Ode to a Reality Speaker

You who once were a girl

Who loved so much,

But couldn't fix the broken ones 

who couldn't love you back well.

To the practical woman,

The one a bit jaded by reality,

And her inability to reach "perfection",

Who was attracted to a dreamer

Because he reminded you

Of who you once were.

Who irritated your daughter

With her head in the clouds,

The daughter who called you "dream stomper."

I see now that a more accurate term 

Is "reality speaker."

I see a strong person,

Taming wild hopes with grey hairs;

a wrangler of half-truths: 

tying them back together into fact.

I want to hug the girl you were

Until the cracks in your heart 

all squeeze back together. 

But I'm not made to do that.

To be able to show you 

bigger and better things than you dared to dream that will come; 

dreams after sleep mirror "dreams" after "sleep."

To say, maybe we have bigger dreams than our brains can hold because

We are not made for here.

Here you traded dreams for practicality.

One day the practical will exchange places with the dream.

Changes

There is an obscenely common
tragedy
of not knowing where we are in a moment
of not appreciating:
a place
a person
a situation
until forced into a new
New.

It's the changes that rumple us
and put us in defense
until it becomes
familiar again.

You'd think this would get easier
with practice
but so often the older,
the more difficult we find it.

God made us to physically anticipate
natural changes,
as summer drags into fall.
Our instincts know
what our hearts perpetually learn,
and we keep trying to control with our intellect.

If we could move
and breathe
and live
in the Spirit;
That transient place between
our ideal
and Ideal
Get out of our heads long enough
to let go:

We would know that
we're in the hands of the
Unchanging,
ever pulling us upwards.

Sunsets and smiles and songs

The sunset caught me by surprise

Blazing up in so much splendor that

I was too busy to see.

Then I noticed

How cute Little One is

So happy from milk,

Curled up smile

Curled up self holding his toes.

Adele is singing something heartfelt

On someone's radio outside.

Sunsets and smiles and songs.

It's the moments that you notice

That you will remember.

Names

Daughter: "Mommy, what does your name mean?"

Me: "different things depending on where you look. Some say slender, adorned, or delicate"

Daughter: "What does 'adorned' or 'delicate' mean?"

Me: "Adorned means decorated. Delicate means easy to break"

Daughter: "So your name means thin, decorated and easy to break?!?!? That doesn't sound good... So what does your middle name mean?"

Me: "My middle name is made up. It doesn't have a meaning."

Daughter: "Well, I'm going to give it one that's better than the first name. I'll make it mean 'bright, beautiful and strong.'"

Imperfections of Life Create Perfection in Us

Have you ever known something intellectually but have a light bulb moment when it moved from “knowledge” into “belief”? This happened for me the other weekend as I was in the kitchen sipping coffee… probably the fact that I had time to think because I didn’t need to do other work for once helped with that. 

I’ve always thought of God as a creator/organizer/guy-in-charge, but Thalia helped me to see him as a loving father. After Thalia went home, it has been challenging to find a reason to want to be here. Far from being a negative question, I've found it a freeing one, as it has stripped everything down to its barest importance, contingent on how God uses it in my life. I have been asking God what the point of this life is, and slowly, He’s given me different answers. It began with loving others to Him and, in this particular light-bulb moment, in creating beauty in us. Gradually He is broadening my concept of who He is as He answers who I am in Him.

I’ve not really thought of God as an artist before. You don’t ask an artist why he does something that seems illogical to the viewer-of-the-process. It’s art! This reminds me of the prophet’s showing Israel a view of God as a potter, and of Job being questioned if he understood God’s motivations. If anyone is beautiful as a core quality, it is God, and as Paul mentions, He is forming us into His image and we will be gloriously transformed: “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” 2 Cor 3:18 

This makes life have a point, not only for others, in a bringing-those-away-from-him in, but also in a continuing beautifying process past that point. I need this hope. Becoming beautiful in the very real, God-like sense of the word is a worthy cause, not only inherently, but because of who we will be beautiful to. And, having His approval, after letting life transform us here, makes the transforming part of the process just that: a process, and not an ending of life. 

I find this impacts the way I approach life: instead of being so concerned with doing things "perfectly" to achieve a "perfect" end result, I can see that it’s more about letting the things I go through transform me. Maybe another way to say this is that it’s more about letting the things we go through perfect us, rather than us perfecting those things. God uses the imperfections of life to create more of His perfection in us. 

God is a beautiful artist.

Desert fog

You'd think that:

Only fertile lands would have fog,

Would have enough moisture to create it

-But clouds crawl in the desert, too

(As if adding insult to injury:

A vaporized desire for rain)

No trees to scrub them

And thick fog settles down 

Unsettling.

How do you walk 

In sand.

And fog?

Feet sluggishly progress through dunes,

Eyes make out muted forms,

Nothing at full capacity but the ears

(And fear if you let it.)

Deserts sounds echo thoughts.

Maybe it is needed:

A landscape handicap

To enhance the senses that are needed.

I'm listening. 

Tears

If tears could only wash away grief...

It's not that I fear the pain,
I'm not always sure how to use it.
How to sow all the love
that turned into grief,
so that it will be love given out again?

All of this water
from parched places.
If You put them in a bottle
it would feel less wasteful:

Maybe this is why one
stoops to wash Your feet with tears.
The weight of "We don't know;"
we only know to come to you with them.


------------------------------------------------------------------------

Isaiah 25:8 King James Version (KJV)

⁸ He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it.

life and "life"

Reality has a choke hold on "life"
unless we die to self
and join the authentic living.

It's hard to stay dead...
and the claustrophobic flailing
when I "wake"

is confusing

until I remember:

It's not about "me."
It's about us.

I'm part of a bigger story
than "my story."

If I let Him,
the Master Author
will finish it the way
I don't even know I want.
And with life.

My rough drafts
meander
and if followed through
just die a different way.

I can die now
or later.

It's a mixed up swirling of
life and "life"
of death and "death."

Real life only comes
after death to self.

Choose:

Die in fear a thousand times
living to self...

or die to self
and live vibrant.

The Counterintuitive Nature of Spiritual Life

"...Words like waiting, depending, surrendering, and obeying  rankle.  We would much rather find ways to control the course of events.  Yet the spiritual life is often counterintuitive.  When we embrace the way of faith and trust in God, following Him even when the path is unknown, what seems like it should diminish us actually enlarges us.  The story about Saul and the woman of Endor reminds us that there's really nothing new about human behavior.  Under the skin we all experience the same desires, temptations, and needs.  Then, as now, our happiness lies in faith and trust."

-"Women of the Bible" by Ann Spangler and Jean Syswerda

I've come back to read this quote several times, trying to grapple with the need to control vs. the counterintuitive nature of spiritual life. It hit pretty hard in a convicting sort of way, "rankle" was a good describing word they used. There's so much balance that has to be acquired to be the best version of ourselves: Whatever we do, we are accountable for, but we don't always have a choice in doing those things, which then leads us to want to control everything because we know we will be held accountable for them annnnd, the cycle continues. Learning to accept that life just happens and we can only control our responses to it is not easy to move from the mental acknowledgement part of the brain into the reflexive, action part. 

How do you balance being cautious with listening to a God who doesn't desire us to be "safe?" 

Where do you draw the line between giving yourself boundaries and giving everything away? 

Is part of maturing figuring out the gray areas between "take no thought for the 'morrow" and the fool who doesn't consider all of his resources before beginning the tower he can not finish?

What is the difference between getting self out of the way and...

And this does circle back to the question "why are we here?" For anyone who struggles with control and the root of fear of not measuring up behind that, it's a crucial question.  How can we best measure up and meet all of the goals we have set for us if we don't know what they are or how to obtain them until the moment?... which puts things like spiritual discernment and sensitivity on a priority level and those are so NOT black and white (which is another thing that would freak out anyone who tries to get it all spelled out.)

This brings me back, though, to the verse that says "the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life" and (as I've been reading the gospels to the kids at bedtime) the harsh words of Jesus to the Scribes and Pharisees about their tithing even the herbs and spices, but omitting the weightier matters of the law like love and mercy. While reading the end of Matthew today, it struck me how twisted and odd it was that the priests who gave Judas the 30 pieces of silver did not care at all about the death of a man they couldn’t prove guilty. I was struck by their complete lack of concern for the distress of Judas and their words: "what's that to us?" Yet, meticulously, they focused on the black and white rules of what that blood money could be used for. They missed the whole point of the law, the fulfillment of it was right there in their moment and they clung to the safe, spelled out, unemotional, facts they could hang onto.

Sometimes I don’t know how to balance the incredible responsibility (some would say burden… but that sounds ungrateful and lazy) and blessing I have in getting to live. Holding life loosely, not counting it really as mine to give and take, but still really living it and, God forbid, not wasting it, and hopefully, actually helping someone else out in the process, all of that gets a little jumbled and I’m not sure I have enough to fill up all of the overlapping priorities. But as tempting as it is to search for ways to control things, bit by bit, it seems that dehumanizes and strips away things like compassion and empathy and leaves only the ability to judgmentally view others through the lenses of our black and white rules and then we miss the whole point of being alive.

I feel like I've thought in spirals, but life feels a bit spirally sometimes. May we really live it, spirals and all.

 

generation

I see him in you,
the form of the face,
the way you take a breath,

birthday...

and I think of him
as a little boy.
and cry.

I want to give you
-the love and approval
he couldn't find,
-appropriate boundaries,
-training before discipline,
-Balance.

You're separate,
I know,
and the present can't fix the past,

but every boy needs his mother.

Before Rest

The closer we are to the other world,

 (The places where this life wears thin

and we can almost see over:  birth, death;)

-The more often we remember:

We were not meant to make a permanent dwelling

of these ragged tents.

-The harder to be content here

And not long for the next one already.

(In patience we possess our souls

Mine so quickly wants to fly away…)

Life can be a ragged, holding on to the tail of moderation,

Breathing hard to pace, mentally, this marathon

with patience.

A tamping down the jumping out of the insides,

Invisible.

A gradual tread, tread, tread

Away from the thin places

on to the rest of the commission

before rest.

Who is Worthy of Love?

I've been reading Jesus' words in Luke. In chapter 10, his account of the Good Samaritan is really addressing the question of "who is worthy of love." This is something we all, consciously or unconsciously, decide and our attitude on giving love has a lot to say about our perception of God and His love.

In chapter 10 lawyer starts it by asking: "Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" (which, as his first question, like most Christians in some part of their journey, is motivated by salvation of self, and sometimes fear of not obtaining that more than love for God) and Jesus answers with his own question: "What is written in the law? how readest thou?"
 The lawyer answered: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself...But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, "And who is my neighbour?" 
Which, in context, is really asking, 'who is worth loving as much as myself?' Jesus tells him the parable of the good Samaritan and then asks him in response: "Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?" and in verse 37 everything gets answered by getting flipped around:  "And he said, 'He that shewed mercy on him.'  Then said Jesus unto him, 'Go, and do thou likewise.'"

It seems to me that Jesus is saying "You're asking the wrong question... it's not who is worthy of receiving love, but how much are you willing to give mercy and love yourself." This puts things into a different perspective. Now we are not trying to judge others and whether they are worthy or not, but the emphasis is put on how far are WE willing to go and to grow in character regardless of another's perceived "worthiness" of that effort. Maybe another way to say it is that where the ruler asked "Who is my neighbor" Jesus rephrased it: "Who are you being a neighbor unto?" Perhaps we could say "who is NOT my neighbor?" Our love for God, our understanding of His love for us is demonstrated in how we love the people around us.

This is addressed in 1 John 4:20-21 also: "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also."

In the beginning of this same chapter Jesus is sending out disciples to heal and spread the news of his kingdom... but through His power, which comes from God. This is where love comes from as well and it seems to tie into the lawyer's question as we are asked to go beyond what is comfortable and, maybe beyond what is humanly possible sometimes, in showing love and mercy. We are reminded that first of all, no one, not even we, deserve love/mercy/neighborliness,  and second, we can't and don't have to do it on our own power.

^{1 John 4:11} "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. ¹² No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. ¹³ Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.^"

coil

My whole being

Is tense with suspense:

Coiled up tight

Like the baby inside.

It's the releasing,

Uncoiling,

Letting go of my control.

That is the process of birth.

love without insurance

A fear-based religion sings this song:

"What if God is not happy with our praise
What if He is not pleased with the words we say
What if He takes away His love and His goodness from above
What if God is not happy with our praise."

I remember singing this in a choir ensemble and my mother objecting to the words. Her objections only make more sense the older I get. If this is the God we are serving, it isn't the one portrayed through the Bible, through Jesus. The basis for a God of love is not anything being earned by right actions, right words, (those come later, in response to that love.)

^{Luke 6:35} "But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. ³⁶ Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful."

  Love by nature is an overflowing, creating, giving thing. This love sought us out before we could love back, and without condition of "ONE DAY" having to give back, without insurance, loved us.

A love-based relationship sings something like this song:

"I know God loves me.
In the face of my failure, I rest in knowing 
that His love never fails...
And this makes me want to love Him in return."

heart's murmur

It's no wonder
that your heart has a murmur
I don't know how it couldn't;

how it could hold so much
and be normal.


Things can only stretch so far
before they bear some permanent form
of transformation.

I hear it beating
and it doesn't sound like a mar;
but like a pause,
a breath before continuing to whisper:
"I love."

Leaving the Gifts to Focus on the Relationships

This morning my oldest (6) wanted to surprise us with breakfast. Our youngest (2) always wants to be involved with anything she does, usually making life more frustrating for her in the process. This morning was no different and her strong ambition had her straining toward her goal with no patience for his interruptions, inducing screams and discord. When finished, she proudly presented her offering on the table. I was convicted as I asked her "What do you think your Mommy and Papi would like better: for you to make them breakfast or to get along with your brother?" She knew the answer was to get along with her brother, and I had a lot to think about myself.

God puts relationships before products of effort. If we arrive at a seemingly righteous destination with a wrong heart, He isn't pleased with our efforts. What we produce tangibly is always second or third or fourth in the comparison to how we use what we do to impact our "brother." How we use what we DO to build RELATIONSHIPS, not products, is what He looks at.

^{Matthew 5:23 "}Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; ²⁴ Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift."

 My "gifts" are often a clean house, prepared meal, academically educated children, acts of service. Things. And too often, these are things that come at the price of relationships. It's backwards, I'm learning. God wants me to use these things to create relationship, if I'm to use them at all, not to let the stress of the doing break the bond of loving the ones I am doing it with.

So, excuse me, I have to leave my gifts at this altar and go talk to some people.

supposed to learn

sometimes 

the hardest part of the struggle

is knowing what you're supposed to learn from it.

what's worse than wasted suffering?

you

are selfless enough

to want to help-

and aren't above

helping carry.

beyond expectation.

my gratitude 

isn't enough to fill my lack.

and still

one does not simply

lie down

in the desert;

too soon overwhelmed

with a million sands

and forgotten under layers.

and still, God's presence would be near.

one does not simply
wander
in this place

-no water, camel, tent.
-so much sun.
-a million miles
from love.

but still, nothing can separate?

Not:
-height, nor depth
nor heat.
-a million layers of sand
where I can't breathe-

It can't stop love.

Each grain of sand, then,
a testimony:
Love never fails.

desert mercy

You make your mercy new (1)*

with each desert sun that seems

poised to snatch it up

and drag it across the sky,

melt it down into the dunes.

My soul thirsts for you

where no water is (2)*

and yet the sun is still

a symbol of your mercy. (3)*

Dry places have desperate

inhabitants, (4)*

But you say that I can have

the very source of living water

inside of me... (5)*

Mercy that I now can

extend in this parched place,

be Your hands (6)*

to share life.

Sun, with light and heat

is a blessing

until You withhold rain. (7)*

We are desperate

waiting

until you reign again. (8)*

Until then,

I will offer a cup of water

in Your name.(9)*

-----------------------------------------

(1)* Lamentations 3:22-23

(2)* Psalm 63:1

(3)* Psalm 136:7-9

(4)* Luke 11:24

(5)* John 7:38

(6)* 1 Corinthians 12:27

(7)* 2 Chronicles 7:13

(8)* Hosea 6:3

(9)* Mark 9:41

Romans 7

⁴ So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God. ⁵ When we were controlled by our old nature,^[b] sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death.⁶ But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.
This theme of dying to self and sin and living to God is repeated, but with a new emphasis on the Spirit of the law and its division from the letter of the law. Our sinful nature cannot keep the Spirit of the law without the help of the Holy Spirit. Our carnal nature takes the law and makes it into legalistic boxes that we either fit in or not, putting the emphasis on our own works and justifications... and neither are ever enough. We have to die. It's the only solution that makes sense! And then, when that same breath of God that made man a living soul comes into our lives through the power of His Spirit, we do live again, but as the Bible says, as a new creature. Now we can read the law and the Spirit can move our hearts to know how to apply the concepts behind the laws to our lives, not just lay a rigid grid over them and see what doesn't line up. The law strikes out at our inevitable, unavoidable unrighteousness. But when we are dead and have fulfilled the punishment the law shows we deserve, then we have the freedom from God's grace to implement it and see how it draws us closer to Him. The law becomes a personal way to grow closer to God and understand His nature instead of a horizontal leveler of the faults of my fellow humans. Paul acknowledges that the law is holy and that the point of it was to show us our sins:

⁷ Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not! In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, “You must not covet.”^{[c] 8} But sin used this command to arouse all kinds of covetous desires within me!

So, once we saw our sins, saw the impossibility of us ever atoning for ourselves and following the pattern of the law found the solution in the death of the sacrificial Lamb of God... which leads us to dying ourselves... NOW, finally, we are free to read and understand and apply where His Spirit leads us. Under grace we acknowledge that the Holy Spirit will guide each individual in the ways that they need most, internally, instead of imposing an outward show that so often leads to facades- so one's growth in one area may not be visible where others may show fruit in different areas more quickly... this leads to actual development of character, not development of charades to show how "holy" we are. Now we recognize it's not about us being holy, but being DEAD so that God can be Holy through us. As Paul says:
¹⁴ So the trouble is not with the law, for it is spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin.

And he continues to our solution as well:
²⁴ Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? ²⁵ Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.
Once the sinful nature is dead, we can actually follow the law, in what Paul previously called the spirit of the law instead of the letter of the law.
In Chapter 8 he goes into more detail on what "life in the spirit" really means.