life: acoustic & amplified

the great challenge

The great challenge of faith is to hold on to hope after you’ve lost your naïveté

– Ann Voskamp

I’ve long had trust issues with You

We both know the truth of it

Sometimes I don’t like poetry’s punch

in the face of my illusions

sometimes it reveals my own sordid secrets

my prejudicial biases despite my brave intentions

I shuffle through my walk of shame through trash-filled parking lots

hearing howls from next doors graveyard shifting

willows always weeping into the wild grass

fake flowers decomposing in the worm laden faded astro turf

My faith starts the morning

feeling a bit wet and soggy

I keep leaking all over my day

trying to lean into the heart of it all

the end of the innocence was over long ago

still and yet,

Jesus always willingly

lays down on the proffered cross

even as the daily crucifixions continue to be demanded

by mobs and masses

the known and unknown

(I keep desperately waiting, wanting, expecting, something different)

carried on out in-spite of the pain inflicted –

possibly because of the pain inflicted –

on the world we inhabit –

Internal and external

we are violent people

so ready to kill

to proudly prove our way is the only right one

even so, love knows no boundaries

chooses to soften on in and smile bravely

courageously receives the wound

lies there calmly bleeding out

dies over and over

in-order to rise again and again

the face of the lover cannot harden or turn away

always faces forward

sees with second sight what is possible

else all will be lost

soft answers wrung from the broken, bleeding hearted

are the only way through the hate wrung words

of the wounded little birds

defending their own lostness

we can never be whole if we refuse

to lay down and hand the nails to the other

…I know it makes no sense…

…It’s never my first choice…

even with practice it’s brutally difficult

to lay down my honorable defenses

…Hence the trust issues…

All I somehow know is this

it’s my only shot at truly living a life of joy

A life that matters even a little bit

A life that carries the weight and crown of eternity

and so I try every day,

all day,

just a smudge,

a smidge,

a smattering,

to doubt myself

and trust the Greater,

the One True Love and Lover

the Maker, Creator and Guardian of my pathway and only hope

of getting what I truly want

which has always been

to truly see and love another

to be fully seen and loved by that other in return

❤️

Amy Lloyd

nights are made for dancing

Hello Fri-day

Good night daylight

so long sunny way

Bon voyage 10th day

see ya later summer say

After while crocodile

tomorrow is another day

Good morning my baby boy

let the flowers sing for joy

Magic music all around

soon the dancing will commence

at daybreak or a bit before

don’t forget, unlock the door

Good bye darlin’ pie

talk to you soon my sugar moon

Oh hi there Satur-day

let’s have a groovy one, OK?

💞

Amy Lloyd

go with it

Try to love everything that gets in your way:

The Chinese women in flowered bathing caps

murmuring together in Mandarin doing leg exercises in your lane

while you execute thirty-six furious laps,

one for every item on your to-do list.

The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water

like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side and

whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.

Teachers all. Learn to be small

and swim past obstacles like a minnow,

without grudges or memory. Dart

toward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking, Obstacle,

is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girl

lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:

Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,

in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.

Be glad she’ll have that to look at the rest of her life, and

keep going. Swim by an uncle

in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew

how to hold his breath underwater,

even though kids aren’t supposed

to be in the pool at this hour. Someday,

years from now, this boy

who is kicking and flailing in the exact place

you want to touch and turn

may be a young man at a wedding on a boat,

raising his champagne glass in a toast

when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.

He’ll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,

but he’ll come up like a cork,

alive. So your moment

of impatience must bow in service to the larger story,

because if something is in your way, it is

going your way, the way

of all beings: toward darkness, toward light.

🌺

From Desire Zoo by Alison Luterman

Lose your balance.

Overflow.

Spilling is never a mistake.

Again and again,

make a gracious mess

of incarnation.

How else will you learn

each step of the dance

that is never rehearsed?

Galaxies enter you to touch

this whirling in the flesh.

Stars drown in your blood

to taste prayer.

Just remember this, friend:

All creatures share

the same breath,

the one that is flowing

through your body now.

☔️

Fred LaMotte

My life is not tied up

in pretty blue bows

not many straight lines appear

on my map to this place

where I find myself today

I’ve chosen to go off grid

well maybe the truth is…

I found myself off grid

and after a while I realized it was the gift!

So I began making difficult, but purpose-filled choices,

again and again to stay off the mapped plan

I’ve skated thin ice and jumped with no net

over and over despite my own stable-craving nature

these tough years teaching me so much

in solitary silence

I’ve learned that somehow the ground always holds my weight

the universe is truly conspiring to help me

and so, I live mostly on the edges

where adventure steals

all the comforts of an easy chair existence

where there is no sinking into the clouded cover of ‘safety’

when risking it all in the danger zone of unconditional loving

takes everything you have

a complex living

of big picture purpose

of fulfilling soul desires

of loving the world enough to sacrifice pride

of working to become me

to stay small and humble

does anything I do matter?

sometimes Im not sure

But,

If anything matters –

then everything does!

and so it goes

and so it goes

🌎

Amy Lloyd

open wide to what you want

Dive into the thin air of hope

Long for it

Like a tree’s roots dig

For drink

Don’t pretend

You don’t need it

You need it

But don’t expect it to look

Like the movie that plays

on the screen

Of your skull

Your job is not to find it

Only to let yourself

Be found

To find strength

In begging

For love.

⁃ Samantha Reynolds

Nothing good gets started without getting to work – nothing good gets finished without staying at the work.

Laziness looks like a friend, but only work can invite you home.

– Ann Voskamp

There was that day of the silent scream inside,

‘God I need you to speak to me today….Pleeeeeease’

But there was nothing in answer

except the poem

from my special God-friend at Unfolding Light…

reminding me to trust the silence…

I was at the door knocking loudly, yet there was nothing –

Weeds and locked doors filled my morning

The door of The Open Door Chapel was not

It was a day of deserted desert wandering

Until I drove East, able to read all the signs, full circle

as the sun set and the sky became a love letter

written especially for me and mine

crazy beautiful stuff surrounding us on all sides

and the magic of life filled me to the brim with wonder once again

I finally spoke to God at 9:06 pm and there was great celebrations in our 33 minutes

of catching up and keeping faith

I went to bed full

sliver of moon having slid right into my heart slot

quenching the last of my desperate desire

to feel you present with me now

like a quarter sliding into the juke box

my song began again

knowing the heart of this moment

It’s Alright

Morning has (indeed) Broken

Everything’s Gonna Be Alright,

Rock-a-bye

Rock-a-bye

🌝

Amy Lloyd

how do you want to feel?

We are shaped by our thoughts;

we become what we think.

When the mind is pure,

joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

-Buddha

here’s the thing…

what’s a girl to do with all this happiness?

what sort of containers can hold this amount of wild joy?

will howling at the moon help release my raging want?

Will dancing in a beautiful fountain fill my soul with wonder enough to overtake my passion for adventure?

will you ever again fight your way uptown, take the train just to see me?

will you tell me again that I’m the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen?

want to do something wild together?

The possibilities are endless..

Let’s let joy flow in big puddles all around us

till we swim in the ocean of this amazing life of grace

💃

Amy Lloyd

desire

There is a spectacle grander than the sea, and that is the sky; there is a spectacle grander than the sky, and that is the interior of the soul.

– Hugo / Les Misérables

Your Soul is everything. The ‘Am that I Am.’ Your beingness. The you that is simultaneously part of the all. The God part that is aware of itself. Unfathomably, your Soul is the stuff of eternity, time without end, spanning space and dimensions. It is the Love of All Loves. It is inextinguishable Source of Light. Your Soul is home.

Your Soul is the destination- your feelings are the road signs directing you to it. Your feelings lead you home by giving you moment-by-moment signals.

– Danielle LaPorte

Success is not a result of spontaneous combustion.

You must set yourself on fire.

Find what you love and let it kill you,

Fine advice from Bukowski.

Set your soul,

Your very life, on fire.

Then let it loose

all over your world

Feed it well

Let it breathe

Until your song

Rises from the ashes

Of what used to be your broken life

but now warms the worn

and speaks grace to the pilgrims

Resting along the way

❤️

Amy Lloyd

love decides everything

Maybe being oneself is always an acquired taste.

💃

Patricia Hampl