Unsung
- Excerpt from Unsung - by Linford Detweiler Let me write on your doorposts. Let me write on the
shoes you wear. Let me write on you. Roll up a sleeve,
unbutton something, slip a hook from an eye. Let me
show you a story.

I dip my pen into the black bottle and touch you with
the nib. The writing is a slow filament, a line, capillary,
tendril. A dark thread of sewing silk, a twine, a twist, a
whipcord, ribbon. Funicular, wire-drawn, cursive, longhand.
And I am writing words on you that my mother sang
to me when I was very young, words found scrawled
on a prison wall. You have stretched out your bare arm.

Could we with ink the ocean fill and were the skies of
parchment made. Were every stalk on earth a quill and
every man a scribe by trade. To write the love of God
above would drain the ocean dry. Nor could the scroll
contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.

I see the tendons on the back of your hand twitch.

What is this love of God?

We will write to fling our voices toward the floor of
heaven. We will vandalize the house of the Lord. We
will persist until a ladder drops, Jacob's angels descending. 
We will wrestle with the night angels until they
bless us. We will not let go. We will bend them
until they stoop a little lower and hear us. We will
scrap and brawl.

Bless me strong angel, and tell me what I would know.
Is it love that gives me the gift of these days and nights?
For this gift of life is too big. I must give some away. This
life is too abundant. My cup runneth over. Look, life is
spilling out on the ground around my ankles. Life is
spilling out of her eyes.

Here, I give my life to you. It
burns and quivers superfluous. It pulses with beauty and
terror. Why have I been given such an unwieldy, consummate gift? 
The universe expands, strains and groans with excessive grace.

Take this message to the giver of life: You have been
reckless with all creation. You have allowed even me to
sip from the cup of the eternal . I have broken the bread
of the infinite. I am overwhelmed and undone. There are
days when I fear my soul will burst.

We will write with no fear of breaking our hearts, our hearts
already broken.