Waiting In The Parenthesis

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

“You are silence and song, you are plain as the day, but you have hidden your face--For how long? How long?” ---Andrew Peterson, The Reckoning

It’s been a year of waiting. Waiting for mom’s healthy return from the hospital. The return home in hospice.  Hospice by its definition is a waiting. The final ‘home-free’. Then a parenthesis.

Open-parenthesis; the memorial service. Margaret’s’ waiting is over. Now the children wait. Our son married in March. The wedding is both an end to waiting and the beginning of a process of marriage. Returning home, the waiting continues.

The house is up for sale. We must move. Searching for a rental. We Zillow countless houses, make calls to realtors, open-houses after work. Hoping to find the right one; making an offer, waiting for acceptance. In all the waiting there is tension.

The wife is looking for work. They want her for interviews. Anxiously she pursues the process. Again the waiting. The tension. We want the waiting to end. But what if she doesn’t get the job?  What if we don’t find a house? Pressure is walking through the process. Hope is that the outcome will satisfy.

Easter is a time of waiting. We taste the disciples last week with Jesus. This “walking with’ as we celebrate passion. Holding on while hosannas rattle windows and high-priests. The confusion of that first communion; Roman soldiers, kangaroo court, crucifixion. Taut and heart wrenching the same question asked; the same cry ascends, “How long?” 

The resurrection doesn’t end our longing. It affirms the answer. In the parenthesis we live as aliens aching for a place to settle. We all seek security. Afflicted and needy we want the pain to stop. The resurrection assures us we will be satisfied. There will be a final celebration, final homecoming, final reunion. The waiting will be over.  Close parenthesis.

Wisdom For Taking The Next Step

Many a questioning, many a fear,

Many a doubt, hath its quieting here.

Moment by moment, let down from Heaven,

Time, opportunity, and guidance are given.

Fear not tomorrows, child of the King,

Trust them with Jesus, do the next thing.

My brother-in-law is in crisis. Flying in to sit with his mom in hospice. Seeking space from his impending divorce and dying dreams. Sharing with him thrusts memory back to my own divorce and the dying of my parents. The question he asks: What to do next? The short answer—do the next thing. The next right thing, though, doesn’t happen in vacuum.

Knowing the next thing to do requires a framework. In pain, with raging emotion ranging down-up-and down again, clear thinking is hard work. In the anger I felt at my wife for forcing me out of the house, for breaking trust, I could have made terrible decisions. Framework saved me. I’d cultivated a handful of deep male relationships. I had vowed to live in biblical context; to seek peace, hope and joy. Framework is crucial.

Process and planning aid in the process. Some days “doing the next thing” meant getting out of bed and going to work. I wanted to roll into a ball or spend the day brain dead with eyes on a screen. Mercifully windows of peace and sobriety would open up for hours or even for days. Those are good times to translate framework into planning. However you best do it; excel spreadsheet, pen and paper, text messages whatever works; do it!  What are the next steps necessary to get a job?  What can I do to communicate commitment to my loved ones. Do I need to (figuratively) take an axe to anything (this question is best asked in a sober, peace filled frame of mind). Taking this step may shorten the periods of despair. 

Let people speak into your life. This requires humility. Telling them to take a hike negates this step. Go back to step 1. Not everyone gets to give counsel.  Only those you trust.  Those friends and professionals you’ve given access to your soul and guts. Listen. Process. 

Gaining traction in crisis requires work, fortitude, perseverance. Doing the next right thing is not easy. We all know that soul that took short-term shots without looking at the big picture; no framework, no process, no community. The ship-wrecks, train-wrecks, the Breaking Bad. Coming through victorious requires more but starts simply: do the next thing. 

Photo by Gabriel on Unsplash

The Numbers Of Our Days

The numbers are constant. Twenty-some thousand white blood count. Eight o’clock phone call from the nurse’s station. Another delay. When it looked like coming home was an option. Pills at four-hour and twelve-hour intervals, Room 432, Stage 3 to stage 4. Phone call on top of phone call. Souls turn bitter that marinate in this. Being steeped in friendships leads to thanksgiving.

Three of us huddle together after church.  These two friends voice prayer for my wife and her mom to a God that is triune. One by one friends text. They drop by. Those inside the inner circle give permission to call them anytime; to scream, to ramble, to question, to complain, to be…Trying to count them, the sum of caring people surprises me.

“As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, Or if due to strength, eighty years, Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; For soon it is gone and we fly away.” The Psalmists’ cry is that we learn to be wise with our days. A lifetime of 24-hour days. Hospital stays and every trial seem an interruption. They are not. They’re part of the whole. It’s not a giving up or a giving in. It’s a working out, sorting out, hanging in; “And confirm for us the work of our hands; Yes, confirm the work of our hands.”

Photo by Jack Sharp on Unsplash

Kenosis, Christmas and Hope

“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself…”

Kenosis is the Greek term.  It means Christ emptied himself of divine attributes in becoming human. Clash of kingdoms. Spirit puts on flesh. The Christmas gospel captures hearts because of this.  Stories of humans making spiritual decisions. In spite of circumstance.  Magi setting personal lives on the shelf in response to the quiet shout of the Heavens and the words of a prophet. Joseph and Mary strike out for Jerusalem as a couple---a pregnant couple putting trust in angel words and First Testament writing over reputation. A desperate despot who thinks the writings may be true…whoa to the two-year olds.  In the midst—grace, peace, forgiveness. Which is why I find such hope in the Christmas story.

We trust in a coming king and a present God. Still normal life looks, well, normal. Water heaters still go out on Christmas.  Governments seem at best to burden the governed.  At worse they persecute them.  In early December Chinese police detained Pastor Wang Yi. “As a pastor, my disobedience is one part of the gospel commission,” Wang wrote. “Christ’s great commission requires of us great disobedience. The goal of disobedience is not to change the world but to testify about another world.”

There is another world.  A risen king. We try live in that way; crucified with Christ living as Christ.  We hold fast to Bible word; “all things work together for good, It is He sits above the circle of the earth, He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, Who makes the judges of the earth meaningless…” This Christmas, we encounter normal, joyful or dismal.  Still may we find hope.  For the things we see may not be the way they truly are. “And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war.”

Waiting Room

In wheelchair he sits and reads the list

Of medications he takes;

Should Prednisone be listed because he only

Took it four days?

His wife, caregiver, or both sits beside

Him trying to pronounce each prescription.

She sits taut and ridged like the

Words she speaks;

Germanic or Swedish some

Language that’s hardly romantic.

Her son, definitely her son, sits beside her

Affirming roadblocks for each new drug.

A young woman sits there by the window holding

Her phone and talking;

She’s alone except for the voice on the phone

And the company of a cough.

She doesn’t seem to fit with the others though

She shares a sense of the same despair.

I sit and watch them all as they wait for the nurse

To call their name;

Wondering if this waiting is better because

It’s a first world waiting.

Bound to the others by common infirmity still

I bounce and dance out into the rain.

A Time For Listening

“You reached out to touch me, I said oh no, it's too true,You and me, we know too much…” Mark Heard

A time for silence, a time for listening. A bunch of deciding between. Quiet when we should be loud. Turning up the wrong voices. Turning off the quiet ones. Some sounds are overwhelming. Shattering glass and gunfire throw off two-stepping at the Borderline. Sirens in the Sierra and Santa Monicas. Coming on the heels of mid-term elections and time change. Many voices; devastating.

Mine should be a loud voice; singing a song of thanksgiving. Hugging those close. Serving the ones with devastating stories to tell—we all have a story to tell. Whispering life to those with ears to hear. Turning backs to dark, hurtful (“hurt people hurt people”) voices; like heroes covering others in that country bar. We cover our ears.

We whoosh through life. Flesh says shut self into soundproof shell. Keep it out, keep them out. Humanity says fling open the windows. Swoosh; wind blows in, life in, air in, breathe in. The wind blows too strong some days.

The listening is important. The cross calls me to hear the cries of the world I live in. To help lift burdens; by listening or carrying. The cacophony is likely to burden. High pitched tension the norm. I must listen to my soul. Rest as I must. Too often I want escape and insulation. Jesus’ example fleshes out this tension. Daily serving, teaching, living. To calibrate he climbed mountains---to hear from his Father. May I know when to lean in, when to lean out, and how to listen throughout.

One Must Have A Mind Of Desert

One must have a mind of desert

To delight in gale and dry heat of day giving way to

Cold brittle nights forcing stars awake from under their blankets

Waking the coyotes who dig for water that

Surfaces for Bighorn sheep and Cottontails,

Water that San Andreas fault and fissures force into springs,

Hot saunas, cool oasis flowing through aeolian dirt that

The permanent shelled turtle thrives in though always sifting,

Like the wind always blowing dust, barely bringing wild rain

Pounding rapidly, soaking soil that can’t grasp precipitate but

Creosote, Cholla and Ocotillo, deep rooted, thick skinned,

Grab hold of moisture and fight to hold tight until Spring

Loosens calloused fingers, rough, brittle, from cracks grow

Fairy Duster and Paintbrush; polychromatic on stark backdrop

They make their stand; dig in for one more season.

---Inspired by the poem, The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens and by prompts on writing poems at https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/

Ninety Nine

A desolate drive,

Not desert,

Farm after farm,

Occasional tree,

Two hours in,

Choking smell of cow.

Sister studied there,

Rural school,

Miles from home,

Chasing art and wine,

Five years in,

Fleeing parents’ grasp.

Truck stops and fast food,

Each off-ramp,

Bathrooms aplenty,

Billboards boast lawyers,

Eight eight eight,

Marring the landscape.

Dinuba Reedley,

Nuts, raisins,

Short stretch to sis,

Where’s the Kings river?

One short hop,

Sweet time with sibling.

A regal river,

Citified,

Time changes all,

Images remain,

Fifty years in,

Cherished moments still.

Luck Has No Face

Photo by Quinten de Graaf on Unsplash

You can’t bargain with luck or argue with luck. Can’t go eye-to-eye or toe-to-toe with it. I throw on a favorite jersey, short and that comfortable pair of socks. There are a variety of socks I wear cycling and certain ones I wear most of the time.  Part comfort, part tradition. Here’s an embarrassing confession. Some socks feel luckier than others.

I’m rational. Intellectual. There’s no luck. So why, when my wife says, “Don’t get killed out there,” do I think I’m more likely to die today? How is it that a mug, a shirt, pair of socks, a pen go from utilitarian to idol? And idol it is.

“Who even comes close to being like God? To whom or what can you compare him? Some no-god idol? Ridiculous! It’s made in a workshop, cast in bronze, given a thin veneer of gold, and draped with silver filigree…” Giving luck a hat-tip belittles God and dehumanizes me. When I have a good day on the bike it’s because I’ve trained well. The muscle that turns the pedals, the blood carrying oxygen to muscle, the tires that hold air, the driver seeing me…all God.

Luck doesn’t have a face. Or heart.  I give to it a face like a little plastic tchotchke or imbue it with ‘energy’. How silly. We are impacted, and impact, the living. God has a face; bloodied and scarred. Friends and neighbors; faces all. If it feels like bad luck came calling; deal with the circumstances. When ‘good luck’ happens in bolt or streak; identify the reality of the event. Then celebrate with those individuals involved—face-to-face. Through it all give thanks to the God that blesses and makes His face shine upon us.

Morning Ritual

On working days and vacation days—one morning ritual. The face gets washed; hot water or cold water; soak the hair, brush it out. Small life-affirming ritual I’ve been engaging in for longer than I’ve been drinking coffee. More consistent than brushing my teeth.

Twenty bucks would buy me a new one! It’s a dark black, solid plastic piece that my dad probably bought from a local drug store. Or the Fuller brush man. I haven’t been parted from it—so to speak. Constant for forty-two years. It wasn’t mine. It was dad’s and it worked pretty good for what I needed. My sixteen years-old long hair needed training and dad’s brush was perfect. When he left the house, he left it behind. Must not have been important. Now I think maybe he knew? How do we lock onto these little things?  

In high school and college I carried a comb in my pocket. Always the brush in the morning. Combs disappeared but the brush traveled with me.  My mom’s pink bathroom to a summer in Chicago; the upstairs bathroom in a house full of guys to the strained and cluttered baths of my first marriage. High desert years alone with my daughter to beach side songs with my beloved. The brush has been along for all of it. In suitcases and toiletry bags; on hotel counters to permanent bathroom drawers. Recently I bought another brush for travel—so nothing happens to the good one.

Why this brush?  Does it feel perfect in hand and on hair (weight, smooth plastic, firm bristles that penetrate to scalp) because it is; or because I’ve used it so long. Is it that ‘one thing’ of my dad’s that I own? I don’t know all the answers.

I do know this. Tomorrow morning the sun will rise.  I’ll get out of bed. Pour a cup of coffee. The face will get washed. I’ll put my head under running water. Then I’ll brush it out with the ideal hair brush. Life goes on.