A psalm

45 years old and I’m still wasting time.

Waiting (in vain) for some life to start: waiting for more than just getting through, just finding something to look forward to, just distracting enough to fill moments with meager amusements only to find that it’s all ash and dust, leaving me more hollow, bereft, and with less time to fill, with the quality I crave, than when I started.

What if I – we all – were just honest with Him?

Remembered this terrible plight, admitted our utter inability to be different than we are – (by our own hands and efforts) and held up all these teeny lives for His loving scrutiny, His healing care?

What if I allowed Him to crispify the ugliness, the complete folly and sin of all this wastefulness and trusted Him to transform the ashes to beauty?

What if I were honest? What if I trusted the Life that’s there to be the Life it is and simply let It Be? Simply enjoyed and celebrated that He Is So?

What if I just handed over all-that’s-wrong to All-His-Right?

What if I remembered to celebrate the Life more than I bemoaned the death?

It would not be wasteful. It would not be in vain. It would not be disappointing, hopeless, a dead end, a new regret, or just another guilt infusing pursuit.

The only ashes would be turned beautiful. There would be no more hollows or scramblings, guilt, regret or lost time.

There would be – because there is if we’ll have it – living water brimming up and spilling over.

There would be fullness and it would well up by virtue of its generosity, its very inability to atrophy, and spread more goodness.

Like spring in the light and the warmth, the pulse of this great sleepy life would quicken and enliven to its Creator, by its Creator, because of and in response to His Life in it.

Praise and thanks, great God, for fresh starts, new seasons, and most of all that You Are and So.

Vulnerable and Married: together at last

Maybe my reluctance towards intimacy
Is an innate refusal to be possessed

Maybe I’ve bought the wrong lines

Regarding sacred union

Maybe I’ve perceived all the wrong sacrificial requirements

Maybe I’ve seen love (inadequately, tragically, falsely)

As an all “giving up”

Instead of following that gift through

To its more accurately and absolutely “all getting”

I have kept you over there – arm’s length

(A safer distance, I thought)

Instead of drawing closer

(In desperate self-protection, I think)

And here, instead of “Impressive Impenetrable Fortress”

As my welcome mat

I have “Lonelier Than Ever”

Starving in this false autonomy

I’m sorry, my lover, my darling, and

(I mean it and vow to grow into all those designations)

I will try…

…No.

I will welcome you.

I will be patient

I will be gentle

I will surrender in right ways

I will treat this ground and the one who shares it with me as sacred.

I will stop fearing the inadequacy of my own self possession

Stop seeing an enemy where there is you:

Welcome guest, honored, cherished, trusted, (wildly patient!) invited friend and lover.

Burdens (and their proper carrier)

Swinging on this crazy pendulum

Between all right and all wrong

Is dizzying, wildly disorienting.

Atrabilious! This brainy black bile

And I feel to be held under by all this care.

Loving ought be liberating:

Come to find out that the world’s weight

Is anything but light.

Then I look up

(A common, but too uncommon theme)

And realize that You’ve been gentlemanly

Standing, waiting

For me to lay all this burden down.

I’ve been bent over with it,

Eyes to the ground

Impossibly straining neath all this weight,

Saturated with the sweat and the load.

I look up at You (finally)

And You smile at me:

All that impossible, tender, complete, understanding, compassionate love in a look.

With nary a word – it took but a second to see you there, to remember You there –

I hand over the load.

It’s not heavy for You:

I don’t know what or how You do with it,

But it’s gone

– or completely changed into something else –

And we walk, You and I.

And there is nothing superfluous or in question

(There is little to be said in true love’s companionship,

Once the repentance is over.)

No more swinging or straining

I find that I am standing upright

Eyes straight ahead

With You

Reconciled and whole and free of all those many burdens

Ready to tackle more

Now strong and courageous

Thanks to the nothing’s-impossible-for-God

God

The next step blessedly clear

And beyond it

A burden not mine to carry.

This moment, this quiet, His assurance

All I’m responsible for.

Hallelujah!

New

Even though I’ve not been here before

Going through the motions

As though I have.

Where nary an original thought

Feeding reaction

S’to be found.

Ideas

Expectations

Roles

Ways of responding

All seem irritatingly preconceived.

Decided upon.

Not deciding’s deciding too.

I must decide to remind myself

That I’ve not passed this way before.

This is a new day

A new thing

(Full of promise and opportunity)

Why does this remembrance seem the exception, the extra?

A pleasant surprise? A life-changing epiphany?

Why does succumbing to lesser quality modes of responding seem to be the most common rule?

Going through the motions will reign

If I don’t fight for lusher, more vital grounds.

Fight to remember this new day

The thrill of new ways.

Will I fight?

Will I perceive it?

Will I see the new thing

And refuse to be swallowed

In the old?

Be remade, live fully alive,

In the new?