“God called out to him from the bush...”
Exodus 3: 4
EVERY TREE IS A BURNING BUSH
Every tree
is a burning bush,
every star
a revelation
of it’s Creator,
every day
a window
to a fresh,
clean path--
to new dreams,
new possibilities,
new horizons--
new birth.
Oh, the new
will not replace
the old;
nor does it lose it.
No!
The new continues
what the old held best
and was itself
once new and fresh;
nor do the seeds
of tomorrow’s glory
reside in the looming
cathedrals of yesterday,
but in bare Nazareths
where simple spirits live;
where life is not a memorial
but a passion,
not a memory to re-imagine
but lived,
not a beautiful past,
a childhood lost--
but the vibrant seed
of yesterday
ever freshly budding
from the perennial
vitality
of its
core.
“Iam the bread of life[...].
Before Abraham came to be, I Am.”
John 6: 35; 8: 58
“We know that all things work together for good
for those who love God.”
Romans 8: 28
SO BE IT!
Lord, if my life with you
is the purpose of my birth,
the testament of my death--
so be it!
If all my glooms dissipate
at your smile
now or later--
so be it!
If every line I have written,
every canvas painted
decay in a cobwebbed attic--
so be it!
If all my loves found and lost,
if all our embraces, my God,
be patters on a wintered window
of yesteryear, O my love--
so be it!
If, when all is said and done
one thing alone glows: your love
on a dark cross that cries,
“I love you!”
And I have said,
“I love you, too!”--
so be it!
If all the times I’ve spent
listening to singers,
savored rhythms of guitars
was, all of it, time wasted--
so be it!
If all the painting
you chose to create through me
be scrap, yet you chose to live in me--
so be it!
Yes,
if I have wasted countless hours
in tears and anguish,
squandered
fierce slashes of your brush--
so be it!
So if--
as Picasso had Paris,
and Michelangelo Florence--
here is my plot for creation,
the blaze their genius started
to dimly flicker
with the brightness of your fire--
So be it!
To know you, love you, serve you
(sister taught us this in religion class,
‘though it takes a lifetime to grasp!) ;
is my only great accomplishment--
so be it!
O noisy highway out my window,
swiftly swizzle all you must:
My love and I know
love’s rich silence.
Oh, yes, yes,
Oh, this, this is enough
for my Love and me, so--
so be it!
“Bark, bark!”
“Shut up, dog!
No, keep barking:
it’s our love you’re singing.
So, in every yard and park
let this our love keep ringing
‘till evening takes his final bow,
and whispers ‘bye!’
and all is loss
but I and Thou,
Oh, yes, yes, my Lord--
so be it!
“But by the grace of God I am what I am.”
1 Corinthians 15: 10
I HAVE TAKEN LIFE ON MY OWN TERMS
I sit back in my easy chair,
looking out my picture window
as I have so many times before,
watching sunrise spangle trees and grass.
My country cottage is quiet
and I could not be more content
than savoring it this morning,
raising a steaming cup of Starbucks.
“Yes! It was all worth it!
“I see meaning lighting each day.”
This is my answer to life.
Yes, this: I have taken life on my own terms.
All, my Lord, you let life bring--
both rich and vapid happenings,
uncountable destructions--
you painted me,
rubbed away my least allusions
to greatness, marriage, fame;
you pushed my parts about
until today, at peace with myself,
and most importantly, at peace with you,
I exclaim, Yes! This is the dazzling
chalice I raise to you:
a heart of grateful praise.
O Lord, how wonderful all becomes
to one who serves you alone
and takes life on their own terms.
The painting of me you first began
you have spent my lifetime shaping
until today. I am your passion’s prize.
When I was just a boy,
an inconspicuous canvas in a corner
in Florida, you chose me--
how long ago it seems--
for yourself alone.
“I am ready to give up
everything for Jesus!”I said,
and you took me at my word.
Now, as I stand to refill my cup,
and return to my picture window,
I see my life outside shining,
all my love torn hours rising,
breaking into a crescendo of praise,
and I exclaim. “Thank you, God--
I’ve taken life on my own terms!
But this is not my achievement,
but your gift: you painted me as you will,
and I, your canvas,
pliant to your docile brush,
stood still and said “Yes, Lord!
Do with me as you will!”
The purpose of my life is
far beyond my sight.
Every work of yours like me
must find its worth in turning dust,
must see its beauty in the vision
of your passionate purpose.
This is the purpose that I chose
in choosing life on my own terms.
Oh, all supposed greatness: an illusion.
Every part of canvases you paint
you value as much as any other.
On
ly you, great Cezanne,
see your goal.
“There will come a day,”
Cezanne prophesied, “when a carrot,
freshly seen,will spur a revolution....
I will astonish Paris with an apple!”
“Some people look at my painting,”
Picasso said, “and they see
an apple a minor addition--
but the apple is the message;
all other parts embellishments.”
Oh, the unreflective cannot see:
They cannot grasp, Lord, what you said --
which Picasso echoed--
“The greatest is the least.”
Michelangelo or a little boy--
who is the greater artist? To whom?
More greatness lies in the love
of man and woman or close friends
than in the “wonders of the world.”
Aix and Arles toppled Paris, then the world;
just as did Bethlehem, Jerusalem--
and Arkansas is as great to God.
I have lived life on my own terms...
for you, my Lord; and I have
fled pride’s rank delusion--
and when crowds stream past my bier,
when my last loved ones have passed by,
when the door finally shuts its last
and I hide from sun and moon,
I shall at last find peace and say,
“Yes, life is good. At least, my Lord,
for those you choose, whose life is ‘Yes!’
to you and take life on their own terms.
“Oh,how deep are the riches and wisdom of God!How [...] unsearchable his ways!”
Romans 11:32-33
WHAT IS SO BAD ABOUT OLD AGE?
What is so bad about old age?
Being part of God’s wise plan,
it must be good, part of being myself.
“Of course it’s good, my deluded son,
so why not celebrate what is? Stop
clinging to the flimsy life-raft
of what was or might have been.
I told Moses I am always Today,
so why desire to be another way?
We admire a beautiful girl but what
is her beauty but an adjective
for a season to search for a mate,
to share God’s call to birth--
inbred in his plan--yet another
in God’s own image?
This dignity she shares with God--
what awesome responsibility!
And, if she turns too much to see
her beauty reflected in a mirror,
how wasteful this is of a gift so pure
made to light the path to godliness.
So, pretty girl, or whoever you are
who share part of God’s magnificence--
wave that obnoxious gnat away.
Seek to make godly your fleeting day,
for you shall one day see your youth
but old age fodder for eternal fruit.
“[...] my days were shaped before one came to be.”
Psalm 139:16
MY LIFE
In one flash of awareness my life
appears--dazzling from birth,
and its light has led me here
to this quiet, hallowed grove
where my world finds all
my meaning, purpose--and wonder.
Yes, Lord, for you who made me
for your pleasure have led me
here and nowhere else, not
to a dreamed-of Paris hallowed
by decayed poets and painters,
nor to the hallowed Holy Land
where you raised up kings
and prophets and you yourself took flesh.
No! This is where you made me live,
this is my holy land, my Paris,
the birthplace of my poems
and paintings where you, my God,
still walk in the cool of the evening--
from my Bethlehem to my Calvary,
from Birmingham to Memphis--
and here unfold my mystery, here
where a brilliance illumines all
my foibles and my furies,
all my loves and all my losses,
make crystal clear my dreams
and you alone chose to imprint,
as by your master painter’s brush,
on all my labyrinthine ways
your deft and graceful touch;
yes, to every bright or dismal day
that lead me nearer my personal heaven.
But this awareness does not come
merely in images--but somehow as
source and soul of all my yearnings
unveiled to my wondering spirit
as to a blushing bride, and coalesces
into the loving awareness
that all I have ever done
has been the best for me--
for you, my God, crafted all
as part of a complex painting--
and made me a fresh creation
of your ever avid passion.
You, great painter, now step back
from your easel to inspect your work,
survey all its sunlit facets
as voices trail away outside,
and glory prepares to claim it’s prize
in the blissbright halls of heaven.
“You formed my inmost being;
you knit me in my mother’s womb.”
Psalm 139: 13
“...the least act of pure love is of more value...than
all others works together [...] I shall be love.”
St. Therese of Lisieux
I THINK I SHALL HAVE LIVED WELL
I think I shall have lived well
if I have shown you your
timelessness, and your withering life
joy’s permanence;
if I have made a sparrow chirp
for you the glory-song of lovers
rising sun-bright
from a dying dream;
if I have shown fruition to
loins that conceive in pain,
for whom deception’s spiders
weave their rank villainy;
if I have unclad the delusions
of whores and hucksters
for whom all ravaged virgins
weep in the dark;
if I have dissipated night
that shades love’s precarious flight--
if I have done this,
then
I think I shall have lived well.
If I, seeing you sweat and groan
for a brief respite from
beatings from a world’s
heart of stone,
and tell you that
what you seek
lies in no other land
than in a pauper’s
praying hand;
if I have shown you, perhaps,
that in the marrow
of your peace
you can alone
unearth the street
that leads
through singing fields of rest
to the mansion of
love’s opulence;
if I, perchance,
have shown you this,
I surely shall not
have lived amiss.
No, and if I have led you
/>
to where you can find
the switch that makes death
turn sunrise;
or show you
a pure sky of stars
that chant love’s ecstasy--
then I think I shall have lived well;
if I, in the moment spirit quells
all turbulence,
helped you see peace
brightly stand
and hand you God’s
eternal wedding band.
Oh, yes, then
I think that I
shall have lived well.
“Listen, my daughter, and understand; listen carefully.
Forget your people and your father’s house, that the
king might desire your beauty
Song of Songs 45:11-12
A POSTSCRIPT-MY ART AND POETRY
I am very much a modern artist and poet: I draw and write of reality as I see it--permeated with God’s awesome, mysterious, and, above all, loving presence.
I paint as I feel God guides me, focusing on the unexpected, the yet to be seen, the enigma that envelops everything.
God has many names; I propose a new one: God yet to be known --a God whose creation is always new and wonderful.
A little girl in a Saturday children’s art class at the Memphis Academy of Art asked her teacher why trees look so bright after a rain, to which the teacher replied, “God washed off their dust to show us how bright and beautiful they are.” I want to wash off my work the dust of influences by other artists and poets, all the while knowing that every new vision I have contains a precious seed they planted. Jesus said, “Look, I make all things new.” (Revelation 21:5) I like to think I imitate his creativity.
God never imitates himself. Each of his creations is unique. Imitators may have great spirituality, but they mimic what inspired other artists before them.
A God Desperate To Be Loved Page 8
