watch & pray
HIDING is a way of staying alive. Hiding is a way of holding ourselves until we are ready to come into the light. Even hiding the truth from ourselves can be a way to come to what we need in our own necessary time. Hiding is one of the brilliant and virtuoso practices of almost every part of the natural world: the protective quiet of an icy northern landscape, the held bud of a future summer rose, the snow bound internal pulse of the hibernating bear.
Hiding is underestimated. We are hidden by life in our mother’s womb until we grow and ready ourselves for our first appearance in the lighted world; to appear too early in that world is to find ourselves with the immediate necessity for outside intensive care.
Hiding done properly is the internal faithful promise for a proper future emergence, as embryos, as children or even as emerging adults in retreat from the names that have caught us and imprisoned us, often in ways where we have been too easily seen and too easily named.
We live in a time of the dissected soul, the immediate disclosure; our thoughts, imaginings and longings exposed to the light too much, too early and too often, our best qualities squeezed too soon into a world already awash with too easily articulated ideas that oppress our sense of self and our sense of others. What is real is almost always to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening. What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.
Hiding is an act of freedom from the misunderstanding of others, especially in the enclosing world of oppressive secret government and private entities, attempting to name us, to anticipate us, to leave us with no place to hide and grow in ways unmanaged by a creeping necessity for absolute naming, absolute tracking and absolute control. Hiding is a bid for independence, from others, from mistaken ideas we have about our selves, from an oppressive and mistaken wish to keep us completely safe, completely ministered to, and therefore completely managed.
Hiding is creative, necessary and beautifully subversive of outside interference and control. Hiding leaves life to itself, to become more of itself. Hiding is the radical independence necessary for our emergence into the light of a proper human future.
☺️💞☺️
HIDING by David Whyte
All the things hidden in my heart
Like Mary, the mother,
Watching and observing Jesus.
Being the witness of the unseen miracles
The keeper of all I have seen.
My faith is real,
because I have experienced great acts of God,
faithfulness
on the inside, and outside, of my life,
In the daily progression of my journey.
You can’t take any of it away from me.
I know what I have seen.
This is not my daddy’s faith
This is not my momma’s relationship.
This is all mine.
Intimacy
Walking together.
Miracles.
Clouds and colors,
falling stars and pillars of fire,
pointing the way.
Falling in love.
Commitment.
Yes, the words of Jesus changed my life,
When I began to live them daily.
When I stepped into the great unknown.
Became an observer of my own soul.
Became open to the door of the unknown.
Became comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Fell in passionate love with grace.
Walked through the unlocked door into freedom
All the hidden things will be revealed
All the hidden things will be proclaimed
All the hidden things will be shouted from the rooftops.
All the hidden things will be joyfully sung at the top of my lungs.
All the hidden things will remain hidden no more.
💖
AL
life: acoustic & amplified 