12:11 am
27 January 2012

—–I’m often inspired by certain artists, vocalists, in ways that don’t make any concrete transition from my head, my heart, or my soul to what I write.  It’s a form of writer’s block to a certain extent.  Yet it’s also a deficiency in me.  Sometimes, there just aren’t words.  The language is far too underdeveloped to express it, or I haven’t learned how yet.  Either way it leaves an itchy place in my soul that doesn’t go away quickly.  But, given the right muse, the right chanteuse… and my heart is soothed and gently held while I am in that moment.  It’s like God placing a blessing… His love and grace in the middle of a moment just for me.  That, that stays with me forever.

1:57 am
26 January 2012

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” —-Jeremiah 29:11

God’s promises to His people above were in the middle of an exile for 70 years in a very very bad place. It would have made almost logical sense to view God in light of the immediacy of the circumstances in which they lived. Their situation, the pain, the ache, the disillusion, even their own hearts must have characterised God in their minds so negatively.  To characterise God’s love for us by our focusing upon the things that He doesn’t want for us or doesn’t seem to give us ignores the many blessings and gifts He lavishes upon us daily.  It makes God seem cruel, dichotomous, petty, and human instead of gracious, unchanging, benevolent, and divine.  It robs us of an understanding that God is beyond our thoughts, feelings, and understanding.  It takes the understanding that God is above our own perceptions to help us rise above that type of perspective betrayal… even the betrayal of our own heart. 

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.  “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” —-Isaiah 55:8-9

If we fail to recognise that, we cannot believe in the nature of a God who truly loves and cares for us.  Essentially, we rob God in our eyes and rob ourselves of truth and grace.  Truth to be able to rise above internal and external conflict.  Grace to be able to stand in the face of painful and hurtful circumstances… and we end up with God like us instead of us like God.

What a horrible place to be,
to believe
in a God that is just like me…

It’s Haiku Friday!!!!

Simple gestures are
gifts of character wrapped in
thoughtful reminders

8:23 am
13 January 2012

Our gestures often let us know our truest intentions.

10:39 am
8 January 2012

Far too often I am found with an opportunity to speak with someone who is grieving.  For someone who has many words, this is a difficult time for me.  Often there is wisdom or knowledge that is inside and is screaming to get out.  Grief doesn’t understand truth or words that are right.  It often only understands someone sitting and sharing, quietly.  No words remove the sting that the loss of a loved one causes.  Nor will any amount of conversation comfort a person who is aching inside.  The words of God are to be spoken with grace and truth, but I am learning that they are more effective if lived.  Just as Christ, the Word of God, became flesh and dwelled amoung us, compassion comes alongside another and bears it out, together.  Sometimes I just need to learn to get out of the way…

Selah

tasselled, tethered, twisting tendrils tying

my poor mind to something quite different from what I attempted.

Then like updrafts that cause wings to soar, there was pressure

beneath me, within me

and my feet never seemed to touch earth again,

aloft, aloof, almost allusionary, altering

the fabric of my understanding, leaving me restless

longing for quiet.

Behind the blink of a moment, life became an eyelash falling

a glimpse of a shadow of an image

out of focus, on the periphery,

and days stretched out into months without writing a word…

but instead living in the moment and living it

became three months ago and then some…

1:28 am

5 January 2012

All that I have been asking for months has been related to these two questions:

Have you met Joy? 

Has someone or something robbed it from you?

It’s amazing how simple the concept of joy

or having it removed from us

affects the world in which we live. 

It can infuse us with life,

or

paralyze us with fear.

It can renew our purposes

and in an instant steal them away

like so often we allow circumstance to do

Everything thrives or withers

when the Joy that the Lord gives us

either dwells mightily

or is evicted from

our hearts

It’s a decision, but often it’s

harder to choose to see that it even

exists…

Hopefully in the coming days, I can sit down and flesh out the concepts that have been on my heart and exposed to me through these wondrous experiences.  Good, bad, beautiful, ugly, hard, satisfying… peaceful and joyous.  I would gladly receive some of that grace to delve into these.  I know the folks that walked with me, for me, and the ones I walked for have earned the right see what God is teaching through all of this.  Hold me to it, because I need the truth of this winding path that God put me on recently.

with the placement of a breeze, or a cloud, or a shadow. 

Once my world was cloistered behind stalwart boxed walls

The sound of spinning and whirring below me frees

Like the winter season gives way to hopes of spring

And boxes move from being barricades to being stored away

Alight with purpose yet again, my inner shelves cleared

To write and read and travel and be

 A spinning world, top-like and blurred

Images that coalesce for the future to see

12:53 am

2 November 2011

Clang and crash

inside my head the concepts are spinning

How do you decide what to leave

for impact, for posterity?

left for others to perceive and glean their importance

If they were forced because of emergent circumstance

the pressure would come from deep within

they would escape like breath

after coming to the surface above

But if I knew for months or years

before the finality came

what fears could my choices allay

or truths carefully chosen

spoken and left to persuade

We fools cling to the belief

that these happenstances won’t ever come for us

that our relief is in the facade of longevity

But it comes for all of us

Sneaking and stealing

that promise to us is so revealing

of how unprepared we truly are

Doesn’t life deserve incredible investment

some statement of divine truths or answers

something, anything for those around us to see?

instead we’re often given nothing that should last

words left of mediocrity

2:11 am

22 September 2011

Someone comes along.  Her feet contributing to the decay, they stop.  She refuses to move forward and leave yet another set of footsteps through.  Unlike those before her, she does not move past leaving this to swelter and cry alone.  In her heart, she sees a mirror of her own life.  So much time has gone by.  Such rich and promising things could have been.  She too has cried out mercilessly weak and unable to change her lot.  Potential becoming a metaphor for failure.  Emptiness chosen over and over, replacing hope.

Now to look at either as places where fruit would grow is unthinkable.  The ground lain too long fallow is unworkable.  The person far too long set in their ways to ever change.  Untenable.  And so both have been written off, like so many times before.  Cast away, cast out.  Abandoned.  Forgotten.  Alone.

She realises that unless she does something, the ground will never be what it was supposed to be.  Generations and years will go by and the world would detrimentally and radically be different from what it should be if she didn’t do something.  Anything.  And she realises that every effort she makes with the soil she stands upon will be an effort of her own reclamation.

That’s what it is… reclamation.

God entered my mother’s heart and reclaimed something that was already His.  She, for many many years, had deliberately stayed outside His care and at arm’s length.  She felt abandoned, discarded, like there was nothing left of worth to come from her life.  By the time God reached in and broke through the walls keep Him at arm’s length, my mother was well into the latter 3^rd of her life.  She never quite got the visual image of her world being dry, broken, crumbling and of no use out of her head.  It was a struggle that lasted until her last days.  

She struggled with the concept of nobility.  That she was what the scriptures said to her.  She was uniquely special, called by God, a royal priestess, God’s mouthpiece, and His arms and feet.  For most of us, those concepts are vagaries, but for mom, they were daily struggles.  She knew that deep down she was meant for so much more.  But like the land in the previous metaphor, the roots couldn’t grow in land so beaten about by the previous 50 something years.  She always saw herself as ignoble, for nothing more than common things.

Then she saw it.  In the words of a teacher, she saw it.  In the experiences related from a pastor, she saw it.  From the desperate pleas of a leader, she saw it.  Her eyes didn’t see the ground parched and pleading.  She saw the lush land with fruits and vegetables growing.  She saw the ground producing life-giving sustenance.  Her belief saw what could be and believed it would be.  It will be.  That’s what she didn’t get for so very long.  That the commonplace, the everyday:  the tilling of the soil, working it with your hands, watering it, and waiting expectantly for green shoots to push through the ground that once was a desert and dying.

As God opened up her eyes, that there was a ground desperate for care, she often would say that she had two arms and she could hug anyone and everyone that she could find.  She would provide nourishment in a place that had none before.  She did so because she was once that dry land.  Her heart and life was very much a wasteland.  As God poured His living waters out and they permeated the soil of her heart, she transformed.  No one really understood the depth to which she felt that.

She fell in love with this ground like she was rediscovering the beautiful child of Christ that she always has been.  For her it was the ultimate place.  Like it was created just for her.  Imagine finding yourself in a discarded place, in the midst of a crumbling reality.  Imagine seeing the beautiful sight that is seen through God’s eyes, not accepting the obvious.  Her whole life turned upside down, and she used up all of the rest of her life for what she saw in that image. 

Her land was in the hearts of those wonderful kids at Base Camp United Christian Federation.  An orphanage.  Hearts discarded because of loss, war, disease, death.  She saw such life and joy and promise.  While she was able, she tilled the weary soil, planted seeds, and yet she will not get a chance to see them bear fruit.  The work must still be done.  The soil is fertile for God’s love to be made manifest. 

My mother reveled in the opportunity to grow things when she moved to Kasese, Uganda.  She ended up having a place to grow fruit and vegetables just steps away from her living room.  I think she loved the simplicity of what it takes to grow things.  Everyday she had to pay attention to the crops.  Watering, seeds, tilling, and most especially enjoyably… harvesting and having the fruits of her labours.  She once sent me a message frantic from the other side of the world… it turned out that she has just harvested her first cucumber and tomato and pepper.  What a special example of nobility in purpose.  She was meant to work the land.

The harvest was rich, and as it turned out plentiful.  What a rich reminder not to get discouraged as the days stretch on.  What an amazing gift to have to reflect God’s gracious love for her.  Just like He rejoices with the investment of those extending love on His behalf. 

Each of us has been tended to for us to reach where we are.  Someone reached us when we were proverbial wastelands.  God wants to reclaim us, to restore us to be who we were created to be.

The ground is still weary.  The people are incredibly weary.  They both feel abandoned and broken.  We’re craving being taken care of, attention being paid to us, and hope for change.  We need to remember that the fields are in desperate need of healing.  Do not let us forget that.  The world around us is crumbling, dry and disheartened.  Be committed to the noblest effort, that of reconciling all of creation to He who created it. 

So… will you tend the soil in desperate need?  Will you step out and provide the thirsty ground what it needs?