Prayer for a Tree

Pity
dust. You know
this frame.

Plant us by living streams--
not so near faith
soddens--
Mellow us not!
Teach your saplings to yearn.

Root us in prayer
pressed down
to cling to fertile soil.

Mark this bark deep
with lines of remembrance.
Prune withered limb;
flower fruit in season.

Graft us into the cross,
boughs vaulting heaven
unfurled to receive--praise!

Pierced hands pluck fruit.
Remind.
It was not we
sowed, sunned the seed.

Amen.

The Sea and the Teacher with a Dixie Cup

I have asked to be

Where no storms come,

Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,

And out of the swing of the sea.

-Gerard Manly Hopkins

My hair is in my eyes, my feet are numb with cold, and the tide won’t stay still. In and out, in and out. I’ve always wanted to catch a wave, to make it stop its rhythm.

A new wave’s icy waters spill over my feet—too much! I run back. My toes are cold now. I bury my hands in my pockets and shut my eyes to the world. What can I see through this windy hair anyway?

Every beach is an alter to the sea. But I'm a wimp. I don't want to be on that alter. I complain about the smallness I feel and how wet I am. This year I actually put down The Little Princess after two pages because I knew what would happen. I couldn't stand it. I knew her dad would leave. I knew Ms. Minchin would turn into a ice-hearted White Witch. And that was only a child's story! Obviously, I have a problem with tension in stories and in my own life.

I remember looking at the same stars Abraham saw and asking, “Why God?! Why!” I was staring His promises right in the face and all I could feel was overwhelmed by His bigness and how much I didn't like the way the story was going. I was as face-to-face as I could get with God's goodness and I doubted it: "What about her pain? What about their trial? You gave these things - why? Why do You let this happen." The starry sky starred me down.

Little children leave their sand castles as a sacrifice for Poseidon and he eats them, slowly but surely, sometimes swallowing all at once. This bothers me, but not the children at the beach. They forget about their laborious creations and instead, delight in chasing the waves, trying to touch and then not be touched by the devouring sea god.

When we were younger, my sisters and cousins loved to chase the waves, but I did not like the cold water. I normally stayed behind to keep the waves away from the fortress. It was an important job. “Stay away!” I would say, waving my plastic cup, “Or else…I’ll pour you back into the ocean!” And somehow I believed my methods worked.

* * * 

 

We've practiced our hallway behavior quite a bit – the only choices are to sit crisscross applesauce or stand straight and tall in line order. But that would be a calm sea. That's not how God works. Wait for it. Wait for the waves to come.

Today in the hall, instead of zen-meditating, crisscross-sitting little boys, I found two floppy forms sprawled out on the hall floor like Peter Pan's shadow. Not really what I expected to see when I turned the corner. Hey, buckaroo. You know better. Hello? Haven't I trained you to a certain standard? Don't you know my expectations?

This fall, the sprinklers had to get blown out at recess - that was God's story. “Stay away from the sprinklers.” To some boys that meant, “Stay a few inches away and feel free to put your hand in the sprinkler.” I waited and watched. One of them got to sit out a bit, but I was sure the rest would get the point after this example. I watched and waited. One of the boys was watching and waiting too. Until he had my eye contact. As soon as our gaze met, he inched nearer and nearer the spraying sprinklers, eyes still locked on me. “Watch me. Just. Watch. Me.”

We practiced obedience. We've run through the consequences. Why isn't that enough? Why don't all these rules and all this practice fix the problem? Why won't you – boy, girl, child - just obey. Like Paul said, “the law entered that the offense might abound,” (Rom. 5:20). The law does not save. The rules do not save. The teacher, does not save.

One particular day after school, I went to the bathroom and closed the stall door behind me, wanting, hoping I could just weep. A dozen names on the board - a pain deeper than I had know even for my own sin. Here was the sting, here was the pain – the sin of others. It is a dagger that cuts and twists with the turning of the hilt. I never had so strong a sensation of the grief of sin, or as Paul calls it, “the sting of death.”

How the Father must have felt bitter anguish over each of His children's sins, and how Jesus tasted the venom and swallowed the serpent whole, I cannot fathom. Here was my taste of the poison. I was pained, weary from their sin toward each other. I closed the door - I closed out the children, the problems, and the confusion. I wanted to crouch into a ball on the cold stone floor and weep, I wanted to enter God's throne room and show Him my tears. “Listen to me, Dad! Abba, I need You to hear this! Hear my supplications - see me! See me.”

I could not weep. Not a tear. Not a sound. Nothing.

For all I had closed out, I had not counted on what I had closed inside. Myself. There I was, and there I was because I couldn't do it. And my Maker left me there without a hearing, without a word on my mouth because I would not see the log in my own eye. I was pruning down their selfishness, but unwilling to cut down my own. I expected God to change these little people, but through me, according to my standard, and in my time. Right now, actually.

There was my dixie cup and the sea, yet I could not see the impossibility, stupidity - blaspheme - of my solution: I could not save these children, I could not control them, I could not be rid of my anguish until I realized it was not up to me. At all.

After all, wasn't it He who bore the cross and carried our anguish to the grave? Was it not He who conquered death with life. There is a better Teacher and a higher law - Grace. “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,” (Romans 8:3).

I am completely inadequate. Like a child on the beach fighting the waves. Like the disciples with weary eyelids, hungry bellies, no food, and a starving multitude on their hands, I am inadequate. But He says, “My grace is sufficient for you. How many loaves do you have?”

I will count the loaves and give them to my Father. He will break them. He will feed the multitude.

* * *

I sit here, where the land meets the sea, battered by the waves, but still trying to catch them. Not because I can, but because He put me here near the wind and the waves. I'm trying to be like Noah and like Sarah, I'm trying to be in the “swing of the sea.”

Often, I do not see the haven or the heavens. I only see the swell of the tide as it encroaches on everything I seem to have under control. I see impossibility, defeat, and the wind whipping my hair over my eyes. But still, I stay here because I can do nothing without Him and He has called me here to become a child again by training children to see Him.

I will learn to love the repeating rhythm to and from the edge of something great and terrible, something much bigger than myself. I will frolic in the icy waters and chase the fingers of the sea, laughing and falling and laughing. I will play without a care, and forget that my toes are cold. Laughter will teach me to face the spit and spray of the seas with joy, for that is what I am here to do. I am here to be a child and laugh with Jesus at the wind and the waves.

Grace's as Relentless as Wind

Grace's as relentless as wind.

Grace is wind: 

Blows away chaff with darts of breath,

Beats me with torrential rushes,

Shakes my soul with whirlwinds,

Topples my Tower of Babel.

Bellows in my ear drums,

Messes my hair.

Grace's as insufficient as five loaves and two fish.

Grace is five loaves and two fish:

Meager means feeds five thousand.

Take, bless, brake, give:

Baskets full of leftovers.

Grace's as awe-full as a miracle.

Grace is a miracle:

I never reached for His garment, nor called His name;

My hand struck Him, my breath damned Him.

His body broken;

Mine, healed.

Grace's as cleansing as rain.

Grace is rain:

Breaking clouds above umbrella-ed heads,

Swell into garden and gutter,

Gush, splash, puddle

Beneath laughing children's feet.