Fruit in Season

Psalm 1 promises that the man

Who delights in the law of the LORD

Shall bring forth his fruit in his season.

(Let’s assume this applies to women, too.)

Most trees do not produce fruit year round.

There is dormancy, bud break, and growth

Before harvest. An apple tree that produced

Apples without pause would be unnatural.

So if you are in a season of dormancy,

Or bud break, or growth, there’s nothing wrong.

All the seasons are necessary, but we only

Celebrate the fruit. Maybe today celebrate dormancy.

Table Bling

I don’t know how God does it,

But his blessings reverberate,

Increasing amplitude.

I talked to a friend. She was blessed,

I was blessed. Net increase for both.

She gave me a butter dish.

Net increase for me.

It makes my life more beautiful.

Net increase for all who come.

Dinner Party

As I sat at table with most of the people

I love most in this world,

We celebrated that God is at work in us.

Not that life is easy. We have battle scars

And sorrow.

But we are new creatures, also,

Children of light, with stories of how

God met us, changed us, sustains us.

JFK once quipped at a dinner with luminaries,

This is the finest collection of human knowledge ever gathered,

With the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

I prefer my dinner to either collected brilliance (which we had)

Or isolated genius. Give me food and laughter

And saints to share it with.

Thanks be to God.

Words to Live By

“Why wouldn’t he be thankful? He has everything he wants.”
“But surely you’ve noticed that it hardly ever works that way. Those who have the most are nearly always the least grateful for what they have. Godwulf there, he spends his entire day giving thanks to God and sharing what he has with everyone who passes by. The local farmers and villagers are beginning to come to him for spiritual advice. … He says, ‘Enjoy your food, enjoy your work, give thanks to God.’ Then he usually hands them a pint of ale.” –The Lioness and Her Knight

Phil, reading through King Arthur tales
A few days after I read them to the boys, called to me:
“This is such a great section! Listen!”

I had copied down that same section days earlier,
But some pieces of writing are so true and good,
They can stand to be repeated.

Enjoy your food,
Enjoy your work,
Give thanks to God.

And drink this pint of ale.

I haven’t yet heard that preached
In a sermon. But I wish I could.

Incalculable

I have not experienced deep suffering,
At least, not yet.
I have suspected, though, that in this life,
The suffering goes deeper than the joy,
That an Everest of pain may be temporarily
Obscured by a hut of happiness,
But that depends entirely on proximity and
Perspective. After all, how can the joy of a baby
Ever outweigh the early death of that baby?
How can some years of marriage ever cover
The sorrow when the spouse is no more?
Sorrow seems so unalloyed,
While even the greatest joys may be lessened
By hunger, fatigue, boredom, memory.

And yet, for all that, I have some hope that
Maybe joy is, sometimes at least, the winner.

What We Value

Languages have words for what
The culture values. In English, we have
Precise words to describe cars and electronics,
But rice … it’s just rice. In Indonesia,
Though, they have different words for
Growing rice, bagged rice, rice in the market.

In English, we love pizza and our spouse and
Your new haircut. How imprecise.
In Greek, there are the famous four words
To describe love: the sexual eros,
The friendly philia, the affectionate
Storge, and the unconditional agape.

It is striking to me now that we don’t have a word
To say, “I wish you didn’t have to wake up alone on
Your birthday” or “I wish your mother did not shake
Convulsively and moan anytime she’s upright.”
We use the clumsy “I’m sorry,” what people say when
Accidentally bumping in a hall or spilling a drink.

Without even a vocabulary for empathy, let alone
Grief, how impoverished are we, both the hurting
And the hurting with.

After Freshman Year

I had almost a week delay before my last final,
So I moved home, then went back to
Boulder for 24 hours to take my physics exam and
Celebrate my year with my friend Wendy.

We watched Amadeus and walked
And ate and talked until late in the night. I loved it all.

Years later I heard what happened while
I blissfully rode the bus home.
Wendy, prostrated by my frenetic energy,
Sat immovable in her most comfortable chair.

Phil stopped by and asked, “What happened to you?”
“Amy Holzmann happened. I’m so tired.
Have you met her?
I could see you two together.”