Dance

A rude awakening

from life's peaceful slumber,

death delivers its powerful

kick in the gut,

dancing a victory jig

as we scramble to reorient.

Clamoring for breath

like asthma patients

without rescue inhalers,

we check our lifelines,

jettisoning all lesser gods,

as the truth of their inferiority

becomes apparent.

Dogma and doctrine fade,

as do belief, rules, and rituals.

What's left?

"Hope" may best describe

the place where who we are

and what happens to us along the way

meet the plans and purposes

that God has for us,

both in the here and now

as well as in the hereafter.

Love, the dance that animates us,

when time, distance,

and even breath itself

separate us from those whose hearts

are forever intertwined with ours.

"Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they will be called children of God."

Matt 5:9

Photo by DeEtta Harris Jenkins

© 2013 Todd Jenkins

Painted

Original photo by Todd Jenkins

Just words, connecting the dots

enough to sketch the big picture;

remembering that, with water color

or crayons or charcoal or even

a bucket of house paint,

however and in whatever shade

your life is decorated today,

the One who dreamed

and drew you before you were born

has your image on the fridge;

your outside-the-lines self

that sometimes feels insignificant

and hurts in ways and places

you'd prefer to have never known.

Never beyond the divine gaze,

your pain and passion,

your hurt and hope

are always on God's heart;

your wholeness being whispered

onto the canvas this instant.

© 2013 Todd Jenkins

Redeemed

Photos by Todd Jenkins

At our deepest, we know

there is chasmic disconnect

between the person our culture

tells us we should be

and the person we really are.

How we choose to deal

with this inconsistency

defines our life’s path.

Operating the battle metaphor,

against a series of external enemies,

bifurcates us, one part

acknowledged good,

the other, denied evil.

Projecting our unacceptable selves

onto serial adversaries,

we will never find peace

within or without, only

increasing piles of weapons and enemies.

Banquet’s the metaphor,

where all are invited,

bringing the fullness of their lovely

and unlovable selves to the table.

It’s the only way we can be

redeemed and made wholly holy;

the place where union with the divine

supersedes our faux majesty.

It’s also the only place and way

that we come to recognize

the same redemption in everyone else.

Once the curtain has been pulled back

on the facade of our own perfection,

we are free to see the amazing grace

that all are more like us than different.

© 2013 Todd Jenkins

Growing Christmas

Photo by Lee Lindsey McKinney

If growing-up required you

to shrink from all mystery,

to avoid expectation,

to deny and hide all vulnerability,

jettisoning these child-like qualities

for a strong, planned, and predictable life,

Christmas invites you,

every year, to reclaim its gift.

You will not likely anticipate

the same things you did in your youth,

but you can learn how to wait,

and hope for the arrival

of gift that surpasses imagination.

Christmas invites you

to keep your inner child,

but trade-in your youthful longings

for much larger ones.

When toys and transportation

are no longer at the top of your list,

you have a chance to dream

more amazing gifts.

Hope isn't wishful thinking,

but the realization that the universe

is ordered to point toward a promise

that cannot be denied or derailed.

Peace on earth is not a theory

or an in-breaking for the distant future,

but a courageous act and kind word

chosen each day and moment.

Joy is a gift unwrapped daily,

by those who cease

their own personal pursuit

of happiness long enough

to recognize what’s been

underneath the tree all along.

Love is the freely-offered overflow

of those who've traded-in earning

for unconditional grace that shows up

in spite of all our fear and hiding.

Find the child in you so that

you may find the child whose gift

gives us all a chance to be

broken Christs to our hungry world.

© 2013 Todd Jenkins

Christmas Eve

You know the day is bound to be long

when it’s called an “eve” at sunrise.

Long it is for many folks in varied ways.

Long for those whose hopes are set

on simple magic of chimneys, sleigh,

airborne reindeer, gifts galore.

Long for those whose plans are 

to stave off disappointment from

such childlike dreams of abundance;

working and saving for eleven months;

decorating and preparing for weeks;

outlasting excitement to assemble.

Long for those little ones whose hopes

are beaten down 24/7 by birth, circumstance

but can’t help hoping one more time.

Longer still for beleaguered parents from

the have-not side of life who must figure out

how to explain tomorrow’s emptiness.

Longing is a deeper long for those whose pain

is heightened by the absence of a life-long love

or knowledge that this year may be the last.

Into this long and longing day that

moves toward darkness all too soon,

a candle flicker moves toward life.

For those whose patience births a faith,

nurturing a flame that warms a hope,

single candle turns to tongues of fire.

Light, warmth, grace all overflow;

gold, frankincense, myrrh arrive;

joy is stirred deep in the soul!

Photo by Anne Shurley

© 2008 Todd Jenkins

Spending

Photo by the Jenkins & Kester families

Advent’s call to wait, watch, prepare

didn’t outlast Thanksgiving’s leftover turkey;

"O Come, O Come Emmanuel" gave way

to "O Little Town of Bethlehem."

The family candle ritual fell

as the calendar filled with fun;

the bell lap comes earlier each year,

pushing, pressing; fibrillation nears.

The devotional book gathers dust

as cable inundates us with new classics.

How many twists and technologies can we find

to complicate and reintroduce Nicholas’ gift?

Worship at the cathedral of the mall

intensifies as credit tachometers

whine beyond the red zone;

package toting enhances subluxation.

Always one step ahead of where we are;

spirit, mind, body– never the three shall meet;

standing in line, expecting only to

exchange presents instead of presence.

Beyond the mall manger’s baby powder scent

the Christ child begs our attention;

the true spending gift of Christmas

is risking honest time sharing love.

© 2013 Todd Jenkins

Gabriel’s ‘Nunciation Blues

Angel Gabriel, he done told me

I’m birthin’ God’s own son.

He’s got to be mistaken.

How can I be the one?!

My baby won’t have no daddy

to walk the face of this earth.

I’m just another teenage girl

who ain’t got no worth.

I got the blu-u-u-u-u-ues.

I got Gabriel’s ‘nunciation blues!

Cousin Lizzy came out to greet me;

her baby jumpin’ all ‘round.

Don’t know why I came to see her,

I just had to leave that town.

My head is spinnin’ so fast;

don’t know what I’m gonna do.

Never had an angel visit;

tell me child have you?

I got the blu-u-u-u-u-ues.

I got Gabriel’s ‘nunciation blues!

Until your angel visits

you just don’t know what it’s like.

‘Fraid to tell my boyfriend,

‘cause he’ll tell me to take a hike!

Lizzy said God blessed me;

blessed the fruit of my womb.

But when I tell my Joseph,

he’ll send me to my tomb!

I got the blu-u-u-u-u-ues.

I got Gabriel’s ‘nunciation blues!

What kind of God is this,

who flips the world around?

Liftin’ up the lowly,

an’ bringin’ the mighty down?

The hole that was within me

seems to have been filled.

The craziness inside me

has finally been stilled.

Maybe it’s not the blu-u-u-u-u-ues;

just what it’s like to let God choose!

God has made a promise

to fill the hungry soul;

to gather in the scattered,

an’ make God’s people whole.

The mercy that I’m feelin’

is holdin’ me up firm,

to carry God’s own baby

an’ bring him to full term.

It’s not the blu-u-u-u-u-ues.

just what it’s like to let God choose!

Photo by Todd Jenkins

© 2005 Todd Jenkins

Sunset

Photo by Todd Jenkins

It's good to be reminded of

and comforted by a few things

on a regular basis:

that the sun never stops shining;

we just move away from its path,

as other people and places

take our spot beneath its gaze;

that we don't have to chase it

around the world daily,

as if it's a scarce coal of fire-starter,

to ensure that we will have

light and warmth tomorrow;

and that sister moon,

with her uncountable brood

of stars, serve as both our night-light

and our reminder of the sun's

promised return, even on the

cloudiest and stormiest of our nights.

© 2013 Todd Jenkins

Choosing

Photo by Lee Lindsey McKinney

As soon as we are certain

that God has un-chosen those

of whom we are afraid and

about whom we know very little,

we can panic assured we have created

God to reflect our own image,

and not the other way around.

God in-the-flesh, whom we called Jesus,

spent little of his time creating

“insider” and “outsider” lists for us to check.

The chief complaint of his generation’s chiefs

was that he spent far too much energy

conflating with the unloved and the unlovely.

Holiness, at least as it is revealed incarnate,

is a great deal about choosing the unchosen, 
about erasing and expanding our circles.

© 2013 Todd Jenkins

Imagine

It’s December 26, of all days,

and the very self of God has decided

to visit creation again, en carne.

Forget, for a moment, if you can,

what this time will look like to us;

try to picture what it will look like to God.

In much of the world, it will be

just another day of need:

toil and suffering

in the struggle to survive.

Perhaps the remains

of a meager celebration

from the night before

might be visible

to the trained eye:

a candle and the crumbs

from a small portion

of seldom-splurged-for food.

And then there’s my neck of the woods:

cardboard boxes, brightly colored paper,

ribbon, partially-eaten animal carcasses

and every food imaginable heaped at the curb

as if an omnivore named opulence

has binged and purged on the spot;

people scurrying to hide every vestige

of what’s not discarded from the extravaganza

in attics, garages, and storage buildings for another year

before returning to the security of their compounds.

Where will this generation’s shepherds be found –

those at the margins whose work

is both so menial and odoriferous

that they must be kept at bay?

What will be their response

to the celestial’s visit and proclamation:

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,

 and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”?

When they arrive in our neighborhood,

will we recognize them as the favored ones?

Will we join Mary in treasuring

their words in our hearts?

Or will their uniforms and smelly trucks

cause our eyes and hearts to glaze?

If you were playing this like the stock market,

how heavily would you leverage

your portfolio for the future they’re promising?

Photo by Todd Jenkins

© 2013 Todd Jenkins

Preparation

Photo by Todd Jenkins

Incarnational experience

is less about doing;

more about remembering. 

Whatever else we “do”

to prepare for Christmas,

what matters most is that

we take the time to “remember”:

who it is that came and

who it is that will come again. 

Our hope, our liberation,

our deliverance are in

and through the God who comes

in decisive ways; the God

whose in-breaking is like

a wild animal tearing out

of its cage and into our world. 

© 2013 Todd Jenkins

Map

How these letters, spaces

and punctuation marks form themselves

into something remotely intelligible,

and possibly hopeful

has always been a mystery.

We can feel it much better

than explain it.

At bare places where pain

and suffering have stripped

all sense of entitlement and control,

there is a swath cut through the jungle.

We don't need a map

to remember the way.

Each time we hear stories

of a remotely similar journey

by another person,

our hearts take that path again.

Somewhere along the way,

our brains join the trip,

sometimes abducted, others willingly.

As we near that familiar clearing,

the fog lifts, and we remember

the most powerful promise of Divine:

it is not protection, or power, but presence.

This is the gift that opens vocal chords

and directs fingertips to keyboard,

steadying us all in our naked places of hurt,

casting a flicker of grace upon our darkness.

Photo by Todd Jenkins

© 2013 Todd Jenkins