{doce de mayo}
their faces crowd my eyelids
their eyes plead “how can you leave”
“how can you leave us here?”

and really, how can i?

sleep evades me like it does him,
on the nights when his mom doesn’t come home
the nights the voices carry,
the gunshots linger

i grasp for the meaning of it
why and how He is all and means all and gives all meaning.

i grasp the way her fingers do
when jumping and grabbing at all she can see,
all she believes she can reach
nothing more and nothing less.

and really, we grasp at the same thing, them and i
for love, for worthiness,
for meaning to the worn shoes and black eye and tragedy
and the beautiful, mysterious redemption.

some days i wake up squinting, unable to open my eyes at first because of the world around me that wears down, tears down, leads in the direction of all things after the garden- falling;

this darkness only makes brighter the grace and glory of Him who lifts up my head. so bright it hurts my eyes and hurts my head because i cannot fathom it.

it is only by this blinding light i am found, led, and moving forward today.

this all encompassing persona,

her hair whips around her face as her dark eyes flash a look of audacious hope.

towards your direction she aims her gaze.

you are captured and then consumed.

in the chaotic wind that threatens to overtake

in the hailstorm that has beaten you down

in the lightening that has taken your flame and passion

and in the thunder that has overpowered your voice;

in the aftermath of the storm that has left you

alone.

here she walks towards you with a limp in her gait as you are face down, grasping to the earth for constance.

here you feel your hand being taken by another filled with scars,

and proven wrong are your fears of solitude.

here she guides you towards something else, something living

away from the chaos,

away from the uprooted trees and the broken blades of grass.

here in the rain battered field, in the eye of the storm;

here she teaches you to reach away from the earth,

to reach upward,

as she does towards the one to whom she belongs.

she reveals the radiance of her beloved.

she leads you to his light and as she stands, illuminated among the shadows,

you can do nothing else but go find others to tell about the one you encountered.

she is the bride of christ.

tonight i saw the bride of christ. she took over my living room and left food in my kitchen and crumbs on my floor.

she sat on my couch and told jokes and sang songs and she was irresistible.

she saw a need in my life and she pooled her resources and she gave.

and she showed me that she loved me because her beloved did first.

i still sit, fazed and in awe of her presence now that she is gone.

because once you have met her and gone to shake her hand then been pulled into an unexpected embrace by her,

you have to sit for a while

her beauty is overpowering

her presence and stature irresistible

her flaws undeniable, yes,

but the one who loves her is felt in every touch, sight, smell and gesture

His love gives her confidence and boldness to love.

and it overpowers those who encounter it.

40 of my closest friends crammed themselves into my living room after weeks of planning and mouthfuls of secrets to keep it a surprise and they gave me a computer.

They made me funfetti cake and bought me a red hot chili pepper pinata and they gave me a mac book pro.

my friend josh told me that acts chapter 2 today  sometimes looks like providing people with a computer.

God told me this is only a glimpse of how i love you and want to provide for you- remember.

my legs told me, bad choice to wear heels and to sit down before you pass out.

because its easy to forget.

like, for instance have you ever been friends with a beautiful person,

someone, who before you met them you thought “that person is beautiful” and you were maybe intimidated by their beauty,

but then you become friends with them and you see them every day and they don’t get less beautiful you just get less worked up about it.

you take it for granted.

i do that with the bride of christ.

i forget to look at the friends and church and job and relationships i have and see them as stunning.

they become life, they become the norm, they become routine.

but, like with that same friend, the one you see everyday and take for granted,

you can look up and they will be sitting by a window and their eyes will catch the light

or you will be standing in a room full of strangers admiring them and you will think,  “oh yeah…”

you will be struck

you will be forcefully reminded of the unnatural beauty they possess

of the attraction and irresistible potential they have.

and you will remember.

and you will maybe even be a little bit proud that you know them, that you are loved by them.

tonight the bride of christ sat on my couch by the porchlight as it caught her hair and her dark eyes sparkled mischievously. she laughed from her belly at a stupid joke being told and

she took my breath away when she flashed a look in my direction.

she pointed me to her beloved who provides all things and in whom we both find our peace and satisfaction, even when we both sometimes forget.

and she reminded me that her beauty

and the beauty of the one who gave her love can be and must be found and introduced to people outside my walls, outside our walls on sunday, on wednesday nights, or on Easter

she gave me a wink on her way out the door and everything in me shouted “don’t forget”

i was reminded how beautiful she was and of how stories of her beauty must be told.

thank you to all who remembered to re-tell me of the beauty that is the bride of christ.

i love you and feel overwhelmingly loved by you.

Let us praise Him in whom we live and move and have our being, oh body,

oh beloved bride of Christ.

continue to be irresistible to the world around you.

Sheila was homeless.

I went and visited her in jail twice. Jacob and I took her a bible and sat across the glass from her and it felt forced.

I have never felt more helpless.

because Sheila is a nice story to tell.

but what now?

She was released from jail and I have no idea where she is.

I haven’t really looked.

Has my time been served?

Is there is statute of limitations for this sort of friendship?

Is she just a nice story to tell about that one time I befriended a homeless person?

I haven’t written about Argentina because I don’t know what to do with Argentina.

i came back to my life here after 2 months and found out that Argentina and what I encountered there don’t fit- there seemed to be a disconnect.

So I put it in my back pocket because that’s what you do with things you feel you should probably keep around but then usually forget about, like receipts and pennies.

But the thing about countries and people is that they don’t stay in your back pocket.

The pesky thing about families in South America and ladies without homes is that you can’t throw them away like you can pennies and pocket candy.

Those eyes demanding an answer of you belong to a boy in the barrio named Petey and those hands tapping you on the shoulder belong to the lady you prayed with in the desert and those arms outreached on the corner of the street belong to a woman who came and sat down across from you in Starbucks and now won’t leave you alone in your thoughts.

I guess what Im saying is that I’m not okay with Sheila being a nice story to tell about the homeless lady I bought coffee for, then brought a bible to in jail.

Two weeks after I met Sheila I gave her a card with a daisy on it and she said they were her favorite and she asked me why i had given it to her.

I told her it’s because we’re friends.

She gave me a look that I saw often from Sheila; a moment of understanding something or seeing something or thinking something that I was not. A moment of examination in her eye that always made me uncomfortable.

I told myself that her piercing gaze was just a part of the muttering to herself and came along with the territory of talking too loud and changing subjects mid-conversation.

I told myself that Sheila was looking at me like that because she was crazy.

But the thing is I think she knew.

She knew that with that card I was making a promise and with those words I was promising something I maybe didn’t understand. And maybe she didn’t trust that I meant.

Now I’m wondering if she was right.

Because I’m trying to figure out what to do with Sheila now that she is gone and I’m trying to figure out what to do with Argentina now that I have left its families and streets and smells and sounds an borders.

And I’m trying to figure out what to do with myself now that they follow me around wherever I go.

There is a common theme to the movies I love, the books I love, the stories of peoples’ lives that inspire me and make me love them. There is a common idea to  the things I have done and the things I wish I hadn’t done and the other things I only dream about doing. There is an idea I have idealized and don’t understand. I could never quite grasp what it was.

The other day I watched a movie and I cried as I watched it. I was on the couch and I was crying and when it got over I was wondering why I was crying. Is it because she finally got the guy? Is it because I wanted her to be with the other guy? Is it because I just watched a character overcome poverty and hardship and sisters dying and lovers spurning and I got caught up in the fake life in front of me for 90 minutes and then it ended so abruptly?

I found out I was crying for real. because I was hurt, I felt pain. I felt the ache of something that those 90 minutes  had, and now that the movie was over I was missing it in my life and it was like I just found out. I found the common theme, part of what drives me and I never knew it, at least not by this name.

This movie re-introduced this ache, this thing I chase and doubt is possible to live out and that’s why I was crying. It was introduced to me by the name noble. a noble life. Now that I know its name and we have been introduced I can look it in the face and ask it a few questions.

Nobility. I idealize it. It’s the reason I love old men smoking pipes and being grumpy or flirty as they share their childhood or war or depression stories. They have lived life and they have overcome things. I love them being grumpy because they have ideas about how life used to be and they dislike the way it is now and how no one has respect anymore and for the most part they are right.  I love them being flirty because they kiss women on the hand when they meet them and call them princess and open doors and tell girls not to settle for the shmucks. And I think that’s noble.

It’s the reason I love listening to refugees and people from other nations who left what they knew to provide for their family, to start over with near to nothing.Its the reason I hear certain things and talk with certain people  and in return feel inferior and feel the wholeness of my selfishness and the weight of my tunnel vision called self-preoccupation.

I idealize this word and I don’t understand what it means. because it is sparked by the woman sitting behind me in the coffee shop who worked as a teacher for 29 years and raised  her children and they grew up and now she hangs out in coffee shops  every week to be friend, confidant and counselor to a new mom, this 17 year old girl who a baby boy and no one else. The same thing is sparked by the business man who worked for IBM then quit his job to bring fresh water to a village in Africa. It is sparked by  16 year olds who have passion and drive and see that the world is wrong and believe that they can change it and so they do things like give up lattes and save that money and give it to people who need it more than they need caffeine.

And  it makes me want  to be about more noble things.

I ache for what I assume that person feels after they sacrificed their life they knew and followed an idea they had to give running water to villages in Africa, or adopt that child who’s mom abandoned them, or work at Starbucks and two other jobs on the side and go to school at night and know the value and sweat and worth that is in every dollar.

I idealize it. I know it is one of those concepts like, well anything, that isn’t anything special, its just people living and living up to the things placed in front of them and I see it in others and I want it. Like vision,  passion, like staring reality in the face  instead of running and working with it and making circumstances beautiful. I wonder if it can only be found in these movies I watch or in Chicken Soup for the Soul books or in Reader’s Digest.

But its something I think I run from. I run from the noble life to the easy one. To the one that lets me coast and be a free agent;  not bothered by things in my soul because then that means I have to do something about  them. I will have to act. I am scared of what the noble life means to my comfortable life because it takes more work. it takes responsibility and intention.

So back to me crying on the couch watching a movie. There is a scene that explains this all very well. The main character is a writer. She is  pursuing a career and she gives her latest published work to a good friend to tell her what he thinks. He tells her its good, but that she is better than writing about ghosts and vampires and pirates and star-crossed lovers and such nonsense. He tells her that there is more in her to write about, things that mean more. There is a better story inside of her that should be told. She gets mad and leaves and doesn’t talk to him for a while.                                                                    because she writes about what she is comfortable with, what is easy and doesn’t require much emotional disclosure or much of herself .

And I think that’s most of  us.   We are fine living the way we are, telling the stories we are. The ones that the public want, the ones they praise and give rave reviews and admire. Most of us are scared to live out the more noble story. the one that takes giving of ourselves, that takes work.

It takes looking things in the face and asking some questions and making some things happen. It takes developing those things that just won’t leave you alone, that maybe are bothering you for a reason and maybe that reason is your God-given purpose on this earth. It takes hard work and some hurt. It means taking all these great concepts I have and write about and idealize, and and it means living them.

and i think that’s why I cried. for something noble.

Growing up around church, I sometimes think I’ve heard it all, I have it pretty well figured out. Even if I’m not cognitively thinking this, I operate on a level that clearly shows my heart. I tune out of services, I find it hard to read my bible at times because I’ve “read it before”, I say “I’ll pray for you” as the natural response to someone’s problem then promptly forget . I consistently show my low, oh so very low understanding of this process, this practice, this relationship. I’m speaking a completely different language.

With this point of view, I look again to the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. This story has so much going on, so many levels that Jesus is showing the completely different way he is working in, living in, speaking in. He goes out of his way to get a drink of water from a woman in the town of his enemies. Talk about breaking social norms; he is shredding them. No one gets it. The woman, his disciples, the towns people, us.

As she speaks with Jesus, the woman gets a sense, a glimmer that the man is different  but immediately puts up defenses. Jesus offers her living water and she, oh so practically, oh so tragically, points out that he has no bucket(4:11). She is speaking another language. The Living Word, her maker, is offering her eternal life and she can only look at earthly limitations. She has come prepared, she has her bucket.

He again probes and gently tries to break down her defenses, tries to get closer by letting her know how very well he knows her , knows her sin(4:18). She counters by asking him a theological question of where the proper place to worship is. He is getting too close, she is perhaps now understanding, but terrified by this language he is using. She continues to speak another language, to misunderstand. The Savior and Redeemer of her heart is revealing that he knows her sin yet loves her anyway;  revealing that perhaps there is a better way to live and He is it. The woman chooses to miss it, chooses to deflect with a question of who is right, a question of theological debate.  Jesus persists, showing her this water,  this life he offers is possible, is better, is the only life. And finally, she gets it. She allows him to open her eyes and her ears to this new way of speaking, of living, and does the only thing one can after coming face to face with Jesus; she leaves everything she brought with her and goes to tell her entire town about this man who gives living water. She leaves her bucket.

The bible, especially the gospels are full of us missing it, deliberately or simply because we are not speaking the right language. Praise God that Jesus patiently, gently, persistently continues teach us  to speak a different way, work a different way, live a different way. What area in your life are you putting up defenses? In what area does God want you to speak his language, to look at in a different, more eternal light? As you are learning to speak his language and hear his voice a different way, what is he asking of you? Are you willing to listen? Are you willing to leave your bucket?

“Who touched me?” Jesus asks.

In a crowd of people, Jesus asks who touched him.

Surrounded by hundreds of passersby, in a mass of followers clamoring for his attentions, being elbowed and jostled, hands outreached in desperation, he asks the question.

Hearing this, a man scoffs as he passes by. What kind of person asks such athing in a crowd such as this? Not a true man. Certainly not a man who’s worked his way to the top, who commands hundreds of employees, who’s earned all he has with his own hands, now calloused from years of hard labor. A successful businessman, he is simply going about his normal routine, annoyed at the unusual amount of foot traffic through his usual route to work. Hands in his pockets, he muscles his way to his workplace, to start the day the way he’s started every other.

A woman is on her way to the temple. She clutches the purse containing her sacrifice to her chest as she pushes through the mass of people; tightly clasps this offering with hands that have been cleansed and have put her head covering on in the proper and holy custom. She is confused by the throng of followers that surround this man, inconvenienced by the unexpected detour. Hands clutching to her chest that which will take away her sin, one cautious step in front of the other, away from this chaos, she draws nearer to the temple.

His disciples follow closely behind him. They look at each other with that look now so common between them. How is it that this man they have learned from, followed, broke bread with; how is it that they still do not understand him? How can one feel so close to someone, give up everything they have for someone, leave everything they own for him, yet still have no idea why he does or says the things he does and says?

Who is this man who speaks in riddles, in stories, who teaches against all they have heard since birth? What kind of person hears the cries of that lunatic in the graveyard, and leaves the crowd to set him free from the legion that holds him captive? Who consorts with lepers, disabled, who befriends the outcasts over the religious? Who hunts down with abandon the individual who reached a feeble hand out to him in a crowd?

Who does that?

…………………..

Her hand still outstretched, she stumbles so as not to fall over completely. She has heard of this man, watched his talks from a distance, heard what the people are saying about him, how he does these things, says these things, makes these things live, makes these things whole.

Not sure what to believe, she follows him now with no other choice or options. If she can only tell him her story, tell him how she has been sick; no, dying, for over a decade, surely he will take pity, surely he will heal her the way he healed the others. But there are too many people, too many demands on his attention, too many others. She is lost in the crowd. She grabs blindly, reaching for something, anything, knowing that any contact at all with this man is what she needs. Not even sure why she is so sure of this, not sure what it is about him that compels everything within her to reach out, she reaches.

As she grasps, through the crowd, through the many hands and faces and hearts and hurts around her, she feels fabric. And in an instant, She feels known. She feels health, restoration. She feels whole.

Jesus seeks her out. He has felt her faith, felt her hands.

In the midst of the crowd, the hands going about their own business, the hands working to save themselves, the hands that are clasped too tight to be opened even if they wanted, he seeks out the hands that reached out in brokenness. Who have reached out with absolute faith and knowledge that there is no other place to turn.

In the crowd, in the chaos, she has come into contact with him who makes all new, who heals the broken, who chases after the one in the midst of many, who seeks out the faith of an outstretched hand.

No violent conversion, no dramatic walking away from the faith, just a gradual shift from the One and towards the many.

The shift was so gradual in fact, that I myself was unaware it had taken place, yet it has become evident in my practices, my faith, my worship. I serve many gods.

There is the god who feels like listening to my prayers; there is the god who doesn’t.

There is the god who loves me more than anyone else on this earth and is preoccupied completely with my concerns, more than all the rest.

There is the god who holds grudges when I don’t read my bible for a week.

There is the god of old testament proportions, who is ominous and far off, cold and uncaring to the plight of humanity, let alone the individual.

There is the god who smiles indulgently at my impulsive and selfish whims, like a father at his spoiled daughter.

There is the god who demands of me perfection, who punishes when I slip, who turns his back when I miss it the first time.

There is the god who has a marvelous plan for my life that will allow me to serve him without sacrificing anything.

Odd isn’t it. Some have a quality of the One, a trait that can perhaps be traced back to Him, just isolated and magnified, making it horribly distorted. Forgiveness, love, jealousy, righteous anger stand alone in the characters of these gods, making them either push-overs or task-masters.

Were there a Being with all these facets, containing these qualities in an incomprehensible existence that is before all and makes all new.

And yet I know him, the One I was intending to serve, somehow ending up here trying to please these entities of wrath and vending-machine-convenience providers.

I want the God I talk to in the morning, the God I sing to in church,the God who joined the three in the fire, the God who cannot tolerate sin, the God who wants my faith to be authentic, the God who laughs and delights in His creation, the God who sees our pain, who can make this life have beauty and meaning,the God that commands me to share His redemption story to others,

To be the One I serve.

what were to happen if i truly believed

someone was on the other end of this one sided door?

would mountains crumble?

would lame walk?

would the nations be saved?

would my heart change?

if what i pray for, what i say i believe were to happen,            would i be ready?

because what i seek and knock and ask for on my side of the door,

means change

means leaving home

means permeable comfort zone

means living as if the red letters were more than just a fancy font in a beloved family-friendly tale.

and as i wearily seek,

as i lift my hand with effort to knock one more time,

as i clear my voice to ask yet again,

i know that change must come.

change i cannot bring myself to want, and yet longer i cannot go on without.