How did we all come here, I wonder
And why
Funny how we all find our way together
But not drawn by each other.
Drawn to You.
And we’ve done all this before
But we still so desperately need it
The crazy grace of remembrance
Of the love we can’t live without.
Hear our thanks to You, Lord
In the laughing passing of the peace
In our voices raised together in prayer
In the feet that move across the floor
Towards Your table.
if i was all enemy
and you were all love
if i was all sinful
and you were all good
if i was all anger
and you were all peace
if i was all noise
and you were all harmony
if i was all fractured
and you were all wholeness
if i was all undone
and you were all shalom
if i was all confusion
and you were all wisdom
if i was all worry
and you were all i need
and if you were to give yourself
all of yourself to me
that’s called grace.
Come to the water, You said
Come and drink until you no longer thirst.
In the middle of this desert land
I’d never heard such words
So curious and parched as the burning sand
I came.
Come to the water, You said
Come and wash until you are finally clean.
In a place of such squalor
I’d never been anything but dirty
So I let go of all my filthy rags
And came.
I can
Listen
To the words
That you need to say
Because I have also
Walked this way.
It doesn’t mean I know the answers
Not for all the questions you can ask
But it means you’re not alone
That answers do come when needed.
So maybe
It is time to turn off the noise
And relearn how to listen
Because most days that’s all
That I really have to offer.
I love you best in evening
As the light fades and the sidewalks
Are all paths pushed out
From where we were to what still could be.
I love you best in morning
Like the first time I remember
Wondering how anyone, ever
Could want to leave this living place.
I love you best in autumn
When the colors blaze all glorious
Like a fiery welcome
On the slope of the far hill.
I love you best in winter
When the buildings offer shelter
When we laugh long over dinner
Before everything speeds up again.
I love you best in spring
When the sun casts a spell on all of us
When the air’s scent is promise
And everyone begins to breathe anew.
I love you best in summer
When you are a waiting place
And all of the places are quiet
With different stories to be told.
I love you with the seasons
With every time of day and night
Your stories are woven deep
Crossing all throughout my own.
You’re going where?
They said to me.
That place is full of headlines,
And none of them are good.
Death and drugs and poverty.
Why would you want to go there?
I still see the name
As I glance at newspapers
And I remember the empty town
Broken sidewalks
Abandoned buildings
Forgotten steelwork.
Dead.
I’ve heard these words before
I’ve said them all
About how I knew better
About how I should be stronger
About how I never thought I’d be here
I know what this does to you
I’ve walked this path
Because we’re all deeply flawed
And we all live on faultlines
And we all fall and break.
So I pray for deep wisdom
For patience to listen
For grace to guide you
I don’t know what I’m doing
But I know Who I follow.
“The Gods we worship write their names on our faces; be sure of that. And a man will worship something … That which dominates will determine his life and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
(1 Corinthians 13:11-12)
“Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
(2 Corinthians 3:18 )
What words can I say?
And my thoughts all fall apart
Hollow and weak before such glory.
Write Your name on my face.
There are days when it seems like everything
Is nothing but shattered and broken
There are nights when it seems like everything
Is slipping away and cannot be healed.
And those are somehow the days
When You send people and weave circumstances
So that I find myself listening to stories
And marveling at how You have worked.
So can the most thin and weak, most frail and fragile
Chain of grace and faith
Somehow be stronger than all the powers of darkness
All the forces of evil?
These things seek to snap us, to sever us
To cut us off from each other and from You
They seem too vast to be conquered
Too badly broken to be made whole.
But You’re the God who hung the plan of redemption
On the single scarlet cord of a prostitute
Maybe it is no surprise
That You save us again by the finest of threads.
