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Same Name, Different Ones and Zeroes.

New Poems

Happening Frontier

It so happens, sometimes,
that eyes peer into and
past, and nothing familiar

is seen. Worried, as such,
the look excavates reaching
truths, and still,

only frontiers.
Intrigue scatters off to
clumsiness and it's all
hands up in the air;

shoulders shrug, and,
if careless, navel gazing
recommences.

Close

You wouldn’t know
at right off,
right before you,

that I’d like nothing
less than some

direct, tough questions.
It’s not, but it is
this public’s penchant

for vacillation,
gerrymandering voices,
that would have me seem
opaque
—at second glance.
Should we come close…

the breezes may break;
nothing seems to point
there, yet.

Interprative Verse of a Jack Tale About a Wishgiver

Quick thoughts don’t come too quick.

All the time you’ve got to think, so
much so that you can even let others
think for you so you know what
thoughts you might need to have.

See, we don’t always see things the
way others see them. Right there
in front of us, see right there, is someone
else’s sight seeing the same thing
and something different, something
you probably need to see.

One day you’re going to find yourself
hoping, thoughts coming quick but
un-distilled, stagnating, eclipsing fine things,
and unless you see someone else’s hopes
measuring yours, it’ll just be your own wishful
thinking full only of yourself.

Else you’ll be eating at an empty table
set with shiny plates of sad gold.

Obedience

What is obedience? We say we follow Jesus Christ, the one whom the Gospel of John says is from above, and of whom no one accepts testimony. Incidentally, following Jesus does not mean being accepted, does not mean finding worldly power. The kinds of power that the world offers require that we would obey humans rather than God. It would be institutions, structures of dominance and control, even seemingly altruistic religious systems, that we would have to submit to, rather than the God who would rather mysteriously break us out of jails at night so that we might preach in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Obedience is such a difficult thing for us to grasp. Embedded into us by the opaque notions of "homeland security," "surveillance," and "patriotism," is a discipline of self-policing, following the laws of the land so as not to be caught and punished. A psalm says that the Lord confronts evildoers to destroy remembrance of them forever; to the contrary, the society we find ourselves in is founded upon insidious institutions cloaked in secrecy. We might say, "There's no need to worry about remembering the deeds of evil done--most folks didn't know they happened in the first place." And so obedience is difficult to grasp because often we are unaware of our options. So often the church throughout its history has seen nothing wrong with blending in--oh, there's salvation in it, but it's alongside everything else. The Gospel and the witness of the Apostles greatly shake up the notion of a comfortable conviviality between the body of Christ and the world. To obey God is to choose Christ, to seek to be led by the Spirit, not to be dictated by the powers of the world.

We must be acutely aware of what we are doing when we choose to worship God in the name of Jesus Christ. Our purpose is not to maintain some institution. The heart of the tradition we come from brings into question all alliances that would crucify Christ again given the chance. (If we were to observe history, they do crucify Christ again and again in the oppression of the poor.) But God has exalted Jesus so that we might be granted repentance, the ability to turn around, and forgiveness, freedom from the bondage of false power. As we worship, as we share the Eucharist, we boldly identify ourselves with Christ's suffering and death, his rejection by the earthly powers, and humbly seek to join in his resurrection glory. In our faithfulness, may we be guided by the Holy Spirit to the table and back into the world obeying God and not humans.

Acts 5:27-33, Psalm 34:2 and 9, 17-18, 19-20, John 3:31-36

She Has a Name

(A sermon preached April 14, 2009 at Adoration, Hopwood Christian Church, Milligan College, TN on John 20:11-18)

She has a name. Her identity has been condensed and construed and misconstrued and used for the purposes of various folk. She’s been called a former prostitute, once possessed by a handful of demons, a woman who may have been the one to shatter an alabaster jar to rub nard onto the soon-to-be-pierced-feet of the Lord. She’s the sultry seductress of the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel The Last Temptation of Christ adopted for film by Martin Scorsese. According to Dan Brown’s Code she’s a rose and the hidden wife of Jesus of Nazareth. Mary Magdalene, the Apostle to the Apostles. She was weeping and “Jesus said to her, ‘Mariam!’” Although her name and identity have been confused for centuries, this Mary that we encounter today in John’s gospel has a name which Jesus knows, and when she hears her name spoken by the resurrected Lord her eyes are opened to see the world transformed. Hearing and seeing her being named, our understanding and our world can too be transformed.

We all have a name. When I was young, my mom has told me, I insisted that people would call me “Andrew,” nothing else. When I was eight, a little league baseball coach repeatedly would call me “Andy,” and I’m told that I would either ignore his address or correct him. I knew my name. On the rare occasions when I would upset my mom or get caught for doing something I shouldn’t have been doing, I’d know I really was in trouble when she would raise and tighten her voice saying, “William Andrew Jehosephat!” These days, when my girlfriend Christina greets me on the phone or at door saying, “Andrew! Andrew!” she reminds me of her love for me. Beyond that, I recognize the great responsibility that comes with being named by someone, the call it entails, the humility and gratitude it bestows and conjures.

The weeping woman we encounter in the gospel reading has lost her sense of identity, has lost the one person that had offered her hope. He has been crucified by the State at the behest of religious leaders who wanted to maintain the status quo, their sense of security. Mourning early in the morning of the first day of the week, according to John, she goes by herself to the tomb in which Jesus had been laid to rest only to find the stone covering the entrance rolled back. She retrieves Peter, and he and the beloved disciple run to find the tomb empty. While they head back home, Mary remains in the garden weeping for her murdered and disappeared leader. But Jesus, now mysteriously unrecognizable, appears to her and asks her what’s troubling her. She mistakes him for the gardener and asks him if he’s moved the body. Imagine Jesus’ voice, tender, slightly amused, yet sure and steady, “Mary,” he says. In saying that small designation, that name, Jesus reveals himself to the weeping woman, and she is no longer the weeping woman, she is Mary. In hearing her name spoken by Jesus her world is transformed. She sees herself as she truly is, who she has been, and is given the power to become who she is meant to be. She is a student, a pupil, a listener, a worshipper, a follower, a sister of Jesus. Understandably, her emotions all in mess, she grabs hold of her Risen Teacher. But in naming her, Jesus gives Mary the awesome task of apostleship; she is to be the Apostle to the Apostles, the first witness of the Resurrected Christ. Mary is named to go and tell the gospel, to name the resurrection, to name the new reality of the Word of God.

We come to worship to be named and to learn how to name. The liturgy of this worship service, with its songs and prayers, its words and practices, is meant to name us. We are a people called to worship, a people who have come out of the darkness of the night into the light of God’s presence. We see ourselves with honest humility and confess our sins, asking for strength that only God can provide, endurance that can only be maintained with others. The reading of the Word opens us up to God’s truth. We will join with the host of angels singing, “Holy, holy, holy,” and proclaim Christ crucified and Christ resurrected. We will come forward and receive the bread become Christ’s body, responding with “Amen” to the celebrant saying “the body of Christ.” Yes it is. Yes we are. We are named clean by the Blood of the New Covenant. Here tonight, we are named the body of Christ gathered from different Christian communities nestled in the hills of East Tennessee into a church building beside the banks of Buffalo Creek. So named, we must ask ourselves: Who have we been? Who are we? Who are we to become?

Being named by Christ does not end with simply being able to say, “I am Mary,” or “I am Andrew.” It’s a calling, a sending. “Go to my brothers and tell them, 'I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Being named means begin given a task. Jesus told Mary to tell the disciples that the world had been radically transformed because of the Resurrection. Now those who know Jesus have his Father as their Father, his God as their God. Like Jesus, Christian disciples have the gift of the Holy Spirit and, with humility and discernment, the ability to name things correctly, to bear light on things trying to hide in the dark. To see what this looks like for us imagine Jesus’ disciples, the body of Christ today, calling the wars, oppressive regimes, and financial crises of the world what they are. They have names—Idolatry, Greed, Racism, Theft, Sin. And imagine the disciples of Jesus today naming the poor and the neighbor: Blessed, Beautiful, Friend, Sister, Brother, Image and Children of God. By taking the time to name people and things, learning what they are, be they beautiful or in need of transformation, the Church of Jesus Christ participates in God’s work of reconciliation. It hears its call to continue the work of Christ’s gospel, “to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Tonight, as we worship, as we sit, and stand, and kneel, as we sing, and greet, and reflect in prayerful silence, we are being named as the body of Christ, as children of God, as a people empowered by the Holy Spirit to go into the world as the light, as the presence of the One who emptied the tomb. May we listen carefully for our names and respond with great joy and thanksgiving: “Teacher! My Lord! My God!”

Amen.

Desert

This screen and it's accompanying keys
do not hold a key to anything my fingers
can touch.

And I will desert them now, for
forty days in the desert of senses
and senselessness. To write

without metaphor, Let's stay away
from machines, and let's question our
need for them. They make us feel like

they need us, and they do; that's how
commodities survive--talking without
a voice, and demon's whisper in your

head communicating things you wouldn't
hear otherwise. Such is desire that must
be ratified by a dollar and devotion,

unclean. We will see a much greater
light as we turn down or off the lights;
closing my eyes I imagine it sparking.

In the Middle of Winter

Reading another's verse on
winter, I was reminded of my
remembrance that the passing

silver solstice overcomes the
darkening months. It all
gets lighter from here. It is

that yellow solstice, that
brightest of days, that hearkens
the sun's shyness, its coy frolic

with the shadows. We don't
notice because of the heat
of those days. But today,

in remembrance, as a member
of this lazy, yet demanding
stroll, I look up from my

thoughts in the handed-down
chair and see crystallized water
flurries meander toward the

clipped grass and tarred
road, and I know it's still
cold, still, hopefully,

maneuvering into that place
where the days are yet
bright and pull warmth out

from, not pimple up and
close off, the skin.

The Epiphany of Gaza

Today, Sunday 4 January, the western Church celebrated the Epiphany of the Lord. The Gospel reading told the story of the Eastern Magi coming to Jerusalem to find a recently born king. The prospect of a new king scared the piss out of King Herod the Great and the Jerusalem elite. In subsequent verses we find that Herod tried to kill all the children that might possibly be this new king. Jesus, we learn made an Exodus to Egypt, however. Nonetheless, the powers eventually got Him, put Him on a Roman cross. We would hope this would be the last time those in power would have tried to kill Jesus, but it struck me again today that they won't stop; be it the Jesus born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, or the Jesus born next door, the Jesus living in Gaza, the one in prison, sick, powerless and therefore mirroring that which the powerful fear the most in themselves. I wrote this poem in reflection. It's probably not finished, but may we see the Epiphany of the Lord, even in a place like Gaza.

When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him... [H]e was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or younger.
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 2.3, 16

These things happen. They always do,
always will. And you think you can do
something about this? You always will.

Jesus has been killed once, outside
Jerusalem. And Jesus has been killed
many times over and again, inside and

out, Jerusalem. For the the rulers, their
rubies and diamonds, it's more paletable
when Jesus is a Palestinian. Jesus, He

was killed once; she and her children
have been killed again. Troops on
cummerbunded horses, ironclad thinking

dungeons, with piercing arrows and
munitions. There is no God but God. No
Anglo or Semite. These things happen.

Jesus hangs inside and outside Jerusalem,
eyes crossing back and forth over
frightened Jerusalem, shrieking Bethlehem,

olive pitted Gaza.

To Arrange a Life

This is a pointless practice, it could be said.
No one reads poetry these days, some think.
I didn’t until a year or so ago. I would take

the time to write my thoughts, that catharsis
of Aristotelian poetics, for a slowing down
of my breath—but to take the time to listen?
But now I want to hear the whispers of silence,

and somehow I think that involves this reading
and writing of words in strange arrangement,
open mostly to inconclusive endings, for you
can’t expect anyone to read these things,

anyway. Any way is not one way, and I’d
encourage you to listen your way, as long
as that includes listening. Sounds are not always

voices and messages. Lack of message is at
times the loudest message of all. That’s how
they get you. We think we know discernment.

We make a lot of choices. But who really reads
poetry these days, and why would I bother
to write out my life’s thoughts when they arrive,
to look inside my heart looking for what is not

dark that I might be freed from my strange
arrangements?

A Year Without Poetry

I told myself, Write, and I put
the pen down. Told myself,
Write, and made a phone call.

They say you have to write,
just write, and write again, and
I don't know if they're right,

but I know I have not been. If
this has been a year without
poetry, it was not, I think, a

year without theory, a breadth
of time to be forgot. But a year
without verses must surely have

been recorded somewhere, even
an unseen somewhere; it was just
not so readily edited, spaced, paced,

or considered as it slipped by.

Advent Sight

In a world embittered by what others have done in the name of God, we would do well to approach God in supplication with great humility when asking, Teach me your way, O Lord. Too often has God been morphed in our feeble minds into an enabler of bad tidings, into an oracle allowing our eyes to see whatever we want to see. But this is one of the many reasons we celebrate Advent, and all the other great festal seasons of the Church calendar. We need better vision. We need our actions to be guided by a holy pattern.

In this season, we await the in-breaking of the kingdom, the star and staff of Balaam's utterance (see Readings for Monday of 3rd Week of Advent), God in the flesh that all of our flesh might be renewed and quickened for the ways of God. Even now we partake in the Advent we await. And in this waiting we are strengthened to be humble, to be able to recognize the source of Christ's authority which shapes our whole beings to be faithful.

Hopeful Sadness

I would imagine that only
those who would say, "the
Lord does not judge us

according to what we
deserve," can only say such
with any authenticity

if they do so with some
grieving. Otherwise, why
the need for the lifting

of heavy burdens? For
strengthening our weaker
parts? For water to keep

us from fainting? In other
words, a tinge of sadness
is a great gift. A sense

of hopelessness is the
awakening of hope. We ought
to still have doubts; never

leave behind those questions.
Only, realize they can be freed
to new modes of lucidity.

So, bless the Lord, O my soul,
all that is within me--
my dissipating fears, my

confidences, affections, visions,
sadness and joy. Fuse my paradox,
and help me to learn from the

meek and humble heart. Jesus Christ,
Son of God, have mercy on me,
a sinner.

(Isaiah 40:25-31; Psalm 103; Matthew 11:28-30)

Terra Incognitas

These are terra incognitas, histories,
to wade through marshes of words,
to swim across lakes of images. Disguised?

Their retreats seem more apparent, yet
transparent, when we’d rather not
know the past as it is felt presently,

a ghost’s nip. On our heels, we’re
forced to face mirrored halls, and
often we do so with closed eyes. Why?

History hurts. Our own acts are enough
to swallow, to still be able to shrug,
and so now the weight of the Church?

Leave it unknown! Leave it alone! Keep it
away! Let me say my pledge, covering my heart,
easy words of heavenly citizenship, I believe,

enough. Ahistory is much easier,
no need to point to how we got here.


But slow down and breathe. Yes,
mystery is unknown. But let us not run
from our flailing efforts, graced by mystery

drawn near. Nor put our back to nuance.
Things shift. We’re shifty characters and
so were our forefathers. Shifting

solidity, solidification, foundation, and
apostles are still sent to speak us back
down to this earth where grace breaks in.

Breathe together, gathered, called of
the Church in the world. Walk the unknown—
they were known—ways, the paths

the aisles to the chancel, the nave of
saints’ prayers and texts. And in all
things, still, say in the Spirit the name

over all names, prayer of prayers, Word
of words, history made history; the truth,
confession, sanctifier of flesh, tongues,

hearts that speak, “Jesus Christ.”

Child, deep down

You, child, reach deep down there,
into the deep opening of the earth,
the serpent's home. Not the cursed one,
but the eternal swallow, the staffed
snake, the swirl of your veins,
the path of you blood. Reach there,
into your depths, into your childlike
self, your revealed self, hidden person
freed from the lowliness of winter
and summer's despair. Reach down
and grow from there, flourish as justice
in the time of God's peace, with
blessed eyes that see what prophets and
humble rulers once only
imagined, now known
through the Son for the Father's good pleasure,
in the vitality of the Holy Spirit's
delightful fruit. Gather, now, all,
all you children and creatures—
those that bear piercing teeth now
purr; which bleat, coo in innocent
frivolity. Commingle around the
table, and banquet the gladness astir,
and taste that depth, that true good, that
endless end.

Confession

Painful, it
empties tears, embraces
humility and, tingling,
moves forward.
The body relaxes,
throws off anxiety, with
lies uncovered, displaying
some truth, a step
toward assurance, uninsured.

Theology

Theology is a (poetic) bodily act.
Its project of “detachment” is most fully
realized when the body and soul

are found to be in harmonious union.
Then the theologian hymns
beautiful poems to God. The hand, with a pen,

spills out in verse, by the soul’s meter, images of divine mystery,
often found in the most mundane experiences
of daily life. The heart, the pulse of a human life,

is given voice, helping humanity to re-imagine

the image

it has bestowed upon itself by

seeing that humanity is to be perfected
as it is—the image of God, ordained by God.
Preachers begin to preach

a Gospel, not of an escapist hope for the soul of
one day leaving the confines of the body, but
of the possibilities of striving toward

the perfected life now, in the body.
The strife, struggle, suffering, and solemnity
of life is redeemed by the catharsis

of moving words that point to an end—
putting affliction to verse—an end of
the pain, perversion, privatization, and pestilence.

Instead of being alone in their heads, people
are empowered to share
together in the community of divine life,

bound together by prayer, conversation, and letter.

Invitation, Acceptance, Power, and Humility

(a homily)

Invitation is a powerful notion. To invite another person or group into your life or your home or your group is an act involving power. It is not a power that lords over the other, but one that empowers the other; to invite is to lower yourself in order to clarify that you see the other as worthy of your company, significant in your sight.

Conversely, the acceptance of an invitation is also an act of lowering and empowering. Acceptance is a gracious disposition, a humbled manner of facing the other and the world. It is living with thankfulness of heart and a true sense of dependence. Within this framework we see the deep significance of the invitation of the woman from Thyatira, Lydia, and Paul and the other's welcoming acceptance. The giving and receiving of invitation and acceptance give us a vision of the spiritual life, the life lived worthy of the Gospel, the testimony of Jesus in the Spirit.

Worship and the Eucharist teach us how to invite and accept. We worship God in response to God's invitation. The conversation of worship leads us to invite others into our personal lives, even into our communal life together. Even when others do not know how to accept our invitation, we continue to lovingly offer ourselves to them, empowered as we are by the Advocate who proceeds from the Father. Our life in the Spirit draws us into fellowship with the Triune God.

Worship humbles us so we might invite God into our hearts. The seventh or ninth century Palestinian monk, Theodorus the Ascetic, profoundly writes concerning the life with God:

The Lord makes his abode
in the souls of the humble,
for the hearts of the proud
are full of shameful obsessions.
Nothing strengthens the obsessions
so much as arrogant thoughts;
nothing uproots the weeds of the soul
so quickly as blessed humility.
[Quoted in The Book of Mystical Chapters: Meditations on the Soul's Ascent from the Desert Fathers and Other Early Christian Contemplatives, Trans. and Intro. John Anthony McGuckin (Boston: Shambhala, 2003) 58.]

May our worship and the high praises of God in our throats lead us to blessed humility. In this humility we are delivered from the kind power that finds its source in arrogance and instead we are empowered by the love of Christ which guides us in a way of invitation and acceptance of the other.

(Acts 16:11-15; Psalm 149:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6a and 9b; John 15:26—16:4a)

The Holy Spirit, and the Heavens, the Earth, the Seas

(a homily)

Does our vision, our way of life, have an advocate? Do we rightly see that the heavens and the earth are God's, that the Lord made them, that we are on the earth as a gift? We have being because of the overflowing love of a Creator God, who is so full of love that perfect union is known in a community of Three, a God who is not only transcendent and above the creation, but also immanent, present, desiring dwell in the lives of those who keep the word of love in Christ. This love, this presence, this union is manifested among us by the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, our Teacher, our lens. Do we allow the Advocate to re-mind us of Jesus words, to make our minds new, to dwell in our thoughts, our hearts, our hands, our eyes, our own words?

Vision is easily skewed. We may see the work of God before our very eyes, but attribute the deed to a false god, a god in our own image. Our world struggles today with the affects of the philosophical turn that made humans the image of divinity, the bearers of power in the earth. We wrongly think that the earth and the sea and all that is in them, even the heavens, belong to us.

Now, it is not wrong for us to see that our fate is the fate of the world, but it is misleading for us to believe we control that fate. Humans seeing themselves as masters of the earth has led to the earth's destruction, and the earth's destruction in turn leads to humanity's misery. The creation groans in pain; we too must learn to weep with it. The source of our tears, the source of living water that wells up in our innermost beings, is the Holy Spirit, the Liberator of the creation, the giver of New Life, the presence of God. It is this Spirit that makes holy that which we do in the love of Christ, by the direction of the Word. The Spirit makes us holy, makes us advocates of the creation, gives us vision to see the image of God in others and the work of God in all that is.

May all we do serve to remind us of Christ's words, that we may hear anew the promise of being made the dwelling of God. Let us listen to the teaching of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, listen to the breeze through the grasses and trees, and go forth knowing that the God who heals, who can help us to see aright, is the God who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them.

(Acts 14:5-18; Psalm 115; John 14:21-26)

Lay Down

(a homily)

What shall we lay down? What is there that causes us to fuss, to exclude? Who are we to hinder God from granting the gift of life to the world, even ourselves?

It seems that more questions arise than answers are received when we face the word of the Gospel. In the light of the love of God we are humbled; we ask ourselves, if we are willing to reckon Christ the rightful role of shepherd, Why are we not following the Voice of God? This is such a troubling question to ask, for we must look deep within ourselves to find the answer, and break through the barriers we've built up between our hearts and God. Such a view is not flattering.

But let us be at peace in the knowledge that God desires us to bid the Holy Spirit to come, to send forth light and faithfulness so that we might be led to the dwelling place of God to find rest. God desires to pour out the Spirit upon all flesh, to unite humanity, to bring together all people into one flock. We, as the church are called to be a part of this work. We have been granted life-giving repentance, and so we can turn away from death, from exclusion, and turn towards the still, small Voice, towards trust, love, contemplation, and selflessness. We can lay down our lives.

The Eucharist teaches us this way of life, the way of giving and receiving and giving, of being broken and being made whole. Let us give ourselves to the Good Shepherd who will lead us in the way of love, in life baptized by the Holy Spirit.

Eunucized Mind

I admit, I want to
spread my seed,
sow my virile
oats. To leave a mark,
a point of
remembrance for
my name. But, no,
not now, not when
marks mark the
lands with the
works of hands
led by minds
corrupt. My name
is enough, my thoughts
and my touch
are of love and
possess only themselves,
them being held
by the fingernail
that scraped the
humus and humanized
the dirt, moved by
the breathing wind.
Enough, this is.
Enough and no need
to leave marks.
The humus already
stands to be consumed.