let time go by so slow

It is a grey day, one in a long series of very grey and very hard days, and I can feel it in my very bones. I press myself up against the railing, leaning my elbows on it and letting my weight rest. Raising my cup to my lips, I sip the tea, shocked by and thankful for the sharp mating of ginger and lemon. I cradle my cup, closing my eyes and letting the brackish wind whip through my hair.

Opening my eyes, I stare across the river at the opposite shoreline. I know that place well, have climbed its rocks and run its damp sands. Today, it is covered in water. The rocks where I sat and giggled and whispered and tilted my face to a fireworks-speckled sky have vanished. I can just make out the places where we crept down the banks, the bushes near the path, the sandy place we set up lawn chairs. It all seems different, almost foreign, with the high tide.

I think that life is like that, too. We play and dance and weep and tell secrets and share joys and fall in love. We become familiar, intimate, with the landscapes of our lives, but somehow, it almost always feels like we're treading water—or even underwater. In times of our lives, too, the tide falls, the veil schisms, the doors open, our feet touch dry ground, and we glimpse, Oh. So this is what that means.

A man paddles by, as I watch, and oh, what I would do to step into his canoe and glide away down the river. But I track his progress and I realize, That's not my place. I think right now, I need to keep my feet planted on the land, my eyes fastened to the shore. I need to stay here, watching the tide. Maybe one day, if I keep looking, I'll see what's under the choking waters. I'll watch as the rocks peep out; I'll realize the true shape of the banks. I'll understand that this is what that meant, and I'll know that everything really was good, all along.


But maybe, just maybe, the waters will never recede, I'll never see, and all I'm meant to do is learn to trust the Mover of the tides . . .

running snail

He was gliding across the rock path when I went out this morning,
       a tiny creamy being encased in a gold and black shell.
  I watched, fascinated, as he glided across the stone faster than I thought possible.
     (I always thought glide wasn't a real action, except with ships.)
He was oblivious of my presence,
    though I was on my hands and knees, face inches from his eyes.
       I only watched for a few minutes
    (I was still in my pajamas, after all)
            before I got up and went back inside.


He's still there, hours later, when I go out again.
    This time, he's fighting his way through the forest of tangled twisty sourgrass and ground cover.
  For a few minutes, I stare down at him, then I put my hand down, in front of him.
       And to my happy surprise, he crawls onto my fingertips.

He is beautiful.

    His squishy sliver of a foot clings to my fingerprint,
 sliding over my skin with quick skill;
          his little eyestalks (is that even what they are?) poke ahead into the air,
   and his feelers play over the area in front of him.
He leaves a thin silver trail behind him.
     His foot tickles.
  He turns, gliding across my palm,
     and I marvel at the loveliness of his shell in the sunlight,
                all golden and shining, with black and grey and brown flecks at the spiral.
  I can see his heart beating, pumping, fluttering, through the thin left wall of his shell.
          It makes me want to cry.
He reaches the edge of my left palm and ascends my pinkie.
     When he reaches the peak—my nail—he hesitates,
         then unceremoniously drops.
           Damn.
    Fortunately for the tiny kamikaze, my other hand is there, 
            cupped and waiting underneath.
   For a moment, he's still, the only movement his eyestalks and feelers,
                 which wave madly, as if only they realize he's dropped onto another plane.
        Then he glides across my right palm, off on yet another mission.
I can still see his heart.
     And as I turn my hand, marveling at the light playing on and through his shell,
              I glimpse my own pulse,
                                  flickering in my wrist, strong under the veil of skin.
      The lump in my throat presses harder.
I would stay here for hours, if I could, cradling him and watching his heart swish,
     but it's getting late in the day, so I move my hand over a patch of viney weeds, 
        guiding him onto a stalk strong enough to bear his weight.
Once he's settled, I get up, brush off my jeans, and go back inside, 
        but I find myself haunted by the image of his tiny heartbeat
                        juxtaposed with my own wrist-pulse.

We are not so different, are we, snail, you with your silver trail, and I with my bare feet?
  Our hearts beat with different rhythms, yes, but we are still so much the same.
       The breath of life flows through our bodies;
                 the pulse of existence beats in our hearts;
                          and the same Lord watches us both. 

All creatures of our God and King
Lift up your voice and with us sing
Oh, praise Him
Oh, praise Him
Alleluia
Alleluia

American poverty

I whine because I have to vacuum the living room carpet.

   I could live on dirt floors, with no electricity for miles.

I complain that I share a car with two other people.

      I could be cut off from the outside world—stores, news, medical care—because it was too far to walk.

I hiss that the ancient oven baked the bread unevenly.

       I could eat one cold meal a day—on a good day.

I mutter that I've gained too much weight, and can't afford a gym or running shoes.

   I could be too weak from hunger and disease to even stand up.

I growl because I hate my old clothes.

    I could wear rags that hadn't ever been washed, except when it rained.

I sigh about cleaning the bathroom.

     I could walk miles to haul my water.

I moan that I'm bored, with no money to go out.

      I could be cowering behind thin walls, praying the bullets don't bite through, that the soldiers don't hear my rattling breath.

I lament my small budget.

    I could be selling my body on street corners, in exchange for a slice of bread and shelter for an evening.

I grouse that my room is too small.

    I could sleep in a pile of siblings under the night sky, shivering in the cold.

I wail that I'll never be able to afford the wedding of my dreams.

     I could have been sold by weeping parents into a "marriage" full of abuse, nightmarish and unending, forced to serve and bear children to a cruel old man.

I fuss that my Bible is too small, too dilapidated with age.

      I could have never touched or even seen a whole Bible in my entire life.

I grumble about the under-funded programs at my church.

     I could be screaming and gasping for breath, begging, praying, that the agony will end, that I'll be released because my only crime was loving Jesus . . . and having no means for a bribe out of prison.


I don't really know what it is to be
                                               hungry
                                          cold
                                                    thirsty
                                             afraid
                                                        wounded
                                         dirty
                                                   sick
                                                      helpless.

 I don't really know what it means to be poor.

          And yet . . . I complain . . .

Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.

Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, "Who is the LORD?"

(Proverbs 30:88-9)

in good times, and bad

Fifty-nine years in the same house—he came home as a baby and never left. He even bought the house from his parents when they retired out of state.

Forty-one years at the same job—he got it right out of high school, proved his worth, and never looked back.

He was steady, and quiet, and predictable, and shy. Nothing ever really changed in his life; he didn't even rearrange the house when his parents moved nineteen years ago.

Then in she walked, three years ago. Highly educated, well-traveled, a temporary resident, she was tiny and quick and adventurous and foreign—all things that should have terrified him.

But they didn't.

He thought he loved her, he told my dad, as he mourned her visa-required home-going. He thought she was the one.

Go get your passport, my dad told him. Go after her, let her know you want her. Meet her family, get to know them, see her home. Show her this is serious—you're serious.

We didn't think he would. He'd never left the country in his life.

But a few months later, we got an e-mail with a photo of him, barefoot, on a bamboo raft in the middle of a Filipino river.

And that was when we knew that she really was the one.

Two days ago, he married her. He wept when she came up the aisle, and he trembled when he reached toward her.

But he held her hands, and he looked in her eyes, and he told her he loved her, and he promised—before God and all of us there—to love her and hold her and take care of her forever.

We all knew he meant those promises.

Today you're getting a kind, generous, faithful man, my dad said to her in the toast. My brother.

He was exactly right. He's right about most things, actually.

If a man truly loves a woman, he will find her anywhere and make her his.

I know this statement to be completely and irrevocably true. I need look no farther than my uncle
. . . and my now-aunt.

Mazel tov.

the gangly youths

When exactly did they get so tall, so boyishly lovely? I remember them as short pudgy kissable babies, sucking pacifiers and smiling chubby little grins. Now here they are, gangly young men, fully-capable older brothers, striking the balance between boy and man quite wonderfully. I listen to their voices rumble, and I smile, marvelling.

Already I can imagine them as men--fathers, husbands, best friends, good men. I won't rush that, though. Today, this shaggy-haired long-limbed skinny stage is best. In just a few years, it will dissolve into broad shoulders and mustaches and college. But for now, I will smile and laugh and tease, and they will hunch and blush and mumble.

I won't always have this upper hand, so I will enjoy it while it lasts, and I will look forward to the day when I tease and they lift their eyes and hit me with a man's confidence. It will knock my breath away--but I will still smile . . . for boy becoming man is one of the most beautiful changes in this world.

black eyes: a haiku

ceiling fans are not
my friends when paired with morning's
limp mind, and bunkbeds

on the cornfields

I watch the fields fly by,
drying corn on near-brown stalks,
and I smell the scent of the leaves.

I could have lived here,
quite happily,
could have walked barefoot and swirling skirt into the cornfields,
could have been swallowed up by the stalks,
and disappeared,
sinking into the earth itself, emerging married to the land.

It's in my blood, my history, this hot humid farmland,
and my heart feels strangely whole in this place.
I think my own roots are tangled deep amongst the corn's.

I close my eyes and dream of it,
but somehow,
I can't quite imagine a life devoid
of chickadees.

so comfortable and so broken in

Do you ever think
        This could make me happy enough?

(There is a vast difference between
        happy
   and
           happy enough.)

What does that enough mean?

It underlines what we think we deserve.
    It says what we believe we're capable of.
       It speaks of disillusionment, cynicism, broken dreams.

Happy enough
    is
      a bride mourning at her wedding
              a child wearing ill-fitting hand-me-downs
          a student enrolling in a major that will pay the bills
      a parent resigning himself to knowing where his child is . . . fifty percent of the time.

Happy enough
    has nothing to do with
             happy
                or
                 enough.

It has to do with settling. It has to do with giving up. It has to do with hopelessness.

Will you be
       happy
           or just
                happy enough?

My God is the LORD

When the fire trucks and police cruisers and ambulances race by, they are nothing more than a temporary nuisance. People stare for a second, pause their conversations, sigh and roll their eyes. But the sirens wail on and on; it seems the screaming lights will never fade into the distance. In a moment, finally, the assault on ears and eyes does fade, the conversations and silences and music—torn by the sirens—are rethreaded, and life flows on as usual. It always seems like the world should stop, freeze for long moments, because somewhere, someone’s world has stopped.

At least, that’s how it was for us.

He was only sixteen, beautiful, hopeful, and invincible as anyone ever was. A month earlier, he’d come walking with us, climbing fences, being a gentleman, teasing, flirting, grinning. As usual—as it always would be.

But no. The road was too wet, the truck was going too fast, he was too new a driver, the load shifted too fast, the ditch was too deep—on and on went the reasons. People spoke of it "not being his time," but really, there was only one reason for his going. God wanted him to come Home.

I’m sure that day, that wet grey March Sunday so many years ago, the fire trucks and police cruisers and ambulances raced by, and I’m sure that people stared and waited and rolled their eyes. But I am also certain that the coversations and silences and music and life that we knew that morning will never be rethreaded, will never continue just as before that afternoon.

Because when the rest of the world went back to their business, our world stopped.

I'd brush the summer by

       A patch of September sun
               caught me by surprise in the middle of the day.
           It poured over my arms like warm syrup,
        dripping into my pores and seeping through my veins.
           I smiled,
             pulled my legs up onto the chest I sat on
       let the rays caress my bare feet, too.
   It was a shocking blessing,
                like an unexpected but welcome kiss,
                     like a puppy tackle,
                 like the perfect cup of tea.
     The September sun
             warmed my bones,
                   cupped my feet,
                embraced my arms,
         clasped me to its chest and rocked me there.
   I closed my eyes
                 and tasted it on my tongue.
Somewhere, the leaves were reddening and crinkling to the ground.
         Snow was hushing the earth to sleep.
              Mosquitoes were being born. 
     But just for the moment,
            I curled, content and purring as a cat,
                   and tilted my face up
       and let the September sun
                               hold me.