Leaving Eden

Sum

I am molten fire,
burning away slogans, idols, the ink of certainty.
I dwell in cracked sidewalks and wilted weeds,
for brokenness cradles my name.
I am not found in any book,
but I am found in every book.

I am in everyone and belong to no one.
I am the riddle that unravels itself
into a deeper mystery.
I am the face beneath all masks.
I am all in all.

I am the space between stars,
where light forgets its name.
I am the crushed cup's dry song
aside the highway.
I am the sum of nothing:
the hollow flute, the seed rotting into a tree,
the breath that binds prayer to silence.

I am the living, the dead,
the fire which feeds on its own glow:
all things wear my shadow
until they become my light.

“In order to arrive at having pleasure in everything, desire to have pleasure in nothing.”

—St. John of the Cross

Leaving Eden

Leaving Eden is nothing to mourn.
We couldn't remain after eating the fruit.
We had to Fall upwards into grace,
our eyes pried open,
no longer blind to the tears of the world.

Now we wander the desert,
our footprints erased by the wind;
learning thirst is a form of prayer.
We dwell in tents stitched with questions,
only to stumble into another Garden
which we don't belong in either.

God offers us faith like a fire
which burns the map we clutch,
makes us eternal pilgrims who leave
every Garden we dare to call home.

For faith without struggle is
no faith at all.

Fear not, the ravens will bring us bread.
At night we watch the stars
flow across the skies
with clearer eyes.

“Eden represents the False Self’s obsession with innocence and control. To leave the Garden is to lose yourself—your ego—so you can find your True Self, which has been hidden ‘in Christ’ since the beginning (Colossians 3:3)”

—from “Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self” by Richard Rohr

Passing Through Nature To Eternity

A tree stump's porous flesh,
cradles moss, emerald and damp.
A civilization appears
On a decomposing corpse.
Day turns to night,
which turns back to day.

All that lives must die.
Colonizing the Earth,
building great kingdoms
brought both death and life;
ash to fuel, a debt to the sun.
Energy remains forever,
and we are only borrowers.

Yes, the world is ending,
but within every ending lies a beginning.

“Apocalypse is not an event to come. It is our daily bread.”

—Eduardo Galeano

Elegy For Slain Leaders

I was born long after Martin was shot,
but I still wake often to the dirge he taught.
He was Moses, gathering God's seed.
Malcolm told the truth till it made him bleed.
Fred's fire was quenched by a midnight sweep.
Into the darkness they all went to their sleep.

We don't have leaders anymore.
The dunes stretch vast, our compasses torn.
Our footsteps falter, ghostly and thin;
Our spirit mostly died with those three men.
Dylan sang about a rain that would fall,
and sure enough, it's soaking us all.

The Promised Land now is the soil of our dead:
a womb for the seeds of words voiced and unsaid.

“You can murder a liberator, but you can’t murder liberation.”

—Fred Hampton