Tag: life

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Eternity stares down my borders.

Why hide my face

From such loving scrutiny?

All these dehydrated papery wrinkles

Need withering’s reversal.

Need re-filling with warmth and light and living water

Away from all this self-induced winter.

(Not the crisp, clean, bright, light, renewing sort of winter,

But the gray, damp, bleak, worse kind of winter void of snowy open spaces and full of miry pits, thorns, and sloughs.)

The strongman needs bound again:

And we both need reminded of

Who’s power reigns supreme.

Instead of diminishing,

My inheritance (wonder of wonders, gracious God) is an enlarging.

Though I’ve been showcasing my smallness by

Giving free reign to my less-than-bests, it’s time to look

Upward and outward,

Extend and unfurl in all this spring.

Though surrounded by yesterday’s-life-made-today’s-dead-patches,

Life courses through:

Ready for the realizing,

Suspended in anticipation,

Poised and ready for animation,

Radiating in slow simmer,

Spurred and graced with remembrance and thankfulness,

Restored to mirror, channel, vessel, servant, and

Resurrected in the power of

Chosen.

—————-

Praise and thanks, great and gracious God.

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Puckered up

Energy turned inward turns sour.

A relaxed grip

A look outward

Expended on these in my care

And all that wasted tension

Softens

Morphs

Spreads as something useful and

Warms outward in healing waves.

Love is an avalanche of healing fortitude.

A mountain

An ocean

A steppe

A fjord

A forest.

Life’s entire ecosystem.

Not a locked up tension-puckered-toothless-soured littleton.

It’s vista?

Always breathtaking and

Further than the eye can see.

No cheap, temporary, quarter-paid-for-a-limited-view from some man made platform.

Every crevice, ultimate horizon, expansive silence and thundering roiling

Is love’s claim.

Bringing belonging,

Springing forth,

Love changes everything.

All that’s worthy responsively?

Praise and thanks and glory remembered,

Celebrated, savored, taken in and poured back out.

Dear, dear Jesus. All and every smallness and bigness. Deeds done and undone… To You, my Lord. All offerings to You. Praise!

“Send forth your light and your truth,

let them guide me…

Then will I go to the altar of God,

to God, my joy and my delight…

Why are you downcast, O my soul?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God…”

(Psalm 43:3a, 4a, 5a)

Reclamation

The fullness and

Scope of this

Gulf Stream life

And I’m right saturated and

Even bogged down while moved along.

Regardless of my desire for calmer (stagnant?) waters
I’m the mom

For all practical purposes

But all I feel is to be

“Like butter spread over too much bread”*

*Bilbo Baggins

All these children’s questions

Charge the particles

In my like-an-old-school-tv’s

Snowy insides:
Instead of jolting to life,

Every word

Zaps already taut and sensitive fibers

And this tired old battery sparks only to grinding.
Proof again

That mere machinations

Aren’t the source of life and

Just-function won’t sustain any of us.

Without the proper mechanic’s lifeblood to

Recalibrate all these lifeless moving parts we’re all just

Bound for the junk heap.

Overdue

I wheel myself in for inspection:

Open the hood

Expose the innards

Wait for His assessment.

It took me way longer to get here than it takes for Him to look.

Surprisingly gentle, thorough, and quick

He fusses with something (I don’t see what) and
I expect the damage report – as ever –

To be that this time I’ve ridden too far, too long

Without this scrutiny, this help, this exposure.

Instead, He bids me turn the ignition and

– Expecting dead space –

A deep resonant purr sounds instead.

Instead of more static misfires and sparks

A healthy hum of life and connection fires full and throaty.

Smiling

I shake my head in wonder and thanks and

Roll forward back into the stream

Anticipating a new horizon and steady current to

Carry me along, the Master Mechanic’s prints? My map.

Thank You.

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.

Crumbs

Feed me, Word of life.
I don’t mean to sound demanding –

Just desperate.

So much to think about 

Yet nothing too 

All these little lives 

Need filled right up

By You who has compassion 

Who leads beside springs of water* Is. 49:10

Otherwise we’d be left alone

To salvage and scrabble

In all this wide world

For some semblance of satiation

To at least fill these bellies

(Never mind nourish)

From all the shiny garbage heap-

So utterly much on the surface

But stinking underneath

‘Cause that’s the thing about all 

These many amusements:

Without Him

Nothing satisfies

All’s little more than a smoke screen distraction

Belying the true nature of life, of meaning, of real, of good.

So, Lord, please free the captives from all these many (false) warriors

Your plunder retrieved from the fierce.

Contend with all these many false gods

And please save these children.

May all mankind know that You, Lord,

Are THE Savior.

And in the meantime,

Thank You for (nourishing) crumbs

That constantly – consistently –

Keep the path blessedly illuminated 

With constant promise of fullness and expectation.

Thank You.

Sacred

  

Some things are too big to be processed

Too difficult, too tragic

Not suited for fitting into 

Neat little boxes

Bigger than words

“Unfixable”

In any tidy, clean-up-any-trace kinda sense.

Some things defy understanding –

Even if our tiny brains clamor for and demand it.

Some things just beg for 

Peace –

As in quiet, and time, and protection.

Some things are too much for us:

And yet we’re invited into them all the same.

Some things are sacred

And ought to be treated as such –

Carefully, quietly, beseechingly

As seekers:

Not as ones ready to impose any will of our own

But as wide-eyed children:

Ready, open, and open-handed to receive good gifts, 

– whatever they may be –

Wise direction

As given by the Giver

Not to be infringed upon by lesser ways of being

That we may be ready and willing to share on.

That we may be ready and willing to share on.

Oh, make us so…