Someone's Trinity

for Sister Joan V.

God needed God's care
and for God, God was there,
knowing God alone could

carry God to God to do
what only God could do
for God in the light of God,

fulfilling the purpose of God
to the great pleasure of God.

Thanks be, thanks be and thanks be.

First Sunday after Donald Trump is selected, a Prayer of the People

I am a human being... and you alone are God...

Yours was the first word and yours will be the last

God of compassion, you alone see all things as they are

Every living thing belongs to you -- every person is your child

I pray fully awake with a body broken, I pray for a body broken... we are fully awake, we are compassionate witnesses to upset and unrest... we are witnesses to demonstrations of hatred and of profound love and solidarity... we are compassionate witnesses to fear and faithfulness... we are witnesses to the sickening enemy imagery in our own minds, kindled in our own dangerous hearts... we are witnesses to brazen provocation and angular tactics of avoidance and wholehearted distraction... we are witnesses to hopeful trembling and steady friendships and we are compassionate witnesses waiting for the violence and hatred and bigotry to stop... we are witnesses waiting upon your very able, very capable healing hand...

Lord in your mercy... Here our prayer

We are messengers... and it is a season for simple prayers and loving restraint and persistent kindness.  ... You give us a brand-new chapter to write together, an opportunity to do so with deep reverence and respect and appreciation for all people, help us do so by our own efforts -- resourcing ourselves intentionally through daily worship, intentionally consuming fewer messages, intentionally taking less offense as a daily spiritual practice... help us resource ourselves by giving more and more to family time and quiet moments, tender loving conversations... where there is speaking and listening back and forth because we really want to understand each other... make us honest and generous and gracious messengers and receivers of messages

... there are so many things we love and treasure with people all over the world... who doesn't live for experiences of connection and cooperation and integrity and competence and inspiration and humor and understanding and on and on and on we could march it out what a life what a world what a miracle to be alive TOGETHER on this Earth... what a gift it is for us to be able to care for one another... we get to carry each other...

Lord in all your glory... hear our prayer

As we turn our hearts toward the needs of this household of faith... we know that underneath this roof there is room for all and NEED OF EVERYONE... ..Whoever you welcome we will welcome... we thank you for your reminders over the past few weeks to be very bold and to be very humble, to remember that the trustful thrive by trusting and that abundantly and fearlessly and tirelessly and hopefully -- we've been reminded that these are the only ways to love... and so we name some sisters and brothers right now holding them in our hearts...

And we join you now... in the prayer that you have offered us and still are trying to teach us... OUR FATHER/MOTHER hallowed be thy name...

Important, right?

There must be

something here

in this place

where we are found

sometimes waiting on friends.  You could sing it

like Mick Jagger if you like, that is how it is

right now for me though the Stones did not do that one, there was no Clemens saxophone solo

as I recall, the night I saw them live, celebrating the direct hit of Mick's

spittle on my face with a witness beside there in the second row.

No, there is nothing negligible here, technically I'm not just waiting, right?

I'm needing the peculiar tone and timbre of that one voice no one else can do

but you, who I would never say I'm waiting for technically, I'm sure you'd agree

and then invite me to a more poetic word than technically, but as I was saying, my friend

there must be something here where I sit wanting to point out just now

this spattering, as though I'd sprayed the screen on purpose with glass cleaner, this constellation

of salivation that flew forth from my tongue while I spoke leaving the words on white nearly

incomprehensible

on the surface right here in front of me.

If you were here you would quick wipe it off and say "Look there, now

we can really see ourselves."

Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize

Something special happened today...Let's not forget to tell the children.  An old songwriter named Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize In Literature today.

He is well-known for writing many songs that deal with the tragedy of war and has voiced the prayers of many who long for PEACE and human flourishing through his music. This one is his most famous perhaps.  Oh, that each one of us could know it by heart!

Blowin' in the Wind

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes, and how many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, and how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Shift Into Prayer

Put me in

a place where

I can sit

comfortably to watch

the other humans.

Put me in

a place where

I can sit comfortably

to watch over

the other humans.

Letter to the Children, 2

October 3, 2016

A 60 minutes interview entitled The New Cold War disclosed a willingness on the part of Russia and the US [military officials] to use nuclear weapons in a limited capacity should they deem it necessary, opening up the possibility for these weapons to be used for specific and current strategic initiatives.  Fear of an escalation that could end in the annihilation of millions no longer prohibits either from seeing nuclear weapons as merely one part of a complete arsenal.  Before the interview played online an advertisement roared on the screen for a violent videogame rated for mature audiences only.  Does CBS know this?

This makes me want to talk with the children.

Do you know how much power you have?  The things that you say and do can really affect other people.  No doubt, you know how much another persons words and actions can mean to you.  We have all been hurt at some point and we have all made others hurt at some point.  We are vulnerable and we are powerful.

Do you know why the main religions all over the world agree when they say: Do Not Kill?  Do not steal?  Do not lie?  It is because most human beings have learned to cherish life and enjoy honest and trusting relationships.  Truly religious people know that basic respect for everyone is the best way to live peaceably and happily.

Still, there have been many wars, as you will learn about in school.  How on earth could this happen?

First of all, don't think I'm going to tell you in just a few paragraphs.  It is something that people have been concerned about for as long as people have been talking to each other about anything.

I think the best place to start is right where you are.  If you have brothers and sisters something tells me you may have had an argument with them recently.  You or they  had an opportunity to cooperate or share or work together and chose not to.  I know, I know... you think you had a good reason and when you told them that good reason they still didn't understand you or listen.  Or maybe one of you were jealous or wanted something the other had so badly that it made you act up and cause trouble on purpose even while you know you are lying about it.

See how it all starts?  We start feeling cheated and not loved enough.  We begin doing whatever we want without worrying how it will affect the other person.  In fact, it takes effort to think about other people on purpose doesn't it?  Everybody likes their freedom to do what they want.  But when doing that hurts another person or means they can't have what they really need to be happy and fulfilled, then that's a different story isn't it?

You hear about nations in the world.  These have taken shape over centuries and many times how much land and resources each nation has has been the result of much fighting and many people dying.  Unfortunately, this means that most of what you learn about in history class will be what the wars were and who fought them and who won.  Some people even say that what we call history is the story that is told by people who have been victorious.  Sadly there is much truth to that.

But as we continue talking, I guess I'd like to have it clear up front that war and killing were never the intention of God no matter who you ask who is truly religious.  In fact, most would tell you about God as a creator of the world and of the human family.  At the beginning everything was as it was supposed to be and there was plenty enough to go around just like today.  The only problem is as the family grew some started to want what the other one had and vice versa and so they became afraid of each other and started finding ways to defend their territory and their stuff.  Sometimes they would steal from each other or other clans and groups of people.  Over time this became a very treacherous undertaking -- building up treasure and weapons to be powerful.  Some of the nations that formed wanted to grow and grow until other kinds of people didn't exist at all.  It causes me a lot of sorrow to tell you that this same tendency exists today and that is why you hear about wars and a kind of war that is called terrorism.

As I mentioned last time, there are many people who have experienced tremendous pain and who have lost brothers and fathers and mothers and sisters -- many of them were innocent women and children who were simply in a territory or near resources that were valuable.  Vengeance -- a desire for revenge, to hurt the one who hurts you, remains one of the strongest motivations for war and terrorism around the world today.  Acts of war are also recognized and people talk publicly about who they hate and why.  They often cite experiences where many innocent people have died because of some other group or nations violence.  Time goes by and different groups keep wanting to pay back the other group for the pain they caused.  And it goes on and on.

Becoming aware of these things can be scary.  But once again I want you to remember that most of the people on earth have an idea about God's beautiful creation and all God's intentions to see us flourish together as one human family where all our needs are met and we all live happily together for ever.  Millions and millions of people have this same vision of life -- its origins, its ultimate destiny.  This is the vision that I invite you to think about most and first and often.  I want to ask you please to dream about paradise, dream about the garden of Eden, dream about heaven -- use your imagination routinely to show yourself and one another what it can look like.  And please do not ever say that there's not enough on the earth for the members of the human family, it is false and some need to lie about that to keep their power to keep others in fear.  And please do not ever say that everyone is bad so this is just how bad people end up living.

War is not necessary.  Killing is not necessary.  Pray for heaven to come to earth and do everything you can to be a sharing, honest and loving person.

If there is war between you and your brother or sister, make it stop so that you can begin practicing how peace is made.  Learn to love human beings, every single one.  Make it your life's most favorite and famous achievement.  I love you and I will pray for you as you do this -- working hard day by day with God.  Do not wait for God to do the sharing and caring that this world needs.  It starts with you.  Talk to you later.

My Letter to the Children, 1

September 29, 2016

The same week in which I again became a Great-Uncle, 100 children were killed in a war in Syria.  This is my letter to the children, all of them:

There are many things that I would like to say to you today.  Sometimes I think there are so many things that I choose not to say anything at all because it seems overwhelming to know where to start, so much seems so painfully out of place in our country and in our world.  Gods vision of us all living together happily seems so difficult to hope for or participate in right now.

Also, perhaps like many of your parents and teachers, I fear exposing you to some of the more dark and disturbing realities, things I don't want you to see or have to deal with until you are older and more capable of managing your fears and your power.  Nevertheless, with much dismay and some despair, I see how much you are witness to so long before you are ready, even while you are still forming a picture of life and the world, you see and hear things that you should not.  Earth and Heaven were never meant to be places where people hurt each other.

The screens of your life bring so much to you, don't they?  All kinds of images and messages from all over the world.  Mostly now you may be watching shows, talking and playing with your friends the simple games that kids play.  But I fear that soon enough these same gadgets will be bringing you images and messages that can be quite harsh and terribly difficult to understand.  Even if you ask me about them, so many circumstances of violence and poverty and dangers to the environment, I feel as though I am hardly able to sort them out myself though I have studied about these things for many years.

So I want to do my best for all of you, you see, even though I'm not sure of how it may help or not.  The things I talk about will raise questions and so I hope to keep talking together so that all of the questions can be heard and addressed over time.  Think of it as a project we engage together.

As I do this now as carefully as I can and as genuinely as possible, I recommend you do the same in your life too, as often as you can for your own happiness and for the healing of the whole world.

We Get
What We
Do
with
What Is Given

These are just a few words that make up a poem, of sorts.  But if you read them carefully the poem means different things.  It makes me think of two things:

1) What I do with the circumstances I am in is up to me and can greatly affect what I get out of life.

2) I can only do what I can with what I am given and we are not all given the same "stuff."

Most of the people I know usually emphasize the first one or the second, but rarely both.

People are born into all kinds of different circumstances.  Some are poor and hardly have enough to eat.  Some have everything they need and an excess of resources that expands the list of choices they have.  Many of us in America, for example, grow up rather comfortably.  We get to choose our favorite stores and restaurants, our many toys and outfits.  But many in our same country do not have those choices.  Their parents have less money to care for them, or maybe there is only one parent sometimes.  Sometimes their parents also grew up in families that struggled to find opportunities for work and an equal chance to succeed because of their race or ethnicity or their physical makeup.

Adults in America argue about why this is the case.  They argue about how to fix these unfair circumstances with so many having so much and so many having so little.  They say "Many of the poor just don't want to work."  They say "Give someone a job and they will flourish."  So who's right and who's wrong?  I am not always ready to say so easily.  It deals with many factors, especially something called economics which we will talk about next time [although it is pretty complicated.]

But here's what I do know.  Those who start off with less have a much harder time than those who start off with more.  This is why those who are rich are more than likely to stay rich and why those who are poor are more than likely going to stay poor.  It's like two people starting a race; one out way ahead and the other way behind.

Around the world it is worse.  There are rich and powerful nations and there are poor and vulnerable nations.  The more powerful use up most of the resources around the globe and those who are poor are left with far less than they need to prosper.  When they trade with each other it is always unfair.  Imagine having only rice to trade with at lunchtime.  Despite God's creating this world with more than enough to go around, over many centuries those who have accumulated most of the wealth and power have created tragic conditions of scarcity.  Because they have taken too much, millions of people don't have nearly enough.  People are forced to live in fear of not being able to meet their basic needs.  Because America and its friends have far more power and natural resources, much of the world is struggling and the adults who are struggling are very angry.  Some of the anger is against their nearby neighbors or even people within their own country.  They see their children suffering and they want it to stop so they use violence.  Other adults may join them because they are hurting terribly for other reasons we do not always understand.  But you need to know that there are many, many people who do not like us for the reasons I'm talking about.  Some have stopped fighting with each other in order to start fighting with us.

So keep in mind, there are children like you who only have rice and water when it is available.  In fact, it can be so bad that some of them would be happy to come here and to live as "a poor American" instead of struggle where they are.  Though it is very dangerous and some die on their way here, some of these people try to walk to America from Mexico and are turned away.  Others can only dream of escaping the place they are because it is dangerous and there is horrible fighting.

They live in violent places where the adults have allowed their anger to cause them to hurt one another, even the children.

And -- I have to tell you my dear ones -- this is where it gets so difficult for me.  I do not want you to be afraid of war and fighting.  But I do want you to know that the world has been hurt by human beings.  We have hurt each other greatly over many years and we have hurt the earth.

At your young age it is not too early to start caring about what hurts other people.  When you grow old enough to begin solving the worlds challenges [this is not impossible] with each other, it will be good for you to remember how much pain people have experienced because of these kinds of unfairness.

What Can You Do Now?

You are not too young to pray for peace and for healing between all people who are fighting and killing in the name of their special causes, which are never truly religious or have anything to do with God and Love, not ever.

You can begin the practice of careful listening which is not easy to do whether you are old or young.  When we listen to other people and truly hear what hurts them, we can begin to think of ways of helping one another and living together more comfortably as everyone's needs are met.

You can begin practicing sharing and being generous.  The more you have to share and give, the better.  Our perfect example of this is God who gives and gives and gives so much to everyone.  God doesn't play favorites and neither should we.  If we have taken too much we should start to give it back, we should include the interests of everyone when we make decisions as a global community.  You can begin trying to cooperate with your friends and classmates.  But you have to want to -- deep down believing that this will make an important difference.  Indeed -- it will.

God has always had a serious interest in our involvement in shaping and caring for the entire creation and all who live within it.  From the very beginning God invited us and gave us the responsibility to extend this care as those living in a garden.  This garden will again be perfect some day and you and I can begin to make that happen right in the here and now.


I look forward to talking with you more later about this.  That's probably enough for today.

Puzzle for Partisans

We get

What we

Do

With what

We are given.

ELECTION

I cuss, I cry, I fall upon Gods tender breast, and
sometimes, though not every time -- for that

would be a cruel test, I'm sent
out to the other with the selfsame

comfort that has blessed me here
and truly so and so I heal and truly rest.

Leave Those Kids Alone

Learning is loving
and loving is living.

Only God can fix
God.  That is why we are here.

Beloved, learn one another.  It is
the answer we've been waiting for.

Sky Lesson One

Just now
looking for God I saw
an airplane crossing
the blue.

It disappeared
behind a tree, still
I expected it was there.

Sure enough, it showed
yet only to hide
itself away again,
clear beyond the forest,

out of view.  Then
I saw, in shade myself,
She becomes truly visible
by vanishing.

Cosmic Christ excerpt

All the fullness of God was PLEASED to dwell in and through him God was PLEASED to reconcile to himself all things... whether on earth or in heaven... it's not just a mystery -- it's a mystery revealed -- no matter where we go or whatever happens to us, no matter who hurt us or who we hurt, even if you die without being able to  forgive... even if you die without being forgiven by that one person about that one thing... even though, even though... it is being revealed to you right now Saints -- that all and everything means all and everything reconciled, every tear ever shed on this Earth is accounted for, every pain transformed into a holy kiss... God was completely PLEASED to dwell in Jesus human body that God inhabited fully... that we might through Jesus inhabit God fully... Your true self is who you are in Christ and who Christ is in you -- that's Your new name from now on [John Doe-Christ], that's Your new address...

(Then Randy-Christ does a cartwheel to celebrate...)

...

Don't Say That

What can the gospel mean to a leper unless it comes with a kiss?

Francis came reminding me to remember the lonely and waiting ones, weary just from watching the others.

Now you are curious about the speaker: Are they parched, surviving guilt?

Listener, love yourself now, right now.  It is a good way to escape your God-damned curiosities.

It is a prayer for the whole colony.

SHE is Persistent, this one

I wanted to be in a rock band

She waved her hand, I kicked at the dirt

And became a DJ.


I wanted to be DJ

She shook her violent hips

Then I was a radio.


I was ready to be a radio

She removed her clothes

Now I am music


And we are wondering what you hear

What is it that you want?

Shawl

Beloved

Kiss me before I depart

Well, well before

Notes for the New Caregiver

Notes for the New Caregiver

Some days I will eat a big breakfast, some days I will sing.  Some days I will obsess about my socks, some days I will share my grandfather.  Some days I will walk down the

bike path, I will tell you my secrets or call you my own or leave you for dead or tear you limb from limb and ask for breakfast.  Some days I will ask you to apologize

immediately, though I was the one poking you with a fork and you will do exactly what I tell you because I was never anybody's father or patient, God dammit.  Some days we

will share a towel some days we will find the sanctuary some days we will fold all my clothes into triangles or find our seats along the first base line at Wrigley and I will beg to

get high with me and take me to church if you know what I mean and put gas in my car and sign your own check.

Some days I will preach to you in pure Bohemian and you will plead with me in Hebrew.  You will bless me and I will kiss your feet and defend your family and change your

tires and fix your sight and mend your heart and walk you home and long for less and give you my dreams and then have to pee and forget what I said and lose track of

time.  Some days, I'm so sorry, it will be all be up to you and later you will miss it terribly but never tell me.  You will negate me and ask me for a raise and put my shit

together and hold me up as a sign to the centuries,...

and then some day, maybe not unlike this one right here, this one with birds in song in the yard in the green in the hope in the light... we will we... we, we will... oh God yes

we will, we will

DECLARATION OF A PENTECOSTAL HIPPIE

Oh my beloved, all my beloved, go my beloved and find my beloved...

It's as though your heart just breaks wide open and pours forth pure love... ALL PRAISE... radiant joy... and the tears just flow and flow, I weep sometimes fitfully and then sometimes careen into laughter, laughter of heaven, ecstatic LOVE as though you were at a funeral, a really good one, at a wedding, present and aware at the rising of a dead person.

Here come my hippies now with peace, ready to love me and send me along on a journey in the Spirit.  Here comes the juice from day one baby,

Little Sun has spoken:

HERE COMES THE SUMMER OF HEAVEN!

I ASK FOR HELP

I ask for help

And squinting face aglow I pray a spark-lit midlife of the

Creek, exhale her nations humble witness, ache for new frost

bare feet my walking as she's only known, raised up at first light, how to taste

the day naked and grateful as willow in song and ask for help.

See the speck of an eye aglow a face, do you know what it takes for the sun to reach through your morning window and pray you awake and squinting?  Your eyes are midlife slow unpasted, a grain through the night your molars grit from supper spit and finish your spark-lit note thank you for being Joy.  And the yard's while you slept become a pale frozen face never knowing the sense of your naked feet your flame hurling your dance and dawn up alive and gathered as a man, a sense from cold oaks standing witness pale and silent.

November creeks and burbles its new frost witness.  I crave the northern birch, pray tongue to my teeth and the cold dark stream coiling the dune pale and down the mile or two as I could walk away, crave the dew fallen by degrees and the taste of craving snow.  I'll day away, exhale I fear and lose the sense and midlife ache instead and humbly paste the trees inside and never face asking.

Because it is not easy being Joy or how to taste, because my walking eyes witness how a spark-light travels its course its trillion prayers on pace to keep on going to kiss a 

raised up moon and trail its naked way to earth and landscape coil the song of mountain willow walk and wake the oak and bare your home-light window through the pain to taste your face.  

Because the tall waves gone to seed to feather tip the autumn beach grass held its place as without feet or seed you did pass by all Indian sewn and through a sky the summer gone.  Because by grateful day you frost and trail for song and evening snug the ocre bowl spun clay fired sweet for squash upon your plate. Because I cannot touch the willowed world without it, taste the bending near and grateful tree held pending in its grace for now I raise it up as Creek in nations song as joy and fallen dew as ache, I naked thank and crave and praise and ask for help.

RECOLLECTED


Don't try to remember.
As it turns out

in denim and bloodstream
suede as buckskin I was -- only

sunray, snapped twigs and scar, one
stone and a stream warriors
get to to weep, a journeys

end and who you'd want waiting
with a way through tall grass, a
blog trailing cabin smoke out line

by vanishing line, its

chimney whispering dreams
it woke to at daylight
in the new air of morning.

I was what sighed

heavily whenever you wondered
mountain trail, pined in a warm
glade, met metallic thunks of the

shallows at the bottom of the boat, fuel on water making
rainbows at the surface of a soul,

what swam deep as though sent, threading

lines beneath placemat pads of lily, flys
sly green landings in the sun, what had
a notion of a sunfish with boy-gills, who knew the way

of mermaids, tackle at the fingertips, burning
to tan and given how to sit still the million years it took to get out
on the water, far enough, they could not call us back.

For Prince

On a bandwagon, hell yeah! Throwing MY electric

storm – out from the four corners of my suburban square

But no one will… BLAAAAAIRRnNnnana…Twoooo…( vamp straight blue, screw, 

stammer, shout, fall, flair, fly, fail, faint – cry like a dove)… 0000…

Did you say something? You're always saying something.

You're not Prince. He tried to tell you and I. Either was he.

What Apparent Might Say, If It Felt Itself

When you get

there -- and you will -- you

come find me.  Do that because

after all of this I am

still here and I know

you know that and it

makes you wonder how, on

earth, that can be.

It is.  It be.  Call me.

CASE IN POINT

sure, cripple!



screw the f-ing bipeds



until you need something!

ASK BUTTERFLY

What if

it causes me

to practice

perpetual communion;

entwining, scented,

ceaseless prayer?

How Are Things?

Have we heard anything?

I was turning circles in the front yard

As birds sang.  I stopped, warming in

The Sun, the phone had not rung, there were

Cold breezes, we would have to wait

And see how things would unfold.

Well, Gramps might say,

In one of his old T-shirts, snug

Inside reading the paper,

What can you do?

[Another Postlude?]

When a poem leaves church it can

finally take off its bra and scratch audibly

and flip through the

channels for an afternoon without batting

or pitching or walking out to the mound, it can lick

its fingers a thousand times or

just wait until the bag is empty, it really

doesn't matter either way.  It farts without

expecting to hear God's voice.  What a relief to

know nothing and share it with the couch

cushions, the neighbor it sees across the street

working in his driveway in coveralls.  It might wait

to take a shower until later, it wants yoga without mirrors and hot

sauce and is pleased

there are three to choose from if

you can find them in the

sanctuary so cool, quiet, so full of good things.

It needs no directions, it forgets

what it was doing next but then

after a while thinks it might be nice

to pause and light a candle.

He Expected Sweet Paradise

Coffee. A chill in the air, a search for morning sun.

Out away from it all, closer to it than ever… He got cowboy, put on Randy.

He expected sweet paradise.

He collared up cool in denim half river scruff under the barn cap

pitched a long rugged month in his tent mind, expected wood smoke to

dream stomach sweet inside and that he'd not for granted go gritted without and have 

all playing it fireside cowboy, stars charged and spit smoldering into hardwood paradise.

'It feels like somethin' he'd say if someone asked, half scruff an answer hard to river out tell but doubtless – whether where a jagged trail had led or a wiley sprang antelope, a soft Eve maybe lingering in the cool barn nights summers years ago – he'd go ready collared up and charged. Can't quite say but the Canyon's in it and that one time and another in his tent-beyond in came a quiet light like smoke-linger in fire lap high licked and far ahead of his hopes shone so long so always he now never left unready.

Kids, woods about them, think this way, boys mainly pitching tents maybe charged starry eyed long expected and smoldering in wait for Eve.  See, ‘It's a slant most days I can give my eye’ – black ant highway marching down crusted tree bark 12 years old, lanky stakes cutting pale the deep pitching down sturdy twine taught to nestle in the grass, stains on knees straddling stumps on a log bridge, grain weathered on worn streambed for 13 for 25 for manhood wet pure beneath the skin I tore off to dream the first tree ever, the sweet shade of it pulp of it mind of it, not mine see… it's now alive rugged for gritted all of us.

And Chasm Falls spun it, white swam fractured down a face-wall rock of canyon and jackpine sap playing sweet in that cool mid-morning holler blue the mountain pass, smoky dream inside it long the bluegrass chickweed all the rucksack leaves for granted gone boldery to stone and spidering up along the Colorado edge where – the gritted goodness of things granted – he'd have all, could be seen by just about anyone charged hard fireside into woody cowboy play.

Oh say, could your eyes beneath within expect to wet kid, can Eve you sometimes tent-beyond see? Could you cowboy into this fireside, pitch a stomach dream ancient, catch a hatful a barn cap aglow with glittering stars gritted o'er the flame and darkness? And join smoldering pure me, spit this way like boys mainly, a slant pitching down taught to true to joy to have all that somethin’ feeling paradise sweet, so granted, so expected.

A Sort of Sunny Disposition

Quoting myself Before Lunch

When I write from an

openness of soul it is so wondrously

dangerous... I want only to write for

those I love, that they would feel it as it

was for me as it came

into being.

FOR CRISSAKE

for Elmer Kadera, Happy Easter

Yes, I should be home soon and

Thanks again for watching Delta.

What's that Gramps?

"You should a seen

Dthat dog this morning.

She goes all dthe way

Dthe hell out to the farthest corner

Of dthe yard like she's tryin to get

Away with sumtin...

an craps... an as

Soon as she's done -- Shoom!

Like a rocket, Running like the Wind, all

Crazy like!  All over dthe yard."

BECAUSE I BELONG TO ISAIAH

I said to him "Pastor,

Woe is me,

I am a man

Of unclean lips."

He said "What is it

My son?"

I said "It's that

No matter what I say

or do, there is always

And forever this one

Fucking little crusty corner

Of my mouth that

My damn $24,000

A year caregiver

Can't seem to find

With the God bless-ed washcloth."

Like a Kiss

So now what?

Have you any more lines to write or

Doves feathers to pack away into your leather satchel?

No, flight you cannot come, you mustn't!  Only a feather

I will leave you, in your suede wonder, darling,

From time to time.

THE TITLE IS

Monastery man

Dreamweaver

Don't say that one

Prince of practically nothing

Prophet of maybe later

Mumbler

Shew's the dogs

The faster pastor

Who the fark are you?

Answers no one

Sits in silence

Waits to laugh

Struggler

Finisher

Refiner of after while

The Last Word

Friday Voices

Friday Voices


Dawn.  Late morning.  Birdsong out beyond the opened blinds.


I am telling you

all of this because

I have never met anyone so at peace and

willing to listen.


There are two cardinals.  One is a red flare on a bouncing

twig just above the shed, the other

a plaid on the peak of the swingset.


I go on and on about her and her and him and

this other one and the thing I said or should have.

 

Both fly away now.  The neighbors let their dog out, a caramel candy with claws.

 

How can you be so gentle and concerned yet

so relaxed?  I talk to you about it because when I say it

you don't fall apart or make a face.  I can stomp down into your floor, solid

and just keep talking.


Wind gets gusty.  You hear the neighbors voice.  Calling out for her.

Beat a drum, Randy

Remember Indian Guides?

Was I running deer or brave deer?

I just texted my brother.  I just saw the story again.  What a brilliant flame shot up straight into the midst of the darkness.

Our father wore a headdress.  What?  We put on costumes whenever we were together, I earned my feathers, I was proud.  My father's name was Proud Deer.

I will write all day long, I will walk with him quietly through the forest carrying the other end of the canoe.  They did not go without me, anywhere.  Though they did miss me sometimes and I them.

But at the Indian Guides retreat we were all together, our tribe, the Pottawattamie, orange and green vests with patches sewn on by mom.  Please let's make a fire and circle round it so I can remember who I am, who I was.

The ordeal forces a young man to stay with it.  I don't care, go ahead pee your pants.  You will eat later if you get through this.  Nobody else likes these biting flies.  We all smell like rotting meat, take a number.  Shut your shit hole.  I know, I know... but one day you will be able to smell this sweet scent of pine sap.  You will pine for a rugged journey.

More LIVE workshop... on the horse, 2

Sometimes things have to go wrong so they can go right.

Back then it was the cancellation of several college classes due to low enrollment, today it was a caregiver too sick to work.  At that time it meant I'd be home for at least three months, I felt relieved, I embraced those winter months.  I gave myself to the winter and to Western dreams and writing.

Today [Winter, 2008?... 9?] again with nearly a foot of snow on the ground, my sister-in-law Jackie along with Bonnie and Schuyler, have come to fill in; to care for me.  My house has been a relatively soundless place.  This is the sound of creativity, homeschooling, writing and dreaming all day long together.  The three of them are brilliant each in their own right.  That is definitely Uncle Randy's opinion.  Throughout the day only rarely do I leave my office, do we engage.  And when we do its "what do you think of this dragon, I'm adding stripes to its wings" or "listen to this quote from Lewis" or my niece, 15 shares a poem where she walks down a deep stairway into her own heart.  She turns a phrase "you are here with me in this place" or something to that effect.  I wonder if it's me she's talking about, or mom or dad, or god forbid the boyfriend.  I touch her face with my eyes.  "It's beautiful Bonnie, absolutely beautiful."

Later in the day we get pizza, I play them my favorite new music, Jill's home and we laugh our way into Friday night.  But for most of the day, the four of us settle into the silent house, into the work of creation.  Sketching landscapes, putting words onto pages, addressing the universe.  I paint a world with a gym, where I'm seated with people listening to my sermon, Schuyler slays the dragon he drafts and is off with a sword to the next dire challenge, Bonnie swims in romance and teen-longing, Jackie rides a bike with a friend, retracing another of God's faces.

We live for that time within the world's we create, four world's in one house.  I realize this not in some spiritual posture, intentional meditation but while relieving myself.  So often things will occur to me when I let my body give back what it does not desire to keep. Each of us are there in our own world, within one house.  One house on one street and then (keep the camera inching back, please) see a block, a neighborhood with houses dabbed in till outnumbered by the trees.  How many take potty breaks and rediscover the world, apprehend in a sigh of release, their own molecular dimensions, the contours of the cosmos? Keep stepping back until you're in God's lap witnessing endless worlds within worlds, limitless creation.  Only a benevolent creator can give a gift like this.  It's not a restroom, it's a sanctuary -- behold the throne of God.  It is a place to receive the gift of winter and words, the present prize of endless worlds.

LIVE in a workshop

The poet Joy Harjo once remarked that she enters poetry on horseback.

This morning I ride the old familiar painted.  I let her pause to nibble at the grass as often as she likes.  I am not in pursuit of a destination, but I am back upon the horse I once rode when I was writing my great Western.  Two Rivers [an operating title] ran through me back then, throughout the winter (perhaps two and several other months.)  I was living there in the writing, in the world of Owen Jessup and Speaks in Cloud.  The only effort then was to scribble their lives down with black ink into the small spiral binder that set on the old antique desk from some 18th century schoolhouse in Iowa.  It rested there waiting before the window of the world, before worlds, two of them, held in confluence and great dissonance.  Were there two rivers also symbolically trying to call out to me?
One of "this world" and another, "the next?"

Yes I see this pattern.  Some of what I had said before led me to old writings I wanted to return to.  Here I am again, now on my horse, and where does she lead me?  Back, again?

Breathing beside the stream, watching the mist linger over the face of the waters flow... I want to cherish what has already been spoken, what has come to me, what stays.  I also sense my resistance to letting them go as pieces of artwork, as moments that were profoundly formative.  Again a word seems to beckon.

So yes, now again, I will refer you to another piece of writing from "before."  Please be patient with me.  You will even see in what is presented next a desire to do the very thing that I am now doing.  One reflection leads back into another and so on.  There's never just one story and although all rivers may lead into one great watery bliss, we experience many streams in flow, all at once.

So let us continue...

I gaze at it because it traps my belly lint

Return to your breathing -- focus = freedom = flourishing for self and others.

You should keep notes that help you self coach

along the way and then just include them in the stuff you're

doing; the story, the poem, the world you're creating for

them and for yourself.

Where in the world did you go?

You see, right up front, it's just the wrong question.  When they

posit "the world" they assume we are all

filling the same space.  Which of course we are.  And

we are not.  We never have done so.  Return to

Your breathing and focus.

Honey

HONEY

The only thing better than going to bed green
is waking up green and by that I mean
like Ginsburg, off at the mouth shoot shoot shoot
fear not the rat-at-tat of poppies popping
I'll take my balm, I'll be that finger
touching ugly sores... oh my children, my children
I must give you what this feels like
I must today let it drip upon your weary lips
this is not your deathbed, it's Honey.

Pretty Sure

One should never

under any circumstances

ever make a blanket

statement.

What are Nothing Poems?

Nothing poems are just so naturally nothing that they just come out of your mouth

 without you even thinking or feeling much other than a recognition of that hmmm hum

 in your throat just behind your tongue and wondering about the rich

buzzing in your teeth, other than that nothing poems are just, yeah, I already said that.

See how they are?

SEE HOW THEY ARE?

She said

Everything is a poem, to a poet!

Three times now, do you want your glasses?

What?  I'm cherishing an inner voice

Congratulations, we're late for church

Could you say that again, wait no

Could you write something down?

I want five minutes, is your microphone on?

Is that other note still in your purse?

They find a spot to park, an open pew.

It is a nice service.

Later it's sausage with scrambled.

Old Mantra #7

Old Mantra #7

Sip it slow.  Smooth.

Sabbath sated, see

Life is only

This moment,

That's all,

Seriously.

Camper, have you tried rebooting it?

Read

Write

Pray

Play

Engage

Now that I've got the editor quiet and the body comfortable, I'm going to let myself think about possibilities... like writing a handbook on the Spirituality of Camping.

Which could tell about going without some things as a choice,

A choice to live
that way
on purpose.

Which conveys only the indescribable.  How could anyone ever catch a fish?

How on earth could you ever begin to tell us what you see, there at the center of the glowing embers?

They are his life.

For God's sake Randy!

What is it!?

In a word...?

theosis.

...who lovingly whispers "Horse."

March 2012

Allow me to tell you about a time when I made my way down the bike path to visit my dear brother horse...

Now I had seen him with his mother grazing in the grass at the corner of Beeline Road and 147th day after day after day... and for some reason once upon a time I had it in my head and heart enough to move me outside of my schedule and outside of my home to walk down to the corner and see if I might greet him.

So on purpose it was that I brought myself down there... and the walk it was much longer than I had anticipated... but when I arrived, sure enough there he was out beyond a small pond drinking whereupon he lifted his head and saw me and regarded me and took his approach there to me... and I sat quietly at that fence in amazement at his approach, eagerness to come and investigate and be with me... and not each of us, mind you, he and I, without some fear and trembling.

And let me relay to you that here, upon our very first ever meeting, what I knew... I knew the wildness and softness in his eyes and lashes long and lovely... I knew the twitch of his careful ears back fearful... forward trusting reaching out... I knew the suede of his hide deep red on pure white painted... I knew the touch of a silken mane weightless on the wind and feathering my face my cheek my skin my lips... the warm nuzzling of lips and nose soft as a summer peach... and his breath upon my neck... the fresh air sustaining his life breathed out over me... breath of life breath of God breath of dear brother horse I knew... and what love that day...

That day indeed whereupon I told myself as though making the profoundest commitment... a vow of fresh fidelity and brotherly love... as I rode away I said to him -- I'll be back my friend, more than you know -- I'll be back...

But sadly it was not so, as upon returning to home and to computer and e-mail, to schedule and commitments and cell phone and voicemail and to rush and tumble and tangle of too many things for too few days which I chose and I chose and I chose... sadly it was not so... and though I drove past him in my van day by day at miles and miles per huffing hurried hour... I did choose to visit him not... and knew full well the sadness of it...

Until that day when the sun was warm and some grace of space was open to me and I decided to stop - pull the car over and get me out to go to him and reunite... I did so with the timid expectation of a prodigal son. But sadly, So sadly as I made my way over... I saw the green grass of his pasture and I saw the quiet pond where he and his mother usually drank... but as I got closer I soon discovered that I would see him not for both of them were gone, had gone away I knew not where nor when they would return.

So somewhat dismayed I took myself down another path... over a hillock or two through a swell of rich sweet soil... down several yawning acres over bridge and stream following the path across farmy fields with many rows of tall drying corn... and in that effortless sense that one can have, so much like flight when flowing down a quiet path, I sorted through my sadness at missing the very presence of my horse brother who had how long waited for me... while I had so much other living to do?

But over time I, nevertheless, gave myself some grace in retrospect figuring along the way I had done the best I could and that maybe it would have to be another time and another choice I would make to go and see him again. And just shortly after entering into this resolve, this new found peace and readiness, I thought, it now being sunny and rather warm, to pause for a moment and find me some shade. Up ahead I saw a broad shawl of Maple leaves held out over the pathway cool and waiting and then as one sometimes does when waking from a dream I blinked my eyes -- and I lived and moved and breathed and in an instant I was there.

There... I was... beneath the blessing bough of a tree, eyes resting low unfocused along the pine nettled floor of a grove, beside another fence... there I was... approached by a lovely Dappled Gray... who saw me before I saw her... who was with curious gladness readiness openness loping over to me so full of living horseness... I looked up and there she was coming close to me as a living God might do.

A God ready to nuzzle close and breathe upon me again... a God knowing me and wanting me known -- to know another horse... another way will always come... and that love will outreach longing as I live and move and breathe, horse after horse after horse.

THE GOOD NEWS

Whoever it is
Whatever their claims

Let them kill you
You will yet live

Yes, even your children
I know, I know.

More Hippie road notes

She dreamt through the night and late into the morning.  It was an epic struggle, the story to end all stories and when she woke she was soaking; sodden mattress, sheets sticking wet to her arms.  She flung off the cocoon gasping.

She stared blankly at the veneer of the dark brown cabinetry just above her foldout bed which was their kitchen table during the daytime.  She fed all night long on what was found there between them throughout the days conversations.

They belonged to the road, screaming wild as Eden.  They were borrowing the RV, that's how they ended up justifying the adventure.

So the next night she was afraid to go to sleep.  She sat by the coals which were glowing orange, white hot when a breeze blew and she knew that this was something she was simply going to have to learn how to live with.  The dream left a scar, no first a wound, one that does not want to close, not ever.

It'll get better.  And, hey, this was still better than sitting at home.

Amateur Healer

this is my art response

this breathing in and out

showing inability

staring at the snows green stubble

acting like someone waiting

this is the nothing you can do

watching the neighbors dog pee

this is the one way to get through

which is not trying to say anything about what this is

seeing this will not have meant so much

as it does right now, just this empty moment

this nevermind, this clear forgetting

not moving an inch.

Hippie road notes

"Hot coffee; it soothes the throat, it nourishes the soul."

I'll have a cup of what he's drinking.

They sat around the fire that night snapping sticks, tossing them in.  The California skies were larger, he was sure of it.  At the coast, maybe it was the slender thread of silver shoreline that led him.  He could peer down sitting atop that 40 foot boulder after meditation, after that knock on the RV door was a friend inviting him to awaken outside, to shape the wet sand with the soles of his feet, to shape himself one stretch, one deep breath at a time.

Now they bantered, sipped whiskey, sang songs.  And there was always giggling out beyond them a ways, beyond the firelight.

"Nobody cares what you call it or where it even leads right now, I told you dude, your overthinking the entire thing."

"I know, I know... enjoy the process."

"Yeah that's f-ing right man, it's a process and wherever it goes -- electric or digital or old-fashioned bound or up to the screen or DVD or DVR... who the hell cares man... this is the process this is it... right here... you and I dreaming it up under these stars, beside this fire... this is it man, this is all it ever has to be.  Until this is all life has to be there is just nothing, I mean nothing to write home about."

"That's where it is for you?"

"That's where it's at."

Ode to a Beard, mine.

I just couldn't shave it off without saying a few words first...

Ode to a Beard, mine.

Manly instigator, John 

the Baptist bug collector, wild shrub, scruff

scrubbed still saving soup, water

for the desert seasons, fullness

of the forest silent after snowfall, snug

about the smile dreaming mountain

stream, in a hand hewn canoe

Jeremiah, caveman snapping twigs, twirling

twine of a thoughtful chin

fireside and wise as itchy as mammal 

as prey as proud as proof of many moons

and musky lonesome ways.

I wear it on my face, my brazen

shield, my holy place, an older way without

a reason, a blade, a frock,

a scent, a scene, a trace.

Oh, dear friend do

Cloak the ruddy, cover the scarred,

wear the surface and every fearful fact,

be an angel, an ancestry, a true beard, be mine.

Sunday

Rain on snow

white on green

mist on moss

mind on you

Today, a List.… for Jamie Perkins

[This piece was first drafted in 2009.]

Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine,
I'll taste your strawberry, I'll drink your sweet wine, 
a million tomorrows shall all pass away
ere I forget the joys that are mine today.

Randy Sparks, 1964


Most days I make a list of some sort or another.  Today I left the short one in my head.  I'm clear and rested and a quick reference back won't be any challenge.  Other days if I don't get it down into a notepad I don't stand a chance of remembering any of it.

There are seven cluttered around me on my desk right now like old friends.  Names and numbers, dates, abbreviated chicken scratch in five different styles of caregiver handwriting.  They're dead leaves fallen from above, through the ceiling and all around me in varying degrees of lifeless decline, various stages of death throws, a mixture of news and history and some hopes for the future.  My lists are documents verifying my existence, living proof that I was here and had some things I tried to do.

I look in front of me and read.  Some of them feel like demands, others invitations.  I wonder:  Have people always made lists? Was there a time at which people only did as many things as they could remember they had to do -- and no more?

So, give me a list, because sometimes it's as though there's been a flood and I'm hurled swiftly down an engorged river, twirled among the whitecaps, scraped on jagged stones beneath the surface.  There's a place back there along the shoreline where I' m quite sure I am supposed to be but there's no way back.  That is, unless I keep track through gasps and gurglings, eyes strained bloodshot to the corners reaching out for landmarks -- remember that squirrel, I think I saw a white house with blue shutters, there's a hollowed out oak, a boulder like a buffalo hump, keep track, keep track, so we can find our way back.

In quieter times, self-possessed, when I'm feeling free, jotting things down feels more like the finest craftsmanship.  Before there is a list there's an open page, a naked canvas.  I'm in my blessed workshop with fresh pliable lumber, the latest tools of the trade and countless hours to spare till I sand it smooth and hold it up with pride.  Yes, I'm going to make a list and when I'm done I'll do these many things that I've set down and the world will be a much better place because of it.

* * *

Of course, it should matter very much what we take time to list, how we set the course for daily navigation. But what if, instead of pay bills, get groceries -- milk, cheese, bread, lunch meat, birthday card for Grandma, oil change 2 p.m.... our lists read something like:

-- Today your heart will beat 100, 800 times... so be grateful, take it easy

-- Before you go to bed tonight your dog will have lived a week...the government will have spent $60 million on "defense"...

You know, stuff like that...

In fact, one year I got excited around New Year's and I decided to commit myself to making a list of things I was absolutely sure were worth memorizing.  I encouraged parishioners to create a "Let There Be" list, empowering them to activate their cocreative potential, to unwrap the gift of Christmas.  They came, after all, each Sunday to start over and I wanted to hand them an open canvas with brushes and limitless colors.  I wanted them to leave splattered with life or covered by sticky notes about how to give themselves back to the Craftsman, the hungry world.

I just came across an old note from that season...

-- Remember... how many children die each day from hunger related disease?  How much of the world's wealth is owned and controlled by the US? How many tons of food are wasted each day in our country?

You know, stuff like that...

* * *

Sometime close to the end of the school year my mother would register me and remind me that it was time for camp in just a few weeks.  I'd wait for the mail to come.  They'd send me my list: sleeping bag, flashlight, sunscreen, bug spray, towels and wash cloths, battery charger, urinal, emergency phone numbers and so on... I'd read it carefully at the kitchen table.  I'd jot notes of extra things I wanted to bring for sure: silly string, comic books, bubble gum cigarettes and the fake barf I bought at the novelty store -- it looked just like real. I'd also make a mental note to call big Mike and see if he could get his brother to hide a Playboy in his suitcase for us.

I'd sit at the table and stare at the words and I'd smell the horses in the barn, hear the voice of my first attendant Karen from years before.  She held me safe in the saddle, I held on to the coarse black hairs of the Buckskins main and was a cowboy.

Soon the boys and I would be waiting up all night for kissing raids, we'd fly over the blacktop chasing whiffle balls into floor hockey nets, tell our young-Buck attendants  "Go man, go... "... crashing into other wheelchairs if we were lucky.  We'd swap dirty jokes, smoke cigarettes and launch macaroni across the mess hall.

The list was a letter from heaven in my hands and I was being invited back.

From there I'd float over to the top drawer of the desk in our front room, take out the phone directory they printed each year with all my friends circled on it: big Mike, Danny and Steve and Perkins, my favorite caregivers, the ones who could drive us around to concerts and take us overnight between camp experiences.  That list of names and numbers was a link to a life I got to live for seven days once a year... with just a few glimmerings throughout the year to keep us hungry.  It was dog-eared with bold black and red ink underlining, like a preacher's private Bible with accumulated holiness from use.

At school Perkins asked me if I got my camp stuff yet.  We were talking in resource room before going off to class still curious about why they called him Jim at camp and not Jamie like the rest of us did every day at Edison elementary.  He seemed to enjoy having a different name in a different place.  I went by Smit, rarely Randy, never Randall.

Jamie Perkins was a dark-haired round faced friend and fixture of my life from the third grade to senior year of high school.  Consummate Chicago sports specialist, Sox fan (rough enough against me to refine my Cubs commitment), classic rocker and radio junkie.  Jamie and I were inseparable.  We picked each other for teams all the time in gym class, our teacher would split us up as team captain's just to piss us off.  For about two years Jamie had a faster wheelchair but we survived the strain it put on our friendship.  He would always wait up for me.

He wore leg braces that stayed on all day despite using his chair for most of it.  His mother put them on him each day so that he could be stood up like a statue, it helped folks transfer him from place to place.  In the therapy room or in study hall they would walk him around carefully like Frankenstein and let him stand in place.  God forbid a gust of wind! I thought to myself nearly every time I saw him stand.  The braces locked at each knee with a latch that stuck out and wore holes into his jeans around the knees.  I'm pretty sure Jamie started that whole ripped jeans trend.  If he ever nailed you with a knee during hockey it hurt like a son of a bitch.

I was growing up in a Christian home with church routines and no thought of a world without God, sin, Jesus, hymns, grace, heaven or any of the rest.  In contrast, Jamie seemed never to have bothered with any of that. His take on life was refreshingly straightforward and honest.  There was no strange mystery behind what it was we experienced.  He repeated aloud a lot of what he heard from his father as he worked in the garage on Saturday afternoons.  I tended to quote my mother's wisdom or at least that much which I could glean from overhearing her conversations on the phone with my grandmother, but that's another story.

To me, Jamie's observations, though often glum, seemed sharp and truthful.  We'd be talking on the bus about the bad news our driver insisted on listening to each day.  Chicago area bad news never seemed to disappoint.  Radio news raised listing to an art form, painting a world down to the darkest detail with incredible precision and conciseness.  Today: a gang shooting, a rape and some aldermen taking bribes. That kind of stuff.

Nearly every time we heard a report together on the bus Jamie would offer a few minutes of commentary afterward.  There was then usually some back-and-forth and then he'd offer an edict as though self-consciously aware that he was closing the topic with a few words of uncommon insight.  I can still remember his face.  Empathically, definitively, authoritatively, he'd shake his head and speak the words and I couldn't help but nod in agreement: "People are Assholes."

* * *

I'm at the table feeling fresh having slept in and Sophie's feeding me.  Each bite is a gift, I'm full of gratitude and savoring.  We've been talking about the sacramental significance of food... remembering, breath by breath and drink by drink and meal by meal... God gives, and so we live.

We go with no television or radio as usual.  Just the quiet of the sun-filled backroom.  I eat and I wonder "What is it about her that makes her such an incredibly consistent cook?  I could eat this breakfast every day."  We speak and don't speak in perfect rhythm, I enjoy the dance of another morning together and I'm also sniffling along the way.

The Dimetapp is gone and I'm feeling freshly resurrected from my recent illness.  And so I look to her eyes and then to the yard and I chew and I swallow.  I'm halfway through a sentence about a squirrel on a limb who's watching me when I stop and I sputter and cough in mid-sniff.  Cough, cough, no food in the lungs please.  I draw one deep breath and blast an explosive NO to the small potato chunk tiptoeing ever so slightly near the boundary of my trachea.  I cough and clear my throat and I stare at the surface of the dining room table.

It's awkward, scary.  I seize up, I am thrown.

Suddenly the surface of the table has become the gym floor at Lakeview Junior High School in Darien Illinois where Jamie and I shared 3-8 grade.  We're much older now and it's a Thursday evening and we are sitting together just outside the crease in front of the goal reconnecting after not having seen each other for several years.

The short talk is a tragic gasp.  We're insistent on our sports, we're together to play and so when I ask "Hey, how are things going?" I'm ready for something short and manageable.  Jamie's voice is glum, he's in his old dour tone resigning himself to the truth and I can feel him reaching.  As he speaks the tension is palpable.  He wants to play and keep things light and just talk.  Our summer camp years are far behind us now and he seems aware of every layer that time and distance have placed between us and he doesn't just want to list what's not right with his life.  Still as he talks I'm aware that he's desperate for me to be with him where he's at.

"Yeah so... my doctor wants me to get a feeding tube" he says.  "Cause when I'm eating I'm coughing on my food.  I'm not really choking but stuffs going into my lungs.  So I don't know what the hell to do.  It sucks!"

"It's bull shit!"  I say.  Fucking bull, man.

"I can't eat without coughing... but you know me.  I mean, Jesus, I love to eat..."

Shortly after camp one year Jamie and I went to see STYX.  Our friend Ken Brown picked us up and took us downtown and for those few hours in the smoky darkness of the concert hall we were serious rockers.  I spent my whole allowance on the black T-shirt I bought.  I wore it to school the next day like Jamie and all of our friends were sick with jealousy.  That night after the concert we went back to Jamie's house and listened to REO Speedwagon and had pizza and Pepsi, almost so much that I was sick.

Jesus was there saying "Take and eat."

I remember us chowing together and watching how easily Jamie chewed.  For every one piece I ate he seemed to have three or four.

Now we were in our late 20s.  We'd already graduated high school some time ago.  Life had moved us on to very different places.  There had been college for me and girlfriends and falling in love with Jill and my marriage.  There had been that one awkward bumping into Jamie while Jill and I were shopping at the mall.  All of a sudden there he was, and so I introduced Jill.

As we talked about the wedding Jamie's face lit up and fell all at once.  There in the middle of the shopping mall he wore a smile I was longing to trust.  He told me how this was a sign that there was hope for all of "us" to find someone.  I agreed and then we spent a few more minutes together promising to call and stay in touch and returned to our shopping.  For the rest of the day I was nauseous and quiet telling Jill I was fine.  I'd shared joyful news only to watch Jamie dissipate into the distance while I looked for a place to cry.

But at Lakeview again, before the game there was another chance.  We were living close enough to remain connected to some floor hockey nights being put together by a local recreation center in town.  Playing together with some of our old teammates brought back all of that life and vitality that we enjoyed through high school.  Three years in a row we won the tournament feeling like we were gods among men.  Now Jamie was on my team again.  I was in the net and he was on defense like it always used to be and in about 60 seconds somebody was going to play the anthem on a boombox and we were going to get underway.

Never mind sissy time.  Let's play the game assholes.

After Jamie spoke to me, there on the gym floor just outside the crease in front of the goal there was no time to unravel.  At that age and in that place I was not available to myself or to Jamie.  I was getting quiet and nauseous.

Feeding tubes are beautiful things in the eyes of some.  I can imagine doctors with compassionate intentions and clean categories, cutting small hole after small hole into the abdomen's of precious persons.  I can see them placing the tubes gently into stomach after stomach, making a way for life to flow on, providing for nourishment and sustenance.

A feeding tube taped in place with adhesive to the skin is ugly in the eyes of some.  A death-patch, a sign to all and to the one who wears it on their soft cream stomach that something sweet and elemental to there being has disappeared.  The plastic tube they tuck beneath their shirt is a reminder that they have eaten there last meal.  Taste and see this, God damnit.

It is a reason for some to celebrate that such a basic need can still be met and that life can continue, to others it is a jolting stab into what is otherwise whole and tender, an open wound, a tragic choice to be alone in one's peculiar hunger with nothing ever to savor or swallow again.

I love to eat -- he said.  And John Merrick said "I am not an animal."  And how many others have had to name, have had to declare their most basic dignity?  How many have coughed and cried out NO! into the face of distasteful circumstances -- "I want to taste the life so many live without thinking.  I am human, Jesus let me be human!"

I want to make a list of these absurd declarations that nobody should ever have to make.  I want back in my workshop until it is perfected.  Let me live to write it down dark and bold and hold it high for Jamie, this list that every asshole everywhere in heaven and on earth should already know by heart.

* * *

The bonfire rages, warming us in the round at closing ceremonies.  I see flames reflected back from chrome framed wheelchairs all around the circle.  Campers in sweatshirts, attendant caregiver-volunteers, arms around shoulders, woodsmoke and bug spray, hugs alongside... we sway back and forth.  Despite digging my heels deep into the sacred ground of Camp Ravenswood as early as Tuesday, Friday night, the saddest night of the holiest week in summer, is upon us again and we know the words by heart.

There is a communion of saints; camp director with her clipboard and whistle, the older arts and crafts girls I'd had crushes on all week, Jamie on my left, Steve on my right, and big Mike and Danny and the rest of the guys from our cabin.  Moose, the activities director-muse, able to play any song you can name, closes his eyes and cradles the guitar as we all sing the words...

I can't be contented with yesterday's glories, 
I can't live on promises winter to spring, 
today is my moment and now is my story
 I'll laugh and I'll cry and I'll sing.

Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine,
 I'll taste your strawberry, I'll drink your sweet wine, 
a million tomorrow's shall all pass away
ere I forget the joy that is mine today.

Today, I'm much too old for camp.  Jamie and Steve are out of reach, I'm not certain about big Mike or Danny or the rest of the guys in the cabin.  There's a prayer inside that wonders whether they received another letter from heaven.  Whether they've been invited back for good.  Could Camp be heaven without them?  I've got questions like these and so many others.  I wait for my letter, I'm making my list.

Have you tried a Stress Ball?

Entry 6.2

 Well… You may as well be right here with me experimenting… Finding out how well this is going to work. Thus far the accuracy of speech recognition is profoundly good! I will allow myself a glimmering of hope.

And immediately I want to pause… I am changing my process to give me tremendous access… And put many many words out into the universe rather quickly… I am trying to say we have removed stumbling blocks and the outcome may not necessarily be a tremendous good for myself and everyone else… I suppose we shall see, because this is part of the experiment after all. It requires some bravery to be a bold pioneer in the SPIRIT!

I do not intend to abandon my engagement of last year's journaling as well as other writings, but to continue as I have thus  far. So part of that entails simply going live every so often… Like now…

Where I could report a brazen pulsing pain in my elbow

or the voice of my wife on the phone in the other room where she's doing work

from home today, because… nevermind because. Or

I could report the possibility of a dream forming during a nap I Am

about to take, i am. slight formatting issues might also be on the list

of unexpected changes… which are now presenting minor issues

at present, which is to say, right now… live in this room.

...Oh, here he is...

Hello Friends...

Of late, it seems, there's been something of a clog... in the blog.  But that's not the case anymore. 

Through the help of some good friends I've been given the support needed to get things flowing again... with greater simplicity and joy.

Special thanks to my good friends Andrew Nelson and Andrew Spidahl for their irreplaceable contributions.

Chopping Wood and Carrying Water