God Is awake
Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones. And when you have finished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.
– Victor Hugo
life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “Grieving”
the world needs kindness
After yesterday’s Boston Marathon bombings, people around the world are praying for this city, and the people affected by the violence. But don’t stop there: pray for the whole world. After all, it’s really the world’s marathon. I’ve been there near the finish line, surrounded by people of every nation. As the winner runs by, a crowd breaks out in the national anthem—of Kenya. I’m sure you noticed all the international flags in the news videos. It’s the whole world’s race. And today we’re a part of the whole world’s pain. We share the trauma and grief that much of the world lives in every day. This is not Boston’s unique pain. It is everyone’s. Pray for the the healing of the world.
People say, “Be strong.” We will, yes, we will. But the world does not need strength. What the world needs is kindness. The world needs people who have the courage to be gentle, even when those around them are full of rage and despair and violence, who refuse to join the world’s bitterness. The world needs people who choose love over fear. That’s the only thing that will actually change the world.
It’s not easy. Love is not quick, and does not produce immediate results. It’s a marathon. It takes dedication and training and a lot of commitment. It’s not for the faint-hearted. As Gandhi said, if you are too cowardly to be nonviolent, by all means take up arms to fight for justice. Love takes guts. It takes faith, confidence that a greater love is at work even when we cannot see it. And it takes patience, like a marathon — the willingness to go the distance, to keep at it when your body cries, “Quit!,” when your mind thinks of better things to do, when pain and weariness make you want to give up —it takes guts to keep going anyway. The Via Dolorsa is the toughest race. To share in the world’s pain and sadness, and still keep up hope and love — that is the world’s oldest marathon. The good news that we do not run alone. Nor do we run on our own energy: we are moved by the desire of God for the healing of the world.
Pray for those who are in pain today. Pray for the world, and for each of us, for the spirit of peace, for the courage to love in the face of fear and be gentle in the face of violence, for the guts to be part of the mending of the world. Pray for those who are hurting, for those who are afraid, for those who are in sorrow. Pray for all of us, that we may make gentle this wounded world. Even now the Lamb of God is moving among us, never giving up, keeping on with unflagging love and tenderness. Take heart, breathe deeply, and keep going.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.unfoldinglight.net
joy in heaven
Brennan Manning
writing of grace
in his human broken frame
a ragamuffin
full if love and scars
he is now home with our Abba
God brought him to me
through Wyatt
in Florida
a weird and wonderful guy
who also brought me to
Henri Nouwen
and
John Eldridge
Wow!
that was a very strange and beneficial encounter
The words and calling
of Ruthless Trust
The Ragamuffin Gospel
the truth resounding
The Furious Love of God
Abba’s Child
The Wisdom of Tenderness
Above All
I read every word of his
I can get hold of
each echo in my heart
We are here to help each other
from one ragamuffin to another
Yes, he lived his calling
in a brave and wonderful way
finding intimacy and true relationship
through imperfection
just as I have
there is great joy in heaven
as he goes home
I am sure he is enjoying
the band greatly
4/13/13
the battle
The real spiritual combat is the struggle to keep moving toward the light precisely when the darkness is so real.
– Henri Nouwen
the dark came
and took me
places I didn’t want to go
brought me things
I didn’t want to know
and I was saved alone
because of the faith
I lived before this great darkness
You see, I knew there was light
even though I couldn’t see it
because the light was hidden inside
it called me to come
In the blackness it still shone
even though I couldn’t see it
my heart could hear it
because it was tuned
in the silence it still called
in the months of waiting
when I couldn’t walk,
even when I couldn’t move,
You were there
my heart felt you there
to carry me
to place me in the arc
to keep the flame alive
to make sure the darkness didn’t win
to make sure the stone was rolled away
so I could find the tomb door
on the morning I awake
to live again
AL 4/4/13
finding resurrection
The lion still roars
I walk in grief
On the purple beach
the grey-green water
meeting the sky
Into infinity
the world unending
I sit on driftwood
Fascinatingly carved by water
Into pieces of art
and shapes that look like
cattle skulls in the desert
I cry as I pick up rocks
Why do i grieve such simple things
Those precious shells
I spent hours snorkeling for
In 1985
You polished them
til they were smooth as silk
So beautiful
I loved everything about them
and that memory they held
Back When the world was still
A mystery
And I knew nothing about hardship
Loss or pain
I thought love and life were simple
That you wanted me to be happy
That you loved me
That we would build a family together
I kept those shells in a special jar
Would let the kids play with them
For a special treat
I loved their delight in them
As they played for hours
sorting the colors and shapes
Loving the story of us at the start
I Kept them close to me
Through all the losses
Then they were gone
lost to me forever
way after my innocence
but somehow they took
some shred I was holding on to
Some secret part of me and you
that was still beautiful
I picked up small beautiful rocks
today at the beach
They reminded me
and it all returned
all the losses
all the pain
What you chose
The choices I was forced to make
The price of gaining my soul
The cost of winning my freedom
I cry so deeply
Right to the core
such intense love
for the wounded heart
carried in small pieces
of the world
connecting all the pain
and love together
Bittersweet grief
Bittersweet love
Exquisite pain
Exquisite joy
Will I ever find another that understands this?
Will I ever share this same heart as one?
Will I ever make it home?
Will I ever make it?
Will I ever?
Will I?
Will?
AL 3/31/13
absorbing grief
Have you sat with grief?
Have you let it wring you dry?
Leave you swollen and exhausted
in it’s wake?
Allowed the pain from the inner depths of hell,
deeper than you knew existed,
to ooze out,
bubble up into your heart,
so that your tears could begin
to wash you clean?
So it can absorb into your highest self,
and make you all you can be?
Have you asked yourself
the questions with no answers?
can you allow them to just co-exist with you,
knowing for sure that life is good,
finding space for gratitude
even in the unanswerable?
Have you walked, and talked,
with death and your losses?
Your innocence murdered
by anger and hate?
Precious time stolen
by monsters and ogres?
Heart trampled
by words of violence and sarcasm?
Are you familiar with vulnerability?
With allowing your deepest feelings,
painful feelings,
raw feeling,
real feelings,
to come out of the grave
where you try to hide them?
Exposing your wounds,
old and new?
I know how hard it is,
I know.
I try to avoid it too.
I also know the truth.
It must be done.
It is the broken road to healing.
To life!
The more we feel,
the more we can feel.
Go deep, my friend
Open up wide.
Sit a spell and let it bubble.
Feel it all.
It will feel rotten for a while,
then comes the morning
you wake up good as new!
New and improved.
I promise you won’t regret it.
Just trust me on this one.
I am well acquainted with grief.
I am intimately familiar
with the process.
AL 4/1/13
3 more days of 2012!
Resurrection
These are the last days of the year
I feel like I want to slow them down
Drain them dry
Not sure why
First time i’ve had this feeling
Between Christmas
and a New Year
Usually I can’t wait
for the page to turn
Im always ready for
the bright shiny new year
To come and bring new things
Shimmering with possibility
Glimmering with potential
Empty slate-start over time
This year I feel these last few days of 2012
Are important for me
To grasp
In ways Ive never felt before
In three days a lot can happen
A death and burial
Even, on occasion,
a resurrection
AL 12/27/12
At Christmas time we think of the “Christ child,” though we know nothing of Jesus’ childhood. But there is this: Luke says when Jesus was twelve, when his family went to the temple in Jerusalem they accidentally left him behind. After three days they found him, in the temple.
Insert your own funny family story here of the kid being left somewhere (ours is a gas station). But wait― three days? Clearly, this is not a biographical story, but a symbolic one. It’s a story about losing and finding, being with and without, separation and reunion. In the Bible three days is not chronological time, it’s symbolic time: Abraham and Isaac on the mountain… Jonah in the whale… Jesus in the tomb. Three days means loss and transformation, death and resurrection. And it comes at Christmas time.
Because Christ comes to us to be with us in our death. Christ comes to us because we are broken hearted. The peace and joy of Christmas is not just for fun, but because we need it. We need the healing for our sorrows, the mercy in our terror, the company in our wanderings. Christ comes to be with us because we are lost, and searching, and alone. Sometimes, like his parents, we feel like we have lost the Holy Child with us or within us. We feel death’s shadow. But the good news is that we haven’t lost God; we are not alone; death does not have the last word. The light of Christmas shines on those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death.
For many people the ribbons of Christmas are braided with sorrow. And this year it has been for us, too. My wife Beth’s youngest sister Paula passed away suddenly and unexpectedly last weekend, two days before Christmas. Family is gathered, yet sundered, both lost and united. We have been more aware than usual that the promise of Christmas is not happy times; the promise is that God is with us, even in the sorrowful times. Sometimes we have to search for three days to know it. But when we return to the sacred center, we find that it is we who have wandered, who have not seen the presence of God. We are not alone. And death never has the last word.
There will be sorrows and fears; there will be times when we feel without God. But “after three days”―beyond the appearances of time and space― we will be reunited with the Beloved, and we will find ourselves in a holy place.
This Christmas pray for all those who do not yet see light in their lives, who are in sorrow, or searching and feel alone.
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.unfoldinglight.net
sorrow
It is not into a Christmas card-perfect scene
of loveliness and reverence that Jesus comes,
but into this rough world
of poverty and human trafficking,
factory fires and school shootings.
Here, in our grief and terror,
and in our secret shame
of who we human beings are,
Jesus comes to bring us God’s love,
and also to show us who we really are.
Yes, it is awful that such tragedies happen at Christmas time,
but this is the time for them;
this is the whole point of Christmas:
it is into the darkness that the light comes.
Our world is full of violence and sadness,
but no sooner do terrible things happen
than God comes among us
to be with us in our brokenness,
with healing and forgiveness,
comes as a child—
amazing, always a child—
comes saying, “I still love you,
and even in world of hurt
I will always be with you.”
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.unfoldinglight.net
let hope rise and darkness tremble – hillsong
A crisis is a gift, an opportunity, and perhaps a manifestation that life loves us,
by beckoning us to go beyond the dance we presently perform.
– Leslie Lebeau
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on te wings of the dawn,
If I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say,
“Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
– Psalm 139:7-12
Yes! When the light of hope comes, darkness has no place!!!!
Hello Life
I am heavy
Stepping with sand-bag feet
Slow
Hello life
In this dark day
I look for beauty
It’s always there
I wonder if I would have jumped
or just gone back to die
If I had really known how hard it would be
year after year
on and on
with no relief
If I had known this day would be waiting for me
Do I really believe it will ever get better?
No answer comes
I move away from the question
I made my choice –
it was the harder one
I go curl up in fetal position
In the Legacy Garden
On the round plaque with Wendell Berry’s words of understanding
I part the out thrusting branches
And come in beneath the blessed and the blessing trees. 
Though I am silent
There is singing around me.
Though I am dark
There is vision around me.
Though I am heavy
There is flight around me.
– Wendell Berry
I lay on the words
feel them
seeping in to my body
connecting me
comforting me
Life continues to flow
There is goodness right here in the dark
I can acknowledge it
I look up at the roof of the gondola
branches of painted ever-green summer leaves
Who cares if someone sees me?
P.S. there ought to be a raven here somewhere
AL 12/3/12
life: acoustic & amplified 