We form new churches

I know this may not be a popular thought. Still... I believe it is true. Everywhere... is holy ground.

We form new churches

With all in whom we see God,

With each new blessing.

...Or watch

Number 3 in the series on the bedtime prayer.

Ye watchers and ye Holy Ones.

God is not the only one

Who watches us.

We watch each other,

Even at night,

Pay attention

To the particulars

Even as we sleep.

Even as we sleep

God holds our hand

Gives it a squeeze

So we know when

To open our eyes.

God’s like that.

She watches

The watchers.

She watches us watchers,

Names us holy,

Calls us worthy

Even when

We are asleep.

Scilla

I had to ask a friend for the name of "that flower." I never knew it before. My mother, the gardener, called it a weed. It is only blue for awhile in the spring, but now I know it has a name. Now I know I can plant it and it will spread where it wills. It will light up the shade.

Every spring I encounter

Blue carpets

On stray lawns,

Blue I have to remember again

Each spring.

I have never lived in a house

With such blue.

When I grew up

The next door neighbor

Had a shady patch which blued

Each spring.

I didn’t encounter it again

Until a few years ago now

On a walk around some block

Somewhere.

Now that blue appears

When we are late to church

And park a block and a half away.

I dreamed that blue last night,

A patch of flowers grew

In my living room.

When I looked out the back door

The blue covered the lawn,

A blue carpet

On my grass.

It was a Visitation

It was an Annunciation

It was Holy

This space

Sometimes a space is more than a space.  Sometimes something is holy, not by anything we do or say, but really only because God has chosen to inhabit it boldly.

I write this for you

My client who is not here  

Today.

I write this for you

My therapist who is also

Not here

And never will be.

I write this for me

For all who have been here,

For all who will be here,

For me who sits

Calm and quiet in this space

I have made;

In this space

I have loaned.

This space

Is more than an office.

This space

Holds so much more

Than I can name.

I write this for all

Who share it

And even for all

Who won’t.

Cost

Holy stories are not limited to the ones told in church or between office walls.  There is holiness in the listening and in the telling.  Sometimes it*s hard to tell who should be paying whom.  There is always cost involved, somehow.  Sometimes money changes hands.  

Yesterday brought

Eight countable hours.

Three I was paid for.

Two cost me money:

The trainer

The hairdresser.

Both had deep stories.

The hairdresser even cleaned my glasses

So I could see my new haircut

More clearly.

I re-met a woman from church

On the street corner.

She has learned to pass

With adequate social skills.

This comes

With clear cost

To her.

We shook hands when we met,

Shook hands

When I left.

When I turned around,

She had disappeared

Entirely.

Everything costs something.

Sometimes we pay.

Sometimes we are paid.

Sometimes the exchange

Is simply, purely, free.

Thin places

I really did google thin places as if there would be some sort of thin place directory.  There wasn*t.  I only found people arguing about its origins and who owned it.  I was looking for a map.  No map.  I knew my experience in Santa Fe was of a thin place.  But is it for everyone?  Probably not.  I list the responses I got from four separate Navaho about the Corn Dance.  I think about the Eucharist and our attempts to describe it.  Perhaps the only real answer is How was it for you?

While I wait to find out

About Iona,

I wonder if there is a map

Of the thin places

Of the world,

The places where heaven and earth

Meet,

Or at least breathe

into each other.

Perhaps I can go

To one of them.

My research says

There is no common mind around

Who has ownership

Of the term

Thin places.

Certainly no map

Exists.

I smelled heaven*s breath

When I stayed in Santa Fe,

The scent at morning*s arrival,

The thinner air,

Two coyotes passed me by

At dusk.

The indefinable Corn Dance:

No one would name its meaning

Except

I don*t know

Or

I*m not allowed to tell.

And finally

How was that for you?

What did it mean to you?

No one owns the thin place,

The meaning

Of the thin place.

There is no map.

I am told in Iona the air

Is thin.

Perhaps I will see

What it means to me.

Holy place

Our experiences bring us new ways of seeing.  I knew this.  But somehow when my left eye suddenly brought me blur and shimmer, I panicked and the doctor sent me to the ER.  Once they determined no brain lesions or detached retina it became... well... more interesting.  Of course it may signal other possibilities, but for now anyway, since I cannot drive again until the Ides of March (due to the seizure), I am exploring this new way of seeing, and I can see well enough through my right eye and shimmery left eye to finish my internship at the halfway house.  Today the living room shimmers as a holy place.


The light plays through the trees

Out front;

It leaf-dapples on the living room floor.

When I close my right eye,

There are dips and shadows

In my left.

The same world shimmers.

A week ago I took it to be

An emergency.

I found

It*s not.

I will see the retina doctor

This week

For the dips and shadows and shimmers.

I already knew

Everyone sees different pieces of the world.

This seems a version

Of that knowing.

I know a woman who sees birch trees

When the Holy appears.

For me the leaf-dapples shimmer,

Mark the living room

A holy place.

Clouds

This is my earliest memory of encountering The Holy.  I believe all children experience God, but often don*t have the words for it.  I don*t blame my mother (anymore, anyway) for not getting that this was a God experience.  Even mothers aren*t expected to be perfect... (being a mother myself has helped me understand this... and it has still taken awhile...)   I put this out there because I spent years thinking that cloud experiences don*t compare with the folk who see the Sacred Heart of Jesus and don*t just see clouds but hear God saying, from the cloud itself, You are my beloved child.  I spent years thinking that because I didn*t feel called at four to celebrate Eucharist with my assembled teddy bears, my vocation as a priest was suspect.  Now I know (capital *K* KNOW) that God calls each of us particularly.  Way back when, He showed me the clouds, and moved them for me.

When I was three, maybe four,

Pixie haircut,

Bright pink sundress my mother made,

Playing in the back yard

By myself,

I saw the clouds move.

Rather

I Saw The Clouds Move

And I Knew

(capital K)

There was so much more to things

Than me.

I ran and told my mother in the kitchen

I SAW THE CLOUDS MOVE.

Yes, dear

She said

Lunch is almost ready.

Now I know

It was God.

Moving.

Today the clouds are painted

On the sky.

How they stay in place

Is beyond me,

But so much seems

Beyond me

Right now.

The appointment I knew I had

This morning

Is next Thursday instead.

The clouds remain

In place.

Painted in place.

I know this afternoon

They will look different.

They will have moved on

When I wasn*t looking.

They may still look painted in place.

It may be a new painting

This afternoon.