miles come
miles go
some stay a while
some roll on beneath our feet
or our wheels
barely noticed
driving in the fast lane
with the windows rolled up tightly
in God we trust
unfolding on every bill we pull from pocket
but, the world doesn’t work that way…
or does it?
peace,
love,
always seal the deal
walk away free,
changed
ready to see some new things
every choice brings us to our new place
right here
right now
notice it
say thank you
❤️
AL
Quote of the Day: Virtue
Next to the seven deadly sins, the seven cardinal virtues are apt to look pale and unenterprising, but appearances are notoriously untrustworthy.
Prudence and temperance, taken separately, may not be apt to get you to your feet cheering, but when they go together, as they almost always do, that’s a different matter. The chain smoker or the junkie, for instance, who exemplifies both by managing to kick the habit, can very well have you throwing your hat in the air, especially if it happens to be somebody whom for personal reasons you’d like to have around a few years longer. And the courage involved isn’t likely to leave you cold either. Often it’s the habit kicker’s variety that seems the most courageous.
If you think of justice as sitting blindfolded with a scale in her hand, you may have to stifle a yawn, but if you think of a black judge acquitting a white racist of a false murder charge, it can give you gooseflesh.
The faith of a child taking your hand in the night is as moving as the faith of Mother Teresa among the untouchables, or Bernadette facing the skeptics at Lourdes, or Abraham, age seventy-five, packing up his bags for the Promised Land. And hope is the glimmer on the horizon that keeps faith plugging forward, of course, the wings that keep it more or less in the air.
Maybe it’s only love that turns things around and makes the seven deadly sins be the ones to look pale and unenterprising for a change. Greed, gluttony, lust, envy, and pride are no more than sad efforts to fill the empty place where love belongs, and anger and sloth just two things that may happen when you find that not even all seven of them at their deadliest ever can.
⚜
~ Frederick Bruechner originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words
photos found at http://www.pinterest.com
My Word is made flesh.
This is how I live.
I am born not once long ago,
but each moment, always.
Will you be my flesh?
Having none of my own,
can I put you on and wear you
into the world?
Will you be born for me?
Walk in the woods for me, will you?
Touch what you can touch for me,
touch with gentle fingers.
Listen for me. Hear so that I may hear.
Smell pine and sage, babies and cities.
Smell for me.
Look with my eyes.
See what I long to see,
one thing at a time.
Be with the lonely for me, will you?
Stay close to the suffering,
dance with the joyful, dance
as only a body can dance.
Let your heart be broken,
as only a beating one can.
Reach out to the despised,
notice the beauty.
Dare to be a child in a rough world.
This is how I come.
You are my flesh now, dear one.
Bear me into this world
and I will always be in you
and in all you meet.
Have an eye for those who don’t know this;
see it in them even when they can’t.
Let me discover
what it is to come to myself
in my own Creation.
Look— even now
I am coming close,
seeking the manger.
Even now I enter.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
On the streets of anywhere lives a man.
The same man.
Homeless and alone in the world.
The tears that fill his eyes go by silent, and unnoticed.
Tears that cry out for a simple glimpse of the certainty that he’s a brother to us all.
That he belongs.
But you and I dare not look. Lest we catch such a glimpse.
A glimpse that might show us the frailty of our own humanity.
A glimpse that might admit that we are, and always have been, more than brothers.
– Nic Askew
Respectfully given,
exalted being
full of grace,
remember to forget:
surrender struggles to catch it’s breath,
then falls soft
as evening prayers at twilight,
gathering into the corners of our hearts
before falling full
onto the center of our living circle,
free and happy as a Friday night.
next morning’s sun fills us,
each day, each season.
nurture moves with grace,
evolving slowly thru
our caring hands,
our grieving hearts,
our shared experience,
our acts of courage,
the healing salt of our tears,
the energy generation of our joy.
with pieces of our true love,
we fly flags,
of prayer,
of peace,
of poems,
of our own making
to heal the worlds –
within us/
without us.
we allow –
simply complex.
we understand –
clearly unclear.
we stand and fill our world with
the beauty,
the mystery,
of sound,
of hum,
of laughter,
of voice,
of music,
protecting us
from lesser gods,
the terror all around.
love is the shield,
love is the answer,
love is the choice,
love is our glory,
our salvation,
crowning us
sons and daughters
of the King.
at times,
in spite of our broken pieces,
our refusal to believe,
even our darkened hearts.
–
astonishing,
isn’t it?
❣
AL
A sob in the night
awakens us from dreams,
a crack opens in the wall
and in seeps the dark stream
with pieces of broken things in it,
and blood, and our own ragged edge,
and in seeps the light,
and the voice singing.
We want to pull the wall around us,
the sorrow pouring in,
but it is breached now,
it is only an illusion,
and we are out in the dangerous light,
the fragile street,
tender as everyone else,
ready to duck, ready to weep.
We are all refugees now,
foreigners, except to foreigners.
It’s the egg that is cracked,
the stone rolled away.
If there is a place for love,
for your own brave soul, this is it.
The cord in another’s heart
knotted in yours,
the hand reaching for you
you can reach out to.
Terror and the stillness,
and the voice singing.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
and for each person in this world 🙏🏻
Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer’s
Sprawling past and winter’s hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.
🍂
Fall by Edward Hirsch
In Fall I saw
a skyline of tree roofs
blowing off in
natural disasters
of Biblical proportions.
Every treehouse laid bare
roofs to be mended in April
when surplus roofing supplies arrive
from Mother Nature
painted bright shades of spring green
with all the colors of the rainbow
adorning the mended windows
as the birds move into their summer homes.
All in the right time
not before
I have known days of the extreme
Both hot and cold
Pain and joy
Full and empty
I have wsited for spring
I have been healed
like the trees
Now I wait for the time
when the lovebirds come build their nest
in my heart
🍁
AL
Nature Photos by Fisherman Dan @ Branford, CT
Word art found on facebook
Can I believe being thankful in all circumstances is important because it acknowledges that during the dark times of change, God is still covering me with His hand?
🔹
– Kristen Strong @ A Holy Experience
facebook/follow the art
When we descend all the way down to the bottom of loss, and dwell patiently, with an open heart, in the darkness and pain, we can bring back up with us the sweetness of life and the exhilaration of inner growth. When there is nothing left to lose, we find the true self – the self that is whole, the self that is enough, the self that no longer looks to others for definition, or completion, or anything but companionship on the journey.
– Elizabeth Lesser
bottom 2 photos found at www.pinterest.com
“Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:50).
My love, do you hear that music, the one where we dance and your steps are light and you swing?
You mother in the quiet places and in the moments when it is loud and it feels impossible to hear. You mother in the choices, the choices to love beyond yourself, the sacrifice that comes with friendship, the nurturing of an arm across a shoulder, the carrying of beauty within you, the permission for Me to care for you, to pour love into your heart so that the ripple of my love continues.
A waterfall begins with a drop, and then a cascade, a drifting through quiet places, a collection until the drops pour past, all together. Mothering happens in the combination of Me holding you in my hands and letting my fingers open a bit to let you pour out what I give.
You can only mother from what I give.
Mothering is a collection of hopes for the future, a belief in good things and the willingness to go to the hard places for those you love. It is the shepherding of children, the gathering of expectation for a future that is to come.
It is faith in possibility for people beyond yourself.
To mother is to press in and give out and never give up. It is to hold on tight and let go, all at once. It is to walk beside and listen close and not fall away, even though the pain comes and it is hard to stay.
To mother is to stay.
And the staying isn’t what you think it looks like sometimes. It is the supporting of the one you hold close while believing it isn’t always you who knows the way.
In mothering, without Me, you don’t know the way.
To mother is to trust and laugh and cry and wave good-bye. It is to come again, despite rejection. It is to provide, when you feel you have nothing to give. It is to look beyond yourself for strength and feel frail and helpless and fall and believe that you will be caught so that you can lift your knees and see what is before you, the Son.
Mothering is not just about bearing a child. It can be that but it is not just that. You mother through loving whom I bring your way. Come on, daughter, look whom I bring.
http://www.gatherministries.com/loop
So, I really didn’t want to do this blog today. It’s a hard one for me. I tried to do something easier, lighter…anything but this, but it was insistent…
The past few weeks I have found myself in conversations with 6 or 7 grieving mothers. Mothers grieving, angry, disappointed, hurting, ashamed over the loss of their children. All different stories, all the same feelings.
I know those feelings well. I wrote the following piece a few years ago about my own loss – I began the grieving process in 2006, 9 years into my loss of everything I ever loved, and that work continues every day. I am sharing this in hopes it may help someone going through similar pain.
💔
I try to clean up
pick up pieces of myself
from all over the frozen ground
Who knew hearts can turn into
Slivers of glass
dangerous to handle
Slice my fingers
I rub tears from my eyes
and find toxic rivers
Red flows
Staining all of life
Small killing shards everywhere
Thousands
Maybe millions
They stick to the inside of my chest
My throat
Puncture my lungs
Settle in my stomach
as I try to eat breakfast
It’s getting harder and harder to speak
To breathe
To stand
I fall face first into a pool
Of freezing water
The glass becomes ice
Eventually I crawl out of the water
but the ice remains
a solid block I live with
for 9 years
Containment my highest priority
Walking dead
until that box breaks open
I begin to grieve
and begin slowly melting
Fusing shattered pieces
absorbing them into
the fabric of my living
Im still working on it
Still looking for the fire of love
to refine the gold
Scars show the hearts broken places
for glimmers of light to shine through
As grieving begins it’s healing work
And I become human
for the first time
❤️
AL
I have no quick fixes, or advice, here. Just a thought of hope, of choosing to stand strong in love and the blessings mothing brings. Go deep with your grief. Nurture yourself. Allow yourself to heal. Never forget:
Love always wins….
photo sources @ www.pinterest.com
Everything is made of God. Love lies waiting in it.
Every darkest mystery
hides grace.
The most desperate act
is born of hopeful longing:
though the hope has been withheld
the longing still burns.
Even the greatest tragedy
is made of blessed pieces
and drips with the light
of grace it has passed through.
In even the most evil despot
a heart beats and breath is given.
The graver the injustice
the deeper the listening needed;
the more foul the evil
the more love is required.
Grieve your sorrows without pretense.
Protest oppression with courage.
Above all: don’t lose trust in the grace
already infolded in the knot.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to Gungor sing Beautiful Things http://youtu.be/1spkhp41ig4
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
via Project Happiness on facebook
Listen to You Can Close Your Eyes – Anika Larsen & Jessie Mueller http://youtu.be/8USVXvRUKoI
life: acoustic & amplified 