My worn out boots
My worn out boots are on
His porch
but my back is to His
door.
I’ve knocked randomly,
rang the bell.
Without an answer I’ve
turned again
toward where I came from
down the shady stone walk
through the trim, thick
grass
that leads back to the
busy street.
Everything passing out
there seems
(momentarily) important –
each phase,
crisis, new adventure,
each fleeting attachment.
Everything but God at
every moment
seems alive and
urgent. Everything
but His quiet house set
back from the road;
everything but getting a
foot inside that door.
My worn out boots are on
His welcome mat.
I’m not going anywhere –
a blessing
and a curse – as I turn
again briefly
to ring and knock, shout
and study
how at last I might slip
inside.
O child of God, to enter
His house
turn forever your back
upon the world.
My candled paper
lantern
My faith is a chochin
lantern
shaped from bamboo and
paper
with past impromptu
fortifications
of old shoelaces, paper
clips,
rubber bands and Scotch
tape.
It’s an easy target
for the glib and
resourceful.
I rarely bring it out in
public
to withstand the
buffeting winds
and random crushing
blows.
Not that my faith has
ever been
doused or shattered by
mere words.
It shines for me in such
an incommunicable way –
my candled paper lantern
with its bright, fragile
covering.
It shines for me dangling
afore,
offering steady, silent
comfort and guidance
through this great
harrowing darkness of a world.
O child of God, keep your
little lantern lit
until you become a six
foot blaze yourself.
You never let go
After I wised up, I told
my adult self
I knew not what I was
doing –
nine years old tramping
down the aisle
to give my life to
Jesus. But lately I see
I knew exactly what I was
doing,
my untouched heart
roughly awakened
and refusing then to
settle for anything less.
Very soon I wised up,
took back my life
and went my worldly way.
It was when I began
to reawaken and search
for You
that I knew not what I
was doing
yet reduced by the
painful invalidity of the world
to having nothing else
worth doing.
And learning later that
once You accept
a lamb into the fold You
never let go.
It was You who initiated
my adult search
for the one Who is within
me all along
and for that child, lost
but not abandoned,
being now mercifully
relieved
of all his worldly wisdom.
O child of God, you have
not changed a whit
since that surrender and
neither has your Lord.
Fig leaf
One of the most fortunate (for us)
attributes of God the Omniscient
is He’s never disappointed.
We can’t let God down.
He didn’t build a garden that somehow
through human error went hopelessly awry.
Shame before God is a dishonesty,
a lack of humility, hiding behind a fig leaf,
seeing ourselves as more culpable
than we could ever possibly be.
Humility is the way back to the garden,
recognizing God’s sovereignty,
offering God our worst and best.
Humility is the opposite of shame –
it unravels our pretensions –
presenting ourselves to God (and to everyone)
nakedly honest, precisely who we are
not who we wish we were nor hope to become.
O child of God, how haughty you are
to speak so freely of God or humility.
