Listens for Shadows

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13)

Discarded into barren terrain
together,
we inherited a gift that burns slow and eternal.

Abuse filters friends from those who betray nicely.
Friends are little spacious places
with spring dew capacity
for binding up the crushed and hushed parts of us.

We languish
We laugh
We curse
We watch our faith collapse
into seedbeds.

There is no Christ in me
without the Integrity in you and yours
to share our grief
to confront our hopes
to crown our hearts with your willow oak presence.

Who will hold our haunted stories?
Who will dull their conscience to preserve comfort when souls are mauled?
Who will flee from corporate-christs enchantment?

A friend is an agile witness
undivided and free
from neutrality or shackled silence.

We watch
We discern
We pursue
life, nameless and adorned in the shadows.

Love prepares a room for us
and waves a tearful goodbye
as friends planted in a shrouded, fading storm,
a benediction of futures
free from domineering scarcity.

The shared soil of our ache will abide
the Voice who shepherds the seasons
and brought us out.

We honor in one another
the humanity simply, to be
and to heal
wherever land and Spirit woo the weary heart.