Turning Tables

 
In this season of bright sadness
a voice in the dark says:

"Go. There is nothing left

for you here," all is madness

We go. In silence we slide

out into the night,

round moon slicing the sky

above, its sadness bright

The table is turned,

the wine swallowed burned

its way down inside

now part of us, blood of Christ

Christ, bloody and torn

turns universe-tables,

Son of Man crowned with thorns

endures epithets, labels of scorn

Dark sun shades that day

we remember as this weekend

crawls on toward the ember

of new fire, night turning grey

Ashes of sadness form a nest

for Heaven's Fire to rest

before He leaps upward

in life—excelling mythic-bird

There is nothing left

here in the tomb—death bereft

of corpse and terrible sting,

Life holds in hand the final victory

The Fullest Extent of Love 

exited the grave on His own two feet,

turning the sadness of sorrow sweet. . .

This you taught me beyond the grave...

Dear Aaron,

The wind is sweeping through the pines tonight,
rattling my windows, whispering 'round the trees
The sky is weeping rain tonight,
Pouring out its pain upon the needles and the leaves

Always, always these are the nights I want to write
a letter to you, but where would I send it to?
Instead, I find your old letters,
weeping o'er their leaves, seeing your words anew

Tonight you reminded me that Despair makes a
show of his strength—or of our flaws—
Yet all the while he's trembling,
Fearing his bluff is up, but if we pause

And listen to his terms, with bowed heads
and hopeless hearts, saying
"These we will take!"
He confidently assumes we are paying

Paying the price of defeat, when really
we are rallying to fight his prideful will
to the bitter end,
Making the end less bitter on that battle hill

The Dark Lord wages war, precarious,
He doesn't have the upper hand,
But he uses our doubt
against us; yet wavering, we stand

Willing to sacrifice ourselves;
Even when hope has died in our hearts,
We will go down
Fighting against Despair and his darts

And unbelievably the eagles come,
Hope beyond hope—unlooked for—
Holds out a wing
To cover and to carry us once more

But when everything sad doesn't come untrue
under the sunless sky and the lidless eye,
Still we press on
Toward journey's end, by our living Despair dies

This you taught me beyond the grave,
Across the years you reached out to me
In red ink written
Ages ago, when we were younger and free

Free in ways we didn't know and often shunned,
You were wise, I was naive as could be—
Behold, time reveals truth
If only we have the eyes to look and to see

Ashes

The sky is the colour of ashes—

       White and grey;

The eaves drip icicle tears

       falling away

My life is filled with ashes,

       my mood is fey;

Death upon death finds my heart

       falling away

Across my forehead a cross

      —charcoal dust—

Reminds me that my frame

       will soon rust

Over the shadow of death

       a Cross

Reminds me that life

       can flame from loss

The kernel of wheat

       must die,

Roots of the tree lie buried far

       from the sky

Are these ashen flakes

       the soil

Not of death alone, but of

       figs and oil?

Are these ashes the fertile

       land, unseen,

Until I have God's eyes

       to see the green?

Is this ashy, narrow place

       a birth canal?

Is this dark smothering earth

       life somehow?

Does the thriving tree begin

       as a cross,

Planted in ashes, in death,

       in loss?

From that hollow hole

       comes Tov—

Roots mingled with ashes, whose

       fruit is love

From the hollow grave

       rises Love—

Preparing Earth, through us, for

       the Kingdom above.


______

Photo by Tobias Stonjeck on Unsplash

Unbreak My Heart New

Normal life and my normal self died a few years ago. The problem is, I keep expecting my normal self to resurrect—to look out at me from the mirror again, to take up residency in my heart and home. I keep expecting to be who I was. . .and I keep getting surprised when I'm not that person anymore. The carefree, wide-eyed, faithful-to-have-quiet-time, thoughtful person I used to be sustained wounds so deep that she died. That person is buried under a pile of ashes. Cancer. Death. Divorce. Things that weren't supposed to touch my family torched us. Many of my own hopes and dreams have burnt out, adding their ash to the grave of the person I used to be.

i am desperate, 

if nothing else, 

in a holding pattern 

to find myself.

i talk in circles, 

i talk in circles, 

i watch for signals, 

for a clue.

how to feel different. 

how to feel new. 

How do I get out of this dichotomy? I so often behave in a way that I despise. I know the right thing to do, yet shrink from doing it. I want to go back to who I was or forward to feeling—to being—new. . . anything but this horrible stuck feeling, this stagnant 'living' I've been attempting. The holding pattern never becomes a flight plan and I'm getting desperate. Desperation can push us over the edge, can push us to depression, can push us into a rut, can push us into despising who we've become. In my desperation I've made rash decisions—hoping that a change in life-circumstances would change the dull ache, the incessant indifference into incandescent joy. Hoping I could go back to who  was.

[But,] no one can unring this bell, 

unsound this alarm, unbreak my heart new. 

God knows, i am dissonance 

waiting to be swiftly pulled into tune.

The echoes of the Fall reverberate in my heart, my thoughts, my whole life. . .and it can't be unrung. Carefree me has become careworn and careful—careful not to get hurt anymore. The more I try to gather up all the pieces, to hold them and order my own steps, the less disciplined, purposeful, and joy-filled I am. The more I grasp at control, the less of it I have. Life spins at a crazy pace with no stillness. 

I am all dissonance, the wrong sounds at the wrong times. Saying 'no' when I want to say 'yes,' and 'yes' when I should say 'no' has emptied me. I keep running away from the open arms of Jesus, looking for acceptance from just about everyone else. It's never enough from anyone else, though. The more I look for acceptance from others, the less satisfied I am. Their acceptance rings hollow. All I want is for God to pull me into tune, into step with Him. But running my own way, singing my own song, makes it impossible to walk in step with, or be in tune with, God. My life feels like a cacophony in unconnected, chaotic bursts. 

i know the further i go, 

the harder i try, only keeps my eyes closed. 

and somehow i’ve fallen in love 

with this middle ground at the cost of my soul.

C S Lewis once made the observation that “We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road, and in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.” Indeed, I know that the more I run away, the more I 'try harder,' only plunges me further into the darkness of trying to control what only God can. I've fallen in love with mediocrity, inadequacy, and complacency at the cost of my soul. I've chosen indifference so many times that I can no longer feel. . .and I'm terrified of remaining thus.

yet i know, if i stepped aside, 

released the controls, you would open my eyes. 

that somehow, all of this mess 

is just an attempt to know the worth of my life…

I want to reach back in time and unmake the mess my life and my soul have become. The more I try to experience meaning and depth, the less I can feel. My desire for control—so I can be free, so nothing else can hurt me—has spilled acid-like onto other people, burning them, hurting them, haunting me. I can't feel pain and empathy to much depth anymore—I've burnt myself out. I'm left with hands full of ashes. The ashes of relationships, the ashes of my emotions—a grey film between me and real life. Is this what being a leper feels like? To not feel. . .to not know I'm being burnt when I'm on fire? 

The more I grasp at life, the more I try to hold onto meaning, the more I want to experience feelings, the more they flee and the less I have. Jesus was right, of course: Whoever loses his life for my sake will save it, but whoever insists on keeping his life will lose it... I keep insisting on life as I think I need it or want it. The more I do, the more enslaved I become. Rather than being satisfied, I am insatiable. Rather than being disciplined I am reckless. Rather than really loving God and others, I run from them and shut them out. Rather than being hurt, I wound—and am insensible to the pain I cause. The more I want to feel, the more indifferent I am. Must I remain enslaved to this dichotomy? Where does change come from? Because it certainly does not come from me or from trying harder. 

Change comes like a breath of fresh air into a musty room—it comes from the hovering, order-bringing, healing Holy Spirit Himself. Change – renewal – can only ever come from God. The more I surrender control, the less chaotic life might be. When I submit myself to God, the enemy has to flee from me, and so I am free. This is the the true paradox: that I must submit to be made free, that surrender leads to life. 

I cannot go back to my normal, carefree self. The quivering of the Fall has shaken my life. I have been rent, broken, and buried. But the Resurrection and the Life is at work in me. He has fallen into the ground and died, bearing much fruit—and He calls me, calls us, to do the same. The breath of life will not fill my lungs the same way it did. . .but perhaps the Breath is a person who will expand my breathing, who will give me deeper life—life etched by sorrow and shaped into something more Beautiful than carefree me could have been. 

I'm desperate for new life. To be a string tightened into tune, no longer wanton but free to be in harmony. No. . . Not desperate. I am confident that there is Hope for new life, for retuning and renewal. That Hope is the Anchor for my soul, to keep me from spinning in the circles of a holding pattern. He holds me steady in the storm—and when the time is right, the Anchor is drawn up and the Wind is given full reign to guide the ship. All things have their times and seasons, their proper channels and right order. When the sail submits to the Anchor even in the storm, or to the Wind under the hand of the Captain, it is then the ship is most free.

______

1. Sleeping at Last (Ryan O'Neil), Mercury

2. C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

3. Luke 9:24 TLB (The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation)

Unless I Die...

Unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. 

But, if it dies, it will bear much fruit. 

—Jesus

A darkening sky greets the great eye

blinking open its shutter to morn—

o'erhead, coarse comes a rook's cry,

from here dreams appear bleak and forlorn

Here, in my cramped, close cell I hear

the neighbour dog howl a lament—

the dirt and the dark I fear,

they close in and my choice I repent

Buried, buried unseen and deep,

with the dog next door I mourn—

my eyes, dreamless now, can only weep,

trapped in the earth like a kernel of corn

How long must I suffocate,

freedom denied, in this dank tomb?

Life with death I conflate,

Later to find my prison mould a womb

The waiting feels empty and long,

but the Gardener waters the earth

about me, and o'er me raises His song,

stirring my spirit, breathing rebirth 

The confines feeling so like death

are the only means of shedding the husk

of flesh strangling my dreams, my breath,

clouding my eyes by dusk

White rhizome rises, unfurling green,

fresh air floods my chamber, tight,

in my heart awakens a dream

after my soul's dark night.

What is Your Grave?

About an hour into a conversation with a friend, we began discussing the death of Lazarus and Jesus weeping with Mary. Jesus had purposely waited to come to His friends that He might glorify the Father through the resurrection of Lazarus. Jesus said to Martha, "I myself am the resurrection and the life." He knew he was about to push death right out of a man, to make him what he should be: fully alive. He knew, and still, when Mary ran to meet Him, trailing mourners and friends and tears, His anger was roused and He wept.

Everyone who saw Jesus weep said, "Look how much He loved him"—but Jesus was about to return Lazarus to life, He was not distraught because He would not see Lazarus again. No, He was angry when He saw how upset and sorrowed Mary and the others were. He was angry because death was not part of the world He had formed. Death had come to steal life, joy, and fellowship away. Death was hurting His belovéd friends—and so He wept at the brokenness, at the pain suffered by His friends. And then He stood there and called Lazarus to come forth, to live and breathe as he was made to.

At this point, my friend asked me: "What grave are you standing next to?" The question struck a chord that is still vibrating within me, as some weeks before, another friend had asked something similar, "What in us needs to die so that God can bring His life into us?" Perhaps having thought on that question already prepared me a bit for the second conversation. I confess that it takes God bringing something to my attention quite a few times before I really give it the thought it deserves. 

A few weeks after these conversations, John eleven was my morning reading. I'm not sure I had ever noticed before that Jesus wept out of sorrow for Mary but also out of anger. Death is not the way it is supposed to be—and Jesus knew that, knew that one day death would be swallowed up by life, like you swallow a poppy seed. You are so much bigger than a seed, more complex in your biological life, and greater than it in every way. Life is like that when it swallows death. Death only exists as the privation of life, of something God made good. Any sin or evil is only ever a twisting of something God made good. 

When I thought about Jesus standing next to Lazarus's grave and calling him to come forth, I realised that Jesus was calling Lazarus back to what was good: life. Much like the man in The Great Divorce with the lizard of lust upon his shoulder. Again and again the solid person asked if he could kill the lizard and the man whined, promised his pet sin would be very good now, even begged not to have it killed because that would kill him. But in the end, when he cried out that yes, the solid person could kill the lizard, he did not die. The lizard itself was restored, or reformed into something good, a stallion. It was such a warping of the good thing God had made that it seemed impossible that such a magnificent creature could have ever been shrivelled and degraded into a lizard.

At the grave, Jesus turned death into life. He unbroke the Fall and its consequences. He remade the fragmented, and He continues to do so in our lives. When I think about what needs to die in me I find that the grave must be my own. I need Jesus to be standing next to the grave of me and my selfishness. It is always myself at the root of my sin—whether it is lack of compassion or sacrifice; or if it is self-righteousness and self-consciousness; or even if it is my "good" efforts. I need to die so that I can be raised to new, abundant life in and from Jesus. He made me to be fully alive, fully—unfallen—human. I need the resurrection, the resuscitation, the breath of the Spirit animating me and keeping me alive.

What grave are you standing beside?