Pedicure

Pedicure

456 pounds of flesh

            In the ICU

            Mounded up on the bed

There was a man hidden in all that flesh

            Covered in hair and scars and moles and skin grafts

Machined up

Tubed up

Wired up

            Like a failed Borg

            Like an experiment

            Like Frankenstein giving it another go

                        Praying for Lightning

Sedated flesh

            Slowly.

                        Shutting.

                                    Down.

Organs lining up

One by one

For their chance to check out

A mountain of chest

            Swelling

            Contracting

            In rhythm with machine sighs

Death paced the hall

            More impatient than ever

            Its foul stench oozing in

            Toward Kelly’s desk.

Where she measured life

            In beeps, blinks, and blips

Without grimace or contempt or judgment

            Of the fat man in the ICU

Half naked, squeezed into an oversized bed

            Everything in the world

            Too damn small for him

Kelly rummaged around in her bag of compassion

            Dignity looked like clippers

            Honor looked like a file

            A quick pedicure before Death barges in

A generous and unanxious pause

             Between the violence of life

            And the violence of death

Decorating a Christmas Tree

Decorating a Christmas Trees

Somewhere

Between blatantly intentional

            And helplessly random;

Somewhere

Between concrete fact

            And magically inventive;

Somewhere

            Between true recollections

            And recollections understood as truth,

I hand pick life events

            From the stores of life events

Stacked up in closets

Stuffed under beds

Buried in the backyard

Junk left here by friends

Some events large

Some small

Some just made up

I string them along

Like popcorn and cranberries

Hanging on Grandma’s Christmas tree

And that’s my story

I hang it up on the tree

For all to see

Right next to Aunt Judy’s wooden elf

            A story of her own

And Great Grandma’s handmade tinsel

            A story no one really believes

And this weird glass snowman

            That appears each year,

            But no one knows whose it is

I hang it on the tree

For all to see

            With reruns of War of the Worlds

                        Playing on the radio

            With wall to wall news of wars

Playing on the television

With culture wars songs

                        Playing on an ipod

This is my story

This is my song

Inside of your story

Inside of your song

We are the flesh

This is a prayer for professors and instructors of MFTs, counselors, psychologists, and anyone involved in the work of teaching and training healers. 

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We Are The Flesh

What we find in our hands

Is the tender beginnings

Of the careers of our students

Multiplied by the aches and fears of their clients

And now hundreds, no thousands of lives

Are touched by us

For the touch of our hands goes with them

For the words of our mouths goes with them

For the tone of our voices goes with them

Yes, our voice goes with them

Everything we do becomes context for everything they do

What have you done?

Did you not know we are just humans?

Mere men; mere women; mere flesh

Our flaws can ripple

Just as our successes

Our pathology can be multiplied

Just as our health

Our ugly can be seen

Just as our beauty

And yet it is only flesh that can do this

And for whatever reason

We are the flesh chosen to do this

We are the flesh privileged to do this

We are the flesh that must do this

Humble this flesh

So that humility flows through our students

Strengthen this flesh

So that strength flows through our students

Make courageous this flesh

So that courage flows through our students

Heal this flesh

So that healing flows through our students

Little is the Beginning of Big

You give us little things

Itty bitty things

Seeds, handfuls of seeds,

Sometimes nothing but seeds

When we stand in forests and fields

With hands full of seeds

We will not weep for the smallness of the seeds

We will not despair that everything else is so grown

We will not run away for some better place to be

We are here

We have these

We can do this

We are alive

And ready to be planted

To be aliver

We are not masters

We are untrained

All we ever have to do

Is let go

Of the seeds

Whatever seeds you gave us

And let them go

To the ground

And in little things

You do big things

Little is the beginning of big

We can’t do big all alone

All on our own

All at once

But little is the beginning of big

You give us little things

Itty bitty things

Seeds, handfuls of seeds,

Sometimes nothing but seeds

Jesus Interrupted

Jesus Interrupted

Met a man

Who didn’t believe

In anything at all;

He tried so hard

To get me to join;

Tried to make me feel small;

Met a man

Who surely believed

That he knew it all;

He tried so hard

To get me to join;

Tried to make me feel small;

Winter souls

Summer souls

Freezing and burning souls

Souls like you

Souls like me

Somebody has to set us free.

Met a man

Down on his luck

With a bruise on his soul;

He tried so hard

To soothe his ache

But the world had let him go

Met a man

Who loved his mirror

Didn’t know his own name;

He tried so hard

To be someone

But got swallowed whole by Fame

Winter souls

Summer souls

Freezing and burning souls

Souls like you

Souls like me

Somebody has to set us free.

And their souls cry out

At the fleeting light

Do you want to get lonely

With me tonight?

Take a drink

Tell a lie

Making believe

We’re all alright

Winter souls

Summer souls

Freezing and burning souls

Souls like you

Souls like me

Somebody has to set us free.

In all humility, I am Superior

You took my breath away,
Far away,
So far away;

Into the wind,
Over the water,
To the horizon,
Plunged down deep -
We are one;

I am in you;
You are in me;

No matter where I've been:
Malibu with a crashing cold surf,
Destin with soft white sand,
Accra with African Palm,
You've always had part of me
They can never hold;

The ships come in
From everywhere
Pushing white foam,
Buoyed impossibly full,
Laden with hope,
And at the Gate,
You let them all in
To tell me another secret,

And I look to you
Like a child looks to giants for wisdom,
A speck on the shore,
Surrounded by the relentless
Wave after wave of wisdom;
So deep;
So vast;
Such mysterious and violent wisdom,

But I am not afraid of you;
Your spray over the rocks
Cools my temper in the hot sun,
Your rhythm on pebbled shore
Teaches my heart how to pound and ease,
Your million water colors
Tell me to feel all my feelings,
Your winter fog wall
Is a shield about me,
Your infinity
Proves there is Infinity;

God
I want to see you!

But I can wait to see you again,
For you have taught me Temperance,
You have taught me Baptism;
The River will eventually flow to you,
I can wait,
Because it is inevitable,
I will see you again

I am in you;
You are in me.

Maybe it's all prayer

There are times when I cannot pray. I mean really pray. I mean talk with God like I mean it. In those times I do a lot of other things. Sometimes I don't even attempt a prayer. Other times I fall into some rote prayer expression that feels every bit as meaningless as it probably is. There are times when I read Walter Brueggemann's prayers. Sometimes I just get busy doing something that can register as productive or meaningful. Still other times I just sit there like a writer with an extreme case of writer's block. Nope, got nothing. 

I have seen couples at a restuarant unable to utter a word to each other. I watch and wonder what is the depth of their intimacy. I wonder whether they are angry with each other or whether the life has drained from their relationship. I wonder a lot of things and none of them are good. And sometimes my prayer life looks like that couple who can't find a single word to say to each other.

Prayer, what can be a simple conversation, a desperate wail, a deep confiding, an intimate connection, an expression of gratitude, an attentive listening, can also sometimes be a sort of awkward moment, an uncomfortable social situation - it can feel like a blind date mismatch.

I wish for prayer to be easier, more in the flow of my life. I wish for the mere experience of something to fling me automatically into prayer, like the thing that happened that I cannot wait to share and then I do share and turn MY experience into OUR experience. And sometimes it is, but sometimes it isn't. I wish the very angst I feel, the joy the bursts within me, the laughter that explodes, the hurt, the hope, the uncertainty, the anxiety, the fear, the optimism, the dreaming, the...I wish everything I think and feel was prayer.

And maybe it is, in some sense. Maybe it's all prayer. Maybe having an intermittent prayer disability is not some new thing or the dashboard light indicating low faith.  Perhaps I am not alone to shoulder the responsibility of prayer. Perhaps...

"...the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans." - Romans 8:26

Profound Sadness

A friend's tear brought me back
To innocence,
A boy,
When I believed everything,
Everyone ever said,
Because everyone was every bit good;

One honest tear
Cut like a diamond blade
Through the granite shelf;
Sunlight pierced through
Exposing a
Quivering, formerly safe boysoul,
Confused in a manbody - a broken manworld

So bruised; so scarred;
So beaten up by theology thugs,
Charlatans, Minions, and Monsters,
The Biblically conflicted and confused,
And legions of misguided innocents,
All filling their roles
For perpetuation of abomination,
Dominion accumulation,

One tear bleeding toxins
Of profound sadness;
When someone could have told a boy the truth
But hid it under a bushel instead -
Instead, a tear:
Too honest to abandon truth;
Too broken to risk seeking it;
Too angry to see straight;
Too tired to shake off sadness;
So overwhelmed by the massive soulgaps
Exposed when illusions wore off
Holes so deep they can't be filled for me,

But what about my son?