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

In God’s Image

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

It’s not that you or I,
  personally, resemble,
   in our physical features,
  the divine;

but that God has planted,
  in every soul,
   seeds of hope,
  grace,
   and love;

and when we, together —
  all of us — allow
   the rain of forgiveness,
  the sunshine of mercy,
   and the rich humus of community
  to nurture the collective

garden of humanity,
  the most amazing
   and resilient wildflowers
  are raised up,
   reflecting the image of God.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

“Bless Your Heart”

 

As the holidays approach,
  and gatherings
  of diverse family members
  from afar draw near,
I often anticipate
  this three-word declaration
  vibrating across the room.

In the dialect
  of southern culture,
it can be the tender whisper
  of a mother’s embrace,
wishing for you
  all the peace and acceptance
  she knows you need
  but haven’t found,
ushering you into
  a safe, warm space
  that desires
  to deeply undo
  all the pain and suffering
  you have endured.

It can also be
  the sharp sting
  of one who views
  your perception
  of the world as misguided,
if not puerile, and yet
  still wishes you no harm.

If you heard it
  spoken warmly to you
  when you were a child,
I hope it helped
  to heal you.

I hope you can
  find your way back there
  when you most need to.

When you speak it
  as an adult,
to another adult,
I hope it brings you
  a thimbleful of catharsis,
and that it might
  help you leave
  the rest unsaid for now.

After you’re grown,
  when it’s uttered toward you
  in a decidedly unmotherly fashion,
I pray you’ll recognize it
  as a flashing
  “check engine” light
  or conversational tap-out.

I hope I can speak it,
in exactly the way
  you need to hear it,

and I hope I understand
  when it’s said to me.

“Bless your heart!”

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

The Edges

 

They are no longer visible.
 The water has taken them away,
  micro fragments at a time,
  with the subtle but undeniable flow
  of its hydrological power;

but I know they existed,
  just as each of the pebbles
  that lies in the river’s bed knows.

In one of countless fissures,
  when earth cleaved
  from its core
  and mountains split,
  jagged boulders of all sizes
  tumbled to the earth.

Some stones fell
  into the flow
  and remained there
  for eons.

When I pick up one
  of these ancient nuggets
  and run my fingers
  across its pristine surface,
  my mind knows
there were once edges
  sharp enough to pierce skin.

My heart whispers,
 “You are like the stones.
 Let the river carry away
  your soul-piercing protrusions
  before you speak;
 then the message you cry out
  can be one of hope.”

In the quiet
of the early morning,
I listen to my heart.
It sounds like a creek.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Peace at Last

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

 

      Sometimes, perhaps
         more often
  than I’d like to admit,
violence — sometimes known
as the absence of peace —
comes from the rejection
   of where and who I am.

          Expecting to be
           somewhere else
      and/or someone else,
            I resent
        my current reality
with a friction-fueling passion.

       Peace at last,
peace at last, comes,
       not from being
       where and whom
        I want to be,
 but from truly being
wherever and whomever
         I am.

     Only there and them —
    that is, here and me —
am I capable of recognizing
  how to breathe and listen
  toward a purposeful life.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Freedom

Photo by Gay Jenkins Howell

 

We are free — uninhibited —
to use whatever physical,
emotional, and cultural resources
we find at our disposal
(AKA, our privilege,
power, and possessions)

to do whatever it takes
to unbind and unshackle
other people from
whatever is keeping them
in chains,
physically, mentally,
emotionally, economically.

Everything else we do
that is not specifically aimed
toward expanding freedom —

including doing nothing,
looking the other way,
or denying the
potential for change
that exists within
our own status —

all of this action and inaction,
adds to our own enslavement.

The further we move
from expanding freedom’s reach,
and the longer
we hoard it for ourselves,
the closer we are coming
to a world
that will be uninhabited.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Dumbstruck

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

 

  As often as possible,
  despite the recognition
  that such halting and controlling
    is both futile
    and yet a barrier,
    at least for a moment,
  I try to define my surroundings
  with words.

    Not just any old words,
    mind you,
    but sharp and specific ones,
    clear and succinct,
  leaving little room
  for misinterpretation,
  or so I seek
  to convince myself.

  But then there comes —
  always there comes —
  a flash of uncontrollable light,
  if not fire itself,
    that sparks from the cosmos
    into my heart,
    conjuring both sensory
    and spiritual ruminations
    far beyond my fathoms.

  And there I am,
  dumbstruck, thank God,
  left with little more
  than groans and breath,
    gasping, somewhere
    between angst and awe,
    staring grace in the face.

  I’m like an infant
  whose every need
  has been met,
    despite my inability
    to either ask or understand.

“Likewise the Spirit 
helps us in our weakness; 
for we do not know 
how to pray as we ought, 
but that very Spirit 
intercedes with sighs 
too deep for words. 
And God, 
who searches the heart, 
knows what is the mind 
of the Spirit, 
because the Spirit intercedes 
for the saints according 
to the will of God.”
(Romans 8:26-27)

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Without Condition

 

The phone rings;
the text pings.

On the sending end
is one who’s just dying
(Or is it
“one who lives...”?)
to offer
an overflowing cup
of unconditional love.

On the receiving end?
Maybe it’s someone
who receives
that gift regularly.

Maybe it’s someone
who hasn’t received it
in a long time.

Maybe it’s someone
who has never had
an experience
of such joy.

Be the initiating partner.
Do it today.
And again tomorrow.

God’s well is artesian.
Let your life
be the pitcher;
your voice, your words,
be the spout.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

Peace

Photo by Loni Dinwiddie

 

“Visualize Peace”
the faded bumper sticker reads,
on the vehicle of one
we all identify
as the neighborhood’s
throwback hippie;

as if a little imagination
paired with a set
of properly shaped
presbyopic lenses
will somehow
usher us into utopia.

But we are
long-abandoned orphans
from Oz, having worn out
the inside edges
of our shoes
with the countless
and useless clicks
of our heels,
only to find ourselves
still trapped
in a dystopian existence
with mindless and
straw-stuffed fear mongers,
fainthearted felines,
and tear-rusted robots
fully incapable
of intellectual resistance.

Equip us,
this day, O God,
to become radical disciples,
rooted in your eternal echo
for justice,
certitudes and comforts
be-damned.

Move us past a peace
that passes for platitude,
toward the deep messiness
of your abiding grace.

© 2019 Todd Jenkins

40 Days

Photo by Jennie Roberts Jenkins

 

Each spring, here
  in the global north,
  we face the lengthening again;
  literally, as the solar system’s
    ball of fire stretches
    its shadow-eraser
    a smidgeon at a time;
  metaphorically and poetically,
  as hope emerges
  from our entombed lives.

Forty days —
  once the Sundays
  are allowed to rise
  above our calculations —
    between the death-shaped swipe
    of incinerated palm branches
    on our skin and
  the too-good-to-be-imagined
  but true-nevertheless
  rising from death
  of God-with-skin-on.

Forty days; and even
  our spelling of the numerical measure
  of 4 X 10 drops its “u”
    as a reminder:
    “It’s not about u.”

Forty days. Dare we turn
  our focus and attention
not toward self, but
  toward other,
not toward individuation, but
    toward community,
not toward fear, but
    toward hope,
not toward indifference, but
  toward love,
not toward quid pro quo, but
  toward grace?

Forty days.

Lent: noun

1. (in the Christian religion) an annual season 
   of fasting and penitence in preparation 
   for Easter, beginning on Ash Wednesday 
   and lasting 40 weekdays to Easter, 
   observed by Roman Catholic, Anglican, 
   and certain other churches.

Origin: before 1000; Middle English lente(n), 
Old English lencten, lengten spring, Lent, 
literally, lengthening (of daylight hours); 
cognate with Dutch lente, German Lenz spring; 
see Lenten

© 2019 Todd Jenkins