Vocare

"The Word was God." - John 1:1

"I am the voice" - John 1:23

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Sacred Cyrano Union

Word

and

Voice

Still Spoken

Still Creating

Beautifully Blended

as In The Beginning

the Let There Be

Still Speaks

Bringing the Beloved

to Life

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Begin Again...

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Daily Reborn

Out of this chrysalis

Into a world

Also longing

for

Rebirth

I breathe Genesis Breath

Into every seeking soul

laying Potter's Hands

on sacred heads

speaking "Let There Be..."

into cocoons of clay...

Till the Beloved

Once Again

is Reborn

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"Blessed is the one whose strength is in You, whose heart is set on pilgrimage...

they pass through the Valley of Weeping and make it a place of springs

and the early rain forms pools of blessing."

-Psalm 84

Torn

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I have sweat so much blood

In this Eden turned Gethsemane,

Died so many deaths,

Been consumed in the furnace of this world,

That I am now

More Spirit than substance

More Flame than flesh

Torn

Like that Veil

Two thousand years ago

To let in Heaven

-The very Veil men, 

mere hirelings who purport to represent Providence

Have spent centuries patching up,

The repulsive presumption of peddling Providence from pulpits

The high treason of imposing taxes on the exports of Heaven -

So He finds a way around

As He always has,

Like a River running around impertinent pebbles

Like an Ocean surging over impostor shores

Through Ruffian Royalty

Through human holy of holies,

Through those who,

Like their Leader,

Would lay down their lives

Would give their all

Would be Torn

So that Living Water

and Covenant Blood

Could once again

Flow Freely

For the sake of seeing His Kingdom Come

For the sake of His Will be Done

For the sake of once again

Letting in His "Let there be..."

For the sake of His Beloved,

Let us be

Torn

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-Matthew 6:10

Beloved Beginning

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We all know the story,

"In the Beginning

God Created..."

Birds and Brooks,

Moonrises and Mountains,

Wind, Sand, and Stars...

All that we see

He brought into being

By speaking a Word,

"Let There Be...",

~ With one Staggering Exception ~

When it came to creation's climax

The Most High's magnum opus,

Namely,

Mankind,

It was not a detached dictum

With which we were fashioned,

But rather God made a distinction in our design

By taking a Hands-on approach...

All the wonders previously formed

Became mere backdrop

As in this pinnacle moment,

"Let there be..."

became

"Let Us make..."

The Potter proceeded to push up His sleeves,

Pick up His clay,

And with a tenderness that brought all of Heaven to tears

This Master Craftsman got His Hands dirty

As He,

In The Beginning,

In the first intimate interaction

Between Deity and dust,

Skillfully Sculpted

His friend,

His companion,

His Beloved

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Genesis 1:26-27

fools?

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God fits into our finite framework

The way an oak tree condescends to fit into an acorn

Considering our scale against the backdrop of our solar system

(Which is, in itself,

A mere drop in the ocean of the universe)

A modicum of humility may be in order,

A pause

In our passing of judgement

May be called for,

Before doling out

Our "God is Dead" dictums;

The scale lent us by the stars and space

Should silence such impertinence

God lends His vision to our limited lens

Tucks Himself into our tiny existence,

Which holds about five factors

of the Billion Factor equation

in which we live, and move, and have our being...

The factors on which we so cleverly base our conclusions

About the Creator of the universe,

The Most High God,

The Supreme Being...

........how cute of us..........

.....how 

Absolutely

Adorable....

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"The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God' "

-Psalm 14:1

What if.......

"If I make my bed in hell,

even there,

You Are With Me."

-Psalm 139:8

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What if

God So Loved,

So Much so,

That He could not bear

To see His beloved suffer death's agonies alone

To stand by while we endured

the soul carving crucifixions

to which we are

so often subjected

in this fallen world...

felled by our own hands...

He begged us choose life

we chose death,

He offered Deity

We chose the Deceiver,

He gave us a Garden

We chose Gethsemane...

He could've turned away, as a lesser god would,

He could've abandoned us to the crucifying consequences,

Dismissed us out of Hand forever...

But Instead,

Instead,

He laid open His Hands

to the pounding of nails,

Laid open His faithful heart

to the risk of further rejection

He traded His throne for thorns,

His comfort for a cross,

He laid aside Heaven

and stepped into our hell...

Determined if that's where we decided to make our bed

He would lie down,

even there,

with us...

We quote, by rote,

the too familiar words,

"If we are joined in His death,

we shall also partake of His life..."

Forgetting,

I think,

that it is not we,

in some show of self-righteous piety,

who join Him,

Rather it was He,

in a show of unfathomable Passion,

Who joined us...

Who joins us still...

 Whose joining rejoins us 

to Heaven

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"  For if we are one with Him [permanently united] in the likeness of His death, we will also certainly be [one with Him and share fully] in the likeness of His resurrection."

-Romans 6:5

Segues, Seeds, and Seasons, a reprise

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Seasons do eventually change no matter how endless things may feel, whether we desperately want things to stay the same
or whether we're waiting with bated breath for something new...

It is the nature of things, the way of life,
ever evolving...

Sometimes we defy the transition so stubbornly, like a toddler throwing a tantrum when her parents insist on throwing out some favored but now ill-fitting garment, with no understanding that something newer, better, and much more comfortable is in the making and forthcoming. With that same futility and short-sightedness we hold on to bygone seasons with a mental vicegrip even after the season has grown old or stale or has ended all together, but, as my Mom use to say, "It doesn't matter if you wear your galoshes in the Summer, Honey, it isn't gonna make the Spring stay." We need to trust that as much as we loved the garment of the time gone by, however familiar and comfortable it was, there is something better in the making. Something that will fit our evolving life and that will foster further growth.

Of necessity the prior seasons that coddled us and were conducive to our growth must fall away to make possible the new life. But leaving these confines is not always easy, the space that felt so manageable, so secure, like a butterfly's cocoon. The transition, while natural, can be traumatic. It's so easy to feel disillusioned during these segues. We are uprooted from the old, but not quite yet rooted in the new. We are waiting to find our footing and even when we finally do, the new land can feel so foreign and we go through nothing less than culture-shock as we venture forward. New beginnings are rarely wrapped up pretty with a bow on top, but rather tend to be trademarked by screaming babies, shattered seeds, civil wars and the like.

During a devastating time of agonizing uncertainty in author Elisabeth Elliot's life, she recorded an instance where, completely distraught and disoriented, not knowing which way was up, she ran out to her back yard, sunk onto her knees and cried out to God for answers...The answer came...in the form of an acorn.

Her eyes fell on the little seed beneath her and the words that flooded her mind were these...

"When the acorn falls and is buried, all it knows is the falling and the darkness and the dying; it has no idea of the oak tree that's going to come out of it's life. If it did, the death would seem insignificant, and instead of fear there would be joyful abandonment into My plan. Look at the acorn and trust Me."

Perhaps it's time to let go of the crumbling scaffolding of past seasons...allow what has died to be buried, so that new life can come, so that we can see when it comes...

...it will surely come.

Look at the acorn and trust Me.

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"Behold, I do a new thing"

Isaiah 43:19

Real - Part I

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These brief bursts

Where we see,

With heartbreaking Clarity,

For just a Moment,

Real

Before "reality" realizes the breach

And rushes back in,

like an ocean wave over

seashell treasures in the sand

suffocating What Was Seen

As though It never was...

And we wonder,

And question what we saw,

And dismiss as a trick of the light,

The Truest Light

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"Let there be Light"

Genesis 1:3

Tether

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You disguise us in flesh

As You did Jesus

Bodies tethering us to Terra Firma

Lest we fly

And forget our charge

The land-locked souls

For whom we are here

We are The Smugglers

of Your Image

Formed in us

Breathed in us

The which we bear into a world

Who is Longing to know

What You Really look like

Unlikely purveyors of Providence

We are found in just as unlikely places

 - As You always were

As You always are -

Not always in pews and pulpits and parishes,

More often in pubs and dog parks and sacred places of the sort

We move quietly among them

To deliver the Goods

To tether their spirits

to Heaven

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

1 John 4:17

The Kiss

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The First Kiss,

A Breath...

Creator pressing His lips into Clay

Bellows bringing to Life,

Stoking the soul,

Blowing into Blaze

the Sacred fire in the Beloved

Mouth to Mouth

The lips of The Original Lover
Awakened Love
Animated Spirit

Enlivened the lifeless

And made One of two...

....As all good kisses do

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"The Lord God formed man, breathed into him, and man became a living being, complete in body and in spirit."

Genesis 2:7

Prayer

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This Gorgeous Communion...

Holy of Holies,

Most Secret of Secret Places,

Sacred Samaritan Well...

Here our hearts intermingle,

I draw from You

You draw from me...

We drink deeply and are drenched, 

soaked through,

slaked once again,

Word Beautifully Becoming

 flesh of my flesh,

bone of my bone,

Bread of Life,

The aroma of which

wafts out to a waking world,

and We become

for others

Communion

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"Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth,

for His Love is better than wine."

~Song of Solomon 1:2

God With Us

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

1 John 4:17

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Immerse yourself in The Fire

Be so consumed

By The Beloved

That you become

someone's Emmanuel,

their "God With Them"

Let it be said of your life

That when they were with you

They were warmed by The Flame

Illumined in Its Light

Let it be said

that they were,

Unmistakably,

with God.

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"One thing is needed":

"Mary seated herself at The Lord's Feet, and continually Listened."

-Luke 10:39-42

Begin Again

I AM with you

Through the breadths and the depths

Through the hells and the highs

Through the lengths you go to unravel this life

You feel stretched just now

On this taffy-pull of Time

-this illusory matrix that's turning-

You measure for meaning

When all method seems madness

To make sense of the senseless

and messes

I beg you, Look Up, from your microslice view

Trust My Eyes instead

Let Them guide you

Your existence is a piece

Of Eternity's puzzle

What seems to you prodigal

Is paramount

You are a precious Word

In the story of Time

My Word become bread

My Word become wine

Without your life 

Someone goes hungry

Without your hand

A lamb goes unfed

Without your Samaritan soul

Walking this sod

A broken heart 

is left for dead

You see the Big Picture

Of which you are part?

The High Calling it is

To be in this Art?

Relinquish now your "wisdom"

For My mysterious ways

This Life you've called a parody

I Created to be High Praise

Take the next step

Turn the next page

Rest all of you in Me

Relax your hold on what you think you know...

The Best Is Yet To Be

Dark

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So easy,
in the Winters of our lives,
to feel disillusioned
(at best)
at worst, to despair,

When what dressed us,
what covered us
is stripped away
and we are left,
cold,
in the dark,
as the old dies,
to make way for the new...
the tattered dry leaves garment removed
readying us for What Is To Come...

Our human tendency to near-sightedness
does not allow the benefit of long range vision
which would soften the stripping down
the exposure
which would warm the cold clean slate,

The Canvas

In the Beginning was a Winter too,
one which was marked with deep darkness,
one which was without form, void,
Empty

And over it hovered the Master Artist,
The Michael Angelo of Creation
Paintbrush poised,
dipped in Light,
Ready to Begin...

In the Silence
Listen for the "Let There Be...",
In the emptiness
Hold steady,
And Know that what you hold is not the end,
But the waiting canvas of darkness
onto which Will be painted 
Light

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"In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The earth was without form, and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
Then God Said,
"Let there be Light."...

-Genesis 1:1-3

Dinner Time

"Come!  All you who are thirsty!  Come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare."

-Isaiah 55:1-2

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Which credentials carry the most weight on our religious resumes?  Which assets do we prize on the pages of our portfolios?  What do we bring to the table when called on to feed a hungry and thirsty world?

Are the impoverished souls surrounding us forced to settle for silver and gold, or can we, like Peter, say to them, "I have what you really need, and what I have I give you..."

What did Peter have?

He had Jesus.

Are we serving up superfluous sundries or something of substance?  Christ or cubic zirconias?

For too long we've offered tokens, trinkets, and trifles to a world starving for the Savior.  For too long we ourselves have been content to nibble around the edges of Who God is, to fill up the gaps of our faith with garnishes...

...But Immanuel is inviting us to feast on His fullness, to know Him as Peter knew Him, to know the breadth and length and depth and height of Him, so that we can, in turn, invite others to the table, so that we have solid food with which to "feed His sheep".

So come to the table

Pull up a chair

Make yourself comfortable

***It's Dinnertime***

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"Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor the mighty man glory in his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who boasts boast in this: that he understands and knows Me."

-Jeremiah 9:23-24

Wanderings

"You number all my wanderings..."

-Psalm 56:8

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I will take you Home

Carry you far from all you've known

But let it go, Love,

Let it Go

Empty-handed lasts a moment,

Becomes Open-handed

and Filled

And you find

Flowing once again

From my Hands

Through your hands

Unimaginable Bounty

Ashes become Beauty

Every regret becomes Redemption

As your wanderings

Become Mercy

Become Amazing Grace

For all who are wandering

For all who want healing

For all who are longing

for Home

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"Blessed are they whose strength is in You

and whose heart is set on pilgrimage;

They pass through the valley of weeping

and make it a place of springs."

-Psalm 84:5-6

Burn

"If the light that is in you is darkness,

how great is that darkness."

-Matthew 6:23

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We are here to show The Way Home

To be a picture of Heaven

A portent of Life to come

We are meant to house The Light which leads to Safety

and staves off shipwreck

The ersatz "light" we too often allow

to douse and diminish The Flame

drowns out The Still Small Voice

and robs the world of its only Hope

The Hope with which we've been entrusted

The Sacred Fire which Saves

How much of our programming comes from the "light" of our TV's

instead of The Word?

Are we basking in the glow of our phones

Far more often than we are abiding in our God?

We are the white blazes on this trail

And Blaze we must

For all who are lost in these woods

and desperately trying to find The Way

We who are representative of The Resurrection and The Light

have allowed Deity in us to be reduced to tired dogma

Doing our charge, His Beloved World, a grave disservice

May Christ become so concentrated in us

May The Flame burn so brightly

That the world will once again be irresistibly drawn,

Out of Darkness

Into the Light

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"I AM The Way, The Truth, The Light"

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

-John 14:6, 1 John 4:17

The Final Word

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The Gentle Whisper...

Stronger than the violent wind

Mightier than the earthquake

A Higher Law than the fire...

...Like Lift over gravity

Like The Rainbow over the flood

Like Mercy over judgement

Like "Peace, Be Still" over the storm...

The Gentle Whisper

has

the Final Word

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"The Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces, 

But the LORD was not in the wind; 

and after the wind an earthquake, 

But the LORD was not in the earthquake; 

and after the earthquake, a fire, 

But the LORD was not in the fire; 

After the fire came a sound of Delicate Stillness, 

A Still, Small Voice, 

A Gentle Whisper."

-1 Kings 19:11-12

A Gentle Thing.........

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Come

Quiet

your Martha heart

dashing about

fixing

fussing

frantic

no need

no need...

all that needs done

is done

Come

Sit

Be Still

Be Small

I AM Big Enough

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"Cease Striving.

Know that I AM God."

-Psalm 46:10

Rise

John 11:1-44

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Dead.

He was Dead.

Past the Point-Of-No-Return

Beyond Hope of Healing

A poster child of unanswered prayer

Underscoring God's Silence

Against this macabre backdrop

Mary and Martha mourned

the Loss of their Beloved Lazerus

Soaked in the Almighty's Silence

And the Loudness of Anticlimax

Friends, in response,

Surrounded the sisters

with flimsy songs of the Sweet By-and-By

While Jesus came on the scene

to deliver a Powerful Here-and-Now

The world's thirst has grown too great 

to be slaked with Sunday morning sentimental slush,

Man's Very Real Need

for The Bread of Life

can no longer be placated 

with potlucks, pithy pulpits, and polished prose

When the Rubber meets the Road

and men need Miracles,

The Beloved of God better Know their God

and be ready to offer

Resurrection

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"...my speech and preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of Power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the Power of God."

-1 Corinthians 2:4-5

New

"The Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces, 

But the LORD was not in the wind; 

and after the wind an earthquake, 

But the LORD was not in the earthquake; 

and after the earthquake, a fire, 

But the LORD was not in the fire; 

After the fire came a sound of Delicate Stillness, 

A Still, Small Voice, 

A Gentle Whisper."

-1 Kings 19:11-12

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Rosh Hashanah , the Jewish new year 5776, begins tonight, at Sundown.

It is also called The Feast of Trumpets, or, in Hebrew, Yom Teruah, 

which means literally, "day of shouting/raising a noise"

May God give you, in this new year, joy befitting the blast of trumpets, shouts and raising a noise...

But may it also be for you

a year of Peace that passes understanding

Stilling of the storm

Beauty for ashes

May He make this for you,

The Year of 

The Gentle Whisper.

Shalom, my friends,

Shanah Tovah,

Happy New Year

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"You crown the year with Your goodness"

Psalm 65:11

9/11 Remembered

I wrote this five years ago, a tribute to the day we all remember, and to the ephemeral unity this destruction paradoxically brought to our country, its leaders, and their constituents, when, for an all too brief and beautiful moment, congress stood together on the steps of the white house, actually holding hands, and there was a fleeting forgetfulness of differences and division, a trading of the self-serving status quo for one of self-transcendence, a laying down of the vitriol that too often trademarks our government, and a taking up of the standard,

 - may it be said of us again -

"United We Stand"

Two towers fell today ten years ago

Two lives torn apart and ten million more

Two parties came together and cried out to One God

Dual towers downed ending duality on our sod

But oh what ephemeral unity

Was born of death that day

That Tower fell so swiftly

So silently gave way

To ambivalence and bickering

To answers we could not find

To forgetfulness of heroes

To the novocaine of time

The best of human nature

Could not stand the test

But sadly deferred

Humbly bowed

And laid itself to rest.

 

-E.A.A. "Hindsfeet" 9/11/10

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"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity...For there the LORD commands the blessing"
-Psalm133:1,3

Of Dogma and Deity

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You cling so tightly to your dogma

Instead of to Deity

Let the flimsy boat

of your 'do and don't' doctrine

break up

The one that insulates you from falling

into the Living Breathing Beautiful Fearsome

Ocean of Him

Jesus was rightly called

"The Stone of Stumbling"

"The Rock of Offense"

The Scandalon

He never missed an opportunity

to scandalize their ersatz "faith"

when it was in anything other than God

To knock the legs out from under

whatever they were leaning on

if it kept them from leaning on Him...

To expose the base "get out of hell free" cards

we so blithely dole out to a world starving for God

"don't drink" "do drink" "don't heal on the Sabbath"

"don't wear that" "do wear this" "be rich" "be poor"...

All of these counterfeit pursuits,

base alternatives to knowing The Almighty

Nothing more than chasing foxes...

And He doesn't want us chasing foxes...

He wants us

Chasing

Him.

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"Jesus said, 'I AM the Way' " 

Period.