Here’s an uplift for your day.
It comes fresh from a blogger named David from New Zealand. I came across “Say ‘Yes!'” this morning following up on a comment left yesterday in response to Steve Shoemaker’s poem “Denial” on Views from the Edge. I’m glad I did.
Click Say “Yes!” and embrace your life.
What do you think? Are you having a Yes, No, or Maybe kind of day? Remember, it’s the only one you have and no one else gets to live it. Thanks for dropping by.
Steve Shoemaker
It’s Monday of Holy Week. I’m walking with Jesus as best I can toward the cross and toward the celebration of Easter. This year I’m walking with members of the congregation who are suffering, in great pain, sick, dying people, trying the best I can to be with them fully in ways that, by the grace of God, might help. This is not head stuff. It’s heart stuff. I get tangled in my head too often. I open the morning email. There’s this double acrostic poem from my old friend Steve Shoemaker, the 6’8″ and shrinking Ph.D. kite-flyer theologian and poet. Thank you, Steve.EASTER MORNING
Either Jesus really did rise or
All his followers made up the worst
Series of lies in history… Poor
Thomas certainly was right to doubt
Even after hearing tales: what four
Reached the tomb (or five?) Who saw him first?
Matthew says two women, Mark says three;
Or was it just one, as said by John?
Reports of what eye-witnesses can see
Never can be trusted. Luke said one
In the road joined two who could not see–
Not until he broke the bread… No one
Got the story straight! Conspiracy?
Even grade school kids could do as well.
And Luke throws in Peter saw him too–
Somewhere unreported… Who could tell
That this jumble of accounts could do
Enough to give faith and hope to all.
Resurrection? Who could think it true?
Maybe just the simple: those whose eyes
Open to the light through grief, through tears…
Reminded of love, of truth, of grace…
Needing to be fed, hands out for bread…
Inspired by the scriptures, in whose head
Grow visions: life can come from the dead.
I’m adding this visual: “Disciples John and Peter on their way to the tomb”:
Disciples John and Peter Run to the Tomb
Burnand, Eugène, 1850-1921. Disciples John and Peter on their way to the tomb on Easter morning, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55038 [retrieved April 2, 2012].
Steve and I would love to hear your reflections and responses to Steve’s poem or Burnand’s painting. Thanks for coming by.
What You Cannot Have (A List). This insightful piece, by the same poet who wrote “The List” (posted here several days ago, was in my email inbox this morning. I quickly posted a comment on Bluebird’s blog. This writer is REALLY good. After last night, I needed this more than my morning coffee. As I said on the blog, “A bluebird just flew by my window(s program).” Whoever you are, Bluebird, thanks for flying by, and…thanks for this delicious cookie.
Some moments last a lifetime.
Chicago Seven - Dale Hartwig in red shirt
My friend Dale has Parkinson’s. He has boarded a train in Michigan (he’s now in a long-term care center there) to be with “The Chicago Seven” – the seven former classmates who gather annually at McCormick Theological Seminary. This year, Dale’s speech is hard to comprehend. He is reduced to listening. Death and dying are sitting at the table.At the morning reflection and round-table sharing, Dale is sitting to my right. When his turn comes, we look at Dale. There is an awkward silence. He hands me something. He wants me to read aloud what he’s written. I read his words aloud.
Gordon C. Stewart – written in thanksgiving for the Chicago Gathering, 2004:
“THE SURROGATE VOICE”
The surrogate voice reads on,
the author sits and sobs
wrenching tears from primal depth:
from some abyss of joy or nothingness…or both.
The author’s sighs and piercing sobs
arrest routine,
invoke a hush,
dumb-found the wordy room.
He cannot speak,
his Parkinsons’ tongue tied,
his voice is mute, in solitude confined,
all but sobs too deep for words.
Another now becomes his voice
offering aloud in a dummy’s voice
the muted contribution
in poetic verse the ventriloquist’s voice has penned.
The abyss of muted isolation ope’d,
his words, re-voiced aloud,
hush the seven to sacred silence, all…
except from him, their author.
Whence comes this primal cry:
From depths of deep despair and death,
from loneliness, or depths of joy
We do not know.
The surrogate voice reads on
through author’s signs and sobs,
through his uncertain gasps for air
and our uncertain care.
The iron prison gates – the guards
of his despair – unlock and open out
to turn his tears from prison’s hole
to tears of comrade joy.
His word is spoken, his voice is heard,
a word expressed
in depth and Primal Blessing,
pardoned from the voiceless hell.
The stone rolls back,
rolls back, rolls back,
from the brother’s prison’s tomb,
the chains of sadness snap and break!
At one, at one, we Seven stand,
in Primal Silence before the open tomb,
as tears of loss, of gain, of tongues released
re-Voice unbroken chords of brotherhood.
All moments are sacred. Some last a lifetime.
Morning reflections composed today by my friend Steve Shoemaker
She Could Give a Kiss
She could give a kiss
and not have less to share.
He could take a kiss
and still have more to give.
She could have a child
and still have time for him.
He could be a child
and run away from her.
– Steve Shoemaker, 03.21.12
Your Dear Eyes
Your dear eyes…
Macular Degeneration,
what a multi-syllabic curse.
Hazel: sometimes blue,
sometimes green, birthing
children’s eyes of blue and gold…
Flashing with indignation,
pensive, wise, creative, wary–
yes, windows to a good soul.
Let us see all that we can see
while we can. Travel, taste, hear,
feel and, yes, smell what is good
around the world. All of us
are fading into dust: some of us
receive a warning–fair or unfair.
– Steve Shoemaker 03.21.12
“And the Word became flesh….” and words.
Little Steve at Sheldon Jackson Church, Colorado
Sometimes it comes in a poet’s words. The flesh it comes in is all shapes and sizes. Here’s a photo of Steve (6’8” and shrinking) standing behind a historic pulpit at Sheldon Jackson Church in Colorado. Sheldon was a bit shorter. Who says ministers don’t have a sense of humor!LEAVE A COMMENT on Steve’s poems. He, I, and others would love to know what you think. Or, in today’s butchered English, “Me and him” look forward to seeing/hearing the words YOU share.
“You have ca… You have can.. cancer. But we think it’s treatable.”
I read The List early this morning, the day after hearing a doctor tell a wonderful older couple the news. The full bone scan tells a different story. It can be treated with radiation, but at what price for an old man already writhing in unbearable pain? My friend has been on “the list” once before 20 years ago. Now he’s back on it, this time for good. He’s a strong man, but not that strong, not immortal, not invulnerable. The treatment will not stop it this time. Morphine and lots of love will see him through until he’s off the list for good.
My step-daughter, Katherine, was placed on “the list” at age 30. She was exited the list at 34. Her ashes are on the mantel now. Her courage, her buoyancy, her steadfast refusal to let being on “the list” define her, her compassion for the doctors and nurses who “treated” her with surgery, chemo, more surgery, radiation, lasers, and morphine, and for us, the members of the family to whom she brought so much delight, have left us with so much more than what’s left on the mantel.
I’ll post a piece written during the third year of Katherine being on “the list” later today. Look for “It’s raining; it’s pouring.”
For now, share your stories with a comment here, or go to Courteney Bluebird’s blog and comment there. All of her work is remarkable and worth the visit.
Purple-yellow iris (Kay Stewart photography). Poem by you know who.
Purple-Yellow Iris
Sometimes I feel all blue
Sad Sorry Down
Like the Blues
A Rhapsody in Blue
Sometimes
When the Blues
Begin to play in me,
It happens –
Blue bursts into purple
Leaping into joy
And a burst of sun-burst yellow
Comes crashing through the blues
I feel all clean
All wet All up
Like a hymn
An ode to purple-yellow joy
Views from the Edge 