Finished

+ + +

So much ground covered

Soul searing soil which seemed insurmountable

Terrain which towered over us

Heartbreaking in its apparent invincibility...

But look behind,

See,

This Way we thought impossible

impassable

utterly implausible

Now threaded with our footsteps

taken one by one

by one

by one...

and Finally,

It Is Finished.....

Now,

It Begins...

*** 2015 ***

+ + +

"Eye has not seen, nor has ear heard, nor has the mind of man conceived 

the things which God has prepared..."

-1 Corinthians 2:9

The Last Word

"In The Beginning was The Word"

John 1:1

+

The Word

Which became Light

Which dealt the deathblow to darkness

In The Beginning

Still speaks

Still shines

Still writes on our lives

Authoring and Finishing

Our Story

in

Light

The deepest night

is no match

for this Dictum

The Word goes deeper still

In The Beginning

In The Middle

In The End

Light will have The Last Word

+

"I AM The Alpha and the Omega,

The Beginning and The End,

says the Lord God,

He Who Is

and Who was

and Who Is To Come,

The Almighty

The Ruler of All."

-Revelation 1:8

...Let there be Light, a Hanukkah blessing...

"Let There Be Light"

-Genesis 1:3

+

The lengths we will go

to procure this primal need

even synthesizing it

with phones, tv's, trifles,

these cubic zirconia counterfeits of what was given "In The Beginning"...

which fall into our stomachs, our base appetites,

but miss our Hearts entirely, where the true Hunger lies...

The True Treasure

Buried under the impedimenta of our lives

Waits for the soul, the seeker

who will not settle for 

smoke and mirrors...

Our deepest selves Know,

and still seek Him

and will not be satisfied

with sparkly substitutions

ersatz ephemeral fulfillment...

We Hear, through the din of false diamonds

True Light

Tireless Beacon Calling us Home

Bidding us Follow His Voice

Out of darkness,

Into our 'Let There Be' Beginning...

+

"What you seek

Is Seeking You."

-Rumi

Faith

+

Remember what was shown you

The Glimpse Given your Eyes-To-See

on the Mount

those High Places

that Day...

Hold to Heaven's View

Gifted you

Choose the Lens that Lifted you

that Lifts you

that will Lift you

into Landscape intended all along

Navigate by this View

Do not settle for the simple way

the base elements

ubiquitous

easily attained

Hold to Wings, My Love

Hold to High Places

Choose the Way where there seems to be no way

The Sacred Ground your beautiful feet

were Created to traverse...

Lift your eyes, Love

Raise your sights once again...

Faith, My child!

Faith!

+

"We walk by faith, not by sight"

2 Corinthians 5:7

Dew

"I will be like the dew to Israel."

-Hosea 14:5

+

A gentle thing

An Annointing

Arrives quiet

Anticlimactic

After such a Long night...

Such a Long

Long

Night

Settles, feather down soft

Soaking

Covering in halcyon Healing

Culling deep Grief

Barest Touch tending to

the bloody blows endured

merciless, devilish destruction

and dark deeds done

finally spent

Silenced

Displaced by this Delicate Dictum

Blanketed in this,

Morning's Benediction.

+

"The night is far spent"

-Romans 13:12

...

+

I Love you.

-God

+

Dots...

"Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed, and in Your book they were all written, the days fashioned for me, before ever they took shape, when as yet there were none of them."

-Psalm 139:16

+

Dots, like a constellation, run through our lives,

Seemingly disconnected

Disjointed

Their place against the black sky

Deceptively random

and Irrelevant

but Zoom Out

and See

A form emerges

A cosmos where there was only chaos

Method where there was madness

Something to steer by

Events, previously unrelated

become a Path

Providence, thought fickle and heartless,

becomes a Master Planner

What makes no sense

What tears out our hearts

What brings us to our knees

when looked at through the lens of the long run

becomes 

Meaningful

Wait for it,

Have a little faith...

The Finger that flung out the stars

Will one day

Connect all the

Dots

+

When the fog lifts...

"When the cloud was taken up from above the tabernacle, 

the children of Israel went onward in all their journeys."

-Exodus 40:36

+

"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep..." is what Frost wrote, an eloquent word picture of what this Life so often looks like...

I'm not sure how "lovely" I think it all is.....sometimes it just feels "dark and deep" and not so lovely, not at all.....sometimes it just feels menacing, unending, oppressive.....sometimes I feel closed in and claustrophobic, barely seeing the hand in front of my face, holding to the tiniest thread and semblance of a path......Could this really be The Path?  

I want meadows, and clearings, wide-open spaces and lookouts that let me see for miles......not this plodding, this panting, this praying for daylight.......

I long for Frost's "Lovely"......I tire of "Dark and Deep".........but he tells me the two are not mutually exclusive......the paradox of "Lovely" and "Dark and Deep", paired, purposely, quite purposely, like a chess move playing out, plotting itself, into my Path.  And the thought comes that perhaps, perhaps, all this "Dark and Deep" belies something extraordinarily, exquisitely, and unexpectedly "Lovely", which, though hidden, pervades the Whole.  Perhaps, without "Dark and Deep", there is no "Lovely"....not the lasting kind of "Lovely" anyway......

....I want the Lasting Kind.  For myself, and for all others who will follow in my footsteps, the ones who will come behind, who will also lay Lovely ground...

So if "Dark and Deep" must coincide with "Lovely", if they are the inseparable companions Frost made them out to be, and if embracing dark and deep means I will also hold in my arms Lovely, for a world who is starving for Lovely, then Let It Be.....And with Isaiah, regarding these Woods, this Life, I say, "Here am I, Send me."...

...Bring on the Dark.  Bring on the Deep.  

Bring on the Lovely.

+

"I am dark, but lovely, oh daughters of Jerusalem, 

like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon."

-Song of Solomon 1:5

breadcrumbs...

breadcrumbs

"We're all just walking each other Home."

-Ram Dass

~~

My book, a compilation of posts from this blog, is now available on Amazon for Kindle.

My friends, I've walked this path with some of you for years, 

some of you just weeks or days...

All of you have had a part in the creation of this book, 

of the Life it took on, the Breath that it holds.

  

You shone your light, you lent your perspective, so generously into my life and onto my path; we journeyed together through calm waters and crucibles, through light and dark, holding each other's hands and helping each other to see, just a little bit farther down the road.

It is with a humble and deeply grateful heart, deeply grateful to each and every one of you, my traveling companions, that I bring this offering to our table,

breadcrumbs

~~

"I am God's pencil.  A tiny bit of pencil with which He writes what He likes.  He writes through us, and however imperfect we may be, He writes beautifully."

~Mother Theresa

breadcrumbs

breadcrumbs

"We're all just walking each other Home."

-Ram Dass

~~

My book, a compilation of posts from this blog, is now available on Amazon for Kindle.

My friends, I've walked this path with some of you for years, 

some of you just weeks or days...

All of you have had a part in the creation of this book, 

of the Life it took on, the Breath that it holds.

  

You shone your light, you lent your perspective, so generously into my life and onto my path; we journeyed together through calm waters and crucibles, through light and dark, holding each other's hands and helping each other to see, just a little bit farther down the road.

It is with a humble and deeply grateful heart, deeply grateful to each and every one of you, my traveling companions, that I bring this offering to our table,

breadcrumbs

~~

"I am God's pencil.  A tiny bit of pencil with which He writes what He likes.  He writes through us, and however imperfect we may be, He writes beautifully."

~Mother Theresa

Wide Water II

+

The Water is wide,

But there are Wings...

and there are boats that carry two......

There is a light on that far shore

coming into view

The same currents that battered us,

That broke us,

bent us to their mysterious will,

now carry us

and plot our course,

into the stream intended

all along...

+

"He shepherded and guided them"

-Psalm 78:72

Lost?

"What you are seeking

is seeking you."

~Rumi

+

Apparent contradictions exist,

carefully pointed out

with our self-made scepters

our limited scope, 

based on our combined five minutes of experience we've had on this planet:

Contradictions in the Book of books,

The Word we follow,

even where God Himself is concerned....

In Reality,

There are no irreconcilable differences,

Only finite minds which cannot span Infinite Distances.

Enter the Way Himself,

the Truth,

the One who came to bridge the gap

Our Path Homeward is plotted through Paradox,

Soaked in Mystery;

So much depends on knowing the Unknowable,

Faith asks us to begin at the end, 

to find rest in the Final Analysis,

The Constant of our Equation:

that God Is.

that God is Good.

That God is Love.

If the factors you're currently considering

do not add up to this end,

keep seeking...

You will Find,

and in the finding,

You will be Found.

+

"May you be rooted deep in Love and founded securely on Love, that you may have the power to grasp what is the breadth and length and height and depth of Love; to know the Love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."

-Ephesians 3:17-19

Mercy

"Deep calls to deep"

-Psalm 42:7

+

You carved and dug

Deep into me

Mercilessly

(or so it seemed)

And made of me

Your Well

in this desert

For all who are thirsty

For all who would drink

Deeply

of Your

Mercy

+

"They shall partake of the abundance of the seas,

and of treasures hidden in the sand."

-Deuteronomy 33:19

Wholehearted....

+

The Heart is enlarged in still small spaces

Multiplied in Solitide

Woven Wide across worlds when given to One…

Thus stretched

This canvas can hold multitudes,

and more Beauty 

than ever it held ashes…

When willing to wait at the empty table

For it to be filled

The heart becomes a feast

even its broken

loaves and fishes fragments

become food

and fill to the brim

the baskets

of His Beloved.

+

Calling all angels...

+

Standing on this precipice

between 

terror of Falling

and

the 

thinnest 

thread 

of 

hope 

for

Flight

.....Wish me Wings

+++

Calling all angels

Which Way...

"He made known His Ways to Moses,

His acts to the children of Israel."

-Psalm 103:7

+

The children of Israel saw the cart,

Moses saw the Horse;

The children of Israel witnessed the effect,

Moses knew the Cause

The children of Israel benefitted from second cause,

Moses interacted with the Primum Movens Himself.

We can settle for outer court living,

protected, certainly,

provided for, of course,

partaking of what has been parceled out to us in God's word

Experiencing Providence from a distance,

Or

We can Live

in intimate interaction

with God Himself

Knowing First hand the Word

which becomes what we see fleshed out all around us

We can become conduits of creation,

not just the beneficiaries of what has been created

There is More than we've been settling for

There is So Much More

We can settle for making a living, for making our way,

or we can Know The Way Himself.

+

"Show me your way that I may know You"

-Exodus 33:13

Held

+

no matter how many rugs are pulled out from under us, 

underneath,

Still,

are the Everlasting Arms.

+

"There is no one like God,

Who rides the heavens to help you...

The Eternal God is your Refuge,

and underneath are

the Everlasting Arms."

-Deuteronomy 33:26, 27

Matrix

+

It's not about how good we are, 

It's about how Loved we are.

And we are so very Very Loved.

+

"For God So Loved the world..."

John 3:16

Simple

+

We serve a Savior Who chose a stable for His birthplace,

A God Who preferred the company of Fisherman to that of Pharisees,

A Lord Who advised the rich young ruler,

not to follow hundreds of laws,

but instead, said simply, "Follow Me."

When offered a thousand rams, ten thousand rivers of oil, even His followers' first born in some twisted attempt to procure His favor,

He gently redirected their well-meaning but misguided efforts with the simple dictum,

Just Do Justly,

And Love Mercy,

And Walk Humbly With Your God.

There is no song and dance necessary to secure your salvation,

No hoops to jump through

that will make Him love you more

Jesus died an agonizing death

to forever join your heart to Heaven's,

He did the hard part

So you could keep it Simple.

+

"My yoke is easy, My burden is light."

-Jesus

Stable

+

God has a thing for stables

The frills seem lost on Him

The fancy-schmancy doesn't seem to float His boat

We have a God

Who digs

Raw and Real

Who would rather be up to His elbows

in the nitty-gritty of our lives,

than to have the wrapped-up-pretty version

we so often offer,

the one that obscures the Gift inside,

the complicated-messy-conundrum He's so crazy about.

He wants your Voice,

not your script

He wants your Heart

not an Excel spread sheet

He wants to confide

without having to cushion and clean it up

He wants to sit in silence

with one who hears anyway

When given the choice

between homogenized and humble

between white-washed and weathered

between the insulation of the inn

and the blood and sweat of the stable,

We have a God Who chooses the Stable,

Every time.

Who makes Himself at home there,

So we can make ourselves at home in Heaven.

+

"For now I have chosen and set apart this house, that my name may be there forever; 

My attention and my concern will be there always."

-2 Chronicles 7:16

Yet

"...Although my house is not so with God, 

Yet He has made with me an everlasting covenant,

Ordered in ALL things and Secure."

-2 Samuel 23:5

+

Yet

The Game Changing Word

The Difference between

serving The Living God

and any other god

This tiny word

contains the entire gospel,

contains All the Amazing Grace

we will ever need

Our Soundness,

Our Salvation,

Our Second and Forty-Second Chances

are Sealed and Secure,

 we are Covered and Kept,

Not because we so perfectly keep our promises,

But because He Always 

Always,

Always

Keeps His.

+

"...This is All my Salvation,

and all my desire."

-2 Samuel 23:5

Modus Operandi

~~

To Live

So that we Leave

A shadow of a doubt,

A wondering,

If we were,

Indeed,

Their angel

Sent From God

~~

"As He Is, so are we in this world."

-1 John 4:17

Finished?

"It is Finished."

-John 19:30

+

Finished.

Done For.

Down for the Count.

So was Jesus.

Hanging

Helpless

Bloodied and Beaten

The words, "It is Finished" on His lips.

And yet

And Yet,

That agonizing utterance precipitated

The Greatest Beginning

in History.

When we, too, are hanging,

When even that all-important Last Thread has snapped,

When the dreadful feeling fills our hearts,

the one in our terrified bewilderment that we barely dare to utter,

"My God! My God?!  Why have You forsaken me??!"

We may also be,

Paradoxically and Providentially,

At The Beginning.

...and this very paradox, agonizing as it is,

would dictate that when we, too, are Finished

what has been Authored can finally come to pass

In this Divine Economy,

Death sets the stage,

becomes the Doorway,

and is servant to,

Always

and Ever,

The Resurrection.

"Life comes back.  Life Always comes back."

+

"Death is swallowed up, utterly vanquished forever, in victory.  Oh death, where is your victory?  Oh grave, where is your sting?  Thanks be to God, Who gives us the victory and makes us Conquerors with and through the Lord Jesus Christ."

-1 Corinthians: 15:55-57

Soak

(Chincoteague Island, Virginia)

~~~

Soaking with You,

in You,

You in me...

Every cell, every synapse

engorged

in this ethereal effusion,

Heart, Mind,

Body, Spirit

Enjoined,

Beautifully,

One

Thus saturated,

Thus enmeshed,

I emerge,

Brimming withYour Being,

Your very Essence...

...Through me

Slake the thirst of thousands,

Let tears be traded

for the Torrent

of Your Presence

Into this desert, wring out the Deluge of You,

once again, drench dust with the Divine,

Quench the deepest place in every parched heart,

Rain out of me,

and Flood

Your Beloved.

~~~

"Passing through the Valley of Weeping, 

they make it a Place of Springs;

The Rain also covers it and fills the pools with blessings."

-Psalm 84:6

Flying Dreams...

~~

The Offering

"The people will come to your light,

and Kings to the brightness of your Rising"

-Isaiah 60:3

~~

Burned

Utterly Consumed

Ashes

Alter empty of All-that-was

The body that held

Life,

Love,

Breath

Fed, Mercifully,

to Flame

Now Spirit, Caught Fire,

Can Burn,

No longer suffocated,

starved of Air,

~~ It Rises ~~

Engulfed in this Gorgeous Fiery Light,

Flesh burns away in a few painful hours,

But Spirit is Fuel for Eternity,

Spent like the Sun,

For The Son

A Lamp

For All who are lost,

Lovely Luminary Shining

For Worlds upon Worlds,

Showing

Weary Warriors,

Languishing Lovers,

and Every Precious Prodigal,

The Way to go Home

~~

"Those who would be Light

Must endure Burning."

-Dr. Viktor Frankl

Out of the Woods.....

"Who is this, coming out of the wilderness,

leaning on her Beloved?"

-Song of Solomon 8:5

~~

Come Out of the Woods now, Beloved..

Just this Way...

You see the Light

begin to Flood your Path

from the Clearing up ahead.....

.....Just Up Ahead......

And you know

And you Realize

Afterall

After All,

That I AM,

Indeed,

The Good Shepherd

~~

...a little slice......

Blue Ridge Sunset from the top of Wintergreen...

...i.e. "Heaven"

Freedom

(Blue Ridge Mountains seen from the top of Wintergreen)

~~

"God gives Wings to those who are not content to ride an ass."

~Rumi

Beloved II .....

"In this union and communion with Him, love is brought to completion and consummation,

because as He is, so are we in this world."

-1 John 4:17

+

Equal parts

Humanity

and Divinity,

We move between the two,

marrying the two,

as He did,

Effortlessly,

Beautifully,

Between 

Groundedness

and Godliness,

A bridge from

Holy Ground

to Holy God,

Jacob's Ladder,

Living,

Lifting others

With Hinds Feet footing

in our own Belovedness

We become the way

to the High Places,

to their place,

as Chosen,

as Cherished,

as the Beloved

+

"He has made my feet like Hinds Feet,

He makes me walk in the High Places"

-Habakkuk 3:19