the dying for the sins of the world thing, but there is also the stuff he idly seems to throw into his parables–weeping and gnashing of teeth, something about being salted with fire.
CS Lewis is right, he is not a tame lion. He is the only and original badass and he more than deserves to be the divisor of before and after in human history.
Years ago I cried when I read an article about a nurse who visited new and at-risk parents. She said that years later the babies she had visited would recognize her voice when they heard her in random places.
This mattered to me because I have a baby out there somewhere who might recognize my voice even though she was just 14 months old when she was taken from me.
The voice of love–that is what I hear when I read Jesus. He is, by turns, funny, deadly incisive, ironic, and passionately in love with us.
Crucifixion and resurrection kind of passionately in love.
When I lost my little foster daughter I grieved beyond what is comfortable to describe. I took my cry to God–why?
His voice was clear–if you have to choose for her to know just one of us, you or Me? Which would you choose?
Him, of course.
Always and only Him, baby girl.
Hear his voice.
John 10:2-5
1. the grease from the hamburgers
starts a fire on the grill
smoke billows out
disturbing a previously impervious
colony of wasps
2. a smartphone next to the ballerina-slippered left foot
Of the tinier girl
plays a song about eating disorder
as the taller girl bemoans
I am scared. This is higher than you went
In the staircase of the rock wall
The tiny child raises her hands
Just hold on tight and come down
One foot at a time
And if you fall
…I will catch you
Viola Davis has recently joined the long list of celebrities who have spoken out against sexual assault–rape, often in the context of their own victimization.
I could write a list of the men and women who have helped other victims by speaking out as sexual assault survivors. I could not give you a list of the names of the perps.
Why?
The ongoing controversy surrounding abuse allegations made by Corey Haim before his death gives us some clues–
And yet if we are honest, we all have a list–the creepy uncle, the duplicitous coach, the father who harms his own child, a neighbor, a brother-in-law, a once-beloved actor. People we know abused someone because that someone said so, maybe at great personal cost, maybe with no positive protection of the law.
Keeping silent about predators gives them freedom to continue to abuse.
So here, a name–
My adopted son is short, overweight, ginger, born February of 1994. Last I heard he worked at the automotive center at a Walmart in Kansas City, KS. His name is Charles Allen Lee.
He has sexually abused very young children. He has exhibited cruelty toward animals. He can be very persuasive and does not tell the whole truth.
And if you asked him about me? If you ask him about me he will tell you I just bring the drama.
And if you ask him about him? He will not tell you the whole truth.
…because the whole truth is…
Devastating.
take hunger, take thirst
Go
stand in the storm
know this to be true:
Thunder, wind, rain
fall splendor from this
Cloud-dark sky
and lift these things
empty into tumult–
The way a man might lift his just-born
hunger, thirst
Once and only filled
By the God of the storm
Looks like deep
Sleep
Draped across the seat
across the bodies of these hungry
Children
Immobilizing poison
Shot into blood vessels, skin
I call to you, no answer
Try to warn you
This venal monster
Hunts then kills its prey
No answer, Sleeping Beauty
Already heroin gone
Who takes apples from strangers in a storm?
Do you believe in ever after?
All the tropes of fairy tales will not save us from
The story of a little girl trapped
In this worst kind
Of nightmare tries to call
for help
Nothing left
As the anatomical apparatus for sound and breath:
Lungs, rib cage, windpipe
Collapses beneath the weight,
The force of blows to this chest,
All alone,
Of the used-to-be
girl.
John 11:4 NIV[4] When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”
What is impossible? Is gravity? The suspension of gravity? Space flight? Sea urchins?
We live in a world filled with wonder and darkness. The wonder feels improbably miraculous until the darkness throws an extreme curve ball and bam!
Death takes all.
Or so it seems.
When Jesus says this sickness will not end in death it seems like he knows what he is talking about.
Several days later when he weeps with the mourners he seems like a total nut job. Until…
I am going to hold that until–single note sung in the dark.
Some of the untils we weep through are excoriating, catastrophic…terminal.
It is important to pause at Jesus’ pronouncement. If you know the story you might be tempted to breeze through to “the good stuff,” but in this case time takes the stage–time for Lazarus to go from well to unwell, time for Lazarus to go from unwell to fatally ill. Time for Lazarus to die. Time for Lazarus to be prepared for the grave. Time for grief. Disbelief. Sorrow. Anger.
And the apparent absence of Jesus.
But…
He is not absent. He is impossible. He is the God of the impossible.
Wait. Impossible means powerless, the opposite of able.
How can God, by his very nature omnipotent, be defined as not able.
Deliberately. He was intentionally…
“not able” in death.
“not able” on the Cross.
“not able” for us.
Jesus called Lazarus out of the grave in preparation for his own death. He gave his followers an impossible four day route through death and burial so that when it was his death they would only have to wait three days.
The three darkest days of history. Three impossible days.
Until…
Sunday morning and the God of impossible things walks back in.
When you were little your foster father would throw you in the air above him. Within one second your face would register fear, exhilaration, joy, laughter.
It has always been a picture in my head–this God of sea urchins and dwarf stars throws us high up in the air for each single looped thread in the seam of all eternity.
The fear and uncertainty only bearable when we know, know, know…
He will catch us in His arms.
As He has already caught your beautiful mama, let Him catch us too…
Forever.
Safe in the outstretched arms
of Love.
Luke 18:27 NIV
[27] Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”
this is what I would say,
If I were your real mother–
Use the pink phone with the rubber buttons
the canned voice locked inside it
–May I help you? She would ask gamely
Each time you rang her up
She would
Drop everything
Just to hear your voice
At the other end of the line.
Carrying Light 