Dedication

To my Rescuer
I dedicate these thanks.
And as token of my gratitude
I offer you my time
For you have given me eternity.

True
Through and through
Melded and welded to righteousness.
Honest faith, honest works
Humble continuity in my new life.
A Sunday way of life
Every day of my life.
Making this gospel my own,
Living the parables
Bearing the burdens
Sharing the yoke that is easy to lift.
It is easy, brings comfort
When embraced in my heart,
When worn every moment,
When borne as my cross.
My actions agree
With my inmost beliefs.
Conversion, when true,
Makes you and me free.

Emblems

Reverently I take the bread,
     Soft and sweet,
Chew and swallow this symbol of Christ.
Teeth grind the bread,
Lashes on the back
Foreign sorrows pressed into his soul.
The cool water,
     Refreshing,
An emblem of blood given in agony.

O living God

O living God
     You look upon death and allow it
O God of mercy
     All knowing, Lord of Hosts
What contradictions
     in your word and nature
What complexities so obscure.
Do you balance your perfection
As we juggle our flaws?

O loving Father
Potent love
     Do you wrestle with yourself
With your pure love
As single as your glory?

Let him in

God
He wept
Earth
She moaned
Righteousness swept-
Buried--asleep in the ground.
Men, we have walked
All over the earth,
Our time we have mocked
With scorn or with mirth.
No place for God
No room at the inn
For Christ's quiet knock,
Gentle healing from sin.
Jesus, he died.
Our debt, he paid.
Jesus, he loves you-
Let him in! Let him in!

Lord, I would serve thee

Lord, I would serve thee,
The king who wants nought
But to love in the melee,
To find those who sought
For his word and his hand,
For his arm and his armies
That shelter, protect the land
Of our hearts, our promise
To serve only Thou,
Humble King, Divine Lamb,
The sower to sow,
Alpha, Omega, I AM.

Child of God

A child, Lord,
in thy house,
I trust, Lord,
in thy love.
I take, Lord,
of thy strength.
I give, Lord,
a poor return,
But I hope, Lord,
like thee to be.

I float behind my eyes,
I'd drift but
I can't shift
From the self-same perspective
Peeping out from behind my eyes.

My mind is malleable
In extraordinary ways
What seems extraordinary to me
That my deepest held convictions
Might be infringed on
Day by day
By interlopers, mere words
That with repetition and rapture
Would have the power of right.
Waves of words
Pull at the context
Until I'm dizzy from standing still
And my soul aches
For the pain in every case.

The visceral memory
Of Emotions
Amazes me
That perception of an event
                         of a voice
                         of a place
Triggers a chemical reaction
And stimulates the brain
Does not explain nor express
The pressing of excitement
On the diaphragm
Or the heavy hanging of regret
From the spine
And every emotion
Feels physically different
But equally overwhelming in a moment
Emotions must be the
Forces of my nature.

Limits are good
For all that free will is fine and dandy
Limits and laws are necessary
And blessed relief
To keep our sanity installed
Only imagine a life
With nothing but choices
Of not only who to be
But even what how and where
Without the physical factuality of science
And the legal labyrinth
That we love to criticize
Imagine what power
Each person must hold
That power would be the heaviest gravity of all
Each person might be pinned to themselves
And so I thank my God
For the necessity of sleep
And the constancy of walking on the ground
For all the choices I can't make

These voices
    their tone
    their diction
Where do they come from?
From where do they draw their knowledge?
What is their source material?
There voices that say
    You are beautiful
    You are valuable
    You are essential
They can hardly be talking about me
Let alone spring from me
The bigger mystery
Why do I believe them
Implicitly
And so readily

Life is a quest for feeling
But what sensation has the middle of the middle
The Middle of the Middle
With no Great Gift
Nor any curse
With no plight or curse or mission
Only every reason to be ever happy
What then
What feeling
But a straightline of
Obliged contentment
Which should, aright, be sweetest
Bliss
But what if sign
Of Surest failure
Of Heart
Of Body Mind and Soul
Where one acts not enough
To achieve the pain of
Important matters
Torn away
And Truly failed
With nobility.

I need my forever and after
Because I am a creature of pain
And I need a purpose
This need doesn't diminish
My Forever into a
Figment of depair
It is not created of me
But I of it
A small strand of Eternity
To be knotted and frayed
And woven
To Be
To Become
To Continue
To Consecrate
The Pain that matters
Not just for hope
But Inherent meaning
In the Vibrancy and Death
Of Life.

I am not mine
Solely Exclusively
But I am bought with a price
Of Blood Dreams and Grief
My ancestors toiled and fought
For a better life.
Kings of earth and princes and pilgrims
Have borne my blood
To this land
To this day
Where it flows through this body
Entrusted to my care.
But still Named Nurtured and Taught
By others
By teachers
By friends
By Family
My Parents' words worries and tears
Carved canyons in my psyche that
Spell out my person my past memories and moral
I am not my own
But bought with a price of centuries
And Firstly and Lastly
Bought with that blood
Of God become Man
Become Sacrifice for me.

The morning light
Catches the triumph
Of the empty tomb.
The very earth shook
And reels still
In the conviction of his victory.
All of nature magnifies
His unconquerable light.
He shares his life as he ever shared it.
Freely, Lovingly, Perfectly, with us.
And he dries every tear
And restores every life.
No sorrow too heavy, grief too deep, sin too black
Nor even death
To stop his divine love.
Why look we for the living among the dead?
He is not here,
For he is risen!

We accept the love we think we deserve
Excepting Christ's love because
Accepting Christ's love
Fills the world past overflowing,
Flooding our souls, our lives,
Our love is made more by His
And our lives renewed by His
Our hope, our brightest hope
Is him
In Him we live
If we let Him live in us
Let his love guide our actions
Because he leads our steps
Into eternity
Our Eternal King
He lives and loves us still.

Underground rivers
Shimmer through the topsoil,
That tints and dims them
As they run south
Under purple valleys
from twin lakes
That bore into the
Center of the Earth
Where secrets flit
Like birds
Learning their wings
And hopes fail
Like old legs
Weary of the gravity
And pebbles set off
Tinny echoes
In the depths.

The Universe is his Palet,
The galaxies and their nebulas
His mixing board.
His canvas stretches beyond the borders of the mind,
This fabric we call Space-Time.
His brush-strokes and blending
Portray so flawless, seamless, effortless a picture,
At times do we fear there is no Painter?
His mural is so vast, broad and deep,
Details illuminate details,
At times do we feel buried in the layers?
And the scene is universal,
Bridging before the beginning and after the end,
Do we feel o'erstepped in it's eternal stride?

We are not.
We are not.
The colors he lay for us,
We take up and live.
And always, His red enlivens our brushes.

The temptation is to sit and still
to invisibility
To lie behind our glass walls, our glassy eyes
And observe and absorb the scenery
Until we sit sure of ourselves
Like the unmoved mountains
To let the traffic and people and feelings
Scuttle along
Without you
To simplify
To simply
Be

The sky is blue
And somehow, it holds hope
Sunshine is warm, even in winter
And my skin craves its caress
A good nap can ease any wound
And you can heal when you wake
The grief of life and death
Means our time is worth something
And the beauty
Means there are mysteries for us yet.

And we need words to assure ourselves
We matter

Haircut

Staying up all night is rarely wise
And never healthy
If I got more sleep
This wouldn't have happened
If I got more sleep
My face wouldn't have been so spotty
If I got more sleep
I would never have seen the scissors.

My Hall

There are people in my hall
Why
My hall, my mop, my job
But there are people in my hall
People with food
People with friends
People watching the game on TV
There are people in my hall with food, friends, and TV
I stand here with my mop
Now sigh
Now join them
Mopping can wait.

Bubbles

I was blowing bubbles in the dark,
the near dark anyway,
and watching the colors spin.
I should go in, I knew,
But I sat on the dorm's dark steps and I bless
Bubbles from a little plastic wand.
It was after work, getting late already,
My night promised to get later still,
What with homework and reading
And I really should clean
And try to act my age.
But where is the fun and laughter
In late night tedium
In real responsibility.
The silence around a lamp-lit textbook
Is deadly, only.
The quiet with the bubbles, a spell.

Beautiful Savior

Beautiful Savior,
Redeemer of All,
How do you love me
When I am so small?
Small in my spirit,
Small in my care,
How do I look to you,
'Midst heaven's bright air?
Beautiful Savior,
You died for my sin,
You died for my sorrows,
My weakness, and then
You rose from the tomb,
You defeated the grave,
You live to bring life,
You are mighty to save!
You love me and lift me,
Though I fail still,
You reach down in love
To a scared little girl.

In Praise of God

In Praise of God,
No mere words suffice.
Words sent on a breath of the heart
Up to heaven
Up to majesty and mercy
Up to our Father in heaven,
Words whispered with humble feeling
Reach his ear,
And his love is ours.

In praise of this great God,
No mere words suffice.
Not words only,
But thoughts, focus
Feelings, worries, heartaches,
Joys, gratitudes, empathies,
Services, sacrifices,
All the fight, fire, and mighty strength
Of the spirit.

In praise of God,
No mere words suffice,
But all heart, might, mind, and strength,
My very self.

Who can share the burden of humanity
But who can bear it alone

Who would relinquish their joys and their griefs
                                  their precious selves
                                  their fragile, trembling souls
To any who must validate,
                           evaluate,
                           freeze and examine
                                                        in the air between their eyes
                                                        in the worlds between their minds

But who would starve their thoughts
                  and dry their empathy
                  and treasure the unknown dust
                                                                 of thoughts that could have lit
                                                                         another's world
                                                                and griefs they might've shared.

Who will share myself with me
Will I walk alone

Soft arms pull me into the dark
The Black of space
          the mystery
          the glittering 'may-be's
The eye of peace
             of sleep
No lights to rouse the mind
               to call battalions of thoughts
               to arms
               to war against the flesh
But the sleep that deadens pain
                           softens aches
                           binds regret
And bids Acceptance reign

In black sleep, sins are not seen
It lies, in its perfection
But soothes my woeful brow, nonetheless