laughing at Jesus

{photo by jennifer upton}

I remember the first time I went to the mission. I don't remember how old I was, but I remember it was cold. I was with my grandfather and his friend, a chaplain whose name I can't recall. I know I was young.

and I remember the first time I ever heard someone laugh at the name of Jesus.

I had never seen a prostitute before. I don't think I even knew what the word meant. but I remember her clothes :: black leather jacket, hot pink shirt that plunged lower than anything I had ever seen. I remember her hair, box-blonde with obvious dark roots, piled up on top of her head. I remember the cigarette dangling from her fingers.

she was sitting behind me on the plastic chairs. the chaplain asked, when you hear the name Jesus, what do you think? and the woman laughed and screamed, holy schmoly. effing Christians!

the chaplain kept in stride, never breaking for a second. I remember that. he pointed to her and repeated the first part of her words like a teacher accepting answers from a crowd of boisterous students, glad they were speaking at all.

I don't remember anything else that was said after that. 

I had never heard someone respond that way to Jesus. I never even knew that existed, never knew that people thought that way about Christians. I was confused, hurt, a little girl who had grown up with Jesus from day one and never even dreamed that someone wouldn't like Him. why didn't she love Christians?

{photo by jennifer upton}

and then I grew up. and I started seeing that woman more often.

obviously it wasn't the same face. but the eyes were identical. I saw her everywhere, in crowds and in churches. I found her in the supermarket. I noticed her at the post office. I realized that I was friends with her.

and now I understand that laughter. I hear it differently. it was mocking, caustic, and was laden with so much pain. it was the sound of a woman who had been slapped and kicked and knocked down a thousand times, had reached out her hand, and had someone spit in her face.

she had been given up on by the ones who were supposed to be the hands and the feet. I don't know every step she took. but she is familiar to me now. her story is one I understand, her words are ones I completely comprehend.

He didn't come for us to look down, to refuse to meet the eyes of humanity. He was born for lifting up. for getting dirty. for putting on skin and blood and pain. He touched.

can't we?

broken stems dancing

{photo by dramaticelegance}

today is the day i forgot my laptop. all i have is twenty-four coloured pencils in their brand-new packaging, and a black ink pen, and the new shinji moon book from rain. and i'm sitting here, tucked neatly away in the corner of the coffee shop, in the frustration, and i've decided to exhale instead.

because i'm eternally grateful for this life, to the One who breathed life in the whispering silence of nothing. and i have hands and fingers and the knowledge to write at all, and that's something alone.

and the homeless man from under the bridge came in with barely enough quarters for hot coffee, hold the cream, and i didn't look up from my phone. because the way he spoke made me uncomfortable. he spoke poverty and a world i didn't know, and it hurt my pride.

and then i looked up and saw the two flowers in the vase in the window, and one was whole and the other was broken. but i didn't judge the broken flower like i did the homeless man. and neither did the other flower in the same vase, in the same world. and their stems touched and draped one over the other.

and i judge me now. silly backwards upside down heart.

:: He promised, after all.

{via pinterest}

come to Me

all you who are laden-heavy

and I will give you rest. 

and He brought the long-haired one into His temple as perfume dripped down from the strands like material world whispers of love. and the men murmured under their breath with priestly robes clutched tight in holier-than-thou fingers,

"He must not know what kind of woman is touching Him."

and He reaches down and lifts her chin, and i catch her eye for the barest second. and i realize, she is me. and i am touching Him. and He loves, oh how He loves.

sometimes, i don't know who this woman is, either. the one who dares to remember His death until He comes. the one who wraps the scarlet chord -- yes, that simple sweet melody written in the blood of the spotless Lamb, the Lion of Judah -- around her soul and clutches there, tight. the one who wanders with the moon to the tune of clucking tongues and shaking head and scolding words.

and i wish i could write the way this music feels when He reaches out and takes my soul in His hand and softly whispers,

daughter
may I have this dance?

meeting broken eyes

{via pinterest

i never know what to say to them,

to those men with the dirty clothes and outstretched fingers. to the guitar-toting girls on the median with their cardboard signs and hand-sewn jackets. 

their eyes might be pleading, but i wouldn't know.

because i never look. 

because for some reason, i am ashamed to meet their faces.

 it's not fear i feel.

they're the ones without homes or jobs or money. but i'm the one with a blush of embarrassment and low-ducked head.

i need to learn to look. 

because there are souls behind that filth. 

i remember a little girl me holding her daddy's hand, feeling so self-conscious in my green velvet cape, while my daddy handed red and yellow-arched "dollars" to these men and women with nothing to eat and no place to go. 

even then, i was shamed into silence.

into lowered eyes.

not just here in this country, but across oceans too. 

people with nothing, they frighten me. not because i'm afraid of them...

...but i'm afraid for them, and my heart burns with the shame of having so much.

i measure my shame with theirs and keep a down-turned face.  

these people have so much soul. 

{via pinterest}

sometimes Jesus is in cinnamon apples and warm home hospitality between sisters. 

and sometimes He finds us in the pews and kneeling benches of candlelit cathedrals. 

but sometimes 

He is in the small.

 in the filthy. 

the shamed. 

the dirty beards and faces lined with so much grief and battered old guitars. 

He is in those haunting eyes which i must learn to lift my head to meet with a smile that speaks Jesus to the emptiness. 

because i forget who He is. 

i forget that there is heart there. that every situation is different, and Jesus sits amid the unwashed hands and eyes that i ache to see. 

the eyes that speak volumes that are yet unwritten but should be. there are stories here.

i just need to raise my head 

and meet their eyes.