The Dance

Thank you for welcoming me back into your home

Thank you for watching my kiddos 

I really appreciate your thoughtfulness

Thank you for raising the best daughter imaginable

Thank you for being a shining example of hospitality

I really appreciate your thoughtfulness 

Thank you for modeling to her what it is to be a godly and virtuous mother

Thank for modeling to me the kind of motherhood I never knew and wish I always had

I really appreciate your thoughtfulness

Thank you for being patient with me these past few years

Thank you for allowing time for redemption and healing

I really appreciate your thoughtfulness

Thank you for considering others more than yourself

Thank you for your empathy toward the weak and vulnerable

I really appreciate your thoughtfulness 

Thank you for inviting my mother into your home

Thank you for spending time with her

I really appreciate your thoughtfulness

Thank you for sharing part of your day with her

Thank you for introducing my children to her

I really appreciate your thoughtfulness

Thank you for telling her your story

Thank you for allowing me to share mine

I really appreciate your thoughtfulness

Thank you for listening to her sincerely

Thank you for leading her to my door, a half-mile away

I really appreciate your thoughtfulness

Thank you for not letting me know

Thank you for telling my wife about it after it had passed

I really appreciate your thoughtfulness

Please allow me to express my own appreciation

Please allow me to make one request

I really appreciate your thoughtfulness

Since you appreciate redemption so much

Since I no longer have a mother who will ever be seen again

Please consider another mother whom we both love

This mother cries openly and inconsolably at every wedding 

As I do at the thought of never seeing my mother again

Waiting nearly twenty years with no opportunity for redemption

Hoping and praying for just one chance

This mother loves greatly because she had a lovely model for motherhood

This mother wants nothing more than to have that dance she was robbed of by a mother

It can be any day

In any room

At any time

Blue Moon

Standing alone

With the love of my own

Just one dance

That first dance

Between us all

I really appreciate your thoughtfulness

Memory Eternal (my wings part two)

All day I played Wings Part Two on repeat

I didn’t want to hear anything else

Just tears poured out whenever I imagined

You were the light and the way they only read about

I didn’t start the day expecting it to become this way 

I left the post office and opened your purse

I hadn’t seen your face since I was nineteen

And now all I could see was your smile

I wish I had seen it in person since then

I remember it, but from too long ago

I wish I had just one more glance

Or better yet, one hug and kiss

And one for Alison, my angel, too

And one for Jadon, Eden, and Gaius

Or better yet, to spend a whole day with all of us together

To welcome you into my own home

To share a meal or two together

To hear your voice resound

To gaze at your smile next to me

To even cry together

I’m sure there would have been lots of tears

I would have been there holding you in my arms 

But I wasn’t ever given that chance

A son can dream, can’t he? 

I miss you so much

And yet I don’t even know the you in the driver’s license 

Other than what my teenage self last recollected

I’m so happy to have received your little notebook though

I immediately recalled your distinctive cursive handwriting 

It didn’t change a bit over the last two decades

Maybe my strong opinions about cursive need to change

And your faith in the Lord didn’t change either

I can imagine a certain someone still asking, “What faith?”

Forget about him

His faith only has a dozen followers

But yours has the hosts of heaven 

“Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord

To what end is it for you?

The day of the Lord is darkness, and not light

Read verses twenty one and twenty two

God himself is saying these verses!”

I didn’t want to read anything else

Just tears poured out whenever I considered

You were the light and the way they only read about

I couldn’t leave the post office 

I stayed parked far beyond my fifteen minute sign limit

Just weeping and praying

More weeping than praying though

Eventually I went to work and didn’t accomplish much

Because I was thinking about your smile and your cursive notes

What an incredible sight to behold

Such a sincere and childlike faith

Not even the most severe tempests of life could loosen your grip

“Hate the evil, and love the good

And establish judgment in the gate

It may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph

The prudent shall keep silence in that time

For it is an evil time”

You held on to the very end through an evil time

Which began when he divorced you for another

I wasn’t in a good place to know any better at that time

So please forgive me

And recovery without you was much needed

But now that nearly two decades have passed

All I could recall from him was the mantra

You were to blame, not him

You ruined everything

He needed a secretary

You were demon possessed 

You were the problem

He needed a virtuous wife and never had one

You abandoned him

You were not merely ill

Because illness wasn’t a just enough ground for him

Yet from what the Sheriff mentioned over the phone

According to others in Aberdeen, you were still known to be mentally ill

And in ways just like I remember you being

But that simple, sincere smile of yours still catches me off guard

And your handwritten notes still overwhelm me 

You remained filled with the faith of a child all these years

“Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live

And so the Lord the God of hosts shall be with you”

Yet I had no way of knowing this sincere faith of yours all these years

Because you were nowhere to be found

You were remembered as the self proclaimed victim and martyr, abandoned and unloved

And no one taught us how to consider some validity to that

Tears just pour out because I now realize

You were the light and the way they only read about

Anamnesis (my wings part one)

I remember my first thought being about a can of soup

Everything changed with my birth

Or was it a shot?

 The docs were oblivious and Merck never made a peep

I remember the sandwich bags

The drenched vivas

Flies in window sills

Roadkill and raindrops spreading disease

I remember a holy man driving our Sunday route ahead of us

Just to remove diabolical obstacles 

So we could make it on time

And spare us all your bitching and carwashing 

I remember covering my face from fumes 

The greasy plaid couch pillows

The lysol spraying

The chlorine cleansing

I remember the eyes closed

The wiping of faucets

The crossing a brass fluted transition

The holes you burned in carpets to save the kosmos

I remember the video games and chips and soda

The weight gain

The weight loss

The bitching about a brother stolen

I remember the money borrowed from dad's wallet

Traded for cartons of newports and camels

So you could look him in the eye

Saying truthfully it wasn't you

I remember the sleeping all day

The shopping

The hoarding

The careless starch flamethrower that looked "nice"

I remember which one were you that day

You'd leave randomly

You'd return randomly

You'd smirk and bitch and provoke

I remember it takes 45 minutes to microwave a frozen lasagna

You never prepared meals for us

Dad pressure cooked chicken and boiled brussel sprouts

Peace and quiet was at Boston Chicken

I remember you never really cleaned

You never educated

You never really cared

Until it was always too late

I remember the blinds closed in every room

During the missionary trip to South Africa

The pensive panic with little kids

Bitching back at you to let us pay our water bill

Which one of you cared afterward?

For years I wished one of you cared about me

I searched but never found her

She never tried to reach me either

It took decades to wish that one would find me

Had I been found within the last few years

We would have taken care of her

I wanted her to know them anyway

But it's not all bad news I'm remembering

I also remember that God became what we are

So that we could become what He is

Including every one of you, who was no guardian angel

Since God is the one who vindicates

Who is the one who condemns you now

If He who is risen knew you and loved you most

Sandwich bags and all

Loss of Face

O God, turn us around

And show your face

And we will be saved

Not from death

But from its sting

This madness of our own making

We see all around us

Crucifying them for teaching

Truths are reliabilities over time

Chasing false hopes

Of corpses rising from graves

And bones receiving flesh again

Of etherealities unto ages of ages

At the so-called end of time 

Of unspeakables and unfathomables 

Venting up and beyond distant galaxies

Of intellections and pneumaticities 

Merely interceding for us

Before the anointed appearance 

Certainly no skies had joined land yet

The first had to flee from his face

After the ascension

The aeons rushed 

Toward Armageddon

Toward Vindication 

The goal was festal sabbath 

No one was raised out of the dead ones

While Hades and Thanatos still held keys

To the gate of a bottomless pit 

And the lake was still a place yet to come

For those who refused to look upon your face

Over time we can rely upon the true hope of our past

That the Mount has been exalted above the plain

Death and Hell were tossed into perdition 

Their righteous dead already raised

This terra firma etherealized

The saints dwell amongst us

Turning us around 

Showing us your face

Saving us, O God

Priests of LMGTFY Culture

Who can get whom to do what with their bodies?

Take

Eat

From all the trees

But not this one

Remember lest ye forget

Indeterminate future manifestations abound

The goal is to discover

We call it mathematics for a reason

Hempel's ravens provide for us a clue

Knowing is a process, not an event

Their eyes were opened and they knew

They were advanced, but not scientific

We think we write our script

They actually do

It's now Us versus Them

Moderns or Primitives

Those of the Present or Past

Science or Tradition

Reason or Revelation

Jet sons or Flint stones

In their dispensation of the printing press

God became a book

In our dispensation of "Secret" in Swahili

Blogs become gods

Non-penetrative

Cyborgic extensions

Habituating their bodies to not know anything without the gods

Psalmos 10•3

How dare you

Perpetuate ignorance 

Denying Science 

Elevating your ego 

Above the heavens 

Religion is a poison 

In a hundred years 

Its death is inevitable 

Progress is the real antidote

For our ancestral disease 

Can’t you see the problem? 

If you teach contrary to Science

Entire generations will devolve

Civilization as we know it will regress

Must we return to the middle-ages?

Your beliefs are the real threat

If the foundations of facts are destroyed

What can the righteous do? 

You can’t possibly remain so illogical

In light of all the progress we’ve made

How dare you

Above the heavens

Elevating your ego

Denying Science 

Perpetuate ignorance 

Cliffnotes

I read it all

Every jot and tittle

It's all or nothing

So I'm told

In the beginning

Adam took notes

Named every creature

Even his wife

Begat in perfect tens

Two sevenths from him were also special

One proclaims the need for justice

The other walks with gods

Who play an important role

Three days of forming

Three days of filling

It was evening

It was morning

Then seventh day had no end

The story prefigures a promised rest

Adam falls like Israel

Failing to enter that rest

Exiled east of the temple

But his children were still welcome to draw near 

Jachin and Boaz with two flaming swords

The younger son draws near according to the Law

The firstborn destroys his brother

Is exiled east of Eden

He receives a city of refuge as his mark 

The deluge parallels the fire of Sodom

And the brimstone of Gomorrah

Offspring of gods are produced

Babelic empires are dispersed

A temple on water is built for rest

War-bows are made to be seen by the Most High

Patriarchs are viewed as princes by all

Giving away their sisters

Not once, but twice

The Canaanite friendly wife takes a look back

As a perpetual witness to a covenant of salt

The seed of Adam remains special and protected

A covenant remains secured

Even the king of peace receives tithes

Eve's daughter grows old and bears a son

The slavegirl and her son are cast out though

Only the freeborn son remains

Only the freeborn is sacrificed on a mountain

Where the temple would be built

To be raised from death

Or receive a lamb to pioneer for him

I read all of this

Every jot and tittle

Must be true

So I'm told

But what if every jot was beside the point

What if each tittle need not be precisely true

But merely to be faithful
To a promise

To a tradition

To a word of God
To a word from God
Who spoke through the prophets
Who prescribed and proscribed how to draw near
And how to be raised from the dead ones

And when that tradition became an empire
Of tribal allegiance with heavy burdens and no rest

Exiled east of the Garden

East of the temple

East of the promised rest

Scribes scrambled to collate and redact
To prescribe and proscribe their tribalism

Yet according to promise
Through a living tradition
When god became vellum

The word became flesh
And tabernacled among them
To rival their gods
And to raise their dead ones

Because the word of God is inspired

The word of God is infallible

The word of God is inerrant

The word of God read it all, too

And his apostles took notes

Myopia

Words clothe God's silence with meaning

Describe a sunrise to the blind

Democracies of ideas aren't enough to comprehend it

Shibboleths of collective identity politics forbid it

Life wastes away because of suffering

A spirit captivates us

Drunk on democracy we cave in

A spirit of consumption

A spirit of cancer

A spirit of addiction

Fear repels us away 

Instead of drawing us closer

Fear is the real suffering

Fear is where the real pain is felt

Fear is also the antidote

Life wastes away because of suffering

You watch me suffer and tell me I don't need to

Being human is not qualification enough for you

Don't allow suffering and pain to go to waste

A word has already clothed God's silence with meaning

Loving to Know

What does it take?
...
To reach the point of no return
To say, I can't anymore
I don't even want to anymore
I need You
I want You
For ever more than now
Don't fix things for me—Fix me
Fix all of me or none of me
In Your mercy exact justice
I trust Your judgment—I don't trust mine

I deserve it
What ever that is 

I'm more than a fool
Lost without You
Leading others astray from the Holy
Feet running swiftly toward the void
None of my paths are peace
I only know how to survive
And not very well
When You serve me justice I will need more 

That stream which I poisoned

How can it be purified?
I don't trust my passions
I don't trust in flesh anymore

I used You as my crutch 

I polluted wells
For fun or out of spite
You were elevator music to me
I never had to learn Your rhythm
You were just there in the background

For my listening pleasure
Or to annoy me
As evil as that sounds
It's true 

Now I don't want to live without You
Have mercy on me
According to the multitude of Your tender mercies

Heal my soul
For I have sinned against You
Give me life or give me death
I know what I deserve
Whatever You choose
Do so for the sake of Your name alone
My name isn't worthy
Uproot and plant anew
Kill and make alive

As You wish

Thy will be done
Not mine
I just want what You want

Happy is he that findeth

Happy is he that getteth

Happy is he that retaineth

Happy is he
...
What must I do now? 

Filling the Void

Wisdom hurts 

Like a broken nose

It cannot be touched lightly

Its damage is done

It can’t be unspoken

Rewinding the clock doesn’t heal its bruising

Even without batteries it keeps ticking

Only more can be spoken 

Even its silence is speech 

Beware of its soft words 

Many bones are broken by them

Its quietude is as cloaked daggers

That which has been done in silence is worthy of the Father

To possess this Word is to hear its silence

For it acts through what is spoken

And is known through its silence

Its mysteries were loudly proclaimed

Yet are accomplished in the silence of God