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“Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

By Ken Woodley

LOVE’S SKIN GROWS OVER THE BONES OF A BROKEN SOUL

On the midnight panes of my shattered places

dirt had been carelessly shoveled.

An afterthought.

Words spoken beneath clouds that had never stopped looking like monsters

were filled with ashes and dust.

Then even they left,

leaving only silence behind.

Until God spoke.

With lips, tongue, eyes and everything

God could think of.

God knelt and smoothed the dirt of my grave,

making little rows for the seeds

that God began to plant,

explaining what was inside them.

No more tears.

Just rain.

And God didn’t keep me waiting.

Something green grew up through the soil.

Other colors followed the skyward urge.

God lifted my broken landscape from the gravity

surrounding places so empty they had been left

unguarded by those who had broken the reflection

I’d been born with.

Weightlessly sang the flickers of light

until all of their pieces fit my voice

and I tasted the first rays of sunrise from God’s tongue

upon my lips,

swallowing without regret.

I wore only the light

God shone from within me,

luminous and laughing joy

at this surrender of my fragments

to the oneness of becoming

something more than I

—more than anyone but God—

ever imagined:

Loved.

 

Sometimes the whole world seems to speak a foreign language that I do not understand.
Times when the whole world makes no sense at all.
Weapons are targeted.
Hearts are shut down.
Voices are raised.
Meaning is lost.
Darkness seems to be in control of every light switch.
I wander like a stranger in a strange land full of wandering strangers also lost in the senseless cacophony of struggles for supremacy and domination.
At those times all of the world’s words are closed to me.
There is no dictionary. No definition to explain it all. No meaning to anything. Just noise, noise, noise.
But no sounds that I want to hear.
All around me divisions are multiplying everywhere.
And everyone seems certain that God is fighting on their side.
Self-centeredly assured that God is in their front rank with a holy bayonet bared, God charging ahead to spare no one on the “other side” of the political, racial, idealogical, religious, social, cultural, sexual, economic—any—divide.
Forgetting, all the while, that every one of those divides is man-made, not heaven-sent.
Sometimes I imagine I am standing in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago in the days before Pentecost, understanding nothing at all.
I am surrounded by Parthians, Medes and Elamites, by residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and visitors from Rome.
But … then something happens.
Suddenly, the Holy Spirit promised by Jesus plays a note.
Just one note.
A note of such wonder that I don’t need to understand every word, or any word, that is being spoken.
Everything is being said—everything that truly matters—by the melody of that one note.
The borderless Holy Spirit opening all of our ears, all of our minds, all of our hearts with one true note so wondrous that it can somehow play a one-note melody inside us.
If we’d only listen.
If we’d only sing along.
Dividing every division until there is nothing left at all.
Nothing left at all but us—the harmony that God has been praying would one day fill the world.
But too often the hardest thing for a human being to do is open their heart and feel what God feels toward the people of this world.
Open their mouth and speak what God would say to the people of this world.
Open their mind and understand what God understands about the people of this world.
I’ve kept my own heart closed, refused God my tongue, and shut my mind often enough to know that’s true. And so I also know this:
A note of beauty needs no explanation, no dictionary, no interpreter.
It only needs us to understand and accept that God has planted the seed of that one-true note in all of us.
Without exception.
The world would make total sense—the sound of one heart beating—if we’d only let it.

 

“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord … the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good … All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.”
— 1 Corinthians, chapter 12
Each of us has a gift that we share with others, our own families and the world beyond our own four walls—a service we provide through the willing exercise of our God-given gift. None of these gifts is more, or less, important than another.
Even the seemingly simplest act of service—which might involve nothing that outwardly shines as a “gift”—is motivated by a keen willingness to serve. That openness of the heart is, in itself, a powerful gift.
A clear example of how every gift of ourselves given to others is important—and not more or less so than another’s—is seen through recalling the old-fashioned wagon wheels of the 18th and 19th centuries. Each of our gifts is like a spoke on one of those wheels. And each spoke is connected to the same wheel hub, just as our gifts come from the same Holy Spirit. Remove even a single spoke and the wheel is weakened and then one day breaks and the journey is delayed or jeopardized entirely. So every spoke matters equally. Just as every gift that God and Christ have given us to share is precious, a blessing to others, and to ourselves.
Our gifts, to look at them another way, are notes that together create melody and song, notes that have all been arranged by the same Composer and without which—even one missing note—the song would not be the same.
Look at our own hands. One of our fingers cannot pick even a penny up off the sidewalk. But when our fingers work together we can take a sword and pound it into a plowshare.
God gives each of us our own unique gifts so that we will work together for the greater good. The more we work together, the greater the good.

Nobody has all the gifts they will need to live a full and truly happy life. And if we did, how terrible to be alone with so many gifts and nobody with whom to share them.

Imagine being one of the apostles near the Mount of Olivet during the scene described in verses six through 14 in the first chapter of the Book of Acts. There we are, with the risen Jesus, who is giving us our marching orders: to be his witnesses, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to the ends of the earth.
If being with the resurrected Jesus isn’t mind-blowing enough, we then watch as he is lifted up and taken out of our sight in a cloud. As we’re gazing up toward heaven, two men in white robes suddenly appear at our side and ask why we’re looking up into the sky. Jesus, they tell us, has been taken away from us into heaven but will come back in the same way.
What a conversation we would have had during the day-long walk back to Jerusalem after this experience. Dumbfounded silence would have been interspersed with gushing voices falling over each other recounting what had just happened.
But, what had just happened?
In all likelihood, I suppose, the two men were angels. They match the description of the two who appeared to Mary Magdalene when she went to Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning.
The one thing I know better than anything else … the one thing I know best of all—is that there is a ton of stuff that I don’t know. This passage from the Book of Acts is among the many things I cannot explain.
And that makes me very happy.
You and I—all of us—need far more than what the human mind could possibly conceive. The transformation of humanity into a world of love and compassion requires far more than anything I could dissect and explain. Knowing that God is in the process of lifting us all toward one another—if we allow it to happen by not misusing our free will—is incredibly reassuring.
We can feel ripples of God’s movement, like a breeze against our skin or a river’s current and the pulling of a tide along the shore as we wade out together. But I cannot take the wind in my hands and hold it tightly, even for a second. Rivers and tides flow right through my fingers. I cannot begin to grasp the awesome fullness of what is happening and how it is happening.
There are clues all around but I cannot pretend to be Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot and solve the mystery before your very eyes.
God is on the case and I thank God for that.
All I know is what I have faith in: there is an awesome transformation underway and taking shape. It is, indeed, happening. The love and grace of God will eventually prevail in the world because it will some day prevail in our hearts. Prevailing in the human heart, one human being at a time, is how that love and grace shine like beams of light into the dark corners of the world, such as the Manchester, England music hall where 22 people died, some of them children, and 59 were injured in a suicide bomb attack Monday night.
The alternative, so often clearly illustrated, is darkness spreading one human heart at a time.
So, here we are. Gathered with Peter and John. Gathered with James and Andrew, with Phillip and Thomas. Here we are, gathered with the mother and brothers of Jesus.
Gathered with each other.
Something wondrous has happened on our journey to Jerusalem, and is unstoppably underway, that we cannot fully explain.
Or stop.
And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Think back, for a moment, to the best meal you’ve ever had in your life. Whether at a fine restaurant or cooked at home, with family at Christmas or over a campfire in the woods by a lake.
A meal that lives long in memory.
Okay, hold that thought as we listen to what Jesus has to say about the Holy Spirit in the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John:
“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”
Of the three figures of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit is the most difficult for many people to fully grasp. God we understand. Jesus we comprehend. But the Holy Spirit? The Holy Ghost? Ghosts aren’t part of our everyday lives. Except this one.
One can think of the Holy Spirit as a “feeling” that comes upon us when we are deep in prayer or, as can happen, when our mind is on something else entirely. A feeling that reminds us of God and Jesus, gives us a feeling of their presence and what it means in our lives, a feeling of inspiration, a feeling of insight, a feeling of hearing, seeing and understanding the spiritual more clearly, suddenly and sometimes only for an instant. An instant, however, that lingers in memory—like the best meal you’ve ever had.
Think of God as the Master Chef. Master Chefs express themselves through their culinary masterpieces. God’s back in a kitchen that is literally out of this world and God is cooking up the best meal we could ever possibly be served—an expression, or articulation, of God’s life-transforming love and grace. That’s what God, the Master Chef, prepared for us: love and grace that change our lives.
Now, think of Jesus as the meal, itself, as the way God’s love and grace were expressed and articulated into the world. God served love and grace to us through Jesus and the meaning and ministry of his life, death and resurrection.
But how does the Holy Spirit fit into all of this? Think of the Holy Spirit as the aroma of that meal that God prepared for us and then served to us through Jesus. Though the Master Chef, the meal and its aroma are three distinct and different things, they are also, somehow, part of the same thing.
Think about aromas. We can’t see them. We can’t touch them. But they sure are real. They are like spirits of what has been prepared for us and then served as a meal. They are culinary “ghosts” but we know for a fact they exist. We smell them every day.
The aroma of a meal is part of the meal, itself. The aroma comes directly from what has been prepared. The aroma of a steak is literally part of the steak. The Holy Spirit is no different, it just doesn’t have anything to do with a rib-eyes.
And all aromas do something quite special.
Think back to that best-meal-ever in your life. If you could somehow smell the aroma again it would bring that meal back to life for you. The aroma would remind you of every nuance, nook and cranny of that meal: how it looked, the way it felt on your tongue and, especially, its flavors.
That is exactly what the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit allows us to feel, to “taste” the expression of God’s love and grace that was prepared and served to us through Jesus.
Jesus promised us the Holy Spirit to ensure we’d never go spiritually hungry. God’s love and grace are being served every day.
Simply enjoying the meal, however, is not God’s dream for us, nor why Jesus lived for us, died for us, and was resurrected for us. Being transformed by God’s expression of love and grace—even just a little bit—is why God brought all the ingredients together and invites us to the feast.
No degree of transformation is insignificant. Consider how one single comma or the tiny dot of a period can change the meaning of a sentence that alters the plot of a chapter that transforms the end of a novel.
So, dig in. And bon appetit.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes my memory for names can’t be called “memory” at all. “Forgetfulness” would be more accurate. On more than one occasion, for example, I’ve come around the corner of an aisle in a grocery store and heard someone call me by name.
I knew that person.
I knew I knew that person.
That person knew I knew them.
But I could not recall their name at that moment to save my life.
The explanation is one I understand: I was totally pre-occupied with my own thoughts, that had nothing to do with shopping, while simultaneously trying to remember all of the things I needed to buy. Had I seen the person from a distance it would have given my brain time to remind me of their name.
Or, that’s my excuse.
But I know it’s not just me. I’ve also been on the receiving end of “name non-memory.” I’ve said hello to someone and the look on their face tells me all I need to know. They can’t remember my name to save their life. I understand. Been there and not remembered that.
So how amazing is it that Jesus knows all of his sheep by name?
Totally astonishing.
Just think how many sheep Jesus actually has throughout the whole wide world, and has had across 2,000 years. Look at how many sheep he has a St. Anne’s. Yet, Jesus knows us all by name.
But he also knows more than that. Jesus is aware of all that we have been, all that we are, and all that we can be—if we follow our Good Shepherd.
Jesus knows when we need to lie down in green pastures. And when we feel, in our soul, the holy spirit of Jesus guiding us to a restfulness that feels like a green pasture it is more than okay for us to do just that—to stop being so busy, physically and mentally, and chill out in the abundance of the green pasture he has led us to.
Likewise, when we feel Jesus lead us beside still waters there is a reason for it. Pause. Refresh. Rest. Drink in the feeling of peacefulness reflected toward our soul by those still waters.
We mustn’t feel like we have to keep pushing ourselves and going and going and going. If we do, we run the risk of pushing ourselves beyond Jesus. We keep going and going and going past Jesus, like a sheep going beyond its shepherd.
Then we get lost and, let me tell you, life’s “wolves” love it when that happens.
Whenever Jesus seeks to revive our soul, there is a very good reason and we should let him do it.
Don’t feel guilty about it. Let it happen. Jesus knows better than ourselves what we truly need. We can see up to the bend in the road. Only Jesus can see around the bend.
So don’t worry about what’s around the bend, either.
The rod and staff of Jesus will comfort us and when we need it most we will feel our head anointed with oil and our cup running over. That is: we shall feel the certain peace inside us that passes all understanding.
Goodness, love and mercy will have followed us no matter where we went—even when we wandered off—and we will know deep down inside that we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
We may forget someone’s name in the grocery store next week and someone might forget our name tomorrow.
But Jesus never will.
Ever.

FAITH
Deep in the longest drought on record

one man stood

believing in rain

and splashing

—so skeptics declared—

in his own precipitation

that had nothing

at all

to do with the sky

and the clouds,

or other things

the man could not prove.

The sky is dead, the skeptics sang in unison,

and there are no more clouds, they added in refrain.

There is nothing up there at all, they swore on oath.

But still the man in the rain

kept splashing.

And his garden grew.

Enough to feed them all.
—By Ken Woodley

The Road to Emmaus is all around us.
There is no set formal path. No particular interstate highway or country lane.
The Road to Emmaus just is, stretching out in every direction.
North. South. East. And west.
We journey upon it each day. Whether we realize it or not. Whether or not we intend to do so. Every paved mile that we drive is upon the Road to Emmaus. Each sidewalk step that we take is upon the Road to Emmaus.
Left, right, left.
Through the woods.
Across a field.
Upstairs and down.
The Road to Emmaus is, consciously or not, part of the journey to every destination we consciously try to reach.
For our entire life.
Forward, or backward, day by day.
Curiously, however, we often fail to sense its presence. There are so many distractions along the way. One moment we are deep in contemplative prayer and the next we suddenly find ourselves in the middle of life’s often tumultuous cacophony of noises.
We become like the two disciples described in the Gospel of Luke, walking toward Emmaus and so busy talking about the crucifixion of Jesus and rumors of his resurrection that they fail to see that he is walking right there beside them.
The experience is not unlike walking out from a forest of wondrous peace onto the Las Vegas strip.
But even Vegas is part of the Road to Emmaus.
The Road to Emmaus is everywhere—no exceptions.
And Jesus is there—no exceptions.
Jesus is there, waiting for us to recognize him.
Waiting for us to recognize him in our hearts.
To recognize him in our souls.
Recognize him in each other when we walk his footsteps into the world.
Every day and every step we take hold such promise.
Every day and every step offer us the chance to make the dreams that Jesus has for us come true in this world that so desperately needs those dreams to come true.
But how?
Sometimes, we just need to pull over into a spiritual rest stop and let the tumultuous cacophony of the world’s traffic of distractions wash over us and away.
Often, we most readily recognize the Road to Emmaus—and who journeys upon it by our side—only when we stop for a moment to look around and feel the scenery of our soul and the sunrise of our hearts burning within us.
That is when Jesus is able to “break bread” with us, even if there is not a crumb or a crust or a loaf in sight.
Quite possibly, however, another person is by your side, walking the same steps on the Road to Emmaus. In close proximity physically, but also close in the spirit of friendship or love. So close that it is as if the two of you are one single loaf of bread. In opening up your hearts to each other—in breaking this human bread—Jesus is able to reveal his presence among you in a way that is impossibly palpable.
And there is true communion.
Because the Road to Emmaus is mostly inside you.

 

Happy Easter?

How happy can Easter really be for someone who has lost a loved one?
How happy was the first Easter for Thomas? He had just lost a loved one and Easter was one of the saddest days of his life.

While his best friends were giddy with astonished joy as they related the story of Jesus appearing to them in the upper room, Thomas was wrapped in sorrow.

“Peace be with you,” Jesus had told the disciples before showing them his wounds.
Imagine their joy at spending time with the resurrected Jesus.

But Thomas had not been with them. He’d missed out and Thomas was so unhappy that he went down in history as Doubting Thomas.
“We have seen the Lord,” his fellow disciples had told him, their faces undoubtedly split wide open by huge smiles, their eyes alight and sparkling with happiness—just as ours might be at the end of an Easter morning service, wishing happy Easter to all we see.
But how happy could Easter have possibly been to Thomas, who had lost Jesus to the hammer and nails of the crucifixion?
“Happy Easter” was just two words that meant nothing to him.
Or, worse, they rubbed salt in his wounds of sorrow.
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe,” Thomas had replied.
I might have spoken those same words if I had been standing in Thomas’ shoes.
But Jesus appeared again and this time Thomas was there. A week later, Jesus gave Thomas a chance to touch his wounds and “Happy Easter” suddenly became two words that meant everything to him.
Thomas joined his friends as resurrection witnesses, trying to convince others that Jesus had risen, that “Happy Easter” could pour its meaning into the deepest of our earthly sorrows—even into the place deep inside our heart where we mourn the loss of someone we love most dearly.
Easter matters because resurrection is promised to us all. Easter would indeed be a hollow mockery to our human hearts if it were just something experienced by Jesus alone.
If Easter was just a Jesus event it would be pointless. God rose from the dead? Big deal. But Easter is not just a Jesus event. Easter is a you and me event. Easter is an event our departed loved ones have already experienced for themselves. Jesus said so. Some day, we shall join them. Jesus said so.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me, that you may also be where I am,” Jesus tells us in the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John.
There are days and nights and weeks and months when our tears of sorrow will make it hard for us to read those words but there are no tears on Earth that can wash the promise of those words away.
Can I prove it? Probably not. But doesn’t the world—don’t you and I—desperately need something far more wondrous than anything I can prove? That is precisely what God’s love has given us. But it is okay to doubt it.
If we doubt then we are in good company. We are locked in that upper room in all of our sorrow with the disciples. And Jesus is coming to touch the mark of our deep wounds. Jesus doesn’t doubt our wounds. He knows we all have them. That is why he is on the way.

Poems for Easter by Ken Woodley

WINTERS

I walk across a field to where the frost

has painted shattered glass on the ground.

Summer must have looked in the mirror,

seen autumn,

and the reflection broke.

Even the clown trees cry,

dropping their circus leaves.

Soon the whole world will lie dead,

quiet as cotton, and cold.

There is an attic smell in the air.

I wonder if this is how our own winter has been born.

Have we forgotten spring?

I kneel now, touching an ice-covered blade.

The frost melts and turns into dew.

My shadow feels the silent, insistent barking of the sun.

THE STORM

I listen to my storm.

There are no words anymore,

no voice like winter thunder,

no lightning in my dreams.

It has rained for days and the only sound is the river

pulling at the roots of trees,

covering the tracks of animals that came to the bank for food

and the footprints of hunters who followed them.

Black birds look like punctuation marks

as they scrape their wings against the clouds

in search of a sentence the wind rearranged and then blew away

and I wonder about the missing words

and who wrote them.

The river, tumbling over itself,

sounds like sand being brushed off the sky

and I pray for this meaning to make sense.

A soft, distant voice echoes the unspoken

and I look up in time to see the small dark dot of a bird

calling me to follow

just before it disappears,

a final period erased

before the end could be written.

I cry uncontrollably, unashamed of this joyful sorrow.

Tomorrow the river may flood.

So might I.

SECRET AGENT

I shadow myself

in the long puddles from yesterday’s tears.

Bedouin clouds cross their blue desert;

the city loses its grip and the sand takes over,

seagulls singing as if they are deaf.

I will leave no tracks on the beach.

The wind and tide are my safe house.

I have come all this way to watch waves

defect from the sea.

They look like spies coming over from the other side,

breaking cover at the last possible moment,

spreading their secrets on this countertop coast.

I cup a foam cipher in my hands

but it soon disappears

and I am left decoding palms,

my own wrinkles and veins.

Translating myself into this new language.

SURROUNDED

The sentry noticed something peculiar:

he was surrounded.

Something must have crept up on him during the night.

He dropped to his belly

and wriggled around a large boulder

to see what it was.

He waited fifteen minutes and didn’t see anything.

When members of his platoon woke up

and were not shot as they stood urinating on the ground

the sentry decided he must have been

imagining things.

Still, something seemed strange.

He felt completely surrounded.

It was unearthly.

It was the trees, he told himself later.

Yes, it’s the trees, and the grass

and the sky.

They’re not fighting.

They’re not at war.

And then he wondered:

Can I surrender to peace?

CHRIST TIDE

A mirage appears in the desert:

a single dark fin cutting through the dunes of sea-like sand,

rippling straight toward the man

who continues walking over the motionless waves;

a shark torpedoing—as if launched by the earth itself—

at the path those steps are taking,

the man spreading his arms wide and cross-like

in greeting or resignation

to meet the unseen jaws

even as a school of porpoise—

their own finned backs breaking the surface of our disbelief—

swim toward his resurrection,

the heavy steel hooks of fishermen

unable to stop them.

EASTER

If I could

I would see the sun making sherbet in the sky

and children running along the edge of their lives,

wishing for bowls and spoons,

sand kicking up behind their heels like bullets just missing.

Each second would be a museum

as I look into their eyes

and see Ulysses in the wooden horse,

feel Africa touching Brazil.

Camels sip scotch through straws now,

trying to forget their humps,

but a whippoorwill calls its own name into the twilight

and leaves murmur, quietly praying.

A dream kicks the wall of its womb.

The sky bends.

I feel pregnant with myself.

And then it happens:

A herd of zebra lopes past me,

looking for the mountains of Peru.

“On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”

—John 14: 20