Songs of a Bruised Camellia

Whether I’d like to admit it or not, I’m not the flower everyone thinks I am.
I am not the flower.
I am not her.
Not that one.
I am another one.
Whether I’d like to admit it or not, my fragrance is not the one most preferred.
I’m not that fragrance.
I’m not her.
I am another one.

Whether I’d like to admit it or not, my petals are not those pristine orbed pillows
Prompted out of hiding by the dappled shade of spring.
I am not a gardenia. I am a camellia. People often mix us up. Gardenia spreads her blooms from spring to summer, but I am different. My blooms appear among the first bloomers of Spring and then they quickly fall to the ground and bruise under everything and anything close and prevalent. Especially air. It’s true I live in a region where once a year an entire festival is held in my honor. It is a ghastly affair (if you are a flower) during which an enormous spectrum of all varieties of my kind are placed in exotic vases or mounted on creatively altered apparatus so as to reveal their most stunning profiles. The flowers are hideously ranked according to the tastes and expectations of fickle viewers.

This shouldn’t surprise me as it happens to everything in the created order. Gardeners are not immune to falling into the same traps the whole of society forces upon them. What makes it particularly difficult is my inability to change myself into that other flower. Even if I could, I imagine the confusion would be repeated by those who were unable to identify me in my original state. I have succumbed to the pressure before. Deciding to proclaim myself a this or a that, rather than saving my efforts to be fully who I am based on the genealogy given to me by my Maker. It was a disaster.

I am the flower God designed me to be.
I am His Flower.
I am His Her.
I am His one.
I am the fragrance God breathed into me.
My breath is from God.
I am His.

I bruise easily. I am short-lived. The very air around me presses in and leaves a mark. I was not designed for competitions but rather to be loved and to bring beauty into the world. Not for beauty’s sake alone, but for the sake of turning people on their heels, for bringing them up short and making them stop and ask how is it that such a dainty thing could come randomly into existence? Given my short blooming season, I understand how my value could be overlooked, but even when my blooms are dormant, my glossy leaves make magnificent nets for the sunshine and extraordinary mirrors for God the Master Gardener. Nothing was spared in my creation to reveal a tiny, teeny facet of the abundance of God’s astonishing resources that were lovingly expended for me.

Whether I’d like to admit it or not, I’m not the flower everyone thinks I am.
I am not the flower.
I am not her.
Not that one.
I am another one.

Choose Trust

Grandmother Thanks Little

Long before the Grimm’s brothers shut down their law firm,
and owned up to their art,
I shuddered swiftly from shadow to shadow,
the big bad pursuing.
To where? For what?
All I knew was to hide or keep going.

Yours was a story slipped from God through me,
through my mother,
through her mother
through the mother before,
erupting first through Eve.

Just like Eve, I hid behind the moon white gardenias,
longing with bruised desire,
waiting for its scent to keep its promise
and return us to the garden.

Distracted by my longing, I forgot everyone else, especially you,
the sweet and innocent Woodcutter’s Daughter.
selectively listening, strung out by half-baked understanding
throwing the Woodcutter’s wealth to the false fires
of what kept me cold and hungry.

But then the Grimm’s caught wind of our story, arrived
just after big bad hid his fangs in a rumor,
stuffed his claws in a lie and delivered his most persuasive speech.
Seeing me worry-weak, settling for lesser than less,
they sent you from The Woodcutter’s hearth
and into my world with your luscious basket
and the red hooded cape I forced you to wear.

But for your timely pleas, your child-like cries for help,
your unfaltering dependence on The Woodcutter, I
would have been dead consumed, our story lost in
legal practicalities.

Thank you.

The Flower Girl

​The Flower Girl

She got tired for awhile; no, that's not quite it. She started out tired.
It took her decades to get rested up. Her weariness came over her the
minute she woke up, everyday like fog off the ocean. One day she
named her fatigue and gave it back to the night. Without fatigue fear
flooded the yawning space. Once she put a name to it, she sent it to
school as it lacked manners and clarity, worse civility. It was all arms
swinging, legs kicking and mouth smacking. She taught it
to keep its mouth shut and its delusional appendages to itself.

With so much freedom from this ill-mannered bully, she got side-tracked
with grandiosity. Now I can conquer the world, she thought. But even
before she could translate the thought to words, Wisdom arched its
brow. "The world has already been conquered," it said. "You might want
to pick a bouquet of flowers and deliver them to a friend." Which is
exactly what she did. But first she took a long, cleansing look at them
herself. It is no small thing to be schooled by flowers.

The Yellow Suitcase excerpt (pg. 3)

Yellow.
The suitcase is as close to yellow as any other color.
For a surprise,
the sisters wrap it with ribbons.

The brothers scratch blessings
in its yellow side.

The lovers latch arms.
This is why they think
they are strong, why they believe they have power.
There is strength
in their arms.
They embrace everything. Lift much.
Carry more.
The way is surprisingly rough.

She doesn’t mention the presence of hills
Ignores the ruts, sees only small declivities,
no ditches, no peaks, certainly no cliffs.

The road narrows, erupts with trees.
An unexpected wind sweeps down.

Avoiding the wind, she runs.
Years of running begin.
To slow her down, wild animals appear.
Wild animals distract her.
She dare not stay, dare not linger.
Wild animals can never be tamed.


Birds. Far off, now closer.
Finally, alarmingly near, in her face,
her hair, frisking her shoulders.
Infantry of feathers.
Battalion of beaks.

The Yellow Suitcase (excerpt pg. 2)

She knows nothing.
Less than nothing.
This is what she knows.
She has agreed to what
she does not know, to what
she believes will be easy.

Something black.
Something white.

Knowing she knows nothing
happens later. This is now.
Now she does not cry.
She leaves her weeping behind.
Behind is where
her weeping remains.

A ring is slipped on her finger.
A circle of gold.
And then on his, his hand is
also captured with gold.
Pictures are taken.
Pictures help with
remembering.
Nothing is needed
to help them forget.
Forgetting is easier
than remembering.

Between them is a suitcase.

The Yellow Suitcase - A Fairy Tale For Adults

It is a simple occasion.
What can I say?
The wedding is
not elaborate.
They wear black and white.

No, this is wrong.
White and black.

The bride comes first.
Always the bride first.
Everyone agrees.
Everyone -
Florist. Caterers. Musicians.
Even the printers.

The guests bring gifts.
Tied with ribbons,
swaddled in tissue,
dressed in foil paper,
kissed with glitter cards.

She carries a glass bouquet.
Imagine. Breakable blooms.
Blooms carried like
sky hooks to love.

It is a happy occasion.
But there are tears.
Wept and unwept.
The tears are here.

-1-

The Clock Ticks, The Peacock Warns, The Butterfly Soars

In every man’s heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty – Christopher Morley

Stop Thief

She wasn’t always so fluid.
She thinks.
This is a thought,
Not a sentence.
By desperate she means in danger of leaking out of herself.
People do all the time, she thinks, remembering all the puddles.
This goes beyond incontinence, she thinks.
This is a thought,
Not a sentence.
The sentence would go like this: I hate dreaming I am somewhere and waking up somewhere else.
(If it was a sentence, and if the dreaming place rippled and the waking place caged.))

Write it out. Write it out.
This is an encouragement.
Writing seems monumental until she considered the weight of a thought.
She often had such enormous thoughts they fell on her chest like stones
Writing seems dull until she understood the sharp edge of an undisclosed thought.
Once she cut off her own leg with one.
For years she limped looking rather than writing.
Of course as it is with all lost things, they tend to turn up in the places no one looks.
This is reality.
Who wants to go there? She asks. This valid question holds the key to the cage.
No one answers.
Why? She asks, folding the key into a cork screw.
No one hears it.
Write it out. Write it out.
Bring others into your undiscovered world.
They have it too. It is not up to them. It is up to you.
Delete.
Correction:
Up to me.

It’s enormous.
It’s dark.
It circles around her.
It takes time, she thinks, picturing a clock propelled by a million swiped legs.
Oh there, she shouts with a ball point pen.
I recognize that one. It’s mine, she writes, feeling the loss of her limp.

Falling from Grace to Grace

A Call To Freedom

She sleeps on a bed of heritage roses,

Awakens to a whispered invitation -

                                            Come unto me

Her ears cup the words as she tries out her mouth.

A rusty bugle nests her sleeping-bird tongue.

In the space of her silence she hears other voices,

each one a withering accusation -

You knew…

You did…

You are…

She raises the bugle to her lips, the bird flutters its wings –

But

But

But

I knew not…

I didn’t…

I am not…

Fear rustles her story into silence.

On a gust of the blue wind’s holy blowing, the invitation returns unwearied -

                                                 Come Unto Me

The bird is weary, the bird is weak.

She places the bugle in a glass curio,

secrets herself in a pleasing summer hat.

Shovel in hand, she loses herself in the heritage roses.

No thank you, I’m fine.

No worries.

No trouble at all.

Don’t think a thing of it.

It’s nothing.

Really.

Nothing at all. 

                                                    Come Unto Me

Against the scandalous invitation she cottons her ears with feathers,

waters the hat with burgundy wine.

Sleeping, working, planning, sleeping, working, planning,

shoveling through the years, hoping to earn her voice.

                                                Come unto Me –

What perseverance, what faithfulness in this long-suffering invitation.

The blue enhances, the holy blowing pursues.

But still, as fears silences a song

she hides in hesitation, cows to worming rumors -

confusing her past, obscuring her futures.

                                                Come unto Me –

Struggling to go up, she falls down,

down to the floor of herself,

right through the door of herself,

backwards, sideways then onto her childhood knees.

Unabridged, uncondensed, she lands on the edge of

what-could-have-been and what-can-still-be.

                                               Come Unto Me –

Retrieving the bugle, releasing the bird, she makes her reply.

I hurt blood.

I’m weak wax.

I white flag surrender. 

                                             Come Unto Me

Easter morning she awakes to the scent of lily-clad words,

She rests in her beautiful ruined story.

The current of myth takes stock of the truth

And judgement heels its curse at the cross.

                                                     I am

                                                     I am

                                                    I am

Your Rest.

Refusing Despair

Refusing Despair, we surrendered to Hope. We remembered our ruined stories and marked the disasters along the way. Returning to scenes of misconceptions, we nearly drowned for fear of their depths. But Faith carried us forward. We opened our eyes. We unstopped our ears. Truth showed us grief we ignored, crimes we witnessed. We came to believe life had always been unmanageable alone but now we embraced the friendship of clarity. Using the mirror of our memories, we found relics of our desires and unearthed them with our prayers. In the spring of our returning we found the children we suffered to be. Discovering them isolated, cold and hungry, we embraced them, soothed them with listening, cradled them with understanding. We told them what we ourselves had forgotten and they had never heard – “Don’t be afraid. Fear robs. Hope protects.” We became new children that day, chattering like birds, receiving our bread every morning, drinking God’s peace with the moon.

Get Carried Away (or Statement of Rights)

We have the right to get carried away by love, to celebrate the whole of creation, to smile, to pray, to bear witness as to what it means to be created in the image of God. We have the right to praise The Creator, to keep our eyes open, to examine our intentions, to cherish mercy, to stand against evil, to sit in solitude, to sing in community, to be amazed at children, to respect the elderly, to walk around flowers, to expose cruelty, to cling to faith, to practice gratitude, to say we’re sorry. We have the right to speak the truth, admit confusion, strive for simplicity, accept God’s liberation from chaos. We have the right to refuse the shame of our need, admit pain, to ask questions, celebrate joy and the freedom to live with an eye toward the dignity bestowed unearned upon us by God Almighty.

This is a short short video about my novel: The Frankincense Tree

https://www.wevideo.com/hub/#media/ci/212092060

Your Trip to Paradise

 

I

 

At 3:00 a.m. on a black kettle night,

a yen for Paradise snaps you awake.

Rising, you pack ridiculous flimsy clothes -

shirts without sleeves,

pants without legs,

shoes without a hint of protection. 

  

You commit this crime in faith,

Commit it in passion and a kind

of boulder-hoisting desperation.

 

You carefully make your bed.

In case you don’t return, in case

Indiscriminate survivors blunder through

your private domain.

 

Bent on Paradise,

you want to leave Perdition

in an ordered state worthy of a

benevolent obituary.

 

Stepping through the door,

the night hits your face and

you take note: this is not a dream.

The sun, held back by fermented rain,

and the liquor of nocturnal recline,

shows no sign of appearing.

 

You board the metal bird in the guise

of a Boeing 747 and

close your eyes as it lifts from the sliver of earth.

 

You are not alone.

Through the square of layer glass, you see the beautiful creature,

the who of you, the yes of you,

the now and then and hope of you,

the transformed you after you accept

yourself as the soul you were

you were fashioned to be.

 

This astonishing you runs at break-neck speed.

But you are not out of breath.

Colored in twilight, your legs drum the delighted sky.

You run outside the strapped-in shell of you,

patiently waiting to make your acquaintance. 

 

Studying you, you gape amazed. 

You are ageless.

Empowered by engines not your own,

Endearing and enduring through weakness,.

through storms meant to grow you wings,

through sunflower gardens turned toward the moon,

rivers of ice flowing uphill to sky,

through yearning and angst all forgotten.

There you go, swift through trees hung fat with I-can-do-anything-leaves,

diving backwards, neck arching, legs stretching,

your toes pointed to God.

 

You are dizzy with balance, 

giddy with peace. 

Leaving a trail of shrinking lights,

you think primordial thoughts - thoughts of fire, of flood, of disarmed fate.

You are a river undamned by God. 

The current is swift, but it is not against you. 

Rejoicing and weeping,

a flock of crystal stars fly beneath you.

With wings of diamonds and bone

and feathers of colored surprise, they churn the wind for the transfiguring mill of you.    

 

 

 

II

 

For this excursion children alone are permitted to sit in exit rows. 

In case of a crash, only the children can open the doors. 

It has always been this way, but only is it safe to be one.

As a child, you behold yourself in a lime green shirt.

Or is it red?  Blue maybe?
You decide on a dotted Swiss dress with a yellow belt.
You remember bare hands, fingers dipping into a sugar bowl
and giving your tongue a treat.
Yes, the hands are small and the child is you.     

You look down. 

You want to know this two-legged shape attached to you and you to it.   
But it is not a completed you. 
Your body is merely a sentence that carries the noun of you,
You are a fabulous stuttering phrase carried by the ill-stated truth of you.
But it is never, not ever complete enough.

And now you remember your former bed, the warmth of it and 

how it felt to be in the arms of it, how it protested with your every turn
and how the covers were never exactly the weight you wanted them to be.

You remember God’s smothered voice, the feel of your hands against your ears. 

In the knowledge of the smallness of your hands you agree to stop apologizing,
to stop making excuses.

Yours is a story that keeps being written.

And not a story meant to be written alone.

In the story you wrote alone you stayed stuck behind a curious door,

afraid to try the handle, afraid to risk its turning.
But the nudge to do so insisted.   

All along you’ve questioned the nudge.

God.

God himself explains the nudge.

God himself explains your hesitation.
Your fear of the nudge has to do with God.
Only God makes sense of fear. 

In Perdition there is much to overcome, to improve,

to remodel, destroy, amend, excuse,
flatter,  impress, refute.

Paradise turns fixing obsolete.

In Paradise the water brims with tears nobody needs to cry.
And the birds?
The birds derive from angels.

The clocks are clowns and time is hour free. 

The cutting wind has dropped its blade and
grown a cotton tongue, and all the words are waterfalls and
all the dots have i’s. 

The shredding cloaks of poverty transform to gleaming gowns and broken doors
are used as boats and oars are pulled by skies.
In Paradise your questions beg and answers grow like alms.
And yes and no are Simese twins and Mondays carry songs. 

In Paradise you are who you were born to be and no one thinks to drown.

She believed her many-headed self was proof of a scattered brain. But a scattered brain was better than a frozen brain.  Most would agree.  Being scattered trumped being frozen; it was her comfort. But she often wondered how to repair herself.  For a season she hunted for glue, for a kind of epoxy that would mend the scatters.  For a while she used only some of the fragments. That season perplexed her. 

She didn’t like the cold.  She was frightened by glaciers: Enormous blue-white citadels moving towards the sea, skyscrapers of ice bent on barely discernible progress until they reach the continent’s edge and tip inelegantly into the sea.  That is what this is all about: moving from frozen to liquid and then letting go.  Letting go was not her first choice.  Her first choice was clinging.

Letting go was slow in developing.  It is still not done.  It comes in stops and starts with sometimes dark moons and missing stars.  And sometimes the sun shines so bright she wears a blister. Thank Jesus for the Sabbath, for celebrations that include candles. Fire. Fire. Fire. She struggles with limbs and appendages. She sets her sights on what she thinks she needs and lets go all over again. She's often dizzy but not so much as she was before. She is coming to love movement and understanding her need to change.

I hope you never change, they said.
But Life said, I hope you do. I hope you keep changing. I hope you never stay the same. 
You aren’t the girl we knew, they said.
She doesn't argue but in her heart she knows she wasn't who they thought she was.  

This is a season of stepping into The Push. A season of tumbling.  Grace has her flying head over heels. She accepts the spinning. Moving keeps her warm. She's made friends with Grace and admitted she can't change. Only Grace can change her and He did and He is.  She reminds herself often: Change is good. I am not afraid of change. Stuck is what to fear. Stuck prevents change.   

When a Fireball Lands in the Middle of Your Dreams

This is what happens when the fireball in the sky lands in your dream and you have to listen to its flames and have to make sense of the blazing language that climbs up on your tongue and starts it wagging. A light gets turned on. All those dark nights turn into summer and you begin to see why the shadows confused you. The fireball doesn’t have to be enormous, it just have to be hot. Given the nature of fire you know that it is. You know it can burn you but it won’t. The fire will only burn the things that aren’t needed. Things like shame or fear or regret. Things like "I wish I had not..., I should have... I missed out on...." Once the fireball lands you’ll be like those crazy people in Acts who knew about love. You’ll stop being cold, you’ll think about winter and how it won’t ever freeze you. You’ll realize how ridiculous it is to bundle up your desire. You’ll begin to yearn and stop caring about what is missing and why you can’t have it. You’ll start telling the truth and feel the fire warm you on the inside where snow used to camp. You’ll act a little crazy when the fireball lands but it will be the kind of crazy that makes sanity jealous. People will circle around just to stay warm and you won’t run out of blankets. I think the fireball was never meant to hide in the sky. I think it was meant to hide in you and me. It was meant to cause an uproar. To wake us up. To keep us hopping. To make us lie still. To undo us, to put us back together. All of this. All of that. The whole thing is ours. Its fire and its God and it is crazy and its good and now we can fan the flames and let it burn. Good morning.