Eastern Angel

Photo credit here.

Eastern Angel
Blow upon this sea
Thick with reeds
And re-create
Dry land from 
Water’s depth
So all of us
Living in captivity,
Awaiting salvation,
Needing a new land-
A new life-
A new way of being
May make it to 
The other side
Dry shod
Dancing,
Singing the stories
Of prisoner’s set free,
Bound wounds,
Reignited flames
And kept promises
Especially, kept promises
Returning us
To our home.
 
4/4/26
And so we reach the end of Lent. For those reading, thank you. I do not normally post during the rest of the year, but I may begin to add in writings for Advent. Subscribe if you’d like to be kept in the loop when I am writing and posting! 
 
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
 
Happy Easter!

Breaking Open

 

Photo credit here.

I wrote this benediction as the ending to my sermon entitled "Breaking Open." I had used Mary Oliver's poem "Lead" as a call throughout the sermon. The majority is from Ephesians 3:17-21.

BENEDICTION

There are many stories to break your heart

May it break open and never close again to the rest of the world

For Jesus has come to be transfigured in us

That being rooted and established in love, we may have power

together with all God’s people

To grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ

And to experience this love that surpasses mere knowledge in the

fleshiness of our bodies

So we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God

Now to God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or

imagine, according to God’s power at work within us, to God be glory

in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations for ever

and ever, Amen.

March 2025

Different

Photo credit here.

 

3/21/25

Providence

Photo Credit here.

 

A slippery fish

Fighting the pull of current

Yet still pushed along

To some destination yet unseen

 

The steely-eyed hawk

Soaring on the winds

A dance with changing direction

To keep aloft and flying

 

A sunflower

Raising its weighty head

Adores the sun and moves

To communicate its praise

 

And what of me

Fights or soars or adores

Through the flow of my life

Directed by forces unseen? 

 

Tomorrow is mystery

Unfolding in every breath

A past which whispers

“Bidden or unbidden, God is here.” 

 

3/14/26

Time Compression

 

Photo credit here.

A week’s worth of a day

Open air and cadence

Sweet nothings and coffee

Cleaning, preparing, going. . .

 

Arriving in hurried conversation

Check the boxes

Make the orders, give

The unexpected, crushing blow

 

An injury, a promised filing

Tears in the hallway

Cuttings on the floor

But you must move forward

 

Leaving at last

Light streaming

The cows making dinner

For a beloved companion

 

Then the screen

Recalling countless words

Which make no sounds

But fill me weary

 

A usual consequence

Of time compressed,

Jammed, stomped from

One week, into one day.

 

Lord help us all.

3/7/26

Seeing God

Gustave Dore, ‘Paradiso, Canto 31’ (19th century)

Found here.

The story of Jacob and Esau includes a pericope in which Jacob, having stolen Esau’s birthright, must travel through the country where Esau resides. Jacob frets over the anger his brother feels and seemingly expects retribution. 

 

As he travels through the country, he sends his wives before him. The first to meet Esau are the women and children Jacob cares for the least. He saves Rachel to the end, but still, he sends her before him with her two children. Then, traveling even further behind Rachel, he meets Esau last. 

 

When he finally stands before Esau, Esau embraces Jacob. When Jacob is released, he steps back and says, “In seeing you, I see the Face of God.” 

 

Outside of Jesus, this is the only other person in the Bible who is identified as God and it is because of the mercy and love Esau shows Jacob, despite Jacob’s treachery and scheming. 

 

The Lenten card asked where I have seen God, and because spring weather brings new life all around, seeing hints of God abound (no charge for the rhyme). Seeing God in people is more difficult, however, because people act horribly. Jacob needed mercy and Esau gave it to him – god-like stuff. According to Jesus, the sick I see in the hospital are God. The prisoner, the poor, the “least of these.” Radical ideas especially in the current social context. 

 

I’m not good at seeing God in those Christ said are God and yet God, according to this criteria, surrounds me day-in and day-out. I stand on holy ground all the time. May I - may we all - have eyes to see.

3/2/26

Good Friday Prayer

 

Photo credit here.

Save us, LORD,

from ourselves and

the unintended

consequences of - 

provoked or unprovoked - 

actions when we

simply cannot go on.

Give us strength

to ride the waves

of our striving

until we find our 

True Home in You - 

the Calmer of all our

distresses who hears

the thunder clap

then crash resounding

Above all the voices and noise

vying for our attention

May we hear - and follow - 

only Yours.

- February 22, 2025

(Un)Belief

 

Photo credit here.

As small as a 

mustard seed.

Yes, faith is

hard to find.

We believe, but

help,

our unbelief is

gargantuan. 

- February 10, 2025

Explorations

 

Photo credit here.

How shall I explore?

By car on open roadways

Mouth dropped

Taking in a beauty too great

to hold in one lifetime? 

Or maybe. . .

by settling in a city,

in a job, in a home

and "doing life" among

a people I do not understand? 

Is exploration friendship - 

where I find gems and vipers

by turning over, digging up

the hard surfaces of my soul? 

Or maybe it is growing

Deeper in one square mile

Reaching higher into 

the area's dimensionality - 

MY dimensionality. . .

Open my eyes to SEE

the myriads of moments and 

places and people and qualities

which beg to be explored.

- February 1, 2025

No Place Like Home

 

Photo credit here.

J and I have now purchased my childhood home. We took over 2 of the 3 bedrooms, the hall bath, and the dining room-turned laundry room/pantry. The rest of our goods landed at the storage facility 2 miles away. Too much stuff crammed into unaesthetic monotony on the 3^rd floor, down the hallway to the left as you get off the elevator.

 

Dad and I share coffee in the mornings while Mom drinks her Boost. J and I go for walks along the creek behind the property, then up along the ridge line of the
Hills. Our rescue, the Maltese named Riley, has grown in to a veritable therapy dog – his love for love softening everyone he meets. Work remains fulfilling, as the people in front of me find space and freedom to air deep concerns or hidden secrets – leaving them lighter and more hopeful.

 

Thanks to Richard Rohr’s book, Falling Upward, I’m looking at my return home to Rocky Ridge through the lens of the Odyssey with its wandering and return, attempting to see how all the pieces of my life are grace. My vision’s not so great, but if God shows up in anything, it is this beam of truth: everything is grace.

 

Going on 16 years ago, my wanderings took me to a Catholic retreat center in North Carolina. St. Therese, the Little Flower, was its patroness. A labyrinth lay just beyond the dorm, scattered trees encircling it. I walked the labyrinth with urgency since I wrestled with returning back South, and particularly to Memphis, TN. I had left the South 3 years earlier and, in that time, faced some of my own demons from childhood. I felt broken and utterly confused about why now was the right time to come back. I had not wanted to return and tried my best to stay in Berkeley, but all the doors closed.

 

I poured my heart out as I walked in one orbit then in retrograde, in-toward-the-center-and-away-again, on the serpentine path to the middle of the labyrinth. As I stepped into the quiet center of that particular system, I saw it: a singular stepping stone imprinted with the shape of a butterfly, its wings filled with the shattered glass from some imperfect past.  Then imperceptibly the thought came, “Nothing is wasted. What has been your wounding will be your path to flight.” Then the tears and gratitude of hope. 

 

I met J in Memphis – a conduit of love and grace that I could never have dreamed or imagined, but God could and did. And here we are, in Birmingham, back at ground zero. I’m trying to envision how all the pieces are being formed into wings – the pleasant, the difficult, the indifferent. Some days the evidence shines, some days not so much, but I believe the hope discovered on the path and I trust the Love with all the unbelief that remains. As a prayer to St. Therese says, 

 

“Little Flower, give me your childlike faith,
to see the Face of God
in the people and experiences of my life,
and to love God with full confidence.”

 

May it be so, God. May it be so.

- Written as an Advent devotional, 11/2020

Resurrection

Photo credit here.

To Mom

The cherry spoke your name;

haloed by the sun,

a thousand angel wings

shimmering -

The blush of red bud,

pierced squares of dogwood,

party hat fronds clinging

to loropetalum.

My teammate once

scoffed at your many,

many pictures of trees

wondering a loud why

You loved them so.

Now, it's obvious she

did not understand,

had no appreciation of

Resurrection.

Now I do.

Until we met again.

I love you.

God Prays Back

Photo credit: Pat Lucas

 Kara,

I Am here -

Listening with you to the bird calls.

Rejoicing with the surprise of hyacinth,

the laughter of daffodils...

Smiling, for the promise of renewal

all around. 

I Am near: 

the Breath you inhale,

the Melody you hear,

the Feast you taste,

With each moment, each heartbeat

Each pulse of body, of nerve

I Am holding all you offer:

Bottles for tears; 

Incense for intercessions;

Words deeper than you know

for all the wonder and pain

knowing no words to contain them.

I Am with you.
.

Prayer

God, 

I'm waiting, as much as I know how,

in the clearing,

cupped hands waiting with anticipation

for the song of my life to light,

beam in sounds only I understand.

I'm walking, the mountain

of my experiences,

the fossils impressed 

on craggy memories, beaten by the sea 

wreckage known only to those who died on similar shores.

I'm willing, to be opened

petal by petal

to face the glorious light,

to feel the ache of space,

to know what it means to be planted.

As long as You are with me.