on the lawn late one summer

From the front porch steps, I see the tree bending like a weary homeless woman. She sags to cover her knobby, beat up roots. Shrinking beneath my watching eyes, in an attempt to hide her disgracing poverty. Scarlet creeps around the edges of her leaves, all she can manage of an apology for her offense to the ideals of beauty. Her branches waver, defeated by a strong breeze. She leans with age, and it is enough to make me burst into tears. I stand, I mean to throw my arms around her and reassure it by my embrace. But the fence frowns with such disarming disapproving, I repent of my emotions.

I stretch out my hand to catch the glimmering light, but it spills through my fingers like water poured out. This time of day kisses me, today with bittersweetness. It kicks my lungs like a mouthful of salt water, over ripe with memory and soiled by my lonely heart. The shadows grow and awaken with a stretch and yawn, lapping up the colors as they flee the skies blushing skin. The aroma of rain lingers as heat makes its departure, mocking me all the more for having counted myself its companion. Noise rings distantly in my ears, draining away beneath an inner commotion. I hold my breathe, counting, but this outlasts me. Like a bully, teasing, teasing. It's a neighbor in all the eyes I see. Every one is always further, everyone is getting farther away. I hug my knees to my chest in acknowledgment of subtle autumn's advancing steps.

The tree reaches for me across the fence and I smile. Ah, who can be lonely with these trees? She shakes loose one treasured golden leaf which floats towards me slowly. And as it falls she whispers with the timeless voice of leaves, that sounds like moss and tangled vines: Remember we are really growing younger. And I can not help but believe her.

loneliness

It taste like a mouth full of salt water.
Lingers of rich aromas without the hope of their return.
It rings distantly in my ears
mocks with the chill of burnt out embers
It fills my head with detached words
and smudges my skin as I paint a temporary escape
it always outlast me, holding my breath
it grows the more I ignore it
devouring the colors fresh on the page
its a neighbor to all the eyes I gaze at
as greedy as the grave, unsatisfied with short encounters
"did not our hearts burn within us?"
and You remembering me remind me
that the deeper night pulls up her blankets
the nearer is the sun.

This is how it begins...

Claire and I were driving home from a week of reflected skies and country roads and these words kept eating at my thoughts so I scribbled them down: "The metalic tongue licked up the miles, consuming the waves of blue and continents of clouds. Returning to a place I'd never been, a place inhabited by my dreams." A premonition passing through my mind like the window-down-breeze.

Later that night, I opened my inbox and found- without a completed application, without a fee, without the medical forms-- acceptance.
A door swung wide open.
I trembled, I leapt, I ran out of the room so that Claire expected the worst disaster or a letter from an unrequited love.
I laughed, I hugged her, I feared, I trembled again-- at the weight of meaning.
My stomach flips and butterflies escape to beat their wings in circles, somersaults, jumping beans.
and my heart wonders at You, at the whispered prayers, at the consuming thoughts, and the stillness to hear...
Then-- all seems to collide in a mass of color, a rushing river-- all Your leading, Your hand guiding me, the lessons of trust, the longing, the conversations-- have a name:

Uganda.
Land I know so little of, land a piece of my heart has already flown too. Time becomes long and short. I swallow:
the unreality. the reality.

"You are a missionary." Her gentle voice a mingle of joy and sorrow- oh how I long to pack them all up, wrap them lovingly in my suitcase and keep them in my pockets. You speak. this is it, the beginning.

Uganda.
Community development. My weakness. My trembling at the voice of Love. The Uncreated One beckons.
to take passage.
and I saw in his face-- the marks of one who has been, who has become a stranger, the loneliness, and the sorrow that has carved out deep joy- deep trust, how he knew the burden...
I tremble, I tremble... while I grasp Your hand.
"Here am I Lord, send me."
a heart that beats in weakness, sustained by You alone. "But David, strengthened himself in the LORD."

rowing on the lakes of Canada

Every song by The Innocence Mission is familiar to my heart- as if a brilliant person observed the moments (significant and seemingly not) and captured them perfectly.

Tonight my soul is wandering through forest of thoughts, I do not want to be tamed... llingering on faces that have meant something (significant and seemingly not), but always skipping or stumbling forward.

Those foreign lands call, away from this home I've already lost to my nomadic heart-- to a heavenly city. It calls like a ship coming into harbor, growing bigger (and more forbearing) as it nears this shore. Just a short time away. It is nearing and I stand watching, longing to breathe that ocean air, and secretly wondering about this trust- this love- that calls for abandon, for pursuit, to night after night drown in those waves and be baptized so He can rise in me.

I met a young man recently, a sailor on that sea, and I could hear in his voice the ache of a stranger, of a man who has no home but "seeks a better country." And it made my heart beat. to join him. to taste. to see. and it skipped, to run, to tremble before this burden. But, I could hear in his voice, what only those who journey discover, the deepest mysteries of Glory. And I was ruined for it.

Someday, someday... how the waiting stretches over me- sometimes suffocating, sometimes security.

but this says it all:

Walking in the circle of a flashlight
someone starts to sing, to join in.
Talk of loneliness in quiet voices.
I am shy but you can reach me.
Rowing on the lakes of Canada,
rowing on the lakes of Canada.

clear head, cloudy skies

the noisy language of florescent lights
unnatural and unappealing,
adds unnecessary ugliness
to these thoughts already pacing cramped spaces.

the noise, noise, noise
as it gathers into static between us
I can spread it with my fingers
swat at it like these summer mosquitoes

agitation evolves in each step
I stomp, I kick, I slam the door
I pluck the flowers and pull the grass's hair
all these signs of inner shouting
as I grow quiet here

you remember these things much different than I
much better.
you see much further, you look out beyond
etching a map for me
while I throw rocks in the pond

I turn up the noise to fall asleep
for you are too difficult to listen too
you dawdle, you whisper,
you are.
and your patience wears on mine

i want you to be louder.
I hide with the skeletons in my closets
so you'll be forced to call me out.
to find me out.
for at moments I can not stand your unknowns.
and that reaps my desperation to know you.

I do not want to wait in these rooms.
I do not like these clothes.
I do not want to be known by these names.

You breath. You dabble. You pause.
and I can not stand your stillness
for it strips off layer after layer.

You hold secrets I search out,
You speak of things above, beyond me,
things I will never figure out.

You wear on me,
with intolerable need.
with astonishment. with wonder.

"You are the sign. And You are the wonder."
and it is too much for me.
the new life stretches within me,
never content at the limits I relent to,
unsatisfied with the tiniest replacement
the smallest reliance on any other

His jealousy will not be denied.
this is a burden and a fire.
this is a baptism and a desert
this is a delight and a terror
this is beauty and holy fear...
the Uncreated One calls out: come.
"and whom have I in heaven but You?
and on earth there is none I desire besides Thee."

wonder.

//Charcoal smudges flew in shapes of birds,
across a sky of blue unparall'led,
and I believe we overheard His hymn,
hidden amongst the joyful woods,
as we tread between their dresses green
into innocence unspoiled. //

The hunger in my stomach is so small compared to the depth of how I long to know Him. Through a wondrous forest today and afterward I stumbled (no coincidence) upon these words: "Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make Him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the eart, and their words to all the world." Time spent well these days with hearts so close to mine, but closer to His and it draws me in -to mystery, to wonder, to innocence. And, I've made a decision, more compelled to it. be still my beating heart. but night can not calm these thoughts that fly to eternity.

"No such thing as too much passion. That's what dead people say... [well that might be a little too strong of language] but honestly. LIFE IS PASSION... and passion is purpose. and purpose is... people and ... yeah. NEVER lose that."

for Claire.

- Charcoal smudges flew in shapes of birds,
across a sky of blue unparall'led,
and I believe we overheard His hymn,
hidden amongst the joyful woods,
as we tread between their dresses green
into innocence unspoiled. -