Hill Country Writer

Here's the thing about Laity Lodge. Normally, I have to buckle down to work. Keep myself focused with the BIC principle (get your "butt in the chair" and write).

Not at Laity Lodge. It's a thin place. The line between heaven and earth is fuzzy, and it almost seems like God is whispering to me. If I can just get quiet enough, I can almost hear him.

I guess that sounds cheesy or trite. Or maybe it sounds like marketing talk, but I'm not trying to get anyone to go to Laity Lodge here. Some places are just beautiful, and there is truth in the beauty.

So here's a poem I found there. I was listening to Ashley Cleveland and Kenny Greenberg in the room called "The Great Hall". And I thought of Beowulf. Grendel originally attacks Herot because he their music is too loud and joyful.

This one is for Ashley and Kenny. You two are the best.

Hurts

Most middle class monsters retire
to a country estate or a ranch in the hills
if they aren’t slain by god-
like heroes mano e mano and exaggerated
onto the pages of high school English books.
Grendel, Jr., knows the truth.
“Dad was a hard case,” he says.
“But I still wasn’t ready to lose him.”
20th century shrinks tired his story out
on their couches. Now he shares it
just to fill silent spaces at parties.
“Gram and I were reading Genesis—
I liked the gold leaf letters,
the haloed icons in the margins.”
Gram liked the moral: “cursed to walk
the earth.” That’s hope. She’d wink at me.
“The earth will pass away—It’s gonna
die. Heaven, too. Us, too.” Who knew
prophecy could find its way into our dark
lake cave? Dad came on the heel of her
words, blood soaking his stump of an arm
and the crude tourniquet at his shoulder.
When curses lift, it hurts.
I hoped for love, but Dad died
in anger and fear. “Get them back.”
He coughed. “Make them pay.”
Not free, just gone. And Gram thought
she’d help hope, bring it home, fix it tea,
offer her life, too. So the hero came.
Dad was cold on the couch where I sat
and watched grandaddy’s sword grabbed.
Gram mounted it above the door when he left,
for safekeeping, she said, though none of us
expected him back from Nod. Is that why
she fought so slow? stretched her neck and bowed
her head before the man the call a hero?
“Come on, kid.” He held Gram’s head
in one hand and my wrist in the other.
Years later, I twisted his ring on my finger
while the dragon ate him. I did not lift
my grandaddy’s sword. It still hurts.

(On another note: I get to lead a poetry workshop this summer at a retreat where Ashley and Kenny will be leading the worship!)