Way Way Awesome

We saw Ai Weiwei’s Lego installation
On Alcatraz.

My brother-in-law said,
“This is way way awesome!”

And we all laughed,
Wondering how many times a day
The Alcatraz workers hear that joke.

So we tested it on the closest one,
And she laughed and said
That no one had said that:

“Tell it to all the other workers you see!”

And so we did,
Spreading joy and laughter wherever we went.

It’s Family Fun Week!

Unexpected

A friend was flying.
The man in the next seat reclined,
Fell asleep.

When it was time to land,
The flight attendant put hand on shoulder.
That man would never wake.

I think of the logistics involved.
If a man died sitting next to you,
So quietly you didn’t notice his passing,

Do you simply gather your belongings
And go to your connecting flight?
What else could you do?

This world is so entirely unexpected.

All the Eggs in One Basket

My friend was hurting.
I brought him some food.

“Don’t put everything you have into me.
Is that the best use of your resources?”

At the time, that may have been everything.
But if “pointing out progress motivates forward movement,”

Something about that act of service triggered
A cascade of community that I did not expect.

One requested a mentor: a mentor I became.
One requested prayer: a pray-er I became.

One called me nurturing: nurturing I became.
One called me hospitable: hospitable I became.

Was this always there, waiting to be released?
Don’t ever stop someone from an act of love.

Ambitious

His little sister asked,
“You’re going to watch cows?”

He replied, straight-faced,
“Yes. I will feed them and water them
And walk them

And even butcher them!”

Astute Listening

Reading in Numbers, Aaron and Miriam
Protest Moses’ standing:
Since they prophesy, too,
Why should Moses get
Preeminence?

God, unimpressed, sends leprosy
On Miriam
For seven days.

Astute listener Abraham asked my question:
Why just Miriam?

I wondered if it was because she was the instigator.
We know that Aaron was rather passive
About that whole golden calf.
Maybe he is typecast as a follower in rebellion.

Or maybe, said Abraham,
It was because he was the high priest.

Considering that a millennium later,
The high priest who condemned Jesus
Still prophesied truly;

That Paul refused to speak evil of the high priest
Who was ordering physical violence;

I am impressed with the depth of my son’s conjecture.

Surely if God used men in the employ of Rome,
Who had no desire for righteousness,
He might also protect his inaugural High Priest
Simply out of respect for the office he established.

This explanation might make me uncomfortable,
But it makes sense.

Be Gentle

I’ve been thinking about encouragement,
How much even the most confident of us
Need it.

I know when I’ve messed up.
When I could have done more.
When things work out wrong
Because of human error or malchance.

If you rub the failure in my face,
It is hard to feel inspired to do better.
Maybe I will just give up.

Could I ask for a conversion to
Gentleness?

The City

I spent a year reading about inner city ministry.
Racism. Poverty. Burnout.

I spent months volunteering in the inner city.
The astonishment of being given a paperback book.
Complete financial illiteracy: “I bet you make $200 a month!”
Toothless meth mom. A child dropping out of seventh grade.
A young teen slept with fourteen boys in a weekend.
Eighty percent of the girls molested by age five.
Broken, broken, broken.

So the phrase, “It began in a garden and ends in a city”
Has sounded horrible to me, like the Bible works backwards.
Begin in a paradise, tended carefully, filled with fruit,

And end in a strip mall with graffiti, an enormous parking lot,
And some big box stores across the street, accessed only via
Stop lights, always red. This did not appeal to me.

I could adjust the vision some: the city has streets of gold.
(But what plants were paved over to get these streets?)
Presumably there will be no sirens or rusty rebar,
No burnt-out neon signs and no fast food.

But today I heard something that upended my understanding.

Start with a garden. The Creator gives the creation
The gift of co-creation. Trees produce more trees.
The world created one day will grow and develop the next day.
There is movement and transformation.

And we end with a city, which can be defined as:

A lot of organized gardens.

Is that not beautiful? Rather than one large, unsubdued garden,
We have beauty, order, responsibility, companionship,
All things in right relationship.

If the city now is fully broken because of the mass of broken people,
Think how glorious it will be, with the shalom of God
On us all.