Water

There is an illusion before me:

A lake.
A tree.
Wind.

There is water in the lake.
There is water in the tree.
There is water in the wind.

I ran, once, through a Dust Devil.
There is water in the dust.
There is water in me, too.

God, take all this water away,
And let me see what's left.

Erosion

By Geoff Hughes

I make my way along the rugged trail

Descending easily over rocks and roots,

A steep descent but legs and lungs prevail

Strapped into loaded pack and sturdy boots.

This canyon offers up no welcome mat,

No crews to keep the trail in top repair

But, here by choice, I never aimed for that.

I simply seek the joy of open air.

Yes, that and proof that at the big seven-O

I still have what it takes to climb the slope.

So down two thousand feet I aim to go.

To climb back out intact my only hope.

Switchbacks steep and perilous do greet

My every step, but right and left huge walls

Rise up and up, as if the clouds to meet

And leave me gazing humbly out in awe.

My pride in what I’m doing at my stage

Of life is held in check by nature’s realm.

These rocks, their stature, their unfathomable age

Have at the least the power to overwhelm.

They mock my seventy years.  “You’re old?” they say,

“Can you believe two billion since our birth?

So if one-up’s the game you want to play

I fear you’ll find out what your pride is worth.”

Descending still I reach a level field

And pause to contemplate the canyon walls,

See countless boulders that the cliffs still yield

And taluses that somehow break their fall.

They perch like statues on those littered slopes

Not moving now but clearly having moved

And moved again, as if belying hopes

Of tumbling to the bottom of this groove.

But clearly that’s ten million years away.

I stand and honor what I see today.

My pride’s eroded like these rocks.  My age

A trifle seen on God’s eternal stage.

The Long Way

When you drive a long distance,
As when you're taking a family vacation
In your dad's station wagon,
The one with faux wooden panel sides,
Cream colored on the top,
A wide Buick,
Rack-and-pinion steering,
And a fold-up seat facing backwards out the rear window,
The drive is often long,
Especially when dad turns off the air conditioner,
Driving with the window down
At fifty-five miles per hour,
As the wind blows through the windows,
Roaring over the AM radio,
Jack Buck, Cardinals versus Phillies.

You might spend dark hours in roots of Appalachia,
Driving through Western Kentucky.
The sun may rise over Lake Superior's North Shore in Minnesota,
Or set among the mesas in Santa Fe.
Storms may throw down their spears in Central Indiana,
A single white cloud may follow you all the way across the blue skies of Kansas.

If you stop to see the Corn Palace in South Dakota,
Or the Mug Tree south of Yale on Illinois 49,
Remember that the road you travel is as much the destination
As the place you arrive,
Wrinkled and stiff-necked,
Stretching arms to the sky,
To shout, Hallelujah! I'm home!

I write these things to express that I do not like to travel
When I travel to arrive.
Accepting that the traveling is the lesson,
Though the Grand Canyon is deep,
And the Mississippi River wide at the mouth of New Orleans,
There is much more to learn in conversation with you,
Twenty-eight hours straight,
Stopping only for gas, coffee, and pee.
I'm in no rush.

The Pacific will stay.

Grace

I have experienced Grace.
What I can tell you about it is this:

You will never know it until it touches you.
Just as you will never know Love until it loves you.
How can an Eskimo understand the heat of the Sahara?
How can a Bedouin know the cold of the Arctic?

Where Grace is
Is different from
Where Grace is not.
The difference is overwhelming.

Dispense with metaphors.
Dispense with uncertainty.
Dispense with knowing without tasting.
Dispense with protecting your life.

Grace is treasure that is lies at the end of this map:

Confess.
Apologize.
Humiliate.
Repent.
Suffer.
Receive.

Grace does not come to the strong.
Grace requires immense weakness.

It can only be found on your knees.
In a blade that slices through the back of your neck,
Passing like swift judgment,
Severing the cord of willfulness,
When all power is laid down,
And your head falls from your body,
Tumbling downward,
With no control to move,
With no ability to see what you want to see,
Nor taste what you want to taste,
Nor hear what you want to hear,
Nor touch what you want to touch,
Nor smell what you want to smell,
But surrender all knowing to the will of gravity,
As your lips kiss dust,
And your eyes look up to see what you thought you were:
Shoulders, torso, arms, and legs,
While the last drops of life-giving blood fall from
The hole in the bottom of your throat,
And your brain moves from sense to senselessness,
And you consider that you had misunderstood the situation
From the start,

In this twilight you face the Truth
That what you thought you were is not what you are,
But more,
And you become happy
For the first time in your life.

HalleluJah

The Hebrew words mean praise God.
Hal'lú means praise.
Jah means God.
Together, they are a confession of adoration.

You can say, "Hal'lú, Jah" to speak to God,
To say, "Praise, God,"
As if you are reminding the LORD
That He has value.

Praise and Prize come from the same root:
To appraise something is to consider its value.
How should God be appraised?
How shall we consider His value?

One way is to consider the value of homeless boy,
With dirty skin and matted hair,
Who smells of street and unwashed clothes.
The Light of God sparkles from his eyes.

Another way is to consider the value of an ancient woman,
With deep creases in the skin of her neck,
And thin, white hair, like a cotton ball set out in the sun for 80 years.
What treasure lies within her heart?

When I look in the mirror, will I, too, see worthiness?
When I look at my face, will my lips declare praise?
Shall I consider the work my hands do and declare, Hallelujah?
Love God. Love your neighbor. Love Yourself.

Who is my neighbor?
The beaten and oppressed, Christ says.
Who is my neighbor?
The widow and the orphan.

How shall I appraise you, God?
I value you as One who brings water to my lips in a dry desert.
I value you as One who lifts me from the pit where my brothers have buried me.
I value you as One who delivered me from the army of a mighty king who has encircled me.

I value you as one who gave me a gift in my despair,
Though I had robbed the temple,
Though I had eaten sacrifices made to Baal,
Though I had darkened the eyes of Uriah,

You offered me wine from a cup of gold,
You offered me bread from your table,
You offered me light from seven silver candlesticks
To illumine my path.

How shall I sing, now, Jehovah Jireh?
What value is there in you,
Who preserves me at every wicked turn of my heart?
What value in He who breathes into my lungs,

As he did in Adam,
When he formed his body from red clay,
Dust from the ground,
And pulled a companion from the cage of his beating heart?

Belial

Darkness, Dragon,
Enslaver of Souls,
Go back to where you came from.

Liar, Deceiver,
King of Despair,
Return to your dark dungeon.

What communion does light have with darkness?
What fellowship has the Temple of God with idols?

Tear this body down, Demon.
Make it bleed.
The temple will be rebuilt.

Hide in your pit,
Cover your dark heart with mirrors.
Reflect all light back to its source.
It will not penetrate your heart,

Dark dragon,
Fire breather,
Cannibal,
Destroyer,
Shame.

The King of Kings has returned to His kingdom.
The Lord of Lords has come to survey his fields.
The Master of Masters has arrived to pay wages to his workers.

Run, thief.
He has returned.

Knowing

Some, like Thomas, doubt.
Doubt is from doubleness, dubiousness, duplicity.
There are two truths on the end of a dragon's tongue.

Some, like agnostics, doubt, too.
Agnostics are without knowing.
There are many things they choose not to know.

Some, like me, turn from doubt to faith.
Faith is being commanded, persuaded to trust.
There is only Truth, durable, like a tree, like stone.

What we choose to doubt,
What we choose to know or not know,
Makes little difference to Truth.

It remains, like a stone that rests high on a mountaintop.
The rain will not wash it away.
It is older than the hills.

God

In an open heart,
He places grace.

In an open mind,
He places wisdom.

In an open hand,
He places love.

Minnow

Small and dangerousless,
With cobalt finless dorsal that fades to Honolulu blue
And white belly with coral pink under chin,
The plastic minnow swims through shallow water,
Wide, yellow eyes, a spot of black,
Unblinking gaze through murk
As spoon under lip moves body side to side
While fisherman spools thread
With hand on fishing rod crank,
Standing still upon a dock by quiet lake.

Tool of illusion,
Tiny, delicate, demure,
In open water feigning death,
Injury, easy prey,
Dangling hooks under her body,
Two sets in clusters of three,
Sharp, like thorns darkly hidden beneath shadow cast
In the emptiness of space
As light from the sun is reflected brilliantly,
Dazzlingly from her shining, hollow shell and sparkling eyes.

What pulls you, minnow?
Wide-mouthed monster will eat you in one gulp,
Swallowing deeply, full-throated,
And in the belly of that leviathan,
Who waited beneath moss and weed,
Hiding from the purview of the sun,
Resting in darkness and hunger,
Did pounce and swallow you deep in his belly,
Where your hooks were set in his gut,
Ripping the bowels from inside out.

The fisherman firmed his will and pulled the monster
Up from the abyss, exposing it to the light of the sun,
Where it could be considered, rightfully,
Known for what it is,
Camouflage revealed,
Black on top, striped and green beside,
Sharp spined,
White and soft bellied,
Helpless in the hands of the master of reels,
Though it thrashes against his strong grip.

The wound is deep.
The striped bass will not recover.
But the fisher will have his minnow out,
Unmindful of the fish.
Tossed back into the lake,
Grendel will return to his watery lair,
Vomiting blood, sinking to the nest where he was born,
Hoping not to float, belly up,
Swallowing rocks to hide himself in hell.

What young, strong bass will regard you, now,
Nibbling at your dark hooks?
Will he swallow so deeply,
Or will you only cut his chin?
Considered by the fisherman only for a moment in the sun,
Who will dip him in the water,
Holding thumb and finger upon his lower lip,
Swaying him side to side,
The waters of life moving across red gills,
Offering breath to revive him from certain death.

The fish will return to his brothers,
Spawning thousands of eggs for thousands of generations,
Swimming cautiously in open water beneath the full light of the sun
That shines even to the bottom of the muddy floor of the shallow pond,
Where he will learn, wisely,
To ignore hunger,
To move slowly,
To eat gently,
And to know the difference between the taste of plastic and brass
And that of body and blood.