The heart becomes brittle and splinters into tiny shards from time to time, when untended, when bumped and jostled by bodies loose-joined, when it's carried not again and again to the Maker's house with palms upward and fingers spread eagle offering again and again, asking, again and again, "Spin it back together, again and again."
Life and hearts get undone. Like the laundry. Again and again. Like leaves scattered, fall again, oh Spring!
How little Life the heart retains when let alone. When it sits on a park bench in solitude but without a prayer. When it is carried in a chest and hurried here and there by Adidas-driven feet, runners pounding the pavement, lungs stinging, striving to suck in more air. When what it really needs, especially needs, is something again a little more eternal, a lot less fleeting. A hug, a healing, a whisper, an embrace, a drink of blood-wine from the chalice cup beneath the cross. A remembering. Uplifted. Heart-upturned. Rising-lifted from her chest and put back together again.
With a pulse returned. Phathump. Phathump. Mmhmm. Amen.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Monday, July 29, 2013
The Meaning of Marriage
So yesterday as I passed the book shelf at our church, I noticed a new face; like, it just popped out at me:
The Meaning of Marriage.
Maybe because I'm on the threshold of beginning my third decade of marriage. And I'm so excited to be here, knowing my husband and I have been given a gift most precious - two decades together.
The book's subtitle is "Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God."
If this sounds intriguing to you - whether you are single or married (for its audience is intended for both species; the authors have lived several decades rooted in the scriptures, living their own unique union and ministering to a demographic of predominantly single people), by all means, grab a copy over at Amazon. Or somewhere.
'Tis a good find.
The Meaning of Marriage.
Maybe because I'm on the threshold of beginning my third decade of marriage. And I'm so excited to be here, knowing my husband and I have been given a gift most precious - two decades together.
The book's subtitle is "Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God."
If this sounds intriguing to you - whether you are single or married (for its audience is intended for both species; the authors have lived several decades rooted in the scriptures, living their own unique union and ministering to a demographic of predominantly single people), by all means, grab a copy over at Amazon. Or somewhere.
'Tis a good find.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Young Love
(An Oral Reading - Tempo Lento; Affettuoso)
Love knows so many affinities.
The love of chocolate, the love of beaches, the love of high cliffs, the love of soaring hawks, the love of poetry hidden in song; the motion of two entwined, moving harmoniously to jazz infused promise.
Love is.
Young love unfolds upon itself in discovery and surprise - oh, delight, awakened for the first time.
Its gaze goes no further than its own feeling, overcome with its own awareness-es. Like an infant discovering its hands or toes for the first time, yet with a power and force yesterday unknown, Young Love embraces itself.
Each newness is a burst of ecstasy. It seeks an expression. It casts nothing more than a glancing benignity toward those left gazing either in wise perception, remembering, recognizing, understanding, or, in confusion and isolation, beholding a rite or a party where one has yet to be initiated.
Young Love remains fresh and vibrant when the thing it discovers is explored fully over time, like eternity, unending; not peripherally encountered like a sunrise in passing (then forgotten), but one where its rays are soaked and absorbed all the day through, year upon year.
Young Love is not yet Mature Love.
Mature Love moves alongside his lover, knows her imperfections and forgets not his first delights, but focuses not upon them, as if they were things to be grasped (or opposed - things to hate or things to love, separately). Mature Love, vibrant with the remembrances of youth but wizened by the long journey two lovers make as One, has climbed the mountain, stood upon its pinnacle and looks not down on himself as satisfied alone with first delights, but sees the vista beyond as if upon a threshold. Mature Love hears a call beyond himself, to a full journey ahead - to a place unknown.
Mature Love unwraps himself, lifts himself up from his own good feeling with sentiments aroused by beauty's first kiss, and places his feet, with trepidation perhaps at times, upon a path less traveled by a fearful man. Wholly awakened to the thought of his beloved, he treks bravely down into the hills beneath the pinnacle and does what only he can do for his beloved - forgetting himself, as Christ does, he serves her, for her good; he seeks his own beloved amid unfamiliar vales, he uncovers what she desires and most needs, and then upon the valley, he goes and dies to bring her joy.
It is a glory.
Oh, beloved mystery, unfolding, he comes upon her, beholding what only he ought know, the power of her beauty and breath as one made exquisite flesh.
Her own mature love echoes this crescendo, her own accompaniment - a tale of hopes and dreams,
some tucked away, many
creased with wrinkled joy
and sorrow, too. He calls to her yet, still clumsily-dumbly forgetting after many years she has her own speech which he must find and use. Her faith runs bold as surging streams she finds below and crosses. She loses her footing more than once, disoriented with daring and careless, unkempt wounds, but searching for a quieter place, she leaves clues for her beloved, calling out his name, searching for the light of his eyes, drawing nearer, nearer - and so (at last) they are found.
Their finding is part of this mystery; it's the whisper of Mature Love. She in hope never leaves, even when hope wears thin and bare; she goes on calling, he keeps on laboring, understanding in time that he who once wooed her becomes now her wooing.
Mature Love knows this. Mature Love tends to it and becomes them both. While breath remains, it leaves neither beloved bereaved.
As jazz infused promise melds into jazz infused memories, their rhythm lies pulsating upon each step of the journey. Sometimes holding hands, sometimes off the familiar path they go, but together they go.
Beauty becomes his beloved
fresh like fallen snow upon the vales;
Treasured is their worth, their joy
and their pain an offering;
Yes, healed as one.
No more just newness discovered,
a sentiment secured and guarded as first love,
but a life as one - well lived.
(holy)
Love knows so many affinities.
The love of chocolate, the love of beaches, the love of high cliffs, the love of soaring hawks, the love of poetry hidden in song; the motion of two entwined, moving harmoniously to jazz infused promise.
Love is.
Young love unfolds upon itself in discovery and surprise - oh, delight, awakened for the first time.
Its gaze goes no further than its own feeling, overcome with its own awareness-es. Like an infant discovering its hands or toes for the first time, yet with a power and force yesterday unknown, Young Love embraces itself.
Each newness is a burst of ecstasy. It seeks an expression. It casts nothing more than a glancing benignity toward those left gazing either in wise perception, remembering, recognizing, understanding, or, in confusion and isolation, beholding a rite or a party where one has yet to be initiated.
Young Love remains fresh and vibrant when the thing it discovers is explored fully over time, like eternity, unending; not peripherally encountered like a sunrise in passing (then forgotten), but one where its rays are soaked and absorbed all the day through, year upon year.
Young Love is not yet Mature Love.
Mature Love moves alongside his lover, knows her imperfections and forgets not his first delights, but focuses not upon them, as if they were things to be grasped (or opposed - things to hate or things to love, separately). Mature Love, vibrant with the remembrances of youth but wizened by the long journey two lovers make as One, has climbed the mountain, stood upon its pinnacle and looks not down on himself as satisfied alone with first delights, but sees the vista beyond as if upon a threshold. Mature Love hears a call beyond himself, to a full journey ahead - to a place unknown.
Mature Love unwraps himself, lifts himself up from his own good feeling with sentiments aroused by beauty's first kiss, and places his feet, with trepidation perhaps at times, upon a path less traveled by a fearful man. Wholly awakened to the thought of his beloved, he treks bravely down into the hills beneath the pinnacle and does what only he can do for his beloved - forgetting himself, as Christ does, he serves her, for her good; he seeks his own beloved amid unfamiliar vales, he uncovers what she desires and most needs, and then upon the valley, he goes and dies to bring her joy.
It is a glory.
Oh, beloved mystery, unfolding, he comes upon her, beholding what only he ought know, the power of her beauty and breath as one made exquisite flesh.
Her own mature love echoes this crescendo, her own accompaniment - a tale of hopes and dreams,
some tucked away, many
creased with wrinkled joy
and sorrow, too. He calls to her yet, still clumsily-dumbly forgetting after many years she has her own speech which he must find and use. Her faith runs bold as surging streams she finds below and crosses. She loses her footing more than once, disoriented with daring and careless, unkempt wounds, but searching for a quieter place, she leaves clues for her beloved, calling out his name, searching for the light of his eyes, drawing nearer, nearer - and so (at last) they are found.
Their finding is part of this mystery; it's the whisper of Mature Love. She in hope never leaves, even when hope wears thin and bare; she goes on calling, he keeps on laboring, understanding in time that he who once wooed her becomes now her wooing.
Mature Love knows this. Mature Love tends to it and becomes them both. While breath remains, it leaves neither beloved bereaved.
As jazz infused promise melds into jazz infused memories, their rhythm lies pulsating upon each step of the journey. Sometimes holding hands, sometimes off the familiar path they go, but together they go.
Beauty becomes his beloved
fresh like fallen snow upon the vales;
Treasured is their worth, their joy
and their pain an offering;
Yes, healed as one.
No more just newness discovered,
a sentiment secured and guarded as first love,
but a life as one - well lived.
(holy)
Mended
A phrase whispers,
"The Liveliness of a soul, the Liveliness of a soul, the Liveliness of a soul."
What of Grace cannot be mended?
What with Love goes untended?
These are His gifts.
~
What of grace cannot be mended.
What with love goes untended.
~
Not death nor breathless nights,
Not life or joyous day.
The Liveliness of a soul, the Liveliness of a soul, the Liveliness of a soul.
'Tis mended.
"The Liveliness of a soul, the Liveliness of a soul, the Liveliness of a soul."
What of Grace cannot be mended?
What with Love goes untended?
These are His gifts.
~
What of grace cannot be mended.
What with love goes untended.
~
Not death nor breathless nights,
Not life or joyous day.
The Liveliness of a soul, the Liveliness of a soul, the Liveliness of a soul.
'Tis mended.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
A Special Guest
"Black"
The colorless shade like the dead of night
with drapes of dark silk made
banishing the night;
It creeps in by a shadow
the candles lose their flame
turning dark the meadow
Silencing the victim's claim.
(Written by Jill Leppert)
The colorless shade like the dead of night
with drapes of dark silk made
banishing the night;
It creeps in by a shadow
the candles lose their flame
turning dark the meadow
Silencing the victim's claim.
(Written by Jill Leppert)
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Of Hunger and Thirst
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they will be satisfied." (Jesus, the Christ)
I imagine my sleeping child, how utterly peaceful; bathed in quiet calm, her features at rest.
Simply beholding a sleeping child, simply remembering the sight of my own children slumbering as infants draws a calm across my soul like a blanket gently laid over tired, aching limbs.
The day is young yet. The morning sunlight still hasn't reached its peak. My children sleep in, of course; now they are teenagers. I don't mind. They are good kids, and they have been working hard. There's time for such rest.
What does this have to do with hunger and thirst? And righteousness?And satisfaction.
A lot.
Rest speaks of fulfillment. It's what occurs when our bodies are full or have done their work and can do no more. It's what occurs when our souls are filled, properly.
Hunger and thirst settles into our bones like marrow. Without them, we would die.
And to not know fulfillment is to sorrow. Are you sorrowing in any way? In a lot of ways? To know quality satisfaction is to discover a place of rest, and it is a very real, literal place, if but for a time. Allow me to explain.
The meaning implied in this scripture, to hunger, tells us how we live best. That is we are "the hungering ones," or those who receive, expend and then hunger afresh. That's definitive of our lives, or at least it ought to be.
We know what occurs when a person loses their appetite for food, for life.
We know this like we know we need air to breathe, water to drink, and food for energy.
But there's something more to be seen. There is an appropriateness to our desire and the object deserving of it, one that truly fulfills. Jesus called it "righteousness."
We know that in this world not all air is fit to breathe. Not all water is potable. Not all food is healthy. Nor are all things that glitter, gold. So, perhaps if we are wise and over time through trial and error, we come to understand that not all things we stretch our hands out to touch properly satisfies longing, or desire, or our inner craving for something more. Whatever that is.
I suggest to you that it is righteousness.
We are blessed if we hunger and thirst for that ... but what exactly is righteousness? As he says it here, at least. (Matthew 5, The Sermon on the Mount)
This is something worth thinking about. Won't you join me?
Here's a place I'm going to go for help: 1 Corinthians 1:30
I imagine my sleeping child, how utterly peaceful; bathed in quiet calm, her features at rest.
Simply beholding a sleeping child, simply remembering the sight of my own children slumbering as infants draws a calm across my soul like a blanket gently laid over tired, aching limbs.
The day is young yet. The morning sunlight still hasn't reached its peak. My children sleep in, of course; now they are teenagers. I don't mind. They are good kids, and they have been working hard. There's time for such rest.
What does this have to do with hunger and thirst? And righteousness?And satisfaction.
A lot.
Rest speaks of fulfillment. It's what occurs when our bodies are full or have done their work and can do no more. It's what occurs when our souls are filled, properly.
Hunger and thirst settles into our bones like marrow. Without them, we would die.
And to not know fulfillment is to sorrow. Are you sorrowing in any way? In a lot of ways? To know quality satisfaction is to discover a place of rest, and it is a very real, literal place, if but for a time. Allow me to explain.
The meaning implied in this scripture, to hunger, tells us how we live best. That is we are "the hungering ones," or those who receive, expend and then hunger afresh. That's definitive of our lives, or at least it ought to be.
We know what occurs when a person loses their appetite for food, for life.
We know this like we know we need air to breathe, water to drink, and food for energy.
But there's something more to be seen. There is an appropriateness to our desire and the object deserving of it, one that truly fulfills. Jesus called it "righteousness."
We know that in this world not all air is fit to breathe. Not all water is potable. Not all food is healthy. Nor are all things that glitter, gold. So, perhaps if we are wise and over time through trial and error, we come to understand that not all things we stretch our hands out to touch properly satisfies longing, or desire, or our inner craving for something more. Whatever that is.
I suggest to you that it is righteousness.
We are blessed if we hunger and thirst for that ... but what exactly is righteousness? As he says it here, at least. (Matthew 5, The Sermon on the Mount)
This is something worth thinking about. Won't you join me?
Here's a place I'm going to go for help: 1 Corinthians 1:30
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Grace Falls
Have you ever wished you could go back to a particular situation? Or a moment in time?
When everything seemed good. Really good.
Deeply good. (Or not, and then, "course correct"?)
I wonder what we would do differently, if anything.
If we would still end up where we are today.
I wonder.
How about you?
So, I am having a conversation with myself today. It goes like this:
It does no good to think about going back when it is not possible. Even if I look back and try to learn from the situation or event, everything about it becomes unfamiliar in the present tense, because people have changed. Physical places - altered. The sun rises and sets, repeatedly, and the earth spins me into another time.
Yes, there eludes a permanence that would be necessary to re-invent.
Does this sound discouraging? I am tempted here to be sad - to wear sadness like a shirt and pants, my feet trimmed in its matching sandals, like name-brand sorrow. But I think it is only truly so if our means to permanence is fixated upon the transient stuff of a world passing us by - people, places, events: children, parents, friends; momentary laughter, fleeting hugs, conversations like snapshots in time or memory.
But, oh, not discouraging when we behold something lasting:
Grace and her family, oh, eternal relevance - permanence.
Do you see them?
Grace and her twin, Mercy, pour down over our heads like rain water cascading from a cliff.
Have you stepped into it lately? Have you stood there, letting them massage and pound the sore out of your soul? Are you soaked to the bone, hopeful, again, now offering hope unreservedly as you step forward into the new day.
Oh, but where do these, Grace and Mercy, dwell? And from where do they cascade? You may ask. It is important to ask, important to know.
To discover, yes.
Here is a good place to go, to know:
- The Gospel of John -
Yes, John knew about permanence and transience.
He knew what it was to be loved - permanently, perfectly, beyond sin and error.
May you be richly blessed as you discover.
When everything seemed good. Really good.
Deeply good. (Or not, and then, "course correct"?)
I wonder what we would do differently, if anything.
If we would still end up where we are today.
I wonder.
How about you?
So, I am having a conversation with myself today. It goes like this:
It does no good to think about going back when it is not possible. Even if I look back and try to learn from the situation or event, everything about it becomes unfamiliar in the present tense, because people have changed. Physical places - altered. The sun rises and sets, repeatedly, and the earth spins me into another time.
Yes, there eludes a permanence that would be necessary to re-invent.
Does this sound discouraging? I am tempted here to be sad - to wear sadness like a shirt and pants, my feet trimmed in its matching sandals, like name-brand sorrow. But I think it is only truly so if our means to permanence is fixated upon the transient stuff of a world passing us by - people, places, events: children, parents, friends; momentary laughter, fleeting hugs, conversations like snapshots in time or memory.
But, oh, not discouraging when we behold something lasting:
Grace and her family, oh, eternal relevance - permanence.
Do you see them?
Grace and her twin, Mercy, pour down over our heads like rain water cascading from a cliff.
Have you stepped into it lately? Have you stood there, letting them massage and pound the sore out of your soul? Are you soaked to the bone, hopeful, again, now offering hope unreservedly as you step forward into the new day.
Oh, but where do these, Grace and Mercy, dwell? And from where do they cascade? You may ask. It is important to ask, important to know.
To discover, yes.
Here is a good place to go, to know:
- The Gospel of John -
Yes, John knew about permanence and transience.
He knew what it was to be loved - permanently, perfectly, beyond sin and error.
May you be richly blessed as you discover.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Confident!
"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." (Psalm 46)
I'm living in a continually vulnerable state (estate). I tremble that it is so.
My nervous system is awake now. Alert.
To be so aware of vulnerability highly arouses my bodily senses.
Vulnerability and Longing,
Trembling translucent garments
flowing off my shoulders,
silhouetted against a twilight sky.
Oh, how to live, to dwell like this ...in the gale.
Recalling, remembering
Whose I am
Who regards me as His own child, daughter.
I'm living in a physical world between
the now
and
not yet.
By remembering God my Father
and
Christ my Lord, my Brother,
by
doing this together, one
brave
step
one confident
stride
in front of
the other,
risking
This exposure to life's elements that hail and rain
around and
upon me.
Calling life's biggest bluffs - recalling
there's a grace and a longing that
endures to the end
with hope,
and a permanence that's firm like an oak and hard like crystal and diamonds
Transcending.
"Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way." (Psalm 46)
I'm living in a continually vulnerable state (estate). I tremble that it is so.
My nervous system is awake now. Alert.
To be so aware of vulnerability highly arouses my bodily senses.
Vulnerability and Longing,
Trembling translucent garments
flowing off my shoulders,
silhouetted against a twilight sky.
Oh, how to live, to dwell like this ...in the gale.
Recalling, remembering
Whose I am
Who regards me as His own child, daughter.
I'm living in a physical world between
the now
and
not yet.
By remembering God my Father
and
Christ my Lord, my Brother,
by
doing this together, one
brave
step
one confident
stride
in front of
the other,
risking
This exposure to life's elements that hail and rain
around and
upon me.
Calling life's biggest bluffs - recalling
there's a grace and a longing that
endures to the end
with hope,
and a permanence that's firm like an oak and hard like crystal and diamonds
Transcending.
"Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way." (Psalm 46)
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