Category: My poetry

Categories
My poetry

poem: first question

my God, you better be ready when i come
and stand before you face to face at last
because you know how many questions i have for you
and you know the very first that will
burst from my lips will be
why?

why did you conceive and birth a world
roiling with so much pain?
why did you make human beings
capable of such atrocities?

why did you make our skin so frail, our stomachs
so prone to hunger and thirst, our minds
so quick to judge and scheme and place ourselves first?

and why, why do you seem to watch passively
as we raze forests into barren dust
as we pour poison into rivers
as we tear flesh from each other’s bodies with our teeth??

…i don’t know, yet. but when i think of you
cradled in the arms of a single mother with calloused brown hands

and of you
walking miles between towns to bring healing on tired feet,
your stomach eating itself with hunger, your tongue parched

and of you
being nailed to a cross
by hands that have shed their compassion for gain
as you cry out “my God, why! why have you forsaken me!”

…then, i feel a little better.
i still do not understand
but i trust.

i trust because you do not watch us suffer from
some lofty throne high above 
but rather

wherever a child sobs with hunger
a woman aches with grief
a whole community is being trampled into the mud
you are there. your face is tear-tracked too. your wrists
and feet and torso bear wounds, too.

so i question, constantly.
and i will demand answers. but also, i trust you.

truly, truly
my hope is in you.

Originally published in The Kin-dom in the Rubble. If you use this piece, please credit it to Avery Arden and link this website. I also invite you to email me at queerlychristian36@gmail.com to let me know how you’re using it!

Hear Avery read this poem on YouTube.

About this poem: If we learn nothing else from scripture, it’s that God welcomes our questions and difficult emotions. And a common question with which we all wrestle is the question of why good people suffer while those who do wrong seem to thrive – see Psalm 73, the Book of Job, and this post for more on what theologians term “theodicy,” the place of God in suffering.

Categories
My poetry

poem: heaven is home to quick green things

i hope Your kin(g)dom’s halls are walled
with tree trunks

with canopies for roofs – in shades of green
never seen before by human eyes

and veritable riots of flowers, fruits,
everywhere i look! – and, when i need
a rest from color after vibrant color,

i hope the leafy canopy gives way  
   to black
          so deep
i almost believe
Your whole infinity
could curl up in its blue-black folds, with room
to spare for all your nursing galaxies.  

…

i’ve never understood
how they can read Your declaration “Good!
very Good!” – read how

You would not cease from making till You stood
amidst a million billion nebulae
that each great downdraft of Your mighty wings
set aswirl with dust and heat that coalesced

into stars and planets — split again
into seas and lands, cells, plants — and only then

only then did You rest
as the milky way jingled on Your wrist –

they read of this
and then they paint Your heaven sterile white
as far as eye can see!
unbroken vault of
neutralizing light
devoid of all the variegating shades
and creatures that You made with Your own breath
and eons of delight.

…

i hope Your kin(g)dom’s halls
are loud with birdsong
prowling with cats
rippling with fishes

i hope new life-forms bud a thousandfold
instead of shrinking down to human beings
and angels stock-still in one solemn mass;

for unity must not require extinction –

and You,  
    great bounty-bringer,     
        atom-splicer,        
            dance-delighter,
You

look lovelier when draped in gauzy rainbow,
a diadem of ivy laced with stars
and shadows silking over You like feathers –

and humankind alone, even backed by angels
cannot think of enough new ways to praise You…

so let the birds of the air, the slinking things,
the fish of the sea and seeds that split the dirt
join in on the praise of You that words don’t cover

and that rings clearer through brown boughs
than spotless white

If you use this piece, please credit it to Avery Arden and link this website. I also invite you to email me at queerlychristian36@gmail.com to let me know how you’re using it!

Hear Avery read this poem on YouTube.

About this poem: It’s important for us to reimagine the heavens we’ve been taught – for not only is whatever God’s kin(g)dom looks like far beyond anything our finite human minds can imagine, but in particular those endless uniform clouds and multitudes of faceless angels are antithetical to God’s love for diversity and color and life.

I wrote this poem because I’ve received so very many messages from people on my tumblr blog asking me in fear whether their beloved pet will be with them in heaven; or whether they’ll still be able to do the things they enjoy and see the people they love in heaven…and after much thinking and studying and praying I’ve found that the answer is yes! yes, of course! For what God calls Good here on earth (drawing from Genesis 1), God will restore, renew, transform for the coming age – not destroy.

Categories
My poetry

poem: tea prayer

preparing tea is its own kind of prayer –
one that heat and water pray for you.

the kettle’s keening. laughter bubbling up. the steady sigh of water
as it folds into the cup.

see the steam raise its arms to embrace
the sunlight peering in through kitchen window?

those swaying arms enact a psalm of praise
clear as voice or timbrel, or clapping trees of the field.

see how the water blushes, rich and brown,
as the sachet swirls within?

likewise are we saturated through
with Spirit when we open to Her dance.

each mundane task, each daily chore or act
overflows with blessing.

the whole world thrums with gratitude for God
Who permeates the stream, the steam, the sunbeam’s heat –

Who was with the leaves when they unfurled from the twig
to taste the pulse of the earth, its breath and light;

Who was with them when a hand reached up and plucked,
and Who is with them still, as they swirl within the cup.

If you use this piece, please credit it to Avery Arden and link this website. I also invite you to email me at queerlychristian36@gmail.com to let me know how you’re using it!

Hear Avery read this poem on YouTube.

About this poem: This piece is about how tasks as mundane as preparing tea can become a prayer. I was inspired to write it by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s discussion of how Jewish law fosters mindfulness and orients a person towards God. I was also influenced by Sister Macrina Wiederkehr’s discussions on divinity within mundanity in A Tree Full of Angels.

Categories
Holy Days LGBT/queer Liturgy My poetry Reflections for worship services

A queer reflection on the Agony in the Garden – Holy Thursday / Maundy Thursday

Tonight we follow Jesus to the Garden of Gethsemane. 

As we kneel with him in the dark, see his hands clenched in prayer,
the blood on his brow, in his tears,
as we hear the cry wrench out of him, “Take this cup away from me!” 

…we hear also the cry of so many of our siblings.

“I cannot bear this part of myself, O God. Why are you calling me to this? Why did you make me to be this way, when all it has done for me is cause loved ones to abandon me? Take this cup away. Please take this cup away.”

Let us not be like the disciples who slept,
ignorant of Jesus’s agony.

Let us not be like them when they fled the scene
leaving him to the ones who chained him and dragged him away.

O God, set our hearts on fire with a fierce compassion for your oppressed children, so that we cannot sleep when they cry out. 

We go to them. We stay awake with them. We. stay.

We remember the one who broke bread and called it his body,
who knelt to wash our feet.
We remember the one who commanded us to love in such a way –
to serve and be served.

Let us go now into a world full of cries,
all anxiously awaiting a day that seems far off, a dawn past all suffering
when we will rise transformed,
when relationships will be reconciled
and all will know God’s love. 

In the meantime – this time of anxious waiting – we leave no one alone in their agony. We cry out with them.
We stay awake with them.
We stay.

Categories
Holy Days LGBT/queer Liturgy My poetry Reflections for worship services

A queer prayer for foot washing – Maundy Thursday / Holy Thursday

Jesus,

I do not know if I could let you, my God,
my Savior, to whom I owe all things
kneel below me
and take into your warm brown hands
my feet, dirty and cold.

I also do not know if I could take
the feet of my betrayers, my deniers –

those who declare my identity a falsehood or a phase,
those who sentence me to suffering by their hate,
those who wield you against me,
those who do not yet know all that I am, but when they do
might cease to associate themselves with me –

I don’t know if I could take their feet
in my hands, 
kneel before them in a pose of the same lowliness
they often make me feel

and wash their feet
just as you did for your friends, who would very soon abandon you.

Must I let you serve me?

And must I serve them?


…And if I do these things, will I really grow closer
to you?

to them?

Oh! You who stripped off Divinity
and took on the frail finitude of flesh…for me!
teach me this humility.

Give me the courage to ask them
if they will even let me wash their feet
and whether, maybe, they might wash mine too.

Intimacy like this is a fearful thing.

But if it truly leads to fuller life
and if you are with me,

I will take the bowl of water,
the washing rag,
and I will sit with bare feet
and I will kneel with warm hands.

Categories
Charge and Benediction Liturgy Reflections for worship services

Benediction: the goodness of the body

Jesus, through your example you have shown us
that joy in banquets and good company can be a sacred thing.

We are ready to go out to expand the banquet of your love.

In the woman of the Song of Songs, we learn that passion and pleasure can unite us and lead us to God. 

We are ready to go out to learn to delight in our own bodies,
and to grow closer to one another, your people.

O Sophia, Holy Wisdom, having seen how you choose
to share your truth with the cast-offs of society,
with the naive and the ignored,

We are ready to go out to share the Wisdom the world calls foolish.

Let us go out with hearts transformed, with minds striving to improve while not fearing imperfection,
with bodies empowered for their share of work and of rest,
all for the glory of God our Beloved. 

Thanks be to God!

Categories
Liturgy My poetry Reflections for worship services

Reflection: God our Beloved

God our Beloved,
you hold out your hands
with the wounds that mark your solidarity with us,
to accept us into your arms as one spouse takes another.

We will cling to you without fear,
for you will never reject us,
and you will never swallow up our selfhood in yours. 
Rather, you delight in what we are,
the true selves you fashioned and free us to be.

May we graft our lives to yours,
while learning to love ourselves as we are.

May we be yours forever, liberated from fear and doubt
and thus empowered to be your love for the world.

Amen.

Categories
Liturgy My poetry Opening prayer Reflections for worship services

Opening prayer / reflection: Strange God, Wisdom for fools

O World’s Restorer, Status quo’s Demise,
you look into our minds, survey our assumptions and our plans
and you throw back your head and laugh.

You do not reveal your Wisdom
to the ones the world calls wise.
(They would not know what to make of it, anyway.)

Rather, Wisdom dazzles children’s minds;
She scoops up outcasts in a heady dance,
swaps secrets with the stranger and the fool.

Incomprehensible God!
The ones we call “unwanted”
you call Beloved.
The ones we call “broken”
you call whole and holy.

Impossible to think you look upon
our frail flesh and even frailer hearts
overgrown with greed and desperation
and fall in love with our potential!

Deepest desire of our hearts! Come!
Lift our burdens from our shoulders
and take us in your arms as your Beloved.

Categories
Call to worship Charge and Benediction Confession and Pardon Holy Days Liturgy My poetry Reflections for worship services

Ascension liturgy (Acts 1, Luke 24, Jesus’s wounds)

Call to Worship:

Here we are, gathered in many spaces but in One Body.
Here we are, ready to worship God, ready to be transformed.

Today we remember Jesus’s ascension,
a rising up of human flesh to mingle with the Divine.

We praise the one who died and rose,
who lifts us all – body and spirit – in his outstretched, wounded arms. 

As we join in prayer and song and praise,
may the Holy Spirit fill us to bursting
both with anticipation of Christ’s return
and an irresistible urge to seek God’s kin(g)dom here and now.

Opening Prayer:

Great Creator,
You who crafted the cosmos and cradle it to your heart,
you who will the flourishing of all your creatures
and weave a tapestry of redemption for humanity –
these embodied spirits whom you fashioned in your image –

Teach us to be your hands, working for the liberation and restoration 
of the outcast and those who fear what they do not know,
of the oppressor and the oppressed.

In the name of your Child Jesus,
who rose in body to you
and who sent us the Holy Spirit to be the very heartbeat of the world,
we pray.

Amen.

Confessional Prayer

Risen God,

too often we live as though you abandoned us
when you ascended into heaven –
as though you are not alive and active in the world,
as though we could make up our own morality,
as though we should wait, dormant, for your return, watching the sky instead of being active vessels for your love and restoration.

When we fail to balance our hope in your return
with living out your already-present Spirit: forgive us. 

When anxiety holds us back: encourage us.
When apathy or resignation leaves us feeling powerless: empower us.

Amen.

Reflection

We are the Body of Christ.

Just like Jesus our God,
we are embodied spirits and inspirited bodies –
bodies of many colors, many (dis)abilities and shapes,
many desires and dreams.

When the world tells us our bodies are wrong,
that we are not the right color or size, that we are useless or broken,
that we love the wrong way,

may the vision of our embodied God –
Jesus of the wounded hands and feet,
Jesus of the brown and callused skin,
Jesus of the poor person’s belly
and kind person’s love of food and fellowship –
appear to us.

When we feel swayed to judge
the body of another and what they do with it
may the vision of Jesus’s table, set for
women and eunuchs, tax collectors and poor persons,
practitioners of many faiths, the Roman centurion and his lover,
deaf and blind persons, lepers and those with mental illness,
and ever other stranger and outcast
inspire us to expand our own table. 

When we feel anxious as the first disciples did
that Jesus arose in body, seeming to leave us on earth behind,
may his Spirit enfold us, a reminder that we were not abandoned
but empowered and transformed.

In the body and divinity of Jesus,
heaven meets earth –
thanks be to God!

Benediction 

The Risen One is here among us, here and now.
Jesus calls to us, not to look toward the sky,
but into the faces of those who surround us –

to listen to them; to commune with them;
to live peaceably with them whenever possible
and to disrupt injustice wherever necessary.

May we hear that voice and invitation as we go out into the world,
here and now, together,
to celebrate and cultivate the gifts of the Holy Spirit
whom we find wherever there is life.

Amen.