Luke 19:40 NIV
[40] “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”
I supplicate
Raise hands heavenward-
(Where Thou art)-
Give me stones and pebbles, hands-full-anything-anything
I can lift up to you,
Tell you, breathe on us, breathe us all into
Sharp shafts of light
The bed roll is rectangular, perfect, filled with a mixture of water fowl feathers and synthetic fill. When I remove the soft duvet to wash it, I find each corner has an anchoring point where the duvet has been tied to the downy quilt. A human had to tie each, the reverse operation of what I do, untying each.
In China a woman like me sews and ties
Sews and ties comfort
And I feel fragile
Because she does.
I want to tell them you will miss the leaves curled into small boats, miss the trees, the river, the way water carries our voices
Our eternal voices
Beyond
Revelation 21:1 KJV
[1] And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
The whole world just a shotgun shack with the big fig tree in the backyard. We used to swing there on the old swing set, first for just us children, then the one even old people could sit in.
So clear in my mind
What passed away meant to you, meant to me, its euphemistic weight gone with all the passings, you, then grandpa, then dad
Passed away you would say then, whereas now there are no euphemisms, no ways of hiding
What the new looks like
All filled with glory.
He says that I have lost my chance with him, as though he is a lottery ticket torn from my grasp by a strong wind in a storm, fluttering away with its winning numbers and it promise of untold riches.
I have lost my chance with him.
A week ago I stood in the Salvation Army and showed my youngest daughter a tee shirt–got love? Become a foster parent.
Her face clouds. Her life was radically altered by my decision to foster parent.
You had your chance with me…
He was small and scratched his face into bloody tiger stripes, he did not speak at almost two years of age. He did not potty train until just before kindergarten. He once desecrated a couch in a strange feral way.
The stories of my chances with him could fill terrible books.
I get it kid, you have a new god now.
But I am haunted by what will happen to you if you don’t have the guts to contemplate
The hell you unleashed on all of us and all it’s damning consequences.
I think just to mess with me, the weather app will place one small storm cloud on the far horizon of days. I tell myself, the light is moving away, the days grow short, the heat will break, these are just shoes in a messy front hallway, seemingly lost and matchless, discardable, but
Make no sudden moves
Until the rains come
The house blinks and dozes as the men apply coats of new paint, let their music waft over privacy fences, over all of us
Little bits of 80s anthems, power ballads from the past,
Is it that easy?
To summon joy?
The girl-child mama ties her daughters to her–kites, they rise
Aloft in the summer breeze
Curl, swirl, dip, and sing
Bird-children
While faraway grandmother
Ponders apogee
The furthest point one can be from another.
I see the man making models of planets in his meticulous, scienc-y basement then lining them up like a photographer arranging and rearranging a family portrait,
Mercury, you stand here…Jupiter if you could squeeze in by the ping-pong table
Or the final run and podium judgment of the Westminster Dog Show
It is a neat trick
Of human folly to think we can order the objects floating in an infinite sky, make them feel smaller than they are, more manageable
When even the moon is beyond us
Its insistent pull and reflective splendor
Missed so often in the ordinary
Night sky
As we pack all the objects of this solar system
Between us
Furniture against the door of Love
Go for a run in a safe, well-lit place
Sing your God songs, loud if possible
Kick around in the Gospels, the Jesus stories, the Bible project, CS of course
Ask Him direct questions
We love you sooo much
But He is love–
oceans-are-small-compared-love
No-story-too-small-love
Big-sky-love
Lonely awful die-for-us love
Lend us a child like you, Love
Arms wide open love
The stars are more than fire love
In the dark sky they admonish/love
He will never leave you, never walk away
Carrying Light 