It's best to compose a poem...

Hello my lemons,

I'm writing poetry again. But the new stuff is too raw still so I shall post something I wrote for the seniors last year which seems perfect for the semester's wind down:

For the Seniors

If I hung you on the wall like a mirror,
I wonder if you'd talk like me, act like me.
Could I dress you up and keep you here with me?
Sing you stories and show you songs about me?
Could I hug you in the quiet crazy of my sleep
When houses I no longer live in call me home
And running never gets me where I'm going.
But they are pretty, all the same, these dream sleep dreams.
They tap at our unspoken and the too much spoken
And yet demand no specific answer for their questions.

Find me in the midst of these and sing,
Tell me how you are like my skin, my story,
But how you dream instead of ponds and rivers
Sometimes frozen but rarely walkable or warm.
How you hang art on the wall instead of mirrors
And find yourself staring at the thick paint,
Wondering why the artist painted blue
When you had always considered grass green.
Which then makes you think of open plains and fields
And following your footsteps to some new house
Some home where mirrors and art are hung side by side
But maybe you don't recognize your skin or the color of paint
When it sketches itself in unrecognizable colors and hues
On walls that look nothing like the home in your head.

Find yourself there where the rivers freeze overnight
And the sick do not always remember your name.
Find there the sad cry of tired voices
And their need for a dream like yours.
Not for mirrors or symbolic art on church walls
But for passion and a willingness to hold the pain.
For recognizing that grass is not always green
And that sometimes the strangest dreams let you run the farthest.
Hold them there and let me be here in my wandering,
Also finding the places that somehow feel like home.

More lyrics. Alanis style.

How bout getting off of these antibiotics
How bout stopping eating when I'm full up
How bout them transparent dangling carrots
How bout that ever elusive kudo

Thank you India
Thank you terror
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you frailty
Thank you consequence
Thank you thank you silence

How bout me not blaming you for everything
How bout me enjoying the moment for once
How bout how good it feels to finally forgive you
How bout grieving it all one at a time

Thank you India
Thank you terror
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you frailty
Thank you consequence
Thank you thank you silence

The moment I let go of it was
The moment I got more than I could handle
The moment I jumped off of it was
The moment I touched down

How bout no longer being masochistic
How bout remembering your divinity
How bout unabashedly bawling your eyes out
How bout not equating death with stopping

Thank you India
Thank you providence
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you nothingness
Thank you clarity
Thank you thank you silence

I'm going to Montana

....and I just keep singing parts of this song in my head.

"Wide Open Spaces" by Dixie Chicks

Who doesn't know what I'm talking about
Who's never left home, who's never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone

Many precede and many will follow
A young girl's dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn't yet guessed

[Chorus:]
She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes

She traveled this road as a child
Wide eyed and grinning, she never tired
But now she won't be coming back with the rest
If these are life's lessons, she'll take this test

[Repeat Chorus]
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes

The art of Love

I keep saying I have a problem with the phrase, "Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner." Most of this is based on the fact that I think we stop at the first part of the phrase or even the first word. Getting permission to hate in the name of doing something good has unleashed an awful kind of hell on the world. Let's just have the second part - "Love the Sinner." Wasn't Jesus' commandment to love God and neighbor? There wasn't hate in that phrase. I wonder if we are even capable of separating the two. Perhaps only Jesus is capable of that.

At least, I've not seen it successfully done by any human or any church. How does one hate the sin but love the sinner? Surely we understand that sin is wrong, etc, etc and that God loves the person and not the sin. I've just been getting multiple challenges lately to hate the sin. (It generally begins with, "But the bible says....") Is this our call? Are we called to hate the sin and love the sinner? I don't think I like being called to hate. I recognize that sin is worth hating and I certainly am not promoting it but I don't really think we as humans can actually separate the hate and love. In our task to hate the sin, we hate the sinner. Or as someone else posed, perhaps the problem is that we really, really love the sin and aren't actually capable of hating it. So I'm casting the question outward - can we hate the sin and love the sinner TRULY? I feel like I am called to love - I'm not so sure about this hate thing.

The Task

It is hard to think of ministry as a blessing right now. Jesus as my friend. God at my side.... Not because God is absent but because of how incredibly difficult this life is. The odd isolation that choosing to be a prophet for God brings. The challenge of being a model for others, a leader, a guide. Someone who has her spiritual gifts and blessings straightened out and is living into the life God has called her to. Even the little things like remembering to actually pray for someone when you told them you would. Completing assignments even when your emotions are distracting. Staying in touch with family and friends who are far away when there never seems to be time for a phone call. Remembering to take time for myself and not knowing what exactly to do in that time but sleep.

I'm just saying it is difficult, even while it is a blessing. Trying to be happy that God has called me to ministry while at the same time grimacing with how much it seems to take of me, how much it costs. But isn't that the point? That God wants all of me?