A million opportunities For me to be A million different people Who were never me Negative one Plus infinity Makes me less than the man I’m supposed to be Made like the Creator Supposedly But show up in my power They’re opposed to me The essence of the One Is meant to flow in me And flow inside of you Hopefully But we’re taught not to try To live in a lie See ourselves as less The higher us we deny On earth as in Heaven I see it so clearly While the Logos Way Is disappearing We’re called to show love But we’re steady fearing Wanting to escape We hope the end is nearing But we’re back in the beginning There’s no loss and no winning Reality is virtual So we’re virtually sinning Missing every mark Too fast and no aiming Preaching to the choir Is so spiritually draining But here is my thesis We’re stuck in mimesis Copying the bound So we don’t know what free is It’s not supposed to be this Leaders who just hinder Taking advantage Because your souls are so tender Don’t knock, but still enter Hypocritical mind splinters So consistently cold It’s like perpetual winter Frozen in place Condemning with no Grace Filled with emptiness Like a room with no space So come face to face Breathe the Breath of the Living Surrender everything To be eternally giving Take part in the Whole Out of the many become One A million choices become choiceless Now the ego trip’s done
I pour my self into You Trusting You will never spill me Never fearing emptiness Because I know You’re here to fill me The terror known by many folks Who can’t contemplate Your Promise Is dissolved the moment I witness You So I give it all to keep me honest I don’t want to pretend to Trust in You Only when for me it is convenient Then as soon as I don’t get what I want Realize that I don’t mean it To me Trusting You is its own reward In fact it’s my only Treasure Because anything that does not have You there Will never stay together From the beginning and to the end From the first and to the last Without You nothing that seems to matter Ever truly has Nations continue to come and go Things that were enter non-existence While people pretend to get it all Through selfish one sided resistance A horrible error in calculation No one can hold their breath forever Whether you last exhaled or last inhaled The project of breathing is both together And that’s what this world’s forgetting Perhaps some of us never knew it Oneness isn’t the strongest wins It’s polarities congruent
Whenever I write a poem, it is the fruit of weeks if not months or even years of spiritual labor. I don’t write to influence. I write to express. What emerges contains every part of the process that you would witness in the natural process of growing an actual fruit tree. And I never give way to the temptation to pick the fruit early. When it’s ripe, it falls on its own.
As the video explains, this poem was born out of two months of struggling to write about trust and a bout with a short term unwellness that rendered me extremely contemplative. What the video doesn’t say was that for most of the three days that my body was fevered and in pain, I was repeating “Thank you God. I love you.” as if it was my breath. I did this in part because of a practice I developed a long time ago based on James 1:2-8 where adherents are advised to count all of our trials as joy. And the other part is that I imagine that most people’s conversations with God are about asking for things they want to come in and things we don’t want to go away. So, I just decided that I would not ask God for anything and just be thankful. Besides there were a number of times when I was a pastor that I would suggest to people that they say “thank you” as a part of their process. So, I had to take my own advice.
Now, before you get into this video, let me me warn you that it may come off as a little irreverent. It isn’t meant to be. But, it is meant to make folks think. It is meant to challenge you and to basically call out where I think our lack of trust is leading us. I put this out here in trust. I guess that is where I will leave it.
Listen Without words To what can only be spoken With Silence There is no loss There is no gain In the Place where Love is Home Like the top of the inhale And the bottom of the exhale Where in and out are One And coming and going cease to be There resides the thought That tells you what you already know You are more than enough And worthy of all Creation Here is where In Silence you hear The Voice of the voiceless Noiselessly shouting Everything I Am Is Communicating To Everything You Are Telling You Once and for All We have Everything We need When We have each Other
Grief is a midwife, giving birth to who we’d never be without loss’ seed. Realizing that you’ll never again be who you used to be makes room for who you are becoming So let yourself weep. Be emptied of who you’ve been Because someone wiser, more capable, and more honest is waiting to emerge Everything you held back, waiting for the right time can be released from its temporal prison The time to be who you were created to be is always now And yet, in the realm of human relating, there is always an order First the mother and the father, then comes the child is the way it is written But also true, is that before mother, father, or child took residence in the womb, they were wholly conceived and fully known in infinity BEING from the beginning AND dwelling in time is the Spiritual reality of those who embrace the human reality that in this life we must learn to hold grief in one hand and joy in the other So grieve as you must, tremble with the pangs of rebirth It is the falling away of who you can no longer be So that who you’ve always been can come to LIFE
In my last poem, Higher Dimensions, I mentioned that my friend, Bishop Carlton Pearson was sick. Well, a few days ago on November 19, he died. Since that moment, I have been going through the 5 Stages of Grief by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D. pretty much in exact order and quick succession.
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
I don’t know if I am going through them in an orderly fashion because I know of them or because they are natural. Either way, I am going through them without resistance and telling everyone that I am meeting up with in person during this holiday season that if I go in and out and look disinterested it is because I am grieving someone I felt very close to.
The Sixth Stage of Grief The poem above is part of the lesser known sixth stage of grief by David Kessler, Finding Meaning. In the text below from Carlton, he was ministering to me in my grief about leaving ministry. But, I find that it is equally applicable for grieving him.
I have been holding back so much over the years because I didn’t feel like I could bear to relive the rejection I received from the Pentecostal church I was a part of years ago. I met Carlton in the height of his rejection and the scarring over of mine. For a season I had easy access to him because many in his life had turned on him. In that time, we talked out all we had endured and marveled at how our lives mirrored each other even down to both of our wives working for airlines and the adventure of flying on standby. It was kind of uncanny. What differed was that he still wanted to go back to the folks who rejected him and make plain what he had not fully been able to articulate at his dismissal. I did not. I only wanted to talk to people who indicated their openness. And that’s where our paths diverged.
Now that he’s gone in the body, I’ve been trying to make meaning of the last couple of years. He was way busier and folks who formerly rejected him started popping back in. He was terribly hurt by Trumpism and how easily evangelicals surrendered to this so called “strongman” and seemingly put him on par with the Christ Carlton loved so much. He was trying to reconcile how he gave so much of his life to that expression of Christianity and how in some ways he felt complicit in many folks, especially Black folks, believing such painful doctrine. He wanted to make up for it. And in that way, he was like a modern day Paul of Tarsus trying to preach his new understanding of Christ.
I totally understood AND I couldn’t get into it with people who didn’t want to meet even halfway. Twice in his life, he gave up everything for his love of God and people. The first time it almost cost him his life. The second time, it did.
Even though I foresee myself writing out a lot of words in my grief processing, words can’t begin to express the contribution this man has been to human evolution in consciousness. I predict that we’ll be discussing him for generations. As for now, I’m going to keep talking to him in my heart and writing my way into who I’m becoming.
I am not your enemy Even though you were taught that decision I see the Universe as it can only be Absent of division Whether I choose to agree or not Everything is connected But in the illusion of the divided mind Anything can be dissected We split atoms and we split up families Draw invisible lines called borders But can’t admit we invented it In a war against natural order Somehow we believe the lies we tell More than the truth that’s in our faces Competing for what is infinite Just for the thrill of “winning races” But there is no competition Once you take away the lies And wake up to the disturbing fact That we’re all collectively hypnotized
You can call me a Galaxy For I’m composed of worlds With as many thoughts as stars in the sky Meanwhile consciousness comets hurl Every moment is filled with wonder There’s no such thing as norm My changing mind is supernova I concentrate and planets form From my dreams I project species More strange than what’s imagined Unconsciously combining elements From the stuff which All is fashioned But at some point I got distracted I lost track of my creations I gave them a mind just like my own And they divided into Nations Instead of seeing with eyes of awe As I imagined them to be They sought to control their neighbor’s lives Before turning their sights on me They wanted my approval They wanted my command But when I refused to play their game They then let go of my hand It was as if I never existed As they projected onto me Illusions of a divided state The very opposite of what is free I wondered how this happened Them thinking thoughts I cannot think Casting shadows where there is only light Descending where love could never sink But instead of anger I felt compassion Because I knew I was their cause So in an effort to guide them back to love I gifted them with Laws But because they came from freedom Laws felt like a type of prison They failed at loving and living law And got trapped in indecision Incapable of escaping The prison that they made I decided to be a prisoner too For surrender’s key unlocks the cage So when they saw I was escaping From what was never meant to be The Galaxy folded in upon itself And all that ever was is me
The truth is they won’t accept you Because you won’t accept that you’re accepted You remind them of the lies they told Because you reflect what they projected The denial of your existence Protects identities that don’t exist And now you want to be like them What part of the message did you miss? Who you are before you’re born Is more true than you can know When you let someone tell you who you are Who has no power to make it so That’s why I live and keep on living Without the dream of keeping score Knowing absence from the body Is Presence with the Lord And by “Presence with the Lord”, I mean I Am Presence too Because the One You Are when You’re with God Can never be taken away from You
I used to come out here and listen to your wisdom. The incarnation of flow You reminded me that I am not my own Source All that passes through our bodies derives from something Greater than ourselves You weren’t just the singer You were sung And when I listened to you and your Way, I wanted to be sung as well Stillness in Motion Your moves were not your own Moved by the Unmoved Mover You carried those who rested upon you with borrowed Strength And this is how we thank you You chose us because you knew the joy of being chosen But, we didn’t choose you back because we thought we were entitled And now, like the One who learned from your mistakes, You’ve been poured out for us So now when I look at you, I know what it looks like to be cutoff from the Source. Reckless realities collide Who will mourn for you if you die When we realize that it’s all of our funerals too? I know thoughts and prayers are pointless But I do it anyway Because sometimes lying to ourselves is all some of us have left But, what I’m really trying to say is that I’m sorry for my part in all of this And if there’s a chance that my tears will bring you back to life, I’m prepared to cry rivers Perhaps that’s why I’ve held back this long.
It's All In Me - Poetry Blog 