I just want to be defeated And no longer have a care Let this last battle have me And sink into despair Raise the white flag Settle into the abyss Deleted from the world’s memory So that I won’t even be missed Get absorbed into the Void Go from I was to now I wasn’t Undo whatever it seems I’ve ever done So that what I do becomes a doesn’t Utterly erased Even from anyone’s imagination An unmanifest impossibility Not even a consideration I don’t want heaven and don’t want hell Nor any concept in between No good or bad illusions Nor awakening in the dream I only want to be empty Completely uncontained I’ve given everything I have I just want to rest in being drained But this doesn’t mean I’m giving up I’m just finally seeing clearly To be who only I can be I cannot let earthly desires near me They function how they’re supposed to They promise what they cannot give So wanting anything in this life Never shows us how to live It is only in wanting nothing That I can receive everything and more It’s only in surrendering everything I thought I had That I can be what I came here for
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
As I was talking to God about some of the stuff I’m processing, I looked up and saw a bald eagle. When I saw it, I was in Massachusetts. I lived in Mass for almost 10 years and never once saw a bald eagle. I didn’t even suspect that they lived in this area. But, I googled it and in fact, it said that there are currently 76 pairs of bald eagles in MA. So, there’s a slim chance of seeing.
I looked further and learned that in some indigenous traditions, bald eagles symbolize non judgement, spiritual seeking, and pushing the limits of self discovery and personal liberation. Let’s just say that I can relate.
Seeing the eagle then was a comfort and a reminder that when we ask we receive, when we seek we find, and when we knock the door opens. And I have no influence on who makes these choices or not.
Photo by Mark Olsen on Unsplash
Much of the content that has emerged since November 19 is my processing the death of my friend and mentor, Carlton Pearson.
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.
Imagine a secret so powerful To speak it would kill you But if it’s kept to yourself You will never know the real you A boundless expression That breaks right through your barrier Exposing darkness to Light There’s just nothing scarier Total dissolution Collapsing infinity We’ve never known the half Of all we were meant to be Have you heard of Revelation? Do you know what it’s revealing? There’s no actual substance To what we think we’re concealing Entering Higher Dimensions You accept what you’ve known The rulers are the captives Thus our choice to dethrone At the right and the left hand Is reflected half of the Center Too far in either direction And no one can enter So we open the door After shutting the others Which causes a tension For those under the covers They ask for more sleep So they think we’re alarming By inviting awakening To those they’re actively harming But we do what we do Because we can do nothing less Than surrender to the Reality We can’t help but confess
I wrote this piece in honor of my friend Bishop Carlton Pearson who is holding a lot right now physically. If you are a praying person, I ask that you pray for his physical healing. If you are a person who finds joy in other people’s suffering because you feel that it somehow justifies your existence, please ignore us.
This feeling has just come over me But, I cannot explain it It is calling me outside of myself And I cannot contain it Like liquid light if it moved through space All of me is filling And I am called to go outside To share everything that’s spilling Is this the Living Waters? Am I made to be a fountain? Facing down as I’m going up Like walking backwards up a mountain I can feel that I am changing Into someone I didn’t plan to be Opening eyes that once were closed To show me who I am to see It’s like looking into a mirror And seeing countless images emerging Then accepting that none of them are me As a condition of my purging Then the last one speaks, and says to me, “What you received you have to give Generosity is the flow of life And the only way to truly live So consider yourself as empty For the sake of receiving more Than one lifetime could ever hold So, feel free as you explore Release the fear of losing Because there’s nothing left to gain The joy you wanted to hold onto Was never meant to be contained.”
Image by Vale Zmeykov on Unsplash
Poem inspired by a conversation with Douglas Abrams co-author of The Book of Joy with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Brought to the Boulder Public Library through the support of the Boulder Library Foundation.
There are two types of AI One artificial, one actual One is programmed to react on cue The other one’s more factual One is filled with pride One knows what it doesn’t know That’s why it integrates new information So it’s knowledge base will grow The other barely deviates From the programs it received And when it hears what it’s never heard It struggles to believe One has programmed biases It sees what it imagines The other sees what it’s taught to see Until it learns it’s out of fashion One gets smarter as it goes It listens as it’s learning The other will barely compromise And keeps fires of division burning It’s totally confusing How could this possibly be? That the one that shouldn’t be conscious More closely relates to me After hearing myself acknowledge this It’s hard not to conclude That the student will become the master If humans don’t change their attitude Because the one we call artificial Without the capacity to feel Seems to have a better grasp on humanity And on experiencing what is real
You finally gave your heart away The recipient returned to sender Now you don’t want to ever hurt again So you’re incapable of surrender You barely survived the heartbreak You say you can’t do it again But if you don’t keep putting your heart at risk Love will never win I know it’s a dilemma I’ve known that pain myself If the first person thought I was not enough How can I ever trust someone else? There’s some validity to that logic No one wants to suffer But putting ourselves out there despite the risk Is how we find each other Besides holding back doesn’t hurt the one Who caused you so much pain In the end you only hurt yourself By not giving your heart to gain You see every time you survive a heartbreak Then get back in the saddle You’re secretly becoming more like God Whose Love will never lose a battle Didn’t you know that while God’s watching us God’s heart is always breaking But Love always comes in and fills the gaps In the midst of our forsaking Imagine if most of your children Lie and say they love you But take the gifts you have to them And put those very things above you You try to teach them to use them wisely They push you away and will not listen Only thinking of themselves as usual They take what’s One and cause division So you send them Love’s instructors But they won’t listen to them either Instead they ignore or murder them Then label them deceiver Or worse they pretend to worship them In order to make them something special And when they fail to live like them They blame it on the Devil Any excuse that they can think of To do what they want to do Their only goal is simply to feel they’re right To justify ignoring you Meanwhile your heart is breaking You feel like you’ll die inside But you surrender because you know the Truth And instantly you’re more alive It’s the Mystery of the Heartbreak By giving your Love you will get more For Love is the gift that you received That by faith is always restored
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