Poem: A Sunday Psalm at the Park

What a simple desire
Unclouded, clear
Beneath the blue
Around the green
The weekend warmth
And cooling breeze
The twinkling stream
Between the trees.

Breathing, being
Beholding the ongoing
And eternal, momentary
Song of life on the lawn.

Shadows are bridges
To hidden light
This pen is my path
In the back of this book
My messenger of glory
Questioner in the void
Carrying my request
Unspoken, yet known:

To let go of all but You
To fall, no, to dive
Leaving life behind
To find You and come
To truly be alive.

Written 4-20-08
La Mirada, CA

The Joy of Animals

I found these animal quotes on a website today. They're cute, like something that should be printed on a mug. Something is wrong with life, I think, if you can't smile at these kind of things. Or, maybe I should say, something is right with life when you can. :) Hurrah!

"You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, 'My God, you're right! I never would've thought of that!'" ~ Dave Barry

"I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it." ~ Abraham Lincoln

"Dogs have owners, cats have staff." ~ Anonymous

"Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled." ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Poem: Listen

My soul is a valley of dry bones.
No motion or hope of motion.
No sound but the wind overhead.
I used to think that time would fix me.
Then I thought a list would fix me.
But I'm not stuck in a rut.
I'm dead.

I'm dead and it's filthy in here.
There's a mirror in the other room.
That's where the guy I ought to be stands.
He looks taller than me but he's not.
I think he works out though.
I've wanted to hang out with him more often.
The devil on my shoulder isn't really my best friend.
But it doesn't matter because I'm dead.

I'm dead and talking about God is a waste of time.
So is going to church and all that other crap.
Talking to God is also mostly a waste of time.
Because dead people can't talk.
Dead people can only listen.
So I listen.

Listen to the wind, that's God breathing.
God is breathing because He's alive.
And He probably has a lot to say.
But all I can hear is His breathing.
That's because He's not talking.
He's listening.

Then I realize that I'm listening and breathing.
And breathing and listening together with God.
And I'm not in a rut.
And I'm not in a dark, filthy room.
I'm outside in the bright and breezy blue.
I'm the guy in the mirror who shaves and stands up straight.

Now it's time to go to church and talk about God.
Because I'm not dead.
I'm alive.

Written 4-14-06
Oakdale, CA

Poem: The Lament of a Tree

Uprooted, we grasped
And, gasping, caught not
Breath, nor did our feet
Find hold, but, falling
Blindly, we mined and dug
Desperately into darkness, nearby
Hearts of others, and tried
Any firmament felt within reach.
Forgetting memories
Of roots, we clung
To weary branches
And, breaking, we broke
Those found, while, finding,
We forgot those promised,
Yet left, in the ground. Worlds
Away, we climbed
Foreign limbs, and foolishly
Assumed false newness
Until
Flying, our minds returned
To true embraces, strained but not
Left, only having
Been stretched, holding
In hearts mementos
To give, while keeping
Secret wounds where familiar
Faces, suddenly strange
Had begun to take
Root. Will we
Mistakenly blame oceans
Who were tossed
In the waves, when safely
We could have but floated
Ashore, or made use
Of invisible wings and taken
Claim to strength
Not our own but afforded
Us through other, unseen
Roots, unpulled and untorn?

Lord, have mercy
On this shaken faith. Grant
Restoration to this graft, and bless
This tender branch and its fruit,
Though fallen, undropped. Receive
My return in to full union
With You.

Written 4-9-08
Biola University Library
La Mirada, CA

The Late Mystic

One afternoon in March, I was in the library avoiding my homework. I was trying to think of a pseudonym or pen name to use for books and music I might publish in the future, one that referenced things that are important to me. I eventually settled on 'The Late Mystic'.

I've been at least a little late to nearly everything for as long as I can remember, a pattern that drives me more crazy than I can even say. "Why don't you just leave a little earlier?" Please.

Anyway, the word late is a pun that has at least four meanings:
(1) tardy
(2) recent
(3) dead (as in, "to self and alive in Christ"), and
(4) pregnant.

Yes, that last one warrants a little explanation. It's from the second Austin Powers movie when Frau tells Dr. Evil she is 'late'. More importantly, it's from Plato's Symposium, in which he says all people are pregnant and desire to give birth: some to babies and some to ideas. I like the idea of being pregnant in mind. That's meaning of the 'Late' part.

The 'Mystic' thing is about my desire to know God in terms of actual experience. I don't merely want to 'find the truth' or 'get to the bottom of things', etc. I'm convinced that life is really about knowing God closely, which is a mysterious thing. You don't get to know a friend by listening to people talk about him on Sunday mornings, but by spending time with him and asking questions and going where he goes and doing what he does. Of course, reading a friend's autobiography would probably benefit that friendship, but having read a book about someone's life doesn't, in itself, establish a friendship with that person. Neither does merely memorizing a few Bible verses and then thinking good thoughts.

So, I don't think knowing God is so much about acquiring data, but rather coming into mystical union with the Creator of the universe. It doesn't really involve the scientific method. It involves probing the eternal quality of your inner being. In St. Augustine's Confessions, he comes upon his own spiritual assent to knowledge of God by first descending into the silence of his own mind, and then, having left his physical senses behind, by ascending through the gateway of his own soul into the presence of the One. He said he believed in the theological truths about Jesus being the Son of God and Lord and Savior and so on long before he considered himself a convert to Christianity.

I affirm historical orthodox Christianity. I also believe that it is through mystical experiences of God's presence that people truly come to know God, often without even realizing it. Life is full of God's fragrance; His unmistakable character is everywhere in smiles and plants and human acts of compassion. Prayer itself is a mystical thing. To know God, not as a mind holding information, but as a whole person joined to another, that is great search of my life. And I think it's the deepest goal of every human heart, regardless of what the mind believes.

That's why I like the name "The Late Mystic".

The Sacred Wild

Last fall I read something in a book that I really like by a guy named Steve Chaulke. The book, whose shamelessly sales-oriented title makes my eyes roll, is called Intelligent Church. ("Oh, finally! I've always wanted my church to be intelligent! This must be the answer I've been hoping would come! I'll buy it today!") It actually was an excellent summary of ideals that I've felt forming in my own outlook, and I would recommend it to anyone despite its cheesy name. (If anyone's curious, here's a link to the book on Amazon.com.) Anyway, the part I really liked had to do with these geese that live on farms in England, and I don't remember exactly what the book said, but I've thought about it a lot. Here's my version:

So, there are these geese that live on farms in England. They live in pens with fences and gates, and they're fed and overfed and fattened up for Christmas. Nearby the farms are little forested areas where wild geese live, who eat far less and aren't nearly as clean or as pretty. Every year when autumn falls, the wild geese fly south over the heads of the farm geese in big "V" shapes, and when the farm geese see them in the sky, they suddenly remember Mother Nature's voice and hear her calling them. They start running around their pens, flapping and flapping, but they're far too fat to fly, of course, so after a little while they settle down and return to their troughs for thirds and fourths. Then life goes on as it has for as long as they can remember, that is until a few work-weeks later when the wonderfully fat farm geese are wrung. No, not like on the phone.

The spiritual metaphor is nearly perfect. (Except for the part about being wrung. Wrung is a good word though, which is why I used it. Wrung. Good word.) Modern American 'church-ianity' is like pens of safety all across the countryside, stocked with plenty of spiritual food week after week. The two big differences from the story I just told about the English geese is that (1) pastors don't usually kill lazy church-goers, and (2) the gates of our pens are wide open.

God is in the forest.  God is in the sacred wild.

And there are a lot of geese out there. And I want to know what's out there and what it's like to explore the countryside and what it means to be a goose. I want to face the treacherous forest, come what may. But most of all, I want to fly south when it's time. I don't even really know what I mean by that, but I know there's something missing in the life of a goose who never flies south.

It has seemed to me that a lot of what happens at mainstream evangelical churches is rather shallow and over-simplified. Like there's the emotional music part, and then the intellectual sermon part, and then come back and do it again next week. Outlines and bullet-points and smooth, formulaic prayers. We get together and listen to a guy up front dispense facts about Jesus in three-step, self-help sermons. It's 'Easy Mac' theology. (You know, the easier version of the easier version of the real thing, which was originally only a side dish anyway.)

[A music-nerd side note: the geniuses of several hundred years ago like Bach and Beethoven, from whose work nearly all of our modern music has descended, didn't first study the rules of music theory and then write their masterpieces. Rather, scholars of music theory studied their compositions in order to discover musical principles. Of course, everyone sees further by standing on giants' shoulders (i.e., Bach and Beethoven were certainly aware of what had already been done), but it was the very nature of human experience--the union of physics, biology, and soul--that begat our understandings of musical truth. Funny how 'truth' pharisaically evolves into 'rules' of how music 'ought' to sound or how life 'ought' to be lived. In this way, rules represent a departure from truth when love (of music, of people, etc.), as their motivating source, is replaced by control.]

Here comes the disclaimer: By now it might sound like I'm mostly all about protest. Not so. My point is not that 'they're wrong, and I'm right.' I'm not here to boycott people who are also trying to do the right thing. Having read countless 'emerging church' blogs over the past few years, I'm pretty weary of 'griping'. Yes, I agree with many of their points, but when their tone lacks the compassion of Jesus, they don't end up sounding much like the voice of Jesus to me. So, I've rewritten this post a few times in an attempt to purge it of gripe.

My point is merely that there has got to be more to life and knowing God than what I've seen so far in the version of Christianity I've known. Yes, the truth of God is there at church; it's everywhere because God is everywhere. But merely going to church every weekend and trying not to sin during the week is a disturbingly unhealthy idea of what it means to live in relationship with God in Jesus.

Along those lines, I must say that I feel no resentment towards the guy up front trying to be as cool as possible, just in case there are first-time visitors who might be, you know, on the fence about coming back next week for part-three of this great teaching series. I've been that guy, trying to attract people to Jesus by being slick and offering the gospel truth in five simple steps. I don't know if anyone who takes the Great Commission seriously will ever fully escape being that guy. I mean, come on, right? Responsible Christians wear khaki pants on Sundays and worry about the unsaved. It's what we do. It's the rules.

Or maybe not. Maybe 'not being that guy' is somewhere in the woods on the other side of the mountain. What if 'not being that guy' actually exists somewhere outside of the pen? I mean, I have poked around out past the gate a few times, out where the grass starts to get tall and bugs buzz much more loudly. So, I can't see it, but it's gotta be there. Maybe venturing out into the sacred wild is a step toward letting go of the endless pressure that runs that guy's life.

That is the hope that has begun to grow in me for myself and for Christians and non-Christians alike. Yes, I think 'not being that guy' is definitely over the mountains to the south. It's there, and someday I'll smell the end of August on the breeze and know that the time is right. Maybe it will be on a Tuesday morning that I'll wake up a little earlier than normal and walk over to the gate without really thinking about it, you know, as if that's just what I do every day. I'll flap a bit, gain some momentum, and climb up onto the misty sky. And there, from the vantage point of God's windowsill, I'll see the sunrise and the countryside and the little forests and farms scattered about the land. He'll point out where to go, and I'll coast for about 20 minutes and find that 'not being that guy' happened miles ago.

Yes, I actually believe the future is a bright, happy thing because I believe that God is empowering people to seek Him in the sacred wild. May you ask Him questions about who He is and what He wants, and may you have the strength to follow where He leads you.

Poem: Not Here Without You

We sat in the second largest castle
And enjoyed our lattes far from home.
And what fantastic foam! I explained and expounded
The inside corporate Starbucks scoop
And the physics of milk and other (un)important
Second-hand news I heard from you
To overfilled ears quickly losing interest.

And what gracious listeners they were to wait
While I steamed routine memories of you
In my half-empty soul. That is, until
The moment when the misty force of your
Absence overtook those overloaded pleasantries
And my powers of avoidance were spent
And I submitted to silence and the brimming surprise
Of ready tears to (un)ready eyes.

Truly, Love, I am not here without you.

Written 3-28-08
Cesky Budejovice, Czech Republic

Poem: Snow Unmelted

Snow unmelted in the shadows of trees
Like beds unmade, unslept, are these.
In the still shade of Winter’s late afternoon
It was early morning: a wedding, a moon,
A birth, a death, the newness of age
And ancients, fresh, green country blades.
A youth and young maiden in secret wed;
Their union forbidden, guilt-ridden, they fled.
Ever-delicate Springtime has come into sight;
Left behind is the snow that belonged to the night.

Written 3-22-08
German countryside near Munich

Poem: The Pew

I touched that pew looking for something. Perhaps I sought
An infusion of life that wood can give having once lived
But stone and metal and glass cannot.
The ruddy pew stood worn and smoothed by centuries of use,
Darkened under oil of countless hands. This modest
Furniture, near the back but not the last, called to itself
No attention, made no claim to glory, caught few eyes
Besides brief glances of those grasping to take use
Of its humble function. As silent slaves unnoticed wait
To offer comforts without demand of thanks
Or gratuity from masters’ hands, this pew
Stands that we may sit and weekly give our weight to it.
How unlike the front, the alter, the gold, and rainbow glass
Meant to represent our God of cross and resurrection. Can it be
More clear in any bright or dimly lit place that these
Pews better portray Our Savior’s heart
Than priestly robes and passing plates?

O lucky pew, so naturally free from this burden of self, praise
With me the One who forgives ungrateful hearts
Like this small trifle I possess. Yes, I am jealous, covetous
Of a position far above my own, and far below,
For I long to be you.

Written 3-28-08
Cesky Budejovice, Czech Republic