consecrated...

+

on we go, "consecrating this time, this journey, this life to God", 

like a fish, consecrating the ocean to God.....

How He must smile........

+

Lost?

+

The Wanderlust Life

We lead on this planet

Our Oz

Our Far Country

Where the Wild Things Are

Yellow Brick Roads

Prodigal Parties

Our days whirling round

The Wild Rumpus of it all

Till one day

Road Weary

Disillusioned by the din

We tire of the endless circling

Our Dervish wanderings...

Yet ever peripheral

Persists Promised Land's pull

Closer than breath

Calling...

We dance unaware

Right on the edge

Feeling always the eventual falling...

Siren song or Still Small Voice?

I like to think the latter

Gravitational Grace

Bending our way

Vectoring us Home...

Every One of us...

Finally...

Forever...

Home...

+

"Behold, I send an Angel before you to keep you in the Way and bring you into the place which I have prepared."

-Exodus 23:20

Twinkle

+

Twinkle twinkle Little Star 

funny little star we are 

full of angst and rivalries 

hopes and dreams

 and follies

 In the scheme of things

 We are so small 

Our problems even smaller 

Such that someone miles away 

Might look upon us all and say, 

"Twinkle twinkle little star,

how I wonder what you are"

+

Psalm 144:4

Hush

+

We struggle so to hear 

The Still Small Voice:

Sing the right song,

Pray the right prayer,

Sit just so,

Eat just so,

or no...

I play guitar

And sometimes

When the strings are strummed

I feel a soft silence fall

As though I have bent all of Heaven's Ear

As though,

Perhaps,

He also loves my still small voice

And bids the angels hush

So He can hear...

+

"Oh my dove, my darling, in the clefts of the rock, in the hiding places on the mountainside, show me your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely."

-Song of Solomon 2:14

Time Travel

+

Grace Alone

 Can travel 

Through time

Through space

 Past and Future 

Reaching 

Healing

 Filling in the gaps...

 The "might-have-beens" 

The "should-have-dones" 

Our failures 

Our falterings

 And turn for good 

And alchemize

 The basest parts

 The broken things

 Grace cocoons these places

 Metamorphosing our moments 

Making joy out of mourning

Gold out of garbage

Wings out of worms

Grace weaves through every tick of time

From Beginning to End

Backwards

And Forward 

Turning our lives into a tapestry

 Fit for our King

+

"All things work together for good..."

-Romans 8:28

Beauty

+

The Match is Struck

When we are born

And we burn through our Lives

Hopefully bringing Warmth

And Light

to Others

Which may, indeed, be our only Purpose...

...Letting God

Turn our Ashes

Into

Beauty

+

Isaiah 61:3

Dark III

"The Lord said he would dwell in the dark cloud"

-I Kings 8:12

+

In the darkness

 In the spin

 In the bewilderment of Which-Way-Is-Up

We are helped 

We are husbanded

 We are harnessed into Him 

When all we feel is madness

 Method holds us 

In higher ways

 In higher thoughts ...

In the dark cloud 

We are tethered to Light 

and Light Himself

 will lead us 

Home

+

A Christmas Story

+

Men decided

They could improve

 upon The Manger

 A chandelier here

Some red carpet there

 Custom carved pews and podiums...

 Layer upon layer replaced "Line upon line..."

 Though more is just more

They persisted

Reducing posterity and Providence

Into princess and the pea

The essence buried 

Under stacks of superfluous nonsense 

And once again

In tragic irony 

The Sovereign Ruler 

Finds no room at the inn

Deity displaced

Emmanuel eclipsed

 A baby's cry 

Barely heard

On a Bethlehem night...

+

"For unto us a child is born,

Unto us a son is given..."

-Isaiah 9:6

Rare bird...

+

Seven years ago

A friend saw these wings

On the bark of a seven times seven

Year old tree...

Seven years later

Their re-emerging 

Graced me with the harbinger blessing

Of fleeting things, 

Of encounters with the Elusive,

Prized precisely because 

of their ephemeral nature

Treasured for their rarity...

Whether once in a lifetime

Or once every seven years,

How Precious are the wings we are given,

In whatever form they come...

+

"He who holds to himself a joy

Doth the winged life destroy,

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity's sunrise."

-William Blake

Echo

+

Lovely Echoes

Of Long Gone Lovely Seasons

Bitter Sweet Beauty

Gilding amber branches

And prophetic falling leaves

Once-Upon-A-Times

Linger golden with last light

The aurous encore

Before their flight

+

"To everything there is a season,

And a time for every matter under heaven."

Ecclesiastes 3:1

Interlude

+

The Tristan Chord of our lives
In tremulous tension

Craving,
Reaching,

 Longing for resolution,

Rest

+

"For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come."

-Habakkuk 2:3

Bathwater

+

Religion is the ultimate counterfeit of God

 Seemingly innocuous

Sometimes attractive

But always a Trap

Selling the tasty treat of Belonging

Which our Souls so crave

Which is meant to be found in God

Not rituals and regulations

It is a sideline

A deadly detour

Derailing us

Distracting us

From

Deity

Well meaning atheists

and waylayed agnostics

were right to reject 

this ersatz nonsense,

In their intelligence they saw it

for what it was

Failing only to compartmentalize

the counterfeit from the Creator

Thus the Baby

Born in the manger

Got thrown out

with the 

Bathwater

Leaving
Otherwise
Wise men
Defrauded

+

Counterfeit--made in exact imitation of something valuable or important with the intention to deceive or defraud.

One Thing

+

See me

 Scraping and clawing at your word 

Trying desperately to find the metaphor 

Which makes sense 

of my existence...

 My failings,

 My agonizing misses

 My utter lack of character

 My Self 

It is here

 In the middle of this crazed kerfuffle

And not in some pious white washed prayer time

You meet me

You gently take my chin

You reel my gaze back in to meet Yours

And to look

Instead

For You

+

"One thing is needed..."

Luke 42:10, 12

Prisoner's Paradox

+

We write

Like Paul

Out of our own imprisonment

Which 

In the end

Is what makes others

Free

+

"The spirit of the Lord is upon me...to proclaim freedom to the captives."

-Luke 4:18

Saved

+

I am the woman at the well

I am Mary

 I am the one caught red-handed, 

The Pharisee in me poised with stones,

Saved by Grace alone 

By The God Who Sees

 And loves anyway

+

"I have loved you with an everlasting love."

-Jeremiah 31:3

Gambler

+

We all play our cards

As best we can

All we're made up of,

For better and worse,

Informing each move

We sometimes play cards we desperately wish we hadn't

We despair at the cards

We did not play instead

Our hindsight a merciless taskmaster

Keeping us fettered to the futility of regret

It is not a new hand we need

 or even a new game,

But faith in The Dealer Who still holds an ace up His sleeve 

Faith in the fact,

 that when all is said and done,

 It is His hand which will play out,

His hand, which so tenderly holds us,

which also holds all the cards

And in the end,

Wins.

+

"I am the Alpha and the Omega

The beginning and the end,

The first and the last,

I am He."

Revelation 22:13

Third Day

+

A pensive stillness

As the crowds

Which had dissipated

Stopped

And

Turned...

... There was movement

They saw it

Unmistakable

The body thought dead

Was Alive

What was that?

Another movement

A Breath

They were sure if it

The dead was being raised,

Back to Life

The Breath Giver

Held her in His Arms

Resuscitating

Reanimating

Determined in His Purpose...

...She 

Would

 Live...

+

"I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for peace and not evil, to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

-Jeremiah 29:11

Wings 101

+

The wisdom of winged things

Their flight

Their smallness

Their delicate strength

Their Simplicity in the Scheme of Things

No wonder His eye is on the sparrow...

...We would do well to follow His lead...

+

Matthew 10:29

Jonah's Prayer

+

Caught between

Sun

and

Storm

This pause

This middle

This nothing

Throw me overboard

Off this ship

Swallow me

Swim me

Spit me

Out

Onto the Shore

Of forty second

Second Chances

+

Hosea 2:15

Second Day

+

The crowd had dissipated

With the disciples hopes

Thousands of had-been believers

Up in smoke

The overflowing stadium emptied

The over-rated throngs withdrew

The jig was up

Game Over...

... Thus Began

The eternal three days,

As most Real stories do,

In Ashes

And in the Still Small Voice of the second day,

In that comparative silence,

Destiny had been decided

Despite appearances

For Beauty was brewing

About to bloom and burst forth

Unbeknownst to any

Unwitnessed by any

Save one...

... The Summit of Time

The Sublime Moment

Would not be seen by millions

But by Mary,

A hooker turned fisher of men

(Gotta love God's sense of irony,

Redemption in a nutshell right there)

God would wait

Till the masses had melted away

To whisper His secret to one

No fanfare

No pretense

(Truth needs not these fineries)

But in an atmosphere of

Utter Anticlimax

And the anonymity of the grave,

The stone would roll away....

Just because the crowd is gone,

The lights are turned off,

The door is locked

-tell-tale signs of the second day-

Don't suppose the show is over...

...It may not even have begun.

+

"My ways are higher than your ways,

My thoughts are higher than your thoughts...

Though the vision tarries, wait for it, it will surely come...

For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for peace and not evil, to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

-Isaiah 55:9, Habakkuk 2:3, Jeremiah 29:11

Lovely wings...

+

I have flown so far

God's wings have flown farther still

Watching over me...

+

"I have loved you with an everlasting love"

-Jeremiah 31:3

Haiku

+

This Becoming is

itself in the end, indeed,

will be, Homecoming

+

Birth

*

Again and Again

We are born,

In one life

We live Many

But A Thread holds together

And runs through

The Whole

As fragmented 

And disconnected

As the Pieces may seem,

In the end

We shall see

They fit together,

They have always fit together

Beautifully

*

"God gave us the gift of life,

It is up to us to give ourselves the gift of Living Well."

-Voltaire

+++

Outpost

+

We are

 breadcrumbs

 white blazes

 beacons

 He has placed 

on this planet,

throughout the path,

 plotting out the way 

to The Way 

Himself

 We are Found for the Lost 

Lights in the window 

We are outposts of the Kingdom of Heaven

 for Travelers

 who feel themselves to be

 so very

 far

 from

 Home

+

"Behold I tell you, the Kingdom of Heaven is within you and among you"

~Luke 17:21

His eye is on the sparrow...

+

Incarnation

~*

It's a sort of reincarnation,

 New Years Eve,

The ritual reset,

A time to rebuild

Having shot our wad

 We penniless paupers 

Come to find our empty pockets

Met by Heaven's Hand

Outstretched

 With the offer 

To Begin Again,

Again

Where our Gideon Hearts faltered

Audacious Grace is given

Where we went left instead of Right

The Way Himself makes a way

Where our bargaining for bad fruit

Betrayed our entire garden

Gethsemane's bloody tears are remembered 

Golgotha is once again brought to bear

Sin, thus silenced,

Is made to stand down, 

And we are rendered 

The chance to stand

This remittance

This rebirth

 This "reincarnation"

Is gifted to us

Lavishly,

Lovingly

By Incarnation

Himself

~*

"I AM The Resurrection and The Life!"

-John 11:25

Gift

+

Graced by this gander

Welcome winged harbingers

Warming winter hearts

+

Reflections

+

For now

That is what we have

We are moons

Reflecting The Light 

of Faraway Day

Into fellow travelers' night...

All of us longing

For Home

+

"Deep darkness will cover the people, but The LORD will rise upon you, His Glory will be seen upon you; The people will come to your light,

and Kings to the brightness of your rising..."

-Isaiah 60:1-3

Hope

+

With David

I Rise

From the dead child's side

I put aside pleas for what is past,

Fix my eyes forward,

And Wait 

For Solomon

To be born...

+

"For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the shoots of it will not cease nor will they fail."

-Job 14:7

Believe

+

You can close the blinds

Pull the curtains

Seal off every crack and crevice

Disallowing the Light

You can hunker down in this darkness

Impenetrable

Unperturbed

Insisting "There is no Sun!"

Asserting disbelief in its existence

"How can I," you cry, "believe in a Sun

Which burns

Which causes pain

Which dries up entire deserts

Which hides when warmth is needed most

Whose rising impels me to work

Whose setting allows such Night in my life

When I'm desperate for 

and despairing of the Day?"

You can hold tightly

With the tenacious grip of a toddler

To your defiance of a Deity you don't understand

You can get colder and colder

Wrapped in the blanket of your disbelief

Of your denial

Eschewing any possible Good

Benighted by what you see only as bad

Or

You can risk removal

Of your limited lens

Let your finite perspective

Be peeled away

Accept your smallness in the scheme of Things

Your blindness to The Big Picture

Allow the pain through which you peer

Which has muddied your view

Exposure to Heaven's Orb

Which seems to have wounded you

Which is your only hope for healing

The Sun goes on shining

Whether we believe in it or not

Giving Life

To the most massive of planets

The tiniest of mustard seeds

Indifferent to none

Despite what you thought

His Eye is on the solar system

And the sparrow alike

Nothing goes unnoticed,

Escapes His gaze,

Eludes His Love...

In your most honest moments

The ones no one else sees

When the superfluous is swept away

And all that's left is your most primal knowing

You Do Believe in God

You just don't believe that He is Love

or if you do believe that He is Love

You don't believe He loves You

And the pain of such an errant belief

Is too much to bear

So you choose

Instead

The anesthetic of Unbelief

At war within yourself

This belief and unbelief colliding

In which state Peace is an impossibility

Let It Go

Risk the pain

Feel the fear

But allow also for the possibility of Love

Know simply that you do not know

That even, perhaps, you cannot know

Herein lies the key:

You Do Not Have To Know

Only Believe

What you Deep Down Believe

Let in the Light

And all that comes with it

The "Good"

The "Bad"

The Pain

The Healing

Open the blinds

Choose to see

The Sun is shining

Love Is waiting...

Believe

+

"Come, and let us return to the LORD;

For He has torn, but He will heal us;

He has stricken, but He will bind us up...

His going forth is established as the dawn,

He will come to us like healing rain to the earth."

-Hosea 6:1-3

Treasure

+

The treasure I hold

In this earthen vessel

With riches to vast to be told...

... And "Once upon a time" you had eyes to see,

And "Once upon a time" I had eyes to see...

But there is One

Who calls to me

As though from a far off dream

His eyes scan the horizon 

Of a world I am a stranger in

Searching

For

Me...

The paradox of searching and being searched for

Will one day become finding and being found

... Home Again

Treasured

+

Esau's Tears

+

I feel myself to be

among the Damned 

once blessed

now consigned

to live with my choice

my damned

and damning

free will 

But that which is consigned

can it not be bought again?

Put back into the circulation 

of the Living?

How many times did Hosea's hand 

Redeem 

one so far gone 

not even repentant

strange that she was saved 

(may it be said of me 

and may I not cry 

the unanswered tears of Esau 

as he stared at the bottom of his empty bowl

his Birthright 

but a memory)

+