Life in Specific

Life in Specific

For Lynn, I love it that you ‘get me’.

At the end of a long day

you're sitting on the deck with a nice chilled beer in your hand and the sun on your face……

Of course, you're there because you're waiting for the dogs to pee so you can bring them back in before they destroy your brand new plant for the third time.

And the beer is a root beer because you're not done shuffling kids around yet and you have an evening work meeting in 2 hours.

And anyway, the chair is pinching you because it's plastic and the arm is broken and you haven't had spring clean up yet really.

And this is when you hear a full blown argument erupt in the kitchen over whether or not there is a natural occurring biological substance that can cross the blood brain barrier. So while you're solving that issue using Google, you discover that your wifi is down and while your tech son goes to fix it, and you try to put your children where they need to be to do their homework effectively,

the dogs dig up your new plant.

The answer by the way is yes. It is frankincense.

Which could in a roundabout way explain why Jesus never cried. The Frankincense was making the calming aromatics around him, and the pheromones of a mother's love for her baby, flood his brain with peace.

And you congratulate yourself in sounding like an educated adult, even if it was only in your head. Especially since baby Jesus must have cried.

Except now your youngest child is eating cupcakes and fruit loops before a three hour gymnastics practice.

Your teenage son is in the front porch with headphones on hopefully looking up Latin terms on his phone, but probably watching you tube.

And your 16 year old is in the kitchen making the dinner you know damn well you should be making yourself.

There's nothing general about it. It's the same every day.

Of course, you wouldn't wish them away for anything.

Sung in South Dakota

Harold's Song

Two little boys

with some nails and a hammer

built themselves a treehouse

amongst a lot of clamour.

Filled it up with memories,

lights and posters hung above,

had some wild adventures

and maybe learned to love.

And as those little boys grew up

so came their teenage trappings.

Pirate boat turned clubhouse

where girls could come a rapping.

Oh the lessons on that floor

that paved the way to preference

of lust and need and maybe love

between the boys I referenced.

As other friends would come and go

their bond would never break

desire, humor, sorrow, fear,

even anger could it take.

But years pass by and defenses fail

and minds can be deceived

and ‘maybe love’ turned very real,

must now somehow be grieved.

My tree house stood alone and empty

so I burned it to the ground

but it exists within my memory

where that sorrows always found.

I share it with many other houses

and other girls and boys

whose fallen hideouts and secret spaces

now hold silence where once was joy.

But now and again their eyes grow bright

remembering those lives with laughter

the times they had, the dreams they shared,

thinking “screw what followed after”.

תַּרְדֵּמָה

תַּרְדֵּמָה

For Pastor Trapp, 

Who made the old testament

come alive for me.

I know that this

terrible storm

is my fault.

I know what

I need to do

to fix it.

I just can't

take the

jump.

Innocent lives

will be lost because

of me.

Strangers try

to save me

even so.

I just can't

take the

jump.

They must

throw me over

or be lost,

But they become

your people

because

I just can't

take the

jump.

Again and again

you send me

to do your will.

Again and again

I run

the other way.

I just can't

take the

jump.

You redirect me,

you drag me

to my purpose.

I sulk,

I drag my feet,

I grumble.

I just can't

take the

jump.

But again,

despite my failure

to comply

a whole city

is saved by a king

who obeys you.

I just can't

take the

jump.

I desire destruction,

loathe forgiveness,

refuse to repent.

I slink away in anger

feeling like a fool

and I am one,

I just can't

take the

jump.

All of your grace

all of your mercy

all of your power

Abundantly evident,

you try to teach me

but still I rebel.

I just can't

take the

jump.

My heart is

in tardemah

unable to wake to you.

Would only that

it be my soul instead,

at peace

So that I

could take the

jump.

                            

ָ

Zephaniah Every Day

Zephaniah Every Day

He will rejoice over you with joyful songs. Zephaniah 3:17

Caught in the light of a splendid window,

laying in a paint pallet on the church floor

seeking in my bible the words You would have me hear,

I can almost imagine You singing.

I can almost see that day,

when all are believers,

when finally you can call us all home.

As we come running to you,

arms open as children to their father,

I can almost hear You singing.

My father used to sing to me in the morning,

so early before he drove me to school for band rehearsal,

hours before he needed to be awake.

Used to sing:

Oh what a beautiful morning……

or You Are My Sunshine.

He sang that to his discontented teenage daughter who was stealing the money he left on the buffet by  accident.

Every day.

I can almost hear You singing too.

Right through the angry, the rebellion,

the hurt and the hate,

the lies, and the ungrateful

mixed up lives that all we human ‘teenagers’ live.

All the time singing and shepherding us along to wherever we think we need to be.

Watching over us all the time.

You're always in the driver's seat, because we never grow up.

And to be honest, like my dad, I think you're playing the oldies station.

And it bugs me now like it did then.

But every time I turn that station on, I think of him.

And, like Happy Together and Jail House Rock put me back in his car,

Morning Has broken, I hear you Calling, and I Am The Bread Of Life

puts me firmly back in Yours.

But sometimes, just on the edge of my belief,

I think I can hear You singing to me.

And I suspect now,

That you do it

every day.

I suspect he sang to me even after I walked away from him, even after I took what was his.

Every day.

I'd say I don't deserve your Songs, i'd say I havn't earned them, I'd say You're wasting them on me. That You have no reason to rejoice in me.

And all of that is true, except for the part where I became free from my sin, became extraordinary, became white as snow.

And now, in this puddle of light reading these words, that I had no idea even existed, so blown away by the idea of God singing praises to me, all I can do is try to understand. Made more overwhelming by the fact that somewhere in my mind, there's a voice growing ever louder by the moment, telling me:

Every Day.

Above it All

Above All

It's really not about that.

It never is.

I hurt.

I ask you those stupid mundane questions

when I hurt.

I am looking for normal.

I am looking for safe.

I am looking for ‘don't give up’.

I am looking for ‘I understand’

I am looking for ‘no matter what’

But it seems that I can never say

the thing that matters.

Just wake up, wake up!

WAKE UP.

Stop letting the world deceive you,

find what you know is true.

Sort it out, put it together for God's sake.

“I took the fall, and thought of you, above all”.

So think, dammit, think.

Can't Have your Cake and eat it Too

Can't Have your Cake and Eat it Too

It's funny,

Sometimes you're calling out so loud, and you're wishing those screaming thoughts could reach out

and capture someone else's mind.

And there's this potency to them,

knowing you'll fail,

and it'll break you when you do,

but you just have to try.

And the music flowing through your ears is just not enough to satisfy.

And the green and the sun and the water can't make you feel better.

I lean my back up against this steady pillar taking the pressure of sharp rocks away from my sore skin.

The peace and quiet here is perfect.

The dock was heaven today,

blue windy warm water.

But I'm always searching for something more.

I have half an hour to let the stream run over my feet and then I will be in the grip of a frustrated world again.

There's enough heat here to make me fall asleep.

This was a beautiful place in the snow and ice. Delicate.

Cold but warm.

Now it's warm but cold.

Just a few months and mother nature can claim wherever she wants.

The cars above me sound so far away,

racing along on their way to somewhere

while I rest exactly where I want to be.

I hope they have places they want to be, and can stay in them.

I hope they can stop running.

Serenity prayer, that's all I got today

This is all I got today

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.