Were you there

When she felt alone,
unknown, adrift
in the small spaces between us?

When he grabbed the gun,

swallowed the pills,
huffed a noxious puff,
poured out his blood
into the bathtub?

Were you there

on the bedroom floor,
kitchen linoleum,
bathroom tile,
after the fist, the belt, the knife?

Were you there

when the cashier dropped her hand,
pushed the alarm two seconds
too slow?
When the deal went bad,
or the heart roiled with revenge?

Bless those who will

meet up with the cross tonight,
whose darkness has not yet
known a dawn so bright
it could bring us back from death.


Cynthia E. Robinson © 2013

The incandescence of a word

Lemons.
Lemony.
I am a gooey meringue when I read those words.
Golden eggs whipped with cream, sugar,
and zest—voilá, joyous custard.
Bright twist shines
on earthy espresso.
Iced tea slices stuffed
under the skin of chickens,
rosemary, garlic, pats of butter.
Mashed potato clouds in summer.
Pastel light beams in winter.
Sunshine, soft breezes, sky
so blue it almost stings the eye.
Tart and pucker,
squeeze these sour orbs—
they tease for sweetness.
When I smell them
I know something is clean.
Lemons.
Lemony.
Antithesis of despair.
Give me a lemon—
I know I would be happy.


Cynthia E. Robinson © 2013

Lemon Slice on a Wood Block by Abbey Ryan, 2009.  Used with permission.

A voice

 —In response to Scott Simon’s interview with cabaret singer Lady Rizo, 4/21/12

Most of us with a ‘voice’

don’t have publicity materials.

Maybe a Facebook.

Our venue is always small.

Life is indeed a cabaret, ol’ chum—

in a church, a stage in a basement,

graveside or garden wedding,

folding chairs, a friend playing

the piano.  If you’re lucky,

a garage band backing you up.

No tip jar, no personally produced

CDs in cardboard sleeves,

not even a cover charge

(unless you count the offering).

Everyone who’s come to hear

you sing has heard 

the same tunes many times before.

Old hymns lustily sung,

gospels and spirituals from the belly,

Dvořák’s Goin’ Home 

blesses the husband, 

then the wife a few years later.

No grinding or growling of any kind.

Just a voice trying to get it as clear

as can be:  you are not alone.

The Waiting Room

Random.

Capricious.

No guarantees

whatsoever.

You sure you want this?

You might not

even get what you need.

Your best intentions

won’t matter.

Your actions will

be like atoms colliding

in a galaxy

you may have the luck

to live in.

Others will offer

what they can:

in God’s time,

if it’s meant to be,

but they can’t always wait with you.

You will look to blame

someone

but find only yourself.

Whatever it is

you can’t forgive

set it down like a stone

or hurl it into space.

Gravity will turn out

to be stronger than

you are and infinitely

more patient.

An altar of bones

An Altar of Bones

            It will not out of the flesh, that’s bred in the bone.

                        —J. Heywood, Dialogue of Proverbs, ii. viii. K2 (1546)

Moonlit thanks

Paper joy

We are an altar of bones.

Put on that fragile flesh

Then wear it well.

For Love invites a life

fully inhabited.

Prophesy this:

The incarnation

is the resurrection.

The resurrection

is the incarnation.

Powerless to save

From the base of the altar of a small chapel, called Dominus Flevit, outside Jerusalem on the western slope of the Mount of Olives. Dominus Flevit is Latin for "the Lord wept".

Psalm 27; Luke 13: 31-35
******** United Church of Christ
February 28, 2010

(I had posted this poem not long after I had written it. I use it here again because it perfectly introduced the theme of powerlessness and the rest of the sermon flows from it.)


Cigarettes
--written for my father, a UCC pastor, who died at the age of 46.

We had settled into
our nighttime TV ritual
Magnum P.I. and Nero Wolfe
our favorites.
I was on the couch,
you in your well-worn recliner,
feet up to help keep
fluid out since the pneumonia.
During a commercial
you casually asked me
if I would get you
a pack of cigarettes
out of the kitchen.

I huffed, gave you
one of my looks,
well-honed in sixteen years,
the one I reserve for when
I don’t know what to say.
When I came back into the room
I hurled the heart-attack-in-a-pack
at you, thudded back
onto the couch, arms
crossed, leg over knee.
Now I know what to say.

Next time you want
a pack of cigarettes
get them yourself.

You looked at me, then
at your wife as though
I had unearthed
a hidden truth,
taken off whatever lenses
through which you didn’t see me.

You once took my
little girl rage against
your palms, raised open
like a sparring coach,
small fists slamming
implacable flesh,
the sting of your wedding ring.

If I thought it would save
what life was left
I would have thrown
dozens of them at you,
my love sealed up
in plastic-wrapped paper,
smokes that would
never hasten your grave,
inscribed with that warning
not nearly fierce enough
but just as helpless.


Most of us know what it is like to want to help someone, to save someone from themselves but we are powerless to do so. And many of us know what it is like to want to save ourselves but try as we might, we feel inadequate and out of control. As I have heard it quoted in a movie, “Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us.”

In this morning’s gospel lesson, it is Jerusalem that eludes Jesus. In Luke Jesus has a special kinship with Jerusalem, which in Hebrew, depending on the transliteration, can mean “teaching of peace” or “abode of peace” or “whole and complete instruction” and in Arabic, “the Holy”. Luke’s gospel begins in Jerusalem with the priest Zechariah foretelling the birth of John the Baptist and ends in Jerusalem with the risen Christ instructing the disciples to wait for power, for the Holy Spirit. It is where Jesus is brought eight days after his birth, where he is found with the priests asking questions, where the devil brought him to the pinnacle of the temple to tempt him for the third time, where he shares the Passover with his disciples for the last time. There are 90 references to Jerusalem in Luke’s gospel while the other three combined mention the city only 49 times.

Though John and the Essenes had rejected Jerusalem and the temple authorities they believed to be corrupt, Jesus could not give up the city to that fox, Herod and the empire he served. In Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem we can hear the ache, the sorrow of powerlessness in his voice: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

Christ Laments Over Jerusalem, Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, 1846.

But wait a minute, we say. Jesus? Powerless? He can change water into wine, feed thousands with a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread, cast out demons, calm storms, heal people of their diseases and infirmities, even raise the dead! How can Jesus be powerless?

What Jesus cannot do is turn hard hearts into softer ones, compel human beings to love one another and to live in peace. The blind may see but are our eyes truly open? The deaf may hear but do we really listen? The lame may walk but in what direction are we headed? Our sins are forgiven but what have we done with that grace?

It is this reason, among others, that the vocal and prominent atheists of the 21st century decry anyone who claims to believe in God yet also declare that God is not all powerful. If God is not all powerful, these atheists claim, then God is not God. Archibald MacLeish, in his adaptation of the book of Job, wrote “If God is God, He is not good. If God is good, He is not God.” How can God be God while so much evil exists in the world? If God is good and loving and just, then this God is not in control.

I would bet that this notion of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God is a leftover from the Greco-Roman empire, when the Church was joined to empire. It was Caesar and his empire that was all-knowing, all-powerful, and present everywhere. That’s what it means to be an empire. (Hmm…surveillance cameras, wire taps, military bases in nearly every country, thousands of nuclear warheads…sound familiar?) Caesar promised peace but through victory in war. Caesar and empire are indeed powerful to save.

The God of the Hebrew tradition, from whom peace comes through justice, the tradition from which Jesus came, was the God that gave humankind free will, the ability to choose whether we will follow and love. In my opinion, God cannot be in control and love without condition at the same time. Yes, we were given commandments but that was part of the covenant, the agreement that was made between God and human beings, that we would be joined as one. That covenant has been renewed again and again because human beings have chosen to go against God and God’s will of love, peace and justice. And that is what sin is.

Jesus promised to save us from sin, but as blogger Stan Wilson writes, where did we ever get the idea that Jesus would save us from suffering? Jesus could not save Jerusalem. He didn’t heal everyone or feed everyone or solve all the world’s problems. What he did do was show us how to love and how to love well, freely, willingly, even so far as to spread his wings over us wayward chicks and dying on a cross. And it is through that love that we are saved.

The church (that means you) isn’t meant to spread its wings so far as to save everyone from disaster. The church is not a social service agency, a psychotherapeutic group, or the Red Cross, or as Karl Barth put it, an ambulance on the battlefield of life. We are powerless to save. But we aren’t powerless to love. The rest of that movie quote: “[We] can still love—we can love completely without complete understanding.” We may not understand the motives or intentions or choices or actions of others. All of these may cause us pain. But by following Jesus we have chosen to give ourselves over to love—a love which may or may not save another but if we give ourselves over to it entirely, this love will save us from ourselves.

Here again we have the first three of the twelve steps: we are powerless to save ourselves or another; we acknowledge that a power, a love greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity; and we surrender our lives into the care of this power, this love that our lives would be changed. Jesus himself learns this surrender in the garden the night before his execution: not his will but God’s will be done. And on the cross, even though he could not save his beloved Jerusalem, Jesus said “It is finished.” His mission to love, to forgive, and by his actions, to bring humankind to the awareness of an intimate, compassionate God—this he accomplished more than amply. But we are still coming to this awareness, each generation learning what it means to surrender to the teaching of peace, to the holy.

Where in your own life do you feel powerless? What about the life of this church confronts your sense of powerlessness? What about yourself or a loved one or this church is it that eludes you? What experiences have led you and this church to surrender to the power of God, which is love? How has your relationship with Christ and with this church saved you? How might this church be a part of bringing to others the awareness of an intimate, compassionate God?

Jerusalem of Hope, Avraham Binder, 1998.

During this Lenten season ask yourselves how might you, how might this church love completely without complete understanding and how would the teachings of Jesus help you do this. Take the first step. Trust and believe that you shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! (Psalm 27: 13-14) Amen.

Notes:

The movie quote is from A River Runs Through It (Rev. Maclean), 1992.

The Longest Night

(Last night we held a Longest Night service after a snowstorm earlier that morning. Not many folks attended but one couple, who had heard from a friend who had seen the article in the paper, truly needed it. It was a small, intimate gathering with beautiful music and candlelight and hope.)



The Longest Night, Jim Brandenburg

The Uses of Sorrow
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
--Mary Oliver


“God With Us”
Isaiah 40: 1-9; Psalm 121; Luke 2: 1-20
******** United Church of Christ
December 20, 2009


Friday morning I went to the New Haven Register website to read the article that was written about tonight’s service. Below the article was a comment from an angry individual whose online identity was listed as “Religiousfactsfromfraud”. This person wrote:

“How nice. What a heart-warming story. [It’s] 2009 and people still believe this...fable of Jesus being the son of God—as Pope Leo himself said "This fable of Christ has been quite profitable for us (The Vatican)”. The Virgin birth, the Immaculate Conception, an annunciation from an angel, and the "miracles": CT Valley Hospital is full of Jesus Christs. You want to do something for these folks—the Reverends should be opening their wallets and [giving] them some financial relief. The Catholic Church will pass the basket three times during holiday masses to receive. Get real, people. No matter the denomination, Christians are like cattle: they will follow a stalk of oats over a cliff. Merry Christmas.”

I paused and wondered what wound this person had suffered to provoke such a reaction to this service. It seemed to me that this individual had witnessed firsthand the inevitable pain that comes with being human and how a relationship with God can sometimes feel inadequate to that pain, so much so as to drive this person away from God and from the church. I too have had periods of sadness and loss throughout the years that have caused me to question God’s presence in my life and in the life of this world, thus deepening my sadness and feelings of isolation.

In a way this person has a point. We do celebrate Christ’s birth as though it were a fairytale, conflating and mixing together the different birth stories into a romantic sort of whole, while omitting other, more difficult details so that we do in fact have something resembling a fable. All of the shadows—the danger of King Herod in Matthew, the warning in Luke when Simeon says to Mary that a sword will piece her heart, the implications of a Jewish king being born under the occupation of the Roman empire—are banished from the story until after Christmas Day, and thus, most of the depth and meaning is missing as well.

What does it mean to have God with us? The mystery of God and God’s activity in human lives, or seeming lack of it, has been one of the more enduring questions of faith. In the original edition of the deceptively innocent book Children’s Letters to God, one child writes: “Dear God, Are you real? Some people don’t believe it. If you are, you’d better do something quick. Love, Harriet Anne.”

It’s the oldest, most honest prayer there is: “God, are you real? Why is this happening to me or to the one I love? Please do something.” The only answers I have are the ones I have lived through. No one can really tell us about what it means to have God with us in our own experience. It is something that each of us must come to, each in our own way.

A few years ago, through much tears and pain and prayer and living, I came to my own reconciliation with Christmas and all its hoopla, expectations, materialism and religious romanticism in this way.

A Real Life

There are times I question the whole thing
Is there a God
Was there ever
a real life
in which God was clothed
all earthly, vulnerable
in our human aloneness of being
What if Jesus never was

On the edge of that precipice
I am humbled
by one thought
I would rather be a fool
A companioned
saved
forgiven
believing
loved-beyond-all-measure
voluntary fool

Thanks be to God
for this life within a life
that Word made flesh
mundane and fragile
for which I am indeed
head-over-heels
hopelessly
happily foolish


For me, ‘God with us’ means that within my sorrow, within my despair, within ‘my human aloneness of being’ there is God; that the light of God is not contained solely in the light. The light of God has life everywhere, even within my experience of loss and sadness, even on the longest night of the year. The psalmist tells us “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.” “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art with me.” Within my life there is another life—the Word made flesh in my mundane and fragile flesh—living out each day what it means to love and to be human in my tiny, insignificant, precious existence.

Within Christmas lives Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. With this birth there will come an untimely, torturous, innocent death. Within each of us, living and breathing, is our death. But within this Christmas story and within each of us there is also the promise of resurrection, of new life and rebirth—the kind that only comes from the ashes of sorrow and loss. It does not tarnish an otherwise bright holiday but makes it all the more real and true. It is this mystery of our faith that cannot be explained but only lived out in our questions and doubts, in prayer and in the companionship of others as we struggle to love as best as we are able.

Let us pray:

Generous and gracious God,
we look to you for compassion
and thank you for your presence this night.
Overwhelmed by our burdens we easily forget
that you never leave us alone
and that your steadfast love for us never falters.
By gathering together we find assurance and comfort
that we do not suffer this longest night alone.
You have given us strength to live through this night.
Turn us to reach out to those whose night is also long.
Grant that we may be your healing presence in their lives
by bringing them your compassion and comfort
that will assure them that they do not suffer alone. Amen. [1]




1. © 2009 the Rev. Quentin Chin, member of Church on the Hill (UCC)
in Lenox, MA, and Interim Minister of the United Methodist Church of Lenox, MA.

Egrets, legs and God

The Banquet of Esther and Ahasuerus, Jan Victors, Dutch, 1640s

Psalm 124; Esther 7: 1-6, 9-10; 9: 20-22
******** United Church of Christ
September 27, 2009

A couple had two little boys who were always getting into trouble. Their parents knew that if any mischief occurred in their village, their sons were probably involved. The boys' mother heard that an elder in town had been successful in disciplining children, so she asked if he would speak with her sons. The elder agreed, but asked to see them separately.

So, in the morning, the mother sent her youngest son first. The elder, a huge man with a booming voice, sat the boy down and asked him sternly, “Where is God?” The boy's mouth dropped open, but he made no response.

So the elder repeated the question in an even sterner tone, “Where is God?!!” Again the wide-eyed boy made no attempt to answer. The elder raised his voice and bellowed, “WHERE IS GOD?!” The boy screamed and bolted from the room, ran directly home and dove into a closet, slamming the door behind him.

When his older brother found him hiding, he asked, “What happened?” Gasping for breath, the younger brother replied, “We are in BIG trouble this time. God is missing, and they think WE did it!”

I like to use this story for two reasons: one, it’s funny, and funny is good, especially in a time of transition. And two, so we can begin thinking about where is God with a lighter heart so that we might actually find God. Or be found by God.

There are times on our journey of faith when we are always on the lookout for God to show up, wondering when and in what way. It seems that when we need God the most we do not get to see God coming but only recognize the Holy One after the fact. We see the wake in the water, the clouds moving off in the distance, the sun coming out after rain, and like a point on the map of our lives, we say, “There! God was there!”

The Book of Esther is a rarity in that not only is it named after its main character, a woman, but it is the only book in the Bible where God is not mentioned. Not only that, but there is also no real mention of the Law of God nor of its practices. There is only scant notice of it in Haman’s description of the Jews to the King when he says that they don’t fit in, that “their customs and ways are different from those of everybody else.” [1]

But it’s important to know the whole story of Esther to make any sense of it. Scholars still question whether this story is historical or fictional, but it doesn't matter because the power is in the story itself. It all begins with a queen who won’t do the king’s bidding. In the middle of a huge party Queen Vashti is summoned by the king just so he can show off her beauty to his drunken guests and officials. Like any self-respecting queen she refuses. He consults with his advisors and counselors about to handle ‘the situation’, and they tell him that the queen has not only insulted the king but all leaders in the provinces. Imagine if word got out and women started treating their husbands this way! So in his anger, the king has Vashti deposed and he has a nationwide beauty pageant to find a new queen.

Enter Esther and Mordecai, her uncle, who are exiled Jews living in Persia. Mordecai tells Esther that she should enter the contest but tell no one of her Jewish heritage. Esther pleases the king; he falls in love with her and makes her queen. But the story isn’t over yet.

Mordecai overhears two guards plotting to overthrow the king. He tells Queen Esther who then tells the King, giving credit to Mordecai and the event is written in the king’s logbook. Sometime later the king promotes a man named Haman, making him the highest-ranking official in the government. Whenever Haman passed by the King’s Gate, all the king’s servants would bow down and kneel before Haman. That’s what being promoted is all about, after all. But Mordecai won’t do it, presumably because he is an observant Jew, and Haman becomes outraged.

Not long after that, the king is reading his logbook and comes across the entry that makes note of Mordecai saving the king. The king asks Haman how the king should honor a man of great importance. Haman thinks the king is talking about him, so Haman suggests that this person be dressed in elegant robes and led through the streets on the king’s horse, with a servant proclaiming this is how the king rewards great deeds. The king says, “Fine. Go ahead and do this for Mordecai.” Haman then must lead Mordecai on the king’s horse through the streets of the city, proclaiming the king’s reward. When Haman finds out that Mordecai is a Jew, Haman sets about to find a way to get rid of not only Mordecai but all Jews in Persia. Haman begins his evil plot by having gallows built seventy-five feet high upon which to hang his perceived enemy, Mordecai.

Now we get to the part when Haman tells the king about these strangers who live in his kingdom, these people who just don’t fit in. He gives the king 375 tons of silver, saying that he will pay for the destruction of these people. The king gives Haman his signet ring and tells him he can do whatever he wants with his money.

When Mordecai hears of the news of his people’s imminent destruction, he pleads with Esther to go to the king and tell him of this murderous plot. But no one can go to the king without an invitation; to do so would be fatal. Esther is risking her not only her pretty face like Vashti before her; she is putting her life on the line for her people. Mordecai tells her that perhaps she was made queen for such a time as this.

As love would have it, King Ahasuerus is in love with his new queen and would give anything for her, even half his kingdom. Esther desires that Haman and the king dine with her, not once but twice. As we hear in this morning’s lesson, after the second dinner, Haman’s true colors are revealed to the king, he is hung on his own gallows, and Esther effectively saves her people.

God’s name and presence are strangely absent in a story where God’s people are far from home and in the clutches of apparent disaster. Yet even though this story ends with violence and bloodshed and the survival of God’s people, even so we witness an awkward grace displayed in the very human characters of Queen Esther, Mordecai, King Ahasuerus, and the deposed Queen Vashti.

In this world where God can sometimes seem as though God’s presence is strangely absent, I have also been seeking words for God’s presence and awkward grace in a poem I am writing, about two other queenly figures. One is a snowy white egret that I saw at a lake near my home. This is what I have so far:

As the egret stretched out
her neck, throat of
a bendy straw pulled
to its full extension,
I realized her kinship
to the giraffe.
Same disproportionate
neck, body, whose legs
fold like an elbow.

Snowy white egret

Queen Esther too stretched out her neck, and though some might call her timid, she worked within the system to save her people. The other queenly figure is a young woman I saw in a crosswalk in Ridgefield:

Then there was
another strange bird,
a young woman
who passed twenty feet
in front of my car,
her awkward grace I thought
had to do with a tattoo
beside her knee,
or was it a decorative pair of hose,
slight limp of her left leg
stretching out from underneath
a brief sundress on a golden September day.

No, it was a prosthesis,
best of its kind,
reaching all the way to her hip,
gamely walking in the same sandal
gripping her other foot
in warm embrace.

Though Queen Esther might not have been used to wearing royal robes and living like a queen, she was regal from the inside out, like this woman and her courageous sundress and sandals.

Kelsey Retich, Hartland, MI

God is always a character in the narrative of life, even if not always visible or apparent. God is seen in the actions of others, in their quiet bravery, in knowing who they are, or in a bird whose body makes no logical sense but speaks volumes about beauty and grace.

One reason that the author of Esther may not have had God as a character in the story is that the people of God were living in exile, away from the temple in Jerusalem, away from home and all that was familiar. They were strangers in a strange land. Of course they were asking "Where is God?" It was all too appropriate then for the characters themselves to rise up in God’s place and act as God would have acted. Queen Vashti in her stubborn refusal to be anything other than a royal queen; Mordecai in his steadfast loyalty to Esther and to himself as a Jew; King Ahasuerus, when we hear him say that he will give anything Esther asks, even half of his kingdom; and Queen Esther, who gathers her courage about her like a royal robe, remembering that her uncle believes in her and that she is more than just one person—she is one of her people.

Queen Esther, Fr. Jim Hasse, S.J.

It can seem as though in time of transition that God has left the building, that God is not as easily perceived and seen and heard when the future appears to be uncertain. But that is precisely the time when we are called to rise up and we become the main characters in our own story, as God works through us. You, the congregation, are the main characters in the story of ******** United Church of Christ, right now, for you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.

Indeed, it is a time when it may feel like you are being asked to stretch out your necks, to walk with confidence when you may not be sure of yourselves. But that is also when God is most alive in you, when God is shining brightest through you, when you are the most alive, when you are shining brightest. Amen.


[1] Peterson, Eugene. The Message (NavPress: Colorado Springs, Colorado, 2002)

"...one as beautiful as you."

This past weekend my pastor and colleague, Pete Allen, and I led an adult education field trip into New York City to the Museum of Modern Art. One of the special exhibitions we saw was Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night (Click on this link to see a flash of the exhibit and the works mentioned). His famous painting, The Starry Night, used to be my favorite. But while viewing this exhibit I found others. Look at the colors of The Sower, the green of the sunset sky, the tree, the bowed figure. The Potato Eaters portrays Van Gogh's affection for those whose lives are rooted in the earth. Though the sunset in The Stevedores at Arles is beautiful, it would not be half the painting without the main characters in the foreground, even though they are in shadow.

My new favorite, however, is The Starry Night Over the Rhone: the way the light shimmers on the water, the stars shine above, the lovers below. I had no words save for a poem.

Van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhone

Engine of being,

that reserve of desire

to which the artist bends

is light, that blaze

so sweet--thus also

darkness, that slit into reality

through which he unleashes color,

shape, shadow and story.

Like a priest celebrating

a mystery, he holds, lifts

what is holy, gives thanks,

breaking it into a billion living stars

in a night sky shivering,

on a silent river unlocked,

above two lovers with little to regret.

NYC poetry workshop

Last weekend I attended another poetry workshop in NYC with Ellen Bass. It was hosted by one of her students who lives in the Village on 12th Street with a view of the Hudson. Can we say 'pretentious'? But the best part, besides writing poetry, was staying with some friends in the Ridgewood section of Brooklyn. The husband, Will, manages a German/Austrian hall/bar (Gottscheer Hall--look it up). We ate pulled pork nachos, potato pancakes, krainer and spaetzel, bread pudding with raisins soaked in rum, and drank beer until we were fat. And that was just Friday night. Saturday night my friend Dorothy (Will's wife) and I went to an Egyptian restaurant, a little on the sketchy side, ate a delicious dinner, and smoked a hookah for dessert; there might have been a wonderful rice pudding in there too. Good folks, good food, and talk--plus poetry; it doesn't get any better than that.

This is one of the poems that came out of the workshop--others are still in the works. On Sunday we had been sent outside to the sidewalk to glean an impression from the yard sale taking place on there (wouldn't that make it a sidewalk sale?). As far as poetic inspiration goes, the yard sale didn't do it for me, but the Mexican restaurant on the corner was akin to the eighth wonder of the world, in its own quiet, understated way. Combined with a suggested word list, I managed to write a poem.


A glory reserved

“Shoot bandits’ heads to ring bells”
reads the faded sign above
the window of the Mexican restaurant.
An oversize discolored bottle cap
teases “Thirsty? Wet your whistle.”
Plastic lantern Santa, sleigh, single
reindeer gambol over the doorway.
Skulls in chorus line on the lintel
mock each hunger, signal every regret.
Our Lady of Guadeloupe waits
in the entryway—dark, lovely,
vacant of desire, her miniature
infant Son the pivot
on which her feet turn.
I can’t look away from
this corner, this blaze
of glory reserved, where
it’s Christmas every day,
even on the day of the dead.

Are you there, God? It's me, the Mom.

This past Saturday, after losing a wrenching soccer game (final score 5 to 1), my first baby girl got her period at the tender age of 11 1/2.

It hadn't been a great morning. I was tired: my husband had been out of town for most of the previous week, he and I had had a tiff before I left for the game, and I was ready for a break. So when she yelled "Mom, come up here quick!" from the bathroom upstairs, I mumbled to myself, "Mom is unavailable at the moment".

But then she yelled again, "Mom, I really need to you to see this!" I went upstairs and knocked on the bathroom door, poked my head in and said, "What is it, sweetie?"

"Is this blood?"

"Oh, my God, it sure is! Oh my goodness, you've got your period! My little girl, wow, this is the beginning." And she started to get anxious, saying "Oh no" over and over.

"It's okay, honey," I intoned. "This is wonderful! You're growing up!"

Then she started to laugh, giggle, and cry all at the same time, as if the faucet that opened the way for her hormones and her blood unleashed her all at once. Then I got her a pad and a clean pair of underwear, put the soiled ones in the sink with some cold water, made sure she knew what to do, then left her alone to finish up.

Since then we've had a few brief discussions about swimming, tampons, how often, how long, and that it is indeed natural and not disgusting. Funny how that particular stain still seems so indelible even now. I've told her that I would like to celebrate with her, perhaps have lunch just the two of us; buy her a special piece of jewelry at the Strawberry Festival at our church in a couple of weeks. She's all excited now. My mom took me out for lunch and bought me a ring and a necklace, both now lost.

There are times I wish we lived in a culture that saw this as magical and wondrous, as a time for gathering women and girls together, and that she and I would take some of her blood and mark our faces like warriors, priestesses, leading all assembled in a dance to drumbeats, lit by a bonfire and starlight. Instead we have replaced all this with the blood of a innocent man, shed by violence, his body given that we might be saved.

In truth, it is my blood that saves me every month, that gives me time to myself, apart from men, to reflect and own my truth. Through the blood of our mothers we were all nourished, their bodies given that we might have life. And my firstborn daughter is now part of that long line; the beginning of her relationship with the mysteries of living.

This is a poem I wrote for her not long after she was born. It still holds true.


If Jesus Had Been a Girl

If Jesus had been a girl
we would await the birth
of the newborn queen,
Queen of the Jews,
like Esther, who saved
her people by sacrificing
and risking more than
just her lovely face.

If Jesus had been a girl
there would have been
no presentation in the
temple, no lost child at
the center of attention
with learned scholars.
Herod would not have
cared had she been born
—no threatened, paranoid
ego, no slain babies, no
kings from afar.

If Jesus had been a girl,
she would have been
our sister, but no one
would have listened.
And she would have
lived to a ripe old age,
begging at the temple
gates, speaking of God’s
radical, amazing love,
many thinking she was
crazy. End of story.

Yet you, little one, were
born a girl and I know
I have seen the salvation
of my soul. For God’s glory
is revealed in your face and
in the face of every baby.
To see your face is like
seeing the face of God.

Joy to the world,
for you have come to earth
and given me a second
birth.

Unfinished

Back in November this past year I took a poetry workshop in NYC with Ellen Bass and Marie Howe, two outstanding poets. They gave us a writing exercise in which we had to describe a defining moment in an unfinished relationship, including setting, any dialogue, taking the reader as slowly as possible so as to make them a part of it. Truly, any relationship is unfinished. This one is about my father.

I wrote this poem a few days ago, as today it will be 23 years since he died. It is part of a series I'm endeavoring to write about the unfinished relationships in my life, both past and present.


Cigarettes

We had settled into
our nightime TV ritual
Magnum P.I. and Nero Wolfe
our favorites.
I was on the couch,
you in your well-worn recliner,
feet up to help keep
fluid out since
the pneumonia.
During a commercial
you casually asked me
if I would get you
a pack of cigarettes
out of the kitchen.

I huffed, gave you
one of my looks,
well-honed in sixteen years,
the one I reserve for when
I don’t know what to say.
When I came back
into the room
I hurled the heart-attack-in-a-pack
at you and thudded back
onto the couch, arms
crossed, leg over knee.
Now I know what to say.

Next time you want
a pack of cigarettes
get them yourself.

You looked at me,
at your wife as though
I had unearthed
a hidden truth,
taken off whatever lenses
through which you didn’t see me.

You once took my
little girl rage against
your palms, raised open
like a sparring coach,
small fists slamming
implacable flesh,
the sting of your wedding ring.

If I thought it would save
what life was left
I would have thrown
dozens of them at you,
my love sealed up
in plastic-wrapped paper,
smokes that would
never hasten your grave,
inscribed with that warning
not nearly fierce enough
but just as helpless.

Losing Control, Having Faith

The Prophet Habbakuk

Ps. 37: 1-9; Habbakuk 1: 1-4, 2: 1-4; 2 Tim. 1: 1-14
First Congregational Church of ******
October 7, 2007 (World Communion Sunday)

Pastor and author Max Lucado tells the story of a parakeet named Chippie. Chippie was like any other parakeet: she sang, she preened her beautiful green and yellow feathers, and she brought much joy to her owner. One day all that changed, when Chippie’s owner decided to clean out her cage ....

With a vacuum cleaner.

She was almost finished when the phone rang, so she turned around to answer it. With a thwup, Chippie was gone. Frantically she ripped open the vacuum bag. There was Chippie, stunned, her bright feathers coated with thick dust, but still alive. She carried the poor bird to the bathroom and gently rinsed her off under the faucet. Poor Chippie was wet and shivering, so, trying to be merciful, her owner took hold of the hair dryer and blew Chippie away with a gust of hot air. A few days later, a friend asked her how the little parakeet was recovering. “Well”, she replied, “Chippie doesn’t sing much anymore.” (1)

Have you ever felt like Chippie? Have you ever felt like life sucked you in, left you washed up and blown away? I know I have. We can’t always see what’s up ahead of us. And no matter how hard we try to eat right, live right, do the right thing, say the right thing, be the right person, our lives can change in a heartbeat. It only takes one phone call from the police about one of our children or our spouse, one messenger delivering the divorce papers, one pink slip from work, one meeting with our boss or supervisor, one bad test result or mammogram or biopsy, one misplaced footstep or turn of the steering wheel, to leave us feeling like poor little Chippie. Some of us have survived one Chippie episode only long enough to be hit by another.

We like to kid ourselves that we are in control of our destiny, yet we know in one moment it can all change. I myself am a self-avowed control freak. I take great comfort from this morning’s psalm from the lectionary: Psalm 37, the psalm for control freaks. I call it this because not only does it tell the reader to wait, to not fret, to refrain from anger, to trust in the Lord, but it does so over and over again. We who need to have the world, or even the church, ordered according to our own specifications cannot be told just once to trust in the Lord. We need to be told again and again for we have repeated difficulty keeping our meddlesome ways out of the way of the Lord.

But not only do we suffer from the unfairness of our own lives but also from the injustice we witness in the lives of others and in the world around us. We see friends divorce and the effect it has on the children. Many of us live in the ‘sandwich generation’: caring for our children as well as our aging parents. Military families dread the telegram, the knock on the door, the phone call from a commanding officer. Some of us are living long enough to lose our siblings, spouse and friends, one by one, to old age, Alzheimer’s, cancer, and stroke, some not receiving the medical care they need. This past week we were reminded of the violent reality of domestic abuse by the display of 104 purple ribbons around town, representing the 104 domestic abuse calls made to the local police in the last year.


Buddhist monks and nuns protesting in Burma.

And in this Internet age, with high speed communication, we hear of the catastrophic effects of global warming, infectious disease, famine, war in Iraq, violence in Burma, Afghanistan, and many other places, and genocide. In the media-forgotten province of Darfur, 300-500,000 black African Muslims have been killed by the Sudanese army and police. Another 2-3 million have been displaced within the region.

Surrounded by all this bad news, by the seemingly inevitability of injustice and evil, like Chippie, it can be difficult to sing, to be joyful. Our faith wavers. In one of the lectionary readings not read today (because of its violent content), Psalm 137, the Israelites in their Babylonian exile are goaded by their captors to sing the Lord’s song. But how can they sing, they lament, in a foreign land? At the close of the Psalm they rage against God, wishing the same violent end upon the children of their enemies that they witnessed against their own children: “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” (v. 9). Believing themselves to be abandoned by God and isolated from his mercy and justice, the Israelites, these oppressed victims, become the new oppressor, meting out their own brand of justice.

It is easier for us as human beings to take matters into our own hands, to act on our fear and anger, rather than to wait for what God will do, to wait for what God would have us do. Like Habbakuk, we cry out to God but God seems silent. We look around us, we witness the terrible violence of this world, the evil that human beings can do, and it is tempting to despair, to allow our unbelief to overwhelm the faith that we have been given. Archibald MacLeish, in his adaptation of the book of Job, wrote “If God is God, He is not good. If God is good, He is not God.” How can God be God while so much evil exists in the world? If God is good and loving and just, then this God is not in control.

Scholars and theologians have long debated this issue of theodicy, of the existence of evil in a universe created by a loving God, and it is still unresolved. Many atheists have used this problem as proof that God does not exist. Over the past few years I have been in and out of this place of unbelieving, struggling with these hard questions, not wanting to be faithful simply out of duty but with my mind and heart deeply engaged. But I was also becoming increasingly grouchy and irritable. How can I sing, how can I be joyful in this foreign land of violence, evil, and injustice?

The answer to this question came in the form of a poem:

‘God’s eye is
on the sparrow’
Yet
the sparrow
falls
This is how I
experience God

The Word made flesh
Wordless
Silent
Mute
This is how I
experience God

Do not
hope for more
for God will
break your heart
This is how I
experience God

And yet
my husband made
me laugh tonight
from the belly
to my eyes
brimming with black
rivers down my face
My side torn in two
where the despairing
wound had been
And this is how I
experience God

In a recent interview, Garrison Keillor said that “gloom and self-absorption are for teenagers. Once you pass a certain point—and I passed it a long time ago—you’re supposed to be cheerful.” Asked if he was a cheerful person, he replied, “Yes, I am, but I have to work at it. I come from dark people, people who were always expecting disaster.” (2)

The question is, to what do we want to give our hearts and minds, for that is what faith is all about. Ironically, what we don’t hear from atheists is a word of hope or joy. (If you do hear a good word from an atheist, let me know, because I would sincerly like to hear it.) In the second letter to Timothy we read of encouragement, to remember the faith given by those who have gone before us, to not be ashamed of believing and the suffering that comes with it, but to persevere in the faith.

Jesus promised to save us from sin, but as blogger Stan Wilson writes, where did we ever get the idea that Jesus would save us from suffering? (3) We know that bad things happen to good people, yet we do not have to let our joy be taken from us. We possess a larger vision of the way things ought to be. I quote from the church’s website: “The avowed purpose of the First Congregational Church of ******, UCC, is to worship God, to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to celebrate the Sacraments; to realize Christian fellowship and unity within the church and Church Universal; to render loving service to all; and to strive for righteousness, justice and peace.”

In the face of all the bad news of human living, you, First Congregational Church of ******, UCC, have good news, a treasure to share: a loving community that strives not for itself or for its own profit but for the kingdom of God, that kingdom of righteousness, justice and peace. You belong to a living tradition, alive for 272 years and still going, not by your own merits, but by the Holy Spirit working through you. You follow one who abolished death and brought life and light to those in darkness. The faith that has been passed down to you is not merely personal but intensely communal, intended to build up the faithful and transform your life together. This church does not live out its faith in isolation but as one of many UCC churches in this area and as part of the witness of nearly 6,000 congregations in the whole United Church of Christ


Vietnam protesters

On this World Communion Sunday, when not only the United Church of Christ, but millions of other Christians around the world gather about the table of Christ, I invite this congregation to rekindle its faith in the living God. I urge you to sing of God’s love and justice in an unjust world. I exhort you to be, in the words of Wendell Berry, “joyful though you have considered all the facts”.(4) To be joyful, even cheerful, in the face of evil is a true act of rebellion, of civil disobedience. Christ is calling us to reflect in our lives and in the life of this congregation the compassion, justice, and faithfulness that our world so desperately needs, especially when it is difficult and inconvenient to do so.

Amen.

______________________________________________

Notes

1. Story about Chippie taken from Max Lucado, In the Eye of the Storm (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1991), 11.
2. Interview with Garrison Keillor was aired on public radio show Here and Now, October 3, 2007.
3. Stan Wilson, Theolog: Blog of The Christian Century, October 1, 2007.
4. Wendell Berry, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”, The Country of Marriage (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 1973).

God was free after matins

so he left his watch
on the dresser (it had stopped
a long time ago anyway)
took his paints and canvas
and went to his favorite
place to just be
He sat on the guardrail
facing the wide
expanse of the reservoir
a straw Stetson atop his head
his easel straddling
the road’s and the pond’s edge
his denim longsleeve
clothing its wooden arms
releasing his shoulder
so he could give it
to the desires of his brushes
He had returned
to finish what he
had already begun
A canvas muddied
with dull greens
and pale blue
waiting for the deeper
watery blue and black
rippled with white sunshine
Shadows of geese
and ducks at midmorning
Bright lime dappling
leaves, thick with June rain
Brief clouds scudding slowly
across a day eternal
He’s never been satisfied
to finish a painting
At most he can only
allow the paint to dry

(I borrowed this poem style from Cynthia Rylant, in her book God Went to Beauty School.)

On a dew-filled morning

A carpet of grass
shimmering, a path
of diamonds, liquid
crystals where buds
will burst forth soon
The only thing
missing was cows
midnight black
creamy white
warm brown
their muzzles moist
with slippery green
eyes bowed to
the sun ascending
having breakfast
in a cathedral

Holy Spirit: Mad farmer

(This post is for Share Cropper who left a comment on the post "Love and power".)

She got a tractor
because she likes to shift,
chug, chug, driving it in unending
S-curves, back and forth
across her family square of field
lustily singing old hymns
How Firm a Foundation and His Eye is On the Sparrow
often belting tunes that Eva sang
at Blues Alley. She plants
flowers: pungent marigolds, vibrant zinnias,
coneflower and Susans for the butterflies
globe thistle for the honey bees
roses because Maria in Nicaragua has to
puts them in with her
vegetables: voluptuous tomatoes, regal corn,
fragrant basil for pesto,
rutabaga for a grandfather,
lima beans because she likes the sound of ‘succotash’
—a bright wiggly patch among
the huge quilt of farms.
As she mucks barefoot through
the sodden field, her
painted toes give a
flashy red smile in
the dark earth.
She turns and laughs
at her footprints,
the curve of her arch
leaving puddles shaped
like her garden rows.
She composts, hauls
in manure, piles on
dead leaves, plunges her
hands till she comes up
with worms. She looks
at death and says, “Now.”
At harvest she
shares a tenth with her
neighbors but with
the rest she feeds the
poor at her table
and fills nursing homes
with the scent of flowers.

November

Remember
remember the dead
and those still
with us draw breath
Remember veterans
and armistice
reasoning for war
the wreckage of a man’s
and a woman’s
living, family, a nation,
a world, that it never ends
anything but life

Remember to vote
that fierce whisper
amid the chattering clamor
power to say enough

Remember
a thwarted gunpowder plot
all those who would tear
asunder that which is joined

Remember to give thanks
not eat too much
make room at the table
and that Advent is coming soon
Remember me, he said
whenever you break bread
and pour wine to share

Remember
students in Prague
and the Velvet Revolution
the golden queen’s
ascension and deathbed
remember the Compassionate
One enthroned in Tibet
yet to return

Remember the owl
her silent flight beneath
Orion's watchful eye
the cloistered bee
the beauty of bare trees
a carpet of russet and gold
not to be seen for another year

Remember
the seed, the sunken bulb,
the misplaced acorn and walnut
the promise of life
cycled within death

Triad

Almost could not walk
for the trillium
pinned by their
shy shadowy points
amid the young
tender green
A color only seen
on the heaviest of
moon days
I stooped to lift
its chin, bowed
to the majesty
noonday bright
And the second time
a butterfly winged
my heart I wondered
Does the butterfly
know the trillium?