[A meditation on Hebrew 10:5-10]

What if there were no Annunciation
No miraculous conception
No Magnificat?

What if there were no angels
No shepherds
No wise men?

Just a starry starry night
And a young couple
Far from home
By order of the emperor

What if there were no flight
No slaughter of the innocents
No Simeon, no Anna?

What if there were no healings
No loaves and fishes
No walking on water?

Just a conquered people
And a young man
Walking the land
Bringing hope and good news

What if there were no betrayal
No crucifixion
No resurrection?

What if there were no broken bond with God
No stain of original sin
No need for sacrifice?

Just Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary
Sent by God
To turn us away from sacrifice
And back to simple joy

What if we believed
That burnt offerings and sacrifices
Are not what God wants?

What if we believed
That God was, is always, with us
But that we need reminders?

Would that be so terrible?

To go to Jesus
Not because he was God
But because he was human

To go to Jesus
Not because of his death and resurrection
But because of his life and words

To go to Jesus because he knew
Though he was just human
That He – like all of Us –
Is Immanuel, God With Us

To go to Jesus

When I was young
I searched for God
In church
In catechisms
In rosaries and holy water
In Latin and liturgy.

When I was older
I thought I found God
In yoga
In philosophies
In wildernesses
In mystics and mysteries.

Now
I am content to see God
In my backyard
As I look out the kitchen window
While I wash dishes
In warm water.

Oh the ceaseless hum, the susurrus song
Of the world that lives only in my head
How I envy those who live in silence
And have that deep quiet for which I long

What do they hear, I ask with jealousy
As my private murmuring thoughts persist
What do I miss, I worry, every day
As insistent words fill my fantasy

If God is found in silence, I am lost
Forever doomed to my own noisy hell
Meditation, contemplation mere words
Like jetsam overthrown and tempest tossed

Stop it! Give up this popular belief
By words I calm my storms and feel relief

Ten lepers
Scabrous, diseased, disgusting
More than dirty – unclean
Cried to a holy man
“Yeshua, Rabbi!
Have pity on us”
Not on me
But on us
Have pity.

And this Yeshua
What did he do?
He sent them away
Go, he said
I am not a priest, he said
Get thee to a priest.

And they went
All ten of them
To find a priest
Though what good they expected
Of that
Is not clear to us
Or, probably, likely
To them.

But as they went
His pity found them
Sores disappeared
Ugliness was no more
They were still dirty
But no longer unclean.

Ten lepers cried for mercy
Ten lepers went to seek a priest
Ten lepers were healed.

One leper returned
Only one
And he
(Do we know for sure he
Could it have been she?)
This leper, he or she
Was less than leper
A foreigner
Stranger in a strange land.

This leper
Recognizing whence the healing
Returned
Praising the God of the Jews
And thanking Yeshua.

Ten lepers
Receiving his pity
Were healed.

One leper
Receiving his grace
Was saved.

So we are told.

Were the nine satisfied?
Happy?
Was life, whole and healed
Enough
Without eternity?

We are not told.

Like flakes of burnt paper,
with words lost forever
in fires of remorse,
the birds drifted away
across the smoky clouds.

To re-member
within my own selfness
requires first dismemberment
of those members of others
that are dangerous to my own-ness.

Not to dismember from others
risks my own dismemberment.

(Sometimes our electronics
are smarter than we know:
When I type “own-ness”
Autocorrect changes it to
man-made.)

I don’t want to re-member
unless, like Proust, I can find
my lost own-ness
(not man-made)
that was me before membering
in family, church, school,
work, couple, culture…

Who was am will be I?

Can I member my own-ness?
Can I unmember enough
to remember my divinity?

She spreads her legs
Hugs that guitar
Snuggles up to
Kiss the mic
Sings her song

In jeans and a jean jacket
“Just an old hippie”
She says
But her voice still
Croons
Sweet and strong

Against the cooling weather
Smoky clouds billow
As though from
Bright tree flames.

Orange, red, yellow, gold
Leaves fly in the wind,
Sparks flung to the ground.
Autumn trees warm hearts.

They seem so close
Easy to grab
I reach down
Wrist, elbow slipping
Into the cool water
Almost to my shoulder
I reach deep
For the golden fish
Quicksilver cold
Mercurial fragments
Figments
Of my mind pool
The small fall
Of my tears
Ripples the surface
But those slivers
Those erratic beautiful golden
Slivers
Stay in the quiet depths
Just out of reach

Once I bent double
Not with age
**Effortlessly**
My nose snuggled into
My shins
My hands waved to my toes
As they slipped past
To pat the floor
When I ached
It was because I
Had pretzeled myself
Again and again
Or rode my bike through mountains
Or danced until I was breathless
This same me
But not
How often do our cells turn over?
I feel bound now
Trussed by age
The grab in my left hip
The catch in my groin
The cramp in my leg
The tiredness in my mind
Remind me
Of what I would rather forget