easter poems

Every Riven Thing

God goes, belonging to every riven thing he's made
sing his being simply by being
the thing it is:
stone and tree and sky, 

man who sees and sings and wonders why

God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing he's made,
means a storm of peace.
Think of the atoms inside the stone.
Think of the man who sits alone
trying to will himself into a stillness where

God goes belonging. To every riven thing he's made
there is given one shade
shaped exactly to the thing itself:
under the tree a darker tree;
under the man the only man to see

God goes belonging to every riven thing. He's made
the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,

God goes belonging to every riven thing he's made.

-Christian Wiman

~

Pharaoh's Cross

It would be easier to be an atheist; it is the simple way out.
But each time I turn toward that wide and welcoming door
it slams shut in my face, and I - like my forebears - Adam, Eve -
am left outside the garden of reason and limited, chill science
and the arguments of intellect.
Who is this wild cherubim who whirls the flaming sword
'twixt the door to the house of atheism and me?

Sometimes in the groping dark of my not knowing
I am exhausted with the struggle to believe in you, O God.
Your ways are not our ways. Your ways are extraordinary.
You sent evil angels to the Egyptians and killed;
you killed countless babes in order that Pharaoh,
whose heart was hardened by you (that worries me, Lord)
might be slow to let the Hebrew children go.
You turned back the waters of the Red Sea
and your Chosen People went through on dry land
and the Egyptians were drowned, men with wives and children,
young men with mothers and fathers (your ways are not our ways)
and there was much rejoicing at all this death,
and the angels laughed and sang, and you stopped them, saying,
"How can you sing when my children are drowning?"

When your people reached Mount Sinai you warned Moses
not to let any of them near you lest you break forth
on them with death in your hand.

You are Love, and you command us to love,
and yet you yourself turn men's hearts to evil,
and you wipe out nations with one sweep of the hand -
the Amorites and the Hittites and the Peruzzites -
gone, all gone. It seems that any means will do, and yet -
all these things are but stories told about you by fallen man,
part of the story (for your ways are not our ways)
but not the whole story. You are our author,
and we try to listen to what you say,
but we suffer from faulty hearing and loss of language
and we get the words wrong.

Listen: you came to us as one of us
and lived with us and died for us and descended into hell for us
and burst out into life for us:

Do you now hold Pharaoh in your arms?

-Madeleine L'Engle

~

My God my bright abyss
Into which all my longing will not go
Once more I come to the edge of all I know
And believing nothing believe in this:

-Christian Wiman

apocalyptic double vision

My facebook feed has been inundated for the past 24 hours with pictures and articles about Michael Sharp, an EMU alum and U.N. worker who was murdered along with two others in Congo. His body was found on March 27 and was publicly identified yesterday. I didn't know him but I know people who did, and the grief I see every time I get on social media is palpable.

What to say? The heart aches. Every time I see Michael's father quoted in an article on a facebook post my throat tightens. His father is a professer at Hesston; he was quoted in a Mennonite World Review article two weeks ago, soon after Michael was kidnapped, saying, "I have said on more than one occasion that we peacemakers should be willing to risk our lives as those who join the military do. Now it's no longer theory."

A beautiful, noble, frightening statement that packs some serious power as Michael's face looks out at me from my screen.



I have this quote from theologian Ched Myers hanging next to my bed:

I call this "apocalyptic double vision": to see the world enslaved and to envision the world liberated.

What is; what could be. I remember conversations in theology classes at EMU. Already, but not yet. I remember conversations with my professors, my classmates, my friends, talking and wondering about the responsibility each of us bears to help bring the fullness of God's peace into the Earth. I imagine Michael having those conversations six, seven, eight years before me; I imagine him carrying those convictions into his work with the U.N.

This Lenten season it is so much easier to see the world enslaved than to envision it liberated. Lord, have mercy.

Help us to see the world as it is and will be.

Help us to see the love at the ground of all being.

Help us to not lose heart.

why we build the wall

this past wednesday i traveled to charlottesville to see anais mitchell in concert. she played this song:

after which, she paused and looked out at the audience and laughed a little and said, "i just want to say -- i just want to say this song is ten years old, so -- any coincidence to any current politicians is purely archetypal."

i laughed, because it's funny, in a dark sort of way, but the hair on the back of my neck was also standing up. 

i am nervous to watch the debate tonight. i am afraid of what my country has been/is/might become.

easter 2016

this weekend my housemates & some friends built a garden in a day! and now it is easter (resurrection day) and i am full to the brim with thoughts about new life, new growth, the hope of transformation.

i am so excited to see what the summer will bring, both in the garden and in me.

A Quarter Century

I'm 25 today but still a child a heart. Celebrated with good food, good people, games, and a Jupiter ice cream cake (complete with Great Red Spot!).

Here's to a 25th year of life.

2016!

i am so ready for this new year. (but maybe not ready enough -- i accidentally titled this post "2015" at first, haha)

goals/resolutions for 2016:
*more guitar skills
*more writing
*more biking
*read 50 books (?)
*apply to Physician Assistant programs

hopes:
*lots of board games will keep happening in my life
*my job will be a good fit
*no more mice in the house
*no more squirrels in the attic


----

and now, here, have an appropriate winter/hopeful poem.

Starlings in Winter

 -- by Mary Oliver 

Chunky and noisy,

but with stars in their black feathers,

they spring from the telephone wire

and instantly

they are acrobats

in the freezing wind.

And now, in the theater of air,

they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;

they float like one stippled star

that opens,

becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;

and you watch

and you try

but you simply can't imagine

how they do it

with no articulated instruction, no pause,

only the silent confirmation

that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin

over and over again,

full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,

even in the ashy city.

I am thinking now

of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots

trying to leave the ground,

I feel my heart

pumping hard, I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.

I want to be light and frolicsome.

I want to be improbably beautiful and afraid of nothing,

as though I had wings.

light for the longest night

for friends in far-away places,

for my friends working in Kurdistan,

friends in Burkina Faso and Pittsburgh, 

Tallahassee and D.C.,

for family near and far,

for refugees,

for all those who welcomed me,

for Baltimore,

for the prisons,

for prisoners and prison guards,

for the work that is yet to be done,

for cold hearts,

for forgiveness,

for hope,

for all this broken world -- 

Lord.

Hear our Prayer.

slow growth

for some reason, i was thinking this evening about a conversation i had with my friend Nolan four and a half years ago when i was working at camp hebron. we were talking about grace, and i said i think of it like the rings of a tree: that you keep learning the same things over and over again, a little bigger each time. that you are given the time and space to learn it again -- this is what grace means to me.

i didn't think of it at the time, but a necessary part of that metaphor for grace is that it takes a lot of time.



this year has been very slow, full of stillness and aimlessness and wandering. i have been like the fox in wendell berry's famous poem, the one who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. i have had an abundance of time to think, to wonder, to wander, to read and write and sleep and take my body out for walks under the vast dome of the sky.

i have learned a lot of things, some of them over and over again.



my new job starts in three weeks; the evening class i'm taking begins in two. i will be busy again soon, and i will be glad of it. i am ready for a new season, for a different kind of growth.

for now, though: it is the longest night of the year, and my life and my heart are quiet and still.



i am lying in the early darkness of my unlit bedroom, contemplating the words Ann spoke at church yesterday on the 4th Sunday of Advent.

i am learning the Christmas story for the 24th time. 

summer pictures part 5

summer pictures part 4

end of summer musings

There is a day

When the road neither 

Comes nor goes, and the way

Is not a way but a place.

-Wendell Berry

-

I missed singing with people during the year I lived in Baltimore. The Quaker Meeting was nice enough but they don't sing. 

This summer I went to the community hymn sings with my Nana at Stumptown Mennonite Church, and let me tell you, if you've never heard hundreds of voices gathered for four-part sacred music, you should add that to your bucket list.

I love singing hymns for how they sound, but more than that, or inseparable from that, I love the feeling that comes along with them. I love to look at the publishing date in small print at the corner of the page and imagine people singing the same songs a hundred years ago, or a hundred and fifty years ago, or two hundred years ago. It is the easiest way for me to envision the cloud of witnesses Hebrews talks about -- to think that there is something so constant that people might sing the same songs generation after generation in praise of it, and here I am joining in...participating in the same faith, holding on to the same rituals. 

I was at a funeral this week for a man I barely knew. Despite attending the same church for something like 18 years, we were almost strangers, which isn't so surprising given that we were separated by 50 years and twin reserved personalities. And yet somehow I felt so much kinship towards him. Because: he was quiet, and bright-eyed, and kind to me? Because he loved music. Because he reminded me of a character from Jayber Crow, maybe, I don't know. 

In any case, I was at his funeral, and I've been in a thinky mood all week. I've been thinking about something Judy Mullet said in my freshman Honors class six years ago: when someone dies, she said, we lose a connection with them, but through that loss we also lose a distinct way of connecting with God, and this is it's own thing to mourn. I've been thinking about art, and participation in the creation of beauty; about how each time people gather to worship, that moment is unique and cannot be relived again. I've been thinking about the fact that it's in their use that hymnals become beautiful. 

I've been thinking about community and mortality and regrets. I've been thinking about the hymn sing I went to back in May; how I saw the two of them there, how I don't know what possessed me to run over and say hello, how glad I am that I did. I've been thinking about how I know that no matter how long I live, that is one perfect moment that I never will regret.

-

summer pictures, part 3