Death – It's All In Me

Shot to the Heart

What if bullets are just proxy tears
For people afraid of crying

February 8, 2023 Higher Up IDEAL2 Comments

What if bullets are just proxy tears
For people afraid of crying
Expressing emotions they can’t control
That result in other people dying
What if bombs are actually heart attacks
Of those too tender to unload
That finally when it all comes out
They cause a radius to explode
What if nukes are really suicide
For people scared to die
Who threaten to destroy the entire world
Rather than face what they can’t hide
That they’re secure in insecurity
Spreading the virus of toxic shame
Because they’re drowning within finitudes
Of all they stole to gain

Image by 愚木混株 on Unsplash.com

Caveat: I know that this line of questioning and poetry may bother some people. That is not my intent. If you know me, you can trust me on that. And check in if it is really charging you. If you don’t, I hope you have a support system that can serve you.

Lies Hurt

October 6, 2022 Higher Up IDEALLeave a comment

Do we say, “the Truth hurts”,
Because we’re all a bunch of liars?
100 percent smoke
Zero percent fire
Addicted to desire
And other folks approval
Saying what they want
Is business as usual.
Programmed by patterns
Like an algorithm
Access to knowledge
But we’re lacking wisdom
Can’t make decisions
Because we’re scared to see clearly
That what we want to be real
Is actually nowhere nearly
We’re scared out of our wits
Because we know we’re dying
So we pay for distractions
Even if we know they’re lying
And there’s no denying
But it’s all we do
Because we’re afraid to be hurt
By the One and only thing that’s true.

What Will You Say? (A Poem in Response to George Floyd’s Martyrdom)

May 27, 2020May 31, 2020 Higher Up IDEAL6 Comments

What will you say,
If you found out that they got me?
Knee to the neck
Or they shot me?
You knew me;
Now you forgot me?
What will you say?
“I thought he was so different.”?
“He shouldn’t have been on that hit list.”?
“There will be justice.
God is my witness”?
“I swear I’ll never forget this.”?
What would you say,
If I told you this was my family?
When they’re damning them,
Then they damn me.
Saying where we can
And we can’t be.
From the beginning,
I know that they stamped me.
What would you say,
If I told you daily I’m dying?
That this is the world that I’m in.
They want your soul,
For a buy in.
The Truth hurts,
When they’re lying.
What would you say
If George Floyd
Was suddenly me?
It was Pedro under that knee?
Let’s pray one day we don’t see.

Whenever my two year old cries for me not to leave her as I walk out the door, I wonder if somehow she knows that this might be the last she sees me–that I might make a mistake and run a red light or go to the store or go for a walk on the trail just outside our neighborhood and never come back. Then immediately after thinking those thoughts, I rebuke them. I tell myself that it is not fair for me to project my anxieties onto my toddler. I remind myself that I have a family, a ministry, and a life that matters. I tell myself that I cannot let these ideas that I live with like a permanent limp, dictate how I live. So I pray, get up, and go about the business of living. And then…

Screenshot_20200527-072013 — Enter a caption

Check out Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi

The New Me

November 9, 2019 Higher Up IDEALLeave a comment

In a Roofless Church blog post, I wrote about how I sometimes hold myself back from shining my light. The excuse that I was using was that by holding myself back in some areas, I was somehow protecting the people who would otherwise try to hold me back. I’d hold myself back before they could try to. Yeah. That sounds pretty silly writing. But I made it make sense. Fortunately, I didn’t hold myself back completely. I made sure to write whether it was blogs, poems, articles, letters, etc. Doing this was like leaving myself clues back to me. And writing that post admitting to myself what I was doing was just the push I needed to stop holding myself back in one area that I’ve held back in for decades–my music.

The image above is the cover for my new single. Over a year after I wrote the song, I finally got to a place where I could put it out there and open the door to some new possibilities of creative expression. In so doing, I am admitting to myself that I have no excuse for holding back. Spiritually, speaking, I never had an excuse anyway as I express in some of my lyrics:

They can’t kill me
Holla if you feel me
Who I am was never born
So they’re never getting near me

Many of us are trapped in the habits of old patterns and behaviors that we want more than anything to break free from so that we can be the people we know we are capable of being–better parents, partners, etc. There are unfulfilled dreams that hang over us like shadows and darken our self-perception limiting how we show up in situations. This song is an anthem for those of us who refuse to leave this world without shining that light that we are. We will shine! To be the new us, we will kill the old us. The old us lives fearing the illusion of death. The new us lives life as fully as we possibly can.

Primarily, I wrote this song and am putting it out into the world for myself–to eradicate any excuse I might make to not shine the light that Creator put in me. Secondly, I wrote it for my wife and kids because if there is anything that they want to do, I want them to at least try. Even if they fail, they can hold their head up knowing that they put themselves out there. And I can’t teach them that if I don’t live that. Thirdly, I did it for everybody who needs a reminder that as long as they have breath in their lungs, it is never too late to be who you might’ve been.

To be the new me
I had to kill the old me
To wake up from this lie bruh,
This is what they told me

Wake up from the dream
Death ain’t nothing but a bee sting
Hallelujah’s what we sing
From the moment we see that real thing

To hear my new single click here.

Death Is Not a Failure

November 28, 2018November 28, 2018 Higher Up IDEALLeave a comment

We all succeed at dying

One way or the other

Despite the value we place on holding it back

We have this in common with one another

Even Jesus couldn’t escape it

Though we say it’s a revolving door

He begged if the cup of death could pass

How much less should we implore?

For the living’s only reality

Is to live, and be, and move

Death appearing a contradiction

What can we gain

For all we lose?

Yet, Death is not an ending

Not a new beginning or a door

Nor does it ever take from us

Or give the peace we’re longing for

All we think it is it isn’t

Because we lack the point of view

To see it for what it really is,

We need a different mind to see it through.

One not born through separation

One complete in its perception

One that sees all things for what they are

Present wholeness without rejection

Such a mind must not fear death

In fact it’s grateful for its inclusion

For the only Death there ever is

Is the Death of our illusions

If There Was Anything Left Unsaid

February 19, 2018February 19, 2018 Higher Up IDEALLeave a comment

Image result for writing on paper

If there was anything left unsaid,
Let the Silence speak for me
For it is filled with more than words
And more than eyes can see

If there is anything you still wonder
Trust that knowledge comes with time
As long as you are open
There’ll be answers you can find

If ever there’s a question
Learn there’s still things we can’t know
But just because they’re not explained
Doesn’t mean that they’re not so

Sometimes we just don’t have the words
For the things we want to say
And some of us are here and now
We’d rather do than stop to pray

The Way of All Flesh

January 30, 2017 Higher Up IDEAL1 Comment

There is a path that all flesh must take
We’ve always known this from the start
It’s the very awareness of this fact
That reveals the nature of our heart

For the spirit of immortality
Wrestles with the ways of form
Tempting us with corporeality
As if it were the norm

There are hearts that surrender to this way
As long as we are here
While other hearts struggle with time itself
Certain that eternity is near

The struggling heart will not surrender
It crams eternity into space
Living life with all it has
And in its wake leaves waves of grace

It knows the way that flesh must go
But it and flesh are not the same
And on that day when the two must part
It receives that which is its to gain

The poem above was written by request for the Rev. Bruce MacKenzie Pastor Emeritus of the church I serve in Boulder, CO. “The way of all flesh” was a saying Bruce loved to say when referring to anything that is temporary in this world. At one visit I had with him before his passing he said to me, “Soon I will be going the way of all flesh, but you and I know that is nothing to be concerned with. So no tears.” I said to him, “Well we teach that Jesus wept when Lazarus died and he was just about to resurrect him, so I cry when you leave.” He laughed at that and changed the subject. Bruce’s body might have gone the way of all flesh. But though the outer man is beyond our seeing, the inner man remains eternally abiding.

There’s A World

December 17, 2016December 18, 2016 Higher Up IDEAL8 Comments

There’s a world we all are living in
But not everyone can see
A World of eternal spaciousness
Where everyone is free

Inside that world is another world
Where people choose to live a lie
“Special people”claim to know the Truth
And teach the “forgetting” we can die

Some of those people know the Truth
And twist it tight for so called gain
Telling us that we can’t get along
And that the Other causes pain

Their clarion call is “SAVE YOURSELF”
So that’s what many of us try to do
We can’t see it’s just a cattle call
And all they want to hear is “MOOOO”

They have no purpose if we’re not scared
“Can’t you see that there’s a threat?”
They know that we will sell our souls
Only as long as we’re fearing death

They tell you they’re here to protect us
That’s the job for which they’re paid
In exchange you can focus on other things
But you lose consciousness in the trade

The world of lies that we think is real
Does not objectively exist
Like a picture of a sumptuous meal
On which no one can subsist

Meanwhile in the eternal world
One is the Truth that always reigns
~~“divided houses”~~ do not exist
And there is no loss or gain

No one’s seeking for the joy in life
For Joy is the Cause of Life itself
And value isn’t used as we use it here
Since everything springs from eternal wealth

There also is never a use for Welcome
Because there’s never a time that we aren’t here
We can tell ourselves that we’ve gone away
But to Truth we’ve never disappeared

Like children with their hands on eyes
Who think they’re unseen when they can’t see
Here we can choose to chain ourselves
But that doesn’t make us less than free

We’re only bound by the limits that we project
Our own judgments become our jail
But our sentence is never for our entire life
Because the Truth always prevails

Pain and Loss

May 20, 2015May 20, 2015 Higher Up IDEALLeave a comment

There is a place where what we think we’ve lost

Is right here with us all along

Never not within our reach

Out of view but never gone

It’s a place that’s called Reality

It isn’t hard to find

All you need to do is reimagine you

And accept that time is not a line

It’s not even a circle

More precisely it’s like a sphere

Expanding all around you

So that any now is always here

With your focus on a center

Life moves in and out like breath

On the inhale you touch eternal life

While the exhale feels like death

But of course that is illusion

The in and out are wholly one

Try to divide them into two

And what you wind up with is none

But that is just a moment

In an infinitude of more

As soon as one ends another begins

That’s why no one’s keeping score

Now some would see this as their freedom

“I will do what I want to do.”

“No loss must mean no consequence.”

But actually it isn’t true

Despite the fact that all is here

And that time lasts longer than forever

There is a flow to how it goes

Which keeps it all together

There’s a pushing and a pulling

That manifests in waves

That creates alignments with likes and likes

Creating masters bound to slaves

Some people call it karma

I call it reaping what we sow

God probably calls it “It is what it is.”

But it’s a mystery we cannot know

It maintains itself through veiling

As we approach the truth we feel it shifting

Causing us to look again

Because now it feels like something’s missing

It’s not trying to be evasive

Even though that’s how it seems

Truth’s just trying to keep us moving

So it can pull us from the dream

There is really nothing to lose

This is the one thing we can gain

To wake us up from the fear of loss

Out of which we make up pain

This Side of the Resurrection

April 23, 2015 Higher Up IDEAL1 Comment

This body that you see

Is merely an appearance

My truest body is doing work

While this one is running interference

In reality you can’t see me

Despite the fact that you think you do

But what you see is just a shadow

That somehow the Light is shining through

Yes, I know that is impossible

According to the laws that you call physics

But our laws are just a theory

To the One in Whom Light’s intrinsic

To the One there is no darkness

They simply turn it inside out

So that the vibrations become reflective

What was within now shines without

It’s something like electric

But with the absence of the static

Transforming so very instantly

That it’s faster than automatic

As it was in the Beginning

Has nothing on what’s eternal

The Being before existence

This Fire consumes before it burns you

All the dross that’s left behind

Is everything we were attached to

Revealing on the other side

That the lies could not dispatch you

Playing the hostage to a lie

We live lives that are not our own

Putting our principle interest

On a body that in truth is just a loan

This is not the true intention

Of assuming this expression

The goal is to know as we are known

Through the releasing of our regression

Going backward to take us forward

To lead us to where we never left

Is the path of least persistence

In the realm where there is no death