A Snow Day...

...can give one time to think.

There are hard things in this world, and at times they seem to press like a yoke. The thickness of grief and the realization of how many, how very many, stumble through it with no assurance that all will be well. The knowledge of children who are growing up suffocated--by media, by materialism, by false philosophies, by the unbreathable air of godlessness. The utter void where God is supposed to be that so many try so hard to fill with self. The turning, falling, fading, atrophying away of America's Christians. The way in which God's church has abandoned truth, has forgotten why it exists. The way we have lost our first love, or perhaps never knew Him to begin with.

This morning, though, I find hope. I choose to lift up my mustard seed of faith, placing it in God's hands and asking for mountains to be thrown into the sea. I plead for restoration, I beg for redemption, and I ask to somehow know what it is to bear daily the heart of Christ.

We are broken people.

I am broken.

I am part of the problem.

I am not altogether consumed by Christ.

God in His mercy teach us humility, help us to know ourselves as dust, take us up in His hands so we can be made into something more.

Pieced Together

This is not a poem, 

nor does it pretend to be.

It just needed a shape 

other than

lines in neat, predictable rows,

more than letters

 following one another

meekly.

Today 

I colored a mandala

(inside the lines, of course)

but the colors that came to hand

were unexpected

and didn't match. 

The coloring book came with 3-D glasses

which I placed on my nose

only to find

that the colors still didn't match

(even if the lines did contain them).

Today I also

read a book to children

--just boys, actually, a gaggle of them--

eager to give up their lunch and recess,

their stint of freedom,

so I could read them into Middle Earth. 

I suppose they didn't give up their freedom after all.

Not really.

Not at all.

In addition, 

I chatted conversed on the phone 

(such a smug word, chatted)

with a friend

and talked about heavy things

heavy in my mind

heavy on my tongue

heavier after being said.

They were not about death,

at least not the death you think,

but rather about fading

about blurring 

about truths and half-truths
at war with one another.

I do not know how

to help her see through the fog
(or help her believe that she's standing in it).

Penultimately, 

I taught some young writers 

how to use transition words.

Penultimately was not one of them.

Finally,

I watched a ten-year old, 

long forgotten video 

full of Christmas trimming,

a dauntless paternal interrogator,

an exasperated maternal interrogatee, 

and a smattering of gawky teenagers

(myself among them).

We were not a family 

taken with home videos.

This one was unexpected,

it caught by surprise.

I am finding that there is

comfort as well as tears 

in the bottle even now

grasped in the hand of our Lord.

T.S. Eliot, "A Song for Simeon"

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.

Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have given and taken honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.
Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children's children
When the time of sorrow is come?
They will take to the goat's path, and the fox's home,
Fleeing from foreign faces and the foreign swords.

Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel's consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.

According to thy word.
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints' stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.
(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also).
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.

Monster Cookies

It was in the middle of math class that he handed me the post-it note with his phone number.

"I'll call your parents and we can figure out a time for you to come over, okay?"

"Um, uh, how about tomorrow...?" with eyes downcast, voice a mumble.

"Well, I'm going to be getting my mom her Christmas tree tomorrow."

"Sunday then?"

He was one of God's children who didn't know his own name, not really. His hand went over his mouth because the words that came out might make him Less than he was while they were in his throat. His shoulders curved in a constant hunch and his arms knew the crossing of self-consciousness. When a smile did come, it was always accompanied by a quick glance up out of the corner of his eyes, half-guilty, not knowing if strangers like joy should be allowed inside.

The yard was amuck with the signs of a winter that can't make up its mind. Muddy and water-logged, we tromped up the steps.

Eyes darted, furtive, taking in the advent calendar on the wall, the photographs on the refrigerator, the cookie fixings sitting on the counter.

"Shall we make monster cookies? They're kind of a family secret."

Two and a half cups of peanut butter, nine cups of oatmeal, six eggs, white sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, baking soda, salt, chocolate chips, M&Ms slid, poured, cracked, sloshed.

It may seem silly, but there's a sort of knowing that comes in working shoulder to shoulder with hands deep in a mess of ingredients. A humanity that comes a bit nearer the surface, an unspoken yes, a movement toward the realization of our own names.

μάθημα

It is the berries under snow

the windows etched with ice

the smoke suspended, frozen, in air

the exhaust exiting the tailpipe

the steps slick as foot treads

the brown tree body creaking

the equation in the stars, 

it is the sheen of snow under lamplight,

 the shadow of branches under moonlight,

the crease of pages under candlelight

all in the hand

that gives and takes away, 

all beneath the finger 

that marks out the voids and the fillings, 

the additions and subtractions,

the arithmetic of grace.

Words from Here to There

I was going to try to write something here, but all I've done is stare at the screen and realize that my own words still fall flat. The only One hearing them right now is God. And for now, this is right.

Please pray, friends. 

For the little mother in the yellow house, the brothers, the sisters, the children, and if it isn't too much, for this heart, too. 

And pray for those who know more pain than us. This little taste has made me ache with the knowledge of what others must bear. 

God have mercy.

God has mercy. 

Praise be to God.

Prayer

                                          O Lord, the Scripture says, 

                                         'There is a time for silence,

                                          and a time for speech.'

                                          Saviour, teach me

                                          the silence of humility,

                                          the silence of wisdom,

                                          the silence of love, 

                                          the silence of perfection, 

                                          the silence that speaks without words,
                                          the silence of faith.

                                          Lord, teach me to silence my own heart

                                          that I may listen to the gentle movement 

                                          of the Holy Spirit within me

                                          and sense the depths which are of God.                                                    

                                          Frankfurt prayer, sixteenth century