Tag: beauty

A psalm

45 years old and I’m still wasting time.

Waiting (in vain) for some life to start: waiting for more than just getting through, just finding something to look forward to, just distracting enough to fill moments with meager amusements only to find that it’s all ash and dust, leaving me more hollow, bereft, and with less time to fill, with the quality I crave, than when I started.

What if I – we all – were just honest with Him?

Remembered this terrible plight, admitted our utter inability to be different than we are – (by our own hands and efforts) and held up all these teeny lives for His loving scrutiny, His healing care?

What if I allowed Him to crispify the ugliness, the complete folly and sin of all this wastefulness and trusted Him to transform the ashes to beauty?

What if I were honest? What if I trusted the Life that’s there to be the Life it is and simply let It Be? Simply enjoyed and celebrated that He Is So?

What if I just handed over all-that’s-wrong to All-His-Right?

What if I remembered to celebrate the Life more than I bemoaned the death?

It would not be wasteful. It would not be in vain. It would not be disappointing, hopeless, a dead end, a new regret, or just another guilt infusing pursuit.

The only ashes would be turned beautiful. There would be no more hollows or scramblings, guilt, regret or lost time.

There would be – because there is if we’ll have it – living water brimming up and spilling over.

There would be fullness and it would well up by virtue of its generosity, its very inability to atrophy, and spread more goodness.

Like spring in the light and the warmth, the pulse of this great sleepy life would quicken and enliven to its Creator, by its Creator, because of and in response to His Life in it.

Praise and thanks, great God, for fresh starts, new seasons, and most of all that You Are and So.

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This Cup

  

I play at beauty.
Enjoy it. 
But relegate my scraps as little more than

Measly contributions.

I won’t prob’ly win no prizes…

All’s simple and meager and small here

From these parts.

But I am learning.

Learning to drink deep draughts

Of pure water

That flows ever purer

The longer and fuller I drink.

No need to add anything

To this cup I’m holding.

It’s full.

It’s good.

And I’ll drink it.

…To overflow.

Craftiness

  

 Wondering if adding to the beauty

 May also take from it.

 Not always or necessarily, and thankfully not exclusively.

 But if indulging one’s craft

 Does more to contribute to self indulgence

 (And this may be a given to some degree)

 Then “adding to the beauty” 

 Is a misspeak.

 Before one satisfies one’s desire to create, or pursue, or whatever,

 There’s something of a decision:

 Will I serve them, or will I serve me?

 (One’s “craft” = one)

 If I decide to serve me (one)

 There may creep in an eventual sense of entitlement.

 And if not acknowledged and made to stand in its 

  Truthful non-entitlement place, 

 May grow – quiet-like – but insidious.

 And if not checked,

 And then if not indulged,

 The ‘I’s not indulged.

 And if the I’s not indulged

 It must be your fault.

 And if the self can convince the self it’s your fault

 – That it was somehow owed its “autonomy” 

 And not paid what it was owed –

 Then you must be punished

 – Whoever “you” are that was replaced, misplaced by my craft.

 I might not tell you.

 But quietly hold on to resentment

 (When I didn’t quiet the voice’s demands, I got to stay mad and entitled)

 Hold it, feed it, coddle it, start to act in its favor ‘stead of yours.

 And soon, there’s no beauty to be seen, 

 No pure craft to be had.

 Only I, me, my and the muddle of inanimate “craft” in my hands.

Worth

  

I’ve borrowed from others’ beauty 

And I’ve resented not having my own.

And I’ve fished and I’ve watched and I’ve wondered,

What is it like to really be known?

Then I hear it real quiet – a whisper –

A suggestion to play over in mind;

“When you look to ME instead of to them,

MY worth in you you will find.”

Then I’ll think that I’m then on to something

And I wait and I think and I ask

Of the One from Whom these whispers come,

“Is this really a possible task:

To quit wasting the time in wondering

If I’ll ever quit wasting the time?

CAN I be known and live fully contented? 

Could I be (I whisper) sublime? “          [sublime – beautiful, morally worthy, complete, excellent]

Now He waits and watches and asks me

With such tenderness it puddles my core,          [core – essential part]

 “Will you believe it is I Who can love you,

Show you all that I’ve made you for?”

And I nod, though it’s tentative, quiet.

And I slowly sink down to my knees.

And I open my hands, with a smile I look up,

And I give Him my heart… 

          And receive.