Poem Take Two

Not all resurrections are good news.
Sometimes we dig up the bones of past pain, breathing new life into them.
Pour our wounded-ness another cup of coffee to keep chatting.
Days pass and we turn the calendar pages,
each day filling the empty tomb with our brokenness ~
and the sounds of our grumbling echo off the stone cold walls.

Not all resurrections are good news.
We scrape our fingernails across the scars so they won't heal.
We feed our fears and fuel our angers.
We keep having the same conversation, never stopping to find new paths we might explore.

Not all resurrections are good news.
We keep returning to the same place,
Keep re-living the same past.
Keep clinging with white knuckles to the words sharp as knifes.

But when we can set our carefully constructed arguments aside.
When we stop holding so tightly to our truth
So that perhaps God's truth might get a word in edgewise.
When we cease to pontificate and prophesy,
So that perhaps God's interrupting and disrupting wisdom can do God's work.
When we stop staring at the cross and turn our attention to the tomb.
Neither seem like likely places for new life to begin.
But it is that exact turning of our gaze that helps make resurrection possible in our life.

Grace and peace ~~