She Ran to Him

She ran to him, knowing, what no one else knew

(Knowing he would carry her)

She ran to him, knowing, what she was too young to know

(too small to see, too new to know)

That he would hold her thumb, kiss it

 

She ran to him, with overweening arrogance, unconceivable presumptiousness

un-justified pride

Knowing he would comfort her

She ran to him, with wisdom beyond the Hokhmim

Knowing he would cuddle her

 

And so the child came crying

Demanding the kiss of God

And so the toddler came indignant

Ordering the arms of God

 

And so the kingdom cometh

For so does it come

And so the child enters

For she is too young, she knows 

I wrote this almost fifteen years ago. I found it on my old college days blog. Thought I would put it up. It is a riff on pondering what it means to "become a little child" to God.

"Unless ye receive the kingdom of God as a little child, ye shall not enter it."

I wrote this from experience with little siblings. Now from the last 14 years experience with my own 8 little children, I would say their defining characteristic is their demand for love. They know it, and they expect it.

Two Poems written at 30,000 ft

 I flew to my sister's wedding, after not flying for about 7 years. I don't know if it was being refilled with kind stranger's blood ten times 2023, or if it is approaching middle age, but people feel so much more...precious. 

The people all around me, strangers, moving along. Sometimes it hits me just how vulnerable we are, our lives suspended over death by miracles we are not aware of. A few pumps of a heart muscle, a mis-timed squirt of air or oxygen...we can be broken so easily. 

Bustling about with our big plans and our daily worries, unaware, so fragile, precious, and human.

[Leaving]

I fly above the world

in a tube of tin

fragile wings outstretched,

caught in the wind

Silent humanity,

crushed within

A life-time of memories---hopes won or lost

Written in a kilogram of greymatter, 

packaged in wrinkled flesh and textiles.

An aging lady reads a romance

its crisp pages never to be turned again.

A middle aged man, potentials collapsed into a suit

 curly hair thinning, tinged with grey, 

with eager eyes consumes the free flight training

meticulously takes the quiz---how to bank, turn, landing, takeoff---

bound back to earth.

All yearnings of our souls, inchoate

Mute children, yearning for words [within]

each of us, elbows carefully at our sides

avoiding each-other's eyes.

My deep apologies for the bad metallurgy that I reduced my aircraft to, in an attempt to rhyme.

The man on my left felt like a Jewish businessman, carefully wearing a nice suit, probably on his way to some business meeting, probably. In boredom he fired up the screen, eschewed movies, and was taking a free pilot course complete with multiple choice-quizzes on piloting terminology and techniques. Banking and turning, when to put the flaps down, etc. He was going through the quizzes, with the eagerness of a preteen who has just discovered they can become a pilot. He had very curly hair, tinted with grey, thinning out. He looked about 40 or 45, when paths have long been chosen, careers have been baked in, and there isn't enough time to re-orient. But it was so easy to see the child in him...what he must have once looked like----a mop of curly hair over bright curious eyes, studying the world. But now middle aged, and all bound up in the respectable suit... it didn't seem to fit his true soul. As if he wore it almost like an ill-fitting uniform, that a good child donned to do the job required of him.

The woman's romance novel was some strange exploration into a possible ghost story or a widow or something, but falling in love with some poor guy who went by they/them. It wasn't your typical harlequin, I think, but it also was all about experiencing a romance, kiss, etc, that wasn't your own. It was odd. It felt like the sort of book one would never re-read. The sort of thing a moody writer writes in desperation trying to squeeze wind and kisses and sunsets out of a computer word-document. There's a sort of pathos to it, the graphic description of kisses, the attempt to summon up hypothetical beach sunsets that you haven't actually experienced enough of. As if your mind was a computer generator, hashing out fuzzy images of Microsoft back-drop screens, with ourselves crudely photoshopped into...longing for life. For wind. Hunched in a air-conditioned room, staring into an LCD monitor that is attempting to reconstitute the photons of a foreign sunset, looking for filling the hunger in our souls.

[Returning]

In a tube of hammered steel,

Frantically riding the wind

Rushing forward, jolting in its turbulence

Packed in, we neatly keep

Our elbows tucked, our heads forward, 

Furtive glances to catch

Bits of souls of the others, glinting though---

A ring, luggage patch, phone screen backdrop, half of a tattoo

What signs of loves, quirks, ideologies and selfhood chosen?

We collect in odd assortment in our pockets, during this mad race toward eternity

The tired middle-aged Indian man [strong, grey-frosted]

beside pulls down the shutter

closing his eyes.

We sit in darkness, lit by light-shadows of sudden brightness,

the few young window-dwellers who 

still sit by unshuttered portholes,

hungry eyes drinking in the sight.

Older ones outnumber them

Lean back weary arms crossed,

Seeking sleep

The attendant comes,

like good children we wait quietly,

sitting in our seats, eager anticipation,

hoping not to be passed over.

I nod off, coming to, afraid I have

missed the awaited treat

The tattooed curly haired beauty next to me,

handing the precious pretzel packets to me in shy solidarity.

I pass it to the Indian man beside me.

In silent fellowship we eat our pretzel packets,

Together

Ginger ale, tomato juice, and a whiskey

In silent communion we consume.

And then wait together.

Jolting again

Through the rough wind, invisible

Trusting that the darkened tube is still

sailing toward the earth

Towards that place

Where familiar faces and voices await us,

Home

There was something that almost made me cry, how we suddenly all became little children. The glamorous well-dressed curly-haired tattooed girl next to me, who probably doesn't agree with me on politics or religion or anything, waking me up so I didn't miss the snack. We may have all been in kindergarten, looking out for each other. I feel like I love her so much. With the love of a 6 year old who just was saved from snack-less-ness by the other 6 year old. Words may have ruined it, we would have disagreed about everything. But there was something about that silence, as if our souls were all lined up, silence stripping away our self-created identities, and just children inside. May God bless her abundantly.

A Psalm for the Apocolypse

God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.

Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Come and see what the Lord has done,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease
to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Joseph of Arimathea

Adonai, I was silent, and believed.
Silence and belief ---which the greater sin?
I waited waited waited ---till the time was right to reveal
what I knew, inside
Bide Bide Bide
'Wisdom', 'Forbearance'---failure I
called it such, and did not speak...
God, I failed.

Now at last, too late, too late
He is dead.

I waited to tell men, till ---when?
Now. too late.
But I, Now will go. Tell them.
And bury him.
All I have left, all I can do,
bury him.

I gave You not my words
I give You now my tomb

Holy God, Forgive,
I failed You.
Too late, too cautious, too coward
now I
Bind him with these failed hands,
Wrap the linen, pour the myrr
These hands that touch your dead flesh
loved you, Lord.

(from  Aug 2011)

picture credit

The One Thing I know

"The one thing I know is that God is good.
That his heart bleeds every time a human’s heart does.
Our pain is his pain, all of it, all of it.
And that he is gentle, and steadfast, and will not waste one drop of our suffering."

from
http://chubbicsblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/02/the-one-thing-i-know/

Lost without Cause

Now therefore, what do I have here,” declares the Lord, “seeing that My people have been taken away without cause?” 

Taken away, 
the children lost, 
for no reason. 
While we worried for them

We, harried and half asleep,
nod to the ones who creep
to nobly trash their souls
Never looked into the faces
Too busy on our phones

Truth as cheap as trash
Drowned in the blur 
of Newspaper Headings and small talk,
(World is going on as before)
Same old same old...

Fields won by battle,
surrendered without a word,
travelling in a muddle
We muddle down the road 

The Lord declares, “Those who rule over them howl, and My name is continually blasphemed all day long.
Therefore My people shall know My name;

When we sit among the ashes
wondering what went wrong
Surrounded by the bodies 
Staring at our hands

When at last the worst has happened
We have nothing more to lose
Knowing we lost our Treasure
---Sold it for a song 

When the captors inflict their jeers
We hear our lies in blackness
--Our eyes gouged out by spears---
Our own lies soft and fair
Will finally appear,
as they are...
 
Therefore in that day I am the one who is speaking, ‘Here I am.’”

The Scorn That Withers as the Fire

The lies come thick and fast
The scorn the withers as a fire
And petty groups display their cards
(showing they are the ones)
Wise, accepted, educated, respected
Laugh the crazies, the sufferrers, the mad ones
Blind and beaten by injustice, pierced with shards of hate

But the Final Time comes, the real fire comes
Burns away our creds like dross
Every deed lies bare, stripped of its skin
Motives bare as bones, every thought spoken
What then?
And in that inferno of our failure
What stands?
but you and I
Our souls inflammable, unbreakable
Naked and alone.

The only covering,
An edge of a cloth
--pulled from the hem of a robe---
Red with blood and White as Fire

Thanks be to God

Thanks be to God for the little things
the sunrise after dark night
the laughter of a baby
the stars wheeling through the sky
Telling us the world is not ended
God still reigns
And despite our darkness, the Light comes