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.
Eternal sweetness
On its outward flight,
the honeybee
zigzags its dogged way
amidst the garden
scents and colors,
collecting in its honey pouch
here and there the
makings of sweetness.
But on returning home to
the hive
there is no waywardness,
no lingering in its labor.
Laden, ponderously caked,
full of pollen it makes a
beeline
for the dripping
honeycomb
and the Queen’s golden
haven.
Would that I be, Lord, on
my way home,
forsaking the world’s
bright wavering garden,
having foraged all I need
of it to enter in
and turn the inner realms
into eternal sweetness.
O child of God, how
fanciful you are
in depicting your
inevitable return to Reality.
