The poet instructs us
on how to call our spirit back
from wandering the earth

How do I call my spirit back?

I am tempted to believe
I call my spirt back
by writing…by poetry…by reading
by thinking…by striving
By appreciating 
the writing…the poetry…the reading
the thinking…the striving
of others

I am tempted to believe
I call my spirit back
by reading difficult but renowned books
(Has anyone – ever – called their spirit back
by reading Finnegan’s Wake?)
by studying philosophy
by struggling with my faith, my God, my sometimes church

I am tempted to believe
I call my spirit back
by my own great efforts
to improve myself
to become more
as if I am a seed
and my spirit the seedling
I must become
to fulfill my destiny

But, really, truly
I think I call my spirit back
when I don’t call it at all

When I run through a garden sprinkler
like a somewhat crazed old woman
to encourage my three year old grandson
to do the same

When I stoop to kiss my husband’s almost bald head
as I hand him leftovers for lunch
because he seems tired today
too tired to get his own lunch as usual

I think my spirit comes back
most often when I don’t try
to call it at all

Yesterday
I lay
In the dentist chair
Left side of my face numbed
Feet crossed
One over the other
At the far end of tensed legs
My left hand covered my right
Resting on my stomach
Clenched tight

The right side of my lip
Was pulled down
Over the small vacuum tube
That rested in my mouth
To suck out saliva and blood
And the tiny pieces of hardened grit
That shouldn’t be
On my teeth

I saw her masked face
Loom close over my own
I saw the small round mirror
In one hand
And some fearsome medieval
Instrument of torture
Surely
In the other

I called to my breath
Breathe in calm
Breathe out anxiety
Breathe in cooperation
Breathe out resistance
Breathe in relax
Breathe out tense
In relax
Out tense
In
Out
In
Out

Wait, I thought,
Do I really want to breathe
My anxiety, my resistance, my tension
Out into the world?
Doesn’t the world have enough
Of its own
Already?

Perhaps I should pray
Let my anxiety
My resistance
My tension
Be a small sacrifice
For the world’s sake
No crown of thorns
No nails into a wooden cross
But perhaps a little death
A tiny death
Of the expectation of well-being
Let me give the well-being I seek
To the world
Just for this hour or so
Maybe
Breathe with the anxiety
Let calm be
Breathe with the resistance
Let cooperation be
Breathe with the tension
Let relax be

I begin to pray, 
“Our Father, who art in heaven…”
I get no further
Before I question
Father?
Why would I pray to a father?

I remember our father
Striding home from work, whistling
Hoisting me on his shoulders
In the Mardi Gras crowds
“Throw me something, Mistah”

I remember our father
Taking us to the beach
Letting me sprinkle sand
On his already balding head

I remember our father
Driving us drunkenly 
Onto the river ferry
To his half-brother’s house
In Algiers
Late one night
Walking in
Collapsing on the first bed
As we trailed behind

I remember our father
Getting thrown out of our uncle’s house
For what we children assumed
Was being ugly to our uncle’s 
Beautiful young wife
But now I think it probably wasn’t ugly
That he was being, our father

I remember our father
At Easter Dinner the year my sister married
“I’ve never been able to say motherfucker
At my own table
Motherfucker, motherfucker, motherfucker”

I remember…
You know, this gets me no closer to God at all
These memories
Let me let our father rest in peace
Rise, I hope, in glory

Let’s try Our Mother who art…
Oh shit, who art what
Tired?
Scared?
Too fragile emotionally
To shield us?
Egging our father on
Occasionally 
Or now
Just old
Needing help
Needing care
Needing attention

Well, this isn’t getting me any closer
To an all-powerful Supreme Being

But this is the prayer Jesus taught
So the Bible tells us
Jesus the God-Man
This is his prayer, his command
To make it our own

Dear Jesus
Blessed with good, easy parents
Whatever the truth
Of the origins of the sperm that made you
Perhaps, perhaps
You are not necessarily 
Best suited to teach me a prayer
To help me cross the divide to God

But then again
Maybe you are
Maybe the best I can do
Right now
Is meditate on, puzzle over
Our Father

The Church of my youth
the Holy Roman Catholic Church
(a sobriquet as undeserved as 
Holy Roman Empire)
gives me so very many reasons
to despise her
not least of which is
the stranglehold
of ridiculous old men
who call the Church
HER
as they rape her

But those old men
have ordained readings
for each day
from God’s word

And those old men
or their direct ancestors
decided for themselves
what was worthy 
to be
GOD’S
inerrant word
declared so by those 
raping sodomizing old men

God’s 
WORD
as filtered through them
includes the book called 
Tobit
where today I read 
of a young woman 
Sarah
possessed by a demon 
Asmodeus
who strangles her husband
on their wedding night
before they have intercourse

But, wait, the best is yet to come:
This happens seven times
YES! 
seven times to seven young men
before the angel 
Raphael 
intervenes
to save the eighth
who, sadly, was not named 
Henry

So although I would love to despise
the Holy Roman Catholic Church 
completely
HOW 
can I not retain some affection
for an entity that includes
TOBIT
as 
divine word
filtering 
GOD
to 
ME?

Never did seed
feel incomplete
without roots and stem

Never did branch
feel bereft
without leaf and twig

Never did leaf
feel incomplete
without flower

Never did flower
feel worthless
without seed

           Ah, no
           The Creator gifted
           to each 
           thought free 
           satisfaction

But I am neither seed
Nor branch
Leaf nor flower

           Her strange gift
           to me
           restless striving
           to be
           something more

Sunday mid-morning
Front porch drenched in sunshine
Or not
Warm
Or not
Front porch with the dirty white railings
The small metal what is that French word
Corner plant stand
Wrought iron furniture
The rock we brought back from 
The beach in Homer, Alaska
The pottery bowl
On the plant stand
Small stones and dry leaves 
Not filling the inside but there
The old tall brown milk jug
That my friend whose name I can’t now recall
Brought me flowers in
When she learned my father had died
Even though I hadn’t seen or spoken to my father
For what was it 3 years
Before sitting at his deathbed
With that skeletal remnant of my once
Tall father, striding home from work,
On long legs
Whistling
But then the drinking
The hurts
The threats
The arrest
The time in jail for threatening
My mother
Trying to extort money for her safety
From my sister and me
We had to testify in a courtroom
Where my father sat
Seventy years old
Shackled
Orange prison jumpsuit
Between two guards
Orange was not the color of love
That day
Now
The milk jug is part of the porch
With the small animal figurines
That grace the French whatchamacallit
Corner plant stand
Figurines from my mother’s front porch
In Mississippi before she moved here with us
The rough wooden cross
That Woody made for my Sunday School class
Now sits on the small table on the small porch
Where Bev brings Mom Communion every Sunday
While I bow my head and pray my memories

Dopamine
Steadfast, pleasing dopamine
Soak me with contentment
As I eat
As I sleep
As I shower

Oxytocin
Saucy, natural oxytocin
Suffuse me with love
When I reach out to friends
When I pet a dog
When I help someone

Serotonin
Sweet, necessary serotonin
Steep me with well-being
As I walk through sunshine
As I pause to breathe deeply
As I move through asanas

Endorphins
Strong, happy endorphins
Saturate me with pleasure
When I exercise
When I laugh
When I dance

And when I pray?
When I remember 
My generous generating God?

Whose gentle breath
Created a world
Whose dragon breath
Consumes only as a lover
Enflames the heart
Strengthens the will
Emboldens the soul

Steadfast God of dopamine
Grant me the wisdom to care for myself

Saucy God of oxytocin
Grant me the love to care for others

Sweet God of serotonin
Grant me the appreciation of your world

Strong God of endorphins
Grant me pleasure through my years

God of my needs
God of my wants
God of my satisfactions
God of my pleasures

Grant me your grace

You know the great thing about God?
She isn’t easy to offend.

I haven’t quite figured out
Yet
How to reconcile my easy going deity
With Yahweh the Terrible
Ready to command the slaying of multitudes
Often reluctant to forgive
Without extravagant penitence
Sending His people into exile
Because they just didn’t measure up
Requiring the sacrifice of His own Son
As a criminal on a cross
With lots of blood
In atonement for an ancient offense

Yeah
I learned that God
I knew Him well
Through a fearful childhood
Never dared turn my back on Him
Not for one nanosecond
He would strike me down in His great wrath
So I decided I had better become a nun
Because what else chance had I
Of earning heaven 

Then
A little later
It was years of lonely non-faith
Because I gave up
Easier to stop believing
Than to I accept that
Nun or not
I had NO chance of earning heaven
I just wasn’t ever going to be good enough

But then
A little later again 
Hey Presto! It’s OK!
Remember that gory death
Of God’s own Son?
Well, God Himself 
The Great Yahweh
Earned heaven for us
By that ugly death

Say what?

More years of confused faith
Before I realized that
I might as well believe someone
Earned my height for me
Or my eye color
As earned heaven for me

Meanwhile
Back in those heavenly realms
God the Eternal is 
Forever patient with me
She waits while I ignore Her
She waits while I confuse Her
With theology and theocracy
She out waits my anger
She out waits my preoccupations

She positively lurks
In the corners and shadows
Of my life

And then
When I am ready again
When I greet Her
She grins from ear
To universe-spanning ear
She does a cartwheel over the sun
And tosses the moon from hand to hand
She juggles a few stars
And throws down a sunbeam or two
Weeps torrents of joy
Claps her hands in time with the thunder
Dances through the green grass
Gyrating and grinding like a rock and roll star

Just because She is happy to see me again.

 

[We have to create peace and reason within our own hearts and homes. Madeleine L'Engle]

We made a decision
A few weeks ago

Not to stop watching
DCI Banks and Bones
NCIS and The Durrells in Corfu
Those wonderful shows
Where crimes are solved
Arguments are resolved
Happily ever after happens
In less than 60 minutes
Each night

But one night a week
We tell YouTube to educate us
About food insecurity
Climate change
Sustainable farming
How to feed nine billion people
Many of whom want more red meat

But also India
India, with one-fifth the land of the United States
And about the same population as China
We tried to imagine 2 million people
Instead of 150,000 in our little city
Wearing masks, trying to keep distance

Today, just a little while ago, I said
“YouTube Israel Palestine history”
(OK, I admit I added “please”
But I muttered it quietly)
What we saw was instructive
But not hopeful
The narrator seemed to think
It would be more hopeful 
If we only understood
That it was not a religious conflict
Just a land and water rights conflict

So my prayers, morning and night,
Are somewhat angry these days
I know the world is as it has ever been
And my awareness has little to do with
The goodness or troubles of God’s creation

But it has everything to do with 
My own creation of peace and reason
Within myself, within my home
How do I model myself --
In love, justice, mercy -- 
On an all powerful omniscient Creator
A divine person who, I am told, is my 
Personal lord and savior
To be welcomed into my heart
But who does not protect Their own creation?