1
I begin with the premise that there is a God.
In the beginning: we start all over,
Where every good book must begin,
And not with “at” or “from” or “once upon,” but IN.
This is the story, the truth of God,
And here is the first thing we ought to know:
There is no moment where God did not exist.
God is the beginning, the action, the whole creation;
There can be no single point at which or from which
God the great I AM began to be. God was
In the beginning, as God is
In the present and in the ever after,
Not “to,” “until” or “of a time,” but IN.
And notice: it is the same beginning
In the days of Adam as in the days of Jesus.
Now is the spark of our creation,
And now the start of our salvation:
God is in our birth and in our redemption,
The beginning of being and the stretch of eternity,
The breath of our formation and our resurrection,
All at once, our first day and our seventh day.
Evolutionists may stumble over the number of days,
Skeptics might question the progression of things,
But those who believe in this beginning
Know the same beginning can continue
From chapter to chapter, can be on every page:
God, who is, can be in our every hour,
Can breathe and beat with us forever,
Part of the conversation and in our endless prayer.
This is the premise I begin with:
And God said, and God saw what God created,
And it was good. Another day.
2
So in the beginning was the Word,
And what a beautiful word,
Capitalized and turned into poetry,
Written by Moses, thank you,
And John, thank you,
And God, thank you that every word
I write down, every word I hear and read
Is so wonderfully preceded.
And the word was with God,
And the word was God.
May the words of my mouth be pleasing,
And they will be, of course,
As long as I remember where they came from,
As long as we return with this respect:
We give thee but thine own.
This is my premise:
God is the word, my word,
The being in the beginning,
The presence of I AM, through which
All other beings began:
Without God there is nothing;
God is always and everything,
Life over emptiness, light over darkness,
The life and light of every being,
The beginning of us all.
As sunlight pours into a darkened room
And changes everything,
So does the light and life of God
Shine into the universe: the darkness cannot win.
In the beginning, God said,
Let there be light,
And there was, and it was good.
God was in the beginning,
Pouring light into the void and giving life
Now and ever after.
3
See, and listen, this is my premise:
There is a light that gives
Its light to everyone,
A light coming into our world of darkness,
And light changes everything.
And everything changes with this:
God, Word, light, shining upon us.
Living in our world, walking with us,
God in the flesh, God with us,
Immanuel!
And anyone who recognizes receives,
And anyone who receives the light believes
That God is with us and we are living
In God’s world: IN God’s world
Anyone who sees the glory of this,
The grace and truth and fullness
Of God, the one and only Word
In the world, this is our privilege.
No one can see God, but anyone
Can see what God makes known,
And by seeing, we are privileged
To be born of God, children of God,
Willed and determined by God alone.
I begin with this premise.
Yes, I will praise God from whom all blessings flow
and by whose strength my every song is sung.
And yes, I think there’s nothing wrong
with letting my convictions show
or testifying to the things I know.
And yes, I’ll sing, and though I’ve learned
the lesson long ago that God is (always) singing
greater songs than I will ever sing,
I will no less keep singing
to the music God has given me
and by the truest notes I know,
and with a voice as providence bestows
I’ll raise my earthly spirit up to heaven
as loudly as the wind allows,
And yes, I will praise God from whom all blessings flow!
Today we meditated: father, son
And waited on a Wednesday afternoon
To see the doctor of attention spans
Whom we had hoped to meet at four pm
But found her overbooked and in demand.
We found ourselves within a waiting room
Of fellow patients of psychiatry
(And those of us along for the support)
For two full hours, and ironically
Amid the stacks of social magazines
And with a background television on,
Among a sampling of the population
Listening to hear their names be called,
We meditated. Unexpectedly
My son, the one who never could sit still,
Is starting to mature before my eyes.
He’s waiting here more patiently than me,
And I begin to wonder anymore
If he’d been diagnosed with ADD
A bit to hastily back in the day
When he was acting all of nine years old
And telegraphing his apparent need
For Adderall, if we have come this far
Again to have his old prescription filled
More out of habit than necessity,
And if there isn’t better therapy
In meditations of a waiting room
Than medications of amphetamine.
Today we meditated: everyone
Who waited with us had a different need,
A different habit, if their trials be told,
And yet we seem to be so much the same,
At least as far as anyone reveals.
I don’t begrudge the doctor for her role
In getting us to recognize ourselves
And realize how simple life can be,
How we all need this opportunity
Of time, however given, to reflect
On simple things, like having empathy
Or understanding our maturity
Or sitting in positions of support
Or being patient in a waiting room.
My father once was in a waiting room
For me. The wait was relatively short
And our trial was a different one to tell,
A different diagnosis, but the same
Prognosis: Give it time, give it time.
The doctor didn’t specify these words
Or scribble his prescription b.i.d.,
But as he had my father wait outside
He talked to me a while, and then he asked
If I played chess. This took me by surprise,
But I said yes, and so the troubled teen
And the Psy.D. played chess while the old man
Was waiting in the hall, more patiently
Than I appreciated, until now.
1
I saw myself today.
Not a mirror image of who I am,
not the left to my right,
nothing so ordinary as that.
I saw a spitting image, a living clone,
a reflection refusing to face me,
my likeness walking away.
I saw this from a distance of many years,
but there I was.
“Hey,” I cried, hoping to connect,
but I did not turn around,
and I saw myself pretending not to hear.
“Hey, listen!” I tried again,
but I know it was pointless:
I am, after all, a stubborn man;
but I am a persistent man, too.
I always have been.
I continued: “Listen to me!”
And I continued, not saying a word.
I’d like to think the years have given me
an advantage, that time is good for something,
wisdom, maybe, or experience.
But as I started chasing after myself
—“Hey! Don’t walk away from me!”—
I realized I was not as fast as I used to be.
The years have aged me and slowed me down.
I do not have the energy I used to have.
I am no longer eleven years old,
nor twenty one, nor thirty one.
I am an age I never thought I would be
seeing myself now as I had forgotten I once was.
Once more I shouted: “Hey! Wait!”
But my image, my clone, my self
was even further away now, and where
for a moment my image would not listen,
now it could not hear.
There was no longer a refusal to turn around;
there was no reason.
Oh, stubborn boy, persistent man!
You who will not listen to the voice of experience,
the wisdom of years,
you who will outpace the ages,
give me time! Hear my call!
But of course, not only could I not hear myself,
I never saw myself: my back was turned;
there was no recognition the other way.
I am not who I used to be,
but more than this: I was not yet
who I have become: I could not see,
and it was impossible to see myself
in that old man calling out to me,
and I did not hear, or if I heard,
it made no particular impression.
And yet today, the other way,
the impression is indelible.
There I was!
That was me!
If only I could have seen myself
looking back at me.
If only I could hear myself
calling desperately.
2
So now I am a father.
The generation behind me is
fading and a newer generation
is overshadowing mine. They,
my son and my daughter, will say
that mine is the generation fading fast,
that my parents, my living mother
and the memory of my father, are simply
extensions of the same generation:
we are the old, they are the now;
our light fades, theirs is just starting
to shine brightly.
And now I am a father,
repeating myself it seems, falling
into old habits. I am the one
who will soon, sooner than anyone
expects, become a memory. I am
the one, too, who will suffer
the indignities of aging:
if not a slow death, at least
the mirror of mortality, and if not
a drawn out suffering, still
they will see me fade. And I will be
the one who, all too soon, will meet their
mates and bless their marriages and
watch them, oh so quickly, begin
yet another generation. I will remain
the old, but they will relinquish
their position as the new and they
will join me as a watchful generation,
slowly fading.
I won’t say I can’t wait,
because I’d rather they stay
the now generation for as
long as they can. My daughter,
age fourteen, gets her driver’s permit
next year already, and I will come to
terms with that —but not so quickly,
no more, let her stay a little girl
who happens to know how to drive.
And my son, age eleven, is starting
to notice the girls his age, and I can
accept that too — but stay there, son,
go no farther for a while. Be the
now generation for as long as you can,
yet be aware that infatuation will
only lead to your fading, and as for
cars, daughter, they will get you
nowhere. Look at me, see
for yourselves.
But of course neither son nor
daughter can see me as anything
but a father. I have always been
a part of their world but never
a part of their now. And I can
accept this too. Just let me remain,
as I should be when they are
eleven and fourteen, still in control,
to some degree anyway, of their now.
And let them see me, as they should
at their ages, as something of
a constant; it is not yet time for me
to fade.
Lately my life revolves around a dog
Who knows whose leash it is and whose routine
We follow, stretching thin the line between
Our independent wills.
I see the dog
As one who needs a master, while the dog
Sees one who needs a friend, and if I’ve been
One caught up on commands the dog has seen
Me friendly now and then.
So man and dog
Since time began have tugged upon this leash
And traveled down the trails of this routine
Each morning looking forward to the walk.
Man and dog,
Unequally assigned, but side by side
Man walks the dog, dog walks the man, and each
One seems to keep the other satisfied.
I am the man. This is my dog
What would I hear if my dog could talk?
What would I want to say
if I were the dog?
What would I think? What would I know?
Where would I run to? How far would I go?
And would I run away
if I were the dog?
Let me stretch this leash from here to heaven,
Let me sometimes think I know the way
But let me take the paths that I’ve been given
And learn what I should say.
I am the man. This is my dog.
I try to listen whenever we walk.
But what can there be to say
when you’re a dog?
Sometimes I find myself spinning around
And chasing after things that aren’t there,
Entangling the one whose leash I share
And losing sight of where we might be bound.
I think it’s good to have someone around
To take my side, to set the pace, to bear
The distance and to gently lead me where
I know I need to go,
But I have found
Myself spinning around things I don’t know.
I’m leaping after birds up in the air
And tracking common scents into the ground,
But I have found
The one whose leash I share at every turn
Keeps telling me the things I ought to know
But giving me the time I need to learn.
God is the man. I am the dog.
I’m not the man I once thought I was.
He seems so far away.
I am the dog.
Prayer is the leash. This is my prayer,
Drawing me close to the man up there.
I don’t have words to say.
I am the dog.
But I’ll stretch this leash from here to heaven,
And sometimes I’ll think I know the way,
But I’ll take the paths that I’ve been given
And learn what I should say.
God is the man, but I am the one
Who walks with him when the day is done
And with each breaking dawn.
I am the dog.
Lately my mind has turned the metaphor
Of man and dog, the leash and the routine
Upon its head. What can these verses mean
If I’m still learning what the walking’s for?
And can there even be a metaphor
Sufficient for the poetry I’ve seen
Along the way, when every step has been
Part of a song I’ve never sung before?
All the more,
I will walk, and in my walking sing,
And with my singing cherish the routine
And through routine embrace each metaphor
All the more,
Of God and man, of learning how to pray,
Of never understanding everything
About this life but walking anyway.
And I’ll stretch this leash from here to heaven,
And sometimes I’ll think I know the way,
But I’ll take the paths that I’ve been given.
I’m learning how to pray.
Prayer is the leash. This is my prayer,
Keeping me close to the man up there,
And he’s not so far away.
I am the dog.
