Tag Archives: truthtelling

don’t miss out

don't-miss-out

“Don’t miss out,” she said.
She was trying to get her two younger twin sisters arranged
In the laundry room before they came
dancing out to the music.

+++

I think I know exactly what is happening.
what means what
what is and isn’t important
what is and isn’t valuable
what is and isn’t worthwhile
what is and isn’t clearly meaningful when
push comes to shove
and kingdom math is done.

and so I do my best to
be involved in the things that
bring honor
and respect
and value
and power
and validity
to the pursuit of the
kingdom come on earth as in heaven.

but I find out–
more often than not–
that I had no idea what actually matters
what actually counts
what God is actually looking for
what moments are actually worth holding on to
as if we are holding on to life itself
because perhaps we actually are

+++

I heard her say,
wearing her dancing tutu as if
that’s what we always wear on a Tuesday night

“Don’t miss out!”

She yelled it in a kind of panicked voice,
as if it happens when we don’t know it is happening,
and if we don’t participate right then
the chance will vanish forever.
And she was telling the truth, of course,
as children often do.

“Don’t miss out,” she said
to her younger twin sisters, both in leotards
before they danced to whatever kind of music I could find on my iPhone.
And then they moved gracefully and childishly
from the flung open closet doors into the den
dancing to whatever music I offered for dancing.

And the room was filled with the promise
that we are all figuring this out
slowly and surely
when we don’t know what to do
and we don’t know how to do it
but we know that there is something
we can’t live life without
and it has to do with us dancing
in our leotards on a Tuesday night

because the Kingdom of Heaven is made clear
over dinner
on Tuesday nights
when we have no idea what on earth is happening
but we know, as if our lives depend on it,
that we can’t miss out.

So we have nothing left to say except
“Amen.”

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

and once again we sing

Vietnam B-52 Bomb Craters

Throughout my last two jobs, I’ve had the same folded-up xerox copy of the first page of a memoir which has the following lines attributed to an anonymous Vietnamese poem taped to the wall above my desk:

We fill the craters left by the bombs
And once again we sing
And once again we sow
Because life never surrenders.

These words struck me when reading the memoir, but these days I don’t remember why. Over the last three years, I’ve thought a great deal about trauma and grief. First motivated to begin understanding it more while working with the survivors of homicide-loss, and then through my own personal journey through difficult work days, and now in the context of the lives of my individual clients as well as communities in which we work for transformation and development.

The notion that suffering and pain, while seen to be inherently private and uber-personal, is in reality communal and fundamentally social, the words are becoming more and more haunting.

As the church moves into communities of violence, systemic injustice, stigma, poverty, materialism, greed, addiction and isolation, we are often afraid to sing songs that the people waiting for the kingdom have sung for hundreds upon hundred of years…

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
    when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars
    we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
    our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
    they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” 
(from Psalm 137)

As a people waiting and working for transformation, before we fill the craters, before we take on life again, we must tell the dirty truth about our loss and despair and all that is wrong and evil and messy and undone in the world, in our private and personal worlds, and in our communal and social worlds. If we, those who hold the promise that life never surrenders, can’t tell the truth about the mess of it all, then we aren’t yet ready, aren’t yet brave enough, to sing and sow once again.

2013-02-01_16-01-42_735

djordan
Summar Dr.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,