Three Cameos

Awake while you sleep
He breaks death's dates, and his laughs
Destroy all sickness

Find her in the choir
Singing in the loving tongue
Dancing in rainbows

He doesn't live here
He sweeps the dusty corners
Looking for freedom

Small Coins

Are you giving your life away, or are you merely giving it up? The difference in prepositions is as great as heaven is from hell.

Withdraw, even from withdrawal!

Never, ever call for destruction. All you know how to do is to destroy. Train all your energy and wit on creation, if you have any wit within you.

Out of the sanctuary and into the street. Leaving your church was easy. You have killed your idols. You have murdered your myth-makers. You are a cut-rate Nietzsche. Bravo. Ah, but you refuse to let go of your cherished community (which is really only a cadre), your sacred space (which is only private property), and your precious safety (which is only the surplus of conquest). Leave the fiction of home all together. Out of the sanctuary and into the street. You will not be saved until you are homeless.

Be set free, even from freedom!

"Follow me." There is no escaping it. Everyone has tried, but no one can get before you.

You are a mindless monk and heartless friar. Do not pretend it is otherwise.

Yesterday your church was a gymnasium. Today it is a hospital. Tomorrow it will be an airport.

You don't want friends. You don't want companions. You want brothers. You also want to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

For as long as you run, the horizon does not grow closer. Think instead about how you will ascend. It's either ascend or run aground.

The journey never starts over.

You said you have nothing to left to give. Rubbish. There is pain, anger, sadness, loneliness, and emptiness. Find a way to give those things away. Or have you given up on these, too?

Eggs and Scorpions

I am full of things I cannot say. I am traumatized at the empty tomb.

Now I can answer the singer of the spiritual:
Yes, I was there when they crucified my Lord.
I took his hand.
I nailed it to the board.
I even lay with him inside the tomb.
A cooling, fooling, lifeless, wifeless groom.
But then somebody rolled the stone away.
I panicked at the sight -- alone at day!

The women at the tomb are either the greatest messengers the world has ever seen, or the world's most notorious lunatics.
What? Must it be one or the other?

How terrifying it is to worship a God who is there by being not-there.

This year for Easter -- no eggs for me. I have asked for scorpions, and I shall have them.

God, be silent. Do not speak. You are so cold. Your voice would be like a rush of ice water down the neck, freezing the spine. God, be still. Do not touch me. It would mean paralysis. God, leave me alone. Do not love me. Why do you love me? It will be my annihilation.

It is not the cross that gets me. It is the empty tomb. Not the cross, but resurrection. I do not see a risen Christ in the empty tomb. I see a shadow. God is in the shadow, and God is the shadow. Christ is in the abyss. Mark, that minimalist and psychologist, saw it best.

It is no mere stone that covers the tomb of Jesus. It is a heart. A heart of stone? No, this is a body of stone. And God is the sun, burning cracks into this fine firm heaviness. God will not send the fire. The fire dwells within the petrified body. God will turn this rock into fire and leave nothing but fine glassy sand to be carried ruthlessly into the ecstatic air. Oh, that Pentecost might come very soon and consume every poor charcoal soul!

Mary of Magdala, forgive me. I have scoffed at you and all your daughters. You rouse within me intensely conflicted emotions: awe and ingratitude; desire and revulsion; respect and jealousy. Please accept my confession and grant me pardon.

I believe God is alive, fearfully alive. The presence/absence of the empty tomb makes me question how alive I am -- that is, whether I am truly alive in God. The anxiety lies in doubts about my own presence. Where Jesus has gone, do I dare to follow? Not only to the cross, but also beyond crucifixion?

There is something terrifying about a God who is capable of bringing new life out of death. That kind of God is more than love.

I am full of things I cannot say. I am traumatized at the empty tomb.

Grand Canyon

The man and woman
Smiling at the Grand Canyon
Ring the empty gulf

From the bright plateau
A dread animal's echo
Barking for water

Plummets the canyon
A metallic wave scrapes rock
Two billion years thick

The couple covers
With geologies of uplift
The ancient gorge

The animal sees
The cascading passion
Of breath and running rain

In the dry abyss
Where earth forever swallows
Everybody thirsts.

Behind the Light

All that we blessed has now been broken
We shared the love that shares the pain
It was a picture-perfect world that floated off
Our fingers into air

Here I stand and do no other
All my life I have remained
But now I see you run, embrace the prodigal
And consecrate despair

Mother, O Father,
Why don't you see me grieve
O Mother, Father,
I won't come back if I leave

I've waited for nothing
I waited, but one is one
I'm running behind the light.

What I wrote, has been written
By many hands across the page
Maybe you can burn the book and wash the wall
You can't unmake the word

Mother, O Father,
God was not God for me
O Mother, Father,
God is still haunting me

I've waited for nothing
I waited, but one is one
I'm running behind the light.

Fool in the Rain

Ten billion crystals of ice in the sky
The lowly and lucky, they fled to get dry
Some of the sainted turned their face to the storm
To trample the dragon and spit on the worm
They conquered the city with spirit and art
Then one deserted -- the peace fell apart
The cancerous cell, the weakest link in the chain
Betrayed he was nothing but a fool in the rain.

A man at roadside said "I'm gonna die"
The fool looked at him and said "You're telling a lie"
Repeating his sentence the man spoke his breadth
An eclipse in his eye, a sting in his breath
He shuffled his feet, he glared two more times
The poor have a right to judge the rich for their crimes
Wade in the water, but don't be so vain
To trouble the water like a fool in the rain.

The money is running out, no time on his hands
Living on credit, no supplies, no demands
He's breaking away from the rats in the race
The living is easy when you're standing in place
It seems to be simple, it seems to be true
But sooner and sooner the debts will come due
When he comes a-beggin' for his soul to regain
Don't spend all your pity on a fool in the rain.

Beatrices teased him at the top of the hill
He married Lucinda, adultered with Lil
So many women in the eye of his mind
And so many more that his heart left behind
They wish him no ill, in fact they wish him all right
None of them knew him, but someone else might
They're waiting for daylight to break on his pain
You can't see the tears of a fool in the rain.

He's telling you something as true as he knows
We all take an error as far as it goes
Staring at dead ends, most will turn on their track
When he is ended, he brings the end back
All his adventures are sideshows for God
Spoiling the children and sparing the rod
Now take it on faith -- you've heard the refrain --
Don't get in the way of a fool in the rain.

Unknown Friends

Tonight
There is no one, no one
Within a hundred thousand miles
Or a hundred years of here
That I want to be with
But you

And I
Fear the cold empty rain
Flying on the black winds, pressing
Me forward away from a home
Less than I fear a word
A name

A face
With a cry and lightning
Tumbling into my bosom
To dig the pit of my desire
And bid me to fill it
Alone

With all
The dirty unknown friends
Of God. Oh, invisible Love!
Why, when I beg one friend for me,
Would you send myriads
Like these?