Colossians 3:5-15

All these things you see
That come from down here--
Kill them.
Anything that pulls our attention away
From what (I mean WHO) is above
Needs to be thrown away.

These rags you've been wearing,
They stink.
You reek like a dead man with them on.
Take it off-
After all you're not dead anymore,
But alive.

All your trash,
The sex, dirty thoughts, uncontrollable desires,
Obsessively wanting what your next door neighbor's got--
Stop it!

Don't you know that it's those clothes that get burned up?
Don't get burned up with it by the One above.

You used to wear those things when
You lived across the tracks.
But you're in a new house now,
Living somewhere else-act like it.

Stop being angry and irritable.
Don't say mean things or even think them.

Momma used to say,
"Don't talk like that
Or I'll wash your mouth out with soap"
Talk different,
Talk like the soap tastes-
Clean.

And be honest.
Don't make up stories to be dramatic
Or get yourself out of hot water.
Be different than all the rest.
Be a new person
Who's becoming like the One
Who rescued and brought you to this place.

He's the One who brought us together.
He's the garbage man, too,
He's throwing all the old clothes out
And making all of us better.

So stand in front of that mirror
And see that He loves you,
Even in your nakedness.

Open the closet doors
And see the clothes
He made for you.

We got silk
And fine linen
In all this kindness and caring for each other.
And forgiving, too,and being patient--
It's like the loosest, breathiest cotton
On a hot summer day.
And it's easier to forgive
When you remember how He brought us here.

But the best piece
All of us got

Is love.

It's a purple robe
Like royal kings wear.

It's the main thing
That keeps us together
Along with peace,
That also comes from Him.

Wear your new clothes
And thank Him.

poem

A single tear
A lonely soul
Falling—
Catch the diamonds.
There is rugged
Crystal shine
In these
Sharp things.

In Tent Cities

Intense,
This living
In tents.
Always motion
The making and
Breaking of camp

Until Spirit finds
spirit
Until Lover meets
Beloved
No more temporary
Dwelling spaces

ONE fire
Consumes
Physical traces.

Rest.

Ocean

My heart is
An ocean
Deep and you
Only see the tide
From your shore
Take a swim
In a mystic sea
Cool water will
Kiss your skin
Life and color
Flashing before your
Sun wearied eyes
Dive into the deep
Until you hit
The ocean floor
Pass the beauty
Pass the murky
And find
What lies
In my water’s store

Night

Starshine

Dusty, broken bits of glass

Falling from heaven earthward

Reflected in crystal muddy rain puddles

music

mystic lines
that fill the skies
aren't enough
all the waters
in these eyes
aren't enough

(to praise you
to praise you)

all the beauty
in the seas
aren't enough
all the lofty
mountain peaks
aren't enough

Want to be a Lover

My thoughts are scattered, like the leaves in the yard that get raked up into piles, but blow away in the wind before they make it into the trash bags. They become brown and cracked, left on the dead grass. Even when spring comes, they are left behind.

How absurd.

Eventually, they wither away and become earth. Like our bodies. Dust to dust.

I was watching the girls jump on the trampoline today and couldn’t help but notice how they vie for the attention of the nearby adult. “Watch me, watch me! What I can do is better than what she can do!” Maybe they don’t always say it exactly like that, but it’s the gist.

I get like that. Donald Miller calls it the lifeboat theory. Our value is in our competition. I need to be worthy of not being the one thrown off the lifeboat.

Damn.

The thing is, I’m so selfish. I’ve got no reason to even be on that lifeboat, but I want in so bad. I want things my way, I want to prove that it’s the best way. It makes me argumentative and irritable.

I told a friend today that I was getting annoyed with another friend for no reason. He told me that it’s my own fault. Okay, I knew that. I did. And it made me more upset. I was letting my friend get under my skin. She didn’t even know it.

I don’t even know what my way is. It’s hilarious. I think I know what I want, but as soon as I get it, I’m left unsatisfied. My way isn’t really so great.

Watch me, watch me! Whatever I do is a waste.

I’ve been reading Galatians, and to be honest, it’s pissing me off. I never would have admitted that I get angry when I read Scripture, but sometimes I do. I get really hacked off at things like, “Why didn’t Jesus heal everybody? Why didn’t he just make everything right when he could have?”

Well, that’s my way again, and I’m not so sure I would be so satisfied if Jesus did do it that way. It sounds great and all, but I think maybe then I’d feel like “For pity’s sakes, why couldn’t you let us fumble around some more? Now I don’t love you for your mercy. I love you because I freaking have to!”

We’re not robots or puppets or whatever. We’re people. Messed up, hurting people. We live in a messed up, hurting world. Christ didn’t come to snap and fix it all in one fell swoop. He isn’t Mary Poppins. No, he allows us to sin and to suffer. He didn’t make us love him…he’s not what one apologist refers to as a “divine rapist.”

Apparently the Galatians thought that performance could save them. But they’d already been saved. Paul got pretty hacked off when he heard about it. “Circumcision can’t save you, people! Only faith in and through Christ can! Why can’t you get it through your thick skulls? God loves you so much, so much that he died, for crying out loud! And we died with him…no more of this law!!! GRACE!”

Truthfully, if I was a Galatian, it would have taken me awhile to listen to Paul again. What makes him so smart anyway? Where does he get off telling me that all the rules I have are so bad?

Okay, so here’s the deal…so much in our formulas is good. Like feeding the poor. It’s great work. But it’s nothing apart from love. If we do it without love, then it’s pointless. It’s just another performance done by a loveless fool.

The real lover will do good things as an expression of the love. And only someone not caught in “my way” knows love. Faith in Christ, and not the law, frees us to accept his amazing grace. The freer we are, the more we receive our value in him and love him. The more we love him, the more we love our neighbor. The more we love those people the more we see injustice and go about working for righteousness. It’s the out-flowing of love.

In the first book of Corinthians (which happens to be another book that vexes me a lot) Paul tells us that doing great things without love is meaningless. He then describes love.

Truth be told, I’m a whole lot more comfortable reading that beautiful passage about what love is than reading about how without love every good thing I do is a waste.

Why?

I think because I fall back into law. Loveless law. And reading that stuff convicts me…leaves me with the knowledge that once again, I’ve let my heart be deceived into thinking if I do enough good things, I’m saved. God will love me.

My ideas are backward. God loves me. I embrace that. Then I do the good things he tells me to do in him and through him and for him. And others know that he is God.

The thing about love—about being loved and loving—is that it hurts.

I mean, it hurt Christ till he died:

Real love is going to cost something. Life. But without real love, your life is gone anyway. Jesus was a real lover, a great lover. It cost him everything. But it bought redemption. Love like that is worth tossing the laws, the formulas, the lifeboats, the dead leaves, my way, all of it. Love like that is worth striving for.

I’m still thinking this through. Still figuring it all out. But I don’t want to figure it so much that it becomes another messed up formula, some distorted version of truth for the sake of “my way.” I want to be broken to love. I want to not think so much about the cost, about the risks. I want to blossom in grace. I want to be a lover.