the village parson

Fire of Stars

2010-01-13T18:46:00.000-08:00

It is well before the dawn and the moon,
long ago, slip slid quietly away,
leaving glowering stars barely winkling
behind the black rage of thunder head clouds.
In the great beyond these stars, fuming fuel,
burn brilliant, lighting up their galaxies,
but here, among these planets we call home,
they seem benign, harmless, and far away.
Light years of distance separate us all,
so we do not feel their awful burning,
nor their bright day warmth. Not good or evil,
they are small white blinks in a midnight sky.
Here beneath, we wrestle with ramping clouds,
though rainbows promise there will be no flood,
no catastrophic downpour cascading
over all we know. No endless floating
on wooden rafts till all is drowned and dead.
Still, we only see this closer danger.
We study clouds, ignore the falling stars
Cataclysmic infernos surely come.
All will burn to nothing in white hot flame.
On that great day, only what lasts remains.
So why do we fear the dark’ning storm clouds,
when it is collapsing stars that kill us?

Bug Hunting

2009-07-23T05:13:00.000-07:00

Grandma took the boys bug hunting,
turned over leaves, stems, twigs,
watched bugs scurry from their places,
searched for little bug houses in the grass,
created imaginary bug families,
wistful worlds of spiders, beetles, worms.

Smiling, bowed on hands and knees,
before wide-eyed, brown-skinned boys,
Grandma wove fabulous chronicles
of the lives and times of tiny arthropods,
little creatures most of us have never noticed,
unless we’re small enough to bend our knees.

Eventually the boys learned of the dispute
between myth and fact, story and data,
but it was a dark, dreadful day,
a clouded, foul, wretched day,
when the bugs’ world disappeared,
like a monsoon rain down an empty ditch.

Scientific skepticism soon replaced
awe and wonder in their eyes
as they’d recount their Grandma’s lovely lies.
Frowning brows and confused concern
finally took the place of giggled stories
about the secret, scary lives of bugs.

They speak of bug hunting now
as something that they used to do,
a silly little childish game
that wiled away the hours of the day,
but I still remember the pure enchantment,
the guileless gawking reverie of little boys.

Today I bend on aging knees,
to contemplate creepy crawlers
scuttling their way across the earth.
I imagined them heading home to families,
after a hard day grinding leaves
and disappear into the mystery.

For Kathy

2009-06-29T09:08:00.001-07:00

A sonnet for my love

In those moments, when your sweet eyes light up,
when laughter bubbles deep inside your throat,
your smile lies warm, like tea inside a cup.
You are ocean where I would drift and float.
If I begin to drown and flail about,
should ancient fears quick grab and hold my heart,
if I sink slow, my mind a sea of doubt,
then you’d be sail, my compass and my chart,
for I see starlight twinkling in your eyes,
a luminescent moon upon your lips,
I find my surface just above the lies,
your breath of love that time cannot eclipse.
Then still, should all the swirling currents shift,
deep in your love, I find God’s gracious gift.

Grandma Hugen

2009-05-22T11:09:00.000-07:00

I see her face, ancient, lined, severe.
Dark eyes, intense, staring
behind old rimmed glasses
that I remember from long before
we carried her box
to the grassy Iowa fields.
Old eyes that saw her husband to his grave
- and much earlier - her eldest son,
a war hero, who drove back
into an ammo dump holocaust
to save his dying friends.
Pieces of his Coast Guard jeep
were scattered all over rich Nebraska farms.
For a while, then, it seemed
she resigned her way
to the insanity of death and pain,
chasing ghosts and grandpa
with hate filled eyes, raging anger.
Or so I’m told,
but she must have rallied,
when I knew her as a kid,
because I don’t remember her as mean.
In later years her baby boy died,
gasping his life away
from a conspiracy of choices,
weather, dust, and Camel cigarettes.
He tore both our hearts in two.
We were miles away from each other,
and could not share the bleeding.

I wandered alone
through brilliant tulip gardens
to find her wood floored room
lost in the Old People’s Home,
which is what they called it
before it became pejorative and impolite.
It was late morning,
the sun lambent through frame windows,
It shone softly on the gently scalloped words
of an ancient Bible held in gnarled hands
inches from her nose.
She looked up when I knocked
on the half open door,
she was sitting beautifully framed
in the dusty grace of light streams
slipping soft through cobwebbed windows.
I will always remember her
caught in that moment.
“It’s me, Grandma,” I said.
She greeted me by my given name,
not the name by which I’m known,
I was suddenly a kid again,
sneaking pink peppermints,
and elephant peanuts from the cabinet
by the ancient Fridgedaire.
Naughty and loved,
like I always feel now,
and felt around her then.

We talked for a while, of Dad and life,
the things that might have been.
She asked me if I'd read the Psalms for her.
I took her Bible in my hands,
she bent her tear stained face
toward the Giver of the light.
She knew the words before I said them,
mouthed them silently to another world.
A world I could not see, but knew was close.
Before I left, I knelt
beside her brown stockinged feet,
pillowed on the age-old hassock.
I prayed an inside prayer.
Silent. Alone. Together.
We both knew it would be
the last time we would speak,
we murmured soft goodbyes,
I checked my watch
to see if I would make the sixty miles
to Des Moines in time to catch a plane.
When I looked back she was smiling
holding her Bible near her nose.
Her eyes were somewhere else.

Elegy Of Lemon Trees When Winter Ends

2009-04-11T21:50:00.000-07:00

The pale white lemon blossoms jerk to life,
fooled by false promises of early spring,
all bright and brilliant, shimmering in white,
they spew lovely fragrance to dancing breeze.
Visions of sweet nectared fruit course their veins;
limbs, boughs, and twigs rush life giving juices,
fill cracks and crevices with faith filled hope,
the kind that does not think of tomorrow.

It is the next day when dull clouds roll in,
foreboding blanketers of dying sun,
stifling monsters exhaling frigid air.
Winter returns with all its latent lies.
Too late the blossoms understand their fate.
Too late they fight to save themselves the pain.
Too late they lose their helpless grasp of life.
One by one they drift dying to the ground.

The earth is covered with a sea of white,
a field of crosses on a thousand graves.
Like massive shrouds they whitewash barren roots,
a million dead with others yet to fall.
Resurrection seems little more than myth.
The whistling winter winds shout out the lie,
the vicious lie that this is all there is.
Behold those silly fools who disbelieve.

Such are the ways of resurrection days,
appearing after winter strikes its blow,
that final shock that ends all hope of life.
“How can it come again?” the scoffers ask,
“See, there is no fruit upon the branches.”
And, truth be told, we can’t imagine it,
for we know where all the flowers have gone,
decaying, decomposing in the muck.

A day goes by, then maybe two or three,
when hope becomes a fading memory,
a story’s end, where all just fades to black.
Then blasting brilliant comes a sunny day.
New blossoms burst and turn the tree to white,
a million tiny orbs quick turn to gold.
A tree, all weighted down with yellowed fruit
for after death, there’s rising up again.

Mountain Solitude - 02/15/09

2009-02-22T10:26:00.000-08:00

Rock and stone bulging from hard packed core,
creating a pock marked, marble colored face,
stubbled grasses, bushes, trees clinging, clasping
to dirt filled pores forming patchwork aging skin.
Together we become a bluish globe viewed far away,
so my face would lift to you.

Inches from where I sit it is all bones and mass.
Further down all molten liquid core and fiery heat.
Places I imagine, but where I can not go
lest I set off cataclysmic storms beyond control,
like reaching into farmhouse stoves to grab at coals,
so my face would lift to you.

Squalling birds cry lonely mating calls to distant ears,
while creatures scurry past my shoes with determined
purposes known only to some great insistence.
The larger animals keep wary distance, their ears alert,
nervy messengers skittering impulses from a greater mind,
so my face would lift to you.

A tiny gathering of chipping birds flock 'round my table,
beggars searching for the crumbs they pray will drop,
needs and longings overcome their fear and dread,
one drops a seed pod on my book and briefly smiles,
I thank him for his little gift and the greater gift of Love,
so my face would bow to you.

Vision Never Had

2009-02-08T08:31:00.000-08:00

I wish I had seen my birthday cake
when I was five and laughing
at the taste of frosting on my tongue,
but so very, very blind.
I wish I had seen Dad’s face
when he sat on the tractor
and held me on his lap,
I felt him smile then
through the warmth of his arms,
guessing he loved me
by the gentleness of his touch,
but I would have liked to see
the love in those deep set eyes,
that are foggy black in my memory.
I wish I had seen the tornado cloud
that swept the corn crib
from its concrete foundation,
wafting it away to Vandy’s farm,
landing it perfectly intact,
but a mile down the road.
I remember the sucking silence
just before it struck
and the hideous howl of the wind
that announced its devastating rage,
but I never saw it coming.
I remember smelling dark loaved bread
baking in the wood stove oven.
It lingers still in some long lost lobe,
racing to my memory at a moment’s call,
but I would love to have seen
the butter dripped slices
Mom placed on one of the saucers
she got from saving Green Stamps,
and looking through the S&H catalog.
I remember the piercing pain
when I touched the stove grating
she always told me not to touch,
but I would like to have seen
the blistered puffing redness
that became the whitened scar
I wear fifty years later.
I wish those blurry memories
would straighten up their act
and show themselves,
instead of hiding in the mist.

Four Corners

2009-01-12T19:20:00.001-08:00

At the ever changing edge
where water, sand, air intersect,
I become the fourth dimension,
that redirects, reforms, refreshes
all the elements scattering
like when you were a kid at Four Corners,
you stood in all those states at once,
reached your hand to touch the wind,
back when you knew your real name,
everything made perfect sense,
except for bullies, sisters,
the truer purpose of things.
The ‘51 Ford had crossed the Great Divide,
so now the water flowed differently,
if there had been any in that corroded radiator,
or those scorched dry beds that zigzagged to the sea.
The spired rocks spoke of other connections,
but they were red stone deaf.
You could not see the brown sand from there
where the shells of life all crash and break
where tidal waves of spirit explode against the wind.
I stand fierce at the ragged edge
of water, wind, sand, time, space,
stick my big toe in and
change the course of planets,
the way the rivers run,
and, maybe, touch the hem of God.

The Wadi

2008-12-24T03:57:00.000-08:00

As veiled ones cry out in the desert,
search the walls of the canyon inclines,
do they see in the death all around them,
the longing of well hidden signs?
The red rusted side of the iron,
the green glow of coppery ruth,
while the voice of a whispering wadi,
gives hints of a soft echoed truth.
The clefts in the rock lift the music,
join their tenor to vein fissured bass,
while the ribs of burned brown saguaro,
like tree rings, still murmur of grace.
Once the streams sang out in the Negev.
Torrents swirled and eddied and flowed.
Deep pools of refreshment once lingered,
where the weald and woodland would grow.
But now in the baked barren desert,
when it seems that all has gone dry,
the whispering words of the wadi
cry out that we don’t have to die.
For there comes a deluge to the desert,
springs again will cascade and renew.
Tears that once coursed down a mountain,
now gather in life giving dew.
Then the wadi will strain to contain it,
and the trees will all clap their hands.
The cacti will laugh their good fortune,
as the waters stream out on the sand.

Ro'sh Ruwm (Psalm 3:3)

2008-12-24T03:54:00.000-08:00

With downcast eyes,
I steal the shame,
and live the lesser lie,
of who I should have been
in that moment
two lifetimes ago
when I was but a mouse
in lion’s paws.

I did not squeak then
or run to nest,
too scared to move,
but slid past
sharpened teeth
to the rotting acids
that eat me still,
devouring flesh and life.

And now,
with the eyes of distance,
curse myself
and do not hear,
through all the haze,
the timid squealing,
but just that terrorizing roar.

On darker days,
I still believe the lie of ‘if’,
the borrowed shame,
the unnamed sin,
that would hold me frozen
just out of reach
of the lifter of my face.

Rondeau For The Child God

2008-12-21T08:03:00.000-08:00

When he began this great crusade
did he feel the blood course through his veins
as he slipped beneath the bright brocade
and crept into our human plane -
a holy child of virgin maid?

Was he startled by the sin of Cain -
our almost lifelike masquerade
when he first met what we profaned?
When he first met what we profaned?

Did he long just then to be unmade,
to feel no more our awful pain
and run to Abba’s serenade,
but chose instead to break the chain,
as child and God and unafraid?
Both child and God and unafraid!

Grace Comes Barging In

2008-12-21T07:58:00.000-08:00

grace comes barging in
kicking down the doors
breaking through windows
throwing love around
in floods of mercy

naked, afraid
hand held to the sky
terrified to die
I cower in the corner
trying hard to hide

we never see it coming
in our barred houses
protected places
security fenced world
it’s in before you know it

it grabs me hard
slams me to the floor
slaps on cuffs
then yanks me to my feet
and makes me walk

walks me past my defenses
past my shame
past my compensations
my abilities to cope
into worlds unknown

where I am a prisoner
of a different kind
a prisoner of love
before a merciful judge
who somehow turns me loose

Metamorphosis

2008-12-21T07:53:00.000-08:00

Worming its way
along a snaking grape vine,
its muted greens and grays
only half protect it
from the deadly pestilence
of sharp eyed birds
seeking to destroy
a juicy larva inching its way
to whatever is beyond.

Deep inside a rumbling begins.
It tastes the wretch of death.
Cocooned in golden chrysalis,
all begins to die, change, morph
caterpillar DNA liquefying
into shapeless mass,
dying to all it knows,
becoming something other
than what its always been.

Strange appendages sprout,
fine and delicate,
in colors never comprehended.
It bursts from mummified remains
flitting on new found wings
tickling the flowering vines
dancing on sunlit breezes,
diving in, sipping sweet nectar,
shouting gratitude to worlds beyond.

Bobbing, weaving, pollinating
bringing life to all it touches,
it cheers the plodding ones
encased in tangled vines
inviting, enticing, crying out
it distracts the hungry birds,
exhorting the creeping crawlers
to touch their calling,
to find new life in dying.

Prayer 5

2008-11-30T09:58:00.000-08:00

Good morning, God,
it is really early and I wonder,
“How good is this?” when I sit
here in the semi-darkness,
listening to my wife, kids,
in-laws all snoring away,
while I discover again the reason
I love their presence so,
is because you give great gifts,
you don’t give like we give,
withholding ourselves,
but you are the gift of life
to us, and to those we love.
You make a way for us,
to love, and be loved,
because you know us
both as creator and becoming
one with the created.
How strange is that?
You are so mysterious.
I cannot fathom how you work,
how you think, how you do
the miraculous stuff you do.
The family comes drifting in
from the corners of the house
trying not to wake Justin,
sacked out on the couch.
Soon egg strata is in the oven,
bacon is frying, potato pancakes
brown in the electric skillet,
orange juice is poured.
We sit down around the table
to the ‘morning after’ feast
saying thanks again
for your goodness, your love.
I wonder if Joseph ever sat
in the early morning glow
listening to Jesus snore,
thanking you for him,
and Mary, and all the rest
of the relatives gathered
in the house you provided.
Of course, he did.
How can we not?
Thank you...

Prayer 4

2008-11-25T05:36:00.000-08:00

I want what you have God,
power, glory, strength, impact.
Yes, I want to be you,
but not in a good way.
Somewhere deep inside me
I know that I can’t have it all,
be all that I want to be,
‘cause it is so not good for me
(did you plant that thought in me?)
In the end, it is all about goodness,
your goodness to me, I mean.
You know me so much better
than I can ever know myself.
I hate admitting that.
You kill my independent streak,
make me bow my knees.
It makes me feel so small,
when you decide to remind me,
that I am here today,
and like a field of hay,
cut down and gone tomorrow.
That is the way it is here,
since you are the good Creator and
I, the result of your creativity.
Then, just when I’ve resigned myself
to the fact that I don’t need
power or glory or strength,
that I can be obscure and trivial,
you reach down and lift my face
to give me little glimpses
of how I change your world
in ways I can’t imagine.
It is funny that I can do all things,
but only through your Son
who strengthens me.

Prayer 3

2008-11-24T21:00:00.001-08:00

I was thinking about the day
we were hanging out in the hot tub.
You were smiling
in that generous way
you smile at me
as we sat soaking in the bubbles.
Your eyes were laughing
and crinkled at the edges.
I poured out my anxieties,
all my worries and concerns
about my family and friends.
You were listening
with a wrinkled forehead,
soft eyes looking sad.
Then suddenly it was like you
couldn’t help yourself.
You busted out laughing
in that big, rich voice
that makes me feel
all safe and secure.
I completely relaxed then,
while we talked about the things
I thought you should be doing
for the people I love; you love, too,
and I suspect you love them
a whole lot more than I can imagine.
When I told you
what a mess they were,
you nodded as though
you had your doubts
about my descriptions
of their sorry condition.
You leaned back then,
splashed water on me,
and told me with laughing eyes
you had it all covered.
That you were real busy
making everything new.
You got the giggles,
when you said that you were
fixing me up, too.
It was a real good day.

Prayer 2

2008-11-21T18:09:00.000-08:00

You’re so comical, God
with your funny little ways.
Don’t you know I’m catching on to you?
Don’t you think I’m getting it?
All these little tests and trials.
Really now,
not enough money in my account,
too few moments in my day,
so many problems I can’t solve.
So I am all stressed out and half afraid,
thinking you are high and mighty,
and very far away,
when all the time you’re right beside
with that big, soft hearted smile,
twinkling, laughing eyes,
whispering my name,
reaching, touching, caring,
running just ahead
or maybe just behind
always out of sight.
Oh, I’m starting to get it now.
I’m slowly catching on.
You can’t keep your distance, can you,
even when you try.
‘Cause you’re in love with me,
wooing, courting,
singing love songs over me.
Trying to tell me of that love.
Wanting me to love you back,
and prove my love,
a thousand different ways.
To trust you,
to know that you don’t leave.
Yeah, I’m starting to figure it out.
I’m starting to get it now.
But it scares me half to death,
‘cause this could get really serious.

Prayer 1

2008-11-20T07:43:00.000-08:00

A thousand conversations we have had,
talking past each other’s longing ears.
I pretend to know you well,
speaking of the things I’m sure you’ve said
--maybe only wish you’d said--
keeping up appearances for those who overhear.
Raging, cursing, shouting how it ought to be
when I think that no one sees or cares.
you barely even whisper then,
so very hard to hear.
I imagine you with head in hands,
pain-filled eyes closing to my darkness,
a disappointed father, a sad distracted son
sitting at a table in a dimming room,
a picture with no words attached,
memories rewritten to fill an emptiness,
painting me the hero, you the villain,
for someone needs to take the blame
and so you do and did and will.
I think I must exasperate you
with my incessant whining cries,
the way I pout and beg for more
on top of everything you’ve given.
I’m sure sometimes
that you don’t know me well,
or pause to truly hear my heart,
though that is what you claim to do.
You try to make me think that you are good,
most days I don’t buy that line,
and simply close my ears
and wish that you’d give up on me,
though that is something
you refuse to do.

Definition of sin

2007-03-08T21:55:00.000-08:00

Today I was the guest speaker at a class called Religion and Pop Culture down at the local community college and I was reminded again how diverse we are as we think about God and belief systems and especially about sin. As a pastor, folks often ask me about sin. They want to know if what they are doing is sinful or not. I've fallen into the habit of asking people what their definition of sin is before I answer the question of whether or not what they are doing is wrong. I am amazed at the variety of answers I get to the definition of sin question. Most of the definitions revolve around the concept that sin is doing 'really bad stuff' and, of course, 'really bad' is in the eye of the beholder. I find myself asking folks to draw the line that needs to be crossed for something to be considered sin. Most people agree that Hitler or Idi Amin were way over the line, but that saying you are fine when you aren't is a meaningless 'white lie' that isn't sinful at all. I enjoy, particularly in group settings, observing the debate as folks try to draw a line down the fuzzy middle. "Missing the mark", the classic definition of sin, becomes easy to do when the middle is ever shifting and subservient to the whims of the artists.

Missing the mark requires an agreement as to what the mark is and since we can't agree on that it seems hopeless to answer the question of whether something is sinful. When we get to move the mark to where we shot the arrow we can eagerly point to our own purity and castigate those around us who don't live to our standard which allows us the fading pleasure of self defined holiness. The problem is that our neighbor is busily moving the mark to where her arrow struck and removing us from the company of the holy.

We have an endless capacity to self justify. My sin is always easily explained. When I drive over the speed limit it is because of the importance of the mission I am on. When the guy behind me goes flying by me, he is being a jerk and I am silently hoping for a cop to be hiding out around the next curve. Self justification assures the messy middle stays muddled. It grants us the ability to point fingers. Scripture says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God which really messes with the concept of a flexible mark and with the idea that I can self justify.

The picture

2007-03-05T12:57:00.000-08:00

Long before I was born my father took a trip to Washington DC and ended up traveling with a group of friends to Mount Vernon where he was photographed sitting on the lawn of that beautiful, old estate. He died when I was just sixteen, but I often found myself looking at that picture and thinking about 'what if'. What if he hadn't died? What if he hadn't ever started smoking cigarettes so that he had never ended up with emphsema? What if he was still alive now? Would we be good to each other? Would he be proud of me, sad for me, angry with me? I wonder if he would be the Dad I wish he would be when I make up dads in my head. So many men struggle with their fathers and the wounds of a father are among the deepest wounds, I think. He wounded me in his dying, but he had already slashed me long before he breathed his last breath. It is the way of fathers to slash their sons. I have slashed mine and though I would love to take all those words, actions, looks, and curses back, they hang between us and they cut still deeper over time. When I was a kid, I believed the lies my father told me. I didn't know that they were lies. And often I believe that he did not mean to tell them as lies, either. He wanted good for me even when his words destroyed the very thing he sought to make good.

I miss him. All these years later, I still miss him. I see men with their fathers and wish that I could chat with mine and say I'm sorry and forgive me and teach me and walk with me and help me when I am afraid and all the other things I imagine sons say to fathers. I long to hear his voice and I remember when I was small and we sat in the living room chair on Saturday night while Mom played the piano and sang the old songs and his long arms snaked around me and held me close and I felt so very, very safe. I look at his brothers and his sister and try to imagine what he might look like now, how he might talk, what mannerisms I have that he must have had. Aunt Marge says I have his personality, his humor, and that when she sees me she remembers him more clearly.

Kathy and I went off to Washington DC on a vacation last year and we made a side trip to Mount Vernon. I found the place where Dad once sat and asked Kathy to take my picture. We took a few until we got the pose correct and the distance from the house just right. George Washington was a creative genius and he was known as the father of our country. His estate is beautifully preserved and as I sat there on the grass, I thought about Dad and fatherhood and God and connections and the importance of good fathers. Countries need them, kids need them, I needed one. I realized in that moment that God is a father to me. That I am his kid. That he knows my longings and that he has his huge arms wrapped around me. I felt very, very safe.

Someday maybe my boys will make the journey. I would love to be the one who snaps the photograph.