It*s in the wrestling

How many times have you wrestled with God at night, in the dark?  Sent all your companions on ahead, waited for a good word, a new turn of events come daylight?  So much, I think, is to be found in the wrestling, not especially the outcome.  I think God comes to meet us in the wrestling, wrestling which we can only do by ourselves.  In that wrestling comes the possibility of blessing.

Send everyone on ahead

Across the river.

You

Wait alone at night

In the dark

Wait in the dark

You

Hope for a good word brought back

Hope for the enemy,

Once brother,

Appeased.

Instead the stranger comes

In the dark

At night

The stranger comes

Wrestles your life to the ground

Pinned,

Lost and won and lost

Hip-checked, wounded

You

Blessed in the dark

Named and nameless

Both.

You

Send everyone else on ahead

Hope for life

Then

Hope for life again.

Pinned to the ground

Wrestle the dark strange nameless one

You

Pinned to the ground

Hip-checked.

Off-balance.

L   mp.

   i

Hope.

Sound bytes

There*s something particularly wonderful about being with people in recovery.   They know they have to take it seriously or they may completely miss out on Life.  They may die tomorrow.  They know (many of them know) they may die tomorrow.  What a privilege to spend time with people who have chosen to grab Life again, to learn something new every day.

The guys at the halfway house are given sound bytes

To chew on

Along with their recovery:

One day at a time

Learn something new every day

Even

Slow down

Let go

Let God.

Sound bytes to chew on.

They stream through my head

Inhabit my dreams.

One of the guys asks me

What I have learned today

I tell him I am newly grateful

To be able to drive.

When I ask him the same question

He thinks a long time.

A long time.

I got up fifteen minutes earlier

This morning.

I took more time before work

And the day went better.

Then he smiled and said

I didn*t realize until I said it out loud

How important that was.

I thought:

That*s two things

The Act

and the Realization

It*s Important.

Prima donna

Quite the light show the last couple of nights.  Not as much rain out our way, but spectacular lightning. I went to bed so I could watch it in the dark.  I had to reset the clock radio three times... three moments it seems that the lightning wanted center stage.  Prima donna.

Lightning

Arrives at night.

She owns the stage

Prima donna that she is:

Piercing bright light, crack of thunder

She takes the stage

Surprise stage left

Stage right

Down from the rafters

Of the sky.

Lightning roams the edges

Of the heavens,

Waits to make her

Surprise appearance.

Prima donna.

She does not like competition.

Lightning waits until all the lights are out

Or turns them off

To make her appearance

Splashy

She owns the stage

Prima donna

That she is.

Boundaries

Boundaries are often difficult.  Where does one draw the line, raise the bar, build the wall?  There do seem to be some rules, but it*s so rarely all or nothing.  It seems it would be easier if it were.  Teaching and learning nuance... that*s hard.  That*s why there are treatment plans to consider boundaries at the halfway house.

Treatment plans at the halfway house

Include boundaries:

Thick and thin

High and low

Permeable but still protective,

Bandaids

That still allow one*s skin

To breathe.

Setting

Making

Keeping

Boundaries

Knowing where the lines

Are to be drawn,

Bandaids applied;

Skin still

In the game:

Protected

And

Visible.

One thing

Multi-tasking, I think, is overrated.  I know there is a lot to be done, but really very little has to be done immediately.  Dealing well with one thing at a time, sitting with one person at a time, being present to One Thing even while I am aware of Everything Else... the line outside the door, for example.  This is the challenge.  I am in training for this challenge, every day I practice dealing with One Thing at a time and listen to the clamor in the hallway.

The challenge:

To deal with one thing

At a time.

One thing

Right now.

Only one.

Today I notice all the links

With everything else

I think

This One Thing.

Really

I mean it

One Thing.

The rest are lined up

Outside the door

They will still be there

When it comes their turn.

One Thing

Sits in front of me

One Thing

It challenges me

To focus

There is a chant

From the rest in the hallway

Outside the door.

They want their turn

Right Now

Right Now

Right Now

One thing sits

In front of me

One Thing.

We have lunch together.

More sidewalk

I continue learning.  Last night was more sidewalk.  I continue learning.  I hope I always will.

Most of the men have been

in treatment

Or prison

Or both

Before this.

The halfway house is newfound

Structured

Freedom

With accountability.

In group they talk about

Having more sidewalk now:

Jobs during the day,

Free time to fill.

I have never thought before

About freedom

As more sidewalk

To walk on

Until now.

Finding plumb at the halfway house

Jesus* parables show us the possibility of plumb, as they up-end our understanding of the way things should be, the way things are.  Yesterday, when I used experiences as the halfway house as examples of the Holy, I realized afterwards I am watching the enactment of a parable there every day.  I watch the men line up, then go off plumb, then back on plumb, as we all tend to do.  Perhaps they are spinning a bit more, but I go into spin on a regular basis too.  I got a note from a friend (thanks, Keith!) saying my plumb bob fit into his sermon yesterday.  I*m glad it was used Somewhere.

The plumb line,

Its bob spinning at the end

Was important,

But not the exact metaphor

I needed yesterday

To demonstrate how Jesus

Was the line that showed

Direct vertical

To the center of the earth.

Instead of a plumb bob,

A plumb line,

I needed

The halfway house,

The guys lined up at dinner,

The guys

Talking gratefulness ,

The guys

Lined up in group,

Sharing their proudest moment.

They filled the room

With laughter and praise,

Pride reigned,

The good honest kind of pride

Anyone could share.

I saw them line up

With Jesus

Right there in front of me.

I saw them

Completely plumb for a moment

Lined up with Jesus.

Really just like me,

For a moment

Lined up with Jesus.

Haiku: too many parables to count

No more to say.

I used the quota

Of words, metaphors, plumb bobs

For today.   Amen.

Plumb bobs

So I woke up this AM with plumb bobs and plumb lines on the brain.  Thought it would fit into the sermon.  No.  I think I would still like to use it as sermon illustration at one point.  For now I*ll hang it in the office.  It*s really quite a cool thing.  

I learned more about plumb bobs

Today

Than I ever knew before,

Enough to know it is apt

To consider Jesus

The best ever plumbline

There is

or was

or ever will be,

Not just leave it all

Back with Amos

And the others.

I am now the proud owner

Of a stainless steel bob,

Strung and knotted with ordinary string,

Threaded by the hardware guy

The way I do a needle:

With spit and eyeball.

All that plumb research

But it didn*t line up

With the sermon.

I think I will hang it

Next to the bookshelf

So I will see it coming

And going.

One can never have too many

Metaphors.

Nocturnal thunderstorms

Weather sirens are a relatively new thing in Roselle.  When we asked after we moved here in 1995 why there were no sirens, we were told they would wake people up.  Duh.  And of course we could probably hear sirens from the Medinah Country Club or Itasca or Schaumburg or even Hanover Park.  Two or three years ago now there was a weather siren crusade led by one particularly wonderful woman.  Now we have sirens.  I think of how change comes about.  Often it begins with one person getting a burr under her saddle.  She will forever be known as the siren woman.  Not a bad thing.  Not a bad thing at all.

I hear the sirens

So I gather the living things,

The cat,

The turtle.

We sit in the basement

With the wind-up weather radio

The cat

The turtle

And me.

3 in the morning.

I sit in the camp chair

Next to the washing machine,

Wind up the radio.

I hear it is the season

For nocturnal thunderstorms.

They favor the climate

In late July and August.

They roam the northern periphery

Of hot high pressure domes.

They develop and strengthen at night,

In the dark.

When the sun rises

They dissipate

In the light,

In the very light

Of the rising sun.

3 in the morning

I listen to weather lessons

On the wind-up radio

With the cat

And the turtle.

I picture storms roaming

The northern periphery

Of hot high pressure domes.

When there are no tornadoes

We all

Go back to bed,

Wake up

In the light.

Life with a Chinese box turtle

We got Felix when my son was 5.  Felix looks pretty much the same twenty years later.  Chinese box turtles live a long time.   A Long Time.  Usually pets don*t outlive their owners.  This one may.  Those who think  turtles have no personality are wrong.  I admit to being partial to box turtles.  When I was young, I had a box turtle.  I kept Henrietta in a tank in the living room.  Her favorite food was strawberries.  She loved any group of people who gathered there, came out of her house, dug into the rocks next to the glass.   Henrietta only returned to her house when people left.

He wakes up

Any time of the day or night,

Maybe climbs into

The water dish

For a bath and drink.

Maybe he decides it is time

For blueberries,

Perhaps Mighty Dog turkey.

At 3 in the morning

Usually

No one is awake.

He throws a turtle temper tantrum,

Picks up the ceramic plate

In his mouth,

Slams it against the glass.

It used to hold blueberries.

He wants blueberries

Again

Now

3 in the morning

Blueberries immediately

He tells us

Now

Twenty years into this

We speak Chinese box turtle

Fluently.

Heat

I suspect we will make new heat records this summer.  It is not a dry heat.  While I would love to live in an open-air house where the cooling breeze blows through, I am grateful for air-conditioning in weather like this.  When we got married and moved in 1995 (me from Boston, Jeff from North Dakota), I remember it was hot like this.  It*s interesting to me what certain memories are tied to, how particular experiences are wired to things like weather.  It*s interesting to me how all those experiences are wired together.

I remember the summer

Of 1995:

Newly married

Soon newly pregnant

The heat of that summer

Reminds me of now.

The heat

The stress number index

Rose

With moving trucks

From Boston,

North Dakota;

The marriage

The baby coming

Two new jobs

A third grader.

That fall I was met at the new parish door

By a large blonde woman

Arms akimbo.

She stood at the top of the steps,

Madder than two wet hens,

Asked me who I was,

What I thought I was doing there.

I remember the heat

Of that summer,

Reminds me a bit of now.

The large blonde woman died less than a year later

Quick diagnosis, then two weeks dead:

Cancer of the bile duct.

She died

Soon after our baby

Eyes wide open
Was born.

.

I remember the heat of that summer

That fall

That spring,

Reminds me a bit

Of now.

Wednesday is gratefulness day

There*s something about practicing gratefulness out loud that I like.  It goes with noticing particular things, as well as the more general.  I think we get used to the help, help, help prayers, and lose the thank you, thank you, thank you ones.  I like Wednesdays at the halfway house.

Wednesday is gratefulness day

At the halfway house.

The guys get five minutes

At the end of dinner to say why

They are grateful.

Sure, some are rote pieces

Of gratefulness, but

Every week

there are always one or two things

Which catch my breath.

The lists always start with

Today:

I am grateful for

Today

Waking up

Today

Going to work

Today

Being sober

Today.

At the halfway house I remember

Sure I am not God

Sure I need help

Like we all do.

At the halfway house I am reminded

Every Wednesday

Five minutes after dinner

To be grateful

For

Today.

The Sort

Preaching this Sunday.  It*s like adding yeast to flour.  Years ago I used to make bread.  I remember punching down the dough after the first rising, putting it in a warm place to rise again.  This morning I woke with my head spinning around all the parables.  I figure this is part of that first punching down.  We*ll see what it looks like after the second rising, and the baking.  I think I remembered to put salt in the dough.  Nothing worse than a tasteless loaf of bread.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like

Wheat and weeds growing

To be harvested together,

Only sorted

At the end.

The Kingdom:

It*s all the fish of the world

Swimming together,

Only gathered into nets

And sorted

In the end.

I remember the fairy tale:

The girl who was given the task

Of sorting all the grains of wheat

Out of a huge pile.

She enlisted the ants

To help her.

She could not do it alone.

I sort and sift and net

The parables of the Kingdom

Jesus told

plus a few more.

Instead of neat orderly piles,

They grow

(Mother used to say)

Like Topsy

(I never knew who Topsy was

But I knew she was always growing

Bigger than anything I ever knew)

Like mustard seeds

They become mustard trees,

Birds nest there.

Like yeast

They make more than enough bread

For the veritable Feast

At the end

More than enough bread

For the Heavenly Banquet.

Trouble

It seems to me a surefire way for a parish priest to get in trouble ... suggesting someone might be better matched to a different worshiping community, Christian or even otherwise.  It seems part of my priestly ordination to help people find spiritual home.  I love the Episcopal Church, but it*s not for everyone.

I used to get in trouble

When people came to talk with me

And it was clear

They needed to find

A different community.

I would tell them about the Methodists

The Quakers

The Orthodox (Greek and Jewish).

I would mention the church down the street

That was doing the exact thing

They wanted our community

To do.

I would make sure they knew

Our welcome

But if they wanted a place to sit

In community and silence,

Speaking when they were led by the Spirit

To speak

I knew a possible place for them.

I used to get in trouble

For naming those other possibilities.

I did not seek to fill the pews or chairs

So we could count them

As ours.

Give it a try

I*d say

Let me know how it goes.

Thistle

Jesus taught in parables, seemingly simple stories, with odd juxtapositions of images:  a good Samaritan, a woman sweeping her house to find a lost coin and spending more than the coin*s worth on a party, a mustard seed growing into a tree which will provide space for all the birds of the air... a mustard bush big as a house...some bush!  Jesus says to his disciples:    Do you understand?  They answer Yes.   Really?  Really?  Do they really understand?

Last summer a thistle grew

Next to the rhubarb.

In the near-demolished box

Of the vegetable bed,

A thistle took root.

I watered it.

Pretty soon I wondered

How big it would grow.

I remembered eventually

It would have purple flowers,

Then thistle seed for goldfinches.

It crowned at six feet

The thorns

The flowers

The seeds.

The goldfinches came

As I watched,

Swooped delighted in and out.

This Sunday Jesus asks us to consider

The mustard seed

The eventual mustard bush,

The birds that may visit

Even nest there

If we water it.

Spin

I begin another week: internship at the halfway house, working out in the mornings, focusing on one patch of garden to weed, oh yes, and preaching at church on Sunday morning for the first time in four years, in exactly four years.  When occasion calls, I move.  I learn from my watching my daughter, watching the guys at the halfway house, watching the flowers and weeds grow.

I watch her twirl.

Even though I don*t dance

Like she does,

Practiced dance twirls,

From lessons two or three times

A week,

I recognize the spin,

The need to be

Everywhere at once.

I practice new ways

To see and hear myself

In new places.

When occasion calls

I move.

When it is time for silence,

I sit

Still as a stone,

Still as a stone

I tell you.

Flow

I try to write every day.  Sometimes there are true bits and pieces, sometimes only a little shine.   Sometimes it flows, beginning to end and I have no idea where it came from.  I think of the preaching professor at Seabury who used to say: Every sermon won*t be a sonnet.  And, of course, there are all the sermons or reflections which people hear or read in such completely different ways that a part of me wants to say: Why work on it at all?  But I do.  It seems I must.  

Sometimes

When I write

I collect the true bits

At the end,

Discard the rest.

Sometimes

When I write it flows true

Maybe blue

Perhaps it recalls the sky,

Maybe water dappled in reflected clouds.

Sometimes there are birds,

They string it all together

In flight

In song

In hop.

They cock their heads and listen

For worms

Underground.

Sometimes

Only sometimes

Like rivers,

Like clouds blown

Like birds,

When I write

It flows true.

Glass birds (redux)

Often dreams have carried the voice of God for me.  Sometimes I recognize it when I wake up, sometimes it takes awhile, a long while.  Today, for example, I am learning new things from the glass birds years ago.  Often God speaks to me in birds, in dreams, yes, but also in things like the tree full of cedar waxwings this spring, the hawks, the great blue heron in a particular pond on Irving Park Road near my house, and, of course, the ducks across the creek.  God uses different language, different images, to speak to each one of us.  I am grateful.  I will preach again on July 24th.  I know the words I choose will be heard in different ways by each person listening at 8 and 9:15 and 10:30.

Years ago now

I dreamed more than a dozen glass birds

Each one unique, beautiful.

They sat, nested

On the clear glass table

before me,

wings folded,

wings spread.

I marveled at the colors,

The transparencies,

Each one separate, beautiful,

Together on the clear glass table top.

Years ago now I asked you

In the dream:

What shall I do with them,

These birds,

This Beauty?

You answered

What do you want to do with them?

I replied

I could throw them over my shoulder.

You said

You could do that.

And again

Perhaps more thoughtfully,

You could do that.

Four months later

Not in a dream,

My sleeve caught

On the microwave door.

I pulled it down from the counter

on top of me,

The microwave and I

Crashed to the floor.

Four small glass vases

Stored on the microwave top

Bounced on the ceramic tile

Landed whole next to me.

I thought

I*m so glad I have been working out

I*m ok.

I thought

The vases did not break

The vases are still whole.

I marveled.

Then I remembered the birds

All the glass birds

The beautiful ones I have thrown

Over my shoulder

Transparent

Beautiful

Many-colored.

I knew the birds,

All the birds

Are still whole.

I knew as sure as anything

All the birds I have thrown behind me

Did not break or disappear.

Instead

They wait for me

To turn around.

Keep coming back

So ends week three at the halfway house.  The men work during the day, in recovery, and live in the house, with support, in recovery.  I continue to think about lessons for the Church in the experience.  The men here have chemical addictions, but the Church has long been noted for its hospital aspects.  We are all addicted to something.  As long as we are living in this world, we are in need of Christ, and we need each other.  In AA, Step One is admitting we are powerless over addiction (the drug, the behavior) in ourselves, whatever it is.  No, Church and AA aren*t the same thing.  Still... I wonder what would happen if we all held hands and said, after the dismissal, looking into each other*s eyes, Keep coming back.

Keep coming back

It*s said at the end

of every Anonymous meeting.

I listened to it even in group

Last night.

There are lines in every group

Which grow fresh or stale

In the naming.

Today it echoes

In my head.

Keep Coming Back.

For community

For support

For one more day of possibility.

In the Church we end the service

 with a dismissal

Go into the world

We say

To love and serve the Lord.

I wonder what would happen

If we added

Keep coming back.

The dismissal, after all,

Does not end the community,

Just this one time of gathering.

Maybe we believe it is implied,

But still:

Keep coming back:

For support

For love

For a kick in the pants

For one more day

Of possibility.

For life lived

Fully.

The women in Saudi Arabia/Bastille Day

So much to say here.  Of course I have a fresh understanding of the freedom that come with driving.  But still, 

I would never face a beating when I get behind the wheel, even if I*m on driving probation like the six months post-seizure.  I picture all the women of Saudi Arabia in broad daylight taking over the streets in cars. It*s quite a picture.  And still an issue.  Even though the King has declared women may work in lingerie shops now.  This pair of Western eyes remains curious.

They have taken to the streets

In droves,

In cars.

They now drive

In broad daylight,

So many that no one dares

To beat them back

To beat all of them back

Or senseless

Or silly.

Seriously they drive.

To Western eyes it seems a small thing.

It*s not

At all.

I heard the Princess speak

On NPR this morning.

She says that the King has signed a declaration.

It allows women to work

In lingerie shops.

The driving continues on

As civil disobedience.

A supreme act

Of civil disobedience

In full daylight

All together.

Variations on the theme

A friend helped me decorate my office (thank you, Terri!).  My brother gave me an Inuit print years ago of a woman in ceremonial garb standing on the moon, looking at the earth (thank you, Lane!).  The print is framed and hangs over the office sofa.  It is the piece around which the office is decorated.  It reminds me of a number of things: holding a wider perspective, celebrating what I see (the whole and the particular), remembering that as a therapist, I am also priest.  I am glad God has called me here.

Perhaps we never get the straight stuff,

Only variations on the theme

Of human.

Clients begin to approach

One by one.

They do not wait in line

Outside my door.

Each one echoes things

That are familiar.

They have seen miracles,

Heck they are miracles

Themselves.

Here they are

In my office,

The Inuit print on the wall

The Woman Who Went to the Moon

Shows both of us a wider picture of the world.

We talk variations on the theme

Of human.

And of course

We talk particularities.