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A Rainbow With Hands

A morning tear on my cheek begins my day.
Am I tired out from yesterday's chase after answers
or saddened the answers remain in the dark?
It has been said by those who know,
We must choose to live with the questions.
I am glad the ache in my heart and the ache in my head
remain the same from one year to the next.
I still demand the same though time moves on.
And a precious daughter writes me notes of love
and a drawing of a rainbow with hands.

Answers

Seek beautiful dialogue
on the nature of answers.

The greatest possible number of answers
should not create the smallest number of questions.

Adequate answers should never satisfy
those who seek to live at the edge of time.

Beware of answers creating
a numbing of the mind.

Divine movement does not hide in answers
but in questions asked in awkward moments.

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. – John 11:38

One who brings all things to an end,
disturb us 
but just for a little while
for it is through our own glasses
life looks livable
and to have them removed
shocks us
moving us back into our tombs.
Amen.

A Kiss Goodbye

The strangeness in me recedes and
     is caught
in cobwebbed corners before it
     falls slowly
on the golden hair of 
     my daughters.
How strange they now seem!
I recognize their dance as they
     skip out
the front door, yet I misstep,
     stumbling,
kissing them each goodbye.

Picking Up Litter

I have placed discarded, empty bottles
into the trash can at the end of a day.

Why the bottles sometimes line the street
is a question beyond the gathering of my mind.

Garbage is garbage no matter where it lies
or so the thinking goes on those better days.

One day in the great memory bank of time
I will remember having picked up litter.

Will my place in the heavens after life be made,
having cleaned up for the world on these days?

And Now?

Looking at a journal entry 
from many years ago,
I run across the question,
Can I start over again?

Something simple, 
with a book or two.

How is it that I could have a life
and, at the same time, 
wish for another life?

Children crying.
A distant spouse.
My own indifference.

Too tired to even go to bed.

And now?

“But I need to grow more, ripen more.” – Thomas Merton

Oh, to give birth to not just one but to many
rapidly expanding points of light 
where needs are met and uses found.

Imagine filling volumes and volumes 
with bridges from one thought to another

and declaring with the coming of the times,
Oh, my child!  What will the coming time bring?

He kept saying, “I am the man.” – John 9:9

Creator of all creatures,
there are those who point fingers
declaring what we are 
is what we cannot be;
move us beyond
petty comparisons
keeping us behind
false walls.
Amen.

enantiodromia

a conflict of opposites
or the infinitely small 
place in time
where one thing ends
and another starts
from the deepest place
of darkness to a point of light
to ripen more
from a previous state of being
from shrinking to growing
the moment when the seasons change
or a smile beginning
as the last tear falls

“May my heart’s disquiet never vanish” – Pär Lagerkvist

Not a disquiet where something is missing.
More of a yearning towards the next moment.
A desire for the means to be worthwhile.
A sense that peace will soon be found.
And a path, unending,
reaching beyond the heavens.