These words are for the artists and dreamers 

Who want a slippery God,

Not the stone one

nailed permanently to a cross in old buildings,

tacked down in polity and institution.

These are letters to the distracted ones

Endlessly scrolling the glowing screen

Needing a word to help them look up

At the glimmering sky,

To awaken again to the world.

These are for the workers, the doers, 

Who never have time or energy enough,

The ones enduring the daily monotony 

Longing to escape the slow strangle

Of unending tasks and obligations.

These are for the weary mothers

Wondering if they are disappearing,

Drowning in the bottomless needs 

of their beautiful beloveds.

These are for you,

You gorgeous broken-hearted,

open-hearted ones.

You oh-so-overwhelmed ones.

You vibrant, silent ones.

You unnoticed, unsung ones.

You treasure hunters,

Looking for words and incantations,

That will map a way to the 

Magic underneath everything.

You who wonder why

Religion hasn’t been spacious enough

To allow the mystical, the whimsical, the wild

Divine to slip in.

You who are parched and

Longing for a deeper well

Of more and more

and more.

You who don’t long for more dead words

On more dead pages,

But living words and musical balm.

You who recognize the dance of this life

with all its terrible and tender grace.

You who need a sacred place 

To hold what is real, and holy, and true.

This place, these pages,

This sanctuary of phrases

is for you.

A Note to Myself.

The poet John Ashbery wrote: “Notice the rafters,” and I thought he meant it metaphorically.

But I realize now that this can be taken as literal instruction. See the actual room I am in. Write poetry about the dusty floorboards and piles of laundry. Compose arias about chasing your toddler down the hall for the 100th time this hour. Create artworks inspired by the budget meeting or the spilled cup of coffee. Fashion prayer of the tedious and the ordinary. If I think beauty must be found in spite of these things, I will never find it. Instead, beauty must be made of them.

This particular place, this moment, these people, these circumstances are the raw materials. Stop wishing for better supplies.

I already have what I need. Now, I must pick up my pencil and brushes, and begin.

A Blessing for the Raw Materials:

May mothering awaken what is most wild within you. May it make you strong, majestic and ugly. May it rub away the surfaces until you are most real: More fully alive. More full of love, grief, fear, and hope than you ever dreamed. May it deepen your capacity to feel all things. 

May pastoring awaken you to listen for the holy in every story. May it challenge you to find purpose and beauty in the most difficult or ordinary of days. May this vocation reveal God, not in some abstract theological way, but in the faces of flawed people living complicated lives in the here and now. 

May the way you wrestle with the challenges of work and family become a dance that enlivens you enough to create fresh choreography, new movements of holy grace. May there be wildness still, not by taking off for a new adventure, but by discovering the mystery and depth of this one particular life you have carved out.