Life is so short,
and the world so very small.
So perhaps
sometimes poems should
be too.
I’m tired.
A month ago I bought boots
with two inch heels.
I did it on a dare.
See I don’t wear heels often
because tall girls should
surely not try to be taller.
I decided not to care.
I liked they way they gave
my step an automatic swagger.
Today I wore those heels
out into the half-hearted rain
and down the city street
for coffee.
I felt good in my
black jeans and
red blouse and
leather jacket and
those swagger boots.
I held my head high
and smiled to myself.
Until I heard the catcalls
of three men working
on a building and
ogling me from the roof.
So then:
shoulders hunched,
head down,
arms crossed, and
quick, tight steps.
Do you have to take
everything?
Can we ever just be
for us?
There may be no
other problem in this world
I’d rather drown in
than too many
friends to see.
This day held
my favorite kind of
frenzy
And I am now
my favorite kind of
exhausted.
A flurry of hellos
and long embraces.
The rush of recognizing
an old familiar face,
unexpectedly present.
Shared memories,
new stories,
and common hope.
These are my bread and cup
today and I am full.
I wish I could always be
this overworked
with loving.
Maybe I can.
I work at a church
that sits on the corner
of city and power.
It can be a holy crossroads
where paths and souls
so often disparate
oddly intersect.
The crossing makes me
uneasy sometimes,
the way I suspect a
burning bush might
tingle a finger
if one dared to touch a leaf.
But I have learned that
in the hollow of my discomfort
God’s voice often speaks.
More Sundays than not
I hear sirens ringing out
amidst the music of our choir
or in the pause within a prayer:
a wailed reminder that
world and worship
always coexist.
Today was no different.
The sirens came,
their blaring grew and grew
and did not cease.
In front, a baptism
played out it’s sacred dance
with liturgy and symbols
and well-planned poise.
Then, doors flung wide in back.
An army of uniformed
helpers entered in.
A woman in a pew
reached for aid
to ready, gracious arms
outstretched.
Up front, another, too,
reached out for aid:
for hope, for love, for grace.
The baptized one
proclaiming
with careful water
spilled upon her head
the words of promise:
That Christ comes
and holds us all forever.
Water, too, in my eyes.
Concern for the one
and joy for the other
and wonder
that these two moments,
so wildly apart,
in their meeting told
one story:
Of a God who enters in
to our perfect plans,
our delicate aspersions of hope,
and flings wide the doors
with ready, gracious arms
outstretched
to take us in.
*Poem-a-day number 11*
Warm days in winter
are my favorite kind of fairy tale.
The kind of fable
that reminds you:
the best miracles
are the regular ones,
the simple goodness
already built into this life,
lost from sight, only briefly,
under layers of coldness
and gray.
The sun lights up
a reminder:
that grace never leaves you.
It never ever leaves.
It’s there beneath your feet,
and behind your wooden doors,
waiting for the sudden burst
within you that remembers
and calls it to come out
and play.
I sometimes struggle,
as a pastor,
with the pressure
to cut off my unseemly bits.
To take all my
unkempt emotion,
and broken edges,
and hungry humanness,
and shove it up under the rug
before company comes.
May I confess something?
I love my unseemly bits.
God made me human,
and I think She knows
what She’s about.
We’ll never get
closer to God
by being less
of what She made us.
She liked humanness
enough, after all,
to try it on for herself.
If my life is to be a ministry,
I hope for the courage
to let it teach this:
Perhaps, to draw close
to God
we need only stop believing
that we’re not.
