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]
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.
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.
The rain today is a slow drizzle
The kind that sinks gently into your soul
Filling the deep cracks that have yearned for its coming
Drawing the broken pieces whole
As I go about my day
Doing the dailyness; tidying and futzing with the debris of my week
The rain is there, in the background
Filling my holes.
What persistent grace you give
Working its way when I notice, and when I do not
Seeping down between each grain of sand
To firm it up, to allow it to hold its shape
You are the rain of my soul
The filler of my holes
The holder of my tiny fragments of self
The moisture that feeds the dry with hope
The tiny wildflowers that sprout across the pasture in delight of drizzle
Give testament to that persistent grace
And to the seeds of gifts within my frame
That you call forth within the quiet patter of an afternoon.
[photo by jenny downing per cc 2.0]
There was once a tiny flower
Peaking up through a crack in the sidewalk
Seeking both sun and the modicum of soil that such a space provides.
My roots are cramped in this small space.
I am, like all rooted beings, unable to move into the sun.
I must wait its coming, turning toward its grace at the moment of its arrival.
I am planted here by the breath of the wind
That carried my seed to this place and time.
My DNA has opened deep blue petals to the day.
There is little ‘me’ of my own making
But there is this:
The grateful tilt of my heart,
The addition of my blue to the gray of the sidewalk,
And, yes, a bit of nectar for that small bee.
I am glad to rest in grace within this small space and span of life.
I am glad to feel the sun upon my face.
I am glad for the fragrance of your joy, unfurled upon my petals.
I am glad for the whisper of the breeze
And for this small bit of soil that feeds my soul
And holds me tight, in you.
[photo by anastasiaphotography per cc 2.0]
I want to be Rumi or Julian of Norwich.
You want me to be me.
I don’t want to settle.
You smile, thanking me for agreeing with you. Continue reading
Quiet, quiet, quiet
Quiet as a mouse
I am the quietest
One in the house!
Our old patterns sneak back into our lives with unyielding persistence. We can’t keep them quiet. We don’t even see them coming till they are shrieking in our ears and we find ourselves back in the same old conundrums.
Good morning, Holy One.
Thank you.
For the morning.
For the quiet.
For the hope of a new day.
For the beating of your heart deep within mine.
For your call, like the pull of the ocean current, unseen, irresistible.
For life – full of fragile beauty.
Thank you. Continue reading
I can’t seem to keep my mind from wandering without my fingers on the keys. Something about watching the letters fall upon the page helps me focus. Somehow watching what has just happened lets me see a tiny bit into the future – thinking my way to the next word as the last one falls into black and white.
So I put myself in that space – in that little place of ‘nexting’ – letting it open up a focused opportunity for encounter. I am hoping for Your interference. Will You come? Are You there?
I can hardly sit still. My spirit is jittery, anxious, chattering away with irrelevant noise. I am afraid of not being able to do what I have committed myself to do: too much work, too many projects, too much responsibility, too many obligations.
I shudder before the altar to Should. Great God Should, my master, my hard taskmaster. High and lofty Should – you are an altar made of my own fashioning, covered with my dreams, like sheets of pounded gold – strong, overbearing, threatening my doom. My own hands have made you, but I cannot find a way to take you down. Continue reading
Quiet Hope 