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Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Swamps and Faces


                                                                       (photo:  Schomsi, Pixabay)


The weather changes and the birds get quiet.  Holding onto the past is like holding onto the always-changing weather, or like a songwriting acquaintance of mine, Joe Doyle, said (in one of the many great songs he has written,) "...it's like trying to put smoke back in this cigarette."  Like a history book of which I can make note, but in which I must not live, my past is a teacher.  There was much good, and there was bad.  There was desperation, validation, perversion, sweet purity... but of all of the evil in the world, even stronger is the greatest of everything else:  love.  And I know of love, because here I stand.



Regarding the battle in the mind when fear and jealousy try to control and overtake good with manipulative plans and the desire to subdue another....oh, that the battle is lost, because my eyes are open to a light shining around him, and around her.   Would that we all rather help, than hurt.

I am reminded of the movie, "The Neverending Story" when the horse Artax is stuck in the quicksand in the Swamp of Sadness.  The horse's strong, powerful, and agile legs were useless without the desire.  And that desire sometimes comes from knowing there is something that makes everything worth the effort.






Is getting out of the muck something I can accomplish alone?  No.  I notice that I've an inborn desire to  need arms... but it is God's arms that I feel when there is no one else to be found.  It is His arms that I feel each time my heart remembers that I'm not doing so good inside without Him.  Bitterness is not going to win if I am mindful of Him.  He will not forget me.  When everything and everyone else around me fails, and I become disappointed in a life that may not be working out like I'd hoped and planned, He reminds me it's because He already has a plan. 

He already made me for a specific purpose.  There are specific needs people have that I can meet right now, that I will be enough for. And when I seek to know what it is I am reminded.  I don't go through the motions of an empty "religion", but I live an alternative choice, choosing love, choosing joy, choosing truth, choosing pureness in my work over instant self-gratification.







Oh, I pray to inhale peace and exhale joy, and it comes.  My breath is like snowflakes, and I inhale His Spirit as deeply as I can, and know that He is God.  And I tell Him,

"You are my God, my Healer, and Provider. You touch the hurt places of my heart and bring me wisdom and understanding, forgiveness and grace for my mistakes and purposeful acts I've done that defy good--forgiveness and grace for others that weren't good to me, or couldn't do what they said they would.  You give me calm faith, and immortal hope.  You enter the places in me that human eyes cannot see.  With You in my heart the deep cut feels like only a sting, and simple delights make me soar!"














In a world that knows how to battle with fingernails and swords, I can do battle with kisses and hugs, kindness, and a willingness to listen when the rest of the world can't be bothered.  When I feel anger to retaliate, I can surrender to the love of Christ, and follow His directions to give grace or turn the other cheek.  Love is that incarnate of the Holy Spirit, of the heart and soul of Jesus.  And He can flow through my hands any time I desire Him, when I reach, in that moment.  I quash any ill desire because I do not want to add to the quagmire that this world is becoming.  Do I cling to religion?  No.  I cling to a Holy Ghost that goes through my skin and inside of me, giving to me like I've never been given to before.  This is my testimony.





Here's that he turns toward that person, looks her in the eyes, holds her face in his hands, and gives what she needs:  this husband for his wife who does things hoping it will bring her a smile, working until his back aches to provide for her; this wife that gives to her husband daily, sacrificing her own desires to make his days more pleasant by filling whatever need he has; this parent for the child, sacrificing his or her own desires to care for the wellbeing of their offspring, providing ways to delight them and engage their minds, teaching them even in tiredness; this brother for his sister, leaving his endeavors of the moment to protect her from harm; these friends reminding each other that they are available to help in any circumstances that arise; this God for you and me, daily doing all of these things whether we are open enough to notice or not.  He reminds us that our purpose is not only our delight in His creation, or our own discoveries and observations, but also in our work for others.  That we obtain peace in our appreciation, but obtain love only with Him, with others.  Daily.  That He gave us eyes not just to witness the glory of the morning, or to see the colors of the sunset, but to see that others are smiling or crying.  He gave us ears to hear oceans and rain, and laughter and wails.





These birds get quiet because they are getting warm in the cooler weather.  I prepare my space for change in this new season that God brings to my life.  I know not whether it will storm or snow, or be the mildest winter of my life so far... but everything I need is at my disposal to minister to another in the Swamp of Sadness... because I reach for God and God is the only one strong enough to pull anyone out.  He has pulled me out this morning, already.  Time to start walking.  Where are the faces for my hands?










Thursday, September 10, 2015

Square Feet and Rounded Backs




We are to be a ship for passengers that carries others to their destination.  We are to let the sails billow taut in the wind, not proudly...just as they were made to do.  We are to be a home for a given amount of time between a point of origin and a destination.  Sometimes we will praised for our seaworthiness, but most times we are to be, simply, a transport to weary bodies and souls who cannot see past their knees.  Always a companion, always with a purpose.

Sometimes we are meant to move like a thief in the night, quickly, quietly, bringing to safety the precious cargo entrusted lest it fall into the wrong hands.  Sometimes we are a place for rest and celebration.  And sometimes we are sailed without a soul aboard just to see what might break before we carry another load.

Without passengers we are being mended, prepared, varnished, to be sailed in the bay, the pass, and one day in the open sea.

So, what will make us seaworthy?  Are we to become strong enough for a day's excursion?  A week's?  Or a long journey?

We begin with oars, and so our ship, in the beginning does not have many passengers, because the Captain knows it would be too much to bear. Our rudder is placed.  Backs are strengthened with the heave-ho.  The rowers become perfected in unison, each relying on each other's strengths and compensating for each other's weaknesses.  In this I'll tell you of my aching back, so that you can minister to me, and everyone can work harder until I am well.  I will lay it all bare before my brethren.

https://www.reverbnation.com/laurenkaysingersongwriter/song/17541393-lay-it-all-bare





Then our idea
of a common purpose becomes the common purpose.  We are of one Movement.  The passionate strength of each pull of the oar is measured, the faces that beg for relief in their efforts, for the higher destination to be reached.  The captain watches and commands, the helmsman steers, the rowers row, and when we are measured ready to harness the mighty wind in our sails we will receive the command to lift them, and our speed will increase.  We will work together, our only concerns being not of ourselves, but rather being the safety of our brother, the safety of the ship, the ship entrusted to the equipped called. 

Mark 1: 16-18
16 As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.”
18 At once they left their nets and followed him.



He says, "Leave your nets.  Leave your ways of doing things.  Leave your own understanding, and submit to the Spirit leading your hearts to greater ways.  Now my strength will enter your backs, the backs that bow into humble curves like the curves of the ship that will cause it to slice through the waters."







We want to pull away from shore in a hurry, but the Captain will not let us go and sink.  In the meantime our purpose is our preparation. It is a small rudder that steers a ship.



Zechariah 2:1-3

2 Then I looked up, and there before me was a man with a measuring line in his hand. I asked, “Where are you going?”
He answered me, “To measure Jerusalem, to find out how wide and how long it is.”
While the angel who was speaking to me was leaving, another angel came to meet him and said to him: “Run, tell that young man, ‘Jerusalem will be a city without walls because of the great number of people and animals in it. And I myself will be a wall of fire around it,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will be its glory within.’

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Yet Another Retraction

When these fingernails grow and grow they are not good for playing guitar.  Neither are they good for shaking hands, nor cradling faces.  I want to hold you close to me, and tell you a thing or two about the difference between instruments of love and claws.





Because, you see, I thought once clawing was the way to survive.  Imagine me on the precipice of a mountain.  I have just fallen and I cling with everything I have in me, my nailbeds seperating from my fingers because I'm trying so hard.  Really the only way to survive is to reach for a hand and cry out that we aren't invincible, that we aren't immune to or above the need of being approved, tried, and tested...that we aren't islands of self-sufficient men and women created to look out for number one. 

We were born to need.






I could wait to post these pictures.  I could get a manicure because nobody wants to see the ugly.  I could hide the swelling and pretend I am not in pain.  I could angle the calluses out of view and pretend I am not over-working them out of pure drive of a calling greater than skin and bones. 



The work of our hands shows in the wear of our hands.  The knobs that form tell a story of what we care about the most.  The tilt of our chins speak volumes of how many we will include.  The deepness of our eyes is where the love of Something Greater is found, the thermometer of our warmth, the barometer of moisture in our souls, the tell-tale of what we will give out of our purest state.



So when our age finds us and our faces own plenty of crevices able to hold all the jealousy and bitterness in the world, and our hands are beyond repair, and we've nothing left to do but sit and think about yesteryear, we will remember by looking at them that we kept our nails short so as not to hurt the ones whose we held, that we let every ounce of bitterness mix and fall with every milliliter of salty tears...the tears that need to fall because, we know better.  We know better than to think we are better, don't we?  Filing nails are choices, such that iron sharpens iron into curves conducive to love.

After all the callused hands are those that build bridges.