The Day I Lost You

Posted on November 13, 2014 by Elea Lee

The sky was very blue in Beaver, PA on November 13th, 1998. There was a cop car parked down the block. I looked at it and wondered–did they put it there for me?

Had I planned a run to Canada I would have take off already.

People from our church came. Reporters came. They gathered around us in our pain.

Then the caseworker came.

I will never forget what happened between the house and my last glimpse of you in that car, but even after 16 years I don’t want to write it down.

Still too painful.

All of it, too painful.

The Waiting Room

Posted on November 4, 2014 by Elea Lee

She uses the word justness
As I sit stilled before these haunting pictures

I don’t know
Quiet only the voices of the past
No present or future here in the waiting room I remember
Paperwork when you believe is different than when you just go through the motions of

All these empty words
But you still
Expect me to believe them

The narrow road

Posted on September 14, 2014 by Elea Lee

We talk about the two roads: (notice there are no others) one narrow, one broad.

I picture the broad one littered with neon signs, carnival-lit and well-paved.

The narrow one is hard to find, off the the side, obscured by overgrown vines and branches. Because, let’s face it: not much traffic.

You climb through the overgrowth to get there and once on the Path the going is any but easy. Rocks, besetting ills, humiliations, and the echoing loneliness of it all.

But always the figure of the Man in front of us. Stick close to Him. After all He is the way itself. The narrow path to life–home waiting at the end.

There we will belong.

Foley and Sotloff

Posted on September 11, 2014 by Elea Lee

I grieve for these lost men
Think about their brokenhearted mothers
Avoid an accounting of the days and the pain and dogs of souls

who could exact such cruelty on…ordinary men

It is easier not to go
To the places these men went
And the place where they were
Cut to pieces

But we must

Ask ourselves what has become of
Us, the Geneva Convention, the boundaries of

Words, only words
strung words together
No guns, no knives, no ammunition
Pictures taken of war
If you can even call it that

They say they got Capone for tax evasion
Not murder
And I wonder if these boys who hide their faces and play “gods and men”
Like a game without a score

Know the second commandment (say nothing of the 6th)
Still applies to their eternal souls:

Forget all else you have done
And understand you owe God for life
For these pictures you have taken
Of Foley and Sotloff

There will be
Forever
Nowhere to hide.

My Monster

Posted on September 1, 2014 by Elea Lee

My monster sits
At the kitchen table
Gnawing on the hollowed bones
Finding scraps of meat left on them
they say you can choke on these broken shards of wings, thighs
The breasts of flightless birds

Few eat their filigreed
Hearts
But when they do you can see through
Each vivisected chamber

He mutters only phrases
Like girl, you know…girl if only…
If only you had..
He is so very clever to leave out
All the
Proper nouns
Dependent clauses
Merciless verbs
years and years of completely merciless verbs

Ellipses for teeth
Never dulled to the task
Of separating bone from marrow
You tell me the vultures
Are being decimated
By poison and other modern perils
Leaving the dead all alone
In their towers of silence

And I know this must be true for Rizpah will shoo them off
Until God chooses to relent…

This drought will define us
Cotton-mouthed and bone-dry
So cavalier about our own now-
Forgotten prayers
For rain

The lottery ticket paradox

Posted on August 31, 2014 by Elea Lee

I have a bag of parables and pet theories I used to bore my youth group with…regularly.

One of them was the lottery ticket theory, which goes something like this:

If a rude person verbally assaulted you in a parking lot and insisted that they were handing you a winning lottery ticket you might be put off by the assailant, but you would be a fool not to take the ticket and check the numbers.

Jesus is that ticket.

We Christians are absolute morons–rude, pushy, myopic, prejudiced, morally flaccid.

You name it, we flub it.

But Jesus did not. He flubbed nothing. He gives us back our lousy, flea-bitten lives, whole and restored.

Why bother restating an old story from my former life?

Because I believe.

Because I still believe.

Perhaps if birds

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Elea Lee

Perhaps if birds
Could bring the rain
We would seed our yards,
Learn their calls
Keep the cats inside.

/beckon to them with fields of sunflowers
/covet their myriad congregation along electrified wires
Build their houses
Guard their nests
Stay all our empty words

For a mated call to water

My children play
Duck, duck, goose
With rich adjectival muster-
medium-sized duck, superhero duck
Yell Goose! and always be prepared to run

Anthropomorphize these missing storms
See sparrows in each laden cloud

Sow the fields with barley
Surely they will love barley
And swoop down toward us
“with healing in his wings”

All our science is naught
Fruitless and pendant
Cotton in the mouth
We cry
medium-sized rain, superhero rain,

Or no rain at all
Because we have forgotten…

He said fire the next time

Bring the Rain

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Elea Lee

I have a short story I recite with my son–

It rains
And then the worms come out
Then the birds eat the worms.

You will notice it is both a celebration and a cautionary tale.

The worms don’t fare so well.

But at this point the story is almost entirely mythic. It does not rain here. My son does not know rain.

I have written about my misguided annoyance about this drought, this lack of rain. I used to think God was not listening to me. Now I know we are not listening to Him.

This is our drought.

Both California and Texas are experiencing historic droughts. Here in Texas we squander our water on fracking. In California they are paying people to remove their lawns and deep water drilling is big business.

And in our churches we ignore our glorious interventionist God.

We must pray for rain.

But first we must pray for the reign of God. Our lack of water is merely a sign of the drought of holiness that defines this generation of believers in Christ.

The message is simple and incisive and begins with a question not an injunction, an invitation to love, not a list of rules.

Ask yourself–

Are you in love with God? Do you long for Him the way a man in the desert longs for rain?

And if the answer is yes then the result will be apparent to all who know you.

You will bring that rain. You will bring that water.

The water of life. The city of God. A Man, a Word: Jesus.

There are no deserts of either holiness or love when He is close.

So keep Him close.

Bring the rain.

Clouds without rain

Posted on August 13, 2014 by Elea Lee

Two days this week we had beautiful storms. There were dark clouds full of rain. Thunder. Lightning.

Only the rain never came.

I told my kids that I had to hope that it rained somewhere in the state of Texas. But the lack of rain makes my heart ache. We need it.

I think of Elijah, praying for God to hold back the rain because of the sin of his people. Mine are no better than his, am I praying the wrong prayer?

This week I heard a story of ordinary sin and degradation. Well…several. This one particular story was disheartening because a number of people who claim to ascribe to a clear moral code registered little or no willingness to apply that code.

When our moral code lapses we are clouds without rain.. The phrase comes from James. He is exhorting a young church to be active in applying the good news and power of salvation to a broken world.

If we don’t because we are uncomfortable we are as useless and sterile as clouds without rain.

Hydrate, Darling. Hydrate.

Carrying Light

Words for light

Category Archives: God