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Primitive religion is not believed, it is danced!

Arthur Darby Nock

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Browning



Sunday, May 12, 2019

And I walked


““I've got a bad case of the 3:00 am guilts - you know, when you lie in bed awake and replay all those things you didn't do right? Because, as we all know, nothing solves insomnia like a nice warm glass of regret, depression and self-loathing.”
 D.D. Barant, Dying Bites
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Tonight I walked the road

Not my normal walk
Where, entertained by the Finn the dog
And stirred by the mountains and the skies
I walk peacefully
Caressed by the Sacred
And Kissed by the stars As they come out to play

No tonight I mostly looked down
At the gravel and dirt and cracked asphalt
And I walked, and I walked

and thought about many things

I found myself thinking
About how futile it feels at times
And about how totally ineffective I feel

At least at this point of my life

I thought about the fact that people who have
For 10 plus years, listened to me try to share the way of Jesus
Still support one who violates that way

Am I that inarticulate?
Am I that devoid of the Spirit?

I found myself thinking of those people with mental health issues
Who left our therapy sessions
Unchanged

I thought of my children
Such amazing beings

But for years, for a lifetime I have sat on the periphery of their lives
It is not that I don’t want to be engaged
It is not even that I haven’t tried

But honestly?
I don’t really know how to do it.

I thought about aging out of my role as the leader of the mental health program
Of being the aged, sagging Crown Victoria replaced
By the one younger, stronger, and probably smarter.

I thought about clients who left unchanged
Frustrated

I thought about my children, how for so many years
I have lived on the periphery of their lives
Feeling awkward and ineffective
Not knowing how to weave my life more fully into theirs

I thought about how I have struggled to really find intimacy
With anyone

There have been moments,
But then they were gone

I thought about how seldom I talk to my sisters
About how many church people I have not visited (when I should)

I don’t have to wait until 3am
To find myself in the place
Where I am haunted by how ineffective I have been
at bending the curve toward love

tonight I walked
and wondered
if it were time to step down from the pulpit
time to hand over the program

tonight I walked

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