A Poem for a Change

Fall swept in overnight, so it seems.
At night a moon beam called and was answered into now.
Coolness propels me forward as I run through your essence.
Beware of the low branch where the spiders now play,
Weaving their tapestries and guiding our way.
Soon to be pumpkins on doorsteps.
Smiling and scaring our spirits each night,
The children are ready with costumes,
A fright to celebrate your beauty, your colors, your might.

Winter bear will soon embrace me,
Coaxing gently with soft moans.
At first will I resist,
Only to be succumbed by your soft pillow chest.
I lay my head upon you,
And with claws protecting and rocking
In your hammock I doze.
The dream is fully formed.
Now wandering through the mind,
There is music, and chocolate and babies who croon.
There are whispers and hushes as the pictures change.
There are crowds and then loneliness in a sullen pond.

Stop poking, persisting, your beak is too sharp, I am not ready yet.
My slumber is warming, my heart is closed shut.
Your chirps are disturbing, your buzzes so strong,
Please let me sleep just one more moment long.
Oh butterfly you conquer, your beauty too great,
You tempt me and pull me to flight oh so light.
My eyes are now open, the bees lead the way,
Your fragrance dear flowers intoxicates my day.

Oh day you grew longer,
Your nights are more bright.
I jump and I swim in pure summer's delight.
Pure bliss is my state,
Not a chill or a burden, no cares in my mind.
The voyage begins as it ends once more,
We navigate our paths until safely ashore.

The Miracle of Faith

Faith is a funny concept. I believe I wrote before about faith and how we make leaps of faith every day. We act in faith when we set the alarm to wake us in the morning or when we buy food for the week. Yet, when we are called to make a leap of faith outside the realm of our normal activities, somehow it seems absurd. I see faith as a kind of riddle. Once we know the answer to the riddle, it is so simple and straightforward. What was shrouded in darkness and mystery is fully illuminated and has become obvious. It is hard to conceive of how it could not have always been so. It seems to me that somehow miracles and faith are intimately connected. Once we take the leap of faith—the trusting of something larger than our limited view—the panorama shifts, and it is larger and more beautiful than we could have imagined. But if we stay safe within the castle walls, we can never really know what lies on the other side. 

Recently Calvin was engaged in a conversation with his sister about God, the Bible and various teachings and stories. She seemed to conclude that she could not believe in God because she could not agree with certain biblical stories that did not make logical sense to her. It seemed that unless she could fully understand and accept or agree with, on a basic level, all of it, that she must reject the whole thing. What a funny approach, I thought, what subject of any vastness does one approach from the get-go with the idea that I must understand everything about the subject and be in agreement with it before I enter into exploring it? It seems a bit crazy really, but I don't think her reasoning is at all uncommon when it comes to a belief in God. 

With almost anything that pursues, there is a great deal of unknowing, yet still a willingness to enter into the subject or activity with the understanding that you learn as you go. If the Bible really is a book in some sense designed or even inspired by God to teach about all of life and spirit, then perhaps its vastness and depth are never fully understood? I think if we are able to embrace the idea of something greater than our current knowing, it lies within that very willingness to actually make it a possibility. 

Faith—A few miracles come to mind, one where Jesus turned the water into wine at the marriage of Cana (John 2:1-11), and another, the feeding of the 5,000 (Mark 6:30-44). It is interesting to me in both of these miracles there is something very tangible to our current understanding. However, the call is to take that understanding just a little bit further than our logical left-brain comfort zone. One can certainly conceive of the rain from the heavens nourishing and watering the vine, to produce the grape, to fall to the ground and ferment then voila: "beaujolais nouveau au nature". We can look at a piece of fish in our plate whole and solid, and begin to flake it into pieces—it seems to multiply before our eyes, what was one solid fish is now 1,000 fish flakes ready to feed the masses. 

If Christ is in Divine alignment, constant communion, able to carry out his Father's perfect will, it makes it not such a huge leap of faith to conceive of the space time continuum being mastered, functioning outside of the "normal." Even science has concluded that after a road long travelled in aiming to unravel the origins and function of reality, there is a place that arrives at a great mystery—cause and effects changed by the observed. These examples of miracles are concrete enough to grasp, yet demand just a bit more. If one is willing to go the extra mile, the fruit is produced of its own accord. The riddle is answered. Christ calls us to be like children — “Whoever humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:4). These little ones can sometimes illuminate the magical freedom to be found when the logic is not so fully formed as to build a closed cage. We have heard the expression "free your mind" in song and memes, but therein does lie a true thing. The link between mind and reality are perhaps more fluid that we care to embrace. Can we walk on the unsteady waters, yet know we are held and loved by something so much larger and more perfect than we could ever imagine? Only way to know is to dive in with a leap of faith...then let the miracles begin.

Love Is Not the Answer

A few months ago at the Royal wedding Bishop Curry preached a sermon. The world was in awe at the beauty and power of his sermon. I met Bishop Curry about 11 years ago in Raleigh at Church of the Nativity which I was attending at the time. We sang for him several times, and he was always grateful and made a point to thank the musicians. Whenever he was at church, he always brought with him a ray of sunshine that seemed to be bursting forth with Christ's love. It just naturally poured forth from his being. He has said "if there is not Love, there is not God." I loved Bishop Curry the first moment I met him. When the world responded to Bishop Curry's "charisma" (as one atheistic/agnostic friend remarked and named it) I thought to myself: that is not "charisma", that is Truth. 

When Truth speaks, people feel it, respond to it, react to it. I am often disappointed after church. Maybe my expectations are too high. I want to hear a preacher, not one who tells me his or her political view and then tries haphazardly to glue it to the scripture of the day. Not one who mockingly describes beliefs different than his or her own with an air of superior righteousness “None is righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). Rather, I want to hear the Truth, plain and simple. Give me the scripture, perhaps illuminate the historical or scenario context and then get out of the way and let Truth speak. It will work its way into the depth of each being’s individual needs and illuminate and transform of its own accord. That is the power of the living, breathing word of God. 

The Bible tells us the heart is evil. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). I have to admit, I always find that pill a bit hard to swallow. It seems there is something pure and good in the heart. Something that informs, perhaps informs even that deepest innate knowing of God. “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them” (Romans 1:19). There is though the heart’s deception, and maybe this is what that scripture points us to. We often hear “love is love”, “love is good”. In fact the scripture says "God is Love". Christ tells us the sum of the law and prophets is to first love God with all your soul, heart and mind, and the second is like unto it: love your neighbor as yourself. John 3:16 tells us God sent his only begotten son out of love to save the world. Such a powerful and touching scripture, not sent out of the will to judge and condemn but rather out of love. We feel Christ's pure love when he goes to the lost in mercy and even in his darkest moments pleads with his Father, in love: "forgive them, Father, for they know not". It seems in all this, love rules supreme. 

And yet, what is this about the evil heart? My aunt Suzanne once said, "I often pray to have made known my secret sins", and this is my light bulb moment. I think this illumines the difference, one kind of love is small, self-driven love, and the other is Agape love—the fountain that never stops flowing, the pure source that is the beginning and the end—The Alpha and Omega. The other is small love masked in all kinds of subtle self-serving needs. This love can feel like the real deal, and therein lies its own deceptive nature. Take Dante's Inferno and his infamous adulterous lovers Francesca and Paulo: the question remains for them, how can something that feels so ecstatic, so pure, so wonderful be bad? And yet...modern day psychology tells us that betrayal is one of the most difficult hardships a human being can bear, one from which many never recover.

I have a friend at church and I remember telling him about a story of a sister who was to be artificially inseminated, and he immediately in a very PC way said, "Yes I have no problem with that, good for her", but later I thought to myself: “but what about the child?” What about the child never knowing or having a father? We have our loves, our drives and ambitions....but what about the other? We are not islands. I believe we are connected perhaps more profoundly than we realize, our thoughts and actions affect others, often in ways we could not imagine.

Maybe this is the difference between a small self-driven love, albeit pleasurable and perhaps seemingly good, and the other enduring and constant, unchanging love of the Father. The difference of the sometimes love in our hearts, which can quickly turn to despising when our self-driven needs are not met. The classic love-hate relationship! Christ illuminates the core of the Agape love when he sacrifices his very being for the other, all the others. Even in his last breath, asking his Father for this cup to be taken from him and yet drinking it willingly, knowing fully the effect it would and could have for the other. 

Agape love, ever calling us and challenging us to find the subtle shades of small love and to expand its horizons beyond....beyond pleasure, beyond comfort, but eventually to rest in a peace much larger and more enduring than that which we can even conceive of if we continue to cling to the other. Love is not the answer, Agape love is!