Song link -- Trust in Love (click on title)

Trust in Love                                                                  capo 2

F                             Bb      C      F                Bb      F        C    

Now that Love has found you, thrown His arms around you

Bb        C   F                   Bb                     F     C               F      C

trust in Love to pull you through     wherever life might lead

 F                             Bb      C      F                Bb      F        C   

now that Love has claimed you, only one thing remains to do

Bb        C   F                   Bb                      F             C                       F    

trust in Love to pull you through   and to give you everything you need

                   Bb                                F

Chorus 1 --            Remember those years you were lost

                    Bb                            F                      C

moving through the world alone at such a cost

                                 Dm                                     Bb

and the longing that brought you down

                    Dm                                    C            

believing that love could never be found

                                   Bb                                          C

then, you turned around      you turned around

 F                             Bb      C      F          Bb                       F        C   

Now that Love has saved you, for your fear and doubt forgave you

Now that Love has shown you   the worth of every pain you’ve gone through

                    Bb                                F

Chorus 2 -- Remember those years you did your best

                    Bb                       F                      C    

to cope with the heartache and loneliness

                                 Dm             Bb                   

and the burden of fear and shame

                    Dm                                           C     

wondering where to turn and who to blame

                                             Bb                                          C

then, someone called your name,   someone called your name

F                             Bb      C      F                Bb      F        C    

Now that Love has found you, thrown His arms around you

Bb        C   F                   Bb                     F            C                      F      C

trust in Love to pull you through and to give you everything you need.

Trust in Love

Headed south

Headed south                                                                                 

It’s like standing on the north pole –

every which way I turn, I’m headed south.

Saying Your name is like stacking sandbags

along the river’s edge before the expected crest

or, wading afterwards through cornfield rows

flooded chest-deep.  It’s like

the peal of a bell in a piney woods church

no one attends anymore.

Headed south and I can get any color

I want as long as it’s black.

The river is motionless,

the old man says,

but, the bridge doth flow. 

That makes for a rough crossing.

Once I leave the bamboo cage, I am forever

outside of it, headed south; down the hill,

across the tracks, into the open country

of a vast, high, flooded plain.

O child of God, there’s only one freedom

and you are countless lifetimes away from its gate.

                          

The truth of myself

The truth of myself

I looked into Your eyes and knew
I would follow an uncommon course --
the truth of myself belongs to You.

Your eyes gathered my soul into view,
my soul transformed perforce,
I looked into Your eyes and knew

the truing of a course -- evermore true;
my way surrendered without remorse --
the truth of myself belongs to You.

I drank 'til my bones became imbued
with wine only my Beloved pours --
I looked into Your eyes and knew,

though I fail Your love its promised due,
tramping a thousand foreign shores,
the truth of myself belongs to You.

And still this course my soul pursues --
the warm pink coat, the pure white horse.
I looked into Your eyes and knew --
the truth of myself belongs to You.

                        (Unpublished)

Things I do not know

Things I do not know

So this is how it is and how it should be.

Other possibilities, potentialities do not exist.

This yearning, this bewilderment –

perfect for me.  This suffering, this fear –

infinitely, intricately designed

and fashioned for me alone.

This life I’ve fallen into, this realm I'm

kicking around in – the perfect kiln for my pottery. 

There’s no achieving heaven.

Renunciation is not about purification.

No one’s handing out gold stars.

Renunciation is about loosening the grip. 

Worthiness is won through love 
(more and more and still yet more), not effort.

O Lord!  Everyone is shouting Your name

and no one knows Who You are!

It’s the not-knowing that entices us.

We’re sated with the known world.

We’re drawn to the interstices, the rends,

the darkness between stars.  Who knows? 

Maybe I’ve got it wrong.  All my poems

are written about the things I do not know.

O child of God, stop squirming! 

Detach; allow; concede; accept; surrender.

  

Blue ribbons

Blue ribbons                                                                                    

To lose one’s life (You say) is to die by inches.

And here I am having sprung another leak,

soaking red the bed sheet torn into strips,

lured again by the barker’s pitch

and the bawdy wink, swept away

by the ignorant tides, the grinder’s wheel

and the smell of sweat.  She’ll guess

my weight and age, the painted lady offers. 

Why, I’m a featherweight

and as old as the stars; 

circling the tawdry midway, fooled again

by the bright lights, the weighted targets,

the crooked scales; by the rhinestones,

the smoke, the make-up and mirrors.

The admission is free into this carnie world

erected in the middle of a cow pasture

where two state highways cross

and disappear in opposite directions.

But, you have to pay to get out

and I can’t come up with the fee

having gambled away all my money

on teddy bears and gold fish and shiny blue ribbons.

O child of God, to lose one’s life is to die by inches

on the immeasurable path back to your original abode.

                             

Your brightly lit windows

Your brightly lit windows                                                                

I became a seeker not knowing

the incongruity of the search;

it was myself I had lost.  An inquisitor,

a thousand questions lay under my tongue.  

You say, Love ask no questions,

but my love is ever trembling on the lips,

rapping on the windows.  

My love is desperate to break into the house

where Your love resides. 

My love asks for a deeper communion,

an unencumbered embrace, for the complete

torpedoing of my facile buoyancy.

My love asks for dissolution and dispersal –

not into debris, but into wholeness and holiness,

into whatever it is I have glimpsed

through Your brightly lit windows.

O child of God, ask for love that seals

the lips and turns the heart to ashes.

Those human years

Those human years                                                                        

You became the Word and observed silence,

vowing the whole of Your advent

and adventure Your silence to break but,

all those human years, You held Your tongue.

Perhaps, Your silence was broken

when the Word was broken

and Your bones, like hatchets,

were buried under a stone on a hilltop

made sacred by Your sandal prints,

silence and sweat, or, as Eruch suggested –

You broke Your silence, even as You kept it

which would explain the multitudes

who turned up at Your door,

who answered and, still yet, answer

Your call – Come all unto Me.

You became the Word and that was the answer

and the breaking of Your silence,

at the same moment, the reply

to God’s original inquiry and to the heart’s

continuous suffering, a reciprocal answer

assuring us we are not alone

in our silence and in our solitude.

O child of God, listen for God’s answer and,

failing to hear it, His thundering, silent Affirmation.