Tag: liberation

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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Vulnerable and Married: together at last

Maybe my reluctance towards intimacy
Is an innate refusal to be possessed

Maybe I’ve bought the wrong lines

Regarding sacred union

Maybe I’ve perceived all the wrong sacrificial requirements

Maybe I’ve seen love (inadequately, tragically, falsely)

As an all “giving up”

Instead of following that gift through

To its more accurately and absolutely “all getting” 

I have kept you over there – arm’s length

(A safer distance, I thought)

Instead of drawing closer

(In desperate self-protection, I think)

And here, instead of “Impressive Impenetrable Fortress”

As my welcome mat

I have “Lonelier Than Ever”

Starving in this false autonomy

I’m sorry, my lover, my darling, and

(I mean it and vow to grow into all those designations)

I will try…

…No.

I will welcome you.

I will be patient

I will be gentle 

I will surrender in right ways

I will treat this ground and the one who shares it with me as sacred.

I will stop fearing the inadequacy of my own self possession

Stop seeing an enemy where there is you:

Welcome guest, honored, cherished, trusted, (wildly patient!) invited friend and lover.

Liberation (of motherhood and otherwise)

  
Sometimes I think I could stay here
All quiet and thoughtful up on this mountaintop
If only I could remain undisturbed

And left alone

THEN what a difference I’d make

And then I remember that I have you to thank

For all my best and worst rising to the surface

You help catalyze all my grandness and terribleness

And all this facing’s what makes a person whole

Without your love

Without you to love

I’d just be all face

And no facing

Void of depths

Too heavy on shallow heights

Thank you for all your yous

Meeting all my me.

And please, God, may my me (with You) liberate their mes as much as they’ve saved mine.

Expenditures of loving these all that fills right up:

Love’s liberation

Love’s Thrill

  

 When the children came, “thrill” left

 Replaced by care and caution and love’s breadth

 Not always safe: the pursuit of safe.

 Lots may die in the wake of hesitate.

 But ah! That is not all there is.

 Before them wonder was a largely private (selfish) affair

 After them – with them, because of them – I am expanded

 Expanded in delight not just my own, but in delight in theirs

 What a gift! What a gift to be enlarged

 And stretched beyond my own thin skin

 These trenches and crumbs are not beneath me

 These are where the real life is – the full life is

 Forced outward love stretches all my womanhood

  – anyone’s personhood through parenthood – 

 Battle waged I am forced to reckon with these, with me

 To find that my self’s death is the truest liberty

 To be present and free from my own way:

 (Not just in order to indulge another’s whim)

 – But to provide what’s needed –

 This is liberation: realizing wholly the love within.

 So to find I’ve grown – and am willing more still –

 Becomes the delight of sacrifice – true love’s thrill

 To find that before I gloried in the small

 I’d venture I knew Glory not at all.