The Walk...

 

**

 

Walk with me, My love

over this threshold,

into New Day...

 

Trust Me enough to loosen your grip

on what has gone before

Trust that there are good gifts still ahead,

not just behind...

Those Gifts I carefully chose

and gave to you are yours,

and will *always* be,

the Gold of those Gifts

has been skillfully

and wonderfully

woven into your very makeup...

integrated into your innermost beautiful being...

 

so leave off with fearfully, needlessly clinging

to something that is,

and always will be,

part of you...

 

...there is more building to do,

more I want to ingrain in you,

dimension still to be added

even more Beauty I want to bestow....

 

More than you can ask for

More than you can expect

More than you can imagine...

 

Oh Beloved of mine,

Let me open your eyes to see

Let me gently take your hand

and Lead you into even more Good,

 

Walk with Me, my Love

My Treasure

My Child,

 

There is still so much Good...

 

**

 

"The God of Heaven Himself is with us;

we His servants will arise

and build."

-Nehemiah 2:20

 

Gift III

 

 

 

*

 

fill me

with the fullness

of You

 

envelop me

in Your

embrace

 

tie me

with cords

of loving kindness

 

give me

as You were given

to the world

 

until I, myself

Become

Gift

 

*


~**~
 

Bridge

**

 

How graciously You share with me

 this space,

In Your Stable

In Your Kingdom

 

You teach me to be,

in both,

equally at Home,

as You are,

seamlessly moving

between the two

which are really,

and always,

One

 

Both hinds feet and High Places

are needed...

ashes and Beauty

relative obscurity and Royalty...

 

I am Your tender touch,

with one hand cupping the face of Your beloved,

with the other cupping the Face of Heaven

 

I am the golden scepter

held in Your steady Hand

extended toward your beloved

banishing fear

conveying Your call

to Come

to Breathe in Your Presence

to know the Kindness of their King

revealed in a Carpenter,

a Foot-Washer,

in One Who left Heaven

to hold Earth,

 

to form a Bridge,
 

and to make of us,

 

Bridges.

 

**

 

Merry Christmas,

from one beloved to another...

 

Gift II

 

 

*

 

so I pray, "Be Thou My Vision",

thinking to see

into Realms Unknown

and Mystery

and Things secreted away...

 

...but instead - or consequently -

I suddenly See,

Sunlight

diffused through my morning window

Golden

Moving like Water...

 

and the Beauty of it

makes me smile.

 

*

 

Gift

 

 

 

*(

 

250,000 miles to the moon,

500,000 there and back...

 

...amazing the lengths the heart will go to Love,

the capacity for which it's been graced

by a Creator Who Understands,

indeed Who formed the heart

for this very Purpose...

 

to Love,

to Be Loved,

to hold Love,

like an acorn

holds an oak tree...

like a stable

holds a Savior.

 

Wishing you God's Greatest Gift

this Christmas,

and *always*,

in the million miraculous ways

He makes Love known...

 

*(

 

"I have loved you

with an everlasting love."

-Jeremiah 31:3



wise men, seek Him

 

 

 

+

 

we move

amidst heaven and earth

hinds feet and high places

ethereal, untethered to terra

the Lovers...

we who know Him

are not always found where you'd expect

just as He was not found where expected

not under some steeple, but in a stable,

in loathsome obscurity

among forbidden things...

we speak, as He did,

not always from pulpits (vulgar barrier between Beloveds)

but at lakesides, firesides, tablesides.....

if you would find the extraordinary

peer into the ordinary...

You who seek Him

seek Him also where you would not;

seek Him in the places that scandalize your faith

and free you from dead dogma

look up from your pew

and see Him also

en plein air...

let not your walk with Him

be trudging and begrudging

but Dancing, Flying

Know the One who would be known

not as a prop in your precarious presbytery,

 

but as the One who's power is purveyed

in nothing your house of cards can hold.

 

+

 

"For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power,

and the Glory,

Forever."

-Matthew 6:13

 

Beauty

 

 

*

 

Oh heavy heart

Let Me sing softly to you

Let Me soothe you

and remind you

of what you know,

what maybe you've forgotten for a moment...

 

That candlelight is lovely

especially in the

Cold and Dark and Night

That Love persists

even long after...even when far away...or not yet...

 

That hearts can heal,

falling leaves are lovely,

and that against the backdrop of a winter sky

silhouetted still standing Oaks,

bereft and stripped bare

are still one of the most beautiful sights to behold...

 

Oh My heart,

Remember Beauty.....

 

There is 

 

Still

 

 so much

Beauty.

 

*

L'Chaim

 

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts,

nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord."

-Isaiah 55:8

 

~*

In our Western mindset, "suffering" is seen as inherently "bad", something to be avoided at all costs.  Our paradigm suggests if we are suffering, that "something must be wrong".  Whereas in other, more ancient cultures, suffering is seen as simply an integral and inevitable valid state, an intrinsic fundamental part of  the Life cycle itself.

No suffering, No Birth

 

When we attempt to subjugate suffering with pills, potions, drink, diversions, we stagnate in the very suffering from which we are trying to escape and stifle the intended end result: new Life.  When we resist the process, we stand in the way of the very excavation which will make room in our hearts to hold what comes after......

 

and there is an "after"

suffering need not have the last word,
if we'll let God finish His sentence.

 

When suffering is seen as some sort of stigma, we miss the opportunity, the doorway granted,

 

into new depth

 

into deeper communion

with each other

with our God

with the One "acquainted with grief"

 

we miss the Gift.

 

As we enter into this Season, celebrating the Birth which allowed all of us to be Reborn,

Let us remember the suffering that precipitated that Promise,

the death which preceded - and was servant to - the Life

Let us, in turn, see sorrow in a new light,

suffering for all that it is worth,

not as an end

but as a means to the intended end

which is,

of course,

and always,

 

The Beginning

 

~*



"I have come that they may have Life,

Abundant Life."

-John 10:10



Thanksgiving ~

 

 

 

*

 

The incomparable Gift of Love

even the smallest Glimmer of it

No Greater blessing can pour from

the Windows of Heaven

 

The Love of a moment

- or a Thousand Days -

can fill a heart for a Lifetime,

the Miracle and Magic

lingering long after...

 

It is nothing less

than Homecoming,

this Finding

this being Found,

and one can never be lost again

once the way has been shown

and walked together...

 

the Landscape is changed forever

lush for having Love's

footprints upon it,

loamy with the treasure

lent it for awhile...

 

...such a sweet while...

 

For this supreme Grace

This climax of Creation

The Almighty's Magnum Opus

 

May the Lord make us

 

truly

 

Grateful

*

"Now abide faith, hope, and love;
the greatest of these
is Love."
-1 Corinthians 13:13


Wings - haiku II

 

 

*

 

I must know the Art

of Landing, of Groundedness,

in order to Fly

 

~*~

 

I Rest in this Place

Waiting, Watchful Stillness which

precipitates Wings

 

*

 

 Ephesians 3:17-19

Returning

 

"In Returning and Rest you shall be saved..."

-Isaiah 30:15

 

+++

 

This Returning, This Rest

This Homecoming

Is Restoration.

 

Like an old, forgotten, Priceless Painting

is Restored,

one neglected, abused, left in dark places

too long exposed to decay

So You find me

So you still see Beauty

The Beauty originally Authored

and Intended by the Artist

You See...

 

You retrieve me out of the dark

out of the decay

You blow the dust off

and begin the meticulous work

of repairing the damage of decades...

 

You Restore my soul

You make new what must be made new

and with the Skill of a Master Artist,

You revive the original masterpiece

and return me

to my rightful place

 

Home again

with You.

 

+++

 

"The glory of the new house
will be even greater than the glory of the former,

and in this place, I will give Peace."

-Haggai 2:9

Homecoming

 

 

 

"One Thing is needed"

-Luke 10:42

 

+++

 

Our Purpose,

Our entire Purpose

for being on this planet,

is to become

the personification of

The Path we've found

from here to Heaven

 

Meaning,

True Meaning

is Found

in our finding and being found

by The Way,

in being so intimate with The Way

indeed One with Him,

that through our lives

others find their way Home

 

So many are starving to know

 

The Secret of Life...

 

The Secret of Life is living close enough to

the Heart of God

to hear His secrets,

and then to tell the whole world...

and not just to tell the Message,

but to become the Message,

the whole of our lives

becoming harbingers of

His True Heart

 

To become conduits of Christ

to a hungry and thirsty world

is the crux of our whole existence...

to become the Bread of Life
 with which He feeds His sheep

 to become the very Light

by which
He leads them

Home

 

+++

 

"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life"

-John 14:6

Reflection - haiku

 

 

 

*

 

let me reflect You

to a world who's eyes are starved

for the True Beauty...

 

*

 



emergence

 

"Awake, O north wind, and come, O south,

Blow upon my garden, that its spices may flow out..."

-Song 4:16

 

~*

 

So many cocoons have held me

And here am I

in the newest nest

once again

waiting for Wings...

 

But Perhaps,

 

in the Waiting,

Because Of

the Waiting

 

I Fly

 

Everyday

 

Every time I emerge

 

into this hungry

thirsty

World

 

-e.a.a. "Hindsfeet" 11/11/13

 

~~~*

 

"How lovely are your tents, O Jacob, Your dwellings, O Israel!

Like valleys that stretch out

Like Gardens by the Riverside,

Like aloes planted by the LORD,

Like cedars beside the waters.

He shall pour water from his buckets,

and his seed shall be in many waters."

 

-Numbers 24:5-7

Voce

 

"God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding. He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.'"

-Job 37:5, 6

*

God's voice

Thunders

in the

Silence

of snowfall,

 

in

diminutive

raindrops

that make up

a downpour,

 

in innumerable

autumnal leaves

quietly quilting themselves

one by one

blanketing the earth

in beauty,

 

and in 

the millions of moments,

miraculous and mundane,

that make up my life...

 

these also thunder

with the still small voice

of God

 

*

 

"...how small a whisper we hear of Him,
and the thunder of His power who can understand"

-Job 26:14

 





Lost and Found - A Prayer...

 

 

*

 

I tire of loss

I'm longing for Found

a little less Loss

a little more Found

 

To know You, God

sans smoke screen

sans all the

less-than lenses

that have been given me

to See

 

I want to be Amazed

Again

by Grace

by Mercy

by Second

and Third

and Thousanth

Chances

 

I want to stand

Tippy-Toed

and Wide Eyed

as I once did

as a child

full of anticipatory Delight

 

my trusting hands outstretched to Yours

waiting for inevitable

Wonderful...

 

I want to know

the One

Who lost love also

in that garden long ago

Who, with anguished Heart

and Sorrowed Soul

went looking for it,

in earnest,

Longing for Found

 

as I do.

 

*

 

Risen

~*~

 

And so the sun rises

 

Again

 

As it always has

 

As it always will...

 

...The night has had its say

 

And we listened patiently

(and not so patiently)

 

for The Lesson.

 

Duly noted, Nocturne.

 

But Now

 

It's Time

 

To bid adieu the darkness

 

To take hold the reins of Hope

 

To Move On,

 

To Lift our eyes

 

To See what's set Before us,

 

And with the Son,

 

To Rise.

 

~*~

 

"Weeping may endure for a night

But Joy comes in the morning."

-Psalm 30:5

 

 



Gethsemane

*

Anguished soul
bent low
and bare
with the crushing weight of
The End

my view of Beginning
(or anything Beyond)
obscured by this cross
which is,
of course,
a door,
as crosses always are

but now,
for now,
tears turn myopic
all vision of morning

and with You

I weep

in Gethsemane

^*

The Occasion.....

 

 

***

 

They do Still happen

And if you're Looking Up

you see

Do-overs

and

Double rainbows...

Broken seeds 

 

become saplings

the Stuff of beginnings

And the Someday that seemed so faraway

Suddenly becomes

 

Today

Redemption

and

Re-Creation

 

Another step,

Another night

defers to

First Light

Zoom out wide enough

to hold the Song

to hold the Day

and Rise

 

to The Occasion...

 

***



Letting Go II

"Death is swallowed up in Victory"

-1 Corinthians 15:54

 

~*~

More of a pirouette than a plummet

this Letting Go

 

It can be Gentle

 

and

 

Beautiful

 

With a Soft Landing

and a Laying to Rest

 

From this vantage point

("Looking Up"

instead of
Dreading Down)

 

I See the Sun above

Feel Your Arms below

Trust the Tenacity of Life

and the Wisdom
of Beginnings...

 

~*~

 

"Oh Death, Where is your sting?

Oh Grave, Where is your Victory?"

-1 Corinthians 15:55



Happy New Year...

 

"In the Beginning..."

-Genesis 1:1

 

+

 

The first day of the Jewish New Year, 5774,

begins at day's end,

Sunset

tonight,

 

...where Beginnings so often happen,

 

in the darkness,

in the dying uncertain light,

in the apparent ending of a thing...

 

in the Letting Go-s....

 

Happy New Beginning my friends,

Happy Brand New Day

Happy Rosh Hashanah...

 

It's going to be Extraordinary...

 

+

 

"You crown the year with Your goodness,
And Your paths drip with abundance."

-Psalm 65:11

Genesis

 

"In the Beginning"

-Genesis 1:1

 

~+~

 

You hold me through the tantrum

through the kicking and screaming

through the heartbreaking bewilderment

of me,

of Your child...

 

...till the tears finally ebb

till my heaving heart slows

till Breath returns...

 

You hold me close close close...

till all is once again

Rest

 

and I curl up into the heart of You

buried in You

broken in You

but ready,

once again,

 

to

 

Bloom

 

~+~

 

"The wilderness and the wasteland shall be glad,
and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose"

-Isaiah 35:1

The End?

 

"For only a penny you can buy two sparrows, yet not one sparrow falls to the ground without your Father knowing about it.  As for you, even the very hairs of your head are all numbered, so do not be afraid; you are worth much more than millions of sparrows!"

-Matthew 10:29-31

 

~+~

 

With every ounce of courage I have

(and with a great deal of cowardice too)
I let go...

 

..of all I have into all of You...

 

...the drop between the two feels like an eternity....
...like an acorn letting go of its oak,

 

all I feel is the falling......

 

The latent life that waits to emerge, the oak I am to become, giving shade, shelter, and strength to many, to all who come, begins to stir, even as I am broken open and buried,

covered in darkness and dying......

 

.....The Beginning.....

 

~+~

 

"That they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be Glorified."

-Isaiah 61:3

Behind the Seen...

 

"...and the temple, when it was being built, was built with stone finished at the quarry, so that no hammer or chisel or any iron tool, was heard in the temple while it was being built."

-1 Kings 6:7

 

***

 

"...but I don't hear anything..."

 

We don't always perceive with our senses what God is building in our lives; we tend to lean heavily on what we can see, hear, touch.....but so often God's work goes on beneath that surface, beyond what we can sense in the traditional sense of the word, and too often, we discount what we can't see, we dismiss what we can't hear, we toss aside what cannot be touched.....trading the transcendental for the tangible, overlooking Heaven's Hand entirely.

 

...We assume nothing's happening.

 

So much is happening.

 

All the time.

 

All around us.

 

I submit that it is only the merest percentage of the Almighty's activity which actually registers on our rusty ol' radar...yet how often and how hastily conclusions are drawn based on that laughably limited data.  How often do we intellectualize ourselves right out of knowing the mind of God?

 

So much of our despair, so many dark nights of the soul, so much angst could be averted if we allowed for what is beyond our scope.  If we could see the bigger picture, hear the building going on behind the scenes, our ears would become deaf to discouragement, and our disillusionment would all but disappear.
 

***

 

"Indeed these are the mere edges of His ways, and how small a whisper we hear of Him!  But the thunder of His power who can understand?"

-Job 26:14



Let There Be...and there was.

 

"Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know."

-Jeremiah 33:3

 

***

When we cry to God, God answers with His Word, and that very Word with which He answers us becomes Flesh, fleshes out in our lives.  Everything we need begins as a Word, is contained in His Word.

Man needed a Savior, the Word Himself became flesh.

We need light, the Word Himself becomes a lamp to our feet.

We need healing, God speaks a Word

Captives need deliverance, deliverance is preached, or spoken

and the Truth of the Word makes them free

 

We underestimate the power in the deceptively innocuous,
seemingly intangible Word

Yet it was a Word that created our World and the Heavens above,

"Let there be..." and there was.

 

To take it futher, John 1:1 says that the Word is God. 

Let that little gem stew in your noodle for five minutes.

 

So what is God telling you?  What is His Word speaking to you?  With what piece of Himself has God answered you?  Take some time to be still, to be quiet, so you can listen, so you can hear...

Consider the posture you take when you are truly listening for something...

 

Jesus said in Luke 10:42, "One thing is needed" referring to Mary sitting at His feet and hearing His Word.  Sitting, being still, and hearing God's Word is not a passive pursuit, but a holy interaction with the Word Himself, wherein everything that is needed is invoked into our lives, so that Word, once again, can become Flesh, continuous creation, our lives becoming a consecrated conduit between Heaven and Earth.

 

"Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord."

-Luke 1:45

 

***

 

Garden

 

"A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse,

a spring shut up, a fountain sealed."

-Song 4:12

 

~ ~ ~

 

To everything there is a season,

Seasons of confinement are followed by Seasons of release

this cycle evidenced in the smallest of seeds...

The life within, locked away,

but potent with potential when planted...

 

There are seasons when we are, indeed, sealed and shut up,

but these seasons are meant to precipitate a powerful emergence...

Even the bible is silent for four hundred years,

between the old and the new testament,

as the bow was being drawn and directed

tensed to release the embodiment of Torah into Terra,

Word become Flesh

Seed become Sight

The Messiah

 

So also our lives are meant to emerge

from seed sown

to Heaven's harvest...

We are, for awhile, sealed and shut up,

but as a means to an end,

to bloom, to blossom,

to bear fruit with which He can feed His sheep

beauty for ashes

rest for the weary
succor for every sojourning soul

Word, once again, become flesh

The very garden of God

 

~ ~ ~

 

"Awake, O north wind, and come, O south!

Blow upon my garden once again,

That its spices may flow out"

-Song 4:16

Respirate

 

 "Come from the four winds, O Breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may Live."

-Ezekiel 37:9

***

 

Respirate......literally, Re-spirit......

...to be restored to life, infused with Spirit, also known as the Holy Spirit,

the Ruach ha kodesh in Hebrew,

literally translated,

the very Breath of God.

Wishing all who are weary today

Breath

Respiration

 

Be Still, Look Up, Breathe Deep, my friends,

 

The Very Breath of God

 

***

 

"I will cause Breath to enter into you,

and you shall Live."

-Ezekiel 37:5

True Love's Turning....

^"The appearance of the wheels and their workings was like the color of beryl, and all four had the same likeness. The appearance of their workings was, as it were, a wheel in the middle of a wheel."

-Ezekiel 1:16

+

 

Even as God desires that we "live and move and have our being" in Him, so also, God wants to live, move, and have His being within us, to live through us....to live out His Life through our Life,

a wheel within a wheel...

 

Seamless interconnection, Completely engaged with our Creator

...He moves, we move, He turns, we turn, He stops, we stop.....

 

This gorgeous intimacy, Two become One, Perfect Unity,

Our triune lives the physical, mental, spiritual expression of The Trinity, of True Love Himself...

+

 

^"...that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us... that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one,

that the world may know...that You love them..."

-John 17:21-23

 

 

Come

+++

Ours is not a neat and tidy tradition, religiously speaking.....Our God seems to have a thing for the sideways, the wayward, the wanderlusts among us.....Ragamuffins and Ruffians seem to be His companions of choice...Ours is an off-the-beaten-path and back-street savior, as evidenced throughout the New Testament. 

His strategems scandalized the "saintly", His social mores turned the modus operandi of the day on its ear.....He sought out sinners' company, He broke bread with those more at home in brothels and barrooms...He hung out on the fringes with the fringes,

and they loved Him

 

He tore down ivory towers that obscured peoples' view of God - replete with marble foyers, chandeliers, and the red carpet of the day -

 

and instead built His kingdom in the stables of our hearts, ever his humble birthplace and hangout of choice.

 

Ours is not a polished prince who wants polished prose
out of a polished posterity,

I think He rather prefers the prayers that are a little wrinkly, maybe with gum stuck to the bottom; I think He wants Real and not Rehearsed......Velveteen Rabbits versus the virtuous self-righteous.

I think He wants the fresh air of imperfect friends

not the Febreeze of practiced pharisaical dogma

 

so really, if you want to be like Jesus, Come...

Come misfit and messy, Come illegitimate and exposed,
Come vagabond and vulnerable

 

That's how He came...

and His coming

changed

the

World.

 

+++

 

^"Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples.  And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

When Jesus heard that, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  Why don't you go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”

 

-Matthew 9:10-13

Pilgrim's prayer...

 

 

***

 

"Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th'encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on..."

 

-John Newman

the 99 and the 1...

 

 

***

 

"What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?"

-Luke 15:4

Minding

"to be spiritually minded is life and peace"

-Romans 8:6

 

***

 

To be mindful of spirit......to put our mental energy into spirit.....this, Paul says, breeds life and peace.......

 

When I consider where my mental energies usually go, I would have to say they are invested rather heavily into the body, into my flesh and bone, rather than spirit.  If I were to tally up this particular investment, I would guess that the mental energy I put into, say, my waistline, directed elsewhere, could probably solve world peace....and certainly hasn't produced "life and peace", angst and self-loathing are most often the outcome, especially when carb calculations come into play.  ; )

 

I wonder then, if redirected, what the kinetic energy of a spirit-focused mind would set in motion...the seed of an acorn creates the mighty Oak.....what, if tended to, could the seed of my spirit produce into this world....if steeped in God's presence, could Word not once again become flesh?  Could the apparently ethereal and insubstantial spirit become substance for a world desperately in need of substance?  Bread of Life and Living Water, Life and Peace, for all who are hungry, for all who are thirsty, for all who long for life and pray for peace? 

 

It would seem I've placed the cart before the horse...flesh before spirit. 

Both are important, but equally important,

 is which is driving which.......

***

"The earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God."

-Romans 8:19

Why?

 

+

 

....When our world gets turned upside down,

our hearts once again sucked under in grief.....

We tend to turn toward Heaven and ask,

 

"Why?"

 

I wonder,

 

If Heaven is also turned toward us

Tears in His eyes

and on His lips,

the very same query......

 

"Why?"

 

+

 

"Jesus wept."

-John 11:35

 

For the victims of the Boston marathon massacre...

which all of us are....

Lord, hear our prayer

Be Still My Soul