Spirit lead me.
Let me not wander alone here.
(I’ve never been alone but boy oh boy has it felt like it.)
Let me not strangle the breath divine within me rising because
it doesn’t sound quite right.
Howling is singing, screaming is singing, sighing is singing.
I am singing and I am singed. I came too close, flew too high, ran too fast and fell, my shin is split, lungs collapsing.
Whose blood is on my hands?
Only my own.
Spirit lead me.
In a dry and thirsty land where there is no water, be the deep well.
Let me lower myself in a bucket, let me rest my burning skin on this cool stone.
I do not ask to drink,
I want to submerge.
Spirit lead me.
Remember the races we ran together, you and me?
Remember the wings on my feet, remember my light tread skimming, floating? Remember the earth’s smooth surface rolling beneath us?
How light everything felt, how graceful, for a while.
You loved it too, O divine.
You loved me then so easily but my question is
What about now?
I thought you carried me, swept me along in winds of the miraculous.
But look.
It’s my footprints drawing the line from there to here.
It was my small hands cupped around you, the feather-light beating heart of the whole.
Did I drop you?
Or did you fly away?
Or did I bury you under cares of the world, cares of my world?
I wasn’t supposed to do that.
My vessel got dirty, oh!
Smudged up, fingerprint streaked, ashed over, passed around, oil running out:
It’s all my fault somehow.
Spirit lead me! Do you think about the places I wandered to wash myself clean for you?
I gave up being the vessel.
I became the oil, oozed into cracks, smeared myself across walls, burned myself up, poured myself out, all the time chanting with slippery tongue —
with dripping hands anointing myself —
Let me be worthy
Let me be worthy
Let me be
oh let me be.
Dry wells and deserts, dirt roads, back alleys, wooden porches creaking, empty chairs, a forest of wavering trees, junk yards, bleached-bone houses, a fire pit, a kitchen (so many kitchens), a seaweed cathedral, the heart of a volcano, upstairs and downstairs, waiting rooms, prison cells, discount stores.
These are all the places I went without you, went to find you, went to find the road home.
See how things go when you’re not around?
Imagine how brave I was.
Imagine how afraid.
Spirit hear me! Finally I found it, the secret.
The magic words, the holy mantra to draw divinity back,
To unveil the eternal
To link me back up to that sacred chain,
O Jesus.
I found the words and would you believe it?
Not a single one of them sounds like Sorry.
Not a single one.
Spirit lead me, sure, okay.
But you have to do your part.
No more carrying you around like a bird.
Listen.
I am the fragile one here, and I have unlaced my shoes.
You do the walking.
I will not be blazing any trails today.
I will be taking a nap.
You will not find penitence here nor guilt,
For I am spewing that lukewarm soup out of my mouth.
Spirit lead me.
Pour this blackened oil through a filter, I guess.
Arrange the smashed pieces into a mosaic.
Do what you gotta do.
Spirit lead me to this moment and this place where I sit as I am,
feet propped, and worship
as a used up woman
as a discarded wife
as a controlling mother
as an obsessive lover
as damaged property
as secondhand goods
as a Jezebel spirit
as an uncovered head.
It is so easy, again.
So easy to know myself beloved
When the rain falls on my face like a blessing,
When it’s just you and me and open sky,
And a few broken umbrellas tossed in the wind.
Weird, isn’t it?
How simple things can be,
How open,
How the loss of all my safety leaves me safer than I’ve ever been.