Nov 08 2012
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poems, Quotes

before the end of this day

You are God of all our possibilities. You preside over all our comings and goings, all our wealth and all our poverty, all our sickness and all our health, all our despair and all our hope, all our living and all our dying.

And we are grateful.

You are God of all of our impossibilities. You have presided over the emancipations and hearings of our mothers and fathers; you have presided over the wondrous transformations in our own lives. You have and will preside over those parts of our lives that we imagine to be closed.

And we are grateful.

So be your true self, enacting the things impossible for us, that we might yet be whole among the blind who see and the dead who are raised; that we may yet witness your will for peace, your vision for justice, your vetoing all our killing fields.

At the outset of this day, we place our lives in your strong hands. Before the end of this day, do newness among us in the very places where we are tired in fear, we are exhausted in guilt, we are spent in anxiety.

Make all things new, we pray in the new-making name of Jesus.

 

+ W. Brueggeman, from “You beyond our weary selves” in Prayers for a Privileged People

 

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Nov 04 2012
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learning to live, the calendar

an unspeakable honor

there is an unspeakable honor
buried deep and wide
in the days
and weeks
and months
and years
of doing life together with other people

time is marked much by
the kind of laughter that makes stomach muscles hurt
the kind of tears that make the tips of our noses hurt
the kind of stress that makes the bottoms of our guts hurt
and the kind of joy that makes everything worth waiting it out

and so we give thanks
while doing life together
when the sharp and truthful moments roll around
that shine like beacons in the water
like roadsigns on the journey
like answers to questions
like human touch to grief
like peace to chaos
like silence to silence
like rightness to wrongness

and it’s in those moments
that we pause
and give thanks to God Almighty
that in the ways of the kingdom
there are things worth sticking around for
and sticking around for and with kingdom friends
is and will always be
an unspeakable honor

so we mark those sharp and truthful moments in our calendars
for those other days where we are less sure
what it is that we are sticking around for at all.

God remind us.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

 

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Oct 29 2012
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learning to live

again at the labyrinth

It’s been almost one year exactly since I last walked the path of the labyrinth outside my therapy office window. I took about fifteen minutes this afternoon to make the trek in, knowing I wouldn’t have time before my next client to make the walk back out.

My intentions, stepping foot into the concrete-puzzled path, was to pray through an anxiety that has been pressing in on me over the last few weeks. I intended to let the sharp red leaves falling and floating across the path offer a kind of poetic aesthetic that would remind me all is well and all will be well.

As one foot made its way in front of the other, my prayers were quickly replaced by the memories of what was pressing in on me the last time I walked through these same stones.  Fear and worry for friends losing jobs, relationships falling apart, futures unknown, and trying to function in the middle of the chaos in ways that were filled with grace and mercy at least in part while I was simultaneously bleeding anger and resentment.

A few loops in now, I remembered that the last time I walked this labyrinth, whatever my intentions were faded quickly and I started to become fully present in spirit learning the bodily art of putting one step in front of the other: something the homicide-loss group teaches me often. 

The sharp red leaves did begin to fall and swirl around the gray and burnt red stone as I made my way through a few more loops.

After a round of quiet breathing, I began to see a kind of baggage trailing behind me. In my prayer-walking, I was being given the gift of visualizing all that I am pretending to carry fall from my hands and back and gut and stay behind in my tracks, only where I have been. In the faithful art of putting one foot in front of the other, there continued to be a clear way, and more room to let go of all that is and has been pressing in and pressing down.

Moving closer to the center, I was passing the paths where I had already shed weight, so while I saw them and was right next to them, they were no longer in my way.

I made it to the center, read the etched in Psalm 46:10, and moved back to the entrance, back into the office, and back into a conversation at the heart of a family wrestling to make relationships work.

In spirit and body, and a commitment to putting one foot in front of the other, the weight lightens.

Sometimes.

djordan
Pine Tree

Related Posts | A Concrete Maze | What They Are Teaching Me

 

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Oct 22 2012
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learning to live, poems, what they are teaching me

in our honest hours

in our honest hours
of anxiety
of unsureness
of exhaustion
of insecurity
of restlessness
of loneliness
of misunderstanding
of arrogance
of boredom
of transition
of self-righteousness
of worry
of confusion
of isolation
in our honest hours
where we are altogether not our best

we come face to face
even when through a dim mirror
with the promise of how things will be
and we feel our souls
lift
weightless
weightlessly
to the sky
with the promise of how all things will be
when all things are as they should be

and then, we live more musically
in our honest hours

djordan
Pine Tree

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Oct 17 2012
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learning to live, what they are teaching me

he measured time in houses

When asked how long ago something happened, he said, “three houses ago.”

We were both laying on the floor of my therapy office, playing with cardboard boxes painted to look like bricks. Recently adopted into the “last house” he was placed in, at around ten years old, he’s in trouble here and there for stealing and lying.

I’m always amazed at how conversations are hijacked by the problems, and both parent and child never notice that the problem begins to run the show and determine who the child is and who the child will be. Most of the time, the therapist is fooled as well.

Trying to see how we could stack the cardboard bricks in ways that would almost crash down, but stay standing, it was his answer that snapped me out of my haze. It was his answer to a simple question that made me realize I had been thinking about him as a child who is a sometimes thief and liar, rather than as a child who, after his parents were caught and incarcerated for drugs, has moved so many times to so many different foster homes, it has become a reliable method of time-telling.

Me: “When did you last see your mom?”
Him: “Three houses ago.”

The session ended soon after, with block stacking and rearranging happening as I was realizing how off-track I’ve been in working with him. The only other words spoken once he answered “three houses ago,” were one last exchange between the two of us before our time was up.

Me: “Do you know I think you’re a pretty strong dude?”
Him: “No.”
Me: “Well, I think you’re a pretty strong dude. Can we discover together next time what it is that makes you so strong?”
Him: “That would be cool.”
Me: “I think so too.”

 

djordan
Nashville

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Oct 16 2012
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learning to live, on, poems

sabbath tuesday mornings

the beauty of the sabbath
and the reminder of both
all we can accomplish
and all we can only hope for
in our work
is found in
the beauty of the sabbath

rest required
in small part because we need the break
in large part because we need the reminder
that we are joining in the work
not steering it
not guiding it
not forcing it
but joining it
but learning it
but trusting it

and so the sabbath
becomes the reminder
that we are invited
that we are needed
that we are a part,

and only a part
a humble
a grateful
a broken part,

of the magic of the work.
so there is always time to rest
even on sabbath Tuesday mornings.

djordan
Pine Tree

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Oct 15 2012
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poems, Prayers

the tension in us

The hardest place that’s worth sticking it out in must be the place of tension.

In the times where we know we must move, but we don’t know how or where or in which direction, the tension burns and builds something new in us.

In the places where we want to do it the right way, with the right intentions, at the right speed and with the right understanding, but we feel the pressure to burst into action because it feels that lives are on the line otherwise, the tension tightens and turns something brave in us.

In the moments where we feel it’s everything we can do to hold back all the yearning and the wishing and the hoping and the praying to keep from cracking open in the most important and tenuous seconds, the tension gags and groans something wise in us.

And so we pray in those times and places and moments when the tension is burning and building, tightening and turning, gagging and groaning in us, that you will give us the steadfastness to stick it out so we can see the fruit of something new in us, something brave in us, and something wise in us.

Amen.

djordan
Pine Tree

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Oct 15 2012
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learning to live

rule-breakers and peace-makers

Although we think we are all alone,
we are all overflowing
in the margins;
we are filling up the outer-spaces

left by the normal
rule-keepers and
peace-keepers

left by the normal
answer-takers and
non-troublemakers.

We find ourselves recklessly seeking
and moreso even recklessly wondering
what it means to be rule-breakers and peace-makers.

So we wonder around
thinking we are on our own
working toward kingdom come
only to find that the road toward
the kingdom is filled with
rule-breakers and
peace-makers and
law-changers and
question-askers and
justice-singers
story-tellers and
kingdom-bringers.

And it is in this work
that we bump into our counterparts
who have been feeling,
also,
that they are all alone.

But in their work
and in their grieving
and in their praying
and in their hoping
they have bumped into us
and we have bumped into them

and the pity lessens
and the courage strengthens

and we find ourselves joined by so many others
living and trying to live
in the margins
pushing toward
the kingdom come
on earth as it is in heaven.

djordan
Pine Tree

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Oct 14 2012
2 Comments
grief and trauma, learning to live, poems

no longer on our own

you’ve been walking a while
mostly in the dark
trying your best to make a map
of where you’ve been
in hopes that you can make a guess
of where you’re going

but the hill has been upward
for such a long time now
you’ve almost decided
you’re not going anywhere or
you’ve been pointed in the wrong direction

but you’ve done your best
to hold out in hopefulness
that you’re almost to the break in the climb

but it’s been in the walking
mostly alone
that you’ve learned the deep value
of holding on to the lantern
with a dim and fickle light
because it’s all you’ve had
to make out where you’ve been
and maybe where you’re going

but we see you now
coming up on the break
in the hill you’ve been climbing
mostly in the dark
mostly alone

and we know what you’re feeling,
mostly we do,
because we remember that climb very well

because of what we remember
we feel our own hearts
jump in our own chests
because of what we remember well

the lost and lone ranger
we remember the fear
we remember the conversations with ourselves
we remember the almost giving up
we remember the almost freaking out
we remember the almost giving in
we remember wondering if we’ve lost our minds
we remember the choice of going back to the crowds
because it felt like the only alternative
to being lost and alone forever

all here together
we now see a glowing
just above the crest of the hill
and all here together
we know that soon
our lights will wrestle the shadows together

you see us
we see you

suddenly that walk was worth it
suddenly the lost and alone and the lesson inside them
have done their work
have done their time

and now, all together
we walk with the light
wrestling the shadows
learning the path

the hill always breaks
and there’s always a crowd ahead of us
waiting, with hearts jumping in chests

because finding each other
is as thrilling as being found

We are no longer on our own.

djordan
León, Nicaragua

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Oct 12 2012
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learning to live, poems

lost and found in the margins

you may have chosen to go there
you may have wandered there on accident
you may have been pushed there by something horrible
you may have been led there by something wonderful

first there, it is all at once terrifying and
all at once invigorating
it is all at once filled with hope and
all at once filled with hopelessness

but however you got there
and whatever it felt like
you find yourself unable to leave
so you begin to make your home there

not because it all makes sense
and not because you know what to do
and not because you’ve been here before
but because you can’t imagine being anywhere else

but here.

and once you decide that you are willing to live there
you find others who moved in long ago
because they chose to go there
because they were wandered there
because they were pushed there
because they were led there

and they too, soon learned, they could not leave

so you join with them
and with the others
and begin to learn what it really means

to live there
to live here
in the margins.

djordan
Managua, Nicaragua

 

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