When we were Faith Leader, then again in Courageous Conversations, I never understood why Grace loved intercessory prayer.  I didn't even really understand what it was.  Praying for someone else?  How could that work?  Not talking with them?  Or seeing them face to face?  How could prayer walk across the invisible air and do anything for anyone else? 

I actually thought it might one of those big christian hoaxes to make the pray-er feel better.  You know how people say stuff like that about us. "They just believe in God because it makes them have a place to place their sadness."  Or, "They believe in Jesus because they just want to get to some false heaven." 

I thought intercessory prayer was like that.

I still did it, mind you, on occasion. For people I know.  Tori.   Deanne.  Lorene.  My father.  My nephew.  My neighbors.  Johanna.  And Grace -- as she prayed for me, I prayed for her.

Honestly, though, I had no idea what or why I was doing. How, exactly, did it work?

But today I got it. 

Chris came back to finish my new kitchen.  I came home from school early, not feeling well.  As soon as I walked in the door, I could feel a red heat coming from him.  He barely looked me in the eye.  He barely said hello.  I just thought he was mad about having to redo work that he had already done once.  Weeks ago, I had told Mike, the contractor, that all of the appliances and cabinets would not fit and, of course, after all of the beautiful work Chris did, they did not.  A fortnight later, here he was again -- Chris -- tearing out old work and rehanging cabinets that would fit the dimension. 

I left my house.  I couldn't stand to be near his energy.  I did not want his energy in my house.  He was building me an angry kitchen.

I planted some peonies.  I tried to start my lawn mower.  He and passed each other several times going to or from the garage. Not a word spoken.

The whole four hours, he was yelling.  Swearing.  Smashing things.  Talking -- hard and fast -- under his breath. 

I had no idea what was going on; Chris had never acted this way. 

I read on the porch, then he called out for me.  I came in and Chris told me that he was coming back "to handle this crazy" tomorrow.  He explained how the new cabinet was not working out because of the slope in the old floor.  No matter how many times he tried, it just wouldn't stay level. 

Then, I don't recall the transition, or how he go to the next thing but then it all came tumbling out.  He hadn't slept in four days.  He hadn't eaten.  He left for work on Friday and by the time he came home, his wife was gone.  Had left him and had flown to Mississippi. How he was nearly forty and had messed up a relationship again.  How she had said he had been working too hard and was never home.  How he was working hard to try to gain money to pay an attorney who was trying to get her daughter back.  How he hadn't had anything to drink or smoke in two years.  How he was a good man who just worked too hard.  How he had tried to kiss her good bye on Friday and she stiffened to his kiss. How his mind was a swirl.  He had gone from normal to insane in one day. How his life flip flopped on him.

My heart leaped out of my heart.  My heart reached out its arms for his heart.

It was so easy to remember that February.  Her leaving.  Not sleeping.  Not eating.  My mind going 6,000 miles an hour. 

So I was suspended there, between his new grief and my old grief.  The sun was setting orange over his truck.  He took off his baseball cap, and rubbed his head.  Shook his head.  Bowed his head.  The disbelief hung on his thin shoulders.

I told him to not worry about my kitchen -- it could wait.  I told him to try to eat, try to sleep.

He finished packing up his tools in the kitchen while I swept.  He stood in front of me for a moment, I touched his shoulder.  Not calmly like in the movies.  I sort of patted him awkwardly.   My eyes too shy to match his eyes, I said, "I wish I could tell you that it will all be okay, but all I can say is to be careful going home.  Be safe with yourself." 

He said, "Ok.  Thank you."

Now, since then, all I can think of is Chris.  Chris, Chris, Chris.  This man who plastered my ceiling.  Who tiled my walls.  Who gave me lights.

And that's how I understand intercessory prayer.  Chris does not know I am thinking about him.  But somehow, I am heavier tonight.  I have willingly picked up his heartache.  I am carrying some of his pain.  He does not know it; he probably cannot feel it  because the kind of pain he is feeling has no left or right.  It's ups and downs are endless.  But, I have picked up some of that infinite ache and it must be helping.  I just know it has to help, because when the whole world prayed for me I know it helped me. 

I did not know how or why then, but tonight I understand.  Parts of me were crumbled into pockets.  Parts of me were scribbled on notes on bedside tables.  Parts of me were talked about over dinner tables.  Parts of me were skipped on thin river rocks.  My name was whispered in the dark.  I was prayed for and those prayers lessened the unburdenable burden.  My friends picked up my pain.  They asked God to carry some of it too.

That's what I am doing tonight.  That's what I will do tomorrow too. 

Hope for Chris.  Think about Chris. Hold Chris up a little bit. 

Pray. Yes, I will pray for Chris.

Rocks in the belly,
suicide worms washed up on the driveway,
algae on the slate stones.
I have just realized that my feet are not webbed, nor is my heart.
If God were sitting next to me on my porch,
I would rest my head on his shoulder.

There would always be a day sometime in spring when my mom would say, "It's time to clean the deck."  My brother and I would pour some laundry detergent into a bucket then grab some hard straw brushes and the push broom.  Then we would scrub the deck.  Slide across the deck.  Spray the deck down, wasting gallons of water.  I'd like to think, though I don't remember, that that would be a night we would eat outside.  I loved that deck -- it's the part of the house I liked best. The tree swung over our heads, the built in bench seating, the flower boxes always filled with red geraniums.

Today was the day I cleaned the front porch.  Milder soap, milder mop too.  But I put some muscle into the floor.  And it seemed to me that everything was happy.  The sun shining down on me.  The birds singing to me.  The wicker seat curling its finger my direction.  "Sit down," it said.  Sit down and watch the world turn green. 

March 16

There is a woman sitting 16 feet to my left. She's studying a thick medical text.  If I listen hard, I can hear her brain thinking.  Metatarsal, phalanges, flexor tendons.  Her mind is a cucumber pie, cantaloupe soup.  Filled with things I will never have to imagine or respond to.  I do not know how my body works beyond the basics.  Food in, poop out.  Hair growing, breasts blossomed and gone to seed.

I know I was conceived on a March night in 1961.  Perhaps it was an evening like this one.  The sky a rosy cove.  Black tree branches, stiff chisels to the silky dusk.  Maybe my dad came home especially present.  Perhaps he illustrated the new configuration of his office on a napkin, leaning in, excited. Or maybe my mom made him a pie, not rhubarb his favorite, impossible to find in the spring, but apple. Yes, apple pie with vanilla ice cream.  Maybe it had nothing to do with what they did for each other.  On that March night, a neighbor may have waved through the screen door.  Or the hydrangea thistle budded, unleashing something green into the air.

That woman 16 feet away from me is studying medicine, but life has nothing to do with what is in her book.  Life draws from the bird's darting caw.  Love is suggested by the spinning top.  By the slightest turn of the eyes. Beginning is something we redo a million times until we get it right.

If it were up to me, I would wish for the night I was made to have been like this one.  Coffee in the pot.  Mushroom soup on the stove.  A song on the hi-fi.  My mother looking at my father again for the first time. He finding her.  The sun and moon in the sky at the same time.  The first blades of grass poking up their heads.  And the sidewalk filled with people walking by.

There is something about this scene that I loved.  The bright light shining on the stark white of the barn.  The rest in shadows.  I find it arresting.  When thinking about it, it's probably because it shows what I feel so frequently.  Yes, no.  Now, then.  Loved, not.  Right, wrong.  Stay, go.  Likable, less.  I spend so much time trying to create a more complex palette, but when in the throws of something -- when my gut is in charge -- I am a pure dualist.  I define the world in such extremes.  I wish, instead, that I could change my perspective and let what is be.  Or better yet, I wish I could -- especially in those snap quick moments -- just feel the gift in it.  Define my life as movement from one beauty to the next.  This barn, so white, is bedazzling because of the black edges, the dark fringe.  It only works in total.  So stay or go, or, perhaps, just give thanks.  Loved or not, just bend in appreciation.  Now or then, just lean into the line I am on.  The infinite number of points, together all, making the path I am on.

Ohio

Ohio, with its noisy spring and its sun-crusted barns,
its wide fields sifting off the winter,
the steel blue sky yawning awakening.
I could have driven all day. 

One reason I like Maya

A friend has fallen in love 4 times in the same time I have just barely recovered from losing it.  She keeps finding the joints, the intersections.  When her brain says go south, she turns the wheel hard.  I hang on the edge of hub, nearly spun off with every rotation, but she slides right into the crux of living.  Centripetal.  Gathering. In the belly of being.

One of the reasons she is good for me

Tia notices everything. She is not like me, the one who took this picture. I know that that black-shoedand black-panted person is me, and I know that I am at work,and I guess there is a child beside me. I think it was someone who had bumped her head in gym. I might be holding her hand. I probably could be telling her, as I so often do, you will be fine. But honestly, this moment, randomly caught by a mistrigger, is nothing I will ever store away, just like so much of my life. Water rushing past river rocks. Clouds passing through a sky. Days lined up, boxes on a shelf. But Tia?  She would know when this happened, why it happened, and how it taught her something, or anchored her life back to its core purpose.  That is one of the reasons she is good for me.

They come back

Even when you forget about the crocuses,
and spend your time worrying about
how the internet's gone down,
or needing to schedule a colonoscopy,
they come back.  While you notice
your hair graying, and your
wrinkles signing a 30 year mortgage to your face,
they poke their sunny purple noggins into sight.
When Super Tuesday fills your mind,
or you start thinking about the new deck
furniture you will have to buy,
the crocuses say come here
out of your faithless faltering,
get down low, bend your head,
bow down to the earth, right here is beauty.
What else could possible matter?
 

Petroglyph

If I had no words, no place like this to scrawl my thoughts, what would I carve into the side of the mountain?  Today, I would chisel in a fat round head attached to a leaking heart.  Wide downcast eyes.  Short arms clutching a stick torso.  Slow, thick feet buried in a slab of muck,   both heading in the wrong direction.  I would stab my sharp stick into the side of the rock face and jab until I ran out of energy.  Until I had stippled out every last drop of disconsolation.  Then I would sit, quiet as a bone, my fat head down staring at my thick feet.

What is not a concert?
Can you hear the robins come home?
The night wind? The creaking of the trees?
The rumble of the furnace?
The rustle of the cold sheets,
The soft notes in her hands?

What is not a meal?
The capo on the strings?
Questions in the dark?
Clear water filling your cup?
The bath filled to the brim?

What is not a bed?
The long smooth highway?
The sturdy shoulder?
The safety of knowing?
The sureness of love?

Estranged son

Blanket Connor with love. Put people in his path to guide and protect him. Help him see some sliver of light every day. Love and guide the ones who surround him now. If they are his source of love, let them be safe and loving. Give him what he needs, then give it to him again. Let him know in obvious tangible ways that the world will not abandoned him. Ease his anger, lighten his darkness.  Keep him safe.  Put angels, how trite a word for such a request, in his path.  Make him stumble over goodness.  Redirect his waywardness to a secure channel. Let him know his only obligation is to his own best interest.  Let him know that he does not have to be or look like anyone else.  He does not have to think or act like anyone else.  Let him sense his own worth. Lift the things that hold him back, hold him down.  Unlock the things that are trapping him.  Blanket Connor with love and care.  Blanket Connor with love and care.  Blanket Connor with love and care. 

I am assured by this good man.
How he is, by doing what he does,
helping to raise these good men.
How every day he shows up,
eager but not anxious, deliberately kind,
unmuttled by other influences.
Just ready.  To smile.  To ask a question.
To field the answer. To raise his eyebrows
and give a loving nod.