I found these words, written by Howard Thurman, in The United Methodist Hymnal - #489 - For God’s Gifts
O Holy God, open unto me light for my darkness, courage for my fear, hope for my despair.
O loving God, open unto me wisdom for my confusion, forgiveness for my sins, love for my hate.
O God of peace, open unto me peace for my turmoil, joy for my sorrow, strength for my weakness.
O generous God, open my heart to receive all your gifts.
I have, for the past several nights, had dreams that I could
not quite recall when I woke in the morning. This is not, in itself, unusual.
Most dreams are forgotten the moment the sleeper awakens. They disappear like a
breeze, stirring the mind for a moment and then gone. But I have practiced
trying to recall them, and frequently find material in them that can be used in
my writing. I appreciate my dreams and have worked at trying to hold on to the
fleeting fragments that remain as I awaken. Still – these recent dreams have
not stuck with me after I lifted my head from the pillow.
Except that there has been a nagging suspicion that these
forgotten dreams have had something to do with my ex-wife – my first ex-wife to
be more precise. But that’s where the precision ends. I cannot recall the
situations, events, or characters of the dreams. I don’t know what happened. I
only suspect, or perhaps fear, that she was there.
And this causes me some concern. Not so much that she was
there – I know that even now these several years later I am still recovering
from her departure and putting my life back together. Things in my life are
much improved and I’m happy in my work, my hobbies, and my relationships. But –
and here’s the real question: What is my brain doing while I’m asleep? What’s
going on up there? I don’t trust my mind – even when I’m awake it must be
carefully monitored to keep it under control. When I’m asleep I can’t control
it. What is going through my brain when I’m asleep?
Addendum:
Last night I dreamt that my friend, Rick, was diagnosed with
terminal brain cancer. Maybe dreams I can’t remember of my ex-wife are fine.
Let’s go back to that.
I remember the nights when sleep felt like death
and I couldn't decide if that's what I wanted.
Isolated from all that I wanted to love,
those winter nights felt haunted.
Sleeping alone in bed next to her
I could hear the wind outside.
Or alone in my car in a hospital parking lot,
I could feel the wind blow through me.
I was tired of life, but afraid to die;
I loved, I hated, and I feared.
I remember this well, look inside me and see
I was surprised by my own fear.
But you are the dawn
and you are my home.
I could go away, sail across the sea.
I could live on an island far away.
It's a strange place but I'm learning to live
with the weight of bright sadness.
What is withered in me will flower again
and all my illness be made well,
and what is flowing and wasting away
will regain its shape again.
For you are the dawn
and you are my home.
This is a song I wrote recently for my friends J, T, and B - though it uses some of my own history and much of my own thought. The concept of "bright sadness" seems paradoxical, maybe. Is there such a thing as joyful mourning? Or bitter joy? Melancholic celebration? It's a truth that seems to defy logic. And it's a phrase found in the writings and prayers of many in the Orthodox church, especially during this season of Lent - a time of reflection on both suffering and death as well as hope and renewal.
I've also cribbed, somewhat, from the Confessions, of Saint Augustine - from IV. 6 and IV.11 in verses 3 and 5 respectively. For, as Augustine himself wrote, "often... while turning over haphazardly the pages of a book of poetry, one may come upon a line which is extraordinarily appropriate to some matter which is in one's own mind, though the poet himself had no thought of such a thing when he was writing..." (Confessions, IV. 3 - translated by Rex Warner 1963)
It was spring and he struggled
against the wind as he walked his route. A storm had blown through recently and
the lingering winds still buffeted. There was trash and debris in the streets,
empty pizza cartons tumbling across yards and fallen tree limbs across the
sidewalks. He stumbled occasionally over broken bricks and dislodged chunks of
concrete. These things, however, would not keep him from his appointed rounds.
It was spring and it was Lent and
somewhere overhead a hawk was screeching. Was it a warning? He thought about
the passion and the pain that waited in the next few weeks. “Not everyone can
carry the weight of the world,” he said to himself and was reminded of a song.
He thought of T. and of J. and C.,
his friend, his colleague, his brother, all of whom had reached out to him in
the past year to say something of their struggles with life and their wrestling
against death. “How can I carry that weight,” he thought to himself and he
remembered his own occasional suicidal contemplations. “I can barely handle my
own.”
He’d always felt like the family
failure – with no college degree and two failed marriages. “How can I carry
this?” He shifted the load he carried and stretched. His neck popped twice. He
stretched again and his back popped as well. He sighed and continued along his
path.
J. was there along his route, out
for his regular morning walk. “How are you, J?” he called out to him.
“Not too good,” J answered in his
halting manner. “I’ve been thinking about God and it hurts.” Then he let out a
long and warbling wail. “It’s not been a good day.” He offered what solace and comfort he
could to J. and promised to see him again the next day. Perhaps things would be
better then…
Somewhere overhead the hawk was still screeching. Was it a warning? Was it a comfort?
Later, as he neared the end of his route, something triggered the memory of the way old Mrs. D. would play the piano in the lounge area of the nursing home. She kept her foot constantly on the sustain pedal so all the wrong notes – and there were many of them – continued to ring. And he remembered her singing through the dissonance:
“Let peace begin with me; let his
be the moment now.
With every step I take,
let this by my solemn vow:
To take each moment and live each moment eternally
Let there be peace on
earth and let it begin with me.”
It was
spring and it was Lent and he had miles to go before the end, but he would
walk. He would carry what weight could shoulder and he would talk about the
passion.
Let There Be Peace on Earth – words and music by Sy Miller
and Jill Jackson
Talk About the Passion - words and music by REM
Does it seem like the void is growing at an alarming rate these days? As if the void were an all consuming void engulfing the whole of reality?
Scream louder. Scream louder.
But also do something nice for your neighbor. Donate to a good cause. Give of yourself.
Today was one of those days when my feet felt heavy but my song was light. My hips ached a little maybe. My heart … my heart was somewhere in between, but what can you say with the world the way it is? I walked through glass, broken glass, following someone else’s memories. I tried new keys for unknown doors. This allowed me to improve my performance.
I ventured, unaccompanied, into questionable places , into the lair of untrustworthy forces. Ring the bell and a gun appears. I was insulted from a great distance. The words came clouded but I could hear them - mostly/ “That Jeff Carter is a … loser!”
There were infrasonic wind chimes too low to hear; the vibrations were felt, not heard. I paused for cats and played with dogs. I spotted owls. I walked in and against the wind.
Today was one of those days…
It is time again for screaming into the void - that vast, unknown, and frightening darkness that engulf us - a darkness for which we are completely unprepared. Whoever screams into the void should see to it that in the process he does not become a void himself. For if you scream long enough into the void, the void will scream back at you.
The echoes of paradise still ring
memories of a place I've never been
from the garden they were thrown
still trying to find my way back home again, again, again.
You went missing years and years ago
and where you've gone I could never know
I've seen your face a thousand times
but never in the New York Times, oh no, oh no, oh no.
The mountains loomed so large out there
when I was breathing in the desert air
I would call to apologize
and to forgive your lies but you don't care, don't care, don't care.
I'm happier than I was before
since she walked through my front door
but here's a great mystery
that the shape of you is still in me, oh, oh, oh.
She is sleeping now so whisper
but when she wakes I will kiss her
in the noon and twilight times
I will sing in broken rhymes for her, for her, for her.
I wrote this song as I was delivering packages yesterday afternoon - on Forgiveness Sunday (also known as Cheesefare Sunday in the Orthodox Church) - the last Sunday before lent.
As I was out and about with the mail today I wondered what it would sound like if country musicians wrote horror stories. This was what I came up with:
In my head it sounds like a Willie Nelson song…
I’m at the airport with no shoes.
I’m attending a birthday party for dreadlocked children I don’t know. I’m greeted by a woman I never knew.
You spray me in the face with a can of mace after I apologize. You embrace me and kiss me on the lips, but I know that this, even this, is another of your lies.
I’m making mistakes- simple mistakes- so I’m retracing my steps to correct what I’ve done.
I’m at the airport with no shoes.
It’s that time again - it’s time to scream into the void. It won’t respond. It won’t change. The void doesn’t care. The void will not be held accountable. But we are compelled to scream because the void is there.
In those later hours
cloudy with no rain
listen for your missing voice
are you still the same?
Disappearance on the bridge that morning
Cross the water, it’s too late.
Trust the vision and the dream
go on down the hill
if I do not see you there
just keep waiting until
electric voices in the air
call to say that it’s too late.
I wrote the words for this song back in 2015 for a book project that didn’t ultimately come together. I have revisited them again over the last several years. They can also be sung to the hymn tune - St. Columba
Our prayers are rising smoke and dust
Our prayers are ash and cinder
But still we pray
For mercy more
As we to love surrender.
Our prayers are silenced by the wind
Our prayers by floods are swallowed
And still we pray
For mercy more
To rise up and to follow.
Our prayers lay bleeding in the street
Our prayers die without a trace
Lord, still we pray
For mercy more
To extend your hand of grace
When the waking world makes no sense try thinking about it as if it were a dream …
I think I went wrong somewhere- in both time and space. This is the wrong hour. This is the wrong place. A strange neighborhood, this, though I’m sure I’ve been here before. The porches are frozen and the doorbells have been ripped out with all the wires left dangling.
There was a cat here once, I think. Maybe. A pale and faded fellow, a friendly follower. There are other cats here now - frightened feral things that scamper away as I approach. Unapproachable. Unlovable.
Cats are everywhere, of course, hiding in our houses and under our cars. Who eats the food left on our porches? Who waits to trip us on the stairs?
There are squirrels leaping from branch to bare branch to yell at me. There are vines without grapes. There are empty milkweed pods and instructions from my supervisor- “make a you-turn at the next intersection.”
The circle has no beginning. The circle has no end. Here I am again and again and again. Make the waking life as irregular as the dream.
It was crowded and noisy inside my mind today, like a daycare on fire. It wasn’t a stream of consciousness; it was a gush, a mudslide, a broken sewer line of consciousness. No symmetry. No reason. Only nonsense nursery rhymes. Two radios played simultaneously. The first played “Stacy’s mom has got it going on” on repeat. Not the whole song, just “Stacy’s mom has got it going on. Stacy’s mom has got it going on. Stacy’s mom has got it going on…” the other played Melissa Etheridge - first “come to my window,” then “I’m the only who’ll walk across the fire for you” back and forth. Sometimes together. I tried to focus. Stacy’s mom. I tried to breathe. Stacy’s mom. I tried to find the mystic selah at the center of the sacred om. But Stacy’s mom has got it going on. - Peel the chicken. Lick the chicken. Peel the chicken. What does that even mean? I don’t know but it wouldn’t stop. Look at me in my old man sweater. Walk across the fire with Stacy’s mom. Are you buying or selling t used cocaine oil? What? Discarded shoes and gloves found after the snows have melted. Come to my window. Eternity is the flame after the candle has been blown out. Who said that?
The noise in my head settled to levels slightly louder than normal around noon. It was almost tolerable. Stacy’s mom had got it going on. Actually - Stacy’s mom is probably age appropriate for me. Is she still available?
I’m out on the streets
while the shadows are still long
trying to recapture thoughts and dreams
that disappeared before the dawn.
There was a hallway that went nowhere
and I was never there.
There was the smell of urine
lingering in the air
while liberals, Catholics, Freemasons, and Jews
were rewriting the dictionaries
that you disdain to use.
Someone somewhere
had barricaded the church-house doors.
Was this dream mine, or is it yours?
All these codes and signs
read more like yours than mine.
A thousands words of poison and deceit.
A thousand words of fraud and treachery.
And so it seems
I will be stuck,
At least for a time,
with all your distressing dreams.
Is it working? I cannot tell
what is it you think you're accomplishing?
No one's ever so cruel
as the one planning a population reduction
accelerating the work and danger
We are great and we are bold
we will pound you into sand
our legs our iron, our head is gold
the world is ours to command
We won't take no for an answer
we demand and we extort
and what they won't give to us
we'll just have to take by force
So it's down with mercy and out with love
stuff your feelings, we don't care
we're in charge now, that's how it is
you can complain but you won't dare
We are vain and we are blind
God help us, but we are cruel
we've forgotten our fist love
and rejected the golden rule
So it's down with mercy and out with love
kindness and compassion are for fools
in the empire of scorn we're building
spite and pride are the guiding rules
Between a cliff and a burning fire
where the mob calls out for blood
when we call it the sin of empathy
you can't be surprised that we have none.
Open this particular wrath
And open this particular hell
With each proximate breath
We delay the arrival
Of the impossible light of death
Not a sudden destruction
Maybe not in darkness
Maybe not today
But unexpected and unannounced
Even as they are still rejoicing
Peace and safety and all the good that will follow
Peace and safety and all the good that they promise
You know enough to know that they lie and they lie
And will never uphold the law
Peace and safety but they shall not escape
Yesterday while I was out delivering the mail, I wrote a song for the second of my ex wives. It’s a country song, apparently.
It was a world of competing interests and the ever increasing influence of performative ignorance. This was nothing new. Nothing had changed. Nothing ever did. A world of pretense toward morality and meaning. A world of secret contracts and contracted disease. A world of decaying infrastructure.
And he hated it. He hated all the strenuous effort required to maintain a measure of daily calm in a world so riven by low men and their rivalries.
He was tired of public officials and the official public rhetoric. He was tired of their much lauded but never demonstrated love. He was so tired.
As the moon of endless failure rose into the evening sky he knew that they would, given the chance, throw us all into the fires of the furnace for a dollar.
Come now, visit and bless
this house, this home
with a gladness and glory unknown
in dark and desperate days
Show us how to rise up in splendor
when darkness covers the earth
when thick clouds of satanic deception
have taken control and taken the soul
of people I know and love
Come to make all things plain
Come to make all things clear
here where our hearts throb and overflow
with grotesque exaggerations
and slow suffocation
The global injustice
and domestic terror
the home grown police violence
of shadow puppets
and selfish prophets
have obscured the stars of hope
Even so, the grace given to me
is still a mystery
the light has dawned and the glory come
like justice a flower
Bless all who live here
with the gift of your love
seeing and being seen
knowing and being known
20+C+M+B+25
The other day I had the nonsense phrase "The knife doesn't know you cut me," stuck on repeat in my mind. It sounded to me like the refrain of a black comedy country song - and that's what it became. I hope you like it.
Inanimate objects don't know the things we know
the rocks and stones can't feel when the winter storms do blow
I don't blame the knife you carried; it was completely unaware
The knife don't know you cut me, but you don't care.
I ain't sayin' I was easy, only that you were unkind
you never let me hear the music playin' in your mind
or was it that you had no songs, no melody of your own
and that's why you would cut me to the bone?
You, you cut me, cut me to watch me bleed
You, you cut me, I'd show you the scars but there's no need
Maybe you won't hear it but darlin' I gotta' share:
The knife don't you you cut me, it's you that doesn't care.
Your lips were hard as iron, your kisses cold and sharp
you never let me hear the beating of your heart
Every act of kindness, every loving touch I gave
you returned to me like a slash from your blade.
You, you cut me, cut me to watch me bleed
You, you cut me, I'd show you the scars but there's no need
Maybe you won't hear it but darlin' I gotta' share:
The knife don't you you cut me, it's you that doesn't care.
There Once Was a Prophet from Judah: Biblical Limericks for Fun and Prophet
