Dirty Shame

Shutting Down...

2011-05-29T11:17:00.000-06:00

You probably noticed a different look here, like somebody was messing about with things, moving boxes outside, setting them on the porch and stuff. That's me. I've decided to shut down the Dirty Shame...its time. I wrote a few words on Facebook the other day about doing something surprising, maybe even startling. Well, this is my something.

The good news is that I'm moving across town, so to speak, and I'll now be blogging at http://thebeautifuldue.wordpress.com. I hope you'll continue checking in from time and time and pondering the cockeyed thoughts of yours truly. And please know that any comment you leave, even if its a one-worder, is appreciated more than you'll ever know.

It'll be the same batman, just different bat channel - make sense? Well, shucks, this is harder than I thought...I'm about to cry. I guess its best to just ride off. So from here, adios. Hope to see you on the other side...over at the beautiful.

John

Smack Dab...

2011-05-27T13:12:00.001-06:00

This one releases in September from Thomas Nelson, a full-color children's book by Brennan Manning and me. Nicole's illustrations are beautiful. I really think you'll like this one. Its a good story to read to a child, or to read to the child within. Again, I'll share more as time grows closer...its available for pre-order from all the usual suspects.

All Is Grace...

2011-05-24T20:09:00.000-06:00

Sometimes a writer finds himself a part of something much larger than a book...he looks up and wonders 'what kind of story have I fallen into?' Such was my experience working with Brennan Manning on his new book. It releases this October from David C. Cook Publishers. You can pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, et al. As time grows closer, I'll share a little more, do what I can...but for now the cover and title - All Is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir - are sufficient.

The Saturday That Was...

2011-05-23T06:17:00.000-06:00

'I don't know where we went wrong other than that we obviously don't understand the Scriptures in the way that we should.'
- Tom Evans, board member of Family Radio

Maybe - its one of the most beautiful words in our language. Its a word that keeps us just a little off balance and possibly just a little humble, if we'll let it. Was Harold Camping wrong about May 21st? Well, maybe...I thought about this yesterday because I kept seeing/hearing/reading jeers. My opinion is even the faithful who said 'no one knoweth the day, Harold' still said it with a grin of 'see, I told you so.' Its fairly easy for the right hand to feign concern for those folks who gave up their life savings, while at the same time the left waves them away as 'moe-rons.' Most of how we feel, one way or the other, about Saturday hinges on a literalism; it didn't happen in the literal way we think it will or thought it would. But what if (three more beautiful words) something happened just a little less trumpet-blasting-sky-splitting-wish-we'd-all-been-ready style?

I'm not a theologian nor do I play one on tv, but I wonder if maybe seeds were planted on Saturday that will take time to bud? Sure, God could just start beaming believers up to the Spirit in the sky...or God could drop a seed of discontent in the mind of a man or woman or child, a seed that would sprout a root of bitterness for the jeering ways of this world, a root that would wrap itself 'round that man or woman or child's thoughts to the extent they would live in this world but not of it. Is that the rapture as we and Harold and co. see it? I doubt it. That's not very literal. That sounds all quiet and hidden and subversive, like the sorta thing God might do...maybe.

Sure, God could line us up, one by no-one-righteous-one, flash the story of our lives on a jumbotron for all the world to see, then finger the lines in an oversized Book of Life to see if our name's written down...or maybe God could ordain a day, any day I guess, maybe even a day like May 21st, as the end-of-tarrying, and allow us to judge ourselves...in other words, its within God's parameters to let the way we faithed, hoped, and loved on Saturday to be our best shot. Am I saying we oughta live every day like its our last? Well, I prefer to encourage living every day like its your first, but yes, that is the gist. If we were judged by how Saturday went, how'd we do? Was spending the day online holier than standing on a hillside with suitcase in hand? That gets a little fuzzy for me.

But isn't there then a sentencing after the judgement, where we're all revealed as either sheep or goats? What if Saturday was judgement day and now we're living out our sentencing here on earth...that God's letting us feed in the green pastures a little longer or butt our horns against the gate a few more days. Then again, it may one day be revealed we're neither sheep nor goats but pigs and God decided to let us wallow in it. Not a very literal judgement, huh? But something along those lines could happen...maybe.

The dearth of imagination in our collective faith never ceases to amaze me...as does the short leash of mercy we extend one to another. Oink.

More Is More

2011-05-18T12:52:00.000-06:00

✠
The yellow box clearly states
'At Triscuit, we believe less is more.'
If that's true, then how did I
consume all the quattro formaggios in one sitting?
Ah, I see, as the box clearly states -
what's inside is 'a kind of cashmere of wheat.'
Now I've felt cashmere before
and by god it made me blush
because it felt like tracing
the clavicle of a doe-eyed angel
from neck to wing
and back again.

From now on any questions of nationality
I will answer with one word - Nabiscoan.
I'm choosing to adopt this race of alchemists
as my genesis for they didn't just
'weave some goodness' -
no, they've harvested desire.

Confirmed

2011-05-15T16:55:00.000-06:00

I sat in the second row this morning as my son, my first-born, my strength, was confirmed in the Lutheran tradition. I had mixed feelings about the whole thing, not that there was anything wrong with it, but that I didn't know how it fit in our lives and as such, how it might fit in his. You see, we're spiritual mutts. I grew up Southern Baptist and my girlfriend grew up Catholic. We married and I was a Southern Baptist pastor for over ten years, a decade into which our three children graced this earth. Then we moved to Colorado as part of a non-denominational church, a painful experience lasting a year to the day, after which we were strangely comforted by an Anglican church a decent commute away and I was shortly thereafter confirmed as an Anglican (nobody else in the family, just me). Then, in an attempt to be 'local' in all things, especially when our kids began middle school years, we joined a Lutheran church in our town and have been found there for over two years now, years in which our son and oldest daughter began the confirmation journey. Our thinking was when in Luth do as the Lutherans.

Maybe you can see why I was slightly conflicted. I didn't want to overstate this day - we're not dyed-in-the-tuna-hot-dish Lutherans, so being confirmed wasn't this epic life-stage where all the folks from Wobegon drove in...at the same time, I didn't want to underplay the importance of faith steps my beloved son is taking in his one wild and precious life. I've also been conflicted because of shame, my own...I am a rover in the faith, a gypsy heart chasing the God of dusk...but I've so wanted to be constant, steadfast like my beautiful father, but the truth is I am not. I have and continue to pray that my prone-to-wander-ways will not be held against the son and daughters I cherish, but sometimes I get scared they'll one day resent being mutts...or maybe being my mutt.

Alright, hang on. Jesus spoke to me this morning while I was eating GrapeNut flakes and drinking coffee. He hijacked the first part of a verse I memorized as a boy - 'Do not be ashamed of the gospel.' That's all he said...and like grace always is, that was sufficient. Now I'm well-acquainted with the gospel of Christ, the power of God unto salvation, no problem...but the breakfast epiphany prompted questions like what about my gospel, the gospel of John, the story of my life and my vagabondish days as ordered by an infinitely tender hand? Jesus answered 'don't be ashamed of your life, John.' He who hath ears let him hear.

So I sat in the second row this morning a man with his nose rubbed once again in the grapenuts of grace. And I trembled when my grown-tall-boy knelt at the altar surrounded by parents and priests and his life was further sewn one-thread deeper into the fabric of God, that vast blanket in which I too am hemmed, as is my father. I had planned to pray many things over him in that spot of time, but there was only this: 'Please God, may he not be ashamed of his life. He is my only son, and I love him so.'

And so we mutt on...confirmed but not crushed, roving but not unto despair...debtors to a grace unashamed.

Just Before Dark

2011-05-14T10:56:00.000-06:00

I strain for a lunar arrogance.
- Jim Harrison

Many an evening, just before dark, I stand on our back-stoop and pray. By pray I mean looking, listening, smelling, feeling. It is a practice of coming to my senses, a return to that often lost in the strum and drang of the day. It is, I believe, communion.

Just last evening the May chill took my breath away more than once. I rolled down my sleeves and snapped my cuffs, for I am not a portly man. I closed my eyes as the coal train clattered by, that iron-linked-sausage bringing warmth to late spring nights. I recently read a man's thoughts about trains being confining and single-destinationed. He felt compelled to make trains a spiritual metaphor and found them wanting. Praying on my stoop, just before dark, saves me from such nincompoopery.

The wind whipped 'round and my nose burned with the fresh dung dropped by the dog who lives with us. The house catty-corner to us is empty with a hint of the burlesque. All the shades are hiked up like skirts revealing two stories of empty, all a tease. But houses aren't metaphors. They need people in them, and maybe dogs too.

The clouds to the north resembled my mother's mashed potatoes, lumpy and lush. The sun's swan-song was ladling salmon-blood gravy over them, a combination that made me feel like a boy and miss home. How quickly my childhood stirs. From my stooped-vantage point the single crow appeared to be birthed right out of the train car, an ashen phoenix rising black as coal. All this sensed against a denim sky.

Then my daughter's voice - Dad, aren't you cold?

I said yes, a variation of amen, then stepped back over the threshold into a kitchen warmed by love and coal.

Rupture

2011-05-11T22:02:00.000-06:00

'Beyond the shadow of a doubt, May 21 will be the date of the Rapture...'
- Harold Camping
~~~

I do not live beyond doubt's shadow,
but I still believe.
So I bought a horsehair belt,
an outward sign of my inward hope
in the Rupture -
that day the sky will cease its falling
as bluebells thrust up to horses' bridles,
that day creeks born of April snowmelt
will swell and not grow weary,
that day heaven will come up
and poets will leave off rhyme
in favor of clover's perfume,
that day roses will no longer
need rain as the tears of men
will do just fine.

For the last good country to
shed the husk of fear
the Rupture must occur, that broken
and blessed day rising toward our soles.
So I gird myself with a horsehair belt
and fix my eyes on the ground,
for behold, no man knows and some don't doubt,
but this fool still believes.

(for Winn)

From One Far Away...

2011-05-05T09:09:00.000-06:00

She's getting the hang of email.
Oh she still prefers a phone call,
well actually she aches for 'in the flesh'
but we're so far away now.
She rarely begins a thread,
rather she replies to one I've started,
sometimes months ago,
just tacking on a hem -
how are the kids? or your dad and I are fine
or we're proud of you.

I've noticed a signature closing evolve,
sort of a finding-her-electronic-voice.
Now she always signs off Hugs, Mom.
Hugs - akin to the Norwegian hugga
meaning 'to soothe or console.'
Of late I've dreamt her an Old Norse mother
wrapped in reindeer hide, bent at the keyboard,
war-worn hands faithfully weaving
that two-word warmth, that telling affection
for those so far away now...Hugs, Mom.

Now git...

2011-05-03T07:46:00.000-06:00

Blue Duck smiled. "I raped women and stole children and burned houses and shot men and run off horses and killed cattle and robbed who I pleased, all over your territory, ever since you been a law," he said. "And you never even had a good look at me until today. I don't reckon you would have killed me."
"He would have killed you," Call said, annoyed by the man's insolent tone. "Or I would have, if need be."
- Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

"Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but give place unto wrath: for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay', saith the Lord."
- the Lord, Romans 12.19 KJV

~~~

My father raised me on a diet of the King James Bible and western movies. Those two elements were formative to the man I am. Crack open my bones one of these days and you'll find thou and begotten and the theme song from Shane; a strange marrow of mercy and justice. That's just the way it is. And as such, days like yesterday make my bones ache.

Sometimes - 'if need be' - there is a reckoning. In this world ye shall have Osamas and Blue Ducks, tribulation, that's just the way it is. But when the reckoning rises that scene must be framed by a mercy we the people mishandled Sunday night. Its alright, I believe it showed our age as a nation - still quite young. Nevertheless, even in our youth I believe we can reflect and mature for the next time...for yes, there will be a next time.

I cannot recall a single shoot-out where the prevailing aftermath was revelry. No, it was always a sigh of relief, a brief mending. My western heroes always paused in the gunsmoke of death with a knowing, a reverence for the weightier matters of justice and mercy, and also a knowing that there is none righteous, no not one. The soul of the offender was never judged, but rather his actions for damn sure. Then on the turn of a spur they walked into a temporally scrubbed dawn, a foretaste...no parades or prattle, just stepping aside so the town could get back to the essence of life - braiding a little girl's hair, planting tomatoes, cleaning the mirror in the saloon, sweeping the boardwalk, mucking out the livery stable, replacing the flowers in the cemetery, getting a haircut and a shave, maybe even axing a stump.

I pray that's what we get back to today, all of us.
Now git.
Amen.

A Good Man Charged

2011-04-28T06:03:00.000-06:00

A good man I know was ordained several weeks ago. He is now a deacon in the Anglican tradition. Following a six-month stint of service among his people he shall be, God willing, ordained a priest...collar'n'all. I'm so very proud of him.

I attended his ordination ceremony, sat in the back, soaked it all in. There is always a moment in a such a service when a 'charge' is given, a braid of words to both exhort and inspire. I adore such moments, pregnant as they are. I attest the charge given was orthodox, seamlessly hemmed and cuffed with appropriate chapter and verve. But as I've tried to recall the content, I cannot. Alas, it was not memorable. Oh, John, you just wish you'd been asked to give the charge, right? Ah, dear reader, thou knowest me too well. Yes, I confess that wish. Had I been charged to charge, here are the words. Alright, John, but are these words for a deacon or a priest? Yes.

~~~

I charge you with a phrase from the gospel of John, Updike that is: Your only duty is to give the mundane its beautiful due. You step from this moment with scripture and stole a man ordained to the ordinary. Ours is an existence in something more than the husk it once was but not yet the bloom it shall be; in other words, you are charged to the in-between, the middle-class, us. Yes, our lives are sewn on occasion with a texture of joy unmistakeable, the foretastes. But many days, if not most hours, reek of repetition, a mundane rising and falling punctuated with what the old hymn writer penned as 'seasons of distress and grief.' The relief you are charged to bring to our souls in times like these is beauty - nothing more, nothing less. It is your only duty. Give up all other ambitions for the dross they are. Give the mundane its beautiful due. Bear witness to the truth we so often bury, that our lives are shot through with drama, interest, relevance, importance, and poetry. Live among us, story by story, with both precision and surprisingness. Help us to believe in God by startling us with the kicker - God believes in us. Know this - yours is not so much a high calling as it is a careful attention... you are to be a man of prayer, not big britches.
Once you begin a gesture it's often fatal not to go through with it, so please, for the love of God and us and you, go through with this. The world for you may be even harder from here on in, but most things worth doing are hard. So break and bless and preach and teach and laugh and sing and weep and rage and whisper at the altar of this astonishingly splendid fallen world. Give the mundane its beautiful due. Amen and amen.

But The God Reborn On The Sabbath Day...

2011-04-24T06:09:00.000-06:00

But the God reborn on the Sabbath day
is bonny and blithe, bonny and blithe.
He sends us a'running, shuddering and wild
crying He is alive! He is alive!
Life now ennobled, forgiveness of sins,
the sermon of Easter is always Love wins.
So remember this day until he returns
and follow him true, follow him true.
The God born on Sunday lives for the weak,
yes Jesus loves me and Jesus loves you.

Saturday's God Works Hard For A Living

2011-04-23T08:23:00.000-06:00

There are those who speak now with authority of the great abandonment, as if they were there, as if they know without doubt's shadow. My question for them is 'Were you there when they crucified my lord? Were you?' I was and I believe it was divine bewilderment: 'My God, how could you have done this to me? I cannot be allowed to die so young and so close to the top!' He was courage struggling for oxygen.

Then he was finished.

Afterwards, it was strange, for most of the visible disciples scattered while the secret ones walked into view. Moments like that remind you of the folly of judging the follower's heart. Joseph, Nicodemus, and those fierce women performed a necessary, valiant compassion. Later, I found myself walking, searching the heaven and earth of my mind, trying in some way to restore the arch to the sky, desperately measuring the grains of time that might transform catastrophe into tragedy. But death's pall was too thick, it was too soon. I had followed him into the smoke and fire, and I was left bearing the witness: 'My God, how did this happen? What on earth was he doing?'

Friday's God Is Loving And Giving

2011-04-22T06:29:00.000-06:00

He was ruined. They scourged him repeatedly, taking turns to catch their breath. It was clear to see they were not trying to maim a man, but rend a god. Then the thwing, thwing as hammer pumped iron and the man previously pinned to the tail of a donkey was now pinned to the roof of the world, a specimen for all to behold. It was excruciating to watch the frame I had leaned against only hours ago. Dear God, they ruined him. They ruined the one I loved.

As I stood, my life flared before my eyes, not the sum of my days with Zebedee, but those years after the nets, when my life truly began, those three beautiful years. There were short-breath moments during his time with us when I felt inspired, compelled to capture his words and miracles, to write them down. One day he asked 'You like to tell stories, don't you?' I answered 'Yes, I like to tell stories that are true.' Then he spoke directly in my eyes: 'One day, after it is finished, you can write our story. Only then will you begin to see.'

I found myself short-breathed again as I writhed before my friend and two thieves. Words from somewhere beyond me rose up my throat causing me to gasp: 'God so loved the world that he gave.' I would remember and record those words years later when I was too old to be a fisherman much less a disciple. Of all I've penned, it is that phrase of which I am most proud, for they are the words most true. The love of God haunts me.

Thursday's God Has Far To Go...

2011-04-21T06:05:00.000-06:00

That supper was the end of the innocence. That's how I remember it. Yes, I believed things were changing when he got on that beast and the pilgrims cheered, but even then there was still the 'follow me' that hung in the air, we were still the little boys dressed in new, chasing after the piper. But after that supper we knew there would be no more parties, no more dancing, the fifes had grown still. His was an evening show-and-tell, a command of how we must dress for the grisly hours that followed, and beyond. Jesus gave us hand-me-downs, blackened shrouds of love for one another, the rags of a true disciple.

As I leaned into him, literally, I felt the maundy pulse and it chilled me. What we all-too-soon experienced was an appalling succession of bleak and bare, a way filled with thorns of a seemingly eternal winter. What we would witness was Thursday's God becoming Friday's clown. And he still had so far to go to get there.

Wednesday's God Is Full Of Woe...

2011-04-20T06:01:00.000-06:00

In those passion days he had eddies of tenderness where healing and blessing would swirl and pool. But then there were the shoots. He had raged at the Pharisees before, but this time stands out in its structure and effect, he was at the height of his powers. So many now cling to the sylvan great commission; rarely, if ever, is much made of Jesus' great derision.

'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!' We all knew who he was addressing, but each time Jesus named them, each time more fearless than the last. To see and hear him was to taste the wild, a primeval fang and froth that dared not yield: 'You are born dead! You have ceased to be sons of living fathers! You have become contented with your condition! You have acquired a taste for it! Woe, woe to you!'

I believe he touched the quick of their lives that day. He ached for them to know whose side to be on, where to give their allegiance, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. But they stood defiant, mucked-up geese relentlessly preening in a field of mint and dill, a brood of blind bones slithering in a lost city, a grievous long prayer bloated with blood instead of mercy.

The rocks that only days earlier yearned to cry out shuddered at his lamentation, as did I.

Tuesday's God is full of grace...

2011-04-19T05:46:00.001-06:00

He was taking us on the grand tour. First the Hosanas!, then his razing of the Temple. He was long freed from self-necessity, but his passion days seemed a new beginning with an old theme. I could scarcely imagine what was next. As was his custom, it wasn't a what but a who.

Jesus waved us still, then sat down and said 'see over there, look at the splendor.' At first we thought he was speaking of the heavy sums many dropped. But like time after time, he altered our vision. 'No, that is merely self-righteous blotches. No, there, her, the difficult splendor.'

Two coins. That was it. Though her life was bent her eyes radiated the sanguine dream. Jesus smiled at her poverty. He did not approach her, he would not bruise the shapely form. Rather he raised his hand and blessed her as he sat: 'You shall have love.'

Monday's God is fair of face...

2011-04-17T22:46:00.000-06:00

I called to him 'Lord, Lord, where are you going?' But he kept walking toward the Temple, and then he began to run. I'd only seen him run one other time, for Lazarus. That story is told now in a strange manner, that Jesus hesitated, dawdled even for two more days while his friend was sick. But I was there, I saw his fury. He was being hobbled by the Father, he knew it, I sensed it, we all did. So for two days he strained against the reins, obedient, but still straining.

Then without warning, his words: 'I'm going to him.' He took off walking toward Bethany, and we followed. He paced with urgency the better part of a mile, shoulders squared, upright, not a word. Then his posture deepened, he leaned forward, and began to run. It was as if he'd been told 'now!' We struggled to keep up, such was his unbridled swiftness. Then Mary was there, falling at his feet, weeping. I saw him begin to shake violently, and then he wept. Jesus wept. The weeping madman ran on to the tomb, crying desire: 'No! No, Lazarus!' I witnessed in that moment the depths of his enmity with the old sorrow. He had come that men might live.

His body sunk into that same posture as he ran toward the Temple after the Hosanas!, like he'd been told 'now!' We ran and followed, breathless. As he stepped inside he began to shake, and then he wept once more. Jesus wept again and howled 'No! No! This should not be!' As if replaying a scene, the unhobbled God ran from corner to corner damning the merchants' world: 'No! This shall be a gentle place!' We simply stood and watched. With Jesus' words the prey suddenly appeared, the lonely ones, the lost and wounded ones, those hindered until then. The Lord spoke 'there is still time' and then he healed them, all of them, and they lived.

A Palm Sunday reflection from the disciple Jesus loved...

2011-04-16T23:55:00.000-06:00

I could not bring myself to utter the words. Me, the one he loved...me, the one some say closest to him. Maybe that's why I could not speak my mind for I knew, I knew he was like flint now, unswerving. I knew I had to be like that too, for him, for me, for the rest of us...I had to will myself to hold my tongue. Had my lips been loosed, they would have pleaded: 'Master, please don't get on that beast. Please.' But he did, as I knew he would. He spoke to me, once, just before the clop of hooves began: 'Remember, John...courage.'

And so I followed him, as I'd followed him those brief widening years. His ride was so very awkward. Had it not been for the press of crowd on either side, he would have fallen off more than once. But they hemmed him in that next chapter of the tale. From where I followed it appeared he rode their shoulders instead of that innocent beast. Jesus, to the crowd a shoulder-high hero; to me, my Lord and my God slouching toward Calvary. But on he rode as they brayed their praise. I believe he chewed this cud of words: 'Father, forgive them, for they don't know...'

You see, it is remembered as a triumphal entry, something in contrast to his cross-laden steps only days later. But I saw it as the death gyre, all of it, from the green of the palms one day to the red of his wrists that soon followed. And if I am honest I have to confess that I feared the center would not hold, that this man I grew to love like no other would drown and be lost. That I would wake one day to the sound of the sea licking the boat's edge and find it all only a dream. And I would be alone again.

But no, no, no, we had come too far, so I decided to mimic him. And so I placed the fear in my fists, as I'd seen him do time upon time, and I strangled it away and cast it among the crying stones that day. I had to be courageous, for me, for the rest of us, and for him. When he'd gone far enough, he dismounted and turned round twice searching the crowd until he found me. He stepped toward me and placed the rope in my hands. His face still a rictus of elegy. I told him I would see to the beast. He said 'yes, John.'

As he walked on with the crowd I noticed his hands clenched in fists at his side. I knew then that surely the revelation was at hand. He was not a dream. He was perfect love loosed upon the world, the madman from Galilee.

The Sweet Return (15)

2011-04-14T05:53:00.000-06:00

Jesus,

I'm ready for these Lenten days to be over. They've gone on too long now, dragging and slogging. I know the calendar says Easter is still days away but I'd be well and fine to celebrate your resurrection today, this day. What if your people roused themselves and said 'we're ringing in Easter a week early, we can't wait, this is silly!' I'm sure some folks would say 'what, you couldn't wait a week?' Some folks always have something to say, don't they?

I'm going to try and celebrate today, Lord. I pray that 'up from the grave he arose' would permeate everything I do and say this day. I pray that you would huff and puff and blow this Lenten pall away, and that you'd do it early. I pray that you'd passover our passover dramas and surprise us, not necessarily like the thief in the night, but more like the favorite uncle we've not seen in months who just shows up on the doorstep and says 'hey, I started to call but then thought nah!' and we squeal with delight because we've missed him so and we love him so and its been too, too long.

Come Lord Jesus.
Amen.

The Sweet Return (14)

2011-04-04T21:56:00.000-06:00

Jesus,

I birthed a baby today, sorta, but you know that. The umbilicus was cut and now its in the care of others. Will they find it pretty? Ugly? Smart? Slow? What kind of score will it receive on the Apgar test? My work is not over by any means, but I've got to welcome the eyes and ears and thoughts of others now. Feeding the lake...

Thank you for the gift of being able to hear a group of rascals called The Rend Collective on the noon hour, their thick Irish tongues witnessing to the enduring nature of love. Lord, you know that most worship music, for me, has all the thrill of a salad. But these boys served up a dark and rich draft with a head on top...it stuck to my bones. Bless 'em, I pray.

And for my friend, Lord, you know the one...give him grace.
Amen.

The Sweet Return (13)

2011-03-29T17:02:00.000-06:00

Jesus,
I've been thinking about you, because I've been listening to Charlie...but you know that - http://burnsidewriters.com/2011/03/29/he-said-he-said/.

Amen.

The Sweet Return (12)

2011-03-25T07:10:00.000-06:00

Jesus,

It was one of a handful of times when I've heard you, audibly...but you remember that. We'd spent seventy-two hours in the merciless magical of the Grand Canyon, those two friends and I. As we stepped back up over the rim we'd descended three days earlier, I was exhausted, ragged, satisfied, my mind and emotions in a thin place. I looked back over my shoulder at that glorious ribboned tear in the earth and a firmament bluer than blue and I heard you, clear:
Its all love. Don't be afraid.

I remember showing my dad the trip pictures once we returned, the evidence. I would describe the scene then pass the photo for him to hold. Near the bottom of the stack was a snapshot of my face, clicked moments after I heard your voice. My dad paused as he cradled that spot of time and said 'you look happy.'

Make us happy as you are happy. May others see it in our very faces. Speak those grand words to us again, Lord. The photo quickly fades.
Its all love. Don't be afraid.
Amen.

The Sweet Return (11)

2011-03-23T07:01:00.000-06:00

Jesus,

It was my birthday yesterday, but you know that. Forty-four years, Lord. Forty-four years.

The perigree moon has been nothing short of brilliant. Thank you for the eyes to see it. I read where the last time it was this close to the earth was March 1993. I was twenty-six then, Lord, married for three years, and pursuing a Masters degree in theology so intently I no doubt had my eyes in a book instead of peeled on the horizon. I'm forty-four now, married with three kids, and pursuing a life of wonder. I didn't miss this one.

Thank you for my life, Jesus. The whole shebang, good, bad, ugly, all of it. I had a passel of family and friends send me birthday wishes yesterday. It meant the world to me, Lord, it really did. Some of them simply said 'happy birthday' which was more than sufficient for me, but some of them said they loved me and a couple even said they respected me. My, my. I felt like the richest man in Bedford Falls. Still broke, but rich indeed.

Thank you for my life, all of it.
Amen

The Sweet Return (10)

2011-03-20T19:41:00.000-06:00

Now to sleep me down I lay,

its been a Glocca Morra day.

I beg you, not before I wake,

JesusGod, my soul don't take.

'Cause there's so much I'm still to be,

to hear and smell and touch and see.

If this is it, I'll miss the smiles

when walking daughters down long aisles.

I'll miss my firstborn fight out loud

to find his voice amid the crowd.

I'll miss her empty-nested tears,

the letting go of mother's years.

I'll miss the books I want to pen,

the stories stitched with grace and sin.

I'll miss the jack of growing old,

of braying no to what I'm told.

The good book says none know the hour

but by Your wonder-working power

'pass over me' is what I pray

come back again some other day.

But should I die before I rise

I want to donate both my eyes,

give blinder flesh the glass to see

the bitter-wonderful from Thee.

The Sweet Return (9)

2011-03-19T08:41:00.002-06:00

WWYD?

Jesus,
You know I like ABC's What Would You Do? I like it especially when there's a string of passive people then along comes a fierce one who 'can't stands it no more.' I believe in those moments you are proud of the race of men.

I also like the show, Lord, because I feel that's really the question; not WWJD? but WWYD? You've already done you, already revealed to us in gospel snapshots what your life on this earth looked like. I understand the generalities, the themes...I get it, Lord. But I believe you're asking me this day: what will you, John, the almost 44-yr-old man/husband/father/son who lives out west but grew up in the south...what will you do, knowing what you think you know about me and my consuming fierce love...WWYD?

I pray you'll be proud of me, of us, this day.
Amen.

The Sweet Return (8)

2011-03-18T07:41:00.000-06:00

Give 'em hell.

Jesus,
That's what he said to me, but you know that. As he was finishing up a noontime run and I was lacing up to begin mine, those were his parting words. The wind was strong out of the south, probably 15-20mph, I was headed north but the return would be, as he said, 'in your face...so give 'em hell.' And so I did.

I can see you, Lord, shuffling along the shore, coming upon a boat about to cast into the wind, maybe a 15-20mph-er, and you calling out to the men on board with 'its in your face...so give 'em hell.' And I can sense those men tremble, as I did that day, as the low string was plucked and the masculine stirred. I can see them grin and wave back or raise a chin and then go give it to 'em.

Wild at Heart was 20 years ago, Lord. Maybe we took it too far, things got too wild, too ballsy, too hairy...but I do remember those as days of being both shaken and stirred, halcyon days of the low string. I miss those days, Lord. And I miss those men.
Amen.

The Sweet Return (7)

2011-03-17T13:34:00.000-06:00

Jesus,

I'm so sorry. Love is not winning in this season of Lent among the faithful, but rather hate.

In weeks crafted to be those of quietness, we are shouting.

In days to be still and know that you are you, we are defending ourselves.

In hours set aside for prayer and good deeds, we are linking and tweeting.

In minutes pregnant with the splendor of this gift called life, we are aborting our greatest witness - unity.

At the sound of the 'Bell' we have come out fighting, fists clenched, chests puffed, convinced this is a contest, a struggle, a mound worth dying on. At this rate our cries on Easter of 'Risen indeed!' will be nothing more than sounding brass and clanging cymbal. I'm not on Facebook these days, Lord, you know that, but still the mob's furor has reached my ears, it is loud like the whirlwind.

Then again, maybe there is design in all this, a graphic rendering of who we are and what we're capable of in the name of you...we are carnivores, people who love the blood, the bite and devour of one another.

Jesus, forgive me, forgive us...we still do not know what we do. Have mercy.
Amen.

The Sweet Return (6)

2011-03-17T06:07:00.000-06:00

But these things happen.

Jesus,
The conversation had to do with the heartbreak in Japan. That phrase was the old man's contribution, along with the shake of his head: 'But these things happen.' The young turks turned and walked away, you saw them didn't you? The loud one called him 'a stupid old bastard.' But I stayed and shook my head along with him. His phrase was strangely comforting to me, Lord. His spavined words did not explain, but comforted. Funny that you promised to send the Comforter, not the Explainer. Oh how we prefer the latter, but you're insistent on the former.

When I was a younger man, I used to speak and reason like a younger man. But I am beginning to see now, now that I am not a younger man, that sometimes 'these things happen'...they just do.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, Lord.
Comfort us,
Amen.

The Sweet Return (5)

2011-03-14T07:36:00.001-06:00

I want the fairytale.

Jesus,
Pretty Julia made that line famous, but you know that.
Lord, I believe that line pulses in every man, woman, and child on this planet. Some of us can just come right out and sing it, others entertain the notion, and in many I fear its been choked out by briars and picked near-clean by crows. But I believe its still there, in the marrow, the desire.

The ladies want the prince to come, someday, somehow.
The men want to slay dragons of self-loathing and rescue maidens both fair and plain.
The children want to live happily-after-all.
Creation groans...

God too good to be true, help us this day to smell and hear. We, all of us, know we must quest far and wide but please always, always keep in our perishing nostrils the sweet fragrance of the flowers of home. And on a wicked-witch-Monday grant us ears to hear at least a few notes of the bluebird's song to remind us of what you knit together in us all...the hope, the dream, that line.
Amen.

The Sweet Return (4)

2011-03-13T08:16:00.000-06:00

If you are the Son of God, then command...

If you are the Son of God, then throw...

If you are the Son of God, then bow...

Jesus said to him, 'Get away, Satan!'

Jesus,

If...then. Conditions - the WMD this world's prince uses relentlessly, his campaign of crock and awe.

If you are a child of God, then...

If you are a believer, then...

If you are a Christian, then...

If you are a fully devoted follower of Christ, then...

If...then. If...then. If...then. If...then.

Scripture quotes you: 'Get away, Satan!' I wonder if the original autographs read 'go to hell' but the world-bound translators washed your mouth out because if you are Jesus then you don't talk like that. I do wonder.

I prayed the other day that I could give up anything or anyone too small for me...may that also include images of you, Lord.

Shock me,

Amen.

The Sweet Return (3)

2011-03-11T19:40:00.000-07:00

Jesus,
My friends lost their son, their only son seven years ago today. His name was John. I simply do not know how they carry on, but they do. I have seen pictures of John, his face...he was beautiful. Please, Lord, please comfort my friends as they remember their son and soldier on and grieve with hope. His name means 'beloved' and he was and is...Lord, have mercy.

But those swept away today, those in Japan, I do not know their names. But I have seen pictures of the Japanese people, their faces...they are beautiful. Is the fountain filled with blood drawn from your Immanuelish veins deep enough to receive the beautiful multitude plunged beneath that literal flood? Are your flowing wounds wide enough to welcome a Buddhist's scream for mercy? Is your grace sufficient, Lord? Is it? Redeeming love has been my theme and shall be til I die, so I can do no other than pray yes...I pray in a poor, lisping, stammering tongue that your precious blood would cover them with yes, yes, yes...and that today they would be with thee in paradise! I do not know their names, Jesus, but I ask you would welcome them even now as seven years ago you welcomed John...as 'beloved'...Lord, have mercy. Amen.

The Sweet Return (2)

2011-03-11T09:02:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it takes darkness

and the sweet confinement of your aloneness

to learn

anything or anyone

that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

Jesus,

Its been awhile since I've read Whyte's poem. I found it again yesterday. No, here in my 40s I know better, it found me. Thank you for that. I pray that's the case these Lenten days; I don't want to follow some pre-formed course but rather have words or poems or thoughts find me. I know, I'll have to pay attention, stay a tip-toe.

Maybe the poet's words are a facet of what Lent is truly about, a season of learning that 'anything or anyone that does not bring me alive is too small for me.' I can already hear somebody chiding me for focusing on my aliveness instead of your suffering. Lord, I'm so weary of that kind of that narrow world-is-flat theology that says there's some edge to you I'd best not sail off of. That sounds so incredibly arrogant, Lord, probably similar to Columbus' brass when he set sail for new worlds in his sweet confinement of ships and dreams...but oh the beauty that found him.

Give me, give us courage, Lord, coeur - heart. Let the darkness cover us, and the night wrap itself around us, for even darkness to you is not dark, and night is as clear as the day. May what or who we 'give up' this season be only that which is too small for us.

Bring us alive!

Amen.

The Sweet Return

2011-03-09T05:25:00.000-07:00

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Jesus,
Well, its here - Ash Wednesday - but you knew that.
I don't like that line, the one about 'dust.' I know its scriptural, but I still don't like it. Each day has enough trouble of its own yet here we go adding ashes to injury. These candle-snuffing ashes of 'dust' which rhymes with 'just' - like in that Neverland movie: 'He can't climb that mountain, he's just a man' or 'That's not a diamond, it's just a rock.'

Ash Wednesday: 'You're just dust.' Its hard for me to hear you saying that line. I don't want to pray in an unorthodox fashion, Lord...but I am. So here goes.

Jesus, most of us are knee-deep in ashes everyday, you know that. As foreheads everywhere are smudged with dust, I pray you'd cross our hearts this day with reminders of how you see us, who we truly are in your eyes. Lord, show us our beauty. And please help us to see the beauty of others, that she's not just a politician or he's not just a teacher or they're not just the neighbors or the Church is not just a bunch of hypocrites.

Your beautiful breath kicked up that genesian dust and we became beautiful. May we hear another priestly whisper this day: Remember you are beautiful and to beautiful you shall return.
Amen.

Seriously

2011-03-02T07:30:00.000-07:00

that which is worthless is highly prized by everyone.
- Psalm 12.8

Charlie Sheen crouches with tiger blood in his veins and growls,
'Defeat is not an option!'
It helps to have goddesses on your side.
Maybe. (snickers)

Rob Bell binds himself to the altar and dares,
'Love wins!'
The orthodox take the bait and light the torches.
Predictable. (yawns)

Miracle Whip refuses to tone it down:
'Don't be so mayo!'
Pauly D says its a deal-breaker.
Seriously? (rolls eyes)

Then Tom Hooper gave a prince's speech crowned with
'Listen to your mother.'
Behold the wheat and tares, they groweth up together.
Yes, ma'am. (sits up straight)

From Both Sides Now...

2011-03-01T06:49:00.000-07:00

...I remember the fortyish man who rang my office bell one summer night. He was tall and lean, athletic and well-dressed, the father of four children, and an usher in our church. His face was sad on this occasion as we settled down solemnly to talk. He told me he was leaving the Church and he wanted me to know. He said it wasn't anything personal and that he had grown to consider me his friend. But he was tired of a Church that would not treat him as a man. He was tired of money drives and overcrowded schools, tired of living in a world that only spoke of varieties of sin, tired of empty confessions and rites grown meaningless and cold...I could not answer him; my defensive eloquence was gone. He was not a complainer, not a wild neurotic, not a proud and angry rebel in the crowd. He was the kind of man I hoped to serve, the kind of man I longed to be, a strong and loyal friend. He shook my hand and thanked me for the services I gave. I asked him why we failed, what he wanted from his Church. He said quietly that all he wanted was a home, a touch of wisdom to see him through the week, a word of mercy that made it all worthwhile, an understanding Church that reminded him of God.
- James Kavanaugh, A Modern Priest Looks At His Outdated Church

Kavanaugh wrote his book in 1967, the year I was born. I'd love to say his words are no longer needed, here in my fortyish years, but I can't.
I've looked at Church from both sides now. With the exception of a few rare appearances behind a pulpit, I've spent the last seven years in the pew. Its been kinda like that William Hurt movie (The Doctor) where he played a successful physician suddenly diagnosed with throat cancer. Then the doctor became the patient, and everything looked different. It might not be a bad idea if every two or three years a preacher/pastor/minister/priest took several months off and sat among the people. He's there anyway, in theory, but sometimes in practice, not so much.

Two things struck me when I first read the words above, and by 'struck' I mean 'tears fell' -
But he was tired...Several years ago an author, widely-read, wrote that most men in Church are angry and most women are tired. As I look today, from both sides now, I believe both men and women are tired, weary.
He said quietly that all he wanted was a home...in the ongoing discussion among leaders in the Church as to 'who and what are we to be?', there are some of us off to the side, hanging on to the edge of the pew, quietly whispering one word - home.

Dear preacher/pastor/minister/priest,
We're tired. Just know that when you're preparing sermons or homilies and song sets and emphases of different durations. What does that mean? We're not entirely sure, but keep it simple. No, we don't want the cookies on the lowest shelf, that's not what we're talking about. Yes, we're sheep and goats, both not always the brightest in the barnyard, but don't forget that before that, we're men and women. We need you, we really do. Whether you like it or not, you represent God. Aren't we all ministers, the priesthood of all believers stuff? Sure, you bet, we know that and more importantly, we believe that. But we still need someone to hold our hands from time to time, someone to stand shouldered to us, remind us of the truth...someone to break the bread and bless the wine and say the words this world ignores...someone to wrestle with the Text, because we're wrestling with texts all day long, many of which are not profitable for doctrine, correction, or reproof...someone to lift holy hands in prayer for us, for our children, our mothers and fathers and friends and lovers...someone to proclaim the good news and not fret about what we do or don't with it, just proclaim it, just tell it, just sing it over again to us, do it beautifully, classically, timelessly, profoundly, be creative to the nth degree, don't worry so much about making angels weep, seek to make men and women pause, and long for home.
Sincerely,
Your friends

Lent...What to do?

2011-02-24T19:32:00.000-07:00

He grew up Baptist, in the South. This doesn't explain everything; then again, it comes close.

Lent. He could remember hearing folks say things like 'I'm sure I lent you that rake last fall' or 'look, numbnuts, I lent you $20 already.' He couldn't recall anyone saying 'my, Lent is such a poignant time' or 'the Lenten retreat last weekend was simply cathartic!' Of course there was always the alternate spelling - lint - and he could hear his mother's voice: 'still damp? check the lint filter on the dryer.'

Lent. The season leading up to Holy Week, sacred days with the cherry on top deemed Easter. Now Easter he knew, that was old stompin' grounds - 'up from the grave he arose (he arose), with a mighty triumph o'er his foes (he arose). Easter was the old rugged cross nailed from head to toe with lilies, choirs belting out Sandi Patti anthems and always a soloist crooning that Dallas Holm standard, sunrise services where two or three were gathered together facing east to greet the rising sun, spiraled ham and green bean casserole for lunch, and afternoon egg hunts for the kiddos.

But Lent? From what he'd observed the last few years, years where he'd been a rover among the faithful who loved to light candles and sip communion wine, Lent was quiet and still and damn near sad. You were encouraged to ponder Christ's sufferings all decked out in the appropriate seasonal hues of contemplation and contrition. It was sorta like 40 days of hearing Jesus say 'look, numbnuts, I lent you my blood on the cross, what have you done for me lately?' It was sorta like that, he thought.

He did not voice these musings to his immediate circle of friends. They were, without exception, Lenters. Where he grew up, folks used to press if you'd prayed the sinner's prayer. If you hadn't, they were usually happy to help lead you through it, line by line, so you didn't spend an eternity where the worm never dies and Hitler dines with Judas. These days his friends would talk about Lent with almost the same weight, sorta like it was the sinner's season, and if you didn't observe 'the bright sadness' and by chance happened to fall into a wood chipper or something, you just might be the ticker-tape in the hell parade. At the very least skipping Lent left you unprepared to truly experience all the stations of Passion Week. About the only remedy for this is slamming a case of quick-penance, e.g., watch that Mel Gibson movie three or four times to get really good and Mel-ancholy.

Lent. What to do? He pondered this in his quiet time, a residue from his Baptist youth group days. The Lenters, without exception, gave up things they enjoyed during the season. Last year his friends temporarily broke the idol-chains of coffee, chocolate, the movies, and the internet, to name a few. He didn't give up anything and seemed to weather the season with aplomb while he watched his pleasure-denying Lenter friends get snippy and snippier and a couple of times just downright mean. It was sorta like his friends were having a 40 day menstrualpalooza, he thought.

Still, Lent. What to do? Then he realized his question was too universal. He needed to get specific, local, bring it downtown; the real question was - what would a Baptist, from the South, do? As soon as that thought crossed his quiet-timed mind, he heard the Sunday night special that always made him weep as a boy -

In seasons of distress and grief,
My soul has often found relief
And oft escaped the tempter's snare
By thy return, sweet hour of prayer.

That's it. While his friends were suffering the mortifications of the flesh and serving the least of these with justice and moodiness, he would lent his prayers to the world, both neighbor and numbnut. He purposed to write them out on his blog beginning on Ash Wednesday, not store-bought prayers addressed to the Ground Of Our Being (god help us), but word-groans hurled right into the nail-scarred mitts of Jesus. His hope? Well, he had a college prof, back in the South, who introduced him to Tennyson's line: 'more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.' He would lent out his prayers with the hope to wrought dreams. Yes, that's what he'd do.

He decided on a heading for his prayers -The Sweet Return. He felt good about this decision. It fit him.

Stay tuned.

Addressing Life

2011-02-22T06:57:00.000-07:00

'Suddenly life has become quite full of monoethic ninnies and nannies who address life solely as a problem to be solved.'

Jim Harrison, Off to the Side

I just finished a new novel - Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich. It reads fast, really fast. I started it in Denver and finished it by the time I reached Atlanta, flight-time that is. Erdrich's writing is always rich in the particularities of her Native American roots; this novel is no exception. However, this time she masterfully grafts those roots into the general trunk of marriage and children and individual identity. There's something here for everyone.

Irene America and her husband, Gil, are in a spiraling marriage. Their three children - Florian, Riel, and Stoney, along with the savant-like dogs - are both witnesses and participants in the gradually rapid descent. This is a complex story; an etiology of love. Its raw and dark and tender and surprising. It doesn't end happily, but it does end honestly. I found Erdrich's writing fearless, and as such, brilliant; it'll definitely break you out of the suburbia of your mind.

If, in Harrison's words, you 'address life solely as a problem to be solved' I'd steer clear of Shadow Tag...you won't like it. That 'address' in my opinion characterizes much of what passes for books on the themes of love and marriage and family. It goes something like this: my husband, my wife, my children, my marriage, my life for that matter, are all, at root, a problem and I need someone to help me fix/solve him or her or them or it or me. That 'address' again in my opinion is a fairly surefire way to miss the raw and dark and tender and surprising gift of existence.

If, however, you address life as a drama to be lived, you might consider the latest from Louise Erdrich. Here are two quotes to potentially further woo -

✠Infatuation, sudden attraction, is partly a fever of surfaces, an absence of knowledge. Falling in love is also falling into knowledge. Enduring love comes when we love most of what we learn about the other person and can tolerate the faults they cannot change.

✠To have meaning, history must consist of both occurrence and narrative. If she never told, if he never told, if the two of them never talked about it, there was no narrative. So the act, though it had occurred, was meaningless.

To my Valentine, 2011

2011-02-14T06:13:00.000-07:00

I seriously considered a night at the Broadmoor
just you and me and room service
but then that vacuum went out
and lord knows with that darn Beagle
the Dyson was a must
and then tires and shocks and struts had
to happen for that minivan 'cause even
though we got Farmers (bum bum bum bum bum bum)
people drive nuts these days
and then that movie he wanted his friends
to see for his birthday only showing
in 3-D which everyone knows is code
for 'that'll be a few dollars more, sucka'
so hell, I guess luxury'll have to wait.
Besides, you hate chocolate
and silk boxers, especially
red ones, make me nervous -
still I did dream of walking
with you around that majestic duck pond
lit only by the moon and quiet.

Faces and Souls and Twits, oh my...

2011-02-12T11:17:00.000-07:00

I'm knee-deep in a mammoth project right now, its due April 1st...ah, blessed irony. Its one of those projects where a number of people, let's say a whole bunch, are expecting me to deliver. To say I'm stressed right now is an understatement. I've been tempted to start smoking or something, you know, some vice to help me make it through the night. But my teeth are stained enough from coffee and I would like to run a half-marathon this year, so for now, no cool-Mad-Men-smoking-John.

So I'm blogging a little these days, but not too much...and maybe that's just fine. Here's something I've thought about lately, I'll slow-pitch it high, give it a lob, a chance to linger a minute before you swing. I've wondered about Facebook and the social networking gig now firmly ensconced in our world. Native American people were shy about having their pictures made, a feeling that being captured like that on film was an intrusion of territory and privacy, it thieved something at the soul-level. What if, and yes its a big what if, but what if that same belief applied to Facebook? - that every time I post an update or change my profile pic or link to my blog or display an array of photos of me and mine, I lost a piece of my soul? It brings to mind a verse I've read a few times, that of gaining the world but losing one's soul...could that maybe, sorta, possibly be along the lines of gaining a following or gaining more friends or gaining herculean 'likes' to a particular quote/witticism? Hopefully I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but there's a kaboodle of posturing on Facebook, putting on our 'best' faces...and I'm sorry, I tried Twitter, but I never 'got it' and the word is too close to 'twit' and I don't have a smart phone and I really couldn't stand that perky bird.

I don't know about all this...like I said, its something I've been chewing on lately. To even type it feels old, stodgy, Luddite-ish, the old hairy crazy guy who lives back by the creek and yells at kids...but that's fine, I don't care. I stepped away from Facebook last year during Lent and I'm planning on doing it again in a few weeks...a season to not be so plugged-in/connected because I'm not a machine, I'm a man, a man who believes in territory and privacy and that just because you don't see my 'face' doesn't mean I don't exist, it means I believe there is more, so much more to a man or woman than the faces we choose to reveal to others...there is something deeper, more enduring, something that remains...the soul...and that the soul is something that can be lost if we're not careful. If you should un-friend me, I'll be alright, a country boy can survive, but if I should lose my soul, that's like losing me, face and all, and...

Well, gotta run, I'm heading over to post this on my Facebook page...hope you like it.

Now I Know...

2011-02-10T22:37:00.000-07:00

I dropped him off at school this morning, the birthday boy, 14yrs and countin'...my lord. He registered for high school last night, made his selection for classes - Spanish, beginning guitar, and of course stuff like Algebra. While at the high school, his mother, also my wife, treated him to a new hoodie emblazoned with the high school logo...that's what he was wearing when I dropped him off this morning. About the time the car door shut, my parents called hoping to catch mr. birthday before school. They didn't catch him, but they did catch me, right in the act of humbled awe at my 14 yr old son all tall and proud and hoodied walking into the last few months of his middle school stint because high school's on the horizon where he'll be strumming Spanish guitar tunes and asking girls for help with algebra. I painted this water-logged canvas for my parents on the phone and without hesitation they said 'now you know how we felt.' And I choked a whisper - 'yes, now I do.'

Your parents tell you a lot of things when you're young, sorta like I do with my kids. And like my kids, I didn't listen too much to my parents, but I do recall that phrase 'one of these days, you'll know.' Its really unfair to throw that at a kid but life's not fair, so you do it anyway with the hope that it'll lodge in his brainpan somewhere and years later, like some time-delayed depth charge, he'll be sitting in front of the school watching his first born, the very strength of his life who is all of a sudden 14 which comes right before 15 and 16, and BAM! off it goes and he realizes 'now I know.'

Moments like that leave you tender, or at least they do me, toward those still young (your kids) and toward those grown old (your parents). They even leave you a little tender toward yourself, which is really not a bad thing at all. You promise yourself, or at least I did this morning, to take it a little easier on folks, especially those you love, maybe even yourself, because you've survived long enough that yes, now you know...and you know it hurts, god it hurts like those big beer horses are stompin' all over your heart, but you wouldn't have it any other way, no sir...but it goes oh so very, very fast...for once upon a time, my precious son, we were so very young.

Fortunate Son

2011-02-05T08:07:00.000-07:00

What a privilege to carry...

We were up early, the two of us. I fixed bagels with vulgar amounts of cream cheese while she got dressed, straightened hair, gathered her things. We left the house in time to drive through Starbucks, 'grande Chai, please Daddy.' 'Alright, but you'll have to whizz like a racehorse not five miles down the road.' She grins. She's in a speech tournament today, all day long, on a Saturday...still, she's bright-eyed, happy. We pull up beside the yellow dog she'll board for the host school, she leans over on my shoulder, a gentle good-bye, I kiss her hair and inhale the scent that's left me for years now a man undone.

As I drove away I was suddenly misty, kensho, an awareness of the utter privilege it is to carry a child in this world. Not all moments bring this clarity mind you, but this one did. There is much I've to do today, the ten thousand things - continue to chip away at a mammoth writing project, fill up cars with gas, dispense antibiotics to the dog I've spent ungodly amounts of money on lately, try to get a four or five mile run in before the snow begins again, call my parents, and so on and so forth. But of all these things, and all are vital in their own right, the spots of time where I carry my children are those I truly cherish. I used to carry them, literally...now, all of us slightly older, I carry in different ways...my fathering looks and feels a little different. Still, what a privilege...

To finish the phrase, so to speak, I did - everything to God in prayer. I prayed for my middle girl as I drove away, my twelve-year-old wobbling the slackline these days between girl and woman. I prayed to the God from whom all blessings flow, the One who art in heaven and is also always near...I asked for her safety this day while she's beyond my view and for her safe return (the universal parent prayer)...and I said thank You for the privilege, thank You for the chance, thank You for the divine roll of the dice on me, the bet that occasionally I would see and know the privilege...I am a fortunate son.

Apologia

2011-02-04T06:22:00.001-07:00

Once a man asked Why do you bother? You never know, I said. The ones you give some semblance of burial, to whom you offer an apology, may have been like seers in a parallel culture. It is an act of respect, a technique of awareness.
- Barry Lopez, Apologia

✙
Lopez intentionally engaged himself in the discipline of removing roadkill from the highway - jackrabbits, porcupines, raccoons, a red fox, sparrows, a big doe, even a badger, 'each animal like a solitary child's shoe in the road.' Sounds crazy doesn't it, deranged, like a man off his rocker.

I was raised a pastor's son, spent quite some time in my father's footsteps, and have lived the last few years, still credentialed, but off to the side. This is what I see - roadkill, the Church is strewn with it, the air acrid, the ground stained. But we just keep on truckin', pursuing the visions in our own heads, barreling down the highway in our pink cadillacs of missional love, forgetting what lies behind, no turning back, no turning back. Everyone seems heavenbent on being part of a movement, if not leading one. I'm sure they're out there, but I can't hear a single voice interested in a stop-and-back-up-ment, maybe a pull-over-on-the-shoulder-ment. If we just keep moving the cries are muffled, hardly a whisper. We've got places to go, busy, busy, busy.

This discipline of apologia (I am not talking about our current fascination with apologetics) is dirty work, takes time, effort, pride-swallowing, you might have to brake your three-year visionquest, pick up the phone, write a letter, take a trip and leave the ninety and nine for the one, two, or three. It begins with the guts to say I'm sorry. There is so much more that follows, but that's the first step, or better yet, stop: I'm sorry, please forgive me. Making amends is a powerful antidote; it possibly has the power to heal.

Why bother? Because you never know...

At the end of the day

2011-01-26T06:19:00.000-07:00

k c u soon -
her slip of message
sufficient to
quicken pulse,
summon revenant tears.
I would see her soon,
the after-school her,
the her pushing through
double-glassed doors
into a slouching sun
to stride near grown
in fur-lined boots,
searching,
talking,
looking,
laughing,
squinting,
finally finding
the ferryman
with nose and eyes
and name like her own
to usher her safely
home,
@TEOTD.

Always

2011-01-24T06:40:00.000-07:00

I'll always be Baptist,
like I'll always be from the South.
That's how it is.
I contemplated becoming a priest,
it seemed good, a delight, desirable.
Then the dream, that of being collared,
easily leashed, led.
I woke up bitter.

John the Baptist did not live long
but by God he lived -
the forerunner,
the vox clamantis in deserto,
the unworthy footman,
among those born of women
none greater,
a honey of a life.

And then a pluck of
southern comfort:
easy to come undone
when young girls dance;
best carry necktape,
a collar or somethin',
not lose your head.
I'll always be a man.

Good Time...

2011-01-21T06:09:00.001-07:00

The Blase kids needed some clothes - jeans, socks, those kinds of things. So we ventured out on a Thursday evening to that mecca of commerce, the mall. Let me add here that shopping at the mall on a Thursday evening was just on the outskirts of bliss (aka, not hardly a soul in there but us). We went in knowing what they needed and found what they needed, plus a couple of things they wanted, on sale, glory be. After each swipe of the debit card, a gentle refrain was heard: thanks, Dad. Ah, gratitude...music to thy father's, who art paying for all this, big hairy ears. Do those two words always dance in the air after such transactions? Nope. Will it always happen from here on out with nary a slip? I doubt it. But it happened last night, it happened once...so I believe it can happen again.

Now, I'd buy my kids those things whether they said thanks, Dad or not. I believe the Good Father's like that and I'm trying to be more like him. Even though his ways are not my ways, I've got some hunches as to how he operates: love regardless of response. Still, those two words - thanks, Dad - made a difference last night, not so much to me as they did to time. Those two words, including the glorious comma, took the Blase clan primarily out of chronos, clock-time, and set us down gingerly in kairos, real time, God's time...or as I like to say - good time. Good time was had by all due to the sound of a gentle refrain.

Now the trick, and I use that word intentionally 'cause I sorta believe that's what it is, is to learn to say thanks, Dad when you don't get what you want, when its not on sale, and when the crowds are best described by the biblical word legion. We, you and I, have the power to trick time with gratitude. I can already hear someone cry 'but dear John, I cannot feign gratitude, I've got to be authentic, I've gotta be real!' Behold, if you and I are not authentically grateful, guess who already knows? Yeah, so please lose the Jerseylicious drama. I'm not talking about feigning anything, but rather tricking something, something that has the power to affect not only ourselves but the mall crowds around us - time. I'm trying to learn to say thanks, Dad regardless, because that's how he loves - regardless. Like whacky old Paul I have not arrived yet, and like tender old McKuen I've got miles to go, but I'm straining on, trying to learn to sing regardless of the whether...

Temporary lay offs - thanks, Dad
Easy credit rip offs - thanks, Dad
Scratchin' and survivin' - thanks, Dad
Hanging in a chow line - thanks, Dad
Ain't we lucky we got 'em...good times.

Secondhand stroke...

2011-01-15T07:40:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday of this week, my wife's friend Joanne was running on her treadmill and suffered a major stroke. Joanne's young, fit, wife of one and mother of two, a writer, speaker, blogger, seminary student, sister and daughter. Whatever resolutions Joanne might have made for this new year have been trumped, just like that. The resolve, now, is living. Her husband is posting updates on her blog - the simple wife - that's the best and most accurate information. If you pray, please pray. If you light candles, this is such a time. And if you groan, as I do, there's room at my table.

On Wednesday of this week, I spent my lunch hour running on a treadmill. Whatever playlist I had prepared for that run was trumped, just like that. I could not outrun Sting's voice -
for all those born beneath an angry star/
lest we forget how fragile we are.

There are days in weeks when I simply do not understand this life...

Onceuponatime...

2011-01-10T05:55:00.000-07:00

Rev. Walton had planned to share thoughts about the magi’s journey, but such schemes went awry when she roared:

To fight aloud is very brave--

But gallanter, I know

All eyes, especially Onceuponatime’s, focused on a female figure in the corner, standing, waving both arms conductor-style:

Who charge within the bosom

The Cavalry of Woe--

Eva Simpson delivered a palpable sigh that rippled through the moments-earlier-pastoral-scene. Jenny Parker quickly appeared with two aides and silently directed them to the commotion while she approached Rev. Walton. ‘I was on the phone earlier and neglected to introduce you to M. I’m sorry...’ As Jenny continued, Rev. Walton’s grandson moved to his side. Its not that Onceuponatime was frightened, far from it. Rather, he was charmed.

‘M is short for Emily, Mrs. Emily Cross. She came to us Monday, she's something else. Her brother helped her get settled, sweet man named Ben, so far he’s here every day at lunch and dinner. M has mid stage Alzheimer’s. Things get shady about sundown, like you might expect, but there are moments like these, every once in a while. She’s in room 305. I know she'd love a visit.’ With that summary, Jenny Parker smiled, turned, and walked away. Rev. Walton heard enough in Jenny's brief account, enough to give him a bearing on a lady he'd soon meet. Onceuponatime had listened too but really only heard one thing, one phrase, a gathering of words still fresh in the air – ‘once in a while.’

Onceuponatime...

2011-01-08T11:04:00.001-07:00

{Thanks to my good friend, Charlotte, for a much needed prod...I'm sorry, its sorta been a hard holiday, I'm moving slow.}

~~~

If irony colors the life of a town, then Foster’s ‘common’ room was a rainbow. It wasn’t so much that Onceuponatime had been sheltered from the aged as they’d been sheltered from him. True, there were some older people in his grandfather’s congregation, like Tuck Jackson, the janitor. But Tuck could scramble up a ladder and change a lightbulb before you could blink. Onceuponatime saw no one in the room he thought might even be remotely interested in scrambling; in fact, they were all seated - some in straightback chairs, some in wheelchairs, and a handful in what looked like the chaise lounges at the town pool. Rev. Walton kept his grandson close as they made their way to the center of the room. ‘Good morning, everyone. I’m tickled to have my grandson with me today. This is Onceuponatime.’ Several voices chirped ‘hello’ alongside tired smiles and crooked waves. Eva Simpson rolled her wheelchair right up to them and extended a hand. ‘Hello, Onceuponatime. I’m Eva. I play the piano but I don’t use the bench. You may sit there if you would like.’

Onceuponatime sat and swung his legs as his grandfather spoke loud and true. ‘Most folks have already put Christmas away until next year. That makes me sad. I’m so glad to see you all are still celebrating. Help me sing, alright?’ Those last four words were a well-worn cue for Eva. She started in with a medley of familiar Christmas carols like ‘Hark the Herald’, ‘Joy to the World’, and ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful.’ And right before a little boy's eyes, the old become young again. Those who could sing, sang. Some, like Paul Jordan, simply tapped feet, while a few, like Bessie Long, clapped quiet hands. Lydia Wilson hugged her American Girl doll and rocked back and forth, a metronome Madonna. Chet Waller just sat and smiled and cried.

Other ministers in town kept to podiums or pulpits, but not Davis Walton. His custom was to walk among the people and preach his sermons, never consulting notes and seldom reading directly from the Bible as he memorized his text. His was a confessional approach, calling folks by their first names, asking them questions, patting a back, shaking a hand. It’s often told of the Sunday he offered to take a crying baby from a young mother, as they say, ‘at wit’s end.’ The child gradually stilled and fell asleep. Rev. Walton continued the entire service with child in arms. The church received a record offering that morning. Jess McCandles said ‘broke the mold after Walton.’ When it seemed right, the singing stilled that Friday morning and Onceuponatime watched his grandfather begin to walk among the beautifully uncommon lives of the Foster Retirement Center. He strode directly to Chet Waller, touched the man’s shoulder and said ‘Memory is a kind of homesickness isn’t it, Chet?’

The Story of Onceupona Time...(still continued)

2010-12-23T08:29:00.001-07:00

{Mercy, the spirit was willing but the flesh has been rather frazzled these last few days...I'll still plug away with this story because these characters deserve it, but we might extend it out to New Years, okay by you? Thanks! From here on, the story will probably be bite-sized...think of it as handfuls of Chex mix or something.}

~~~

Liberty’s first day of class was early in January, so early that the Foster Retirement Center was still ablaze in Christmas décor. An old plastic crèche sat just to the left of the front doors, the three main characters weathered but determined. The Christ-child looked stable enough, but someone or something had rendered Mary and Joseph flat; the blessed Virgin flat on her face and righteous Joseph flat on his back. As man and boy carefully reset the scene, Davis Walton spoke in pastoral tones: ‘Most of the people here are like this, Onceuponatime…they’re old but beautiful, life keeps knocking them over…we’ll just try to help them back up.’ The smile and nod of his grandson’s face was sufficient, a word the good reverend had learned to live by. Davis Walton offered his hand to the little boy he loved the most and in they went.

Jenny Parker, Foster’s 'Activities Architect', was on the front desk phone as they walked in. She waved them past, silently mouthing ‘they’re waiting for you.’ The words were not lost on Onceuponatime. Some mothers would have overcoached this experience, trying to prepare their child for any and all contingencies. But not Liberty. She believed her son belonged to these Fridays with his grandfather as sure as rain is wet. Liberty had read stories to her son since his birth; she knew now he would begin living them. Before driving away earlier that morning, she kissed her son’s forehead once and nose twice, then simply said ‘its waiting for you.’

The Story of Onceupona Time...(continued)

2010-12-14T07:31:00.001-07:00

You may be wondering who I am and how I know so much about the life of Onceuponatime Walton. At this point in the story all I can say is that I was a firsthand witness to the life of this boy, maybe like no one else, even Liberty. I believe it will become clear along the way, but if not, I’ll tell you when we near the end of this particular chapter in his life. I promise.

You might anticipate Onceuponatime was born with special powers, like he could talk to ravens or his arms wouldn’t break or his singing made it snow. Those would be false hopes, for Liberty Walton’s son was as normal as normal. But every once in a while a baby is born who is, as they say, ‘a carrier.’ This child has no unique powers of his own but rather carries the collective power of the people around him, like their dreams or fears or sadness. So in a sense, yes, Onceuponatime was valiantly special, but it took the people around him to make him so. As you will see, he needed them, just like they needed him.

For the first three years of his life, Liberty Walton and Onceuponatime did everything together. If you saw one, you saw the other. Franny Withers, the postmistress, said ‘a goose and her gosling, I tell ya, goose and gosling.’ Folks in Delight would see them out walking mid-morning, which they had a habit of doing, and ask Liberty how things were going and she’d say ‘oh, oh these are halcyon days.’ Not everyone knew what halcyon meant, in fact practically no one did, but they loved to hear Liberty say it. If you sorta had a hunch, you were right; yes, Liberty was a carrier too.

The halcyon days of Onceuponatime’s life did not end when he celebrated his fourth birthday that unseasonably warm Christmas, but they did change. Liberty had decided to take a class at the nearby community college, a class that would meet all day on Fridays for the duration of the spring semester. The question on the heels of this decision, one that Liberty’s mother and the entire town of Delight wondered was, ‘but what will you do with Onceuponatime?’ Come to find out, Liberty and her father had been in, as they say, ‘cahoots’, they were already one step ahead.

Every Friday, as had been his habit for years, Rev. Davis Walton spent the morning with the old folks of the Foster Retirement Center. They’d gather in the common room and he’d always share a story, just almost a homily but not quite a sermon. After that, the remainder of the time was filled with singing, everything from ‘Amazing Grace’ to ‘Stardust.’ The folks there were of a variety, not so much a box of chocolates as a can of mixed nuts. Some, like Eva Simpson, were still mentally a razor’s edge. Others, like Chet Waller, were always lost somewhere in the past. Make no mistake, Chet knew where he was, its just no one else was quite sure. After his time with these tender souls, Rev. Walton would stop by The Net for their fish basket lunch special, then he’d head to the park to saunter, feed squirrels, skip rocks, think…he called it praying.

The two cahoots had agreed that for at least the time being of Liberty’s class, Onceuponatime would join his grandfather for the Friday usual. Rev. Davis Walton was so excited he thought he might, as they say, ‘pop.’

The Story of Onceupona Time

2010-12-11T07:59:00.000-07:00

{Its hard to adequately express my gratitude for your regular or even sporadic stopping by to read the popcorn thoughts strung together at The Dirty Shame. I wrote a story a couple of Christmases ago as a gift to you, the readers, my friends. You liked it, or at least you said you did. So today begins another story...a present for you, unwrapped a little every few days or so, concluding on Christmas Eve. Just know this tale is unfolding itself for me too, I have no idea where these lives will take us. But if there's anything I've learned thus far as a writer, its this - trust the story. So here we go.}

He was born on December 25th. It was the happiest day of single-mother Liberty Walton's life. But the ache in her bones told her it would be easy for his birth to be overshadowed, what with sharing a birthday with Jesus and all. She knew how the town loved to do Christmas. So she willed herself to give him an inimitable name, something to level the field a bit. His birth announcement in the local paper read

Onceupona Time Walton, 7lbs 12 oz, 19 inches

The truth is Liberty Walton could've named that boy Judas and the folks of Delight (pronounced Dee-lite) would've loved him just the same. The reason is every breathing soul in that town adored Liberty, she was native, 'a born and raised delight' as they say. In many ways the girl and the town grew up together. Liberty's parents were both beloved fixtures, her mother the school superintendent for years and her father the founding pastor of the Congregational church. Upon graduation from high school, Liberty received a prestigious scholarship to an Ivy League school. Delight was agog.

But something happened that first spring semester. Of course folks knew what happened, but they never really knew what happened. Liberty came home for the summer showing signs of life in her belly. The town all tiptoed around for awhile, trying to give her some space. Then one July Sunday morning, just prior to the benediction, Liberty stood before her father's congregation, hands resting on her abdomen, and said 'I'm so, so sorry. Please, please forgive me.' Jess McCandles, the church's tenured crosspatch, rose to his feet, wiped his eyes, and declared 'you'll always be a delight to us, Liberty Walton, you and that baby.' A hearty amen followed and from then on, as they say, 'that was that.' Delight was agog once more.

Per Liberty's request, folks took to calling her boy by his first and middle names, running them together sorta like you'd expect - Onceuponatime. Liberty would read to him at bedtime from a book of fairy tales, legends and myths, always beginning with that magic phrase - 'Once upon a time.' She would say those four words, then pause and look deep in her firstborn's life. This quotidian ritual was such that Liberty's son soon began to associate one thing with another; in other words, he began, even at an early age, to know why he was here.

Another Parson Brown question - Why So Serious?

2010-12-07T07:44:00.000-07:00

A friend alerted me to a 'discussion starter' in Christianity Today last week. The last four words of that sentence sound sorta funny, huh? I don't read the magazine because I've never found anything in there that made me snicker, giggle, or hunker over and belly-laugh and the only kind of Christianity I desire today and any day is one that allows for the thunderous guffaw. As the Joker pined - why so serious? Anyway, the article was centered around the lyrics of our traditional Christmas carols. Some churches are being very selective about which carols they sing this season...some churches apparently considering banning certain carols - for example 'Away In A Manger' - because of questionable lines/theology like 'no crying he makes' which seems to run counter to the get-down-and-dirty-in-our-messy, a.k.a, the incarnation.

Have I already used the line why so serious? Yep, I have, well let's go ahead and make it two.

There were other voices in the piece, like my friend's, that lobbied for some yuletide sanity, but the fact that someone felt compelled to start such a discussion speaks volumes about a Christianity that today often needs to make much ado about something. But dear, dear Parson Brown, the flag waving bravely above it all is the banner of orthodoxy and that's important, right? Well, dear, the lyrics I've always boogied to in the shower are His banner over us is love. That other banner, orthodoxy, has flown above many a corpse on many a battlefield as heaven wept.

I'm not a theologian nor do I play one on tv. I am, at least for these Advent days, a lowly parson. I will say this about 'Away In A Manger' - I sincerely believe there were moments when no crying he made, slivers of nanoseconds when the swaddled Son of God was still, still, still. These were spots of time when Mary and Joseph looked at each other and said mercy, all is calm, all is bright. And then, wouldn'tcha know it, the little drummer boy dropped his sticks and Melchior stumbled knocking over the frankincense and the One born to die let loose with a squeal to make humanity proud as the mother of God and her man sighed the sigh of joyous exhaustion and took, once more, to tending the little lord Jesus awake in the hay. Joseph looked up and noticed Clarence the angel standing in the corner, leaning forward in grinning adoration humming it really is a wonderful life...and the ox and lamb kept time.

A Reckoning at Eventide

2010-12-05T12:04:00.001-07:00

[This poem arose from a meditation on today's scripture reading concerning John the Baptist. I wondered what he might have heard or done after a day waist-deep in the Jordan. The poem points toward contrition - an important facet of Advent.]
~~~

The sun was dying away
they had all gone by then
my day's work done
the water stilled.
I shook myself dry
a final time,
that's when the rocks
awoke with echoes
they'd pocketed all day -
repent, repent, repent.
Another man might think
himself crazy in that moment
but not me, not the baptizer.

I knew.
I knew of my anger flashed
at the whoring husband
who will never change.
I knew of my breathless disgust
at the shrewd lover of mammon
as he confessed for spectacle.
I knew of my lust stirred low
when she rose from the water,
yes I am a man.
I knew of my envy as I
watched them leave my wilderness for
settings of silver and beds of ease.
I knew of what shone as indignation
for that brood of vipers but
was actually my venom of hate.
I knew of what I am foremost.
I knew.

So I turned, like a dog to vomit,
stripped myself bare and broke the surface
scrubbing my weathered skin
pink then blood-red,
a reckoning at eventide.
And the stones,
the stones finally slept.

Parson Brown's Hebrew word for the day...

2010-12-04T09:25:00.000-07:00

We spent Thanksgiving week in Arkansas. An author I like calls the state 'Crackeropolis.' I think that's rather funny. Two and a half days at my sister-in-law's house and two and a half days with my dad and mom...it was a Goldilocks week - not too much, not too little, just right. One morning, after pumpkin bread and Community coffee, I opened the decorative chest that holds my parents' photographs and sat down to, as the Hebrews say, zakar - to remember. In many ways that chest is an ark of family covenant, housing boxes upon envelopes upon folders, all filled with spots of time from our lives written on tablets of film. My dad plopped down, saying 'I like remembering too.' My brother joined us.

So the leader of the band and his sons did just that, zakar. We weren't gathered around a screen, charmed by a prepackaged soundtrack from Apple, but rather shoulder to shoulder, with the tick of the heater nearby, carefully passing the texture of sacred time back and forth between us saying 'gosh, look at this' and 'what was her name?' and 'hey, nice Members Only jacket' and 'I sure miss him.' There was the picture of the church where I prayed Jesus into my heart. There were poses of Christmas mornings past, us groggy-eyed in front of the trees love always decorated. Family reunions. Summer vacations. Bicentennial Sunday, where we were all dressed up in colonial garb, me wearing (are you ready?) a puffy shirt. And then there were the old ones, fragile glances into a world of black and white, a time when yes, things seemed simpler. One of the old ones was a large 8x10 of my parents holding a butterball - me. I looked up at my dad sitting nearby, seventy years old now, eyes greying, and I looked back at the picture and suddenly he's in the pride of life, dark-haired, eyes full of promise, young wife on his arm and firstborn son in his hands. One of us, I cannot remember who and it doesn't matter anyway, said 'our lives are precious, aren't they?' The answer was not spoken but written with water that pooled our eyes and wet our cheeks: 'Yes, yes they are.'

I realize one can get 'lost' in reverie or even live in the past, neither very beneficial for yourself and those around you. But I also realize that many of us, myself included, don't take the time to zakar and that sin of omission renders us a bunch of ingrates, a condition that seems to be rampant these days and, I believe, an aroma quite unbecoming for one who once prayed Jesus into his heart to stay. Advent is a time of looking ahead, no doubt, but it is also a time of raising the question - 'our lives are precious, aren't they?' and remembering, often with words not spoken, the answer - 'Yes, yes they are.'

Joachim

2010-12-03T00:15:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered about Mary's father? Scripture is silent in regard to him, tradition names him Joachim...

Born under the moon’s nail,

long expected, carried low

as was my prayer.

Unto us a child was born,

yet not to carry my name.

But children are a gift from God,

what’s born is born.

She would smile at my voice,

stitching herself to me,

a hem of grace

to my half-lived life.

Oh, Mary.

Then it all unraveled,

the veil of promise torn.

Through tears we witnessed

her jubilant shriving:

a tale of angel

and favor and son.

She spoke as one changed,

not older, but larger, magnified.

But who could believe such things?

By day her mother murmured

all things are possible.

By night she paced.

Me? I wept alone.

Oh, Mary.

Whoever the father is,

I wrestle with him in dreams.

Parson's Prayer...

2010-12-01T06:41:00.000-07:00

What if I'm not ready?
Not ready for December,
and carols and Rankin-Bass?
I'm no Scrooge, lord knows,
or a foolish virgin (actually, scratch the virgin part)
its just my ivy's
not feeling that holly...
at least not yet.
If someone said well ready or not, its coming
I'd be tempted to shoot their partridge
and that's not christian, lord knows.
So help me, help us get ready. Amen.

Parson Brown...

2010-11-29T22:26:00.000-07:00

In the meadow we can build a snowman
then pretend that he is Parson Brown
he'll say 'are you married?'
we'll say 'no man'
but you can do the job
when you're in town.
~~~
I don't preach much anymore, not from behind a pulpit at least. But maybe for a few weeks here, during these adventus days, I can pre-tend to be Parson Brown...and try to do the job 'cause I'm in town, sorta. And what, you rightly ask, would be the job? Well, somebody needs to be asking questions, not necessarily like 'are you married?' but other ponderings, musings appropriate to this most wonderful time of the year.

Advent. The season of waiting.

So what are you waiting for?

Allow me, the goodly parson, to pose that in two ways. I can ask as if we're both standing on a busy street corner beneath holiday lights and you're obviously waiting on someone or something to come along and I say So what are you waiting for? I can also ask as if we're both standing in front of a Blue Bell ice cream truck and the driver is offering you the one fudge bar he couldn't sell. He says 'here, take it, my treat' and I say So what are you waiting for? Same question, slightly different takes.

Maybe 'your Advent' this year (or switching those words you have Advent-your...impressive, huh?) is to wait for someone or something to come along. The temptation would be to make it happen, go ahead and do it, find a good deal or a steal, put it on the plastic...but your Advent-your is to wait for him or her or it or whatever to come to you.

Then again, maybe, just maybe, your Advent-your is to reach out and grab what's looking you square in the schnoz. Maybe its been there for days, weeks, months even, and its high time and quite possibly the right time to act, move, seize, carpe!

You might think one take easier than the other, but I'd gently, parsonly disagree. Both takes are hard because fear crouches at the doorstep. Fear that he or she or it will never come along...or fear that if you do grab the gusto it might not be the correct gusto (a whacked out fatalism) or if it is, then you'll grab too hard and kill it/ruin it. But the only way to experience an Advent-your is to have courage, take heart...or, in the words of the Good Book - fear not!

So what are you waiting for?

KATE RUSBY - THE WILD GOOSE

2010-11-28T22:23:00.000-07:00

A Song of Harvest Home...

2010-11-18T21:24:00.001-07:00

The great God sits the rim of the universe, his long legs dangling over the edge swinging kid-like, back and forth, he’s watching, listening…

My father will look around the ornate table he and my mother bought years ago, a table large enough for the family that has grown to include grandchildren and their mothers. He’ll catch each of our eyes for a mere twinkling and then tears will pool his aging sockets as slack-jawed wonder shoots hot through his marrow – how’d I get so lucky?

He will then take my mother’s hand, our signal to do the same with the blood kin beside us and my father will bow his head and close his eyes and raise the song of harvest home. I no longer close my eyes, not in dumb rebellion, but for fear of missing something here, even one breath. While my father extols the leader triumphant, I will look around the great table at our lives and echo his refrain – how’d we get so lucky?

That word – lucky – a dice-roll of letters that can hold both wheat and tares together sown for as the table will fat with decent health and deviled eggs and some-day-dreams, it will also lean of loved ones here no more and pang with disappointments too dark to name and owl with questions like who, who, who am I? The joy and the sorrow are one, inseparable, stitched, all the world is God’s own field. There will no doubt be turkey on the table, but the real birds in the room are ducks, each of us, one and all, a brace honking out our best gratitude in calls loud and soft with tears on our cheeks and pumpkin pie on our minds, witnesses that yes, for one more year God our maker doth provide, seldom if ever as we’d prefer but always sufficient, always enough. And so we’ll squeeze one another’s hands as my father says amen and then babies-no-longer will lean in and pass the rolls their grandmother makes, while brothers will laugh again like boys as our wives sit close and talk with tenured voices, and my father and mother will rest from their labors, basking in the unmerited warmth that keeps this world, as outside ere the winter storms begin. Beyond frosting glass a mustering of angels sweep, back and forth, peering into our cockeyed lives, flapping with envy at the powerful gift of being alive...their voices ride the wind what a bunch of lucky ducks!

The great God sits the rim of the universe, his long legs dangling over the edge swinging kid-like, back and forth…he is watching, listening to a fowl gathering lucky he forgets not his own.

Monday's Mild Rant...

2010-11-15T07:32:00.000-07:00

What you're after is this antiphony. This calling back and forth...
- Barry Lopez

The African-American pastor stands before the congregation and says 'I'm not gonna make it unless you help me.' The people nod and sway and begin their 'yes, yes'...the response...antiphony.

Its what we want for Christmas. Its what we want for Easter. Its what we want for our birthdays, anniversaries, Father's Day, Mother's Day, Boxing Day, any day for that matter. The antiphony, the response.

I heard a sermon not long ago, impassioned, loud, on the subject of marriage, about how its never to be a 50/50 deal, give and take, two way street, but rather we should love 100% regardless of the other's behavior or attitude. When I listened to the pauses in that sermon I heard a man's silent cry - 'dear God, I hope what I'm saying isn't true, what a life without parole that would be.' I read a blog post recently where the conversation in that domain proclaimed that comments were not important, that the writing was for the writing's sake, maybe even for the ever popular 'audience of one' - whatever that means, and that whether or not you and I read and respond are, in the final analysis, rather beside the point. When I paid attention to the margins of that blog what I saw was armor, protection, resistance to hurt.

Both of these examples had a strong whiff of spiritual on them, the Bible was stood upon, verses were waved, God's name was invoked, a fleece of devout placed just so. In both of these instances my heart grieved 'dear brother and sisters, this should not be so.' Once that bathroom Polo of holiness dissipates I believe a stench arises, one where the other is not important, one where forth is all that matters and back don't mean a thing, one where response is driven from the camp, antiphony crucified.

Spend fifty years, a rarity these days, of giving 100% in marriage while the other never responds and you might die some Hosea-like-saint, but your bitterness and regret and pain will be as dark as your age spots. Spend a lifetime writing for the writing's sake with no concern for hearing from the other and maybe when you die we'll publish your stacks of journals and you shall be more powerful in death than in life...but then again, maybe your mountains of print will be burned as wood, hay, stubble by relatives who never got the chance to respond and, to be quite honest, are glad to finally be rid of you.

When the call is 'thank you'...the response is 'you're welcome.'
When the forth is 'I love you'...the back is 'I love you too.'

The response is not only what we want, it is what we need. It is courteous - a word akin to courting, that old fashioned dance of manners and nuance...(I'll have to return to drive that post another day).

Antiphony...break that word in half and you have anti-phony, the antidote to a phoniness that all too often passes for some humble-bumble devotion that's shiny at first blush but upon careful inspection is revealed to be the currency of fools.

Antiphony. It is, I believe, how God so loved the world and therefore how we should then love it and one another too. Without it, we're not gonna make it.
Amen?

Playing our song...

2010-11-10T05:53:00.000-07:00

He was wise enough to keep the sermon short and not invent Shane's goodness but to simply speak of loneliness and how we can't completely know another human being.
Kent Meyers, Twisted Tree
~~~

That word - lonely. Say it. A word defined largely by its sound, the long O creating a moan leading into the n allowing you to rock on it a moment before tipping into ly and then it drifts away.

That word - lonely. A word with origins, like all things, in Eden, when the first two ate from that fated tree. Many say sin was birthed in that moment. I say that's when lonely was born. They looked at each other with egg on their faces and felt something new, something not yet named, the pang, the oh. They sewed and sewed until their fingers bled, God knows, but the fig skins could hide only naked...not lonely.

Yes, yes, alone had been around, the man could not find like bones, like flesh. God declared it not good and so the woman ribbed forth. But it wasn't until after she came along, after the bones and flesh lost themselves in grassy splendor, after God rested, after that first black communion of take/eat and they did, after all was both said and done, then he and she knew lonely. The old book calls them cherubim and flaming sword, but those are words used west of the garden. From where they stood, he and she saw them as Eden's neon rainbow, flashing stabs of lonely. The man and woman went forth to cultivate and have relations...and dream. Put another quarter in, for that is where our song begins...the first note, the first word. Dance slow, dance close. Its our song.

Thank you...

2010-11-04T10:48:00.000-06:00

You can't just walk away from yourself, she said. You don't expect a waitress to say something like that. Maybe more coffee? or would you like to see the dessert tray? but not that. Guess that's why it pierced, meaning, oracle. She smiled, paused a moment as those wild-bird words settled, then said you just can't. What would possess a middle-aged Native American woman to say that, out of the blue? There hadn't been conversation beyond hello, how are you, patty melt medium, potato salad, and iced tea. Everything normal, usual, comfortable. And then that, something not ordered but offered, a tip in reverse. Ate every bite, as mother trained, and left 20% as dad taught. The restaurant door was paned with that old timey glass, thick, wavy. Caught my face it in as she pushed it open, at first carnival-contorted, then clear, placid, myself. Her voice touched from behind. Pilamaya she whispered. No, I thought, thank you.

A Halloween Regifting...

2010-10-30T10:20:00.000-06:00

[This is post, slightly revised, from a couple of years ago...think of it as a re-gifting of sorts]

A very liberal columnist for the Denver Post wrote an article not long ago about Halloween. He mentioned the two words that should not be named, words which strike fear in the hearts of children everywhere in the month of October - fall festival, or some variation on that theme. I had to laugh, remembering all the semantic gyrations our churches used to pretzel in so as to offer something on that night, but not cater to the whims of the fallen world.

Overall, the article was not a keeper, but there was one point that I found very intriguing. He said that we, as Americans, need Halloween as a holiday. Let me type that once more - we, as Americans, need Halloween as a holiday. Why, you ask? Well, this gentleman believes Halloween to be the one remaining holiday built around opening our doors to the stranger. And if there's any time in the history of our grand land that we need a discipline to help us be more open to those we don't know, those who don't look like the rank and file, those of lower economic status, those with darker or lighter skin, those who love not as we love, those with the courage or the gall to ring our doorbells and open their sacks, hoping for something - well, it's now. I agree with him.

Is it possible that we might look deeper, further beyond the ghouls and goblins and see that our children are being taught something beneficial, even if it comes via something not so perky and nice? And that if we don't go out and trick or treat ourselves, then at least we might keep our porch lights on, answer the door and then open it in order to give something away. And not just anything, but the good stuff, like M&Ms or Hershey bars, something of worth.

I'm familiar with the darker elements of the night, I am...but I felt the columnist raised one of those consider this points. Jesus used that phrase you know - consider the lilies, and so on. So I'll ask you to consider this, just consider it. If the day and its festivities are too much, then fine. But if you're willing to crack the front door, then that might, just maybe, result in a crack in your heart, an opening when so very much these days is closed...and as you give, you might receive, for you can extend a gift, something sweet, alongside a whispered blessing: I don't know you, but welcome. It's dark out, so step up into the light, if only for just a moment. Mercy covers the borders of this house. May mercy cover you as you go. Amen.

Dear God...

2010-10-29T07:31:00.000-06:00

what am I going to do with you?
you've changed, you know,
no longer the tall friend of my childhood.
i used to be able to read you,
no, not in some predictable manner
but rather, well, let's just say I could depend on you.
but now, I'm not so sure.
lately you've been so
(oh, what is that word? oh, yes)
mercurial.
never in a million years would I have
used that word to describe you,
its just a stone's throw from
fickle and -
oh, see there, you're all quiet now,
i've offended you, haven't I?
this is exactly what I'm talking about.
ah God, dear God.

From Great to Good...

2010-10-26T06:38:00.000-06:00

In our efforts to see a savior beyond the gentle, meek and mild variety, I fear we've constructed a golden calf of the word great. But riddle me this, batman, when God created the world, you know, back there in Genesis, when all was said and done each day, what was his refrain? and it was great? No, I'm pretty sure it was and it was good. Not a page later and God said it wasn't good that man be alone, so along came the lady, yeehaw! The psalmist wrote it is good and pleasing when folks dwell together in unity. It'd be pretty cool if we could read Acts 10.38 in a Tony the Tiger voice:

Jesus went about doing gr-r-r-r-r-eat!...

but we can't. Jesus went about doing good. Even the word 'gospel' describes a news clarified not great, but good. Don't forget the Bible itself used to be known as the good book. And one of these days, I hope to hear the words well done, good and faithful servant.

Why has this word, that seems to mean such a great deal to God, fallen on hard times? What if God doesn't really want us, or our churches, or our organizations to move from good to great? What if he's quite delighted if we live good in this world gone bad? Remember that childhood lunchtime prayer - God is great, God is good? What if God's the only one who can be both, both great and good, and we, his children, are to be good? We can't be both because we're not God. Maybe that was the banana peel Lucifer stepped on, he tried to be both great and good, like God, but he slipped...and fell. Maybe the road to great is broad and wide, but the road to good is a knife-edge you must be faithful to each mundane day, and it'll take the great God's help if you ever hope to be a good man, or a good woman, or a good kid, or a good neighbor, or a good pastor, or a good friend.

I hope one of these days, when my wife and children and friends and acquaintances and creditors are gathered around the funeral canoe, getting ready to set my body ablaze and send it out upon the waters to Avalon, that somebody, maybe a little kid just happening to walk by will ask was he someone great? and one of you will chuckle, reverently of course, and say nope, not a chance, kid...but he was a good man.

The Toll of Silence

2010-10-24T13:48:00.001-06:00

She came as a friend,
her voice veiled,
how the hell'd I get here?
That's what she asked.

My teacher's voice, long dead now, whispered,
behind every question is the shy one,
only silence woos the soul.
That's what he said.

I chose to yield.

After minutes like years,
her voice rent,
this is not the life I'd planned.
That's what she meant.

I said yeah, me neither.
She held surprise, we laughed,
then the quarter-hour chimed.
That's when her question returned.

Our Brief Affair...

2010-10-22T08:03:00.000-06:00

~~~

Could you feel my eyes on you? I want to say yes,

that you knew all along I was watching.

I cannot know for certain though, you never said a word,

not once. Good, that would've ruined it.

You blushed that first time, just enough to stand out.

You blushed the time after that too, but it was more, blushier,

then without shame you moved beyond blush to blood,

as if driven, accelerated into ordained flame,

lithe arms riddled with guiltless scarlet letters. I had to break

the silence, you were simply too much.

I drew close enough to whisper - ravishingly valiant...

please, at least tell me your name?

Winter's wind broke the spell, whistled acer, acer rubrum,

and you began to weep, one tear at a time.

~~~

Start With Me...

2010-10-19T05:48:00.000-06:00

Forgive and forget. Two borders she could not cross. The memory haunted her even now. If she could stay busy it seemed to stay quiet, but she could not always stay busy. The remembrance was both sight and sound, always the same. A sky so black it threatened to swallow you. The only lights were the crazed eyes of a woman, her mother, old beyond her years, slowly tearing pages from the Bible, eating them, repeating 'taste and see...the Lord is good...taste and see.'

So begins the book project I was privileged to write with Mike Seaton, founder of the Start> Project - www.juststart.org. Our hope was to show a weekend in the lives of ordinary people, men and women like you and me, and what it might look like if folks like us took seriously the response-ability of being a good samaritan. And in that hope, we tried to show how vital small kindnesses are to this thing we call life. There is much ado about a global awareness of needs and meeting those needs, as we believe there should be. But if you're building orphanages overseas while neglecting your neighbor back home, well, something's foul; its not one or the other, its both. Hopefully this story, which you can probably read in one sitting, brings a little perspective back to ourselves and the precious people around us and the spots of time we can seize to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.

For those interested, there is a DVD series, curriculum, etc., all available on the Start> website. The book - Start With Me: A Modern Parable is a complement to those products. You can order the book from Amazon, Borders, and Barnes & Noble.

Thanks,
John

In the world and of it too...

2010-10-16T09:26:00.001-06:00

Friday Night Lights is, in my opinion, one of the best shows in television history. Its last season begins in a few weeks, the final drive. I can't recall exactly how and when I got hooked, but I am - hook, line, and sinker. Some have called it the little show that could because it survived numerous threats of cancellation. Sometimes a good story full of memorable characters endures - I think I can, I think I can. I, for one, am thankful. If you're a fan of this show, then I'm just telling you stuff you already know. If you're not a fan, might I have a moment?

I want to recommend this show to my vast readership (ROFL) who love and/or like Jesus, the reason being that I believe this is a show Jesus likes and quite likely loves. Yes, yes, its high school football Texas-style with egos and bravado and beer parties and big hair and mechanical bulls and teenage sexual activity and rough language and in some episodes, enough cleavage to darn well hide China's entire red army. Have no doubt, its in the world. But its also of the world in a way that, I believe, you and I as folks who love/like Jesus are to live because thats how Jesus lived, fully incarnated, fully human, fully of.

Now I'm probably close to losing some of you right there for the biblical phrase is - in the world but not of it. I realize that, I get it. And some of you would immediately react that part, if not all, of the problem these days is that Jesus lovers/likers are too much of the world. But I don't believe that, sorry...it sounds good, I'll give you that, but its too easy. There is of the world and then there is as the world...that difference might be worth pondering, maybe.

Friday Night Lights tells the ongoing story of the difference people can make in the lives of others, as well as their own, by living in and of, and how it can happen it a little no-account town, far from the city-seats of power. At its heart, I believe it is a story about caring, giving a damn about people and a town and a game that's much more than a game. This is a show that doesn't strain at prepositions but swallows life whole...and leaves everything on the field. It doesn't hurt that the writing is brilliant and the cast is superb.
*NOTE:This show has one of the strongest lead male characters I've seen in a long time. If the numbnut fathers from most tv shows (Modern Family, anything Disney) drive you crazy, as they do me, then search out Coach Eric Taylor and just watch him, watch him coach, watch him husband, watch him father, watch him friend, watch him win, watch him lose, watch him love...in and of the world.

Lange and Ruess - Deep & Wide

2010-10-14T10:22:00.000-06:00

Gary, here's Frank & Hearty but renamed as Deep & Wide. I toyed with the temptation to 'rip 'em a new one' but who wants that? Who has ever wanted that? I don't, so I'm going to do unto others as I'd like done to me. The words, I believe, are still both frank and hearty and I trust they'll be heard. If you decide not to publish it, fine...I was grateful for your invitation, more than you know. But if you do publish, then fine as well. I'm at peace with the words, they're far more than words. I'm nowhere near your word count limit; hopefully not too few and not too many, but just right.

It'd be good to see you sometime. Go write that novel. I'll buy it.
Ruess

~~~

Deep and wide, deep and wide,

there’s a fountain flowing deep and wide.

I learned this song as a child, words and accompanying motions. There was a childish aspect to the motions; they were fun, no shame in that. But now I am a man, I’ve put away the motions, but held fast to the words. I have grown into them and they into me, they mean something now – the fountain of grace is deep and wide. I am haunted by these words.

I heard the statement again this week: ‘Well, I’m not even sure he’s a christian.’ It grieved me in the moment, literally hurt my heart. After the moment, later, in the privacy of my car, I wept. After all this time, after all the revolutions and reformations and revivals, we cannot get past being the prodigal’s older brother. There is a straight and narrow, we believe, a line one must not only talk but walk and straying from that path, say going to some far country, disqualifies the straying one, unfolds them from the fold, strikes their name from the lamb’s list. Rings are being given, robes pressed and cleaned, fat calves are gracing the spit while the band is warming up, and we, yes we, stand cross-armed just outside the shadow of the Father’s house, steaming, stewing, refusing to enjoy a grace both deep and wide. Make no mistake, the grace is deep enough and wide enough to ravish us even as we stand at the edge; the efficacy of the grace is not the question, but rather our enjoyment of it. The thought that we’ve been faithful and worked all the live-long-day and some scrap comes in at the eleventh hour and gets the same wage, same gift, same love, dare I say same heaven…well, that is gall to us, a bitter drink that allows us to not only hate the sin, but the sinner as well. Yes, the unspoken rancor: hate the sin and hate the sinner too. Surprisingly, we hate ourselves for the hating, but we also secretly like it for it gives us something, something to trot out to say ‘look what I did or didn’t do.’ We grab our bibles as a witness and point to straight chapters and narrow verses and exclaim ‘But he…’ while the Father pleads ‘Put down the book, lose the hate, and come inside.’ For some reason, we’d rather endure the cold. Old Dante believed hell was ice, not fire.

There’s an aged Baptist preacher named Will Campbell. Once, he wrote: ‘We’re all bastards, but God loves us anyway.’ That’s the skinny, right there. Until we can see and say and live those words, we’re all just much ado about nothing, either youngsters off’a’whoring or resentful older siblings lost in our own home. The only hope for any of us is that there’s a Father keen on adoption, with a river running through him drawn from his own Immanuelish veins, a fountain flowing deep & wide, a flood called grace. I pray that you, like me, will live plunged beneath such waters....deep & wide, deep & wide.

Prayers of the People

2010-10-09T10:49:00.000-06:00

Sunday's children lift their voices
with all of creation and every blessed saint
to pray for bishops,
nations,
good weather,
and those in danger and need.
Lord, have mercy.

Weekday children oversleep
and look for work
and pray like they talk.
Jesus, what kinda coach would call that play?
God, no, haven't talked in years, but she just friended me.
  Lord, of all the days to get a migraine.
   Jesus H. Christ, you got tickets?
   God, he's your brother for Christ's sake!

God the font of all life, our thoughts are not as your thoughts,
our Thursdays are your millennia,
as with persons, you are no respecter of prayers.
So yes, have mercy on our families,
our deliver us from strife,
but what kinda coach would call that play?
Lord, have mercy. Amen.

Same Old Story

2010-09-27T12:03:00.000-06:00

I woke up not sick
but worse -
discouraged.
Not quite the depressed black and white of George Bailey,
worth more dead than alive,
but somewhere near that jumping bridge,
tired of the same old house,
same old town,
same old dreams,
same old face in the mirror,
same old God.

I woke her up for school,
and the sun in her smile blinded me
like that old Damascus fool.
Hi, dad-o.
Hey, kid-o.

She combed her hair
with the same old comb,
in the same old mirror,
as I stood close brushing
the same old teeth,
in my same old head,
and tears like scales
fell from my eyes
at the technicolor mercies
in my same old life -
me, the richest man in Bedford Falls.

Lange and Ruess - Frank & Hearty

2010-09-19T22:42:00.000-06:00

Gary Jeffers had worked as editor of the successful 'Christian' magazine for over a decade. His devotional column - Green & Still - had a loyal following he'd fed faithfully each month, rain or shine, but his devotion had worn thin, he was exhausted. He'd been a groomsman at Ruess' wedding, a pallbearer at Jane's funeral, and a trusted friend all along.

Gary's request caught him off guard: 'Ruess, I'm resigning, had enough of the spiritual stone soup cooking in this grand land. I'm going off to write the book I've always whined about never having the time to write. The mag is giving me a final column, one last chance to say my peace...and I've decided to invite a guest writer - you. Instead of Green & Still this last hurrah's going to be Frank & Hearty. I want you to let go the length of the reins, Ruess, like we've long talked about. You've got 1500 words. I'll merely spellcheck it then send it through. Do it for me...and Jesus.'

Ruess took a few days to hem and haw. He loved Gary like a brother and was one of his loyal readers, but he had no affection for the magazine. Ruess understood the necessity of wooing advertisers to keep a periodical afloat but the prevailing blood lust for all things young and relevant or dead and orthodox drove him nuts. He'd intentionally walked away from those reindeer games a long time ago...stepping back into them, even by way of a magazine article, felt shaky, risky.

But the thrill of the rant was strong and one thought swallowed another. It used to be he swore if one more person used the words 'worldview' or 'closure' he'd slather himself with A1 steak sauce and hurl his body over his neighbor's fence, straight into the feral desire of twin rottweilers - Coco and Chanel. Then he choked on the memory of Jane's voice: 'Ruess, write the article for Gary, but be smart, baby...remember the two people in every audience - Nicks and Henley, and how to always reach them - leather and lace, leather and lace.'

Ruess smiled and then bowed his head and wept. He'd write the article for Jane...and Jesus.

Letters for dad-o...

2010-09-14T05:48:00.000-06:00

Her third grade spelling list for the week includes
the words dance, wreck, fancy, and tremble.
She already knows how to spell them,
she'll ace Friday's test, 'no prob, dad-o.'
Still, we'll review them, just to be sure.
As she reels off d-a-n-c-e
I see a boy who will one day soon
take heart and ask her to inhabit this word.
Maybe he'll grow on me, I doubt it.
W-r-e-c-k will be the letters soaked in tears
as she explains 'I swerved to miss the dog, dad-o,
but I'm o.k.'
Thank God and Jesus.
I'm no prophet but my gut tells me
she'll want the f-a-n-c-y wedding dress,
her easy days of hoodies and jeans faded
like weekly spelling lists.

Still, just to be sure, we review these omens.
I try my best not to let her see me t-r-e-m-b-l-e.

I'll Never Forget

2010-09-11T13:17:00.005-06:00

I do not remember any of their far-away names,
those swallowed by that black September day.
But I do remember her.
Our families had long known each another,
I always easily ten years her senior.
For time upon time,
as long as I could remember,
she embodied youth, innocence, goodness.

She paused at the door to my office
to say 'I think something's happening.'
We walked to a room where televisions
broadcast O beautiful's scourge.
We stood shouldered in quiet, image after image eroding
our shores of amber grain.
Our bodies did not touch in those moments,
but rather our souls.
We shared a more perfect union of loss.
She searched my eyes and
I saw her suddenly older,
no longer the girl I'd known.
Her wordless question of 'what now?'
found me dumb.

I do not remember any of their far-away names,
those raptured into spacious skies that day.
But I do remember her,
as I remember me, cast ready-or-not
further east of the garden.
I remember Ellen.

Meditation on Luke 15.1-32 - Quickly!

2010-09-09T23:13:00.001-06:00

He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him.
His son said to him,
'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you;
I no longer deserve to be called your son.'
But his father ordered his servants,
'Quickly...

~~~
That word - quickly - that's what I remember about that day. And his crooked smile. My brother later told me it was a stroke, the day after I left.

It undid me, to see him hobbling toward me. I just stood there, frozen on the ridge I'd played on as a boy. The old man fell twice, like some child learning to walk, the last fall only steps from me. He began to crawl, scooping at the ground, willing himself forward. It was then my body released me to move to him. As I knelt he raised his eyes to mine. That's when I clearly saw his face, half-right, half-wrong, as if something had torn him.

He frantically began to climb my frame until he reached my face. He kissed my cheeks, over and over, and stroked my hair. I'd had whores do that and more countless times. Money will buy almost anything. But then he began to mumble my name through his broken smile. No one had spoken my name in what seemed like a long, long time.

I shook to myself and knew I had to say the words. Were they honest, sincere, heartfelt? I doubt it, I really do. You see, I'd come to my senses earlier, primarily the sense I was starving. I was still so young. I held the old man by the shoulders: 'Father, I have si-' His eyes filled with a fury I'd known as a boy, his hands covered my mouth, he would not let me speak. And then he began to wrestle with that word - Quik-klee! Quik-klee! By then the servants had made their way down the ridge. He turned and clawed them in - Quik-klee! The next few seconds were filled with the old man's commands, half-spoken, fully understood.

Then, quickly, the celebration began.

My father lived long enough to see his sons work beside one another once more in the fields, like we'd done as boys. My brother and I both came to live again under the mercy of our father's roof. We awoke one autumn night to shouts of that word - Quik-klee! Quik-klee! By the time we reached his bedside the angels had taken him. My brother stayed at his side, close, until the dawn. Meanwhile I wandered down a familiar ridge and squandered my tears.

A word of 'thanks' to my alma mater...

2010-09-06T13:13:00.000-06:00

I am partial to the letter l...one of my favorite poets, B.H. Fairchild, refers to it as 'the Audrey Hepburn of consonants.' If I allow little miss Hepburn to wiggle into Ouachita's Founders Day today, I find a word that immediately reminds me of those halcyon college days - flounder.

flounder - v. 1: to struggle to move or obtain footing; 2: to proceed or act clumsily or ineffectually.

I'm not sure what all my alma mater's founders had in mind when cutting the ribbon on a small, liberal arts Baptist college, but I bettin' at least one of them had a renegade thought, probably unspoken, that went something like 'ya know, kids need a good place to flounder, be clumsy for a few years, gain a little footing.' To that founder, I tip my hat and say 'thank you.'

For some, the thought of spending four, maybe even five years, and not to mention rather large land masses called 'tuition' in a state of floundering is, well, just horrible stewardship of unbiblical proportions. But I, for one, would gently disagree. As for the 'some' just mentioned, yes, there will always be two or three gathered together who have it all figured out at nineteen, 'look out world, here I cometh.' As for the rest of us, we really need some time to flounder around, find our life legs. Ouachita Baptist University provided that for me, and a few others I know...we needed a place to act clumsily and be downright ineffectual...a safe place to fall, for a little while.

You can flounder via many climates: the high-n-tight bootcamps of our military branches; some Elizabeth Gilbert Eat, Pray, Love romp across three cultures; even a go-North-young-man-into-the-wild trek that leads you to an abandoned bus up by some river. All those are fine and well and at least one resulted in a New York Times bestseller and a movie deal with that handsome Julia Roberts. But you can also flounder as a medium sized fish in a medium sized pond in southern Arkansas at a competitive-tuition-rate, in the company of a great cloud of witnesses known as staff and faculty who possess a trait not always found among drill instructors, yogis, or the inside of abandoned buses...yes, I'm taking about

compassion - n. 1: a sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it.

I'm quite certain the folks at OBU didn't always like me. But I'm quite certain the folks at OBU always loved me. They remembered the distress of being nineteen or twenty and not knowing what-in-the-sam-hill God wanted you to do, much less what you yourself wanted to do with your one wild and precious life. I believe they also knew you might not figure that out until you were in your, let's say, forties, and miles and miles away from the grace of red-bricked buildings and Bradford pears all in a row, swimming now on your own...strokes only possible because you were once upon a time permitted to flounder about.

So, thank you, Ouachita...thank you very much.

Gifts of my Magi...

2010-09-04T19:28:00.000-06:00

'Nothing you do for children is ever wasted.'
~Garrison Keillor

Once, long ago now, on an east Texas Indian summer afternoon, my parents took a trip to one of those pre-Walmart discount stores, maybe Howard's or Gibson's. They returned home with whatever items necessitated their trip, but they also came bearing gifts, two things not on my mother's list. One seemed from my mother's heart, something needed, warm, true, while the other came from the vagaries of my father. Together those gifts were kneaded into the impressionable dough of a boy I was and have risen like yeast into the man I've become - a plaid, flannel shirt and Rod McKuen's Greatest Hits Vol. 1.

Based on its point of origin, I'm willing to bet the flannel patterns didn't match up across buttons and seams and being pre-button-down-days, the collar points were no doubt sharp and wide. The shirt probably cost $4. We lived, in those days, on the loaves and fish of a Baptist preacher's salary. As I think about it now, here in my 40s, I am humbled by my mother's miracles of blessing and breaking and having leftovers enough for the extravagance of $4 flannel. I am often in the presence of believers, God's people, who pooh-pooh on the things of this earth, things that will pass away or be consumed as wood, hay, stubble or grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. I am often uncomfortable around such people for I don't know exactly what they believe in; some unmediated, disembodied grace I guess. I probably make such people uncomfortable as well, for I believe in the icons of a mother's love and flannel.

I'd never heard of Rod McKuen until that day my father brought home a two-album set of his greatest hits. I've only met one other person along my way who likes McKuen - http://www.robertbensonwriter.com/. My southern Baptist preacher father bringing home a Rod McKuen album of love songs is evidence that the man will always have facets of mystery to his life that will elude my grasp. I'll never know him, not all of him. From the moment the needle dropped into the vinyl groove that day, I was taken. Songs like 'I've Saved the Summer' and 'Love's Been Good to Me' and 'Seasons in the Sun' and 'People Change' and 'The Lonely Things' were listened to with the same regularity of wearing that flannel shirt...over and over and over again. Its hard to say exactly what it was about McKuen's voice and lyrics that wooed me so; all I know is that they did, and they still do to this day, especially on crisp prelude days of fall. I wonder sometimes, here in my 40s, if the music my father introduced to our home, such as McKuen's songs of love and melancholy, was his way of tempering the hymns of certainty and conviction we'd stand and sing each Sunday in nice neat rows. I don't recall a single hymn extolling the sensuality of a stranger's eyes or the prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I am often in the presence of believers, God's people, who have no place in their lives for music unless it specifically mentions the name of Jesus or works the crowd up to some hands-raised-hallelujah-climax. I am always lonely around such people for the hills are ablaze with the morn's yellow haze but they seem to have never noticed. I probably make such people lonely too, for I was raised on my father's music, and I can't recall your name but the street...was Channing Way.

It's Time

2010-09-01T08:50:00.001-06:00

Like the evening summer sun,

my bronzed hands and forearms

gently fade and pale.

We both sense it, the sun and I.

It’s fine. It’s time.

We could rage against the dying,

as some are prone to do,

but why?

Old John Donne believed it’s always autumn in heaven,

no buds or flowers, only fruit fully ripe.

I believe that’s crazy.

A seasoned Elysium holds my hope,

not some never ending summer.

The Good Book speaks of all things new,

not all new things.

Donne’s mercy-filled Fall will be covered

by Winters whiter than snow.

Then Spring will thrust up blackred roses

e.e. cumming’s mother couldn’t dream of.

As for Summer, we’ll saunter along

streets of gold with bronzed hands and forearms

until we sense it’s time.

Then we’ll roll down our sleeves once more

to harvest the mercies of God.

Meditation on Hebrews 13.2 - Angels

2010-08-28T08:05:00.001-06:00

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.

~~~

The scripture reference clearly reveals the intended audience - 'the Hebrews' - that's who the writer was writing to. But what if you're not a Hebrew? What if you're an angel? Not literal wings and harps, but as in 'the better angels of your nature.' I believe we all have them. If you don't, fine. But if you do, then it's interesting what happens if you're willing to play with the text...the verse could read thus: Do not neglect to receive hospitality from strangers, for by doing that you can live quite an entertaining life.

Early this week, I was with a group of complete strangers. There is a common link/person between the group and me, but said link was missing so I was among people I'd never met before. Strangers. The group had set meetings, sorta closed-door sessions, I knew that going in. But as for the inbetweens - meals, breaks, downtime - they invited me in, to be with them, hang out, talk, visit, eat, drink, be merry. I felt maybe one or two times would be sufficient for the purposes of my trip, but these strangers just kept extending hospitality to me, over and over and over again. This phrase kept popping up: Oh, we certainly hope you'll join us, please, please do come. For two and half days, I was the recipient of spring-fed-mountain-brewed-grace. Forget living like a king, I experienced the rush of angels.

If you have the opportunity to extend, by all means do. But if, from time to time, you're invited to receive, fiercely forget the humble-bumble oh, that's o.k., ya'll go ahead. Spread your wings. Say yes. And afterwards thank you.

Exodus

2010-08-25T05:54:00.000-06:00

I came down from the mountains today
to find the republic whirling around pyrite media-geldings,
wild-eyed over anti-incumbents and
mosques and 'is he really a christian?'
I wanted to go all Moses on the people,
throw rocks etched with roman numerals,
but the mountains did not give me such stones.
Rather, I descended with something not written on tablets -

gratitude

- impossible to hurl and never effective on a mob.

And so I walked among the people as an alien,
one refusing to bend the knee in this canaan of curdled milk
and rancid honey,
one too thankful to appease the gods of hate.

Meditation on Luke 13.24-27

2010-08-22T07:33:00.000-06:00

"Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. Once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock on the door, saying, 'Lord, open up to us!' then he will answer and say to you, 'I do not know where you are from.' Then you will begin to say, 'We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets'; and He will say, 'I tell you, I do not know where you are from...'"

~~~

The Lord ends his statement with a preposition, twice. Apparently the narrow door has something to do with more than grammar. His words ring strange though, almost bumpkin, especially spoken into the sophisticated air we currently breathe. We strive with the question - who am I? - some of us our entire lives. We pass the striving on to our children and our children's children - do you know who you are? In light of Jesus' riddingly poor grammar, I wonder if our question may be too broad.

What if we narrowed our focus from who am I? to where am I from? Some would immediately say that it is, in essence, the same question. Well, maybe. Who am I? ends with a pronoun - me. Where am I from? goes one beyond the me to some place, some people, something other than just the me. What appears to be a narrowing is really an Alice-in-Wonderland door into an open plain of sorts, filled with the menagerie of our lives, people, places, things, sinners, saints, the good, the bad, and the often ugly, always a result of much more than me. To enter that question though, you must shrink yourself.

So, where are you from?

Lange and Ruess - Read, Drink, Tend, Listen...

2010-08-19T06:14:00.002-06:00

Lange heard the doorbell ring. It was almost 6:30pm, so the odds were one of the neighbors or UPS. Sure enough, he opened the door to see a brown blur of man and machine speed away. What remained was a large package, taped well, with a familiar name beginning the return address - Ruess.

He opened the box to find a manilla envelope on top of a sea of packing peanuts. The envelope had the words START HERE written across the top, and so Lange carefully slit the seal with a steak knife and read:
Dear Lange,
This is a little goodwill from me to you. As I told you early on, I'm a hard mystic and after awhile words and concepts can make me a little loopy. The popular movie right now is Eat, Pray, Love...well, I prefer Read, Drink, Tend, Listen...sorta the same idea minus Julia Roberts. Dig through the packing and you'll find
~an Annie Dillard book - There are times I don't know what in the hell this lady is talking about and other times when a sentence or phrase of her's splices me open. At one point in this book she writes 'I don't know beans about God'...that's a writer I trust. This is a wrestling book.
~a planter - As you'd guess, the coyote reminds me of you. I dare you to plant something in here, doesn't matter what necessarily, and tend it. It never ceases to amaze me what giving a little attention to small things every day can do.
~a cd - I found this first in album form, as in vinyl. Chances are good you don't own a phonograph so I copied it to cd for you. This is Brazilian flavored easy listening, a good way to begin or end the day. Eve might like to be rocked to sleep by it. I'd be interested to hear your favorite track.
~a coffee mug - If you're a coffee drinker, great. If you drink green tea or something, lord, don't tell me. This is what I'd call 'an icon of light.' You said everything around you feels like weight these days. That's fair. Maybe the BOOTAY mug can elicit a grin, always a turn in the direction of not taking everything so seriously. Sometimes where the face points, the mind will follow.
I was going to keep all this for myself, I like all these items. But if there's anything I've learned in the last few years, Lange, its that 38 Special was right - 'hold on loosely'...so here you go. The whole shebang cost me $3.
Your welcome,
Ruess

Lange and Ruess - Dancing in Place...

2010-08-16T08:00:00.001-06:00

Ruess,
I thought my life would look different at 40. I'm sure you've heard that before; its a true statement for me. I didn't have some elaborate plan for my life, but I was expectant. Now everything around me, especially those I love most, feels like weight. I wish I could feel like your coyote, nose to the wind, but I don't. I feel much more like a mule. I don't like this feeling.

I've had moments lately when I've seriously wanted to run. I'm sure you've heard that before too. But I don't want to be the man who leaves, who abandons those when they need him most. Though right now, I'm afraid that's more about my pride than it is about their needs. Doesn't it say something in the bible about a house divided?

Roy said you were brave in the pulpit.

~~~~~~~

Lange,
Sure, I've heard those things before. Guess what? I've felt those things before, felt some of them yesterday in fact. Its hard for a man to talk much about those things though, the wound-too-tights'll be on you like ducks on a junebug, shaming you, telling you its a sin or something to feel that way and the loose-gooses are just as quick on the draw spinning some version of Disney's just follow your heart. Neither extreme is much help, you're either hurting yourself or those you love, and oftentimes its both. Yes, that house divided phrase is in the bible, but so are a lot of other things.

I came across a story once about the holiest religious ceremony of the Plains Indians - the Sun Dance. The writer was privileged to be a witness and she described it as 'not really a dance with steps but a dance of containment, a dance in place.' I wonder sometimes if that's not what a man has to learn, at least a man who desires wife and children and home and hearth...to dance in place. Sun Dance is quite taxing though, it takes a lot of focus and grit. But you do get to wear nothing but a loincloth.

Brave? More like foolish, Lange. Your daughter, Karen, now I'd say she's brave. Send me your mailing address, I've got a few things for you, a little goodwill.

Lange and Ruess - Forward...

2010-08-13T07:26:00.000-06:00

Lange,
I'm gonna throw something your way. It was a gut feeling I had driving back from the Goodwill store.

I live not far from a popular running/walking/biking trail. Its usually always teeming with body-nazis and eco-ninnies. But yesterday, around noon, a certain stretch was almost bare. As I drove past, there stood a lone coyote in the middle of the trail. Many of the coyotes around here are sickly, yet this one looked like a coyote should, wirey and mean. But he just stood there, looking around, nose to the air, stock-still, deciding between back or forward.

My gut said that's Lange. I realize your grandmother stirred up something in you, something you're thinking you've forgotten. There's remembering the past and then there's trying to recreate the past, two totally different things. If Nora was half the woman you said she was I don't believe she was encouraging you to do the latter. She was trying to help you go forward, Lange.

Trust me though, I'm the pot calling the kettle black.

Lange and Ruess - Endure...

2010-08-11T06:18:00.000-06:00

Lange had intentionally been brief with Ruess about Rebecca. It wasn't so much he was trying to conceal, as he just didn't know what to say. Or actually, he wouldn't know where to stop. The truth is he'd like to scream RUESS, YOUR WIFE IS DEAD AND GONE, BUT MINE IS DEAD AND STILL HERE. But the only way to scream via email is to type in all caps, something Lange simply refused to do.

It was a late Sunday afternoon when Karen broke the news, whimpered I'm pregnant. Lange sat stunned, but Rebecca suddenly sprung to attention, soldiering around her only daughter with strength and we'll get through this, sweetheart. Seven days later, late in the afternoon, Rebecca sat down in a kitchen chair and said I can't, I quit. That was the beginning of her perverted sabbath. And as for most things, she just quit - bathing, dressing, working, sleeping, cooking, laughing, crying. In all the quitting there was one thing she started, smoking - Natural American Spirits, the blue pack. Rebecca would always smoke outside though, on the back deck, never around Karen. Initially Lange believed that behavior to be a singular ember of care, something that might be stoked, fanned. But as days passed he stopped believing.

What's a man to do in a situation like that, when he finds himself between a young, unwed mother-to-be and an older, wedded woman-that-was? The chorus in his head sang endure. And so Lange did. He became, as they say, tough as nails. The only problem is he also became a nail.

Lange and Ruess - Goodwill...

2010-08-09T06:46:00.001-06:00

He couldn't believe Jane's robe was gone. He'd told Roy the lady at the Goodwill store tried to help, but that was a lie. All she did was wave Ruess toward a corner of the store and say maybe back there. His intent to elaborate was silenced as she put in some of those little white earbuds and turned her attention toward a fresh People magazine on the counter. Ruess struck a cruciform pose, palms open, pleading one more time. She popped her gum and raised her chin toward the back of the store. He remembered a line from Hud: 'You don't look out for yourself, the only helping hand you'll ever get is when they lower the box.' He didn't believe the line, but he did remember it. Ruess turned and walked away.

He never found Jane's robe. But Ruess had always had some of the picker in him, and his search yielded an Annie Dillard book - For The Time Being (he'd only read her Tinker Creek), a black coffee mug with the word bootay emblazoned across it in sparkly gold (it fit his hand strangely well), a terra cotta planter in the shape of a howling coyote (an ear chipped off), and a near mint 33rpm of 'Fool On The Hill' by Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 (some days you're just lucky). He gathered the four items and headed back to the front counter. The same lady was there, same earbuds, same gum. She keyed each item not once making eye contact with Ruess. You wanna bag for this? Ruess said please although he was about out of patience with her. Rich or poor, young or old, there's no excuse for rude. As he walked away she tacked on have a good day.

He sat a moment before driving home. Jane, I'm sorry about your robe. I feel like the fool I am. He could imagine her sitting there, grinning, saying Ruess, grow up. He rustled the bag, $3 for a little goodwill. Not bad.

Maybe, maybe not...

2010-08-07T12:26:00.000-06:00

[I temporarily interrupt our current storyline for this…Lange and Ruess’ll return on Monday, promise]

Years ago, I and a gamillion other people read everything author Robert Fulghum wrote. Critics summarily dismissed him as saccharine; in other words, sweet. I’m rather fond of sweet myself. It does wonders for black coffee, and the medicine-go-down. A little more sweet might make for a better world.

Fulghum always had great titles: Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten; It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It; Uh-Oh…genius, pure genius. My favorite was Maybe (Maybe Not). The title was inspired by a Hebrew word – timshel – meaning ‘maybe.’ Something in my splankna tells me an astute reader will offer the ‘correct’ meaning of that word and it won’t be ‘maybe.’ Just remember, astute reader, that sometimes its more important to be in right relationship than it is to be right. I heard an arrogantly humble preacher say that once, so I guess its true. Maybe.

Fulghum’s book is a collection of stories built on the premise of well, maybe, but then again, maybe not. Possibility...openness...wonder...all stances that, I believe, might just make for a better world. For example

- Maybe the most spiritual cinematic scene in recent history was when that raindrop fell from heaven in the crucifixion scene in Mel Gibson’s The Passion. But maybe not. Maybe it was those quiet moments in Million Dollar Baby, the ones in Ira’s Roadside Diner with Eastwood and Swank sitting at the counter eating a piece of lemon pie.

- Maybe Miley Cyrus is really not a Christian after all. She’s got a racy pole-video out, she did that nekkid-back Vanity Fair shoot, all image enhancing efforts to let us know little Hannah’s done-grow’d-up, we’re not in Montana anymore. But maybe not. Maybe she’s going through changes that are going to be fraught, fraught I tell you, with achy-broken hearts, but they are all a part of her life's climb and she’s gonna end up with a mansion next to yours just over the hilltop one of these days, in heaven, just down the golden bricks from Anne Rice, and me.

- Speaking of heaven, maybe we’ll spend eternity singing Matt Redman songs, or crankin’ Third Day, or doing the motions to that awesome Rich Mullins tune. But maybe not. Maybe M-W-F will be filled with Pavarotti and T-Th with Emmylou Harris, with Saturdays being devoted to Chicago. Sunday mornin might be Johnny Cash and evenings could be the Ave Maria a capella. That’d be nice, huh? Of course, it being heaven, we could probably make special requests, like a Judy Collins' tune or two.

- And maybe church is people gathered together under something, a roof or lean-to, and scripture being read, folks sharing about life, a little wine, a little bread, amen. Then again, maybe not, or at least maybe not always. Maybe it might also be something along the lines of Chardin’s saying Mass upon the altar of the world, divinizing the day, driving on past the Sunday morning assembly and having breakfast with your family or friends at Cracker Barrel, laughing, joking, catching up, some biscuits, a little more coffee, leaving the waitress a graceful tip…or even walking around the lake outside town by yourself, chewing juicy-fruit or Copenhagen, watching for sparrows that might fall, humming a Bieber tune, smelling sage.

I realize maybe is a sandy word, it grits at the heart of certainty, the rock upon which wise men build their houses. That’s fair. But I remember reading somewhere that we see, when we’re looking at all, through a glass darkly; in other words - maybe, maybe not. That phrase can leave you all shaky, nervous, closed, or it could swing wide open the door to wanton permissiveness, all-roads-lead-to-Rome, no rules-easy rider, don’t-stand-for-something-fall-for-anything. But maybe not. It could open us up to a life that’s attractive, inviting, trusting, faithful, shot straight through with the grandeur of the Grace that keeps this world…in a word, sorta, well, sweet.

But then again, too much sweet can rot your teeth, make your zits go nuclear, and lead to an early onset of diabetes. So never mind. Just never mind.

Lange and Ruess - Remember...

2010-08-05T07:10:00.000-06:00

Ruess,
Lange said he wrote to you. Go easy on him. He can wax pretty eloquent about the recent past but between the lines is a lot of hurt. Quite a few family and friends blackballed them when Karen got pregnant. His wife, Rebecca, went completely zombie on him, useless as jello. Karen carried the baby in her belly and Lange carried the cross on his back. The fit really hit the shan, Ruess.

I told him a little about you, where you've been. And about Jane. I sure do miss her.

~~~~~~~

Roy,
Lange seems like a man who's trying, but yes, he builds walls with words. That's alright. I'll listen for awhile. He's pretty angry.

I miss Jane even more these days. I accidentally gave away a bag of her clothes last week, it had her old purple robe in it. The lady at the Goodwill tried to help me, but its gone. I swear that robe still smelled like her, Roy. I'd cut my hand off to have that back. The things of this world, the precious things of this world.

~~~~~~~

Ruess,
Well, crap. I'm pretty sure she was wearing that robe the first time I met her, that and those yellow buckaroo boots - do you remember that? Sherry had just left me and I hadn't touched female flesh in weeks and Jane shook my hand and I literally had to sit down, remember that? I sorta hoped you'd get hit by a bus or something that evening and Jane and I could run off together and be lovers. But a bus never came by.

~~~~~~~

Roy,
I remember it all.

Lange and Ruess - God weeps...

2010-08-04T06:14:00.000-06:00

Lange,
God weeps - I realize that was sorta abrupt. When Karen came and told you she was pregnant, did you laugh at her? Even before that, say when she hoped to make the volleyball team or something and didn't, did you chuckle? Or how about you, when you talked with Roy at the funeral about life going cockeyed, did he just lean back and hee-haw? I'm gonna roll the dice on all three counts and say no.

Sure, there's always some ninny cooking up semi-selfish plans, some days that ninny is me, but even then you've got someone trying to do something rather than nothing. I've found most folks, like you and Rebecca and Karen and Aalim and Nora and Roy, even the Yiddish, are trying. If God's sitting around laughing at all our tries and misses because he knows better or likes to be able to say see I told you so, then we're in quite a shitter.

~~~~~~~

Ruess,
I've had thoughts like that before. Thank you for writing them.

Lange and Ruess - God and Yiddish...

2010-08-03T06:42:00.001-06:00

Lange,
Mercy. That's alot. I'm sorry.

The old Yiddish proverb is 'we plan, God laughs.' Lord, I'd like to find the Yiddish who came up with that and whack him.

How did Nora dote on Eve?

~~~~~~~

Ruess,
My grandmother was married at fifteen and got pregnant later that year. Nora didn't approve of all the details, but her support for Karen throughout the pregnancy was nothing short of heroic. At the reunion, Nora gathered everyone together. She kissed Karen and Eve and then presented Eve with a string of blue glass beads. Everyone in the family knows of those beads. They were a gift to my grandmother on her wedding day, from my grandfather.

If God doesn't laugh when our plans go awry, what then?

~~~~~~~

Lange,
I believe he weeps.

Lange and Ruess - Mice and Men...

2010-08-02T07:47:00.001-06:00

Ruess,
My grandmother's appearance at our most recent reunion was intentional. I mentioned she doted on the newest born? That would be Eve, my granddaughter. My fifteen year old daughter, Karen, gave birth to her back in March; it was an incredibly difficult delivery and Karen almost died.

The last year and a half of my life has been a thief. I know the quote about the plans of mice and men, but I doubt mice have dreams for their daughters like I had for Karen. They weren't dictator-dreams like 'you are going to be a surgeon!', but they weren't 'why not be a fifteen year old mother?' dreams either. They were dreams we shared with Karen; she's our only child. God only knows how much I love her.

The father is Aalim, a boy in Karen's class at school. His family is Muslim. When news broke of the pregnancy, they immediately shipped him off somewhere, we still don't know where. Then the family moved, no goodbyes, no nothing, just gone. Karen cried for weeks. My wife, Rebecca, still cries. I liked Aalim. Eve has his dark skin, dark eyes, and dark hair, but not his presence.

Those are the bones, Ruess, there doesn't feel to be much flesh left. My grandmother's parting words roused something in me that felt like life, but then it was gone.

Of course, in all this there's the crucial, intelligent word: Why?

Lange and Ruess - A harder mysticism...

2010-07-29T07:16:00.000-06:00

Lange,
You wrote: Someone to listen while I try to remember how to breathe. Lord that's beautiful, it makes me all warm in the anima, but what does it mean? This from Robinson Jeffers' 'Credo' -
I humbler have found in my blood
bred west of Caucasus a harder mysticism.

I'm a hard mystic, Lange. I don't know squat about the true underlying existence of reality. Give me coffee stains on teeth, salty tears when listening to Karen Carpenter, the always illicit rush of mounting stairs behind a woman's fanny.

Someone to listen while I try to remember how to breathe. Flesh and bone it out, Lange. Give it two days and respond; that time'll save you from reacting, which is what most of the population does.

I'm listening.

Lange and Ruess (cont.)

2010-07-27T22:10:00.000-06:00

Roy,
Thanks again for talking with me after Nora's funeral. I emailed your friend Ruess. He's giving me a chance, I think.

You called him a spoiled priest. Care to elaborate?

~~~~~~~

Lange,
He was a minister for awhile. When I first met him years ago he was the embodiment of idealism. He claims the wine and women never got him, but the doubt finally did. I respect that.

Ruess and his wife, Jane, used to have me over on Friday nights for tacos when Sherry and I first divorced. Those two people kept me from drowning. Jane died two years ago come November. Goddamn cancer.

~~~~~~~

Roy,
Thank you.

Lange and Ruess (cont.)

2010-07-27T07:26:00.000-06:00

Ruess,
Fast forward thirty years to our most recent family reunion. Nora ignored the doctor's orders and made a brief appearance, maybe ten minutes, doting on the newest born and downing her signature Arnold Palmer. She summoned me to escort her out to the car. As I folded her into my uncle's Prius, she raised her bony palm to my chest and held it there. She said you've forgotten. My grandmother died the next morning.

~~~~~~~

Lange,
What is it that you want?

~~~~~~~

Ruess,
Someone to listen while I try to remember how to breathe.

Lange and Ruess

2010-07-26T06:30:00.001-06:00

Mr. Ruess,
My first cousin is Roy Satterfield. I talked to him at a family funeral after the 4th of July. I've never liked Roy. Before I left he handed me a post-it with your email address and said see if Ruess'll listen; he might not, but he might. Roy called you a spoiled priest, but I don't know what that is. But I've always trusted Roy.

My name is Lange. Would you be willing to listen?

~~~~~~~

Lange,
Your cousin Roy sent me a two-word condolence when my wife died: Shit. Roy. I've since wondered how I might repay that singular kindness. Based solely on that debt, I might consider listening.

Ruess is my first name, call me by that. If you're looking for a guru, keep looking. Better yet, stop looking. And I can't help you with your mommy or daddy issues; my own hound me daily. A genie gives three wishes. I'm no genie, so you get two tries at explaining what it is needs listening to. After that I'll know whether or not I can make things worse. Deal?

~~~~~~~

Ruess,
Strange, but yes, it's a deal. Here is my first try.

Thirty years ago at a family reunion, my grandmother, Nora, spent the afternoon in a hammock. Her feet always swelled when she sat in a chair. She summoned me, the only grandson, to come and lay beside her. I was ten and unafraid and I loved her, so I did. She took my hand in hers and placed them on her chest. My grandmother began to inhale deep and exhale long, deep and long, deep and long. Then she moved our twinned hands to my chest. For the next few moments, I was breathing like her.

~~~~~~~

Lange,
That's one. You've got one more.

Pickup Man

2010-07-17T08:58:00.001-06:00

He was young, maybe twelve. His home was what some call 'broken' and a childhood accident left him scarred literally and figuratively. He walked everywhere, just him and his dog. He was always much more comfortable with adults than kids his own age. And he loved pickups and trains. I liked him.

The church I pastored at the time celebrated every fifth Sunday evening by having a sanging...yes, that's spelled correctly. It was basically open mic night at church...a sorta non-closed communion where bread and juice took a backseat to the human voice...all were welcome. There were the regulars - quartets, duets, solos - they gave the people what they wanted to hear...Little Is Much When God Is In It...Have a Little Talk With Jesus...I'll Fly Away. And then there was the occasional shy soul who no doubt sat and watched the others for years thinking lord I'd like to do that someday and for some reason, nobody knows, he or she finally screws up enough courage to sign their name to the clipboard list and stand before the casual crowd and give it their all. One Sunday night, he signed up. He told me earlier he had decided to sing and his song selection...I approved of both.

Some folks were surprised when his name was announced.  He stood and handed his cassette accompaniment tape to the soundman and walked up to the microphone positioned just behind the table with the etched words do this in remembrance. If memory serves me, the song prior to his was a Sandi Patti anthem, a goose-pimpling affirmation of faith with a key change near the end rounded by a full court press to the final orchestrated grace note...a true gift of gold, frankincense, myrrh. Angels probably dabbed their eyes and said yes, yes.

And in that wake, the little drummer boy played.

I don't know if you've ever heard Joe Diffie's Pickup Man, but that evening, in Dolby sound, we did:
"I met all my wives in traffic jams/
There's just something women like about a pickup man."
I sat on the backrow and watched folks squirm and blush...I'm sure a few thought hell itself was gonna open its jaws and swallow us all, me first. Several cut their eyes at the pastor throughout the song, that you can stop this look. But I didn't. He and Joe sang it to the end, to the final two words - "that's right."

I don't know what you believe about God and the Church and all that, but here's what I think. Once upon a night, years ago, in a south Arkansas gathering, a quiet boy without a dad stood before those who'd been knowing him for years and sang from an ember deep in his life called desire. I believe on a higher plane than Arkansas some of the angels began to squirm and blush and shake their heads no, no. But then there were shouts of let me through! let me through! as the man of sorrows elbowed his way across the angelic throng, to the very edge of the heaven itself and he raised his nail-scarred wrists and thundered be still...he's singing! can't you hear him? he's singing!  And a grin the size of salvation broke across our hero's face as he leaned in and listened to the rum-pa-Joe-Diffie-pum-pum of a shadowed little boy struggling toward the light, toward life, toward love. I believe Jesus listened all the way to the end, finally saying yes, yes.

Advice To My Son

2010-07-16T05:55:00.000-06:00

It's important to be good at something.
The something is not as important
as the fact that you're good at it.
You could be a circus master
or a gynecologist,
either one's fine
as long as you're good.
Of course you could choose
to be a man, a good man.
Now that's something important.

Lee's Side

2010-07-15T12:00:00.000-06:00

Her note held no regret, just explanation:

The wind. I could no longer stand the wind.

Our union held three years,

survivors lashed together

living bent against the onslaught.

But she finally cut loose.

I do not blame her;

she did not grow up under the wind.

The postcard came months later,

sent from a languid state

somewhere downwind,

on a final updraft of grace:

I'm sorry. But I have tulips now. Love, Lee.