Poem: Dare to Provide

Dare to Provide

When one assumes the position of artist

One must expect the critics to arrive

And notice every stroke and color

Suggesting a hue is improper or

A stroke too broad. They have their preconceived

Notions of what this should be or what that 

Should say to society but you have,

Dear artist, a mind of your own that wants

To say what you’ve said and they should leave it

Alone. Yet, just that they’ve noticed and said

Anything means that your work has been seen.

This, alone, should give you pride that your work

Has fully arrived. Not many will feel

Just what you feel and they might just feel it

And not like it at all so they warn those

Who would feel, not as you but, as they do.

Nor, perhaps, would you want them to, but to

See what you feel, what you project, feelings

Through art weren’t made to protect. Just take pride

That critics will see and present your work

To society who will, in their turn,

Take time to decide the value of what

You feel inside and dare to provide.

February 2024

About This Poem

I don't remember what inspired this poem, but it expresses what I feel about one's own art be it writing, painting, or gardening. That does not mean I don't believe in a good edit, or respected opinion. I just know I've watched many a great movie that was highly criticized in a negative fashion and I couldn't agree less. So, sometimes the artist has to make the final decision on the artwork's release. I chose this picture because I thought something more abstract would best serve the purpose of this poem.
 

Poem: Palm Springs

Palm Springs

They came here some time ago to

Get away from all their fame and

On every street left their names.

They built their homes in the sand,

Mid-Century Modern, the style

Covering up the purple of 

Verbena and bringing here the 

Crowds who now peep through their homes’ gates

Hoping to spy a small castle

And probably surprised at the 

Modesty of flat roofs by pools

In which they’d swim during summer’s

Great heat, yet nothing like the flames

From strangers projecting upon

Them things that could not be true.

I wandered here one spring seeing

Homes of pianists with swimming

Pools shaped like those instruments they’d

Played, or little mail boxes there

Looking like a baby grand and

Thought it somehow strange that they would

Choose to live near farms of date palms

And sand blowing into great dunes

Settling into the bottoms of

Their beautiful blue swimming pools.

But we all have our little quirks

And now those people with their names

On that city’s every lane

Are, I pray, resting in peace from

Things that haunt us all while living.

April 2023

About This Poem

I don't really think this one needs much explanation. The photo is of the house of someone famous (which one I now forget) in Palm Springs.
 

Poem: On Writing Poetry in the Morning

On Writing Poetry in the Morning

I read some poems every day

Hoping for inspiration on what to say,

But sometimes the words just don’t come;

Nothing I say makes sense to anyone.

Emotions may have boiled in the evening

Yet I had no time to write anything.

I read a book before going to bed

To help erase all thoughts within my head.

So here I am in the arms of Aurora

Seeking words hidden beneath my fedora.

But they were stolen by Mr. Sandman

And I’m left with only coffee in hand.

May 2023

About This Poem:

I write poetry every morning when I journal, but sometimes it's just hard. I often rely on what I have read in the morning, or photos on my phone. But sometimes those are little to no help. This poem was written at one of those times. The photograph is from an afternoon walk just west of Potlatch, so you can see bits of town, the trees, and Gold Hill in the background with the sun tinting the clouds. If you don't live here you might think it is a morning shot...

 

Poem: Rejoicing is Satisfaction

 

Rejoicing is Satisfaction

The morning hour now slips away

And I am left wondering what

It is that keeps going here

As my life’s work has found its close—

But was employment really work

Enough to give meaning to life?

Alas, no. What would retirement

Be if work were done? Is the glass

Half empty or half full? That is

The question of one’s satisfaction.

But my cup runs over and so

My abundant life must be shared

In belief, in joy, in living.

What a gift is here that we’ve been 

Given, so how is there despair?

Some days there is sunshine and joy

While others hold rain and its gray

But always remember that that

Is just the sign of the cups flowing

Over, for we have everything

We need. So learn to be content

In all things you have been given.

April 2023

About This Poem

Sometimes, in retirement, I have had to refind my purpose. After having taught for so many years, starting at such a young age, I really had to work to reset myself. Now I tend to fill my time with all the same sorts of things I did while working but from a political standpoint. I'm now more of a cheerleader for libraries, schools, and, to a lesser extent, writers and runners. But I also have my family and that gives purpose to anyone. So this is about being content and finding happiness in that, wherever you're at in life's many stages.

Poem: Red Winged Blackbird

Red Winged Blackbird

It is you, red winged blackbird, trilling

The return of spring as each day longer

Grows and slowly diminishes melting

Snow. You appear in the cattails in the

Marshy creeks or the hawthorn in the gulch.

Snow banks are piled everywhere and 

Yet you sing in the frost of the morning

Not even letting the rain hush your song.

Funny, how I should go plodding along

For all this time oblivious to your

Song that gives hope. So like many others 

I forget to even hear that you have

Returned. So engrossed we are in our dark

Moods of mud and slush and gray, frozen we

Are to the songs o spring and your return

As you blend subtly into all the gloom

Like the raven cawing daily for us

Missing all the bright red tipping the black

And those short trills as the snow melt now fills

The river. You bring the cooing soon of doves

That awaken me in the morning’s cool

And cause me more complaining. Oh fool

I am not to notice you, your friends

And the miracles of life that on us

Descends daily, even in the dull times.

Ravens’ caws, doves’ coos, redwing blackbirds’ trills,

Intricate snowflakes flooding streams, sun, moon,

My cup runs over every day, yet

I think it only half full. Sing on red

Winged blackbird! Life abundant is your song.

April 2023

About This Poem

This poem is about forgetting to be grateful for what we have. I love the sound of the Red Winged Blackbird, but sometimes it just gets forgotten in the shoveling of snow or drear of early spring. That's what happens with so much of our lives: we forget to be grateful for what we have. That Red Winged Blackbird is a subtle reminder to me to be grateful. Life is so much better when you have gratitude. I'm afraid I stole the picture from the internet because I couldn't find any in my own collection.

 

Poem: Let Your Flowers Show

Let Your Flowers Show

Upon these pages strange tales I tell

Of one returning to the north from sun

Endlessly burning the earth to only sand

There in the heat I did sojourn at rest

From the relentless northern snows only

To climb those southern hills to find more snow.

Caught in a quandary of homesickness there

I climbed from the low desert heat to the 

Hills covered in snow and rested in sun

On snowbanks cold. It was there that I found 

A restlessness in my soul so that I

Could not shake wanting to be somewhere else

No matter where I roamed. There cactus grows

Slowly, contemplating rain, satisfied

With only a few drops now and then to 

Quench their thirst and they give thanks with flowers

Maybe once ev’ry other year, toiling

Slowly in desert sun, thankful for

Drops that seldom come from the sky above.

And me? I travel far and wide looking

Always for more, be it water, sun or

Storm. So there on high mountain top in snow

I came to know that while I still may roam

It’s not where I go or where I have been

But what is within that I do know.

For even in desert I can find snow,

And in forests of rain I can be dry

But it’s peace that’s within that will make me

Grow with weathering time and people dear

To me that I can let my flowers show.

April 2023

About This Poem

I was looking at pictures from a trip to Palm Springs and combining thoughts of restlessness with the knowledge that I just need to be content wherever I am. Typically I am content, but sometimes we all get a little stir crazy and need to be reminded to stay grateful and content. That's probably where this came from, but I don't fully remember what caused me to write this particular sentiment. The photo is a blooming cactus from that Palm Springs trip. 

 

Sermon From Grace Community Church, Potlatch, Idaho, May 18, 2025

Sermon for May 18, 2025

            Today is the fifth Sunday of Easter. Jesus is risen. (He is Risen Indeed) In today’s Gospel reading, he told us how we are to behave by giving a new commandment to love one another just like he loves us. This reading is before the crucifixion, stressing his new commandment of loving one another as he loved us. He is about to completely blow the collective minds of mankind by defeating death, but first he tells us to love one another just as he loves us. Pretty tall order, far beyond what the disciples could understand at that point. But he had to tell them so they could begin understanding as everything unfolded.  If we check our love meter as the church in 2025 I’m not sure we are loving each other as he loved us. I’m not going to tell you anything new today, but just make a reminder so we do check our love meter as a church and as individuals. We still seem to think we can put parameters on who and how we love. That’s not how Jesus loves us. He loves us completely, with all our sins and faults so we need to love others in that same way. That’s pretty radical, impartial love.  Love without favoritism.

All right. Before I get ahead of myself, let’s look at the context of today’s Gospel reading. It starts with “³¹ When he was gone, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. ³² If God is glorified in him,^[a] God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.” The “he was gone” guy in verse 31 is Judas. Jesus had just told Judas in verse 27 “’What you are about to do, do quickly.’ ²⁸ But no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him. ²⁹ Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the festival, or to give something to the poor. ³⁰ As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.” Jesus knew Judas was about to betray him and he was ready to get it over with. Remember, Jesus is fully human and fully God so he knew, better than Judas, what was about to happen, but he was also fully prepared for it to happen. It’s hard to imagine having that sort of physical exhaustion along with that sort of foreknowledge. If you think about it, it should give cause to really love that guy. His love toward us is simply unreal.

From the Psalm, vs. 5: Let them praise the name of the Lord,
    for at his command they were created,
⁶ and he established them for ever and ever—
    he issued a decree that will never pass away.

His love wasn’t just in that moment extended to his disciples and Judas, but to all of us: a decree that will never pass away. He knew what was coming, the brutality of his own death, yet he also knew that that would not conquer him. It was in a way (a very small way) like what I go through when I do these sermons: I feel like doing anything else, but knowing I’ll get through it just fine. While I really love having written, I’m not a big fan of the writing part. I’ve heard a lot of writers say that. And I’m sure Jesus would have rather not have had to go through the crucifixion as a man, but as the son of God, he wanted to do it for all of us. Again, simply unreal, his love for us. And I whine about little medical procedures like getting shots in my eye! Sometimes we really lack perspective.

And just a quick side note about Judas. I really think Jesus loved him just as fully as he loves all of us and the rest of his disciples. He didn’t just choose him to be a disciple for nothing. He knew Judas for who he was, yet he still loved him. He still died for him. What happened had to happen for his love to fully extend to all of us in its eternal way. I know some people like to think of Judas as worse than Satan but I can’t really think of him like that. We already know how he ended up feeling about it all, committing suicide. It’s part of the anguish of the entire story: radical love extended to every one of us, but we don’t all accept it.

Do you ever wonder why God would love us enough to actually become human and die a human death to free us from our own death to live forever? What a crazy gift that is. But he created us in his image and loved us from the very beginning, endowing us with intelligence and creativity, interacting with us in the most miraculous of ways unlike any other part of his creation. We are a little more special to him than that bookshelf you might have made for your spouse, or that pot you might have really enjoyed making. He created us with the ability to interact with him, to talk to him. We weren’t made to collect dust while moldering books sit on our shelves or to accidentally be shattered into pieces. Even when those sorts of things do happen to us—yes, some of us have been shattered, some of us might feel as we’d been forgotten with the old books and dust—he is still there, picking us up, dusting us off, putting us back together just for the asking. He really does love us. We are his beloved creation and we need to recognize that in every other person and every other part of His creation. But, as we all know, we don’t always do that. Sin has corrupted us, no doubt. He’s also taken care of that.

Let’s take a look at the reading from Revelation, what He revealed to John, and through John to us:

21 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”^[a] for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. ² I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ⁴ ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’^[b] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

⁵ He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

⁶ He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.

There it is. The restoration of the broken pot, the rebuilding of the old book case. A new heaven and new earth for us. This is our hope and our faith. It is not an excuse to resign ourselves to the way things are now and just having something to look forward to. We are here right now, alive because of Him, our creator. The shackles of our sin have been removed and we are called to bring everyone into His radical, extravagant love. The love that is with us right now, right here, not in reserve for the new heaven and earth, but right here and now.

Look at how he revealed that to Peter, the rock of our church, a pretty orthodox Jew who spread the good news, the gospel, to we gentiles. From Acts 11: The apostles and the believers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. ² So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him ³ and said, “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.”

⁴ Starting from the beginning, Peter told them the whole story: ⁵ “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. I saw something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was. ⁶ I looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles and birds. ⁷ Then I heard a voice telling me, ‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.’

⁸ “I replied, ‘Surely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’

⁹ “The voice spoke from heaven a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’ ¹⁰ This happened three times, and then it was all pulled up to heaven again.

¹¹ “Right then three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea stopped at the house where I was staying. ¹² The Spirit told me to have no hesitation about going with them. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered the man’s house. ¹³ He told us how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. ¹⁴ He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.’

¹⁵ “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. ¹⁶ Then I remembered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptized with^[a] water, but you will be baptized with^[b] the Holy Spirit.’ ¹⁷ So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?”

¹⁸ When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, “So then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

We know that Peter always had an exuberant spirit for Jesus, but he also wavered in a big way when it came time to stand up for Jesus, even denying he knew Him, not once, but three times. Peter had put up his religious parameters on how to live, certainly to eat nothing unclean like the gentiles. But God made it very clear: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” And guess how many times this happened? Three! We are Peter. We are the church, and we sometimes think we know enough about people to know they are “unclean.” Thankfully, God is gentle and willing to repeat Himself to us. And who did he die for? Not just Jews. Not just Christians. (There were no “Christians” in the sense that there are now.) He died for all who have sinned. All of us. Jew, gentile, Asian, American, European, African, men, women, gay, straight, married, divorced. All of us. We’re all impure but He has made us clean. Remember Peter? Do not call anything impure that God has made clean. This is the radical, impartial, perfect love of God for all of us. No parameters.

And that brings me right back to Jesus, just after Judas had gone: ³⁴ “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

And remember what I said about us being Peter and that we are the church? We are the body of Christ, our Lord. We may not be made perfect yet, but we have a new commandment to love one another. That’s how we spread the gospel, not by coming to church by itself, or any other thing that we do, except loving one another.

It sounds so simple, but I’m not going to lie. I really struggle these days with some Christians, and I have no doubt they struggle with me. I can’t believe, for instance, that the public school system is “grooming” children with inappropriate library books, or indoctrinating them with critical race theory, and Christians that say those kinds of things can really get under my skin. But I hope I’m getting better about defending the profession from which I’ve retired while still loving the people that say those kinds of things. I don’t want to break fellowship or friendships over falsehoods. I believe in radical love, and sometimes I believe in bleeding tongues from biting them as much as I believe in tongues of fire.

I know we all have our little irritations with our brothers and sister, but if Jesus can love me, I need to show my brothers and sisters grace and forgiveness and love. That doesn’t have to mean being completely silent because part of love includes dispelling lies and separating them from truth. It also involves recognizing that we all still walk in our own shadows of doubt and ignorance. It probably comes as no surprise to any of you that a retired school teacher believes that part of loving includes seeking truth through research and knowledge. I sometimes think the New Heaven is going to be a huge library (with large print books, or these eyes made perfect) and the New Earth is going to be beautiful temperate forests with perfect hiking trails. (I could never make sense of streets of gold…)

While it may seem like I’m getting off track, my point is that the new commandment is not exclusive, even while we all have our little quirks that can easily clash with others. Some people would not want to go to a heaven with libraries at all and others might want a new earth to be completely tropical. Should we not love those people because of that? Of course, we should. We are called to love everyone and our love will let others know we are Christians. It’s not our list of rules that spreads the good news of the gospel, it is our love. That’s the good news anyway: radical, impartial love. The love that comes from our God, the one who saves us from ourselves. Just as He loves us, we are called to love His creation, the creation that He died for, the creation that His death through the resurrection has purified. “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” These are the words of our Lord. The perfectly radical, impartial love of our Lord. Jesus is Risen. (He is risen indeed.)

Amen.