"The Mailman"

(1 Corinthians 16:13-14)

I can see you wanting to look me in the eye
Craving my attention just long enough to
Make me a convert of your perverse truth;
You’re destructive heresy.
I can see who you are.

You will think of my anger as misdirected,
My experience as falling short of your own.
I know you and I know what you expect of me.
But if you think I am going to step down
And take the express train to hell to satisfy
You’re mouth full of fear,
You will be sadly put out when I take my seat
Right beside yours.
I can see you for who you are.

You are the trip tongued devil wearing the skins
Of good people to try and pull me under
To drown me in unspoken hatred and burning
Misquotes that make you the angel,
Make me the demon.
I see what you are doing. I can see YOU.

Wrong

I want you to hear me.
I don’t want to be misunderstood
Or misquoted
I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea
To dissect my words to find a hidden meaning.
I don’t want you to even think that I have
A meaning that I would try to hide.

I know the meaning of the word wrong.
I know that right is think that feels good
And tells you that you are pleasing God.
I know the wrong thing will break you
Into pieces so small that you can’t help
But cut everyone who tries to help you
See the way to right.
This is why there can be no misunderstanding
Me when I am saying these things.

I understand that you are holding a bible
Deflecting my love with it, coloring me
In with the black ink of it’s pages
And screaming the only things you can make
Sense of to tell me that I am hurting you,
Hurting your belief and your trust that
You are being lead in the right direction
Even though I can see from the way you bend
To protect yourself from my smile
That it hurts you to try and break me.
I know that you mean to love me,
Mean to hold me sacred, because my heart
Is not screaming for pain.
I will continue to reach out and touch your
Face and connect you to my love
Because I can’t forget that you are a part
Of me, I think you feel that too.

But I am not going to let it go.
I am not going stop begging you to
Hear the words I am speaking because I am
Holding the bible to my heart
And not trying to deflect you, not hiding
From the smile you are trying to not
Share with me…
I know you want to love me.
What I need you to know is that love
Is never wrong.
It’s never wrong to hold someone to you
That wants to be in your arms
Its never wrong to kiss the lips that whisper your name
In the dark of night and the light of day
Its never wrong to say goodnight
Its never wrong to say good morning
To the same face each day of your life.
Its never wrong to wear a gold band
And confine your sweetness to the hands of
Another when you know they are going
To take such good care of it.

Can’t you see what I want?
I want you to stop, stop screaming
That I am the sin.
Stop saying that God cannot love me
Because I hear him inside my head
My heart
Turning words inside my soul
And I hear nothing but the bright
Light of love
That I am welcoming in.
How can you say that’s wrong?
How can you say that I am dangerous,
Thinking the devils thoughts
When all I want to do is love
While you are trying to trample me?

I know you want to love me.
Just reach out one hand
I will take it, I will hold it
Stand strong
And never let you down
Walk with me down the same road
And see that I am not taking a path
Any different from your own
Trust me that I know God too.

I know you want to love me,
Because I love you.
Jesus told me it was the right thing
Why don’t you agree?

principles

I have done so much thinking, praying and talking
To those close to me in the past few days
Regarding a topic of enormous ‘issue’ for me.
I have to deal with it head on and I don’t want too
But what continues to stand in my path is
That I must do the right thing.
When right and wrong are so very vibrant,
I have to simply chose right and stand for it.

It’s really hard to stand for what’s right.
Inevitably someone will get hurt,
Someone will be get angry and someone
Will become defensive and use that as a means
To knock you down.
But right is right.
And hypocrisy is not right.

I have decided to completely
Uninvolved myself in something that actually
Means a lot to me based on pure principle.
I cannot be part and parcel to an act
Of blatant hypocrisy…
It would be lying, it would be against
My beliefs so powerfully
That I would be ashamed of myself.

So now, it sounds easy,
Just don’t get involved.
But its not that easy..
I cannot silently uninvolved myself
Because the world wont change through
Silence.
To step back and cross your arms
In disgust…
You become a main character in the
Acts you find repulsive.
So the hard part is to face the fact
That you have to stand up and say
“I don’t believe in what you are doing.
I think your acts are unchristian. I believe
What you are doing is more harmful
Than helpful.”

But to have to say this all to and about
Someone you love
Is the worst feeling in the world…
But the best thing you could ever do.

"Everything" (Psalm 62:7)

I can rise
Waking against the dawn
Drawing myself from the comfort
I believe, into the purple-gray
That I am so unsure of
I can open my eyes
Stare into the horizon
Daring the sun to look back at my
Face and blind me with it’s
Unending draught
Purified in fire
Disintegrating darkness
I can do anything
Even if I am only me

I can retire
Pushing against the light
Quieting myself with the escape
Into my own world
Something I think of as
Mine alone
I can convince myself that this
Doesn’t have to happen to me
I don’t need to see the sun
When I am shivering with the moon
In my hands I create dreams
Telling myself I don’t belong
To the world you made
I can do anything
Even if I am only me

I can.
You etch into my soul
The desire to resist
The desire to fight
To comfort
Steal
Scream
Laugh
Divide
Dream
Control
Decide
You let me call it my own and
I fall into your arms
Calling it anything I choose
To invent

You will wake me with the light
You put me to sleep with the night
You let me believe me
You let me just be

Free me

So helpless.
These are times of trouble when
We struggle like animals in caves
Trying to see the darkness for more than the light
Trusting the light not at all because it chanced
The darkness was false.
Questions are not riddles
Answers are not certain
Things are taken from us and given to others
And we are embattled..
Truncated by the very God we deign to
Worship.. worship with such limited
Trust…

Times of trouble.

The struggle is not new to me,
It is not new to you either.
That helpless desperate need to change
Things that cannot be controlled
And fix things that are simply not
Broken other than by your own vision.
We damn ourselves for our lack
Of healing when others hurt
Our inability to work miracles
When things are impossible..
And we damn God for entrusting the world
To us and not empowering us as he is empowered himself.

Oh, false prophets and cast iron idols are we.

I dare you to sit, to look at your own face
And admit that you are the powerless.
You are the human child to a mysterious Lord
And he cares not if you have the answers
Because you don’t have what it takes to
Make these answers the truth…
This is not a condemnation.
This is a beautiful relief when you are faced
With injustice, desperation, disaster, loss and pain.
You are not cursed
You have not been forsaken
You are simply human.
You are responsible for only what you put into this world
Not what He has taken out of it.
I speak not only to you
My brother of fear
My sister of discontent
I speak to myself, most potent enemy.

In trying to learn that unhappiness
Exists not to swallow me
But to remind me that joy does not grow
Without sorrow first sowing the fields
I cannot hope to know happiness
If I do not trust that it is on the heels of
Sadness and that the two do
Walk together and one will be
Sorely missed should the other be
Cast away so completely.

No, you cannot solve the pains that
Are bound to open the wounds of the world
You are not responsible for the knives that carve them
So unless it is your hand so maliciously set forth.
I don’t know what to tell you
Because I am not that powerful, my words
Ache with loss and misdirection as much as any
But I know only that in this time of
Terrible loss
I have found so much gained.

Morning in Jerusalem

Good morning and happy Easter.

it's a beautiful thing to awaken
to be forgiven
to be with one another
to know the truth

Christ is risen!

re-writing Isaiah 41:10

I watched your head fall
Your haunted silence is mine
The tested waters cold to your
skin at the riverside
I see what this has done
to you in the sacred places
The changeless soul
that I have grown to love
as I could only love my own
I know that you cry
Tears of lost redemption
Tears of prayer for the last
of the revelations
I can taste the salt on my lips
when you sing in the dark
It is for me that you sing
the words are my loss as well

Before you drive yourself
any closer to the ledge
Stumble any further from
my sights
Let me plead with you
in a language you will know
Take care, frightened heart
Hold to the shore and you will
find in time that it is my hand
Run into the darkness and I
will make it my arms
Fall to your knees and wail for me
I will make it a love song
and your cries will be redemption
Trust me that I am here in
your darkest nights of fear
Whatever wrong you believe is done
I have righted it with my love
You and I are the same
And forsake you I will not