carpe poem #3

Consciousness and conscience.
I have been reading lately Foster's book on Prayer, and I find that the prayers I tend to avoid are those that look inward. I like every other room in the house, except my closet space. Why is that? And when I do peer inward, sometimes it is so messy that all I want to do is throw everything into an incinerator. Other times it is easy to justify my room. But what if God speaks through you, to you? What if the most significant patterns of God's love are woven into the fabric of your own life? God wastes nothing.

----

Couch

I sank in cushions

shushed in light incandescent

from three lamps on the periphery

of this couched enclosure. 

I did not feel lazy or drowned

in drowse that mid-afternoon showers

incant when winter descends

hushing the suburbs

dousing the hubbub.

There was, instead, a liveliness,

an ecstatic cling of peace

cradling me in its sling.

While I was fitted hobbit-snug

with book and coffee mug

I was unfocused of them

as though someone had sown

a question and my response

had just begun to grow.

And how could I answer

anything without being so reposed

in living room, nooked in felt

sling, furling in understanding,

slung for schemes sprung

stones flung and verses sung 

versus these toweringly uncertain

titans and curses?

How could I begin but being

idle before I dole and mete 

out un-mittened, smitten

demolition

of these gods and idols?

carpe poem #2

Let poems be what they are, speak into context-less contexts, blank pages of life. I think poems are context-creating things, putting frames on life, which is why I think so many poems are about nature, because nature frames us these days. How many of our forests and groves and copses now border our neighborhoods and city limits? Bodies of water? Okay, poetic rambling ends here. 

Here is another poem. 


----


Stronghold

I have set its hedges down

where you would trip,

dug the moat where you would 

drown and muddle in diplomacy,

and if you were far

off, I have poised the trebuchets on your

position, reaching into old tensions, 

so that if you advanced,

weakened with that volley, I could signal

the indefensible archers emoting from intelligent

parapets bearing impossible standards, 

and if you rammed close

so that I could see my name on your lips,

my bowels would be moved, cauldrons

of scoria slagging over so consuming that 

even my defenses begin to char and change

out of desperation, knowing the condition

that this castle's keep will not, cannot, keep

and what I cannot keep, for some reason,

without end, without reason, I will die to defend. 

Daily Poems

For the last few weeks, I've been trying to do what I did in college for a quarter: write a poem a day. Of course, maybe only one of out five poems are actually worth reading. But they all have been worth writing. So, I think I may post my favorite poem of the week, once a week. Here goes.

Carpe poem.


----

Recital

At night, if I can hear past 

the static of traffic, the vehicular whooshes, 

I can perceive the leaves warming up wood-

wind wayward warbles, susurrus fast,

now slow and low beneath the tender twine tunings

of maple, apple, pine. 

They are rehearsing for the morning concert,

performing ordinances set before time, when time

signatures held their authorial sway and way, 

way before it was called night and day. 

There was a Voice in the seasons

that sung into motion stallion clouds, clung

dew to trifoliate clover, flung the constellation

into sky-sea, rippling melodies from rain-drops

that have fallen on my thinning hair, clods of hair

pointing out my anointing.

In these songs sung without tongue,

but hummed in heart, what part 

will I harmonize with, with what end

shall I start as though I had never started,

never ended, never parted?

So at night, as I distinguish these sounds, 

distilling them into coherence, hearing

the mild breathing and stirring of the woman

you have given me, herself warming up for her

tomorrow, the silence before the silences, 

perhaps this night, my heart has had its last rehearsal. 

buffet or potluck

I love potlucks. It's kind of like meeting your neighbors. You're never sure of what you're going to get, but there is always some serving of mac salad or mashed potatoes. And, the containers! From tupperware to foil, to someone's grandma's favorite casserole dish inherited from her uncle. It is a smorgasbord.

Don't get me wrong, though. I also love buffets, although I tend to feel obliged to overeat at them. Everything in limitless supply before you, and there is usually something for everyone. These days, it isn't uncommon to see a buffet that has everything from sushi to sliced roast beef.

But I wasn't trying to talk about food or the social gathering around it. I mean to talk about the church and our membership within it.

I would like to think that what draws a lot of people to a church is what draws a lot of people to buffets. Great selection. Fantastic presentation. Seemingly endless supply of resources. Accessibility. A little something for everyone. It could even be multicultural.

But the primary difference between a potluck and a buffet is not necessarily the food or the selection, but it is what you bring to the table.

I understand my church to be more like a potluck. Actually, every church is a potluck. This is to say that the health, growth, vision, and character of a church community isn't something that is catered to them, but rather is what they--the individuals--bring to the table. How I prepare my own walk and devotion to Jesus is what I will be, in a sense, bringing with me to the congregational feast.

I freely admit that I have been a free-loader, coming to churches in times recent and times past where I just want to marinate in the steam that arises from the spiritual buffet trays. I've experienced retreats where some gifted preacher and praise team has prepared for me a sumptuous dish of spiritually spiced meats. And I've gobbled it all up.

But buffets aren't reproducible. And church then becomes a few head waiters cleaning up after the masses. So is it a wonder that when many of us expect a buffet--to fill up on what we ourselves failed to prepare--come to the communion table and find the spread meager and wanting? Our own personal devotion, our own practice in His kitchen, tasting and seeing that He is good--this is what is missing. We forgot that it was a potluck, and so everyone guiltily crowds around the mac salad and chips, and we go home still hungry.

What are you bringing to the table?

good in tensions

"As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman,
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows,
Useless each without the other!"
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from The Song of Hiawatha, part 10

"In the same way, faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead." - James 2:17


I was never in Boy Scouts, so I don't know much about bows and arrows. But I do know that those flimsy, plastic ones or the Nerf version that I used to play with are nothing compared to a real, English longbow. Reading about English longbows, made from a piece of yew wood about 6ft long, just made me feel like a little Camelot kid, brought me back to my wistful, medieval imagination. A longbow could fire an arrow over 200 yds easy. Range and power, which brought the Britons to victory.

photo credit: http://www.solarnavigator.net/sport/archery.htm

Power, because there is tension.

Perhaps why I find my faith to have little bearing on the weight of my real life is because I misunderstand tension. When I hear about faith being accompanied by action, I think of

believe the right things + do the right things = good life.

And I think of the good life as the easy, relaxed kind of life. Things ought to go my way when I get my theology right and I practice social justice, right?

But what if faith and action are not merely two parts of an equation, but are tensed together like the cord and the bow? What I mean is, sometimes our faith can stretch us only when we act, and sometimes our actions can only stretch us when we have faith. Which means sometimes our faith can be difficult. Our actions may prove to be costly.

Right before James 2:17, the scripture gives a real life example of faith without action: "go, I wish you well" without doing anything to provide for that to be a reality. It's a classic example of good intentions. But the other end, of merely doing good without faith, appears to be a contradiction. How do you "do good" without believing what that "good" is?

I don't have clear answers. But I think that being strictly "answers only" or a "questions only" seems to me a powerless kind of life, a piece of wood rotting on the ground. String tangled in a mess. But maybe there is something in seeing the cross as nailed together by mercy and judgment, earth as a battleground between heaven and hell. I myself, a mix of sinner and saint. Simul justus et peccator.

If Romans 7 is right, then a Christian's spiritual life is always in tensions. It's not about resolving that tension (cutting the string, breaking the bow), but living in that tension well. To grieve well when I sin, to rejoice well when I triumph in Christ.

Lord, let me not be numb.

I want to have more than good intentions. I want to be good in tensions.

running on E

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled." (Jesus)


You and I know the terrifying glare of the indicator light.

(photo credit: http://spiralwayjsj.blogspot.com/2012/01/running-on-empty.html)

I drive a Prius, and when the fuel gauge is on E, the last indicator bar blinks repeatedly. The fact that I can still get 50 miles on my last gallon is inconsequential. Its insistent blinking, while on the periphery of my vision, annoys me to the point of desperation. I am afraid that when I go up a hill, the little fuel I have left won't make it into the fuel injector and my car will cough and sputter to a stop.

But when I fill up the tank, comfort and ease flood into my life. Thus, I can drive without worry for at least the rest of the week. It's kind of like mood swings. Or the spiritual life. You and I both want it to be full so that we can grow with ease. But is that really how it is supposed to be?

Which makes me wonder: how is it that spiritual "fuel" gets spent? And how do I "refuel"? Am I ever certain of how much spiritual power there is in me? My thinking about this has changed recently, thanks to the Beatitudes.

Spiritual fuel, I think, is that zeal that gets spent when I am determined to pray, to read my Bible, to help others. I used to think that it was a kind of eagerness that stirred within me. And when I didn't sense that drive, maybe I thought I needed a revival, a refilling. So, I would go to retreats, or pick up a new devotional book, or visit any other spiritual pit stop in my attempt to refuel. My spiritual life has been this constant battle against emptiness.

But maybe Jesus has been telling me something different, something paradoxical, which most likely means that it is true.

All this time I have been talking and thinking about my spiritual life as if it something I need to maintain (like the fuel level in my car). It's a constant, uphill struggle. But what Jesus says here is that those who declare a spiritual bankruptcy, those who are completely spent on their own righteousness--they will be filled with riches of Christ's righteousness.

I think Lewis is right when he wrote in his Letters to Malcolm: "I have a notion that what seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling and contend with the greatest disinclination. For these, perhaps, being nearly all will, come from a deeper level than feeling."

Maybe God is weaning me away from these fossil fuels to alternative (altar-native?) forms of energy. (Sorry. I'll stop.) Or maybe it is a weaning away from the concept of fuel and drive and progression in general. Could God be pleased especially when I still choose to worship and praise and pray when I am running on empty? Could this be the real engine of spiritual living?

The indicator light tells me I need something. And if it is on all the time, I think that's a good thing for me: to know that I constantly need God. Needing Him, instead of using Him.

Mourning has broken

"Anger is the besetting temptation of those who have begun to see things clearly." (Evagrius)

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." (Jesus)


Of course, I am not angry. I am just an Asian American Christian male, who has been told by my culture and sub-cultures that I cannot be angry, that I cannot even be sad, and that I have to keep it together. Angry just doesn't cover it. I am repressed, lonely, and seething. I am wretched. Lord have mercy.

I am discovering that I haven't learned to mourn, that I haven't learned to cry. I have never learned to accept myself, or to believe in myself. These things I have had to learn only pretty recently, and I found that I am poor student. A poor student in the deep, personal things.

I don't want to rant or to bleed sentimentality. But I know that if I tell the truth, then I somehow find myself in the chorus of voices that whisper the truth. I know that humility only comes through honesty, or rather that there is no difference between honesty and humility. Christians talk about humility, and I want to talk humble. I want to tell you who I am, but I cannot do that fully. At least not yet.

I did a google image search on "mourning," and I kept finding pictures of these butterflies called "Mourning Cloaks."

Their name reminded me of something. They reminded me of those veils women wear when in mourning, which had always struck me as slightly ironic. I had thought it was an effort to "hide" one's mourning, which, however, would only draw more attention to themselves. But that is a perspective of someone outside the veil. Perhaps the veil is not for the world, but for the mourner. What I am saying is, seeing through a veil from the view of the mourner is seeing, paradoxically, clearly. Partially blind and through a grim, fragmentary mesh, the world seems dim and broken. Incomplete. And that is largely the truth.

And maybe this is a stretch here, but if brokenness is on the way to wholeness, and honesty on the way to brokenness, then this veiled picture of the world, of society, of myself is exactly the semi-opaque chrysalis into which I must go before transformation will happen.

Okay. My sentimentality just dipped into poetics. I can't help it. I am a jar. And mourning has broken.

On a theme developed by Jeong-Mung Ju (1337-1392)

(From his poem on death)

This body dies, a hundred deaths a day, dies,

slumbering in surrender, rising to its demise

to be true to You, Lord, or it lies.

The original poem:

이몸이 죽고 죽어 일백 번 고쳐 죽어

백골이 진토되어 넋이라도 있고 없고

임 향한 일편 단심이야 가실 줄이 있으랴.

Should this body die and die again a hundred times over,

White bones turning to dust, with or without trace of soul,

My steadfast heart toward Lord, could it ever fade away?

(credit: Wikipedia pages)

"And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out." - Mk. 9:47

When I give up something that I know causes me to sin, it must be a loss. It wouldn't be a sacrifice if it wasn't close to me. But to sacrifice a small thing--even a big thing--for an eternal good: is this a sacrifice or is this a key? Jesus hates my sin because He loves me, the sinner. I need a different definition of wholeness, if indeed it is better to enter life blind, maimed, crippled, poor, than to be whole and destroyed.

"I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!" - Mk. 9:24

The gospel doesn't get as personal to me by my beliefs as by my unbeliefs.

The statement, "Jesus saved me," really only makes sense when you know from what you need to be saved. It's impossible to grow deep roots when the you are potted in the strictures of your unbelief, when instead you are meant to be flourishing by streams of water. Resurrection makes sense only to the dead.