A Prayer from the East to the West

It’s difficult to know what to say at a time and place when I am so full and so distracted and so completely disarmed. There is little more powerful than stories, stories of success and of failure and the most important, which are all of those words in between.

I keep pondering what success is, what fulfillment is. I keep begging to know if I’ve failed or if I’ve passed. I am disarmed utterly and completely, in learning, in beginning to grasp that these two poles, these two ends that we flee to and from are hardly more than whispers. They are the east and the west and while we fly towards one the other does not recede. I am, we are, held in the balance. Not because failure and success both pull at us, begging us to grasp at them, keeping us strung somewhere in between. No, because they are not true ends.

We are, here and now. There is no goal that I will attain that will leave me with rest, and there is no failure so low that I can go no lower. There is this, telling from beginning to end and finding that stories have begun before I knew them and that endings have not yet been. There is always more, and I am not some being, some undefined entity who can be either this or that.

 I wake in the morning, begin a new day with my love beside me, and depart to begin the work of my hands. But the work I began upon waking, that is, loving and learning who my husband is and how I can create even more between us, does not end when I walk out of the front door no less than it ends when I fall asleep in the evening.

And the people I labor for and with in my office, their stories do not begin when I arrive nor end when I close my laptop for the day. I am not saying we should not strive for certain things and certain people and certain places, or that we should not celebrate all things that point towards life. And I am not saying we should cease to mourn when things are lost. But to sum such joys and such aches into something so finite as success or failure is to rob us of a real and true glimpse of being alive.

 When we read the unfathomable and comforting truth that our sins are as far away from the Father as the East is from the West, we must know that our lives cannot be summed up in our striving, cannot be defined by success or failure. We are more, our labor is more. These carrots and prods have been thrown from us, thrown as far as the East is from the West.

Our standard for our worth has been destroyed and instead replaced with a terrifying truth that our souls cannot be summed up as pass or fail. It has been given a new name, our souls, beloved. It has been judged and found without blemish. And now the stakes are much more terrifying than success and failure. It is life or it is death, and it is not determined by the work we do or have not time or heart to do each day.

 It is powerful and it is about stories, and it is about speaking and creating life. And it is about knowing the source of life and believing that we are not strung between the East and the West, and we cannot capture the East or the West.

 It is often said you can tell what or who a person loves by the way they labor for it, and yet we are told we are able to love and to labor for that which we love, because YHWH loved us first. He labored to create us and labored to begin a work in us. And he will not cease.

 So we work and we labor each day, not to secure failure or success in our workplace or in our relationships, but to affirm loudly and with passion that we accept the love given to us and cannot help but labor to create greater reflections of it in everything we touch.

 Again and again throughout my life I dream about stories and I write stories and I live stories and am unable to escape that all things came before me and more will come after. And I am not diminished by this great East and West which cannot touch, I am comforted that I must never reach them.

 I must labor because I have been loved, and I must choose to let the love and labor of Yeshua cover all that I have done, failed, or accomplished. Oh YHWH, I delight in the love that reaches and has touched both the East and the West.

I wrote words about you once,
I said our story was through, once.

These were hard words, when I ached for your aching.
These were hard words when I tried to make the story go on.

You write words, too,
and you sing them well.
But I have not been in your stories for a long time-
I am not sure why I ever was.

old fashioned

Jim and I, we sat in our respective chairs, and we stared. He with the grit of an ex-marine, cynicism like a grin laid onto his face. His eyes so appropriately cold looking, a blue turned grey as they narrowed, judging my attire and demeanor.

My own stare met his, indignant, curious, knowingly naive. We were sizing each other up, wondering who would be victor. I was a guest in his home, however. I had niceties to maintain, sugar cookies to politely munch on courtesy of our hostess, his lovely wife. And here I sat, and here we stared. Gradually, I took notice of the conversations surrounding us. Jim's grandson, Chris, was coddling a conversation between his grandmother and his girlfriend. Claire is the type of woman who knows how to cook and sit properly, spills no crumbs from her sugar cookie, and had Chris's grandmother cooing and awing at her hand embroidered blouse. I looked quizzically at Chris, who mouthed to me that a blouse was a nice ladies shirt. I nodded gratefully and froze as I turned back towards the two. They were looking at me expectantly and I groaned inwardly as I realized it was my turn to shower compliments and answer invasive questions courteously, gracefully.

I glanced back at Jim, who was still eyeing me, and not surprisingly looking pleased about my imminent torture. Ignoring him, I addressed Claire, complimenting her manicure and asking where she had her nails done. She launched into a perfectly executed story, ending with an endearing scene in which she invited the little vietnamese woman who owned the nail salon, and her entire family to go to church with her, which they had. Grandmother Gene began her cooing again, which I didn't mind because it meant I was not the one talking.

Until Gene turned back to me, asking what church I was a member of, what did I do there, had I a boyfriend. I smiled a little at the presumption that I went to church, never mind that I be a member as well. And what did I do there? Was I supposed to be doing anything aside from going and being a member? Though I assumed she was wondering if I taught a Sunday school class, kept the nursery in order to practice for motherhood, or pretended to be Mother Theresa on a regular basis. I hesitated in answering. I was not a member of any church, save the dear body of people I called home- but they were half a country away in Manhattan. I hadn't been on a date in close to two years. To answer truthfully would result in glances of sympathy and requests that I come with them to church the very next Sunday. To lie, well, who wants to lie to an adorable eighty year old who finds no greater joy than baking cookies and serving sweet tea to her guests.

I looked at Chris for help and he shrugged, Claire seemed just as interested in hearing my answer as Gene, the framed ten commandments on the wall offered no guidance aside from further confirmation that lying would have only the most eternal of consequences. And Jim, the god damn old bastard was actually smirking, and when I met his look he raised his old codger eyebrows as if to challenge me, as if to poke and prod and say, "what have you got girl, what have you?"

"Actually, Mrs. Cannon, I have not really found a church to my liking since moving back from the city. I can't say I have been anywhere for more than a few visits for the better part of the past year. I miss having consistent fellowship and good teaching, but I won't settle for attending a circus of people who sit there every week in order to feel better about themselves and to stroke the egos of pastors who are more interested in the number of folks who attend than their names. I see that a lot, and I'm a little discouraged with it all right now, and no I'm afraid I'm not seeing anyone at the moment."

I paused, unsure of how much I had offended and if I was wanted to keep on speaking. I decided I had said enough, and waited for the next volley.

"Well darling, we'll just have to fix that. Bless your heart. All alone in that big city, no man to protect you, miles away from your mother and father. And here you are, back safe and sound in the South and with no where to praise the Lord. You'll have to come with us this Sunday. Jim and I, we just love Pastor Harris, he's a good man. And we have a Sunday school class especially for you single ladies, and one for couples." She smiled and nodded at Chris and Claire, who to her horror were sitting no more than an inch apart, Chris's arm around her.

Jim spoke his first words of the evening, aside from his first grunts of introduction.
"Gene, just let her alone. Girl says she's too good for churches around here, and probably for the men as well." The man must play poker exquisitely, his gruff but matter of fact speech held no hint of irony, but no comfort against it, either. In fact, I was disquieted at my inability to decipher his intentions with that comment. Malicious, jesting, or completely mundane?

No one spoke. I felt the hot burn of embarrassment, the remembering of words spoken too quickly. I was being a terrible guest, Chris had been kind enough to drag me out of my apartment, thoughtful enough to remember that I wanted to meet his girlfriend. Why, I could not now remember, as I was acutely aware of being a single and misguided woman to be pitied.

For God's sake, she said, "bless your heart." I might as well pin the scarlet A to my breast and say hello to Hester, who I'm sure Gene had also invited to church. If I remember correctly, Hester endured all these things with humility and silence, and I am good at neither.

And yet she was the first to speak. "Oh honey, don't mind Jim, he's asleep on the pew every other Sunday and it's a miracle any woman ever decided to stick around."
I appreciated her gesture, she might think I was a poor lost soul, but she had no intention of seeing me hang, only of saving me from singleness.

"Mr. Jim, surely you don't think I believe so highly of myself. I'm just a little over opinionated, and they don't make many men like your grandson these days," nodding toward Chris. "Besides, I'm too young to be settling down, I have my career to think of, school to finish, books to read. I can't even cook. " I offered a smile in jest.

My words were pointed back at myself, and I felt their sting. What woman doesn't hold her dreams in one hand, leaving the other to be held by a man.

Ignoring Gene, Jim spoke directly to me for the first time.
"Couple things you got wrong, missy. Chris ain't my grandson, he's Gene's. And you damn well ought to have an opinion about where you sit on Sunday morning and who you lay with after. But no, I don't reckon many men like a woman who reads every book but the ones with recipes in 'em. What's this career you're so busy with anyway?"

This man wasted no words. I immediately grew an affection for him, where anger and possibly fear had been only moments before. I asked him, hesitantly, what he meant by Chris not being his grandson and left his own question unanswered. I looked over at Chris to make sure this was no news to him, and thankfully his expression held no surprise. Rather, he was still occupied with Claire, the two of them in quiet but ernest conversation. They were no longer interested in my inquisition. In fact, even Gene was no longer in her seat but had bustled into the kitchen.

Again, Jim and I sat in our respective chairs, and we stared. Finally, he cleared his throat and recrossed his legs, settling into an air marked for a story. He and Gene had been high school lovers, sweethearts since 37. But Jim enlisted on his 18th birthday, left Gene with the promise of a marriage when he got back, asked her to wait for him. Gene, being a reasonable woman at the time, was furious at his enlisting and absolutely refused to wait.

Instead, six months later, she mailed him a photograph of herself and her new husband. Jim at this point chuckled a little, while I wiped a dumfounded expression from my face and replaced it with an appropriately sympathetic one. So Jim came out of the war with a stiff left leg, a hankering for whiskey, and a string full of women, their handkerchiefs in his duffel all smelling of perfumes and advances.

The rest of the story, Jim told in a remarkably curt and brief manor. "Well, Gene's old bag of bones died six years ago, and she hadn't changed one bit. Damn woman still won't wait for anything. She looked me up, found I was as single and handsome as ever, and we married at the age of eighty two. Now I know what killed her first husband, she won't quit talking, but I figure I ain't got too many years in me anyway."

Jim gave me no time to ask more questions. He stood and motioned for me to follow. We walked downstairs, to his own entertaining room and office. Jim pointed at the deep mahogany cabinets and told me to take a look. It was a proper gentleman's bar, stocked handsomely.

"A man ought to have a good bar in his home. His guest ought to be able to ask for any drink, and he have the best of spirits to make it. I don't drink much myself, but I'm a man and this is my home. And another thing, you always drink what your guest drinks. Now what do you want to drink?"

His demeanor doesn't allow for refusal, courteous or not. I asked for Makers on the rocks and he chuckled. "You're a damn strange woman. I'm not bringing that little goose up there Makers, we'll pour her a little hazelnut liquor and we'll see how well Chris takes a strong drink."

"What about Gene."? I winced as I had forgotten to call her Mrs. Cannon. Jim didn't seem to mind, but replied that she was an obnoxious drunk and he didn't feel like having sex that evening.

We returned upstairs with drinks and all sat down into conversations. About the things which we fight about in this world, about the things we shouldn't. The drinks eased us, we talked freely. Jim and I no longer seemed at odds, though he still shot challenging looks my way as he asked about my opinions of homosexuality, abortion, immigration, HIV. The whole of us were merry, charged by argument and tingling with hot blood. In the same breath, there was the knowing that the warmth would fade. Jim and Gene would remain old, Chris and Claire a couple, and myself so far from either.

I asked Jim late on in the evening, after my words were loose and my mind running, "How is it to love a woman who loved another man? How did you just take her back after fifty years?"

As Jim placed an Old Fashioned in my hand, he noticed my smile falter, I think he noticed the fight had left my words and I was no longer present with them. He asked me, not as an old conservative ex-marine, or as the husband to a wife who'd been married before, but as a man who loves. One who has loved much for long years, lost much, and somehow over our evening of sparring, decided to love me.

"What are you afraid of, darlin'?"
And it was hard not to heave out my answers without tears, and hard not to be angry and awkward that tears would come at such a time. I cursed being a woman under my breath. I told him I had loved someone once, and how will I love another some day, and have to tell them they are not the first, tell them someone else had me first. Won't my love be cheapened, be less for it all?

Jim and I, we sat in our respective chairs, and I looked down and he looked at his wife across the room.
"All I know," he answered, "is that love cannot diminish, and every day I am loved by that jew of a woman, I am able to love more. Read the damn Bible darlin', and give me that drink back. You've had enough. I expect to see you asleep on the pew next to me this Sunday, and for poker and scotch that evening back over here."

we crawl around in these places we've dug out for ourselves,
we tell stories in bed and run our fingers down ours spines,
his spine and he down mine.

and we are lovers wondering where our hearts fled to
and when did we lie here together and where have our clothes gone;
this is how we are found,
alive and breathless, warm beneath skin.
mirth of new beginnings, how shall we live, how shall we live.

Our first kiss wasn't in an opportune moment,
with weeks of anticipation behind it or the promise of more before it.

It was on my couch after too many drinks;
it was crooked and imperfect.

We held hands to be nearer,
and we fumbled around each other's eyes.

Afraid to glance, afraid to stare.
We held hands afraid to look.

Our conversations have not flooded from our lips,
we have not finished a single sentence of the other.

There is nothing perfect, nor pretty, nor easy about us.
The states between us are many; the years between us are more.

However; there is something good, something human,
something real about the way we choose to keep on talking.

There is a solid fire of human heart in him, a good heart, a heart known and loved by yhwh.
There is a man, with scars, with faults; but eyes that see truth, that see the world as it is-
and love it still.

How few are the men who will love the world after she has hated him, has seduced him, has twisted him.
And though our kiss was crooked, improbable.. it was secure around so much that is not.

There is no ideal to be broken here, there is only a real man
who this real woman might one day decide to love.

Or we may hold hands once again
and say goodbye.

a new story

Big toes curled around my little toes
and his beard scratches my nose
as we lay between covers together
and lay while the day goes on without us,
and we lay hoping the world will forget us,
let us curl around each other
with his big toes and mine small.

It's the quick heartbeat of a new beginning,
eyes shining and fingers intertwined
laughing at the eighteen inches between his head and mine.

I am warm and breathless,
he is warmer and full of words that
make me blush.

We're a strange sort of people, aren't we?
Tonight an Irishman sang his heart out,
and we wept and danced in the course of his songs.

And we're a cold sort of people, aren't we?
Tonight we laughed and smoked through his songs.

And we're a soft and weak sort of people, aren't we?
Tonight we wept and wandered through his songs.

But the truth, we breathed through them, and in those moments we felt the weight of life in our veins and in our arms. It's a simple enough feeling, we understood what it means to be alive, and we let it show on our faces.

We're all human when the music is playing, we're all alive while he's singing sweet words.