Category Archives: poetry

My friend Stephen says that the internet hates Valentine’s Day. I think this is a hilarious thing to say because it is so entirely true. As an individual person, I don’t really care one way or the other about the holiday, but as a part of the collective consciousness that is The Internet, I am inclined to agree that it is a disagreeable day of saccharine sentiment, thanks almost wholly to– you guessed it– The Dang Internet. Moreover, I maintain a fierce aversion to the word lover, and this, not as a part of any nebulous “we,” but as a very individuated, very opinionated “me.” It’s a gross word, and that’s the end of it.

I think lover is a weird word to say because it automatically makes me picture people having sex. If you say someone is your lover, I am not going to picture you and this person on a lovely seashore picnic, stemware brimming with Dom Perignon; I am going to picture you two nasty-sweaty in your bed, cowgirl style. I am also not going to want to visit your home any time in the near future.

But whether The Internet and/or I like it or not, Valentine’s Day is today, and I am scheduled to post at A Deeper Story for Valentine’s Day, and Valentine’s Day is a day for lovers. So I am going to go with it. I am going to momentarily set aside my wildly inappropriate mental images and focus on lover at its simplest meaning: one who loves.

Because when you write for a site that tells stories of Christ and culture, there’s really just no way around it. One way or another, Valentine’s Day or not, you’re going to need to talk about your Lover.

Join me at a Deeper Story today? Love ya.

Please join me at A Deeper Story today for my monthly contribution, Like Flowers in Winter.

I had a proper baptism
Enshrined in liturgy,
Sprinkled with holy water
From a fixed baptismal font.

Head full of soft, sweet curls
And all I knew of God
Was you could ask him for your wishes;
He’d make you nice and good.

Now my head is full of tangles
And all I know of God
Is He doesn’t make you nice or good;
But He will make you well.

And if I had it to do over
I’d have a proper baptism,
Knocked under by wild waves,
Come up holy from the salt.

***

Please don’t mistake my brief thoughts here as a statement condemning or favoring any particular school of thought on baptism. I am simply suggesting that proper baptism is a reflection of the relationship between a Christian and God, however that might be made manifest.

Photo credit: King’s River Church

I trace your story
across your face,
and I want to rewrite,
but I read.

I am too broken
to fix you.

I feel your wounds
with heart and hands,
but mine can’t heal,
just hold.

I am too broken
too.

So I lift stories
and hearts and wounds
as whispers and cries
in God’s ear.

I am too broken
to fix you.

I beg it’s enough
to make you whole,
that He was broken
to fix you.

I am too broken
too.