Daniel

PRESENTATION ORDER:

Song: “The Power of Pentecost” –Traditional Song

“What’s that feelin’ that I feel?
It’s Pentecost, Pentecost.
Can’t explain it but I know it’s real—
The power of Pentecost.”


Poem 1:

I was born into flames.
Pentecostal syncopation, no doubt,
Can be sourced as the root of all my
Rhythmic woes. “So it goes.”

And now I am so distantly removed from the
Three-hour Sunday Nights. “God showed up,”
And we got so carried away, the preacher,
He didn’t have nothin’ to say—too busy spinnin’
Like a top, I suppose. When a man’a’God
Moves like that—only the Lord knows.

Two things I know, beyond the doubts
That cloud my mind. I have seen and
I have felt what it means to be alive.

You think you know what I mean
When I say, “God showed up.”
But I can see it in your face.
There is something that can only be known when
Charismatic, boisterous song descends
To weeping, praying, seeking…God.
And going to the place where silence waits…

Pregnant with possibility…
The immaculate conception democratized
Through the playing of Babel in rewind,
’Cause you’ve never woven songs of this kind—
The unencumbered, intertwining, melodic phrases;
Bending lines—that stretch across the space
To make a unity so diverse, you find yourself
Trembling. Embodied.


Song: “Comfort Ye” –from Handel’s Messiah

“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Saith your God, Saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem and cry unto her that her warfare, her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, that her iniquity is pardoned.”



Poem 2:

Throughout my childhood, I would have explained
That the work of the Spirit was of
Power to proclaim—
Now I barely note a single day when
I fail to ponder the power plays
Inherent in terms like, “Spirit filled,”
“Sanctified,” and “Fire Baptized.”

As a boy, I didn’t know
what it meant to pray in groans that
words cannot express. But
I did know things no boy should have to know.

The weight of souls and
The silence that grows from
The fear of what could happen in my own bed.

It was here that I learned what was meant when it was said,
“I will send to you a comforter.”

Here, in the place where the darkness bleeds,
Language leaks into silence
That speaks.

Music beyond words that can
Fill the soul.

(Darkness) –Song: Sacred Harp Singers- Cold Mountain Soundtrack. Start at 1:49.



Poem 3:

Language goes beyond the banality of shaping together lips and teeth and tongue.
Even lovers long to express more than is afforded by the vocabulary of kissing.

It takes technique to structure strokes and scratches straight upon a page.
Be it by pen injected with India ink made from plastics produced in Peru and
Assembled in Alabama, or the digitized hum of a chipset converting keystrokes to
The binary equivalent of an eye exam.

Now which is better? …Zero or One?...Now A or B?

And this just trips the lever on the linguistic layer machine.
Much may be said of sign, signified, symbol, and referent,
Object, phoneme, morpheme (I may need a morphine), participles,
Pronouns, predicate adjectives, tenses and creoles,
Pidgins, jargon, syntax, composition, flow, and cohesion—All
Pieces of a puzzle that allows us proclaim:

“I love you”
“Bless your heart”
“Could you pass the mayonnaise? Mmhmm, the big jar. Thank you, precious”

Sometimes I sit speechless,
Like when my Pawpaw makes some audacious claim,
To which my Nana replies—she doesn’t bat an eye—
“You ain’t gonna!”
And when he says back,
“I are too, Dunnit,”

…I have no idea what he just said.

And it’s only then, in the moments when language fails to
Body forth the complex chaos that structures into speech, do we
Truly relish the beauty of God’s Spirit, inviting us to play
In the mysterious communion pouring forth, One-in-Three.

Song: “Heaven Above” –original song by author

“We were meant to live some kind of life.
We were meant to bear all of the heartache.
We were meant to love—we were meant to grow…
Heaven above, heaven below.
Kingdom of God reign in us.
Take off these clothes that hide all these scars,
Give us new robes made of love.”