And like Bartley the Scrivener
I’ve abided months of sermonette after sermonette of the addressed person’s trespasses,
late bills, possible eviction, UHAUL left overs.
You name it.

I’ve begun to check the obituaries
expecting to find that,
not only did she mysteriously die months ago leaving a trail of unpaid bills,
but that she suffered from dyslexia
and simply entered my number instead of hers-
interchanging a
15 for a 51
or a 934 for a 943.
Like a pigmy born the wrong place at the wrong time,
one of us confused with the other
and left to the damnation of the ignorant collectors!

Either that or to read that she was killed by Goths and Vandals whose numbers she had listed fraudulently to evade responsibility for her expenditures, but who’s zero sum religion required a sacrifice.
And my newfound freedom,
no fault of my own,
by grace alone
just a stroke of dumb luck.

Some days,
I hope for the disability,
others for the displaced revenge.
But its always one or the other.

Isn’t it embarrassing how death seems the only legitimate closure available to my imagination?

I’m dreaming about a big morning
but all I know right now is that everything I’ve loved is dead and buried.

the chief priests, with the elders, the teachers of the law had reached a decision.
But they had run out of coffee beans
and so they waited for someone to make a quick run to Starbucks
before making any public statements.

A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of two boys,
was passing by on his way in from the country,
and they dragged him out of his car and forced him to carry Jesus’ cross.
Next they dragged Jesus to The Place of the Skull.
And the police search helicopters were circling overhead.

The people stood watching, and the politicians and business leaders even sneered at him.
They said, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he indeed the Chosen One.’
The soldiers (with M-16s over their shoulders) also came up and mocked him.
They offered him blackmarket painkillers and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”
Meanwhile a lady’s iPhone kept going off.
The ring tone was catchy Katie Perry tune from about two years ago,
the one where she was riding on a long swing.

One guy next to Jesus yelled, “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!”
Another yelled back at him, “Don’t you fear God?”
Jesus interrupted the argument, saying
“I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”
And as I pulled out of the driveway our neighbors’ shit was thrown out on the lawn,
the marshal was just doing his job because the bank
was foreclosing on their slumlord
even though the he was still taking rent from them and sitting at home,
no where to be seen.

Jesus yelled, “Dear woman, here is your son,”
and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.”
And from that time on, John took Mary into his house, as if she were his own mom.

It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three-ish,
for the sun stopped shining. And then the special curtain was torn in two.
When I plugged my portable hard drive into the Pro Tools last night
there was this pop and smoke came out of it;
my friend and I looked at each other, both afraid of the worst.

Then Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
When he had said this, he breathed his last.

I remember sitting with my wife’s grandpa in his last days while he was gasping for air.
A tube blocked up his laboring throat so that he couldn’t talk.
But his eyes, they spoke volumes.

So today when the beauty
of music,
art,
design
and family
truly do spill over my apportioned serving sizes
I am convinced
that gifts
(those things we oughtn’t bet on)
are really all there is.

I want you to be free to know,
one day at a time,
your life as it shall become.
Trust your eyes and the scent of things
and give your feet over to that lit-path alone,
one step
at
a
time.

Don’t take;
not my advise,
another’s advise
or anything else born from outside your discovery.
Instead, eat what bread falls around us all.
‘Just enough to last from breakfast
and to stretch into a dinner with unexpected guests when necessary.

When we pulled away from the house this afternoon
there were vultures circling overhead.
Ready to take
what was to become theirs.
But the life is gone from that.

this was the difficult hard-
wiring we each received as children.

but the warmest remembered ritual
he and I still both enjoy
is rooting for the underdog
until they
lose

So here’s my first:

Wake

The ocean’s hand is long. Or is it wide?
Or is it her entire reach?

My toddling son stands facing her for his first time,
smiling as if at a bath that knows no end.
Then balance falls
away from him.
Rather, she takes it
and then hands it back
and then takes it again

wave
af-
ter
wave.

I’m holding his hand
and so much more this year.

And there’s that vast ocean again
handing to me
and taking back
and handing yet again.

“The Invisible Seen”
—St. Athanasios (c. 298-373, trans by Scott Cairns)

When our dull wits had so declined
as to set us mid the squalor of the merely
sensible creation, the Very God consented
to become a body of His own, that He
as one among us might gather our dim senses
to Himself, and manifest through such
incommensurate occasion that He
is not simply man, but also God,
the Word and Wisdom of the One.

Thereafter, He remained His body, and thus
allowed Himself to be observed.
his becoming joined to us performed
two appalling works in our behalf:
He banished death from these
our tender frames, and made of them
something new and (take note here) renewing.

“Nativity”
—John O’Donohue (1956-2008)

No man reaches where the moon touches a woman.
Even the moon leaves her when she opens
Deeper into the ripple in her womb
That encircles dark, to become flesh and bone.

Someone is coming ashore inside her,
A face deciphers itself from water,
And she curves around the gathering wave,
Opening to offer the life it craves.

In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers,
She falls and heaves, holding a tide of tears.
A red wire of pain feeds through every vein,
Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.
Outside each other now, she sees him first,
Flesh of her flesh, her dreamt son safe on earth.

wicks
-Church of St. Andrew, Christmas, 2006

1.
Until pews are dandelions
–sprig leggy levers–
catapulting young minds into kingdomcome;
sweeping elderminds like dreamseeds of evervision.

Until songs take wing
stretching strong like the arrows of migrating Juncos
lending lift, everloft, and standard.
Tail feathers slicing
tomorrow unto tomorrow.

Until prayers shovelset us into the red Georgia clay
sinking our toes like the magnolia’s roots
breaking open bone-earth’s chapped tongue
making our hope particular and rooty
tangling us here, now, to daily bread

2.
Until our aviary,
a loose canopy tabernacling for us,
meets the winds of intrastators
and price-per-acre
and towers catch-and-releasing invisible information;
until the long carving frenchdrains spoon away at its stature
(walk humbly with your God)
until the pieces of our umbrella
–the very stones and mortar of this sanctuary–
must join their sister elements
that groan and clap to the song that sang  us all into

existence.

3.
Until then,
inhale;
receive Spirit here.
Spirit who practices this all like Moshe’s bush on Horeb
who sings that song to which our ears belong.
Take the cup,
raise her,
exhale the gratitude of
carbon dioxide and moisturedrip for the forest,
lick your lips and dig your teeth in
to heaven’s sweet ‘what-is-it.’

4.
Today is a Tuesday,
December’s light is late as usual.
Slipping past the commute
into this morning’s eye,
I sit in my study,
a place of words, walls, and a solid oak desk that all precede me
and I watch this candle devour the cold room
and flicker
hotter than any coal placed on my lips.
And I remember,

we are already lit. Burning
but not consumed.
Set to flight.
Racing but not exhausted.
And this building already sings
and breathes
and joins creation.
And the dead are raised in Christ,
worship already working,

and the old and the future are part of today’s
firelight.