We Should See Other Blogs

I’ve been ruminating on Sunday’s sermon for a few days now. It’s been bouncing here and there inside my skull, or my soul, or whatever you want to call it, gathering moss like any good stone.

It’s C.S. Lewis saying that Aslan is not safe, but he is good.

We love safety so much, don’t we? And there’s nothing wrong with that. I, for instance, feel incredibly safe with Laura’s love. I don’t feel like she’s going to blow up any minute and abandon me. I know what that’s like, and trust me, you don’t want a relationship (God forbid a marriage) that resembles more a landmine than a safe harbour.

You can find in God that incredible safety as well: no matter what you are going through in your life, if you’ve bought into his grace, if you’ve been granted that faith, you are above all safe. As Mrs Elliot used to say, Underneath are the everlasting arms. From our seemingly impossible disasters to actually impossible disasters, there is hope that will not leave you ashamed for having hoped. Or assurance. You may lose your lover, you may lose your health, you may lose your house, but you will not be ashamed of finding refuge in God. He is a strong tower. You are above all, safe.

But there’s safety and then there’s safety. God isn’t bound by your desire to be financially secure. When Joel mentioned how so much preaching is geared towards a better life now, I wanted to stand up and cheer. (Not to mention that Mr Osteen reminds me of a smarmy used car salesman and I would very much like to punch him in the face, with all Christian love.) Or maybe God does care that you have a better life now, but we’ve simply got the frame right and the picture all wrong. Maybe your better life now isn’t about being financially triumphant or well-loved. Maybe your better life now is about crossing a wilderness and getting to a promised land. The trip isn’t necessarily going to be cushioned. Maybe it will be. You don’t really get to know that.

Laura and I have been very tight for money since we’ve been married. We have one income and some debt from her schooling and from my life as a bachelor. One of the things we’ve been really convicted about, ever since Joel talked about giving, is separating a portion of my income and giving it to God. We do this in several ways, but primarily it’s giving to the church. We don’t have a lot to give, and common sense says that what we do give should be instead squirrelled away for a rainy economy. Yet it seems better to me to live outside of that small comfort and safety zone by obeying God with our giving than using it for ourselves. I’m not going to spin a sob story here: we live very well on what we’ve got, but there are a lot of things we have to forgo whilst living this way.

This is a small thing. There’s a couple from Imago Dei who essentially walked away from a comfortable life to work in the Himalayas with an unreached people group. Joel moved to Mississauga and started a great church. Paul was whipped and beaten and shipwrecked ultimately killed. These are not small things, and they are not safe things.

But they are good things, and things that will ultimately be blessed. Because in following God, sometime you end up dying on a cross. Look at what Jesus did: was his life at all safe? Yet here we are, millennia later, still looking at his legacy and seeing it change the world.

I am fresh of the graveless waterfront
as a groundkeeper for this beach,
at least till I am swallowed by the moon.

I am freshly alive with life not my own,
with maggots that spill from eyesockets
and insects burrowing, jaw to bone.

But I am a fresh convert to the process:
yesterday I was born a ghost,
and today I till and furrow for the flies.

I am fresh, also, of a thousand places
all equally regal, all flushed with life,
all carefully tended;

these freshly cultivated twin sisters and brothers -
I have become a thousand teeming islands,
a million writhing worlds,

a universe freshly strewn with self-consuming stars.
Here, you will grow your corn.
You will press its flesh between your teeth,
and it will not taste like disaster.

The spinning cyclone spoiled the sky
when Macy was somewhere
between five and six;
it tore open the horizon
like clumsy fingers
to tissue paper,

and in that heartbeat
she fell on the cusp
of twenty-seven,

her hands pressed against the wall,
the smooth stone of the wall;
there, where the edges
crumbled her prayers
are pushed in
the way a wedge
spoils wood;

it is the way of Kansas
to disappear and leave the wall;
it is the way of all things
to rot and leave a wall;
it is the way of tears and ashes
and stone and paper
laid even at the wall.

You have become expert
at the holes in my floor
and how to fix
them;

I wish, sometimes,
that you’d do more than
lend me a hammer.

How do we grow like
wheat at the corner of a wall,
where the earth’s furrow meets the wall,
and the wall towers in worn mortared stone?

Always in the darkness
the hesitation. Always. And then
the glorious warmth of forgotten daylight,
but how did we grow at the corner of the wall?

You were beautiful
there, beside a chain-link wall.
When did the evening fade around your
shoulders to become this night’s precipitation?

How did we grow like
wheat at the corner of a wall,
where the earth’s furrow is itself a wall
and we are shadowed and as such remain?

I was always setting things aside
for a grander idea:
I dabbed and swept
impatiently
(the way I wrote poems),
unsatified but willing
try a different colour
on a different canvas,
but when it came to you
I was not writing or painting
or getting somewhere.
You did not have
the hum of asphalt or
oil on your fingertips
and it was like writing a novel.

You were always polishing
phrases until they
were uniquely weathered,
the same colours in streaks
and gashes so carefully
constructed;
but when it came to me
you weren’t writing or painting
or getting somewhere.
I had the tactile sense of
a work unfinished
but one too jumbled to
aid precision
and I was in awe of you
when you abandoned for
the familiar.

We are safe now, here,
in our warrens. If that
means what it means then
we are safe.
If not, I will wander through
your thoughts
and set the china
on the garage roof
the way you wander through
mine with a pen,
connecting dots.

We write words backwards
at the corners of mouths
that curve upwards
and beside eyes that
crinkle like newspaper;
these are words in a mirror
we roll up and toss
aside for guttersnipes
and urchins in
search of phrases to admire
themselves in;
we write words backwards
and they are
frowning.

Belowdeck they rumble
like chattel shifting awkwardly
to the tune of pitching oak
all tar to the ocean’s
feather -
above the consonant crackle
and whipsnap sail trimmed
to bound for shore -
we are five hundred souls
praying for something
and not quite certain what
it is -
tomorrow perhaps
coral will empty our pockets -
today maybe
Jim will shoot an
albatross.

From between the laticed
board and plaster I
am a roving iris to
pachyderms passing.
If my heartbeat were as
deliberate as their footsteps,
if it pounded less dramatically
like drums in my ears,
less like the frantic ticking
of a grandfather clock
in its final seconds,
I’d tear my eyes from this.
From between the tenpenny
nails they seem
a palindrome,
blood on each and every hand,
slowly walking by.

In the early morning hours you
left off hammering stakes,

and set off into the mist rising
from the lake.

You disappeared from view
’till I became a housekeeper,

silently attending our fireside vigil
for civilization.

I though I heard you yesterday,
returning from the hunt with empty arms

and arms overflowing.
I thought I heard you.

Flames flared like lightning for a moment,
alive suddenly.

I became a housekeeper with
sod and lifelong coals, knowing

of dust to dust to ashes to grass
to fire to rebirth and

coals burning merrily
underneath.