That encounter at Starbucks.

A hot cup against nervous hands
keeps me acutely aware that my heart is panicking.
I've had you in my arms a hundred times,
Said more that a million words,
But when you walk in the door,
You're suddenly too cool for me.

I stare at my cup, my hands.
They're no help. They're on your side.
My conscience tells me that this is a mistake.
I calmly tell it to fuck off.

My mother warned me about this.
Probably where my conscience got the idea.
We both know she never liked you.
"Don't take two steps back."
But no one hopes for relapse.

Without making eye-contact, you're in front of me.
The scene is familiar.
But everything is different because I know that the hands holding your drink have held someone else's.

Do fingertips leave fingerprints on fingers?
I swear that I could see them.
But she wasn't in your eyes.

"I still love you" flew from my lips like duct tape ripped from a hostage's mouth.
And just like that, I left everything to you;
My nerves, my patience, my passion, and my hope.
It was yours and I wanted it back.
Because all of a sudden my conscience and my mother made sense.

I'm only telling you this so you can let go of the sick satisfaction of breaking my heart.
I did that myself.
One afternoon at Starbucks.

Behind the Counter.

Behind the Counter.

Dressed in the oppressive black

that marks a minimum-wage worker.

I drive to work before the early risers leave dreamland.

55mph in town isn’t a problem when the cops aren’t even up yet.

Slipping on an apron,

Why am I protecting a $5 shirt?

The hum of the machines,

Still alone, but no longer in silence.

The pot brews,

The cookies bake,

The tea seeps,

Thermometers collaborated.

The sun is my timer.

When it’s up, it’s too late,

People without their fix are unforgiving.

They tend to forget that what they want

is on my side of the counter.

However, white collars running late write my paychecks.

Some faces are blurred,

I don’t care, to them I’m a personified coffee pot.

The smile they get is just as commercial as the black crack I serve them.

10am is why I come to work at 7.

People who aren’t in a hurry.

These are the socializers.

I know all of their names, as well as their orders.

They want to chat and I want to listen.

How surprised they would be

If they arrived just 3 hours earlier.

After two years,

I can predict any order when they walk in the door.

To really know someone

Is to pour their coffee.

Oct 15, 2012

Lucky. (Sermon for Sept 12)

I grew up in a strict home
With a list of rules
... made Leviticus look like a nice poem
(ok, that's a little dramatic).

So if I walked in the house after a day of school,
Just to hear "I'm giving you a new rule"
I might have cried.

"Love one another."
"That's it? What's the catch?"
"No catch"
"...we'll see about that..."

But you see
"No catch" isn't synonymous for easy.
With only 3 words
We don't expect complicity.

Love. One. Another.
It doesn't sound hard!
But when "one another" means
Absolutely "every other*
Palms get sweaty and the pressure starts.

It's the difficult moments in life that try us
And it doesn't help that
Our differences are highlighted
With retractable yellow markers.

....

In the last two days I've been spilled on twice by strangers.
And of course neither time was anywhere near my closet.
Love one another.

My first year here during VIESHA
A very confused, very inebriated gentleman
Broke into my dorm at 4am.
Love one another.

Unfortunate things happen in everyday life.
Thank God.

Lucky I got to meet two people this week who are just as human as anyone else.
Lucky for the awkward phone conversation between myself and a wrong number.
Lucky I had to repeat statistics, only to find out that sociology isn't where my passion lies.
Lucky in High School I didn't make varsity show choir right away, so I met one of my best friends.
Lucky a scared, confused young man broke into my room and reminded me that life in unpredictable.
Lucky our ministry found itself in financial trouble, to remind us what it's really all about.
Lucky I consistently get lost...
And am reminded that I need other people.

Lucky the frustration.
Lucky the fears.
Lucky the heartache,
Lucky the tears.
Lucky the sleepless nights.
Lucky our personal limits.
Lucky the conflicts.
Lucky the tough classes.

And:
Lucky our Savior died on that cross.
Lucky the purpose and message wasn't lost.
Lucky the Martyrs, the rebels, and critics,
Lucky the revolutionaries who refused to quit.

Lucky that God brought us here together.
And so lucky we're commanded to Love One Another.

Emily Martin
September 12, 2012

a Presidential address

Words of promise and too-optimistic hope
travel on a sheet of well-rehearsed  silk
Covering the collection of people who have gathered
Hoping to take away just one message, thought, or sentence,
wanting to put it in their pockets to store in their arsenal of good-intentions
and "one-day" wishes.
A vague statement to withdraw from an account
of well-meaning one-liners.

Cat nip for the quote saps.

But I don't see a politician speaking.

It's my High School principal,

speaking in front of a crowded stadium filled with barely-adults

clad in red tents and cardboard hats.

She's telling us that today is great,

but it's tomorrow that matters.

I look around.

Waiting for others to catch on to the 

anthropomorphic properties of our elected official.

But they're recalling their own histories.

I'm writing mine. 

Emily Martin

Aug 28, 2012

Ballerina Dreams

I take daily comfort in knowing that somewhere,

someone who once called themselves a writer,

still finds pleasure in carefully constructing grocery lists.

She used to be a dancer

but now the only choreography she knows

is the syncopated rhythm of her children’s schedules

The grace it takes to make stir-fry

while re-learning algebra.

and enough rehearsal etiquette to realize that

tomorrow she’ll have to start all over again.

Plagued by unfulfilled strings of ambition

she wonders if the life she has

is her punishment for not working harder,

being more dedicated,

or drawing the line when

“what it takes” was too much for the reward.

She drops her child off at dance class

wondering why no one ever warned her. 

Emily Martin

Sept 11, 2012

I'm over "it"

I'm over mushy dreams
Goals of putting pictures into frames.
I'm over the term "soul mate"
Like it's a position I'm hiring for.
I'm over "girl friend"
Like it's a position I'm forever interviewing for.
I'm over looking at guys like they're perspective futures.
Over that dreading/exciting/anticipating/expecting feeling
When I log onto my computer.

I don't want someone who always thinks I'm right.
I do want someone who wants to wish me goodnight.
I don't need someone to take care of me.
I do need someone to be there for me.

Whether this person has the title of boyfriend
Or whether this person has the title of best friend.
History and personal experience has shown
As people, we're not meant to go it alone.

A Present-Day Moses?

Stricken by politicians

Who can't see what's behind them.

Think back to every:

Political stupor perceived as a rock star tour,

Each political caller disrupting dinner hour, and

Each candidate promising a better tomorrow.

See; every politician has two faces;

The face that people see and the face that can’t face faces.

Pharaoh was a politician.

And Pharaoh was scared.

In his gut was fear, so out of his mouth came “slavery.”

His weakness of insecurity fed the power of genocide.

They say that out of a person’s mouth flows the condition of their heart.

Pharaoh felt helpless so he had the helpless killed.

Fast-forward to Moses, sailing down the river in his own infant-sized Ark in the form of a basket.

His small boat docks in the home of Pharaoh.

Here it becomes obvious that history repeats itself because following Joseph, a Hebrew is in Pharaoh’s house again!

And Moses’ rise to power is just more evidence that God’s people cannot be kept down, because we have a Father who doesn’t allow it.

In this family we breed leaders.

I’m talking about standing-in-front-of-a-classroom-leading-children-into-a-better-tomorrow leaders.

And restoring-and-preserving-the-land-that-God-left-in-our-hands leaders.

Being-a-shoulder-when-someone-needs-us leaders

And offering-a-prayer-for-those-who-don’t-pray-for-themselves leaders.

From the Oval Office to a west coast hospice.

From the preacher feature on CNN to the child serving in a soup kitchen.

This family breeds leaders.

So I ask you;

Could you be somebody’s Moses?

Do you have what it takes to take the hand of a brother? A sister, father, mother, son, or daughter?

Keep in mind that had fear prevailed we would not know the name Moses today.

Had a number of women not acted out of compassion and courage the extermination of an entire people would have been forgotten by history.

Christ calls us to do one thing above all else; to love one another as God first loved us.

This is a story about fear  of people who are different.

About people who look at others and see something that isn’t.

Fear of the encroachment of the so-called-outsider.

A lesson that shouldn’t be that difficult to decipher.

Because it’s happening. Now.

Through chilling with those whom social diseases were festering

Jesus teaches us to be that much more accepting.

But our churches tend to be cultural cocoons where we can escape the changes out neighborhoods, cities, and nations are experiencing.

So who will be Moses for the people out there?

Who will speak up when others simply don’t care?

This is a call to the future leaders of this tradition.

Future doctors, and teachers, and pediatricians,

Mothers, and fathers, and computer technicians,

Hasty environmentalists, and honest politicians.

This is a challenge to live a life worthy of the call you have received.

Because as a child of God, you were born to lead.

Emily Martin

Sept 28, 2011

Revised: Nov 29, 2011