Break Me and Bless Me

Break Me and Bless Me

Fall 2010

Verse 1

You speak and it’s unclear

My heart is clenched with fear

That what You said is what You really mean.

I cannot answer Yes, Lord,

For my heart, it seeths with greif,

And I cannot make myself believe that You would speak this pain.

Chorus

Through the long night, don’t let go

Though the day breaks, don’t let go

Fight with me, wrestle with me

Never give in to me: break me and bless me.

Verse 2

Your power is unmatched,

Your strength beyond compare,

And You will bring Your will to come to pass.

Still I fear You’ll let me win, Lord,

But I cannot acquiesce

O bitterest Friend, match blow for blow – don’t abandon me to my strength:

Chorus

Bridge

God of Jacob, my Portion, my Passion,

Ladder of Jacob, Who opened the heavens,

Spirit Who came down and who remains:

Peniel, Pen’el, uncover Your Face,

Lead me to Bethel from this desolate place;

My soul thirsts for You, the Living God.

Chorus 2

“In the morning, the fleece was wet,

In the morning, the fleece was dry,

And Moses could not run away from the burning bush.

Come and flood My throne with tears,

Come and match your strength to Mine,

For I will not let you break away from Me.”

Chorus

Test Track

Test Track

Cambodia Seems Dusty

Cambodia Seems Dusty

              To you whom God calls here

Does the day start when the roosters crow?

                                                                  Seems so:

                     The day awakes before the sun.

The sun is strong,

the rain is strong,

and the heat is strong.

In the villages, the people are friendly—

and weathered.

And everyone comes from the villages,

Where the rice fields lie flat

lollipopped with

coconut trees

and palm trees.

The buildings are bold

bright

blue and red and

orange and green and

traffic median-paint yellow.

The buildings are muted

wood and faded thatch,

rusty metal roofs.

The background is bright

rice-green to shame lawn-care,

tropically flowering-fruiting-and-flourishing

forests and fields,

farms, yards, gardens, and

painted pots.

The background is drab

dust-ridden paved roads,

dust-red dirt roads,

bare-trampled yards,

and construction zones.

The people are rich

See the thousand rooftops

‘round the royal palace?

The people are poor

we see the young ones,

see the old ones on the street.

The past is bleak—years

of power struggles,

 land-grabbing,

and terror.

The past is glorious—because…

Who has built such temples?

The future is dark—fears

        of corruption and prostitution

                ever ensnaring,

                        stripping the richness of the

                land from all people and

        twisting it into the

pockets

        of a few.

The future is bright—because…

The people are building,

The church is dawning,

And after all,

what is the miracle of man but

bones out of dust,

                tendons out of dust,

                                flesh out of dust,

                                                beating heart full of dust dissolved in rain,

                                                                running red only by the hands of

                          God?

      And we know:

   God’s hands are still moving,

And Cambodia has a lot of dust.




Christmas 2011

I Saw Flies

I saw flies

hoarding on the chapped, sandy bones

and beak, demorphing

into maggots who, crawling tail-first,

reconstruct

the flesh they consumed, and curl into

eggshells, borne away

by flies.

Vultures, too bear gifts

from afar; they cough up chunks of unrotting

meat to reverently

replace –

refitting one piece, then another to untear

into the surgeon’s puzzle of flesh.

Wind sweeps backward

through the desert, moistening

flesh and skin,

fastening

with unseen fingers: wind-parched, sun-bleached pilgrim feathers

that journeyed long to their source – fastening,

like a dandelion puff in reverse.

The sun saturates

their tones, until the eagle, glowing golden, rises

to its scaling feet, eyes

swelling to refill

sockets, and lunges at the skies.

I saw smoke

falling to where flames lick

ashes and birches charred to dust, leaving

heartwood, sapwood, bark, leaves;

And saw flames floating,

assembling dust into the

alignment of a rosebush,

and burning it alive,

precipitating petals

and thorns out of air.

We

Ran down to the churchyard,

Dug up the graves: father, grandmother, great-great aunt,

Sat down, and

We

Watched

As first to one here, then to another there:

            Bones out of dust.

                        Tendons out of dust.

                                    Flesh out of dust.

                                                Beating heart full of

                                                dust dissolved in rainwater,

                                                now running red.

I never saw

skin spread itself on faces

until the day I saw my great-great grandmother,

beautiful,

lying Eden-naked in her coffin,

breathing.

And yet

I forgot her

when I saw

Him.




February 2011