Love Laid Bare

I had an amazing opportunity to lead a team of artists that created the Forsaken: What We Are Saved From Art Project for Good Friday at the Duluth Vineyard this year! Writing a piece that reflected on the sacrifice that Jesus made for all of us was incredibly difficult and deeply emotional for me. The poem Love Laid Bare is what came out of some intense soul searching, research and prayer.

Love Laid Bare

Arms stretched wide, to the point of dislocation
Hands held open, holding all of humanity
As the weight of our sin
Ripping and tearing his bloodied skin
Love laid bare

Streaks of scarlet drip from battered brow
Spilling into eyes of endless grace
As mocking hatred echoes through
Wounds he suffered in my place
Love laid bare

Exposed spine splinters up wooden beam
Lungs forcing fluid through pockets of emptied air
Sliding back down to strain for shallow breath
Inhaling our sickness and sorrow, disease and death
Love laid bare

Forsaken as the Father turns away
His life not taken but given for all
It was this that held him there
Love laid bare

Three Coins

I was already 10 minutes late when I opened the car door. The demands of the day had piled up and were now spilling over into evening. My mind raced as I sped across the city, trying to make up lost time. At least I had remembered to bring quarters for the meter. Now if I can just find a parking spot.

The hazy grey of dusk hung thick in the air as I past Pizza Luce and lurched into a parking space two blocks down. I quickly gathered my things and found the sidewalk, eyes down as I focused on my next meeting when my eyes were suddenly forced up by the sight of a heavyset woman staggering towards me.

With severely slurred speech, she asked if I could help her out with some change.
"I'm hungry and I'm pregnant," she said as she held her belly.
"I don't have any money but I can pray for you" slipped out of my mouth before I realized what was happening. A look of confusion passed across her face.

"I can pray for you", I repeated to both her and myself. "What's your name?"

"Bitch" she said with a jaded defiance that caught me off guard.
"What's your name?" I tried again, not believing I could have heard right.
"Bitch, my mother named me bitch".
"Well what's your nick name then, what do your friends call you?"
A heavy pause held the question in place as I watched her mind struggle between the layers of drug induced forgetting and the faint memory of who she once was. When she felt human.

"Prayer" she scoffed out loud. "What can prayer do?"

"We can ask for God to protect you and your baby", I offered. She gave me a nervous look and began to back away, as if I might be the one to bring her harm. Falling back into her well worn script, she asked one last time if I had any change to spare.

In that moment, my heart broke for her and I could see that the connection I had with her was breaking as she started to sink back inside herself. Then I remembered the quarters I had in my pocket! I reached in to give her all that I had and then time started to move in slow motion. I raised my hand to give her the coins and I'm ashamed to say that part of me did not want to touch her. A modern day leper who would somehow make me unclean. As I dropped the 3 coins in her hand she suddenly reached up and grasped mine!

"You can pray for me now" she said, my name is Karen. In stunned disbelief I held her hand tight and began to pray right there in the middle of the street.
"God protect Karen's soft heart and her baby" and I watched as her face, hard and carved deep with the pain of a broken life, softened. Then came a torrent of tears that carried the ache of prolonged suffering from deep inside her, rushing to the surface.

She wept.

Allowing herself to feel something real startled her and she pulled away, slipping back down into the shadows of the street.

Or imagine a woman who has ten coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every nook and cranny until she finds it? And when she finds it you can be sure she’ll call her friends and neighbors: ‘Celebrate with me! I found my lost coin!’ Luke 15:8-9

Begin

                                               Because I can no longer hold it inside

                                               The weight of this creating, like an endless tide

                                               A thousand tiny fragments tumble upon the shore

                                              Of hope, passion and inspiration to explore

                                              It is through the broken pieces that we become whole

                                             As we allow the carving of beauty into our soul