He walks into every room looking for someone who might comprehend
what it is
he has seen and heard
He weighs their solemn waiting-room-faces
Do they have
Better memories now? Do they still need to write things down or
Know every word by heart?
Are all the lambs among them and
can we see their scars?
Who can end this waiting
By calling us out
Out into life
It would be an ordinary basking day for the spiny and the green
Lizards who sun on the rocks and the fences
We would beat the palms of our hands on the opacity of windows
Before we opened them to warn off
night so late that morning is just a nap’s distance
Away
The fans would beat their wings
Now while we can
Let us forsake
all our wasted days.
John 12:2-3 NIV
[2] Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. [3] Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
What do you or I know about spikenard? It is named for a place or places, it grows in the Himalayas, it came from afar, a pint would have been a fortune, an amount of almost incomprehensible treasure.
I say almost because Mary knew what she was doing.
The incomprehensible treasure was the Man at the table.
This scene so similar to the earlier one–
Martha served
And Lazarus was at the table
Only we know now, what Mary knew then–
He is the perfume that fills the house
Dead raised to life, his life for mine,
Nothing will ever
Be the same
As you well know, I have been trying to focus on the presence of signifiers–the feral blender noises the dogs make when they are behind the dark door–the way the clouds pool and furl in beautiful splendor–let us say our daily prayers
Swap the signifiers
Killer clouds for beautiful dogs
This savage world/all ripped to pieces
While the light of one ordinary star is enough to
Remind me
Just how good you are
At holding on to me
All the same.
What happened to me, that in a moment of gargantuan hubris, I smudged it out? So what if it lived in the books or the play things? So what if it preferred the damp and closeted nocturne?
The moment before it was a glinty, wriggling alive
Then it was just an undoable regret
A life I should not have taken
We all have them–
Our ghosts, the ones we wish we could
Bring back whole
A parade of The Returned–
Uriah, John the Baptist, Stephen, Joan of Arc
Leaping and unfettered procession
Amidst the boundless sea of
The Redeemed
these trees of life
I could be a quark or an hurtling star,
A duck or a chicken
Living on one side of a beat-up plank fence
With knots in it, and scooped out holes
Signifying they all used to be trees
and the fence and the yard and the girl are just
Another kind of spaceship
Prone to sunset
Nothing can stop the Splendor from breaking through
Every hole in the fence.
I pretend the river is bottomless because I cannot see it to the end
Because, so blue
when I come up for air she asks–does it get all of its color from the sky?
Hold this
river in your cupped hands
Until night falls on us all
I have never been a roller coaster girl. Too queasy, but these days the ride is all mental grit and actuarial tables–I stop in the credit union parking lot just as the preacher on the radio quotes Jesus–ask anything in my name and I will give it to you!
Ok, God, I tell Him, make those doctors brave
Could substitute kind, generous, humble, compassionate
Feels impossible, I tell Him then
He reminds me
Impossible
Is His specialty.
John 5:3-4 KJV
[3] In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. [4] For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.
My first question for you is–do you believe there was an angel who came down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the waters?
So one person each time could be healed?
Crazy, right?
But no crazier than believing that Jesus healed the man who had been at the pool so long, who does not turn out to be the most grateful healed man.
I have skirted the issue of the angel at the pool for years, choosing instead to focus on Jesus and the man and the religious oligarchs who made it hard for Jesus.
I understand that angel complicates everything–messenger of God who brings some healing, brings some hope only
In a certain season.
People look for hope in all kinds of things–money, elaborate shelter, the absence of risk, the presence of satiety.
Other people
It is not hard to believe in God
By the power of blinking stars and damselflies, it is hard not to believe in God
But what is hard
Is choosing to only
Believe in God
For the hope where there is none
For the rain in a dry land
For miracle in the Iron Age of science
Hard to believe that God could comfort every soul in Lebanon when Lebanon is not sufficient to burn
Hard to believe in Resurrection at the foot of the Cross
But if you can or do
Cling to Resurrection
All things are possible
Miraculous little
damselfly.
Carrying Light 