Prophetic Witness

Prophecy

And I said, I don't know how
all the things that we know now
can continue for much longer…

Already one can feel the rumble
rising up from shaking ground.
So many things are starting to crumble;
feel the tremors all around.
And the sky is growing nearer,
the very heavens pressing down…
Frightened sounds;
the birds are crying...

And I see the kingdoms falling,
all the towers crashing down,
man's thought-systems and religions,
all these present world-dominions
crashing down along with them;
root and source of our divisions.
And all argument shall cease;
then there will at last be peace!

And much we say that we believe in
will be proven vain that day,
an idle mouthing of old phrases;
only what is of God remains.

Someone Must Go

Someone must go and seek a vision,
go forth and dream another dream;
drink again from the living stream
sprung from the wellspring of Creation,
and bring back a word for this generation;
so that we might know where we are,
so that we need not have to wander,
feeling lost and alone any longer.

Someone who has the ears to hear
must become quiet and draw near
unto the very heart of things;
spend some time there listening
for the rhythm of his breathing.
Try to hear the Voice again,
that we may not place our reliance
upon the annals of dead tradition,
thirdhand and fourthhand information
passed on by lifeless repitition.
Someone must go and hear again
what the Spirit is really saying.

Someone must go and rediscover
how all of us are linked together;
what it really means to be human
beneath all the different-colored skin.
How none of us can be forgotten,
nor cast aside nor left abandoned,
whatever evils we have done,
whatever nightmares we have seen.

But, do not speak if you've never gone,
sat on the naked grass alone,
and rocked and wept beneath the sun;
felt for the heartbeat in the ground.
--Better, then, not to speak a word
if you have never really heard;
for you would only regurgitate
the sermon that you heard on Sunday,
or the voices inside your head,
or phrases out of a book you read.
What isn't real won't be received;
today it will scarcely be believed.

And, why should it be? Isn't there plenty
of empty noise in the world already?
Endless quarrelings and contentions,
people arguing for their positions…
Someone must go and sit and listen.

Newborn

Round little face so strange, so familiar,
ancient but ageless, from the foundation,
budding anew from life's eternal Tree;
the face we all wore when we first came here,
the sum of our race, containing us all,
unmarked, half-emergent; everyone, noone.
The image of God in timeless reflection
in softness of flesh so smooth and shiny.
"O come let us adore him
(and her)
again.

Newborn Eyes

Little newborn eyes, so clear and liquid,
reflecting dancing colors, your first tree at Christmas,
gazing, absorbing…what do you see?
Sparkle-shining out of focus wonders,
whirling lights of inner galaxies,
angel hosts around the throne of heaven,
so near, perhaps, within your memory…
If you could speak,
what glories could you tell?

Soon enough, your focus will be clearer,
your mind begin to grasp, your tongue to form
the words, the names of all the separate objects,
"lights" and "balls" and "icicles" of tinfoil;
and one day you'll learn to hang them up yourself!

But I hope these eyes will never learn to focus
or this mind to grasp and name things so narrowly
as to see the separate parts and not the whole;
to see the tree and not to see the glory.

Wondrous Child

And this is wondrous, that God reveals
in the life and face of each newborn child
some part of himself, his mind and intentions
which not even the angels of heaven
have ever glimpsed or comprehended.
That beings of such splendor and power
would gather around to gaze in wonder.

Not only one child on one special night,
but every child, when seen in the light
of his love: unique, a new creation
which has never before been seen
in ages of time, nor will be again
until this present world shall end.

And isn't it also strange to consider
that the same child can be born here
and most of the people never notice?
They just go about their daily business
like this were an everyday occurance.
And so does the very miraculous
come to be viewed with indifference.
And the child can grow up this way,
and the rest of their lives go on this way,
and, like so many, come to their end
without anyone having comprehended
the miracle that they really are;
an aspect of God never seen before,
and nevermore to be seen again
until this present world shall end.

But the holy ones still see,
and in the highest, so does he
from whom they spring. He knows their deeds,
their every sorrow, heartache, dream;
and he it is who will receive
what each one has been and done;
who will take each one back home.

(What mercy to consider this:
perhaps they never really left!)

A Child's Lament

Too much concrete,
not enough sand;
Too many voices,
not enough hands.

Too many distractions,
not enough time;
Too many gadgets,
not enough mom;

Too many buildings,
not enough trees;
Too much instruction,
few eyes that see;

Too many strangers,
not enough smiles;
Too many grown-ups
who've lost their own "child";

Too many children
grow up too fast;
Too many old folks
live in the past;

Too many signs
in the heavens above;
Too many newscasts;
not enough love.

Does Anyone Know

Does anyone know
That this urban desert of steel, glass, and concrete
was once living forest, pasture, and wetland?
That wildflowers shine and stars sing above us?
That the songs of the birds are the voice of the forest?
That the earth is alive, the rivers, the mountains,
everything dancing and dreaming together?
That the watered-down symbols of all our religions
once spoke of real power, beauty, and meaning,
born of the earth, the dancing and dreaming?

Does anyone know
That thousands of millions of refugee peoples
uprooted, alone in the streets of these cities,
trapped within poverty, tyranny, hunger,
nevertheless have their own dreams and stories?
Silenced hearts, words left unspoken,
unformed worldhoods, promises broken,
wasted potentials, leftover tokens,
Sent out to live in these desolate places
, behind masks of clay, these blank, staring faces
denied self-expression, self-determination;
They cry in and through me
for their liberation.

I fight to release the wings of these angels
bound up in the earth and the silence of strangers;
To give voice to the cries lost in deafening silence,
the clashing of gears, the roaring of engines,
the everyday business of buying and selling;
our daily unseeings, unfeelings, unknowings.

There must be a naming, a true recognition
within some bright space all people could live in,
A place where each one is named and remembered;
I know you, you know me; our God dwells among us.

Cry

Heavenly Father, hear the cry
of these we lift to your remembrance:

Remember all those whose lands have been conquered,
their culture destroyed, their holy men murdered,
their temples and sacred sites desecrated;
their country polluted, its wild creatures slaughtered,
the inheritance built over centuries, squandered,
lost to their children. Lord, hear their cry.

Remember all creatures facing extinction,
the loss of their rightful place in Creation
before the crush of our human dominion;
our engines and appetites for consumption
like death and the grave, beyond satisfaction;
nor any less cruel. Lord, hear their cry.

Remember all those whose lives are uprooted
by spiralling technological forces
unleashed by people whom they've never seen,
whose agendas have no further use or concern for
hard work and loyalty, years with a company,
need for security, roots and stability,
friendship, nor places beloved in memory;
homes left behind. Lord, hear their cry.

Remember the children being left stranded
by drugs and divorce; abused or abandoned
for fast-track careers and adult ambitions;
cut off all working day from their parents
and from the beauty of wild, living creatures,
from the knowledge of God in man and in nature;
for the love they're denied. Lord, hear their cry.

Remember the wives and husbands abandoned
when the marriage vow is heedlessly broken,
when the covenant of the lips is forgotten,
and the first, true love of youth is forsaken;
who find that there's nothing left they can trust in,
believe in, or live for. Lord, hear their cry.

For every promise and covenant broken,
for every lie and heedless transgression
of the law of love which binds us together,
Lord hear our cry, and grant us repentence.
Show forth your works, a fresh revelation
to open the eyes of this generation.
Unleash your awesome beauty and power,
that your covenant may again be remembered.
That all men may know you holy and just,
spare what you can, but do what you must.

"In wrath, remember mercy."

Exile

Who can tell our grief and shame?
How can we call upon his name?
--The Beautiful Land is lost to us
because of our heart's unfaithfulness.
We have broken the sacred covenant,
and now our God has rejected us…
The sins of the fathers have come upon us,
and how can our children ever forgive us
for squandering their inheritance?

Our holy temple is burned to ashes,
its wooden carvings smashed with axes;
the walls of the city are broken down;
our beloved Zion has become
the dwellingplace of owls and jackals.
A shattered and defeated nation,
our land become a desolation.
The festivals and songs have ceased,
and there is no more king or priest;
no sign of God, no prophecy,
and none knows how long this will be…

Mighty walls and marbled temples,
multi-garden terraces,
golden-columned palaces
crowned in high magnificence;
horses, riders, chariots,
rumbling and crack of whips
upon the teeming thoroughfares…
Gleaming steel of office towers,
marble-columned civic centers,
libraries, museums, gardens,
theaters and sports arenas,
endless rushing cars and buses,
ceaseless roar of booming business…
Such power and prosperity!
Babylon is all around me!

Yes, I know just how it feels;
that's one wounds that never heals.
They wonder why you don't succeed,
why you can't seem to be happy;
--How can I, how can we be,
exiled in a foreign country?

I sit beneath a tree in tears,
chanting psalms which none else hears.

"If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill,
May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy."
Psalm 137

Homeless

How quickly, completely the city changes face
on the day when your pockets and keychain come up empty.
Once-familiar streets become a foreign landscape,
and every bush and thicket, every nook and doorway,
sheet of plastic, discarded blanket
or abandoned couch or mattress
takes on a significance you'd never seen
or guessed. The eye misses nothing
once the issue becomes survival.
Its powers are quickened, focused, retrained
to see the things most people don't notice…

--How radically different this world must look
to those on the outside, their faces pressed
against the glass, seeing, not having,
no longer belonging, if they ever did.
To dwell in the margins and shadows like this,
like mice in the walls, rats in the basement…
(--How could I have imagined it 'til now?)
The world is a puzzle, a baffling maze
where you wander in circles and can't find the cheese,
or the exit, nor the light of day.
And many wander until they die here:
it can be drugs or alchohol,a broken heart,
mental illness,pain and confusion, not knowing the way out,
nor the way home,
nor even if there is one.

Nor do I find any open doorway
in all of these faces passing by
hooded and blank, their eyes averted.
But as for the first time now I can see
how they are not really different from me;
how even presumably "normal" people
are mostly bound in their own private dungeons,
lost to their real selves, to man and to God.
They fear the silent stranger within them
and all around them: the alien,
the outsider, lurking primal bogeyman…
They cannot trust the ones in the shadows;
darkness speaks from soul to soul,
and fear to fear: "Don't let them touch you!
Don't let them near you! Or they'll slime you
with their insidious thoughts and diseases!
They'll come and ask you for a handout,
urinate, defecate on your lawn,
ruin your business, rob your home,
molest your children.
They should all be locked up,
or be made to wear a bell and shout,
"Unclean! Unclean!" as they walk about!
(Along with gays, victims of AIDS,
the cancerous, the handicapped,
the elderly, the criminal,
the unwed mother, the fatherless child,
the illegal alien in the land,
and the rest of the Company of the Damned:
welcome to the 'Eighties!)

"Rule One for Survival: just try to act normal."
Keep the darkness covered;
don't let them see the Stranger,
nor glimpse the alien in your eyes,
lest you be suspected, moved on, shunned,
or even beaten. Or the cops come…
Don't act or think like one of the damned,
or one day you'll find you are one.
Above all, don't abandon hope,
or surrender to the loneliness;
a closed circle never ends.

Now I see them in the doors and alleys,
those who can no longer break the chains;
eyes glazed, withdrawn within into their darkness,
angry, lonely screaming silence,
shame and damnedness. They reek of damnedness,
and all eyes turn away.
So they learn to be invisible,
lest the gods or police or passers by
or some bogey within them come and strike them,
and take what few possessions
and dignity that they still have.
I start to sense just how they feel;
I've seen this country; I know that it's real…

The world is made of fragments, shattered
remnants of something………everything's scattered.
Food's over here, bed's over there,
always searching for a restroom,
a john and a sink to wash up in,
fill up my jug. Go find a bus bench,
sit down a moment and eat a sandwich,
then try to stretch out on a sunny lawn
and take a nap…….but never for long.
Too hot, too cold, the shadows keep shifting;
All crazy, no center; disintegration…
Stay long enough, I'm starting to find,
and I'll lose my focus, my purpose, my mind;
end up incoherent, mumbling in circles
until I'm as trapped as all the rest!

…People in rags, skulking in shadows,
lives without hope, coherence, or center;
a landscape without design or intention,
proportion or scale or human relation…
Frazzled old women wandering aimless,
pushing their carts full of everyone's refuse;
schizophrenics in high heels and dresses,
middle-aged men who think they're their mothers;
the demon-possessed who stand on the corner
cursing in heated rage without ceasing,
profanities screamed at everyone passing;
a haggard mother with fists of iron
clutching, dragging a child through the bustle,
staying alive with no friend or protector
amidst the unknown, a world full of dangers,
together-alone in a city of strangers.
--As I am to them, and they to me, wary,
> a foreigner, too, in my own native country.
(Though the map said "America" last time I checked it--!
When did this happen? Did nobody see it…?)

My heart is in anguish within me;
the terrors of death assail me.
Fear and trembling have beset me;
horror has overwhelmed me.
I said, "Oh that I had the wings of a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest…
I would flee far away
and stay in the desert;
I would hurry to my place of shelter
far from the tempest and the storm." (Ps. 55:6)

But I have no wings; only sore feet,
and they are bound to these city streets,
this darkened and wandering labyrinth
haunted by shadows of fear and death.
I seek for my food and daily bread,
for a safe place to lay my head,
and for signs of some slender silver thread
which the soul's Ariadne might have left
to help me once again to remember
who I am and why I have come here;
and where it is I'm trying to go.
…I remember a shining, spinning globe,
a vision of love, an emblem of wholeness;
how I'd wanted to journey to the Ocean
a thousand miles beyond these mountains.
But as it is, I don't see how;
I'm just surviving in the "now".

I lift my eyes up to the hills;
where does my help come from?
(Ps. 121:1)

"Born Again"

You say that you've been "born again"?
I look around and wonder, then…

Are you willing to die inside
with and for each child lost,
for every vanishing forest,
people and endangered species?
For the world that you see
dying over, over, over,
right before your eyes,
feeling it every time
like it were for the first time?

Are you willing to know nothing,
to have nothing, to be nothing,
to lose all that you have, you are,
you knew, or thought you knew,
over and over without ending,
only beginning, only beginning?

To rise up dripping from a dream,
reborn naked, trembling
from tender flower, leaves of green,
with eyes able to see again?
Christian, are you really willing
to be born again, again,
or is that just
your church-religion
talking?

New Beatitudes

Blessed it is to enter in
to the space within another's skin;
to know the heart of God in them.

Blessed are they who have the key
to the secret openings
to the soft and hidden heart of things.

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for they shall see
beauty.

Friend of My Longing

New-old friend, just to be near you
is to feel the heat of pent-up longing;
to bear the wounds, to share the scars
of broken hearts and old betrayals,
dreams deferred, denied ideals,
home and friendship and belonging;
and yet there is a joy in longing…

I am still drawn to be near you,
like a moth is drawn to flame;
years go by…..it's still the same.
Why do I go on returning
when I know how much it burns me?
The pain I see within your eyes,
yet sparkling with deeper joys.

All your hopeful words to me,
visions of what's yet to be,
things you say that God has shown you
about yourself and about me…
I wonder where you get the courage
to believe so readily?

Faithful heart, always seeking,
glimpsing far, yet never able
to bring the thing within your grasp…
We both share in this blessed curse,
this strange ability to see
the endless possibilities;
so many things which yet could be,
still bound up in the tyranny
of that which is; this fierce resistance
tied up within matter's substance.
We share the common pangs, the labor
of the world, the coming Kingdom.

Terra Christa

And God becomes flesh
and bleeds among us,
stretched out on the cross
of all our contradictions,
of our rational denials,
the power that we wield,
our logic and technologies,
hard, cold as steel.

Lifted from the earth
against a barren sky,
her arms outstretched
to embrace all mankind…
Her throes are now upon her;
she is earth-stuff in labor,
the new birth in nature,
in common space and time.
I feel her pulse within me;
her cry has become mine.

Light shines out of darkness,
beauty out of ugliness,
life out of death,
she, the deathless;
words of divine substance
dripping from her breast,
birthing forth her children
in tears, blood, and sweat.

The meek shall yet inherit.

Tibet

A land for centuries unknown,
near to heaven's blazing sun;
summer's heat and winter's cold,
blue of sky and white of snow.

There, the streaming pilgrim bands
make their way across the land,
journeying for many weeks
toward some sacred mountain peak;
walking all the way around,
every step on holy ground.

Others still are journeying
toward the fabled Holy City
where great temple-citadels
stand upon the highest hills,
hiding ancient hallowed halls
deep within their rampart-walls;
where brightly-painted tankas show
the hidden countries of the soul,
and the ancient scriptures tell
of a calm, unchanging realm
beyond the world's dualities;
a seamless, whole reality.
The culture of the timeless Way;
but that was another day…

Monasteries burned, defaced,
millions gone without a trace;
mandalas of colored sand
trampled, scattered to the wind;
broken walls and shattered doors,
images defaced and marred.
Now a rumble of machines,
bulldozers and tanks and planes;
the tramplings of soldiers' feet
fill the Holy City's streets

But the colored banners still
wave atop the lonely hills,
and the wooden prayer wheels
spin wherever water falls,
calling all the elements
to join the one unending chant,
crying for compassion
on man and all Creation.

A Promise

The hills all around are green with the rains,
and the creek flows between in beauty again;
yet solidly cased in a prison of concrete,
solid and lifeless under my feet.

Here on a wall, artists have painted
a mural depicting this frozen landscape
as it might have looked when the waters ran freely,
rippling colors, radiant beauty.

Orchards and vineyards mantled the hills,
cattle and horses grazed open fields;
the trees on the banks glowed silvery-bright,
and children bathed in the rippling sunlight.

The wetlands around yet teemed with abundance,
fish by the banks, frogs in the rushes,
sparrows and hummingbirds, egrets and herons
standing in sky-blue pools transparent.

The wetlands around yet teemed with abundance,
fish by the banks, frogs in the rushes,
sparrows and hummingbirds, egrets and herons
standing in sky-blue pools transparent.

By the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our harps…

I lift up my gaze to a tall eucalyptus
shedding its leaves like shimmering teardrops.
Rushing waters well from my eyes,
bursting their banks with a long-pent up cry,

I love you all! But how can I hold you
whose green lives but seem like flickering candles
bared to the wind, too-soon extinguished,
bulldozed aside for the sake of our "progress"…?

But even for this, I carry a witness
that one day, indeed, "the meek shall inherit",
and all this will be restored, I swear it!
New life will thrive along this embankment!

And I promise more, that I'll always remember
this beauty I see, and keep it forever;
that through human time and even eternity,
as long as I am, you'll all be a part of me.

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem…

Sometimes I See

Sometimes I see in a midflight-frozen instant
the poise and pattern of a bird's outstretched wing,
tucking and unfolding to loop, arc, and soar
in a rhythm too rapid for the eye to follow;
yet fixed in the stillness, the retina of vision,
an impression indelible, clear and truthful
of the poetry of flight, the curve of its motion.

Sometimes I see the pathways of bees
weaving golden threads among the blossoms,
golden-darting energies, subatomic instants,
electrical charges circling the living bouquets,
leaving bright traces, signatures in space,
patterns in time, writings in a language
that can only be read through a corner of the eye.

Sometimes I see the breezes blowing patterns
in rippling random unison, spontaneous dance
in the leaves of trees, the grass of the field,
in bobbing heads of flowers, faces white and yellow,
each plucked in passing by some artist's windy hand;
in lake surface shimmerings, moving ghostly footprints,
the lingering thoughts of an ever-changing sky.

Sometimes I see in the forms of men and women,
divine sons and daughters moving in their beings,
the gracefulness of angels, rhythmic flights of wings,
treebranch-supple motions, limbs like swaying boughs,
windblown blossom-hair with golden sunlight threaded,
blue sky-pool reflecting crystal eyes,
prophetic walking visions of the coming Creator