Wayne White – Live in NYC

Birth and Death

Why does where we go after we die perplex us more than where we were before our birth? 

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I wanna take my place among them.
Those crooning creators.
Those well mannered makers.
Those artists.
You know the ones.
The ones you turn up real loud so you can hear every word.
The ones you don’t want to miss.
The ones you hold close to your heart.
I wanna take my place among them so one day, they call me more than “friend.”
So that one day, they won’t just call me “buddy,” but brother. Oh brother I wanna take my place among them.
Take my place with them not above them. Rather just by their side. I wanna be a thorn cast sideways. Oh brother I wanna take my place. I want to give up my running. I wanna finish this race. Yeah yeah, just tell me, how would it taste?

Rooftops – TAL

RIP

When I was a kid, I would draw spooky night scenes. There’d be an old, scraggly tree sitting atop a hill and lightning coming from ominous looking clouds. Sometimes, I’d try to draw an owl, but every time, I drew a gravestone that was cracked. I wrote RIP in big letters before I ever knew what it stood for. I always thought it meant something scary. I came to find out it wasn’t scary at all, it was actually kind of sweet. Rest-in-peace. I like that, I decided. Hopefully, one day I will.

Paradise – John Prine

The anthem of a lot of things.

His Sadness

Maybe we’re all pieces of God’s personality.
Some of us represent his happiness.
Some represent his frustrations.
Others still, are his wonder, his fear, his joy.

I am his sadness, I think.

I am his woe and depression. I am his lament and sorrow. I am him when he looks at brokenness in the mirror and doesn’t accept it, when he looks at it out the window too. I am him when when he’s kicking and screaming and foaming at the mouth in the face of all this sin and separation. I am him when he’s tied to a bed in a mental hospital, thrashing and wishing for something, anything else.

I am his sadness.

I’m sure of it.

A Door that’s Painted Red

The church I have called home for the last two years is called Red Door. Here’s what that name means to me:

There she goes.
Wandering again.
Tired, weak and
hoping.

She is looking for something,
But cannot put a name to it.
All she knows is that she desperately needs it.
That she cannot live without it.

The road has become her home.
The road is like a poem,
she wrote many years ago
and forgot to finish.

Travelers, like her, know about the road.
They know its dangers.
How it whispers to the weary with
words that mean anything but rest.

* * * * * *

Perhaps then, Heaven is an entryway.
A place of unconditional welcome.
Of shelter and of solace.
A door that’s painted red.

* * * * *

After months of traveling,
Her body is giving way.
She is worn and battered.
Bloodied and bruised.

But up ahead, she can see such a door.
While her legs ache, she cannot
help but run. While she thinks of her past,
she cannot help but hope.

There it is! The symbol of passover.
A hue that the angel of death saw
and kept moving. The very color
that means “refuge from death!”

She falls to her knees, weeping.
She now knows the name she was missing.
What she was desperately needing.
She knows who painted the door red.

Oh, Ireland

A distant place that I oft fail to see,
has been erased from my memory.

She’s clothed in green, unlike any that I’ve seen,
and from the ground pours the emery.

Satin skies give way to an auburn guise,
and I’m left spinning in a field.

Birds of blue sing not a note out of tune,
and all my wounds have quickly healed.

‘Tis the land where my great grandfather
Walked hand in hand with my great grandmother.
‘Tis the land I’d like to call home.

‘Tis the land where my great grandfather
Walked hand in hand with my great grandmother.
‘Tis the land I’d like to call home.

Oh, Ireland take me home to thee,
Oh, Ireland.

Oh, Ireland take me home to thee,
Oh, Ireland.

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