Sometimes

Sometimes people call you in the middle of the night because they want to talk about faith, hope, and love. And you do and then you go back to sleep and dream in three words. Those kinds of conversations don't end. What you talk about in the night stays with you in a way other things don't. I feel faith, hope, and love swirling all around me this morning and I hear the voices on the other end of the phone mirroring back to me what I said as I tried to put words to these concepts. I keep thinking of wine. Like someone came and woke me up to go to a banquet. And there was fine wine. I don't want to forget that sometimes communion is dialogue. And it's rich, and messy, and stumbling, and careful, and free, and heretical, and gracious. I wrote a poem about faith because my prose doesn't always understand me as well as my poetry. They aren't words, faith, hope, and love. They are, each of them, an invitation. Dangerous. Bold. Enlivening. You who've been betrayed. You orphans with no name. Trust. You are invited to trust. Trust that there will be provision and you will have a name. You who've been made powerless. You strangers with no land. Hope. You are invited to hope. Hope that the future will be worth bearing for and you will have a home. You who've been torn in two. You widows with no companion. Love. You are invited to love. Love desire and know the companionship of giving and receiving.

Faith

Faith.
Faith is remembering.
'Here I raise mine ebenezer.'
Remembering happens in memory.
Memory is made of story.
Story is narrative.
Faith has many names:
 lore
 legend
 kings of old
 history
 in the beginning
 and...
 ...yesterday.
Faith is an understanding of what yesterday and all the days before mean for today and all the days after.
Faith accepts an unseen order in randomness.
Faith is the audacity to trust in the face of betrayal.
Why?
Why?
Because there's something you can't kill, something in me you can't kill.
It's some kind of light.
It's a beauty.
It has a quality of infinite.
It's creating.
Even with your treason and wickedness you can't kill this thing.
And I will leverage my life against this belief: that thing, that thing you can't kill, has a Maker.
Faith is living in this truth: that thing has always been. It will always be. It exists in the face of Evil.
It has a Name. And a Story.
Faith is knowing the glory of God, manifest in His narrative of One Death. One Resurrection. One Ascension. For all.
Faith is remembering this story as the epicenter of all stories.