Luke 13:10-17: We are what we watch

Every damn day we’re watching what’s under our feet,

Watching for bankruptcy/cancer/betrayals that will trip us or drop us

Bang up our knees, skin us bloody, trick us out of our due.  It’s happened before

And can happen again. So we watch our step and our backs and our money

And we don’t see ourselves

Bent crooked like pine trees never out of the wind.

We don’t see

How small our view is, here where we’re holding on.

Then comes a man interrupting everything,

Proclaiming God’s love right next to us

Where we’re daydreaming about golf scores and what’s for lunch.

Our own hearts are the most frightened of him.

They beg us to bend back over

Toward the familiar dirt path.

We hear voices, probably our own, saying anything to drown him out:

“Don’t/no/ stop/ it’s the law/ it’s politically smart/it’s rude/ it isn’t what everyone else is doing/ it’s not safe/you have to watch where you’re going/you might miss the quarter someone dropped on the sidewalk!”

But he calls us over by name. And when he takes our hand

Our bodies remember something like stars.

It gets very quiet. And we look up

And forget the habit of what we’ve learned; we stand up.

The transformation is easy to explain.

Like a seedling under the sun, we must grow and straighten,

Using what’s possible in us

To push towards what’s possible for us.

It’s nothing we have to ask for, or decide.

We were born to dance with God,

And once we begin dancing,

Who turns their eyes away from his face to watch their step?

- Lynne Homeyer