God’s First Gift

A tree reached out to me yesterday.
A leaf, fresh from birth motioned
to me to take a look and I
saw thin veins echoing my own.

On this Mother’s Day she
reminds me that many
are the relatives
giving birth.

It is said that it takes a
village to raise a child;
I think that it takes
a forest, or ocean,
or mountain, or leaf
to raise a soul.

There are many ways to
be born, to live, to die but
there is only one way to
know yourself and that is
by paying obeisance to
the earth, our first Mother,
God’s first gift.

I Will Draw All to Myself

Yesterday I was in my office
upstairs when I was
caught unawares by
soap bubbles, rainbow themed,
floating by my window on the
wind. Our neighbour’s grandchildren
sported after these globes with
sticks, gleefully striking them
down with due diligence.

I hopped upon one for
a time and the Spirit carried
me up on it to get a bird’s eye view
of trees stretching out buds
of squirrels in serious play
of robins staking their claim.

From above I could see all of this
and more – so much more in these
two children reminding me that the
sermon I was labouring over was
playing out in the yard below.

Live Little

How do candles work such magic?
A little wax, a sprig of wick, and
with a flame they right
a room.

Hatred ebbs,
worries wane,
uncertainties erode,
and hope obtains
for a time.

It is amazing what a little
light does in its being little.
Brightness blinds and search
lights cast hard shadows.
But a gentle lumination hallows a room and
creates a warm space that slips inside.
The softness suggests Spirit,
birthing hope,
suckling faith,
begetting love
from a spirited candle,
teaching us to live little.

On the Breath of God

I recall one summer in my youth,
working at an institutional laundry,
where Alfred insisted in his Teutonic
accent, on being always busy.
The way to escape the drudgery
of each day – replete with
soiled uniforms and sheets
rendered with tears and tears –
was to be frantic.
Even coffee breaks were
frenzied with cribbage games.

Time remains an anomaly.

Some days race away, now into a day of delight
that becomes an eternal now and then
into the belly of a beast burdened with
too much to do and never enough time, racing away.

In days crammed with detritus we evade
pauses – the quiet that reveals both
the paucity of our scrambling souls and
the possibility of a humility
born in the realization
that we are a drop in the ocean,
we are dust in the wind,
a word on the breath of God.

Shards of Grace

Last weekend it snowed
shards of grace as if
the heavens shattered and
sprinkled powder of delight
wherever the eye could
see. Love lay down
feather-like in snow
drift and bank
of divine distraction.

This weekend it all
melted and left me in
the lurch – March mud
in January, and I am reminded
that beauty, like time, like weather
like life and death and the aging between
them is really not at my bidding,

But still, there is a wonder in mist,
in fog, and today I spot a startling
mass of moss on tree, my seeing softened
by light refracted in divers directions.

My wife tells me it has always been there
and I realized that just now I am there too.

Winter’s Canvas

January beauty is
sovereign – snow
crystals command
my attention. Flakes,
each tiny and a treasure,
join together in sculptured art
even while they close roads
and shut us in.

But isn’t that what
beauty does? It arrests
us and divests us of
distractions by prying us
free from inane necessities.

Beauty slips through
the pores of my skin
and once inside decides
for me, choosing me to be
the site of resurrection.

My flesh shivers and quivers
as I see You from the inside out
now in the soft contours of winter’s canvas,
now in a melting flake flooding
my shivering porous flesh.

Love Is Born Again

This eve is utterly unique
yet ordinary in time
as the holy invades
the cosmos, infusing the divine in
napping trees,
dormant grass, and
evergreens never letting
up on watching the crib
and lauding the One who
comes once and for all,
again.

The days are lengthening,
it seems, although I cannot yet
feel a surplus of sun in my
bones. But that doesn’t mean
hope is destitute – no, I know
that I will but blink and spring
will be upon us.

And so tonight I breathe in and out a hope –
holy in local dialects of grace and
whole in the wind’s good word that
love is born again, now and for always.

Advent crosses my path

Advent settles my soul
when I decide I won’t deride
those with pre-emptive Christmas cheer.

Advent stops my worrying
by prompting my recollection
that life is both a birth
and death and neither are
at my bidding.

Advent piques my soul and
holds before my eyes
pictures of pregnant teens, and
homeless families, and grace
between cracks.

Advent hold hope for me even
when torrential rivers of ruin
raze my days and my day,
our future and our futures,

Advent crosses my path and
the wrath of enmity evaporates,
the power of self-righteous rage dissolves, and
the utter absurdity of advent love
vests me with quiet and
invests me in peace.

Breath’s To-and-fro

The sky spoke to me today
with Talmudic wisdom
reminding me that
we are dust and
we are lightning
the sky
spoke to me of
time and eternity and
of their meeting at the
horizon that holds my
attention, my
heart.

I sometimes rue my failure
to hear, see, taste, smell, feel
creation’s word to me but then
I breathe deeply and divine You
in my lungs, my blood, my bones, in
my life vivified and I descry in the sky
a word from the world that
includes me, exudes me – like
breath’s to-and-fro.

Not Quite a Cardinal

It’s not quite a cardinal, but
still this leaf sings. It cannot
cock its head so I do and
hear its hymn sideways.

She lauds the coming cold.
She portends a hard frost
and snow so soft it lulls you
into steep sleep that
awaits a choir of
hunger pangs to sing
you awake.

This leaf-come-cardinal
sneaks into my heart and
starts me thinking about how
fall has blessed me.
She sings of a
harvest of faith, of the
hallowing of love, of
hope in the shape of
votive candles.

This cardinal sings me.