Thank you for the wrecking, the undoing, tears and rips And the way that you committed to your most savage whims Thanks so much for craving the unmarked skin on me And leaving me with scars to keep and throb in memory Thank you for the lessons in betrayal of myself And teaching me to grovel, beg, forget to ask for help I appreciate your tolerance as I clung to remnants of my worth Your patience til the shame was set and you knew it would endure Thank you for the questions I never thought to ask And the gentle way you coated them with answers made of wax Thank…
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The Skeptic and the Mystic
I guess it’s how I came here: carrying the questions of my ancestors and the mystic trust, too. Which of them were lawyers? Which of them shamans? Because I can escape neither. My earliest memories are of totalizing faith. Utter confidence in God’s existence, God’s love, God’s particular devotion, God’s humor, God’s sadness. I did not separate the world into what is God’s and what is not, it was all God’s. He made it. He loved it. He was never far from any of it. Now that I know me a little more, it seems inevitable that I would wring this faith through inquiry. Sometimes I wonder what took me…
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Love Notes
“Maybe Jesus knew you’d read the word ‘beagle’ today!” I say to her after sounding it out and our remembering that those two matching beagles just walked by the house this morning so she got to hear this strange word. “Or maybe the owner just wanted to walk his dogs…” she says, empirically, with all the rational exposition 300 years of Enlightenment Thinking can produce in its youngest prodigies. I laugh and nod, “Both things can be true, you know.” Because the question I am convinced is built into the factory settings, is Are you there and do you care? That is, is there a “you” to care at all…
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Beam Hallelujah
The beams reach high—to you As if you are not here, in the pew But you don’t mind it You come how we’re able Hallelujah The cross up there reminds me of the ones you put all over Torture as a decoration, hallelujah Like the one you pained for me at that pottery shop When I got myself baptized And Grandma Betty thought it was a waste You were my sanctuary—are? Do I still get to say that? While I learn to stand on the legs you knit for me in your womb? Which sort of makes them yours, I guess And I like that thought, hallelujah And I hope…
