Baba, baba, baba,
King of the skies,
I looked for your name with all the others,
it wasn’t there.
It was off on its own, 
clear as diamond and shining in the sun,
precious. 
Didn’t you make a whole city like this?
Your name glistening in light in every direction,
city walls so wide they hold the whole world?
Is it here yet?
Will you show it to us?
Is it time for us to enter?
Let it come, lead us to it, in it.
Your jeweled city, the path that leads us in it,
Even when we can’t yet see it all,
When the way we’re walking 
just seems like regular dirt.
I’ve heard the bread you make in your city-
You lay it out in morning-mystery,
Whole hills golden-wheat-gleaming,
laid with already-ready bread.
I’ve heard it tastes like light.
What is it?
Can we have some today?
here, where dimness grips our wrists,
where we’ve slung shadow out around our neighbor’s ankles,
where it wraps around our necks,
smothers our cities with smoke.
Lord of the Light-city, release us from this darkness.
In shadowland, walk with us.
Keep our eyes where the light is.
Set us free from this obstructed place,
Where darkness tricks our sense of real. 
Keep us low, where the road glows,
And the way is true,
Where the city’s Light never goes out,
But keeps rising, racing after us,
until all that is
is coated with your light.

Again and again and again,
gracious, compassionate God,
bring peace and resurrection.
You who wept over Lazarus,
teach us to love life, light, as you do.
Hold the grieving, and help us see
you as you truly are.

No human being is replaceable.

With love,
Audrey Doris Brown Menard

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How are you holding up, friend?

In the wake of the murder of Good,
in the echo of the King killed for dreaming,
in the strange, tense clouds,
in the fears and the tears and the signs and the hardening,
what’s holding you?

A friend (gently) called me out of the arrogance of my agenda,
of how inhumanely I pack a day,
of how godlike I play,
of how unkind to myself to hold a godweight I can’t carry.
How kind to be humbled.

My children need my presence.
I need practices to ground my body,
to help me see clearly, to help me sleep,
to help me give up trying god-ing and to try again at human,
this human, to help me to be.

To live well today, this one body in this wide, wailing, wonderful world,
I need habits that tune me to a heartbeat steadier than mine.

I’ve got a little one:
I love the prayer that Jesus taught us.
I love that Jesus prayed.
I love that his prayer starts out like a toddler’s.
I like to imagine the prayer like I remember my children’s newborn fingers waving about,
until they learned to move where they meant them to,
how they reached for my face, or for their dad’s stubble,
and I like to think that that moment is the kind of posture we’re invited into with this little prayer.
Reach up to find
someone safe, reassuring,
in a world that is wilder and wider than we have any idea.

Jesus taught the words like a playground rhyme to those that walked with him.
They’d play them morning, noon, and night.
They’d repeat them while the words worked at the playdoh of their hearts,
while they eased healing and reassurance along neural pathways,
while they reshaped the hurts between them,
while they learned new ways to walk and live and love.

Those friends taught them to the ones that came next,
and those to the next.

I imagine they whispered them in secret handshakes,
sung them softly in catacomb burials,
maybe even in the shade of the colosseum,
I don’t know.

I like this, because sometimes I imagine, when I repeat them,
that we’re all still saying them all together,
that we are, today, so much less alone than we could ever imagine,
that there is, in this little-prayer-whisper-cloud, a family of people
who have traveled here before,
in Colossae and Caracas, Cartagena and Tehran,
who walk with us and our children
with the same ancient Breath in our lungs.

I’d like to repeat after Jesus.
That’s what I do most often.
It’s a good thing to do. I recommend it.

Sometimes I get a little lost in the familiarity of the repetition,
and then I play around with the words.
I also like this. I also recommend it.
I’d be curious what words you’d use.
I wonder how new words help us hear the ancient one.

I tried it recently with my children’s voices in mind,
especially with the questions they save up for bedtime.

It feels so small.
I think it turns my sight inside out.

Pray with me?

little cup

Papa, where is heaven?
where is all of you? 
why can't I see you?
Is there anyone else like you?
I don't know them.
Just you,
but not all of you.
I don't have a know that big.
Will you fill up this little space with your bigness?
Don't you love to come into the little?
Will you hold my hand and walk me in the goodness of the little way?
the goodness of a little day?
with just enough bread for the hours we're awake?
fill us up?
bless this little cup.
where we've made small out of this world, of one another, of you,
release us.
where we've forgotten your bigness in others, in ourselves,
show us again.
turn us around.
don't walk us into the place where you look like what bad is
and empty looks like all the good there is. 
set us free from mirage and misunderstanding.
meet us, make us in this mess.
may your good-sight, your fullness, your light, 
your all-of-you fil us all in the end,
in the forever and ever. 

amen. 

I dare you to look little, pray little.
I dare you to wonder, leave space, for big.
I dare you to look again.

May big envelop and widen you.
and Hope grow big, grow wild in you.

Thank you for reading. For being here.

Good night, friends.
Audrey

Baba in heaven.
Soft, sure sound on my lips,
Baba.
Who else has a name like yours?
Ordinary perfection, playfully bobbing across the pale
blue puddle of our all-of-us existence,

Baba.

In the flatlands and prairies,
let the land itself wrinkle and rise,
hold up your name high like peak, other,

Baba.

Let wind wish it, dash across dried mountain
on dandelion dare, carry it east and west 
and to each sidewalk crack and fescue lawn unsuspecting, 
whisper it far where the 
world ends and the expanse begins.


Baba.

Let the seas find it floating,
hem and haw and then with one voice
spray and rise and send your name skyward,
a thousand droplets singing

Baba.

Let clouds catch each syllable with pinkie toes
and turn, babes to the cosmos, giggling
rolling, backs to the earth, and fling
a thousand repeatings up to the cold
til sky sends iced confetti to melt on all our tongues,

Baba.

I’ve not been following any particular readings or writing-prompts, my body is staging some sort of rebellion against I’m-not-sure-what, and I’ve been tired. Disoriented. Unmoored.

Maybe that’s what Lent’s up to, anyway, or maybe that’s somehow how Spirit’s inviting me, or us. Isn’t Lent supposed to be silt-stirring?

I’ve a poet-friend who’s been sharing sonnets she wrote during another year’s Lent, (she sonneted her way through Luke!) and her words caught me like chain leading to anchor. When I read her words reflecting on what happened in that process, how she felt with-God in the creative back-and-forth of listening and re-wording, I remembered how often Maker has chased me too in word-play, re-minding to see the life again in familiar-words.

When I get lost in my studio, I draw penguins. When I get lost in my prayers, I write the Lord’s prayer. Like the steps, it works if you work it. This morning, when I followed the links in the chain, I came back to this age-old translation process. (Thank you for the gift of community.) I traced back through my prayer journal and found this one from December. Another old one, but one I’m praying again today, listening to, remembering that with-You time, and the mystery of the old news.

Pray with me?

Wrestle?

Our Father

Our good Father, 
mysterious and self-disclosing, 
good all the way through, consistent, 
unlike any human, even our best,
holy is your name.
Holy, holy, holy, good, worthy of all glory and all praise,
worthy of the worship of cherubim, seraphim, all the cosmos-
Your name be honored as not like ours, as unlike any others,
As beyond our imagination. 

Your Kingdom come,
Your imagination, your reality, your trust-me-I-have-a-nother-way,
Your will be done
Here, where we live, some taste of what it’s like wherever heaven is,
Whatever heaven is.

What do I even need today?
Where are all the rumbling stomachs?
Mercy, Lord,
You know, better than I do, what land stretches beyond wants,
What your good design names right, need.
Today, come feed our hunger.
Name us worthy of eating.

And what is this, to be human, to be unable to bear up under our own injustices?
Name this too, our not-good,
And release us from the weight of our own hating,
From the weight of our hurting.
How else can we human, if not with forgiveness?
Release my striving child to freedom,
And my erring child to repair,
Help us to let go, release, to stomp wellie-wild in the grand puddle of your grace-soaked invitation 
to exist.
Forgive us, and lead us in the forgiveness way,
Today. 

And as we go,
lead us not to deny any others the gifts we’ve already received, not to leave those gifts unopened,
or half-seen,
as we run, panting, to the next.
Lead us into your way, not into temptation,
but deliver us-
mercy, deliver us-
from evil, from not-good, from not-you, from the space where we’re robbed of our reality-
Beloved, forgiven, healing, whole-
Isn’t that your reality? 
Heal whatever it is that keeps us from knowing it,
Rooting deep in it,
Root us, root us,
Each, all,
Until all the cosmos turns our face to the sky
And our knees to the soil,
Your kingdom, your kingdom, and you- our King. 

unlearned

God of the cosmos,
who nursed the freshborn stars,
taught Time to count with their twinkling,
Steadied the legs of the wilderking
fawn, wobble-legged, wet from the womb, 
You who closed the Deep in its room,
wrapped it in clouds, and dark, and bars.
Forgive me for thinking I should,
I could,
be you.

God of the celestial spheres,
You spun the sun on the edge of the earth,
Toddler-star never tired of chasing darkness across the blue beyond,
Marble-shot earth in orbit-ring,
Your fingerprints left mountains.
I’ve lived a day
and I count the minutes as years.

God of the deep,
who walked in the dark underneath,
knows the secret keep where the water is held
and released, who springs through death’s door without any key, 
old friend to the home where Light sleeps,
Liberate me.
Hydrostatic pressure, and I’m lung-drained at ten feet.

Your soft hand humbles me.

Lave me with limits, lift from me the load
of lying about the length of life.

God of the sky,
who stacks sleet in sheets in silos,
holds hail in houses in your hands, sprinkling
the battles below, earth wrinkling
under history’s frozen tears,
when Light’s heart breaks does it crack the firmament?
where does the mouth of the earth open, that her breath caresses my cheek as it carries the scent of melting sorrow,
are they your tears rushing canyons, turning bare land soft with seed?

Papa, 
whose chest does the rain run to for relief?

God of all comfort,
your arms a home encircling the world,
Unlearn me.
Release me from believing I could,
I should,
you needed me to
be you.

With profound gratitude for the pastoral poetry of the book of Job,
whose chapters haunt and hold me. Here, my wrangling with chapter 38.

Thank you for joining me today in the practice of word-play and prayerful reading.
The peace of the Paraclete be with you.

Guidepost,
meeting marker in the fog,
I followed Your note,
“Meet me here?”

When I can’t see what all I’m shaping towards,
I can’t see a thing,
It’s always You.
Your Kingdom, the details, the whatever-that-really-means,
That all follows You.
Help me
follow
You.

Your story,
This is all about You.
Explosion of YOU,
Your goodness,
Your more-than-enough,
Love poured out and bounced back
In a cosmic celebration of You, Our King.

Garden of belonging, enjoying, loving and creating
Together.

You and all of existence,
You and all of Your Creation,
And You and us.

Humans,
You wrapped us up in Your image,
And miraculously we look like You,
Sound like You,
Make like You,
Love like You.

Ruler, rule us,
Because there has never been a way better.

Your goodness sprouts up in a thousand clovers,
Invites us to look closer,
Marvel at stamen, chlorophyll, translucence,
Wild apiary dance, intertwinedness,
Choreography,

And asks us to step back,
Look up,
And gape at Your infinity, fire suspended in expanse,
cosmic beings in mysterious dance,

And I am a child in a field of pure presence,
Content,
To be Yours,
Be here,
Right now.

We are broken, hurting. We need You.

Pain rips through our veins,
Shame locks our bodies up in chains,
And every recitation of history reminds us that Eden is gone.
We can’t believe the lie that we can just get past this
if we try hard enough.
As if our ancestors knew less than us.
We know,
Stomach churning with what we don’t want to admit,
We’re not going to suddenly achieve what no generation has ever even glimpsed in an echo.

We’re more than a mess.

Tracing the lines of this glory,
We know we’re not who we were meant to be.
Uneasy mirror-stare,
Milk jug caught between stones,
Scraped knees, broken bones,
Families sitting silent with haunting memories,
Children tripping over undetonated traces of war atrocities,
The bodies keep stacking up.

God, let this be enough.

Sin, shame, darkness, despair,
Broken bodies, broken spirits, broken families, broken earth.

We are glorious,
But

It’s harder to trace these lines back.

Help us see You’re still here.
Help us remember what we were,
What You made us for. 

It’s been so long, but I think I used to call the ground by her name.

To be

With

You.

To garden with You.

Rule with You.

Create with You.

In perfect shalom.

Every piece perfectly fitted together,

This dance is too good to hold.

You, King, Present, Wise, Good,

Light,

Abundance,

God.

And I am unfettered, truly free,

Full,

And glorious

With my eyes on You.

Every human in an unimaginable choreography of harmony,

There is no wondering if-he, will-he, does-she,

We are loved,

And we know it.

To the fiber of our beings,

Nerve endings soaked with knowing,

Tingling with the kind of life no creature could invent.

You breathe real life,

And we all feel it.

Touched this soil and it laughed.

Laughed.

I laid my cheek down, bare, against it,

And the rumbling chuckled up into meadows,

It tickled my shoulders with diamond-clear streams,

Giggled out fiddle-ferns,

And let loose into a giant oak,

Dust in the wind caught the light

And danced,

And even the grown-ups noticed.

God help us notice.

Help us remember who You made us to be,

What You made this to be,

Who You are,

King!

Your Kingdom is more than improbable,

With every other being it is impossible,

But You

Hold this all together.

We know,

Marrow calls in our bones,

That we were made for this.

Joyful, glorious, garden work-play-be-life,

right here,

with You.

Somewhere in our human-history,

DNA passed down,

We still remember this.

Oh God help us remember this.

resurrected God, you are still the crucified God.
You still pour out.
This is not triumphalism.
This is you still crucified,
still resurrected,
still resurrecting a dying world and
we are still waiting for all things to be made new,
to be joined with the dead
in new life
in new Jerusalem.
and it won’t come by strength
of my sword, or my voice, or my prayers,
because you are still the God who pours out power,
empties yourself.
You have defeated death, but
you still went through it.
we still go through it.
I still prayed, empty-mouthed
for a miracle,
and now empty arms ache to hold resurrection.
You saw your mother at the foot of your execution.
ascended God, where did you go?
Hold us, with your mother’s empty arms,
in this still-crucified-God waiting
until all your pouring-out turns all the emptied to filled-up,
and You and all creation come home.

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