The Way Inn

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

 

I know I was born, because
  I've been told the story.

My brother was three years old.
  In order to assist him
  in transitioning from only child
  to older brother,
  my dad bought a football
  on the way home from the hospital
  and gave it to him.

He told him it was a present
  from me; sibling bribery.

I know each of you
  were born because
  you're reading
  or listening to this story.

I may not know any
  of the rest of your story,
  but I bet you do.

Whether you were adopted
  and much of your birth story
  is shrouded in mystery,
  or you were born in tragic
  or precarious/premature circumstances,
  or you came into this world
  pretty much according to plan,
  your birth is a miracle of sorts.

One thing is for sure.
You didn't have anything
   to do with being born.
It happened to you,
  and life is what has happened
  to you ever since.
Life is what will continue
  to happen to you
  until it doesn't;
brutal and beautiful life.

The thing that the church
  calls the Christmas story
  is our story; yours and mine.
A female said yes,
  maybe with the complicity
  of others or maybe
  with their coercion,
  and we were born.

Maybe it wasn't an angel
  who popped the question,
  and maybe no one
  considers God to be
  our mom’s baby daddy;
but all of us share the divine DNA
  of creation's stardust. 

This Emmanuel one -
  God with us -
  didn't enter time and humanity
  to show us the way out,
  but to show us the way in.

He didn't spend thirty three
  or so years
  in the particularity of Palestine
  in order to give us rules
  by which we could judge others,
  and an exit strategy.

He came to reveal to us
  God's passion for community,
  and the path of immersion
  into the particular lives
  with which we've been gifted.

Whatever else you do
  with this life
  that you've been given,
  and however much longer
  you have to live it,
  be sure that you don't miss
  the beautiful ordinariness of it,
  and be sure to open yourself
  to the gift of reconciliation.

Merry Christmas!

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Hope

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

 

By definition,
  it is the courage
  and compelling
  to risk our place
  and our person
  for the sake
  of living people
  who’ve been told
  they have no place,
  and maybe even no person.

It is to chance
  what feels like everything,
  precisely because
  of an unstoppable beat
  in our marrow
  that keeps a rhythm
  knowing full well
  that the only tune
  worth singing
  is the one
  where all have a place
  and each is a person.

Hope is a memory
  of a better tomorrow.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Saints Alive!

 

There lies deep within
   the human heart —
   yours, mine,
  and everyone else's —
  a vision and desire
  for how life is supposed
  to be lived.

Some days,
   we feel it clearly
   in our bones.

Other days,
  it might as well be junk-mail,
  relegated to file 13,
  or the spam folder.

On our best days,
   when the hallway
   between heart and head
   has been swept clear 
   of ego’s debris,
  and the wall lamps 
  are filled with oil,
   wicks trimmed,
  and shining their light
  for all to see,
   we can glimpse the incarnation
   of divine desire.
  Here is what we see:

images of connection
  without coercion,
   dreams of enough
   without competition,
  hunger for community
  without uniformity,

thirst for intimacy
  without betrayal,
   hope for understanding
   without judgment,
  longing for love
  without condition.

All this is within us;
   divine spark planted
   before we were born.

There are but two impediments
   to our bringing
   this vision to life:
  fear and scarcity
  as primary motivators.
   Fear, as leader
   in life, is a liar.
  So is scarcity.

That’s why so many stories
   of divine encounter begin
   with the holy plea,
   "Fear not!"

Now is the time
   for the communion of saints
   to not only speak to us,
  but to come alive
  within and around us;
   to light a holy flame
   within us, collectively,
  so that we join forces
  with those who plowed and planted
  sacred seeds in our lives.

Now is the time for us
   to live from this deep place;
  to rise up to the grace
  for which we were created.

Now is the time for hope
   to reveal the strong roots
   she has sunk
   in communities of faith,
  to nourish our courage.

Now is the time
   to set aside a myopic view
   of scarcity, in favor
   of the divine lens of abundance,
   recognizing that resources aplenty
   are not a blessing themselves,
  but rather an avenue
  through which God’s blessing flows.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Not the One

 

I’m not the one
you thought I’d be;
not the one
you hoped would come;

unless you’ve dared
to hitch your dreams
to the arcing light
bent ‘round the universe.

I’m not that light, either;
just a fool for love
who has grown tired
of the diminishing ways
of competition and comparison;

so weary that
I daily seek to surrender ego
to the flicker of grace
I feel burning deep within.

If you’re among those
who’re pulled toward
that holy fire,

let’s find a way
to see the world
through love’s lens,
and fan the coal
of hope resting
in our marrow.

Let’s dare to risk life
as the world defines it
for something deeper,
something worth striving for,
something worth dying for.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Planting

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

 

  Where there is violence,
  let us sow violins.

Where there is mistrust,
let us sow, “Join us!”

  Where there is fearing,
  let us sow endearing.

Where divisiveness is the tool most-used,
let us sow, “What’s it like to walk in your shoes?”

  Where there’s them-ing and othering,
  let us sow sistering and brothering.

Where hatred flies from flame-throwers,
teach us, O God, to be hope-sowers.

  Before the next flood and between
  lightning’s flash and claps of thunder,
  whatever’s been sown before
  needs to be plowed and turned under.

Time for replanting has been here
for a long generation or more.
What, in the name of all that’s holy,
are we sitting around and waiting for?

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Arcing

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

 

In the baking
   of a summer afternoon’s
   celestial oven,
   a surprise rain begins
  to fall, a misty fog
  of humidity momentarily
  screening us
from the heavens.

Suddenly, I look up
  and see, not one, but two
   distinct rainbows arcing
  across the now-opening sky,
forming a rounded tent of light;

brilliant colors,
   one laid upon the other,
   like a cornucopia
   of diverse friends
  piled on a single sofa,
  sharing the truth
  of who they are,
one with the other,

none afraid of how
   their own essence
  will be received
by the others.

This, brothers and sisters,
   is how the universe
   is designed to function;
   each chromatic entity
  laying itself along the others,
  unassuming and unafraid,
  working together
to illuminate hope.

It is love
  in full visual manifestation. 


© 2019 Todd Jenkins

The Table

Then he told them a parable, “The land of a rich man 
produced abundantly…” (Luke 12:16)

What if, instead of having a dialogue 
with himself alone, 
and deciding to build bigger barns, the man 
with beyond-bumper crops had decided to build 
a bigger table and sit down with his neighbors 
to listen to and learn their stories? What kind 
of world would that create?

The Table

  Fear trolls the neighborhood,
  like a creepy ice cream truck driver
  on a summer afternoon,
  his drama divisively blaring
  a dissonant angst
  from his rooftop speakers;

   but Hope, standing steadfast
   and firm in the front yard,
   her roots sunk deep
   into the garden of faith,
   laughs Love into the story,
   until we all realize the deep chasm
   between drive-by sweets
   and the magnificent feast
   of divinely designed community.

    Hope’s picnic table
    has a seat for everyone.

   Her splendid meal is always prepared
   with the richness of mercy
   and the tenderness of forgiveness.

  With her words, her eyes,
  her heart, her actions,
  the invitation is clear,
  “Come to the table of grace.”

   Yes, 
   “Grace is the word
   that’s spoken here;
   we seek to let it flow
   as hope and comfort far and near
   so everyone will know.”

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Piling Up

 

Mass murderers, armed
with weapons designed
for efficiently and effectively
eliminating multiple human beings,
are death penalty advocates
who view themselves
as judge, jury, and executioner;

sometimes for specific individuals
who’ve been convicted,
in a tiny mind’s courtroom,
of disrespect and indignity;

but often those
placed clandestinely 
on death row
are simply charged
with being “not like me”
and/or not as from around here
as the judge imagines
himself to be.

Do people whose faith
in a risen messiah
is steeped long and deep
in a tea of grace and love,
have the gumption
to strongly encourage,
and even demand,
that our elected officials
place reasonable,
lifesaving limits on access
to portable electric chairs
with crosshair sights?

Or will we simply continue
to toss boxes of tissues, 
sprinkled with thoughts and prayers,
into the grieving masses,
from a distance,
while the body bags pile up,
and the cemeteries fill?

Asking for the dead,
whose blood and voices
cry out from the soil,
and many more
who painfully limp along,
collateral bullet holes
pocking their own lives.

#endthemadness

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

 

Be the Flame

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

 

    It may seem random,
  but I have my doubts,
  when the passion and pain
  of life overpower
  the entrenchment
  of cultural anesthesia;

    when the fire within us
  refuses to be extinguished
  by the sprinkler
  of status quo.

    The divine spark
  of the cosmos
  has hidden treasure troves
  of holy phosphorus
  deep within
  each one of us,

    hoping against hope,
  praying against rain,
  for the flint of love
  to strike against
  the granite of power
  and influence,
  thus kindling
  sacred possibility.

    Be the flame
  igniting the fuse
  of transformation.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Beauty

 

   True ugliness
   is not a judgment
   of one's appearance.

  That kind
  of superficial perception
  is simply a subjective opinion
  based on the limits
  of society's acceptable range
  of normalcy and symmetry.

 The real ugly
 is a hardening
 of the heart that keeps us
 from recognizing
 our basic connection
 to the rest of the universe.

  When love
  has been drained
  or banished from the soul,
  genuine ugliness
  is reflected in empty eyes.

   True beauty
   is also revealed
   through the pupils,
   as it emanates
   from a love-rich soul's overflow.

  Love, then,
  is the freely offered gift
  that radiates from within
  because it raises
  our own worth
  without lowering others',
  drawing the cosmos
  toward its core design.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins