We go out
Into the yard
Catch light in butterfly nets
Unspool the hammocks
Which then become sails
Lifted by the wind
Which as you know (already)
Goes where it wills
Spring Light
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Category Archives: child advocacy
Lunchtimes with Lazarus
Of course, neither of us chew
scoop cold water to our waiting lips
In the congregation of those
Waiting for bright sunlight
Resurrection
Fast
He moves up the wall quickly, ascending over three thousand vertical feet in a little over 3 hours. We all marvel at him, as well we should, that kind of hubris and fearlessness is an altar to the human spirit
Who fails to see the God who held him there
All along
I go back to Alex’s choosing the rocks over the ladies
As I count days and hours and minutes and seconds
A slow hunger crawl
All fat girl dependence not on
Finger strength and will power but the dorsal strength of a lullaby–
You are greatly loved
I have a dear friend who signs notes to me you are greatly loved. Which is cool, right?
On one of my phones I have played with the tag phrase at the end of emails. I am not sure anyone needs to know I have sent this from my iPhone, but perhaps they need a Bible verse, and exhortation of some sort, or to know they are greatly loved?
Sometimes I forget it is there. Sometimes I read it and think this snarky email I am about to send needs to be edited for snark if I truly believe the recipient is greatly loved. Sometimes I acknowledge it but then delete each letter because the mayor or the police chief or the college professor or college president already thinks I am crazy as a loon and annoying and foolish as well.
The phrase itself is not the strongest iteration of the idea. It is in passive voice. The active form is just I love you, which can be the most exposed and committed utterance when rendered true.
When we love someone enough to fight for them
When we intervene on their behalf.
When we are willing to be desperate or look foolish for them.
When we are willing to be misunderstood to keep them safe.
When we go hungry for them
Or give up jobs and honors for them.
Or when we call for help on their behalf.
When we give them our voice because their voice is young or small or taken from them.
They are greatly loved because love demands fierce and extraordinary things.
…..
A few days ago I was in deep mourning thinking about the sheer number of people who have decided that either I was not good enough for love, or worse, that God was not good enough for love.
I cried over this, and opened up YouTube to pray and sing through this grief. Matthew Mole’s You are loved appeared without a search or a place on my history.
God does that. He leaves signs all around us that we are greatly loved. He sends leaves falling over us, pennies shining on the pavement, songs which feel like lullabies, setting and rising suns–all love letters with the same matchless
guarantee–
You are greatly loved.
–John 3:16
Why?
We went to two concerts last year. One was at Whitewater Amphitheater and the other was at the Majestic in San Antonio.
While Whitewash was not bad, we were told that we could not bring in blankets or toys and we were searched at the gates. The people working there were actually helpful, but the excessive restrictions were oppressive.
By contrast, the Majestic concert was amazing. I realized that being treated as a valued and valuable guest made the Majestic a place I wanted revisit, while I will avoid concerts at Whitewater.
Believe it or not, this is not actually about venue policies.
I composed a several sentence reply to new, additionally restrictive policies at WA, then deleted it. Because I probably won’t go back, I just emailed them, why?
And suddenly that one small question meant the world to me. Sometimes silence is a form of cowardice, but this time it was power.
As soon as I sent my why I realized it applied to all the unanswered questions I had about far bigger questions than why Whitewater Amphitheater won’t sanction me bringing in a purse, a blanket, or a deck of cards to a concert I have to pay to attended.
I never have to go there again. They need to prove to me that they understand my value.
Not the other way around.
Howdy!
Never forget that God speaks your very own special language.
Matthew 10
If you need prayer, please comment.
Shout their voicelessness
Children are notoriously voiceless, which is why Lindy West’s crusade to “shout your abortion” is so very tone deaf.
In this country and in many countries all over the world, women of childbearing age may have the right to kill their own small daughters and sons, but once that procedure has resulted in the death of a child, it no longer belongs to the mother to shout.
Mother–see how ironic that sounds.
We have to shout for…
…the voiceless girls
Who have lost their lives, their right to shout
For daughters
For sons
Forever missing
Their voices.
Prayer
Prayer comes from the Latin word precarius which means, obtained by entreaty. I remember years ago looking at the way it came to us through the feudal system–subjects would pray to their lords and protectors for the things they needed to survive.
Sometimes prayer can seem less feudal than futile. Is anyone listening? Will anyone come to save me? Those two questions can haunt the soul.
I believe in prayer. I believe it brings light and brings help.
The hardest time to tell someone to pray is when you yourself feel the most alone, the most abandoned.
God never leaves us or forsakes us.
Pray, beautiful one, pray.
The Altar
It was a garden-variety Protestant set up–big ol’ baptistery in the rear, low pile carpeted stage, wood veneer podium, and home-made wooden sign written by an earnest non-native speaker of English,
DO not PLAY on the stage!
I used to speak there once a month for several years. If it was my week to sermonize I would pray first, wait for a topic to surface (unless one was assigned or liturgically evident), then chew on that passage all week. I would research words in original languages, cross-reference key words with other passages, sift through for what it all might mean for us.
I remember speaking on faith, rivers, stones, and children. The process was often exposing, riveting, beautiful, intimate, and met with a regularly dozing deacon or two.
You preach a message and then hope some small smudge of it besmirches the forehead of the listener.
And still I struggle whether anything did.
Anything like–once there was a woman who used to speak in a church where there was an ordinary altar, garden-variety stage, oddly capitalized sign propped upon it.
DO not PLAY on the stage
Sometimes all we need to know about the beauty, splendor, and grace of this dying religion is that the Spirit of the Living God can drive an ordinary man to
Print the words that matter
ALL IN capital letters
For those who are awake
By the end of the sermon.
Uncomfortable Sermons
I wonder, perhaps more often than I should, what would happen if we actually expected church sermons to be practical, actionable, real?
I wonder this because in the last 10 years I have worn my proverbial mendicant’s shirt to communities of faith, as has my whole family, only to find that the churchy probably don’t want us there.
They don’t want us because we talk about horrible things–rape, sexual assault, the abuse of children, sexual exploitation, the way the justice system fails victims, the way branded communities fail.
Not all at once, mind you.
But the truth remains so. If you tell a story about faith-minded adopting family neck-deep in ministry and family and community and then those people, especially their young children, are hurt, terribly hurt, by the people they were supposed to consider family.
Well, that is not a good sermon.
It is, however, very similar to many stories in the Bible, which is where I have gone for my uncomfortable sermons.
Where do you find yours? Where do you go to find the way through
The darkest, hardest places?
Carrying Light 