Costly Grace

I've been reading The Cost of Discipleship alongside a new biography about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Not surprisingly I've been contemplating the nature of grace:

"Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."

"Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner."

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Grace is not the light lined

brilliance of sun-dipped leaves, bricks, eyes

but

air, rich with the smell of water-darkened earth,

whispering the wavering voice of distant thunder on our faces

and although we in the city, with our oak trees

red-tipped bushes beneath our windows,

chemical green St. Augustine purchased by the yard

simply turn on a windshield wiper,

somewhere there is a farmer bowing his head.

It is grace when it nourishes, not when it dazzles.

A reminder (for myself)

The density of a poem

is inversely related

to the number of its readers

and directly related

to the size of the poet's ego.

The Resurrection for Post-Moderns

"the peculiar individuality of us all

is not enough

and

do not ask for more."

It does not take much for a boat to float

in the dead sea.

Only shop.

Only drink.

Only talk.

But do not create.

A blank slate for a blank slate's sake.

The miracle of His resurrection is its potency.

Trinity

He is a body within the light

and the light is seamless.

He embraces the light

and the light is without border.

We have seen his silhouette

but there was no shadow.

Dumb

I know how ill-fit the cross is to war

and that I have a thing or two to say

about the two pregnant women we shot

or the village of children we burned

or the jihadist we dragged naked through the mud.

but I am in my home

and gospel fumbles out of my mouth

and onto the floor,

I am inarticulate about these things.

As if complexity ties a string around my tongue

and just as I shape the sound

of a "d," or a "b," or a "t,"

it pulls me into a vowel

and I end up yawning something incoherent but audible-

it might as well be a blessing for all of its courage.

My God,

not a blessing.

Never a blessing.

A New Morning

A new morning
and still the same.
I do not begin with prayer.
It is work to swallow flem
on a dry throat.
There is a water glass
on my bed stand.
The taste of warm stagnant water.

Another Word

I am winded
by our walking towards
all things unknown,
one foot
the other
a breath
then another
and each step is its own walk.
We mark our pants and back
green or red or black or simply
wood-stain brown with freshly attended
park benches when our stomachs are to much to carry.
Other times it is our shoes
and the bottoms weighed down
with salmonella,
road-tar,
gum.
It is always something
and then a something's something
until our lives are family trees
of debilitation.
But I walk
and some days
not so angrily
and most days I wish I could find
another word
but redemption
will do for now.