Passing two guys sitting

in the subway today hunched

like monks of the city

praying, leaning forward

from plastic benches against the glass

waiting to move on home, or out to

play. Heads bent hands clasp together,

lips moving so earnestly.

…peeking more closely I see a glimpse of phone in palm.

The vehicle of prayers of today, these

notes of need to each other. Broken to broken soul.

We commune by steel walls, squinting at small

screens- in the hope for connection, any sense of

reception.

We create, send,

wait. pray.

confession from a busy soul.

I have been living in the world’s way, with

such ardour that it becomes more mine, every day.

I have moved about as if in a dream of dim fog,

hoping through the smothering for a path and place,

packing the moments full until

bloated, they crack like

china. Like a runner, near stumbling, running

out of breath.

I need to know my fragility.

I haven’t owned it, have become tight

hard with aging,

growing anxieties on my back, layer

on layer like a shell that clings to my shoulders

that I can hide beneath against

the seeming and real live love

and pain-invasions of day.

To be as small and new as a child

thin, wavering as a reed or young tree

in wind feel very much unreal

for one as formed as me.

So now I can only come to the one who

can scrape away my scales

can plie gently from my muscles

dead weight- cutting callouses, massaging sores,

inviting me into a softness

that might look like less than I imagined

in my current mind; but I have a feeling that

in this less

in a simple cafe

in my trapper cabin in trees

I’ll find a stillness that is very good for me.

And maybe my soft child-spirit will reappear.

Spring/Holy Saturday

Through the cuts of last snow falls, late

ice winds and the other wining backward

steps of winter leaving, spring whimpers forth.

Small wet buds cling like dew to aspen’s ivory

bark. Surrounding fields’ fences catch with coils

bags, cans- trash. Caught like butterflies

delicate in a net- a wet wrapper hangs on, while others

loose, flutter by. Their host’s iron

wavers in strong wind.

Even the sun wrestles behind the thickness of damp cloud-

beams vulnerable to fog.

Yet still singing a song to spring is this one- small

feet trip over paper cups in the park

like the birds who flit over branch and bramble

with the oldest sounds of new life,

full in tiny mouths.

avocado

these lines

are but a humble ode to you

my little butter pear.

you are the pit to my pat-

a patter of you on toast or

a cracker really is transforming.

you soften the

dry edges and cream the

bitter- in short, wee fruit

you make everything better.

in fact, the likes of you made

Daniel’s face shine, now

can you make mine, too?

nearly-spring sun

after six months of this she is craving the light

although a lover of the dim crescents and

sweet luminescence of this cold season

the variance of shades that can be seen within one

or two colour palettes- that grey could be so lovely

in it’s softness. still, she looks

from this place,

hoping.

later, standing out in the front lawn

knee deep in snow, a sweater for a coat

leaning into the suggestion of sun like a spring plant

that grows towards it’s food,

as if thirsty for light.

Sabbath II, Prayer

Out of the deep quiet of this day I cry

a peaceful prayer to the Lord who hears.

O Lord. Your name stops

my throat- who you are,

you who are enough: Father

of all gifts,

of all Good things,

who has shown me, us, that

you are so good,

(this is your way! -to be good and to show us)

This day, help me to receive your gifts, build in me

to courage to have them in both hands,

to wear them, breathe them, dream and speak them-

and also to hold them outward to feed, to offer as your gifts in me,

through me to all in need.

To not cower in my own comfortable

cloak of selfishness

hiding from responsibility,

the fearful power of a gift.

Grow in me the humility to receive

gifts offered to me from you, through

the hands or voice or dreams of a brother,

the touch or laugh or prayer of a sister.

In the silence of this day’s rest, may I rest close to you

in your quietness, in your peace

that in it my roots may grow down deep.

Oh Lord. My delight in you is expanding! It grows

within me, and it is something which grows me.

In this space to see you I remember how it is

you came and come again daily in such love

and hope to connect. That you long for

peace in hearts and in the world.

Oh may Your kingdom come, this Sabbath day of

remembering, and these days to come,

until you O Lord come once again

in full.

Amen.

Sabbath I, a poem.

Out of the deep quiet of these

afternoons life in me grows.

My voice rising

even as the silence widens

with the low sun beams across

wood floor.

There is softness to this day,

like the edges of an aged photograph

not only yellowed but deepened in time.

The mystery of the days allow itself to

show its surface and perhaps a

sensing glimpse of what else,

what stories and connections

are concentrated in this quiet.

In these days there is space

so precious to let breath move

down from lung to the resonant

cavern of my stomach.  

Way of Witness

I never considered that this way might be so like

re planting a forest.

Like the tree-planter we live long days of digging in,

the selecting and setting

of a root into it’s home like the

restoring of a lost bird to it’s nest from low-lying field, out of the

wildness of the free air to the place where it can

seed and grow, before

soaring out.

For the tree, we wish that in time each

will eventually be play it’s part in the grandarching narrative of the

forest, offering it’s own new life in the ancient garden. It’s own

piece and place in the ecological community,

offering layers of shade with the contours

of its body; the possibility

of life in every breath.

To serve all with pores breathing, even

those unconscious of it’s existence, needing

it’s action in every living moment.

In this work of growing people we see and select plants

as we move in the rhythm of the full days from dawn through dusk

and through the night hours our sleep is pierced with dreams and

prayers for these young ones, and the nightmares of

their splintering, their wear inevitable in the winds of the wilderness

and the bitter beauty of the natural way.

Like the tree-planter, if you give

your all to the care of the day

it is responding to the invitations

not only with yes, but here is more, not only

good but the best. The offering that

is possible only backed by the belief

that this is worth it,

worth everything.

If you bring yourself

you bring your whole body

and heart to what is aching.

To what is the core of it, to sow deep

tend long and then step away, move on

perhaps before never knowing

what might be the fruit of your

tingling arms and seering muscles.

But there is community around this work, as if

strings wrapping and weaving intricately

those vulnerable and weary but with vision, together

such as the inexplicable but certain recognition of

a brother in a moment- you too have done this, you

too have loved, invested, longed for, grown and been grown…

And maybe you will have the chance to travel

back to what was once still grasses and years later

see now layers of forest life. The little ones who

new your touch and now live and breathe and

offer life with their fruit and leaves.

Adonai.

Struggling through a volume of Hebrew

characters, adrift in my meagre knowledge

of the script and language, I land

a moment rewarding as an oasis in a desert

of strident trying. This treasure,

Adonai. A name for our God

meaning “And the Lord said.”

A word that can also be read, “And he said, ‘Lord.’”

He is the God whose name is Speaks.

He is the one who reaches out

into the silence

to us.

Breaking through the numbness

of our reality with himself

he awakes,

saying, I am with, distinct but near,

knowing you, asking,

close enough to say so you can hear.

He, who is Contact, and who also includes

our name in is.

He is the one to whom we call, the one to whom

we say, “Lord,” and he encompasses the we

in the definition of him.

This is he, Adonai.

I have heard that in Eastern California’s Mojave Desert

a single flash flood can cause seeds dormant for more than 30 years to

burst forth. In this place called Death Valley grasses and wildflowers

bloom, lighting up the hot sands with fresh life and colour.

I wonder how it is that the desert of my heart might break

into some new life where I thought none would ever be

again, and what might it require?

What will it take for these now wet sands to curl around ancient seeds

as if to hug them and say, you can do it, grow little ones.

what it is you have longed for, receive; and what it is you were made for,

do, and in bloom go forth.

It was said to me recently that Our God is the God of both poetry and logic. I’ve been thinking alot about this ever since, about God and his nature, the confusing and wonderful complexity of who he is.  I think I often miss the logical side of God-or I see but take it for granted, assuming it to be necessary but boring, instead of as wonderful as it is essential.  

When I look though, it’s all around us, the order and art reflected in all he has made, as well as in all we mini-creators have made…  I don’t have to go further than my own body to appreciate the way my skin breathes and lungs heave and my brain carefully regulates the innerworkings of all these systems as they interact so wholly with my environment.  

It’s also startlingly evident when these things are lacking, at how sad the empty or ugly or unfinished things are. (Not always; sometimes these pieces are charming and also reflect our need and the way God is in those things too- and that is their purpose, their poetry)

May we see these dimensions of God more in the logical and the poetic, to see the complexity and simplicity of him in us and him in the world…

2 Corinthians 12:10 

This word says, For when I am weak, I am

strong. It feels so far from real,

for the uncomfortable awareness of me remains

a call to meekness I can’t ignore. Can’t go on

living flipped about in the sea

of myself, seeing but just off shore of you.

For you are near and you are strong

offering to grow always more

in me, to weave yourself and strength

where there is so little or none of that particular gift.

where lacking

capacity- you build. A symbiotic relationship

of the best sort.

If I am never low, how would I truly know

not just of you, but know you,

your persistent strength, your gentle

way of being present, and allowing me to grow up

out broadly, and also down deeply, steadily.

celebrating not weakness

as virtue, but the way that reality shapes itself when we

face ourselves as we are, our maker as he is,

ourselves as pieces of him, poor

but brightening, twisted

but in the work of being made right,

marred but shining

ever clearer pictures of him.