Monday, April 2, 2018

Dear Lord, Thanks


Dear Lord:

Hear our prayer for rest and peace,
From all our strivings, Lord, to cease.
For food to eat and joy to share
To hang with those for whom we really care.

We thank you.

For travel way off to foreign fields
To see our grandson play a game that yields
Him joy and fun
While on the run

For travel way off to foreign fields
To see our grandson play and sing
Makes our hearts ring
When he strums that thing.

We thank you.

For Easter Sunday and all of its gain
To chase our dream and enjoy the rain
To see the babies grow each day
To love their parents along the way.

We thank you.

For the promises that this day brings
To laugh and cry and pray and sing
To read and write and search it out
To find the truth and with a shout

Say once more

We thank you.

Amen

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Your Face: A Few Thoughts in Response to Psalm 27


Your face is what I want to see
Your face will tell me what there is to know
Your face will inform and shape
Your face will rob me of my comfort.

So

I see your face
I look into your eyes
I feel your gaze
I long to stay here.

And

Your gaze is piercing
Your eyes are frightening
Your vision of me is revealing
Your hopes for me are disarming.

My eyesight is blurry
My vision is skewed
My perspectives are defective
My views are awry and misshapen.

When

You see me looking at you
You know if I want to remain here
You sense my doubts and fears
You hear my feeble cries.

As

I wilt beneath your gaze
I face my lingering doubts
I have deceived myself
I only think I want to see.

Yet

My delusions are comfortable
My placement of people and things are predictable
My blind spots are truth
My assumptions are reality.

Still

I want to see
I want to see more than objects
I want to see what you want me to see
I want to feel my blindness disappear.

My life is in your hands
My vision has been blinded
My world has been shaped by what I will not see
My surrender will lead me to see as you see.

I long to see your face
I long to be in your presence
I want more than anything to see your children
I desire more than I can say to overcome my own blindness.

You know what I do not know
I know that you know what I need
My life will not be the same
You remove my blindness.

I see
I see
I see
I am blind no more

To people of color
To women
To immigrants
To the poor
To the homeless
To LGBTQ
To the young
To those outside my social group
To those physically disabled
To those emotionally challenged 

Hopefully
Is my prayer

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Anxiety, I Know Your Name and Your Game


Is that you anxiety
I think I know your name
The feelings you bring
I recognize your game.

You come attached
To the news of this world
To times and places
Ugly flags fly unfurled.

You leave us unsettled
We want things to be serene
You leave us in a mess
Or is peace too much of a dream.

Explosions left
Explosions right
Coming during the day
And in the dark of night.

Shootings on the left
Shootings on the right
Kids are out protesting
Offended by our slight.

The news cycle is full
Of all manner of things
That raise our angst
And make us dream.

We feel our humanness
Down clear to our core
Sometimes we wonder
Will we face what we abhor.

We have no trust
Of the man in that position
He stirs us up
We are his opposition.

He tells us lies
Day in and out
Our friends believe him
Sanity is in the middle of a drought.

We choose up sides
We blame and shame
But peace is what we long for
Our human game the same.

Looking for who to trust
Safe places an absolute must
Living anxiety free
In that place we long to be.

And from the storms that rage
I want to find a sweet reprieve
From the things that tear at my soul
Just breathe, I just want to breathe.

What gets us to that place
Is what I oftentimes wonder
It’s because of what we value
That is what I ponder.

Give us rest, O Lord,
From the stress of these insane days
Help us to breathe and march
And reside within your gaze.


Thursday, March 8, 2018

Lord, Hear My Prayer

Lord:

Where does my strength come from
To walk another day
The earth is full of such nonsense
How do we even find time to pray.

Frailties of the body are the way we are made
Could that be part of the story
That it’s not about us we might learn
It’s about you and your glory.

When do you make your appearance
In what form of yours do we await
Or do we keep on looking
While in this barren land we make our paths straight.

The right seems to know it all
It garners many of the votes
The left reacts with frustration
We have nothing of which to gloat.

Righteousness does not rule this land
We have injustices all around
The world is full of corruption
In our stench I think we’ll drown.

The book I just read this morning
Has the prophet yelling at his people
Woe to those who idolize injustice
We’re headed toward more upheaval.

We glorify our guns and our rights
We offer thoughts and prayers for the deceased
We return to our busy lives
And continue to feed this beast of a beast.

In what do we put our hope
Do we place it still in you
Or do we move on to another
Or stay with what we know is true.

I trust you move in our world
You use people and moments
And we are reminded of the fallacy
Of putting our hope in our governments.

Our hope is in you Lord,
Our faith is in those you have called
To march and protest for what is right
Lest with wrong we are way too enthralled.

Inspiration is found all around us
In Dallas, DC, and Raleigh they speak
There is hope in the words of the movement
It is righteousness and justice we seek.

Bless our efforts, Oh Lord,
Remind us toward what we all move
To make the world a better place
And the matters of which you approve.

Amen

Friday, February 23, 2018

The Strange Life of Grief

Grief is what we feel when we read the newspaper or watch our preferred news channel only to learn that 17 lives have been destroyed in Florida.


Grief wearies the body
It troubles the soul
It can be about life or death
Or about dreams untold.

It may speak of unspoken hopes
It can be about ideas or places
When it has us against the ropes
It keeps us longing for those other spaces.

It takes hold, sneaks up from behind.
Its clutches are strong and forceful,
It has many things to remind
And no one is respected, no one.

It comes from wherever it comes,
And it goes wherever it goes.

Grief strangles with its hands,
Squeezes the neck of joy.
Wherever it may land
While it removes the colors from the rainbow.

It makes the tastiest of
Morsels taste bland.

Grief asks a lot of questions
It gives but few answers.
It tells us not where we are destined
It forces us into chasms of hang on and let go.

Its forces are vast
And uncontrollable.
It thrives on the past
Its thirst is like the desert or a rainstorm that appears from nowhere.

Its hunger is like an
Animal that is
Lurking about looking for prey.

Grief is like the grave with
No body found down deep inside it.
Grief dulls the senses, robs one of
Words, and
Makes itself the focus as people stare.

Grief keeps us up all night
Filling us with fright.
Grief keeps us occupied all day
Creating things to hold at bay.
Grief reminds us of things we wished
Telling us that all is still amiss.
Grief beats us at every turn
Reminding us that we’ll never learn.

Grief tells us of those who are gone
Reminding us that we’re not really strong.
Grief may let us know who is here
Whispering to our  souls not to hold too near.

Grief is a circle goes round and round
Driving us all right into the ground.
Grief has no beginning or end
When it will leave can only depend.

So, I’ll continue to give voice
To the grief in my soul.
Until that day I’ll rejoice
With all its stories finally told.

Grief. A strange thing.
Grief. A very strange thing.
Grief. It gives us hope.



Monday, February 19, 2018

Summary: African American Land Acquisition and Loss: Reconstruction to the 21st Century


Here is the summary paragraph of a manuscript that is now off to the editor.  Maybe the document will be worthy of publication or it won't.  Maybe the editor will recommend minor revisions or major revisions. Now is the time of waiting the editor's professional opinion.  That opinion counts.  

In retrospect, here are some things I have experienced in reading and researching the last several months:  1) racism has a long, long, brutal history in our country; 2) we have not resolved it yet, and maybe we'll never resolve it; 3) America is a country that has embraced violence from the very beginning; 4) African Americans at Freedom were way, way behind the curve in terms of wealth, property, and belongingness as equal citizens; 5) I cannot escape my own history of whiteness and enslavement of Africans; 6) life here in the USA under the current President* looks very similar to life in the USA before, during, and after Reconstruction; 7) we still live in a land of the privileged and the not so privileged; and 8) as a nation, we have never repented of what our ancestors did to American Indians or enslaved Africans. 

"The path from the shores of Africa to modern day farming via the Antebellum South, Reconstruction, and into Freedom was an arduous and painful process that few can begin to imagine. As millions embarked and ten percent fewer disembarked, a dark day in American history had dawned. Removed from their countries, cultures, and languages, these enslaved Africans both toiled under the brutal whip of slavery and invented ways to maintain their personhood. Their African worlds involved a rural, agricultural context. This was not lost as they were forcibly removed to the U.S. They inventively created ways and means of preserving some sense of dignity that involved economics led for some to property ownership and ultimately to landownership. While the overwhelming majority of freed Africans did not come to be landowners, significant numbers did eventually own their own land, tilling the soil the ways they did in Africa and in the days of slavery. Following a period of immense growth in ownership with all of the attendant features pertaining to owning the land, a precipitous slide toward disenfranchisement and land loss occurred, which remains relatively unabated to this day. Primary and secondary data sources were used to capture land acquisition as well as loss across regions of the South. The data sources are not without their problems and must be explored tenaciously with a high degree of academic acumen. The reasons behind land loss must also continue to be explored including systemic racism, USDA policies, heir property and partition sales, and other factors. Stories of land loss must be heard because their stories are worthy of the hearing."

Friday, February 16, 2018

What Are Those Tears in My Eyes?


What are those tears in my eyes?

Do they take me to another place
or do they remind of that space
and will they help me find the grace
and to continue to trace
the ways so as to someday see your face
or do they give me the energy to continue the race

of life to chase the never ending ways that memories intrude
and when the Holy One exudes
that majestic go and preach to the people beyond your reach
to those whose lives are lived on the edge of the chasm and teach

us that this ongoing battle over who owns

their soul
and who stole

and who throws the stones
and over the world still roams

and yet they have the right to speak
and eat and live and cry and die and not so meek
and before that to feed their children right from the start
and to feel their own need and to give us a generous heart
to heed their yearnings to build them a house
to place the possessions of the man his children his spouse

not by the color of their skin
feeling deeply the sin
of those who dwell within

the house of the evil one
who still lives under the same warm sun

of all of us
but to embrace the grace

that embraces us all
lest we fall
into misery of judgment and hate
and find ourselves with an empty plate
heaped up and running over with the fate

that we deserve
when we failed to serve
and when we have become a shell
on our way to hell

and of what service there could have been
had we loved all of God’s children

less than the big gun
from which we run
and on the walk-ways we see the blood
the deep red blood
where once they stood
now they cower in fear
that the end is near

while we ponder and pontificate
until it is too late
for that which we hate
and while we wait

another one plans the scheme
of which they dream
to tell a story of suffering and woe
and we are the foe

we have become

when our time is near we stop and pause
know that we spent our lives in a sacred cause
and retrieve the world from the grimy paws
of the evil one
because our race is run

but Lord you gave us strength
that brought us from the brink
of doubt and fear
and you were near

every step of the way

of the journey when you fed our souls
and you made us bold
to proclaim the truth
that cuts to the root
protect the babies and in them we hope
that when we are at the end of our rope
that we find strength to cope

with a world gone mad
and we find it sad

that we love our guns
see us make them run

just lead us out of the wilderness

of our own morose and madness into a better place
where we can see your face
because it looked a whole lot like those of another race
and their cries of sorrow and joy
it all began in the stable with that little boy

when evil and good
could be divided like we knew it would
just like that Red Sea of old
when they made it across
and they knew that you were boss
they left behind comfort and all that they lost
and the land was dry
and every tear-filled eye

and every heart was undivided and relieved

but on to the destiny of a wilderness wandering
that would lead them all to pondering
much like today when all around us we see and despair
there is too much to share

so we find our own people
who may not be inside under the steeple
for they may be out and about
looking for things about which to shout

and when I stop and listen

I know I am home
never more to roam
just to stand and sing
and let our hearts ring
for what is true and just
we have found it we must.

We find no peace at the end of a gun
When our race we’ve run
At the grave we stand
Not really part of your plan

forgive us we pray
lead us into a better day
when the life we save
this side of the grave

may be that girl or boy
now playing with that worn out toy
may we find more joy
before the children we destroy

What are the tears in my eyes?