A Positively Poetic Priest

the street preacher goes on and on about Jesus and the girl nonchalantly nods along focusing on other things but something catches her ear about redemption - a feeling she's only dreamed of unknowingly subconscious wish for good "yo - what's that?" she says wondering if perhaps a few questions might be answered for the trouble on the corner "Jesus was a man - the Son of God and he died, he died for all" "Stupid, why'd he do that?" "because of love," he said, "because of love" "shut up" she said, "no one's that dumb" no one loves me that much the demons in her head confirmed why bother for this life? "oh no, Jesus did. Died for you, died for me. Died so that we might know love. Do you know love?" he questioned wondering whether he could even answer the girl looked at him in concern know love? what is love? and who's this crazy man who loves these cranky p...

Pattern our demise Destroying all hope in bits Who could forgive us? In the end what was And is and will be ever Family table love What is sacrifice?  When you know the greatest joy In ordinary 

An itinerant  Traveler am I indeed Yet always at home Everything loses The way, the path, direction Still finding yourself I wait peacefully Watching the trees grow taller One day I'll come home

What is the equation Of the weight of our worries It changes us over time But the mass of them all Cannot be measured by normal scales Especially with gravity Wavering in the new doubt Of any constant in this universe We forget what we carry Getting used to, comfortable With the feeling of rough wood Pressing down, pulled toward mass Worry to worry magnetically The core of the earth crying out To our uncomfortable souls Waiting for redemption 

Paint the sky with blessings Broad salmon strokes With lilac and yellow and green In spring additions to the world Living in the tension Between the death that is And the never ending resurrection Of new celestial life. We are waiting Always impatiently Given our ineptitude  At sitting in between On the spectrum without extreme definition. How do we recognize love  In rooms of disambiguity Except by the colors of the prism?

A spider spins out part of itself Each day casting itself into a web Connecting separated objects, nature By the thinest thread of glossamer  Yet strong enough to keep together And trap the fly in its sights It gives so that it may receive My father's coffee pot receives each day A predetermined volume of designated water  Roasted ground dark coffee beans The unmistakeable pungent fragrance Waking up half the house Delivering the poisoned anecdote to worry It receives so that it may give Give and take, cause and effect We celebrate causality in ritual Learning ever deeply softly All we have to give is life

The window disappeared from view It was just the yellow green leaves The weathering fence and the red brick The leaves fluttering in the breeze Changing color as the shadows Came alive in non-geometric shapes Rapping against the buckled wood Change doesn't stop after death Green or gold the sunlight could be either Splashed in bounteous array With a start I realized I was praying. 

some people enter looking for all the exits some people enter looking for the position of power some people enter looking solely for their friends some people enter wondering about the architecture      and the fire safety codes some people enter dreaming of grand success some people enter preparing for their imminent failure some people enter looking for newness some people enter with cartloads of baggage some people enter running away from themselves some people enter walking simply into a room. 

The symmetry Of tiled bathroom walls Makes a difference The clean painted corners In oft forgotten neighborhoods Changes minds The well tended care Of the hand-me-downs of love Shows dignity It is not the rich Whose lives are worth living Because of money It is the enriched Who know true meaning Because of love

thinking about the sky and how it is a sphere wrapped around a ball of rock and that rock cuts out the core of the sphere and so the limit there is rock, is dirt, a taurus, and the limit on the other side is gravity what holds the air to the earth, but eventually it melts off into infinity and the limit there does not exist at least as we know thinking about a brick wall in rectangular shape the limits of its existence of the formula of its function verily exist in natural states of integers here and there and here in front of your face brick in absolute unyielding tenacity thinking about skin in various shades yielding and limited within limits there exists a place where you are you and you are not but porous enough that me touching you exchanges particles, molecules, mass tininess we cannot see thinking about the world in cold circuitous routes there are obvious boundaries with absolute limits found without exception each time while other unmanageable s...

what does energy look like to the tired what does positivity look like to the beat up what does it mean to be healthy when you've spent your whole life not knowing you were sick what does love look like when all you've ever known are those who have treated badly or disappointed what does it look like when the world turns its face from you because you are not what it wants to see How do you define in action abstract nouns? change happens from moments of clear eyed energy

I see the questioning look wanting to ask but not daring inside laughter breaks out what is it this time, musing the outfit, uniform, so well known but so unknown on my form or the array of items stacked precariously in the basket. There is a website, right? Interesting mixtures of things where people try to guess why you'd want or need to buy those things right now together. I glance at the man behind me in line taking in the clues where along his life journey is he under this moon?

a simple gesture an opened hand here not an always thing when sirens signal heartfelt mind needed everyone sometimes regardless of self though some thus needed smile gesture give not rocket science silence doing duty friends and family love its hard to ask for easy simply known true underrated fully understood we are humans yes only two hands is never enough for complete existence 

For all the unexpected light and unsought for quiet For all the unassuming joy unpronounced in coming For all the waiting eyes that see the symmetry in the lines For all the places where I am not who I expected to be For all the gentle background hums when we forget their importance and all the sirens of the day saying help is coming For all the longing desperation which keeps us seeking meaning For all the complications and attitudes bringing me back to why For all the irritations of this life reminding me how much I care For all the little deaths I die keeping me mindfully alive

my God, my soil deepened richly sustains me in eloquent silence for there I learned though death did speak to my hate-filled waiting heart that my life must be worth the gold I weigh and more for a man, a man with love who knew me not two thousand years of fated human history ago a man who loved his mother his friends though fraught with lies and complications a man of love worth more than I could ever know died so that I might live and that life not worth living as slowly as an orchard grew with strength and depth and breadth living, breathing, ever changing to bear the fruit of unknown destiny all for the living dust of one man's flesh enraptured in the resurrection and grateful be this little seed for the death which brings new life

Lent 5C John 12:1-8 Eternal God, who brings us together in the midst of family and friends and those we love, grant us to take a deep breath and give to each other generously of our time and attention. Through your Son our Savior Jesus Christ who is your example for us. Amen. The gospel passage today is from the gospel of John. John’s gospel is so interesting because of the number of layers he has in his story. I’ve talked about this before, the multilevel drama of John. Always, the interplay of these levels adds depth and dimension to the story and so in order to see what is going on, we are going to take apart the passage for today, peel back the layers, to find the real focus of this story. This story has five major characters in it: John, Judas, Lazarus, Mary, and Jesus. We are going to look at each person, what role they play, and how they affect our view of what happens. We are going to start with John. John isn’t exactly in the story as a character, bu...

With the sounds of crying from the other room I gaze in wonder at the city lights  At what does Orion point his deadly bow Casting my imagination in any other direction Than admit my unhealthy obsession I dream of you in spare moments Wondering who occupies your brain space And with slight awkward feeling wonder In whose brain my life is fictionalized Considering the psychology of circles and triangles You aren't the only one trying to be healthy Trying not to be afraid of love It's a human condition: messiness Riding tandem with doubt and loneliness But we are born intrepid, we carry on

I miss my future Husband, children yet to be Lonely in the past A fine romance full Gifts of flowers and jewelry Bringing open hands The greatest gift of Nature, time, and space combined Simple open love

Fruit on the table    Cool, fresh, and available Fruit on the vine    Ripe, ready, and rolling Fruit of the Loom    Comfy, silky unseen Fruit of your loins    Deceptively cute and unkind Fruit of the Spirit    Temperance remembered Fruit of the past    An architect's dream    An historian's playground    Nature's rich memoir While simply fruit scatters the seeds

Vocation calling Clear as the bell on an old fashioned telephone  calling Where connection grasps you breathless calling No escape and none wanted, willingly vanquished calling Into places words cannot express calling Following an unrelenting flashing deer calling Through yearning miles of rugged mountain scapes  calling While lying in bed at home awake calling Listening to the rain water your unquenched thirst calling Vocation

The World in a Carpet From my bed I can see written in the carpet The lines I leave traced along my pathways Telling all who see, well, I need to vacuum And the normal boundaries and routines The world through which I walk each day I go from here to there and there over Chasing a life of meaning through concrete structures  Wondering how soon it will all be forgotten  As nature continues her unending cycle Life and death and life and death and on Each part totally ordinary, made of the same carbon chains Variations on a theme of chemistry Each part different from the rest  The chances! The probability remains insane Each inch a pattern of latent pathways I just wrote a poem about carpet. Sometimes I wonder at myself.  I said in the beginning, some would be good, and some would be questionable. I think we know where this one lies along that spectrum. 

The iceberg question Always lurking beneath the surface Under all the pleasantries of how And where and when and who The question of all intention Why do we eat applesauce with pork chops? Why is the sky blue or grey? Why can't we trust our politicians? Why was I created this way? Why doesn't he love me? The silent questions we ask at night Staring into the shadows Created by light and mystery Not always seeing what's before us Focused instead on what's behind God asked Job so long ago Who are you to question why? I created infinite diversity and free will Including suffering and uncertainty Each is beautiful down to the atom, love

So precise, regimented Driven by the spheres In ordered paradigms Being graphed  regularly  Defining other boundaries It slips across our mind Like so much good olive oil And oh so wobbly! Our measured countered ingeniouses Come nowhere near this complexity Three hours around a table And who you thought you knew Has changed - encountered  The space between the seconds The laugh between the lines The science of forgiveness We were made for timelessness Eternity in love

A dream, an idol, a vision Of how we want our lives to be The people we want to be Cuz naturally how we are now Is not enough  We hear other people's voices We hear their pain and grief, guilt and sorrow Craving and addicted to those moments Of happiness, belovedness, chance joy  Never enough We intimately know other people's lives Notice the girl next door's cycle of bad boyfriends But it's all just sound waves carried in the wind What makes people people Is it enough? Diagrams of musclature, print outs of brain waves  Only fully defined by interconnected webs We are us and all the same uniquely God's creative writing in light  Simply enough

Sometimes it is the simplest words that are the hardest  when you stare at 'that' trying to figure out if it's always been spelled that way and when did you realize it has 'hat' in it? Mostly these days it's the meanings the meanings hitting you in the face totally obscured what does it mean to trust? to love? to hold? to miss? to hold something when the nuclei of your atoms  and the atoms of its substance never meet and yet you know you can feel the shape of it, the feel of it against your arm what does growing up do to us? Maturity? Knowledge? Age? The long and winding road speaks volumes in its name I seek a way to wisdom instead, alas a chore Definition is too brutish for such elegance, away away with words layered upon each other! sink into the wisdom of this moment  sink into the feeling of connection sink into the colors of creation sink into the silence of salvation home

Lingering on the front porch BREAKING NEWS: Plane Flies Into World Trade Center Family gathered round the table BREAKING NEWS: 9.1 Magnitude Earthquake Shakes Indian Ocean Learning to drive and the feeling of freedom Breaking News: the Pope is Dead The moment of realization during your wedding Breaking News: Hurricane hits City Your first child's first smile breaking news: beloved star is dead Laughing with your husband after a fight breaking news: globalization does not change love

Thrive or survive man There's a choice to overcome Where's your enjoyment? Given certain walls To thrive here means to create Beyond survival City concrete blocks Stifling all sense of open  Meaning and love abide

Every repetition strengthening the muscles Pulling, pushing, stretching, contracting Creating a haze of strain and struggling The angel that was midwife to my birth From me to recreated me heard those screams  From pain-filled dying to new life crying The world in its one language calling out Every lesson in years of school merely practice For the life time string of pearly lessons waiting I raise the blinds each morning to observe again Each observation changing hopefully acknowledged  A pointy thorn into a marvelous rose blooming