Who knows Your Bank Routing Number

If by fear I write
the rhythm then
is not poem at all
but pen and syntax
carefully thought out
never breathing in and out
and in and out
foot falls
door raps
a cop steps on the front steps
summons justice
my day in court
the broken glass
I still find when
I pack it in and pack it out
Three days wages
two weeks of what
I earn
he won't return
my calls
hems and haws
the phone clicks
time repents
and justice calls

Looking Back

I just wrote my prayer support a letter this morning saying I wasn't going to look back, but by request here are photos from last year. I chose ones I didn't post last year. Tried to find odd ones. Eliminated all that made me look old, fat or ugly. There were a lot where I looked tired. It was stress. I needed to get a job, my one at GNN was winding down to part time, very part time. I had lost child support and I hadn't been paid in three weeks. In the midst of that I took a vacation and then found a job in August, was evicted from the house in September (because my land lord defaulted in his loan.) So I really wasn't stressed yet. I am still moving into my house and I ask myself often... or maybe I should ask, "Can I relax yet?" I think I can a bit and enjoy myself. Life isn't half bad.

Epiphany Squared

She hasn't drawn since she was a young child. She used to draw paper dolls, she just stopped. We decided it was ok to draw the apples blue. She is very young and very brave.

My first attempt. I drew with my mentee.

My second attempt. I drew while I listened to this new girl's story.

My mentee's version. She loves color.

The beauty of art ministry is that it opens doors. The question is will we have the courage to walk through them when they open or will we shut it down. The kids and I mean kids God sends me, need someone. And the fact that I have gone through what I have gone through, does not disqualify me, it qualifies me unless all you care about is appearance. Appearance doesn't heal, it doesn't open doors, it doesn't please God. It isn't real. But it is real sad.

I would rather have a room full of little girls like the one I found today than a room full of respectability.

Thanks but no thanks. You did me favor.

Epiphany Squared

My youngest, no my baby slams
the screen door I love and
heads out to tomorrow .
I am sure.
I glimpse an opening into
something bigger than
what it seems.
He hops into the SUV
with friends and they
head west to the airport and
I retreat into my thoughts and routine
But the wonder of it all lingers.
Something bigger than it seems.

Spread before me
The blues and golds
The linear shapes are told
We create the colors
Of this life, the strife
Corrects us in unexpected ways
She speaks and it seems
Her story overlaid in me
my own
I know of what she speaks
It wounds me
It seems
It calls me to Him
It shows me a plan
That must be
Epiphany again
The something bigger than it seems.
And in the chalk lines we lay down
fill with colors of our lives
tell story of the strife
The whys we felt
We had to leave
The fight we face
Consumed by grace
Her life overlaid in me
And I see again
The why.
Her name is like a flower.

This is the best I can do right now......... I need to talk about this... but I don't know where the words are. She asked me if I was a grandma and then she let her story spill out and it overlaid in mine and I understood it all and why I was there. There has to be a plan and a way to survive. No thrive.

Found this.... what I mean by strife.

[Strindberg's] recovery from this dark night of the soul, under the tender care of his mother-in-law, led to a radical transformation in his personality, his religious beliefs, and his approach to theater. Whereas Strindberg formerly believed, for example, that what passed for love between men and women was strife, a crude Darwinian struggle for supremacy resolved only through the victory of one sex over the other, by the time he writes A Dream Play he has abandoned his Naturalistic strategies and misogynistic dogmas and embraced a kind of rueful asceticism modeled on Eastern religions.

Strindberg's change in mood was further influenced by the dissolution of his third marriage, to the actress Harriet Bosse. Previously inclined, and on the slightest pretext, to accuse his female partners of infidelity, lesbianism, careerism, uncleanliness, sloppy bookkeeping, and trying to emasculate him (his model was Hercules, robbed of his club by Omphale and forced to do female tasks), Strindberg was beginning to concede that he might share some of the blame for the way his relationships had been unraveling. Trapped in a repetition compulsion, he recognized that he was producing the same neurotic patterns over and over again.

from Dreaming a Dream Play
Robert Brustein on Theater. New Republic, 00286583, 01/15/2001, Vol. 224, Issue 3

Now that it is technically Thursday

The Haiku I wrote eating bar-b-que pizza at noon.
Haiku can be one line.
It helps if this form gives the haiku another dimension.
This haiku seemed somehow linear.




moonshadow silently breathing.




Breathing is a measure of time
a moonshadow is ethereal and as transient as a breath
you really have to stop and watch
maybe see for the first time

not rushing

Little Plastic Red Gas Cans

People really do mess with my mind. I mean 4 realz. So after a hard day at work, I mean hard day.... I wanted to shoot the phone. I did threaten to and my boss shut my door and put me in time out. LOL.

I was interrupted a million times a million = a million squared which cannot, I repeat cannot be a rational number. You have to make it one to work with it, quiz me. I digress.........

I was interrupted from my scientific experiment in InDesign and the database merge. Almost a nerd. I no lie merged the excel file converted to a .cvs and created, I repeat, created 6,664 InDesign pages with one piece of data on each page. The LARGEST Home Owners Association Directory in history... so if you live in Canyon Creek I apologize, it is huge. I sent the files to my tech support person to figure out. He did the SAME thing last year before he figured it out. It is probably a simple setting. Go figure.

I get home and I sleep. See it restores my soul and makes it so I can study BEGINNING ALGEBRA (I am proud) and maybe write a how to article about cloth tissue holders. Don't mess with me you will get one as a stocking stuffer. (I opened your AMERICAN EAGLE playing cards for a photo shoot, sorry, but for a good cause.)

So I sleep and the phone rings......... it is Scott. He hesitates, did he wreck my bike again? No it needs a new WHEEL. He is OOG. That is out of gas at Walmart near the house.

I pull my sad body out of bed and take the Little Red Plastic Gas Can and help him out. (I am sending him to Chaipas with the man who collects Little Red Plastic Gas Cans and I wonder what other bad habits will he come back with?) GEE. Did we just hear about Little Red Plastic Gas Cans Collections in the sermon?

I think Scott is messing with me. But he was really out of gas at Walmart. So I went and helped and did not get mad, because Scott and I have an open honest relationship. And I had to pick up a few items I forgot when I shopped last week. :)

Raising Boys on My Own

Each pregnancy I thought I would have a daughter. Having grown up in a house full of sisters, that was something I could understand. When the second son arrived I realized my fate was to be the mother of boys and I relaxed knowing that with my adventurous nature God knew what he was doing and I was perfectly suited for the task. So I went at it like I do all things overachieving, trying to be the best that I could at the task set before me.
I like to hike, ride bike and I am an artist. That alone takes me out of the world of the girly girl and puts me into the strange category. I would rather canoe up the Rio Grande for an afternoon than shop in Manhattan, although I would try it if the offer ever came up. I would rather conquer the North rim of the Grand Canyon on a mule than take a Caribbean cruise although I love the ocean, it is in my blood. Let’s camp in the Keys somewhere and snorkel instead and eat at the bar that Hemmingway frequented. I don’t need linen and lace when there is an adventuring waiting for me.
So sons provide that adventure I have needed. Because I don’t really believe in fate, it is providence, provision.
Parks and the pools played a big part of the summer agenda for the boys. We frequented them regularly taking their friends or meeting them there. There was little league and soccer which I think I enjoyed more than they did. I was on the floor building legos and tents in the living room and bedrooms were a regular affair. My soul needs to wade in a creek or explore the tidal pools at Laguna Beach or see where this road will take us through the canyon. All this is stored in my heart and mind and although the last few years have been hard I am not going to let the enemy steal it.

Last summer when I couldn’t really afford it Scott and I headed for the coast, south of Galveston where we asked, where does this road lead as the sunsets over the intercoastal high way and we discovered the light of the refinery and took photographs of each discovery. We ate on the waterfront and talked a blue streak about all that was lost. Then we handed to Houston for a concert and I was abandoned to friends and spent the evening in a hotel alone having danced the delicate dance with my son that lies between child and manhood.

I am glad I danced.

Feet Washing

Servants
Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. John 13:3-5

The Lord used the book Jesus on Leadership to prepare my heart before I received my call to ministry. The book brought me to a point of being willing to surrender my live totally to God’s service. The author begins the book with a memorable scene. (Note: the other book I used was God's Call, the cornerstone of effective ministry by Neil Knierim and Yvonne Burrage, Lifeway)

I rode with Henry Webb and Ralph Hodge to Atlanta for the first Promise Keeper’s Clergy Conference. While there, God changed my heart. One evening we heard Wellington Boone speak on reconciliation. He commented that while reconciliation between blacks and whites was important, God could not bring revival until blacks were reconciled among themselves. Wellington began to honor Tony Evans, a black pastor in Dallas. I did not know that Dr. Evans had been catching flack from the black community because he has reached out to whites.

Rev. Boone said in front of forty-two-thousand-plus clergy, “if I had a cup of water, I would wash Tony Evans feet.” The men of integrity would have nothing of idle words. Suddenly, a man jumped up and approached the stage with a glass of water. Almost immediately, another man came running down the aisle waving a towel. Men began to cheer and stand to their feet.

Another black clergyman on the platform, Bishop Porter, went to Tony Evans, stood him up, and led him to a chair on center stage. Wellington Boone took the towel and the water, unlaced Tony Evan’s shoes, and washed his feet. The place erupted with emotion. Men began to cry at the display of humility and honor. I began to cry because I knew God really wanted me to wash the feet of those who had called me to decide who deep the mission of God was in my life. That was it. I knew. My responsibility was to wash their feet. God would take care of the rest. (Jesus on Leadership by Gene Wilkes p. 5)

Last spring at Breakaway 05 our youth camp, I had my own powerful encounter with feet washing. Kevin, Kyle and Jordan had planned an awesome week at camp. As they prepared they decided to set the pace of camp by setting aside the Sunday evening for worship. The decision to use all five senses while engaged in the act of worship brought results beyond our expectations. Drawing on the traditions of the Christian faith we set up stations that the students would pass through; a room of incense for the sense of smell, music for hearing, a PowerPoint presentation of the names of God for sight, the feet washing for touch. We completed the service with communion for sense of taste.

I was asked to do the feet washing, the touch aspect of our sensory worship. As a child raised the Brethren church, a denomination who regularly practiced the ceremony each *Maundy Thursday, I was familiar with this ancient rite. I was able to pull from my memories and the resource of my father.Paired with Jordan, we were stationed outside on the patio between the tennis courts and pool. It was a beautiful cloudless night. There was no wind, unusual for that time of year in Texas.Jordan read the scripture, John 13:1-17, and I gave a brief talk from what the Lord had placed on my heart.

For who is greater, the one who reclines at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves.Luke 22:27

Jesus asked this question of his disciples at what is now know as the Last Supper. It was an unexpected question because the disciples had just finished arguing about who was to be this greatest. (Luke 22:24). It was an ironic question because Jesus had just finished the Passover supper and he had lead them through the first communion service and told them on of them one among them would betray him. Jesus was pointing to what he had done for them in the interim after the meal and before communion. He had washed their feet as a sign of humility and a lesson in servanthood. Jesus was making a point, because it was obvious they had not gotten it yet as he listened to their argument. He had come to serve. He was the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. He was prepared to die and preparing them for his death.

This is a simple ceremony we are going to partake in. At one time in all the protestant denominations and in the early church it was a common practice, however, it has fallen to the wayside because it makes people feel uncomfortable. This is sad, because it is a very powerful picture of the living Christ.

In silence Jordan and I started to wash the feet of the students, about a dozen at a time. I washed a young woman’s feet and Jordan a young man’s. They in turn washed the feet of the person beside them. We did this four times as each group of youth made their way to us. Each time it became richer and richer. The youth as they passed through all the stations were being transformed too. The presence of God was as strong among us as the night was deep, windless and silent. But the most powerful thing I witnessed was when Jordan knelt down and washed the feet of his wife Jennifer. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I witnessed one of the most beautiful acts of love of think I have ever seen. That is the heart of Jordan, my friend; he is a servant of God. He loves his wife more than himself.

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*The word "Maundy" comes from the Latin for 'command' (mandatum). It refers to the command given by Jesus at the Last Supper, that his disciples should love one another.

http://www.thisischurch.com/christianinfo/maundythursday.htm