too convinced that ‘nothing can be done’ to brave self responsibility
too comfortable to say no to that monster keeping us chained to the weakest parts of ourselves
the bullsh** of wasted lives
the emptiness of wasting time
the cruel decisions of men drowning
the hopes of the weak trampled
the tragedy of the parental misguidance
ingrained foundations
the travesty of religion
gone wrong
it happens so often
doctrine and old false belief systems
becoming the
masters of deceit filled lives
rather than the servant
of love
oh soul arise and fight
break up the hallowed ground of the falsified truth
oh, my friend, take back your life
open the beautiful box
of your most vulnerable, passionate essence
the pope will never take your case
your parents will never grant permission
but then again,
why would you want them too?
This is your life!
Only you can stand for what is given you
take that buried coffin
out of the ground
plant a seed or two inside
No one else can do it for you
or take it away from you
just you
you can never be too sensitive
you already know the real truth
celebrate yourself
flaunt your true colors
they’re so very beautiful
remember to remember
only love is real
💞
Amy Lloyd (AL)
Help Me
As they’re used psychologically, words like repression, denial, sublimation, and defense all refer to one form or another of the way human beings erect walls to hide behind, both from each other and from themselves. You repress the memory that is too painful to deal with, say. You deny your weight problem. You sublimate some of your sexual energy by channeling it into other forms of activity more socially acceptable. You conceal your sense of inadequacy behind a defensive bravado. And so on and so forth. The inner state you end up with is a castle-like affair of keep, inner wall, outer wall, and moat, which you erect originally to be a fortress to keep the enemy out, but which turns into a prison where you become the jailer and thus your own enemy. It is a wretched and lonely place. You can’t be what you want to be there or do what you want to do. People can’t see through all that masonry to who you truly are, and half the time you’re not sure you can see who you truly are yourself, you’ve been walled up so long.
Fortunately there are two words that offer a way out, and they’re simply these: “Help me.” It’s not always easy to say them-you have your pride after all, and you’re not sure there’s anybody you trust enough to say them to-but they’re always worth saying. To another human being-a friend, a stranger? To God? Maybe it comes to the same thing.
Help me. They open a door through the walls, that’s all. At least hope is possible again. At least you’re no longer alone.
~ Frederick Buechner
originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words
All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you.
– Octavia E. Butler
fierce surrender
relentlessly engaged
In a loud and howling world, it’s in the silence of a broken heart that the chambers of you can hear the sound of God speaking. It’s in the emptiness that happens in the wake of a broken heart, that God fills you with Himself.
Soundlessly, relentlessly praying through your spaces of brokenness makes the heart bigger, until you hold the gift of God alone.
I memorize the white of the moon. Freeze frame the Farmer grinning in the white light of it there on the tractor seat, the peak of his feed cap pulled low over his face. We get to inhale. We get to live every day like it might be our last —- because one of these days, we’re guaranteed to be right.
We get to surrender to the glory, to the weight of it coming through the thinning sky, and there’s nothing in this world that’s normal — there’s only growing blind to the glory. There’s only growing blind to the injustice, to the blood on our own hands, to the love we could make, to the One who says, “Holy Father, keep them in Your name…. —- that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:11) to the truth that we all belong to one another. It’s the cynics who wear armour to shield the heart from all this beauty that wounds.
You are perishable here.
Taste the moments accordingly.
Taste the space between every breath like it is bread, the space between the stars where you and he are just for now, the space between you and faces you love and being here no more, the spaces between the pain, between you and streets of grief, between you and injustice and war and mothers cradling their babies in fear, and learn to love before it’s too late. I need to etch that into me.
You are perishable here, Taste the moments accordingly —
You get to decide whether you are going to taste it, all of it and know that God is good and enjoy Him and make your life about others tasting His goodness too.
You get to decide whether you’re going to spend your one life trying to make an impression and look good — or make a difference and do good.
You don’t get long here before you get to be a memory — so make your life about getting thirsty people glasses of water.
💧
– Ann Voskamp
blog: aholyexperience.com
Isaiah 6
There were banks of candles flickering in the distance and clouds of incense thickening the air with holiness and stinging his eyes, and high above him, as if it had always been there but was only now seen for what it was (like a face in the leaves of a tree or a bear among the stars), there was the Mystery Itself, whose gown was the incense and the candles a dusting of gold at the hem. There were winged creatures shouting back and forth the way excited children shout to each other when dusk calls them home, and the whole vast, reeking place started to shake beneath his feet like a wagon going over cobbles, and he cried out, “O God, I am done for! I am foul of mouth and the member of a foul-mouthed race. With my own two eyes I have seen him. I’m a goner and sunk.” Then one of the winged things touched his mouth with fire and said, “There, it will be all right now,” and the Mystery Itself said, “Who will it be?” and with charred lips he said, “Me,” and Mystery said “Go.”
Mystery said, “Go give the deaf hell till you’re blue in the face and go show the blind heaven till you drop in your tracks, because they’d sooner eat ground glass than swallow the bitter pill that puts roses in the cheeks and a gleam in the eye. Go do it.”
Isaiah said, “Do it till when?”
Mystery said, “Till hell freezes over.”
Mystery said, “Do it till the cows come home.”
And that is what a prophet does for a living and, starting from the year that King Uzziah died, when he saw and heard all these things, Isaiah went and did it.
🔥
~ Frederick Buechner originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words
What is your unrelenting passion?
My Beloved said, “My name is not complete without yours.”
And I thought, How could a human’s worth ever be such?
And God knowing all of our thoughts, and all our thoughts are just innocent steps on the path, then addressed my heart.
God revealed a sublime truth to the world when He sang
“I am made whole by your life. Each soul, each soul completes Me.”
– Hafiz
The best advice ever, beautifully written, by Fred LaMotte:
‘Smart’ people believe in their thoughts, especially the thought of ‘me.’ How can a thought discriminate between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ideas? Only the silence beyond ideas, who watches without thought, can discriminate.
Don’t be so smart. Be a little stupid. Watch thoughts come and go without grasping them. Even the thought of ‘me.’ Rest beyond mind as self-radiant emptiness.
You are not an idea, ceaselessly arguing with other ideas. You are sparkling omnipresent free space, where all ideas arise and dissolve without conflict.
The way to peace is awakening the Witness.
Oh Infinite Intelligence, I ask not for more blessings,
but more wisdom with which to make better use of
the greatest of all blessings with which I was endowed
at birth – the right to embrace and direct to ends of my
own choice the powers of my mind.
———-
Napoleon Hill’s Greatest Speeches. Sound Wisdom. Pennsylvania. 2016. Pgs. 161-162
with wings
rough hands
feet on bare earth
I want to become a continent of angels
some common rarity so unexplored
unadmissable
that even I cannot find where I begin or end
.
let this body become a borderless land
full of immigrants
artist and poets
whose only claim to fame is that
they rushed to join this conflagration of
unbound unexplored unknowable art
to enter full existence
.
who is to say what is real
in a universe so wide
and blasted unpretentious
let us join this revolution
wild eyes full hearted
as if this day
is the only day the universe will ever exist
and yes you matter
.
come with me
join asunder
this world is fully ablaze
and yet none of us burn
like a kernel in the heart of the sun
.
now I have come to understand
the language of infinity
it is in the way you dress and speak
and hurry along caressing the earth
and me with it
some vision of your standard uranium golden globe reeking sun
the perfect curve with no edge
———–
Adam A DeFranco (c) 2016
I am always amazed at the layers,
the levels, of the human experience.
The never ending,
ever-evolving, devolving,
shifting, opening,
illumination, illusion-revealing,
conviction shattering, my gospel truth challenging,
deep calling to deep, border breaking,
darkness, light and color discovering, re-discovering.
This way of living I have stumbled onto – into –
not because I’m so smart –
but because I asked,
I was given this priceless gift.
This surprising path
of a pilgrim,
of spiritual growth,
baby stepping my way to
healing, learning,
opening, Mystery,
more always reveals more.
Always re-defining the definitions
of love, abundance,
grace, healing,
truth, error,
good, evil,
joy, suffering,
prosperity, poverty,
spirit, spirituality,
life itself becoming more with each step.
My self righteousness becoming less important
with every glimpse of my Creator, my own Belovedness.
Sometimes I understand how Peter must have felt when he saw the great sheet of unclean animals come down before him,
which God asked him to kill and eat,
He challenged with those same words I have heard from heaven –
“What I have named clean do not proclaim unclean.”
Challenging, very challenging, stuff.
The stuff of humility and opening,
the stuff of learning.
Life changing/giving stuff.
We want to think we know, that we are right.
We want approval, to be able to judge.
We want to earn our way, be worthy.
It will never work. Thankfully.
Then we catch the tiniest of glimpses of the Lover
and we fall on our knees,
breathless, undone,
aware of our need, our misplaced vanity,
stripped of our pride, our shoes,
amazed by what we have encountered, changed forever.
full but ever thirsty for more –
LOVE
💞
AL
I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.
I gave myself permission to feel and experience all of my emotions. In order to do that, I had to stop being afraid to feel. In order to do that, I taught myself to believe that no matter what I felt or what happened when I felt it, I would be okay. – Iyanla Vanzant
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
📝
The Layers by Stanley Kunitz
there are people and places
which live inside me
I feel them
as I spin the kaleidoscope wheel
they come into focus
moments
smells
textures
visuals
each hold exquisite love
each hold delicately intense, brutal, suffering
each hold ruthless trust,
radical hope,
extreme faith,
continual healing.
each person,
each place a threshold
of practical practice,
of growth and becoming,
of wrestling with letting go,
of spiritual teaching towards love,
of defending my tenderness,
of stepping into ‘I am’,
of allowing myself,
of removing the toxic tarter buildup of my own soul,
of seeing glimpses of the unlimited, ever-unfolding mystery.
Yeah, so, the past month has been an intense one for me in every way. A bit emotionally brutal. We can all relate, I’m sure. It’s shown me a lot of new things about myself, also revealed some new glimpses of this mystical mystery named, so simply, “Love,” in our language.
I’ve been a student of the nature of Love for the past 7 years, which doesn’t seem very long, now that I write it down, but, I have to report, just this short time of study, it has changed me in every area of my life.
My studies are always, first and foremost, practical. To me nothing I ‘believe’ is worth anything if it does not actually work in my living to bring me healing, make me a better human, remove my baggage to reveal my highest and best self, lead me into paths of peace and load my arms with fruit to share with fellow pilgrims along the way…and, so, I began by asking God to reveal what love was and how love worked.
My first flash came in 2009, riding on a CT commuter train from New Haven to Branford, looking at the marsh fly by. I had been asking for some days, intensely seeking, when God showed himself to me as ‘LOVE.’ That brief instant changed everything for me. I experienced the Aleph of The Mystery and left that train, completely changed a flash or, in real time less than 30 minutes…
Many wonderful writers have helped me along this open-ended, unlimited path of discovery on this topic. I must give much beautiful credit to Henri Nouwen, who helped me early on in my excavation of this topic. His revelations, and life surrendered to this mystery, have inspired much learning in my own voyage on this simple, yet so radical, path.
Over these years, I felt lead to share some of my tiny bits of insight with others – it has just been so amazing! So beautiful! So everything – I just wanted others to open to it as well, to learn and heal along with me! Over these years I have learned to be a writer and a poet. Until recently I didn’t feel I could claim those ‘titles,’ but I do now, just another way love has changed me. I am so grateful.
This brings us to yesterday, which brings us to Frederick Buechner’s 90th birthday! Buechner is one of the best, most beautiful, writers ever. Sometimes I stop breathing when I read his words. I won’t say more, at this moment, as this is becoming a very long post, but here’s my best advice: read him!
Recently someone, somewhere, on Facebook, posted words by poet, Fred LaMotte. They deeply touched me and so I ‘friended’ him. Then he began posting his words and I found myself on Amazon ordering one of his books. I received it last week, and it has been moving me into some very deep waters.
Yeah, so, back to yesterday, I re-posted a happy birthday write-up about Buechner and then…
I got this comment from Fred LaMotte:
He was the reason I became a teacher and a school chaplain. When I was a 10th grader at Exeter Academy (near Boston) he was the school chaplain. It was before he became a writer. One dreary morning in late Winter, we were 700 half asleep boys in morning ‘Chapel’ (it was just an assembly really), and decided to read to us. He read the entire 7th chapter of ‘The Wind In The Willows,’ ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn.’ It was very long and I think I might have been the only one stayed awake. It was amazing. Not only did it show me my first real piece of spiritual writing, but I thought, “Wow! This is his job? Reading to people about the great God Pan? I want to do this!” Thank you Frederick Buechner.
💞
WOW!! Then Fred LaMotte shared that chapter of the Wind and the Willows, ya know, the one that inspired some pretty intense poetry, which is, at this moment plowing up some new fields in my back forty…
I have not read The Wind in the Willows since I was a teenager, and, at that time I remember thinking it was rather stupid. My thoughts being something like, ‘Good grief, what in the heck is this about?’
Yesterday, I finally ‘got it!’ I broke down. I took my shoes off and bowed to the glory. Yesterday, a gift of love I offered was returned to me, unaccepted. I ‘got it!’ I broke down. I took my shoes off and bowed to the glory. There’s no right or wrong here, just gift. I choose to be only grateful to continue on in the, ‘yes and amen!’ of it all.
I have no idea what Love (God) will teach me next. I am a very humble beginner. No Master here. Just a girl who cannot believe how lucky I am to be on this narrow road. A very unlikely pilgrim, I. Always wearing inappropriate shoes for climbing these steep hills, but somehow, always getting the view of the most beautiful sunsets imaginable. I guess it’s true what Babe Ruth said, ‘You can’t beat a man who keeps getting up!’
Here’s a song I wrote for my children’s musical about my life of faith, named: The Fantastical Inside-Out-Upside-Down Journey of a Rich Little Poor Girl
You Otter Know (verses spoken in the style of Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked by Cage the Elephant/choruses in Sinatra style)
I was walking in the forest
I was feeling all alone
The birds and bees were sleeping,
the weeping willow weeping
Then I heard a little creature
Start moving oh so slow
and the little brook began to play
music with its toes
the woodpecker was keeping time
upon that tall oak tree
and I could not help start dancing
cause I knew it was for me
and as I whirled and twirled about
I came upon a log
and the beaver and the otter (Frank Sinatra style Beaver. Sammy Davis Otter)
were acting more like hogs (pushing each other to get to the log stage with microphone)
and then they each began to croon
they’re words were oh so rare
I stood there for a moment
my foot still in the air
and they sang to me…
You otter know I love you
loved you from the start
(if you’ll beaver me
then I’ll beaver you
You never walk alone)
You otter know I love you
love your precious heart
(beaver me it’s true
I’ve always loved you
You’re never far from home)
and the band it just kept playing
and my happy heart did gasp
Cause this was so much better
than that silly talking a**
uhhh donkey
Then my heart it felt so happy
and my eyes at last could see
That though I hadn’t been aware
You’d never once left me
and as I danced on down that path
I swear I sang this song
The one my friends had written,
which had been there all along
and I sang…
You otter know I love you
loved you from the start
(if you’ll beaver me
then I’ll beaver you
You never walk alone)
You otter know I love you
love your precious heart
(beaver me it’s true
I’ve always loved you
You’re never far from home
💞
AL
Ephesians 1:4
Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.
New Living Translation
You don’t have to melt
until you are ready.
Remember this:
Each moil of your unoiled joints,
every numb stiff gristle of resistance,
cramp of anger, clabber of shame,
clot of envy, opinion or belief,
is simply a mass of refusal
contracted into “me,”
a particle afraid to waltz
with its field, a wave
that will not settle to its sea,
a sky who thinks it is a cloud,
life: acoustic & amplified 