Wayside Pulpit

Becoming Catholic

I will join
at your table
because God has called
me to supper with injustice, hierarchy, and misogyny,
all the while being fed
the food of love.

So, anoint me to initiate me,
join us together--
put yourself between my lips
hear my voice whisper in your ear
and feel our consummation.

Your own oil moves
me deeply inside
your body surrenders to mine
and I am surrounded
with all that is you.

And in our joining
the change confirmed
will alter the table
and we will never
taste the same again.

Final Fingerprint

last breath -
comes
and
goes
uniquely.

Bounty

harvest comes and goes
in the same way, 
God travels
through the seasons. 
sometimes abundant
sometimes absent 
but always present,
even if only a forgotten seed
waiting under a pile of leaves.

Sunset

I am discouraged.
A discouraged that makes tears run down.

Then I realize the feeling comes
from believing that all of this -
life, opinions, choices, jobs, critiques
really matter.

They don’t.

What matters is the music outside
wafting over the grass
voices sharing in a bit of laughter
the light of this computer
shining on my face
and knowing
that it will
all be
okay.

A Visit

Why is healing so rare when I see
	a doctor?
He or she comes knocking 
	on the door.
Me wondering,
	“Why knock?  
You’ll come in anyways.”
And they do enter,
	full of knowledge, smarts and
	often extensive expertise
	attached just behind the M.D.
	embroidered on their coats.
But wisdom,
	I rarely witness,
	or compassion.
And if you can’t 
	really see my heart,
how can you heal me?

Real Savior

I want a savior that really died,
not the half-assed man who
got the gift of a second chance.

I want a savior that
knows, really knows,
about the
permanence of death.

I want a savior that
was born and died.
Died.
Died.

I want a savior that
knows long term suffering,
not the 12 hours
nailed to a piece of wood.

I want a savior
that has slowly felt a body
fall and fall apart
over and over,
a body that has lost everything
down to speech itself.

I want a savior that
is still buried in the tomb
covered in cloth
aging oils
rotting.
Because then -
that savior,
my savior,
would really know
what it meant to be alive.

The One Called Lazarus

A caregiver in motion
he travels the countryside,
stoically healing
without much emotion
(or at least the story goes).

He has seen death, blindness, leprosy, demons -
blood that didn’t stop flowing.
Yet he was never really moved
until him.
That man somehow connected to him,
connected enough so he could say
from miles away,
he is dead, not sleeping.

He arrives too late.
But they all believe,
really believe that he
can wake him.
And this is what he wanted
Isn’t it?
To be known as the man,
the man who can heal
So they all will know
that he is -
The One.

Tears fall around.
And he looks down on
hands that had lifted paralysis away,
hands that had changed water into wine,
hands that had opened the eyes of the blind.
And he realizes that it does not matter
if they see - The One.
He simply knows he loves him.
And he weeps.

His tears are for him,
Not for them.
And they move his heart
from inside his robe -
to his death clothes.
And he no longer cares
if they believe or not.
He just wants to heal
to heal
and make the dead man walk.

Exam Room

She says, “I’ll be back in just a minute,”
The door closes,
Her white coat disappearing
around its edge.

My legs swing
from the exam table,
bare heals hitting
its metal underside.

Chronos is palpable
moving slowly through the room,
echoing off jars of tongue depressors,
packaged needles and diagrams of lipid systems.
The sound is deafening.

Then silence descends,
Kyros fills the room.
I am pulled into my own hope
that this place, this doctor,
this now, will cure this pain.
And I can leave the lifetime
of Chronic and be born again.

mindheart of god

Inside the mind of god
is what?
Why does god have to have a mind?
I mean really.
What has mind given us that heart can’t?

And then lev in Hebrew
heart and mind in one word,
or at least the grammarians say,
trying to capture dualism where,
really, there is none.
Just our Greco-Roman ghosts showing their
never ending power

And so it should be -
inside lev elohim or inside lev YHVH even just -
inside the mindheart of god.

Mindheart - a single word.
No dash.
No hyphen.
And definitely no hymen.
No thin membrane to be broken
again and again
by theologians
that really
would like god to be,
force god to be,
Either/Or
Virgin or Not
Spirit or Not
Mind or Not
Heart or Not.

Heartbreak

Heading Down 6th

Her child, their child, had finally stopped
breathing,
by their choice to unplug the plug that kept it going.
And now the heart was on its way to some-other
eleven year old girl.
He held her close
and he focused on
the stairs as they came,
the street as they walked,
and he only felt her and his own
broken heart -
all the way to the turn into a parking lot.
The space that held the rented car,
not the twisted one.

Heading Up 6th

He saw them
the man, the woman
walking toward him;
the man protecting the woman from
the neighborhood
the graffiti
and he knew
more than anything -
that the man was protecting her -
from him.
And when they turned to avoid passing
like they all did -
his heart just broke,
just like it always did.
He saw the ratty dumpsters
and a flattened bottle of Pepsi
shoved his hands in his pockets
and thought, “Fuck ‘em.”