Untitled.

Marrow sucked the life out of you –

I could not console the
Descent of death;
I did not hold your hand
As chemicals pulsed their way
Through every thriving cell
Poisoning your existence.
I did not watch you lose your hair,
Falling in manes of freshly dyed mahogany tresses.

I could not hold the few feeble strands
clinging to your skull
– as life clings to the soul -
While you purged
Your empty acid – a few sips
Of chicken broth
And unsalted crackers.

Broke you down
Like messy and splintered bones
In dust returning
To the pangs of Birth’s slow murder.

 

I stole this from an old post. Sometimes it reminds me that I used to write more than just exhortations and encourages me to try again.

Things That Get You Through.

Early in the morning, somewhere before 6:00 am, Elise had awaken to the fiery branches outside the window of their guest room. Elise had told Claire that the tree waited just for her, the leaves clinging tightly to the branches, bergamot and ruby leaves, ready to fall, but not until Claire’s arrival. The bottom branches were now shedding their clothes, drips of red and orange sprinkling the front lawn.

The water boiled in the microwave. Elise sat silently for a moment, sniffing the ginger-peach tea bag and listening for Claire’s footsteps on the stairs.

Homesickness is a lonely disease. It is unreconcilable but only mildly treacherous. It is a disembodied feeling, as if your heart might be yearning for another country  - somewhere in the inexistent – somewhere where people are living without you and you without them, and yet, you know exactly who they are.  It had been 6 months since Elise moved, and she still missed the open freeways of Houston, the bleary orange lights speckled along the edge of the road at night, and the smell of driving in the city. 

The microwave beeped, and she tossed the tea bags into the matching cups, shoving them deep into the sizzling water with her spoon. The floor creaked above her, and finally she heard soft footsteps pacing the bathroom floor, water running, a few sighs, and then Claire emerged, stepping down the stairs to join her for tea. 

“Finally,” Elise said.

“Hey, chemo is like pregnancy. Morning sickness,” Claire replied, her green eyes flashing. These were the only eyes Elise had ever seen smirk at her, as if she did not need her mouth to smile.

Elise was house-sitting that week, and Claire joined her, caring for an English Cocker-spaniel and a beautiful house nestled into the side of a hill with a forest behind it.  

They sat together in wing-backed chairs and watched the sun as it rose through the trees and lit up dew on the grass. Claire told her about the cancer and the steroids, the chemo, but only for a little while, and began, in her usual and magical way, to draw out Elise’s life before her.

There was a grace that went before Claire, that enclosed behind her and hedged the edges of her life; this grace would bump against her friends, her foes, her family and softy, surely cause a person to think more serenely about the world – to question what was now taken for granted as fiction – whether perhaps there was a God who was real and truly loved His children. Her life could do that. 

Elise knew Claire wasn’t perfect; in fact, as they sat there conversing over tea, snuggled into robes with the dog tucked into Claire’s lap, Elise became profoundly aware that mortality was not a joke for either of them. Thus, this conversation, this moment would transpire, evaporate and leave only neurological traces in the vast expanse of their minds – and even so Elise would always remember Claire differently than Claire saw herself.

Regardless, they sat, murmuring to themselves about men, marriage, life – how it would come quickly and leave – about whether Claire should make plans for the future, how she so desperately wanted to, and Elise would exhort in her ignorant way that Claire should dream, dream wildly and ready herself for life.

“I’m just not sure, Elise, any more. It is so hard to be unsure all the time,” Claire spoke frankly, between sips, “And anyway, who knows? The doctors said this might just work. I mean, I’m on a break before I start just drinking organic mishmash and stuff.”

Elise smiled at her,”Speaking of which, do you need to eat something before you take your meds?” She stood up, setting the tea on the glass coffee table and moved toward the kitchen, “I can make you an english muffin with cheese??”

“That would be great,” Claire responded,”I hate this steroid. It has made me gain weight.”

Elise rummaged through the refrigerator,”You look fine!” she said.

“No. I look oinky. AND, I need a shirt. I need a shirt that has writing on the front that says, ‘No, I don’t eat fast food, I just have leukemia and am taking a steroid that makes me retain water, thank you very much!’”

Elise laughed, and brought her a the english muffin, “Well, this is FAST food…” She winked.

“God is strange,” Claire said, “He uses the most peculiar of broken situations to bring about the strangest of joy. Not to say I feel joy about looking oinky, but I am glad to be here with you.”

“I have definitely missed you,” said Elise.

The words hung delicately in the air, as an enchanted chandelier, twinkling about them; to miss someone is to envision a beauty about them, to dream of experience with them, to imagine a future or to replay a past – it is a dedicated feeling, like love.

It was being missed that made Elise feel like she could be home where she was; as if Claire, from the distance of Houston, could send her the peace of friendship, bring it to her in her suitcase and leave it with her for safe-keeping.

When Claire came to visit, she felt sure she might crack, split right down the middle of her heart and ooze blood and tears for weeks. But, instead the comfort of her laughter settled her soul, and she rested better those nights than ever before.

The Passing.

The Passing.

 

I heard
her passing
on the phone.

A quick draw of breath,
a living expiration.

All of her left,
in books and letters,
a compass on the desk.

Images of evidence

“I am here!” they cry out -
One ½ gallon     organic chocolate milk
and strawberry yogurt.

Two t-shirts laid out to be pressed.

Perhaps we are all just passing,
Summarily collecting
our lives in rusty 
archives of hapless
dream-making

and
plans.

Just to leave
the living
to the

Dying.

Planted and Yet Pilgrims: 3 Months.

As far as the eye could see there was sand – dunes and plains of sand. The sky, golden and dusty, betrayed no sign of cloud; it was too early. The sand swirled around me, nipping my legs with the grains. Often, I would get up as the sun broke the horizon and walk to the edge of the camp and look in every direction for any sign of other life – but there was none, just the knowledge that in a few hours my family and I, with the other 50 families, would gather our clothes and shoes – our tents and linens, wrap them up and place them on our back to keep moving.

My mouth was dry except for the tears. I still missed home, even after 15 years. The security of knowing that I was planted some place that existed in the present reality. The songs of the children singing as they went to school, the smell of baking brick – the sounds of a distant rippling water visited me in my dreams, and prompted the precious anxiety that kept me aching, feeling and wanting the past – regardless of its cruel master, regardless of the freedom I experienced now. How could this be freedom, really? Wandering and wandering – endlessly punished for the misery of being stripped of everything I’ve ever known – for what? Some land, some far away land – some random and concocted perfection that doesn’t exist – or so the other children keep telling me… Where is this hope?

Lately, I’ve taken to imagining myself as a Hebrew – living in Egypt from birth, told the story of my ancestors, their faith, their hope – their joy. I imagine playing with  my friends, learning Hebrew, being mesmerized by the pyramids and Pharaoh. I imagine the strength of the Egyptian culture and how difficult it must’ve been for my parents to maintain the history and understanding of what it meant to be a descendant of Abraham, trapped in slavery with no hope of escape, and a hope for escape only given to me by my parents. I think about what it must’ve been like for a man to come out of Pharaoh’s house and sweep us all away in a night, across some giant sea parted by an invisible hand – and to find myself in the desert with just the clothes on my back and whatever my parents were able to pack in a hurry. To never be able to return…. and to wander, for the duration of my entire life in sand, packing my life up everyday to follow a cloud. And then, to have Faith – that is, the assurance of things hoped for – that one day, I would see Canaan.

Then, I juxtapose this with Charlottesville. 

Charlottesville is hardly a desert. I have a house; I have a husband and a business. The daffodils are happy in my yard, and food is abounding. Yet – there is this strange dissatisfaction within me, there is this strange longing for a place where the world is set right.

The idea of a being a pilgrim in a foreign land is particularly odd, because I am not foreign. I speak the language; I am not a slave. In fact, I am well-liked, connected, and enjoy, for the most part, the benefits of living here.

What does it mean, then, for me to be a pilgrim and yet planted? Because, I am – if I am a believer, whether I recognize it or not – foreign, on my way somewhere else, and packing a light material load.

This is the question that has me most challenged at the moment, and in Hebrews 11 – there is an entire discourse on faith, on the heritage of faith in the Christian church – and the commending of righteousness by God on account of Faith and the movement it brought forth. Here’s an excerpt of heritage:

I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets 

• who through faith conquered kingdoms, 
• administered justice, and 
• gained what was promised; 
• who shut the mouths of lions,
• quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; 
• whose weakness was turned to strength; and 
• who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. 
• Women received back their dead, raised to life again. 
• Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. 
• Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 
• They were stoned; 
• they were sawed in two; 
• they were put to death by the sword. 
• They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 
• the world was not worthy of them. 
• They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. [...]

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses,

let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 

Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 

WOW.

The great irony of Christianity, is the beautiful inversion of where our hope and happiness lies.
For the joy set before him, he endured the Cross. How odd!
Who, with joy, endures pain?
Who seeks rest in racing?
Who sees truth in majority opposition?
Who has hope as a result of devastation?
Who counts their life as gain, when it is reviled, mocked, and wasted on living for something beyond the present?

Who is planted and yet a pilgrim?

Once we had no delight in God, and Christ was just a vague historical figure. What we enjoyed was food and friendships and productivity and investments and vacations and hobbies and games and reading and shopping and sex and sports and art and TV and travel..
but not God.
He was an idea – even a good one – a topic for discussion.
But he was not a treasure of delight.

-John Piper, Desiring God

This is me! Is this you? 

I hope, for the sake of our lives where we will blink and be dead, forgotten, buried and rotting, that we believe like Moses, that the Promise will be fulfilled, and that the present should be marked with that assurance, the fruit and deeds that flow from that faith.

Franklin.

The play ground was situated to the right of the orphanage, immediately as we pulled through the gate. The children waited for us, their faces pressed against a rod iron door at the end of a hallway splitting the living quarters into two sections. The sun, bright over head, poured out it’s heat beamed delightfully off the children’s cheeks.

The littlest, 18 month old Israel, spoke broken spanish and shoved his finger at me to show that it had been smashed in a door or something similar. I kissed it. He did this every time I saw him, as if the hurt of it could not be shaken or forgotten.

After a while, we began to photograph all of the children. Eric placed them against different backdrops, or caught them during play, in an effort to capture their smiles and age. For the past 5 times he’s photographed different aspects of Nicaragua and these trips. However, in the last few years, he’s begun a project of tracking these kids through photographs as they grow up.

 Franklin, 8 years old, crouched by the shed, plucking the seeds from green pods that had fallen from the tree. He was one of the last of the younger kids that Eric needed to photograph, and he wasn’t in the mood to have his picture taken.

We walked over, I -holding the flash, and crouched in front of him.

“Como te llamas?” I said softly.

The guard at the gate replied, “Franklin,” and made the ‘crazy’ sign and mouthed loco.

Eric snapped away, and I kept trying to get his attention. He finally looked up, and we got a photo. But, Franklin began to cry and ran behind the shed. Eric followed quickly and apologized, and showed him the photograph. Franklin stood there for awhile, and Eric left to finish up the kids. 

I walked back around the shed and gathered up some pods, and brought them back to him. I held my hand in front of his face for a minute, open, showing all of the pods we could collects and split open to gather the seeds. He looked up at me, grabbed my hand, and we walked back over to the tree.

We collected as many pods as we could, and after a few minutes, the rest of the boys came over and started collecting pods and tossing them into Franklin’s basket. He smiled a lot after that, and Eric was able to take many photographs of him.

Waiting to Repose

In the night hours,
when black eats everything
and the chirping silence of
nature coos the last child to sleep,

i fear everything.

the aching wood beams above me,
your barely
breathing murmurs,
the faraway moments
of murdered Sudanese
And the girls of cambodia
raped in Thailand.

Slumbering death row inmates,
and the last conversation
with my dying friend,
tomorrows schedule,

and whether Jeremy will
hate Christians forever. because of us.

perhaps fear is overblown
narcissism,
that I could
at will, change everything
if the world revolved around me.