Psalm 29:3
Neighbor as Theologian
How can she talk about a “word from God”?
The weather, yes, or the fate of our hedge.
A snake or the shrinking odds of her spouse
beating cancer, sure. But a word from God?
As though God were an actual person,
albeit incomprehensibly vast.
Yet this is how she talks, the way I talk
about my son from whom I could never
hear too much or too often, who’s only
hours away in Brooklyn. Why, unless
my sin were envy, would I begrudge her
an assurance of contact? More likely,
I long for what she has, embarrassed, pained
by my lack of openness to mystery—
which, she has told me, is wholly present
in, with, and under the hedge between us.
When you hid your face, I was dismayed.
Psalm 30:7
As It Is
The face of God is hidden from me.
I see only old walls, the clutter
of familiar rooms, shelves of books, snapshots,
mix-and-match decor. Awake or asleep
and dreaming, no divine shook-foil glimmer
for my inmost eye. Rumors reach me
of others’ encounters—glimpses of His face—
but after devouring these, the want
remains. Is there some special training I need?
Last week a friend confided that for years
the Holy Ghost has shimmered inside her,
every moment beatific. My resolve:
to pretend my friend is not a liar
or schizophrenic—and to seek new friends.
He showed his wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city.
Psalm 31:21
Putting a Name to the Face
In Madagascar or Peru, St. Kitts
or Tasmania, wherever children,
despite suffering, find games to play
or halt play to marvel at a column
of clouds collecting on some horizon;
wherever anyone takes care to make
ready a back room for a visitor—
sweep the floor for the ten-thousandth time,
place a fresh flower on the pillow—there
a glimpse, the face you know you know
in a crowd of strangers who disappears
before you get a fix on the distance
between you—
mercy!—
and that face.
Do not be like the horse or the mule which have no understanding.
Psalm 32:9
Brother Chronos
Radio-controlled and programmed to check
in every four hours with an atomic
device deep in some bunker in Denver,
my travel clock is more monk than truant
on probation, for it desires correction,
six times a day turns out toward the big
unseen—receives it—then turns back
to serving my fascination with time.
No trumpet sounds to signal the clock’s
connecting moment—a mute faithfulness
wholly independent of audience—
and I would be its disciple, pray the hours,
live contented, in step with the Spirit,
but my program is a prison named fear.
Still, how wonderful to know what time it is,
precise to within a millionth of a second.
From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind.
Psalm 33:13
Report
I flavor my food with long suffering.
The clothes in my closet are unironed.
I have never spoken in another tongue.
Given the option, I would work alone
or in the tested company of friends.
I find nothing holy in national
holidays though love getting the hours
off, time being the skin I look forward
to shedding once I am done with my life.
Between Eden and the New Earth, only
wind, music, and diligence feel at all
familiar. Here, everywhere is exile.
I will continue to speak this language.
Every word, a stand against losing heart.
No one will be condemned who takes refuge in him.
Psalm 34:22
God
Are all theophobic? No one wants to
be reminded. No thought, sentence, or deed
can escape the chill of divine review.
Dread being a dark matter of the soul,
engines of suppression hum constantly
flooding the wakeful mind with distractions
grand as virtue, common as relatives.
(How else to prevent the unwanted Word’s
indelicate meaning from causing hurt?)
Judgment by one’s peers can be useful, but
keep at bay the cool scrutiny of God
lest “luv” lose its warm inclusivity,
“my truth” its fragile singularity.
No “truth,” though lovely, will be left standing
on the day Truth absolutely arrives.
Poor, middle class, rich; straight, gay—no one
questions the myth: autonomy, each one’s
rule a law. But those who fear the Lord and
seek Him lack nothing, their fear a spring-fed
tributary to perfect freedom where
unruly wills find rest in serving Him.
Voice-beyond-language (still, small, holy),
wickedness reveals itself resisting
(xenophobically) Thy sovereign wisdom.
Yesterday, today, tomorrow, folly’s
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