Perichoresis

As when David danced 
Before you, shining with sweat
And every layer coming off:
Finally we are reckoning-- this 
Is the place where psalms ooze
Out, covered in blood and pus:
Religion is a nasty business
Especially the religion of
This living God, the bleeding
God who came down to partake
In scars and tears and dirty
Diapers at the Incarnation:
Meaty God, holy God, you
Know it altogether, better 
Than I know, beyond knowing
To the place of perichoresis 
Where you humbly, lovingly
Beckon me into your
Dance. 

Note: "Perichoresis" is the idea that three Persons of the Trinity abide in a kind of dancing relationship

Wrath

When he said 
"Let go of your anger"
He didn't realize
You couldn't because
The anger was part of you 
Now, as real as your
Hand, skulking, reaching and
Jesus said you'd have to
[Not let go but]
Cut it off and 
Throw it
Away. 

Moses' Call to Ministry (Exodus 1-3)

Moses was one of those folks
Who wasn't from anywhere.
A Hebrew by birth, and
Supposed to die, to be buried
With the holy innocents
Their blood a testimony
Their souls perched higher
Higher, waiting in the courts of heaven.

Moses, you are the true Hebrew
An Israelite, indeed
There is deceit in you
And narrowly, narrowly were you
Saved.

Moses lived, or so it was thought,
On the right side of the tracks.
In the palace: Servants, six course
Meals, hieroglyphics, girls like
Cleo, and walls too thick to hear
The howl of the moon, and the cries
Of the beat-down children of God.

Moses, fatherless boy, you were the first
Man delivered from Pharaoh: When you
Knew you didn't need him. When you
Stepped outside and emptied
Yourself.

Moses has a record. An anger management
Issue. Red flags on his psychologicals.
He killed the guy in red blood, killed him
With his bare hands, and he enjoyed it
Savored the Egyptian's loud terror and
Slammed his head into the sand, over
Over, even after the Egyptian's last breath
And the Hebrew's strangled cry.

Moses! What were you thinking, or were
you thinking? Psychodrama turned violent
Or righteous anger uncontained? Either way
God was thinking. Any way, you are
Known.

Moses decided to start over. But he couldn't
Start over, not really, for in the land of Midian
The priest's daughters were in trouble, and he 
Told those shepherds, scared the scoundrels
And even in exile he was a warrior, a rescuer 
His vocation crying out like the fearful and false
Shepherds.

Moses, you must have known when you bound
Yourself to the woman you saved, and gave
Her a son, Gershom-- stranger-- you were born
Not really a wanderer but a 
Lover.

Moses was in wilderness beyond wilderness
And on the first of many mountains when God
Showed up, or showed his face in a bush burnt
But not consumed and Moses, in true form blurted
Out: God, send somebody else! Better to run than
To risk (it all) anymore, better to forget his people
His problems, his fathers, his destiny
Unrelenting.

Moses, teeming and huge with wrath, were you
Angry, too, with this God who pesters and demands
Of you your life, who doesn't seem to realize
Somehow you are still the small boy in the basket drifting
Downstream?

Moses listened, though, and came out from the
Wilderness and the anger was no longer anger,
Not really, and he heard himself say Thus saith
the Lord and Let my people go! because now the
Lonely boy had a people and now God was his
King and Pharaoh was not his father and in the
Questions and terror and wild fight Moses 
Stayed.

Moses, how did you stand between Pharaoh and
God, doubt and faith, your wife and your people
Rage and love, yourself and the world? That's the
Captivity from which there's no exodus, that's the
Calling you could not shake, that's every shepherd's
Place.

Moses, who drug and shuffled his feet, made it
Through, but only because the Lord was with
His mouth, the mouth that ate the manna of
Pharaoh, that cursed the dead unburied Egyptian,
And only because the Lord bore his raging 
Doubts, his flying terror, and with strong
Hands, loving hands, a father's hands, held him
Fast.