I needed to be touched
After a long absence of feeling
My skin had forgotten
The sensation of fingertips
Her nakedness comforted my soul
While she told me stories with her eyes
As we danced in the shadows of time
I will miss you
Or how I long for more words in a beautiful novel
After the last page has been read
I want to feel you like a poem
Written on my body
I want to photograph you
While the light of morning dances on your skin
Then press the poem and the light between us
To keep safe our story
When the night comes
To steal away our moments of time
"I waited patiently for the Lord.
He inclined and heard my cry.
He brought me up out of the pit
Out of the miry clay.
I will sing, sing a new song.
I will sing, sing a new song.
How long to sing this song?"
~ Psalm 40/U2
"If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."
~ Paul, I Corinthians 15:9
"Human life...." (is) "....grounded in and constituted by the implicit or explicit stories which humans tell themselves and one another."
~ N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God
Why do I believe Jesus is God?
Because...
He tells a better story about why we are here
He lived a better story so we can live better stories
Stories...
Real and tragic
Beautiful and hopeful
His story is our beginning
There is betrayal and anguish and death and tears
But no ending only an invitation ~ "Come..."
The grief we feel will turn to joy
The tears wiped away
He said...
"I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."
In the beginning there was a story...
A garden
Humanity
Distortion
Exodus
Exile
Exodus
Embrace
Restoration
A new garden
Living waters
Resurrection
Forgiveness
Grace
Life
A love story for humanity
Making all things new
"The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.'
And let everyone who hears say, 'Come.'
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift."
~ John, Revelation 22:17
I search...
For you
On deserted roads
On the blank pages of time
Where I write and expect you to appear
I search…
In the space between here and there
In the quiet corners of dimly lit cafes
In dreams during mid-afternoon naps
In Pubs while drinking beer and whiskey shots
In the melody of beautiful songs
In the words of a novel
In the cadence of a poem
In my bed between soft sheets
In my bruised heart
In the whispers of the wind
In the roar of a waterfall
In a strangers smile
In my empty arms
In waiting
I search...
It comes out of nowhere
An ache for epistemological mooring
The loneliness, ennui and isolation
Of the search
Solitary confinement of the soul
A longing for intellectual touch
To know and be known
Mingling minds in conversational intercourse
Ideas bared between sheets of thought
Vulnerable locutions in the night
Poetic memory wrapped in metaphor
Making the story with two endings
Searching the empirical forest of otherness
To encounter more than an abstraction
To touch, taste and feel the ineffable
If only for the briefest of moments
I don't know what to say
When
There are no words in the night
When
Her clothes drop too quickly to the floor
When
Her lips move without speaking
When
I am lost
When
The radio plays a requiem of regret
Time for a little more Promised Land and a little less wilderness, time for a journey, time for glimpses of grace, time to burn down the buildings that hold in the fear, time to dismantle the institutions that kill the hope and dreams of humanity, time to re-imagine what is possible. Time for a peripatetic ecclesiology of healing encounters. Time to get on the Train of creative and inclusive community…
(Bruce Springsteen, Land of Hope and Dreams)
“This train...
Carries saints and sinners
This train…
Carries losers and winners
This train…
Carries whores and gamblers…
This train
Carries lost souls
I said this train…
Dreams will not be thwarted
This train…
Faith will be rewarded…”
~ Bruce Springsteen, Land of Hopes and Dreams
I once saw lines
On a shoulder above the clavicle
Bared to sunshine
Words etched in skin
To touch...to trace...
With fingertips
While eyes met listening
Lines of syllables
Written for hearts on rainy days
Connecting lines of time
Dark lines of a tattoo
Life bringing lines
Of words in a sentence
Exuding depth
And profoundness
And lush compassion
Deep
Deep
Deep
Deep
Lines of fluidity and becoming
Lines unencumbered
Liberating lines
Lines in the story of a journey
Poetic lines
Of meetings in coffee shops
Memories and hope
Drawn on a body
With imperishable ink
