If you grew up like me perhaps your ism was a trap you didn’t see.
Perhaps it was in the air we can breathe in the news man on TV. Maybe It was the laugh at a joke, the cast of a vote.
It’s the hand that shakes yours in the church vestibule
The gravity that chains you to the earth terrestrial.

It’s hidden in the majority history we learned, the institutions we served,
Implicit in our education and health, our generational wealth,
Unbidden in how we read God’s word to justify
Our silence through centuries of oppression of violence.

But what if I told you that all that stuff that Jesus said
About neighbor love and let Your Kingdom come
He actually meant it though?
Not just the parts that protect our pride our rights our status quo.
Would you reject or resent it? Or let me finish? Three minutes? Go.

Now that I have your attention, let me mention
That there’s no such thing as a Christian nation
And where we’re at today is a culmination,
From the doctrine of discovery and the myth of meritocracy,
Through lifetimes of redlines and segregation
Lynching and mass incarceration.

And if we need convincing of the plain truth that “I can’t breathe”
Is the strange fruit from that tree of slavery,
Before we check the spec in a brother’s eye,
We have got to transform, make another try
To get our platform out of our own.

And could I get an Amen if I were to weigh in?
Don’t get triggered congregation,
But the God we put our faith in
Is way bigger than the politics of polarization.
And do black lives really matter
To our denominations of red-blooded good Samaritans If we preach a white-lie, silver-spoon
Golden rule American
Dream that’s green with greed and grieves those in need?

I know it’s a drag but understand
We inherited a gospel that was colonized and colorizedBy the flags and empires of man
And as I unfurl the fact from the fiction
I’m coming to find the contradictions
In these lines and scars that won’t heal
From the stripes and stars that won’t deal
With the unraveling myths and unflattering ripsIn our old-glory story.

Yet as I face up to my upbringing
I still find hope in the uprising of our Christ King.
So we’ve got work to do, me and you,
Uprooting weeds planting seeds.
Let us open a brand new beginning
Join me in lamenting, repenting, apologizing
For the sinning of our faith tradition.

Let’s talk less and listen
More. Defend and amplify the brave voices of people of color.
Upend the systems and structures that legitimize our unspoken isms, our broken conditions.
May we share a just vision where there is no “Other”
Only sister and brother.

God, let our eyes recognize
Your sacred image brimming inside every human being
Let Your light shine beautifully In a prism of a thousand shades.
Let Your will be done in a hundred every-day decisions:
Let us stand in unity for your mercy and redemption.
Let our hands work faithfully to bless those who are hurting.
Let our words fluently call forth the best in humanity.

This we pray: Today may
We come wide awake to celebrate a kinder ruckus Calibrate to a higher compass, your true-north justice.
Cultivate the wonder of a wilder grace. Elevate Love not hate love not hate love not hate.

Test.  One two.
Three four. This is more   
than just  
words expressed
into a microphone.
This is life and death as metaphor and poem.
This is my heart pressed
against a megaphone.
This is all the hope in my chest
here to confess
the God who came to empty His divinity   
into a cage of humanity and entropy,
mercy dressed in chromosomes and flesh
to join in our adversity, to love us in our suffering.

Consider this an open letter to a caged bird,
one child out of a generation
in African nations imprisoned by starvation.
This is my apology   
to a girl orphaned by HIV,
who deserves more from me  
than the misery
of a birthright stolen by the machinery of poverty.

A childhood of tear stains, and stars torn asunder.
And I can’t help but wonder,
is my faithlessness leaving her falling, fatherless,
featherless on flightless wings?

I’m sorry for the accident of longitude and latitude
that forms the grid of bars on her cage,
for my attitude of apathy
that added to the twisted theology
that justifies my obesity,
that tips the scales for me
and strips away her dignity.

Consider this an open letter to my soul.
If I could fly, I would perform the rite
that rights the wrongs,
write God’s words in the sky,
ride the currents, creating cursive curves to cure the curse
of currency that currently  
traces a trajectory of tragedy.

But I’m trapped between these dreams of wings
and this politician in my head
who changes convictions and hides in contradictions.
See, I know this world is not my home  
and this life is not my own,
purchased with Christ’s blood alone.
But I can’t stop trying to fill my hollow bones
with empty things that only bring death’s sting.

What kind of faith is it
that turns away from a pandemic?
Aren’t we all diminished
when we become a church of critics and cynics,
while the very image of God’s beloved Son
is hungry and hurting and living in mud?
And we won’t get our hands dirty.

If true religion is for the   
widow and the orphan,
are we able to offer more than   
just labels? As Christians
will we make the decision
to love the children without fathers,
to be a drink of water   
for God’s sons and daughters?
Will we live what He has spoken?
Will we bend to lift the damaged and the broken?

Church, I’m not gonna hide tonight from what the truth is:
God gives us gifts not to keep but to use them.
Are we really God’s people, or do we just talk big?
Let’s prove this;
Get your heart out of your wallet and let’s do this!
Get your feet in the dust and let’s move in
to living   
the bigger story God is using
to heal the world.

Consider this an open letter to the Holy Trinity,
who is ever present at the address
of misery and unless.
Father will you grant us new wings,
that we might be
ones who bring   
Christ’s kingdom?
Seeking the suffering, being with the weak,
interceding with the Spirit to redeem the dignity
of every human being.    
Would You break the spell of HIV?
B the key that unlocks the door of this C A G E.

Will You speak a new name for all of your adored?
Call us forth,
change our course,
orphaned souls to find true north,
meant to fly, sent to rise   
up from the cage,
reborn
for Your   
sky of stars.
Let love break through these bars.

____________________________________

Credits
Videography: Wes Broadhurst & Jim Kallemeyn
Music: Papercandle
VJ: Liz Jarocki

I got stuff.
Good stuff.  Happy stuff.
Successful, sensational, recreational, relaxational stuff.

And you can’t take my stuff.

My stuff is the needle that drops to the vinyl
to start the party and spin the spiral.

My stuff immediately, impressively, incessantly
illuminates my import,
and my stuff is loud.
It commands respect and you can’t neglect
when my stuff says, “I have arrived,
And this is what I ‘m all about!”
My stuff identifies me.
And I   identify   with my   stuff.

You can’t handle my stuff!
My stuff is the needle that tattoos my skin,
signifying the significance of who I am.

I got stuff.
Stuff from my past…   
that follows me around
like some run-down evangelist-carnival caravan
that keeps coming to town.

In the amusement-park dark
swaggering saints from the shadows
shout my shattered story,
selling sacred success-souvenirs and seductive soul-sideshows.  
Their slanted slogans solicit me, slander me, compel me. Tell me
fortunes I regret that I can’t forget.
And seeking grace I surrender to the stuff-spell,
but it conjures no confession, no communion…
just a constant carousel of clamor
that casts out the quiet and the questions,
So I don’t have to hear my heart
beat.

My stuff is a Ferris wheel that takes me up to the top
and drops me right back down again.
But after a while I twist and I spin,
and I want off,  but the ride never stops.

I got stuff.    

Right now, my stuff is an elevator straight to the penthouse floor!
But sometimes,   no matter what number I push,
I can’t seem to open the door.

You can’t handle my stuff.

My stuff is the needle that injects my vein,  
and it’s warm like a fever and it spreads like a stain
and it itches, and I scratch, and I dig
'til it burns like a blaze.
But all I have in my hands is gasoline,
and I can’t stop the flame.

I got stuff.

You can’t handle my stuff.     
You can’t take my stuff.
Can You? Take my stuff?

A meditation on the Beatitudes

There is a kingdom,
an upside-down realm where light seems lost
where shadows hold hope for ransom
where the vulnerable are scattered and religion grows rancid.

And throughout history there is this national anthem
of power and greed that’s deafening
and the only prophecy in the lyric we hear is: You will surely die.

But we all march along to the empty song
that’s covering the whispering of suffering
and we’re not even listening for the distant rhythm
of the coming reckoning.

We seek to remedy the false destiny in this empire melody,
but the bridge to set us free is gone.
And we can’t invert the gravity in the chorus
or cure the original curse in the verse
of this twisted DNA song.

In this kingdom of night we are searching, unfound eyes down
beneath this light-less shroud and we can’t adjust the brightness
in this faded and filtered
Instagram wilderness hashtag blessed
where success is overrated, hearts are de-saturated.

In this decaying orbit of sin our satellite souls circle again,
following the hollow ellipse, falling for the darkness of the eclipse.
In our loveless not-enough-ness
we are crushed within these borders of rust and flesh and poverty,
dust and death and entropy.

Yet there is another kingdom

For in this eternal mystery our king sent
His only son the prince of peace to gain the victory
over sin’s captivity.
Thorn crown Whip comes down
Hammer sound nail pound
Our God spent his own blood and skin
to rend the veil that separated
humanity from His divinity,
liberating us from death’s slavery

Our Kingdom flag is surrender to the greatest King.
This Lord who was born in the mess of a manger brings
blessing for those who mourn.
For the poor in Spirit, this Kingdom is yours.
For the merciful and the meek,
let His right-side up kingdom come.
For those making peace, let His light rise up.
For our King of love He has won.

Now the whole earth turns for God’s realm to be unveiled
and the universe burns for His glory to be revealed.
In this place as in heaven may it ever be:
Let His kingdom reign in peace.