Can your love be true?
Do you really love me,
Despite my silly, scary self?
Then let me snuggle down
Within your arms,
Within your deep embrace.
Let your love shape my heart.
Let your wonder call my soul.
Shape me to reflect your gentle kindness
To the world.
Let me be a sliver of hope
That finds its way
Into the life of my community
Borne upon the whisper of grace
That flows from your lips
Through my words
Onto the page of my life.
[photo by Adventures of KM&G-Morris per cc 2.0]
Physics is right.
The way you look at things makes all the difference.
The looking, itself, changes reality.
When I look with generous eyes,
Willing to see wonder,
Searching for hope,
Watching for moments of grace,
My edges of my days are softened.
When others look at me with generous hearts,
Looking for reasons to love and affirm,
Rather than pointing to my warts and worries,
I am made whole.
What a gift to have friends
Who intentionally see the good in me,
Who hug me into my better self.
Perhaps that is the definition of a friend:
Someone who holds the mirror for your better self,
And calls it forth to play.
I am grateful, today, for friends like these.
They fill my life with grace.
They help to make me who I want to be.
After all, it’s not so much what you look at.
It’s what you see. It’s what we see, together.
Thank God.
Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Philippians 4:8
[photo by Khalid Al-Haqqan per cc 2.0]
Help me
To be
In you
In you
Help me
To be
I will
I do
I AM
You are.
2 27 01
[image by Christopher Michel per cc 2.0 from flikr]
You have no right to speak my truth for me;
To choose the words or set the cadence.
It is mine … it is me.
You have no right to tell me who I am, who I should be,
Based upon your own determined ‘truth.’
‘I AM’ does not belong to you, either.
That said, I cannot presume to know your truth
Or deeply understand the place from which it springs.
It belongs to you, shapes you, as mine shapes me.
Given that we are in this together,
Would it be better to start from questions
Rather than presumptions?
I mean the kind of questions that are, themselves, true;
The gentle, inquisitive, persistent questions that actually want to know;
The ones that lead to true understanding.
I mean the kind of questions that acknowledge
That the bigger truth cannot be held within one small frame;
That my small truth is never big enough.
I mean the earnest search for truth that calls each of us
Into the deepest expression of our own true selves.
I mean the truth whose source is love.
I AM calls each I am into being.
I AM loves each I am along the way,
Fully, at every point, without precondition.
And I am learning, slowly, to relinquish my hold
Upon my small definition of truth, my small definition of me.
I am learning, instead, to be held, in truth.
May this day smile upon you.
May your heart catch its breath.
May your eyes rest upon beauty.
May your soul know peace.
May the touch of your fingers
Warm the life of another.
May your words fall like rain
On thirsty ground.
May the love that gives you life
Expand ever outward
Moving from heart to heart to heart
Like ripples across a pond.
May you pause to receive
The gifts that come your way
Adding your touch of grace
To their endless journey.
Once again I come to you and place my day within your hands.
Once again you smile and it evokes a smile in me.
Once again I feel your love, full and free.
Once again I lean back in that love, in your arms, and raise my face to your kiss.
Once again you have blessed me deeply with your presence.
Once again I thank you.
How frail and thin those words seem, “thank you.”
Life itself, love itself, eternity itself, are within your embrace.
And yet, my tiny thanks still fills my tiny soul … and so it fits.
Your embrace gathers me in and more
A drop within an ocean
A whisper in the wind.
Thank you.
I sit, trying to still the waters of my soul,
Trying to find myself within their flow,
Even as the howling storms around me
Threaten to split the very stones beneath my feet.
But the water is not threatened by cracking rock.
It merely flows into that space as well.
And with sweet relief I see that the level of my pool is not diminished.
The source of that water is not within me.
The spring that feeds my soul is unlimited.
And even when a deep crevasse opens up before me, the water fills it all.
I do not have to fall into the abyss.
The water holds me up.
Sometimes the contours of the change make it whitewater – full of crash and spray
But if I will trust the ride, and leave the end within your hands,
It can be an adventure.
A rainbow rises in the mist that floats across the tumult.
Pull me into this reality, oh Holy One, I pray.
And help me hold firm to your buoyant grace.
Rock, scissors, paper … water covers all. You win.
Sounds like a dance, doesn’t it? Well, it is the dance. Suddenly the second commandment – love your neighbor as yourself- takes on another layer of meaning. If the interrelation of The Three is a dance, and we are invited in, we must learn to dance together. Continue reading
I stand at the top of the steps – a hundred steps, perhaps – and look out upon the morning. The sun has not yet come up, but the sky has begun to turn a lighter gray and the silhouettes of buildings and trees have sharpened, just a bit. It is quiet here, and still. No one else is stirring.
I turn and look at the large oak doors, heavy and metal-bound, that guard the entrance to the building that stands, imposing, at the top of oh, so many stairs. No one comes here, no one enters, by accident. Continue reading
Quiet Hope 