Our Child's Baptism

Welcome, baby, to the Family of those who believe.
We believe that the world’s rightful King was born on a night like this, small and helpless like you, and lived and died a rebel in His own country. We believe our job is to continue the rebellion against hate, against greed, against arrogance, against all that would destroy the things that matter.
We believe that, as water cleanses the body, so He can cleanse the soul, and make us who and what we know deep down we ought to be.
We believe that, as bread and wine feed and restore the body, so He can feed and restore the soul, and give us continued strength to do the work He has given us to do.
We believe that, as a little incense fills a whole building with a sweet smell, so His Spirit can cause a little work of kindness to sweeten all the world.
We believe that, as music is not mere noise, but a pattern that turns chaos into order, so the Conductor of all things has made the world to be more than just sound and fury, but a Pattern in which everything makes sense, everything has its place in the whole.
We believe that God is with us. We believe that, in these things we see and hear and taste and touch and smell, we perceive the things too big for us to perceive.
And we believe that the miracle of your life is only the beginning, that there is a different and greater kind of Life into which you will be born if you receive it. We believe that your new Family will help you learn how to live the new Life.
We believe the impossible, and we know that the impossible is more real than we are. And we believe that it will make us truly Real.

© John M. Munzer

God with us

To all who mourn, to all who wait,
To all whose lives seem to abate,
To all who still in sadness dwell -
O come, O come Emmanuel.

To all who pray, to all who hope,
To all who triumph, or just cope,
To all who manage pretty well -
O come, O come Emmanuel.

To all in need, to all who give,
To all who die, and all who live,
To all who watch for time to tell -
O come, O come Emmanuel.

To all who listen for the Word;
To all who wonder what they heard,
What meaning comes from each Noel -
O come, O come Emmanuel.

To all who strive to be Your hands,
To follow Your two Great Commands:
To love You, and neighbors as well –
O come, O come Emmanuel.

To You, whose hunger we must feed,
To You, who comes to us in need,
Thirsty, in prison, in pain, in Hell –
You call us to come, Emmanuel.

To You who comes broken to our door,
Our tired, our hurting, our empty, our poor,
And to the ones who help them as well –
We come, we come, Emmanuel.

O God, Who is with us in the least of these,
Grant mercifully that soon each of us sees
In our brothers that You have already come.
Emmanuel, may we welcome You home.

© John M. Munzer

While by my sheep...

A blinding flash - a beautiful, terrible Glory that burns, chills, hurts, heals all at once - an overwhelming Presence - a Voice that makes the earth tremble - All the host of heaven singing praise to YHWH (they spoke His Name aloud!) - and peace and goodwill to us - and then the impossible vision is gone and we are again surrounded by darkness and the stench of sheep. A moment of Silence, and we are running towards Bethlehem, our thoughts tripping over each other - Why here? Why now? Why us? - Wonder if the priests got a message like that? - Ha, wonder if the Romans are hearing that their tyranny is broken? - But the message said joy to all people - maybe Romans don't count - but then shepherds shouldn't count - not in this stable either - be up all night looking - never sleep again anyway if we don't find - The inn? Really? God is surely with us tonight! - and we are here, breathless and sore but here.

For this?

What is this? Yes, in a manger, wrapped in graveclothes - rather morbid for a childbirth - but an ordinary baby. The stink of donkeys - yes, and shepherds, I know - the parents, such plain, poor people - like us - such an unremarkable child after all - No. That unbearable Presence is here - No, ma'am, I couldn't - well, alright - I am holding a baby. I am remembering the last time I went to the Temple with Father - the lamb we slaughtered - why am I trembling so? - So should I play peekaboo with him or bow before him? Or – can it really be permitted, that I can simply hold Him? – Child, what are you? Why is it more terrible to look on this plain face than upon the Host of Heaven? And - yes, please take him, I am rough, I may - hurt - him - O God, did Jacob feel like this when he realized who he'd been wrestling with? - "All we like sheep have strayed, and ELOHIM has laid on him our iniquity " - why that? - A baby in graveclothes - the mother says she is a virgin?!? - I hope our sheep are okay, we didn't even stop to lock up - but when angels speak to shepherds, the angel's business comes first - I'm surprised, there's no royalty, no priests - even the innkeeper hasn't stopped to visit, can it be he doesn't know? - well, I wouldn't have known, either, without the message - Why wasn't he born into royalty or something? What can a carpenter do? - But that Presence - what can he not do? - and yet I feel, somehow, that he will be a shepherd. And I am afraid, because a good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.

© John M. Munzer

What it's all about

I work with people who have developmental disabilities. One of the people I’ve grown closest to is T, a woman with Cerebral Palsy. T was at my wedding, and was the first to meet us at the door in the reception hall, with a huge smile and a huge present. I think the reason T and I have bonded so much is that T needs a lot of help to communicate. She’s only able to do so by blinking to say “yes”, and shaking her head a little to say “no”. We have a book of topics she usually wants to discuss, and she can tell us what she wants if we use the book and ask “yes/no” questions until we get to the one she wants. So it takes a lot of time and attention to find out what T is trying to say. And because I’ve invested so much time in understanding her, she’s also come to understand me, and that makes us close.
Over the years, T’s ability to digest food has gradually decreased. At the wedding, she was able to have cake and non-alcoholic champagne. A year later, the risk of choking had become too great, so she was switched to tube feeding. After a while, that type of tube feeding wasn’t working, so they had to use another type. After another while, she began to need medication to keep her bowels moving. Then more medication, then different medication, then more and more frequent hospitalization.
This week, her bowels stopped working entirely, and there’s nothing the doctors can do to start them again. She can no longer take in nutrients. This means that she will die. We could make the process slow and painful if we intervened, but she will still die. So we decided not to intervene, except with pain medication.
I was the one who told her she was going to die. She surprised and impressed me by taking it better than I did. She’s angry, sad, and scared, and so are we, but she’s still taking it better than we on her team took it.
Soon after she got the news, she wanted to tell one of her staff something. After playing 20 questions, staff found that T wanted to write cards to people. When asked which people, she indicated “yes” to each person, until we asked “Do you want to write to everyone?” YES. YES. YES.
So I got stationery and markers and asked who she wanted to start with. She wanted to start with her boyfriend D. I helped her pick out the color of the card, the color of the marker, then asked her what she wanted to say. She indicated “Love, love, love, yes, yes, yes.” I asked a few more questions to make sure I got the wording right, and what she wanted to say was this:
“I love you. Thank you for loving me.”
So, I put the marker in her hand, and hand-over-hand, we wrote those words and signed her name.
D has a disability too. He has autism, and noises overwhelm him so much that he has to wear headphones ALL THE TIME. He finds hospitals especially overwhelming and scary. But when his mom told him T was in the hospital, very sick, and this might be the last time he would ever see her, and asked if he wanted to visit, D was dressed and in the car in less than a minute. When he came in, he smiled, touched foreheads with T, waved bye-bye, and walked out. He came in a few minutes later, smiled, touched foreheads, waved bye-bye, and walked out. Once more he came in, smiled, touched foreheads, waved bye-bye, and walked out, and that was all he could cope with.
Later, his mom read him the card. D smiled, signed “Love” and pointed to T’s picture. “Love, T. Love, T. Love, T.”
That’s humanity, stripped down to the core. That is who we are, and what’s important about us – giving and receiving love. T and D helped me remember that this week.

© John M. Munzer

A new father’s prayer

Father of all, now I am a father too, and I know enough to ask:
Is this how You felt, too?
On that sixth day, when you exulted in creation, roared in joy and triumph “It is good, it is very very good!!!” – did You dance with delight, too?
You who know all things – were You surprised, too?
You whose love is vaster than universes – did You, too, feel that still wasn’t enough to shower upon your children?
You who are invulnerable - did You feel afraid too?
If so, I’m not surprised that even the Source of all energy needed to rest on the seventh day. You, too, knew that it would be the last chance to rest, that as soon as your children awoke, You would need to watch, to guide, to help, to protect, to love, and to hope to be enough - forever.
So You’ll understand why I ask:
Father who never sleeps, help me to keep watch. Watch her when I cannot.
Father who knows the way, help me to guide her. When I go the wrong way myself, guide her the right way even so.
Father who is our only help, help me to help her. When I don’t have the wisdom or ability, help her for me.
Father who is our shield, help me to protect her. Protect her from all that I cannot shield her from.
Father who is Love, help me to love her. When I don’t know what would be the loving thing to do, help me all the more.
Father who is our hope, never let me lose hope for her.
Father who is all in all, let me be enough. When I am not, carry us.

© John M. Munzer – 11/25/09

On the Facets of God

God our Father, forger of worlds, mighty maker of unfathomable heights and depths, laughing for joy in Creation and crying out tov, tov!!! “It is good, it is very very good!” Forming us with His own hands, kissing the clay and breathing life into it, into us. Teaching us to create, to craft ideas, manipulate matter, showing us how but leaving us room to make our own mistakes. Telling us the Story, and letting us know before the light goes that we have nothing to fear from the dark.

God our Mother, Jehovah Jireh the many-breasted one, holding us close, nurturing us, our comfort in times of trial. Our Sophia, guiding Wisdom who brings us back to the right path. Gathering us under Her wings, shielding us, and woe unto any who would attack us there! For She is a lioness as well as a brooding dove, and has iron claws within the velvet paws. Our Mother, who gave us birth but is still in labor, who brought us into this world and will take us out of it, who knows when to hold our hands and when to slap them, who loves to hug but kicks ass when she has to. Our Mother, who loves us no matter what kind of bastards we become, who yet hopes we’ll remember the things She’s taught us.

God our Son, the Son of Man, who is become flesh and dwells among us, who needs us and learns from us, who knows hunger and cold and asks that we feed and warm Him – for our sake more than His. Our Son, Who first learns from us, then teaches us, how to be human. In the weakness of His youth we carried Him, then taught Him to walk. Now we are old, bent with the weight of age and the sin of centuries, and in our weakness He carries us, until the day comes when He can teach us to fly.

God our Spirit, our very breath, our life, our being. Holy Fire that brings light and warmth yet does not consume. God’s power to create and heal placed in our tiny hands, faltering lips, buzzing brains, and trembling hearts.

God our Lover, sometimes caressing gently, wooing softly, touching oh so carefully our most secret places; and sometimes frightening in intensity, overwhelming with passion, even indecent in hot, panting, naked desire. God who finds us by turns delightful and maddening, beautiful and terrible – and the feeling is mutual. God who is jealous, and will have no rivals, who wants and demands our faithfulness. God who loves our uniqueness, who shares the most intimate secrets with us, who laughs at that joke that only we two understand. God who sometimes wants to set us throbbing all night, rock our worlds, pour oceans of wild, furious, insane love upon us; and sometimes just wants to cuddle, to hold and be held by us, to silently cherish simple togetherness.

God the Way, the Tao, the rocky, arduous, shining path to every place worth going.

God the Truth, Emeth, that which is most deeply Real.

God the Life, Zoe, the Body, Blood, Breath that dies and yet lives again.

God our universe, our all in all, Who is male and female, light and dark, yin and yang, life and death, and greater than all of them. O Jewel, blazing glorious in multifaceted Oneness! There is more to be said about You than there are words with which to say it. Who can know you by all Your names? Your many arms juggle the worlds and stars, Your many feet go everywhere at once, Your many faces greet us everywhere and each time surprise us anew.

God my Father, my Mother, my Son, my Spirit, my Lover, my Way, my Truth, my Life, my All in All: be in my sensing and perceiving, hearing and understanding, speaking and thinking and acting, that they may be worth doing.


© John M. Munzer

Sometimes

Sometimes.
Sometimes it almost makes sense.
Sometimes I think I can almost see it, grasp it, taste it, live in it at last.
Sometimes I don’t just hope it’s true, I know it’s true.
Sometimes, when I’m tired of myself, tired of everyone else, tired of the world, tired of our smallness and stupidity, tired of seeing greed and lies win out over honor and truth, tired of seeing death swallow life, tired of looking out over the huge ocean of what ought to be from the tiny, barren island of what is;
Sometimes, when I choke on the air of our world, and long for a better one;
Sometimes, then, it seems that a breeze from Beyond floats by, and I seem to catch just one sweet
breath
of the air of that heavenly country, and it seems I can see its outline, just for a moment.
Sometimes, in that moment, I dare to believe that one day, it will all come right, and that Amor Omnia Vincit, “Love Conquers All”, will stop being a truism and start being true.
Sometimes, I dare to believe that every knee shall indeed bow, every tongue confess the lordship of Love, and our wars, our hate, our self-seeking stupidity that looks only for our own good and does us only harm, all shall lie prostrate before Him, gasping in awe. I even dare, sometimes, to believe that the Dark One himself, whether he be the literal lord of Hell or the symbol of the hells within my own heart, even that Dark One shall in the end come to the Light, unable to resist the relentless love of God any more; and even he shall be healed, cleansed, made whole.
Sometimes I dare to believe that my blind eyes shall see, my lame and broken spirit shall walk tall and strong, my dead heart shall arise and dance, wheeling and leaping and roaring, bursting with the life everlasting.
Sometimes, I dare to believe that the dark, decaying, stony islands of my hate, my arrogance, my pettiness, my folly, shall all crumble at last, under the endless, awful, all-consuming pounding of the ocean, the ocean, the ocean of God’s love. And as the islands collapse, they will finally join in the wild, joyous dance of the waves.
Sometimes, I dare to believe that I can stand where the Creator stood on that first day; and looking down from on high, see the world as it really is – a dazzling chiaroscuro of flowing light and darkness, each showing by contrast the beauty of the other, until the Day comes when even darkness shall be filled with the splendor and holiness of light.
Sometimes I dare to look at the world and see what the Maker saw, and shout with Him “It is good! It is very very good!”
Sometimes I know it’s all right.
Sometimes.

© John M. Munzer

The Reaper

is a sneaky son of a bitch, a coward terrorist who strikes at random and hides where no one can strike back, hides his treason within our own bosom. We come to expect that he’ll at least have some modicum of consideration, that he’ll knock first, ringing bells that chime “You’re old, you’re old” before he walks in. And then comes the scythe, a truck that shouldn’t be crossing the median, but impossibly, it is. Comes the scythe, a swing and a miss, and we are untouched, and the car behind us, the man behind us, is shrapnel. And I seem to hear the reaper’s whisper:
“Tomorrow you, tomorrow yours, tomorrow all that you were and did, tomorrow all you loved and hated, tomorrow all will be gone. Create what you will, love as you can, but I will turn it all into its component atoms, and there will be no one to remember. Comes the reaper, and nothing will have mattered. See you later.”
But until then, I am I, she is she, we are we, and we are here. Let us live while we are alive! Let us not waste our tiny sliver of time in falsehoods and half-assed attempts. Let us love, work, play, create, fuck, fuck up, try again, laugh, weep, dance, mourn, roar with power while we are alive. Let there be LIGHT! Before the darkness takes us, we will flame as bright as we can. Better to have been a brief flash of glory in the darkness, than to never have been. It may mean nothing in the end; for that very reason, it means everything NOW. We’ll show that bony bastard, that biggest of bullies, that he can’t intimidate us even if he does beat us, that though he destroys us he will not defeat us.
And who knows? We may find, in the end, that the grim, grinning general whose orders all must obey, and before whom all must fall, is only a lieutenant lackey after all. Perhaps HIS orders are to gather the harvest to the Planter, that each may rejoice in the other; and to make room for more life. And when the reaper has worked himself out of a job, when the harvest is done and there is no more death, it may be that we remain. And then, too, we shall be triumphant.

© John M. Munzer

The Drummer

The drummer is a god, and all gods:

Warlike Thor of the Norse, raging and roaring, rising in wrath, his bellowing hammer-blows beating back the Ice Giants, buying back the sun for a season;

Mad manic Loki, untamable trickster, Deceiver who plays more than his four limbs should allow;

Demon Quetzalcoatl, screaming for blood, and ever more BLOOD, straining to break the universe in his fury;

Many-limbed Brahm, dancing life and death, yin and yang, good and bad, light and darkness, and all there is into being;

Flame-faced Ra, blazing in white-hot glory, breathtaking in his intensity, before whom and without whom none can stand;

Olympic gods of sunny Greece, sometimes gliding slowly in graceful, holy, godly splendor, and sometimes pouring forth rivers of wine and getting down to some insane dancing and long, languorous lovemaking;

Gods so old their true names are forgotten, gods that live in wood and stone, fire and water, air and earth, beasts and trees, men and women, all holy, all alive, pulsing, resonating with one great rhythm;

Keeping time with Time himself, eternal, infinite Ourobouros, beginning where he ends and begins again;

Echoing Jehovah’s primal LET THERE BE, he creates a new thing, he channels what has always been, as an ancient Power flows through him, rises like a challenge, a summons, as his hands dance with the joy of creation, a dance wild and free, yet disciplined and precise;

He is the poet who has got beyond mere words and into pure expression;

While others would suck the marrow out of life, he plays the living bones.

© John M. Munzer

Mary Holds the Child

Can it be permitted, that I hold Him? Why do I not burn away at the touch, if it is He? How can my baby, so soft, so weak, so warm and close, be Him? And how can I ever know my child well enough to be a good mother to him, if he is really He? I can’t play peekaboo with Him! But I can’t help playing peekaboo with him – his cute little giggle is irresistible! I know nothing of God – no mortal can know Him. But I know children, and maybe He is become a child so mortals can know Him as - him. And in a way, perhaps, God has always been a child. A child demands that the world be black and white, that things be either good or bad, right or wrong. Adults learn duplicity, compromise, settling for less. A child is hurt and angry every time someone rejects him –adults shrug it off as the way things are. A child believes in the miraculous, the impossible, sees it as surely as he sees the room around him. Adults know that it’s all mundane, as ordinary and earthy as eating, and that only the pragmatic survive. And a child knows nothing of real suffering – even if he experiences it, he doesn’t understand it. But an adult suffers, and knows what it means, and knows he is as helpless as the child, though he strives like a man to fix the problems. And – oh, God! – a child doesn’t know what death is – but an adult does. O my Child, my child, that you will have to learn that lesson! But my God, my God, perhaps You should know what we adults go through, even in that. Yes, Child, You have always been a child. And I wonder, have you come here to grow up? Or will You try to teach us to be children? Will you manage to do both?

© John M. Munzer

The Moth

My mind is a moth.

Too small to contain the whole of a thing, forced to flit from place to place to find things small enough to absorb; living on little things, finding forgotten fruit, consuming cast-off clothing, sipping sap, devouring dead daisies.
But the miniscule moth mind is wise enough to know this:

Light
Is
IMPORTANT.

© John M. Munzer

People of the Book

The sickles glint, fly screaming through the fields,
scattering blood and bones of wheat and chaff together,
and all banners burn.

And on the Sabbath, the people greet each other salaam alaikum
And on the Sabbath, the people greet each other shalom aleichem
And on the Sabbath, the people greet each other peace be with you

And we all cry peace, peace when there is no peace
when we will not have peace
when we beat our plowshares into swords
our words into swords
and the blood of Abel cries out against us all
and we will not listen for the Blood that speaks a better Word.

O that the camel would speak, the bush burn, the rocks cry out,
Creation tell us again that His Name is wonderful beyond understanding.
We breathe our darkness onto the glass and cannot see that on His side
All
Is
Light
and smoke of war
and smoke of hate
and smoke of death
and smoke of sin
do not blur it.

O my brothers, fellow sons of those who wrestle with God, each other, themselves;
may some remnant of those under each banner someday meet in the New Jerusalem,
and say then

salaam alaikum,
shalom aleichem,
peace be with you

and forget themselves, forget each other,
rejoice in the end of wrestling as they are pinned by His Glory.

© John M. Munzer

At Half-Mast

November 5th, 2009

I am at half-mast.
I am no hawk, colors flying, blazing defiance.
I am no dove, flag furled in shame.
I am at half-mast, in mourning for all that is broken:
For a world broken, in which two nations whose religions preach peace are at war. A world broken, where the only way we know to try and stop violence is by violence.
For a mind broken by its inability to contain these dichotomies. A man who became so broken that he killed those he was supposed to help and heal.
For the lives, families, friendships, trust, and security broken by his actions.
I am at half-mast, hoping against hope that healing may come to our brokenness.

© John M. Munzer