A candle flame, unsteady, dances to an uncertain future.
Within it, secrets caked in want, wax-tomb-embedded
lay a still brighter flame to the still darker day.
Be still,
listen to how the dying light of Persephone’s
summer, brings the long wait of Demeter’s winter.
In the cold years of months when time drags her feet
and the wick is snuffed
to light a fuse – there hides a promise –
more wick, and an ember-lit flame.
___________
Picture found here
My RobsLitBits year in review!
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,900 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 48 trips to carry that many people.
My year in review at innerwoven…
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,900 times in 2015. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.
From Christmas two years ago. The words are older. The sentiment? Not so much.
Christmas Day. My eyes are like twin harvest moons of bloodshot fatigue. There’s a roller derby taking place in my head. My church music ministry gig ramps up something fierce this time of year leaving me satisfied and happy, but a shivering hump of quasi-humanity. The solution? I sent my wife, Rae, out to find anything resembling coffee, if only for a most yummy and effective remedy for my pounding head. God bless her!
A rather poorly decorated poor excuse for a Christmas tree tries unsuccessfully to stand guard over the precious few gifts tucked under her skirt. A single strand of multicolor lights graces her awkward presence in our living room. Perhaps fewer than a dozen ornaments hang suspended, lifelessly, from these poor, little green arms – flimsy and weak.
I speak of symbols, those tried and true geiger counters of the meaning and truth they represent. Many…
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Sometimes he gets stuck in the dictionary so
long that his brain becomes alphabet soup.
He wears his skin tattooed with another’s thoughts.
And he waits.
No, he frets – and sour apprehensions
swim atop a slowly scumming pond
of wilted words, reeking of lost sleep.
And, if reflections in the coffee shop window
are meant to serve as metaphor,
they only spur on the edict
of secondary pictures mirrored from
another’s doubting face.
Come then, if you must,
shadows from a cold mist to
rattle and rustle the bones.
Come, take up residence beside
one with a plasticine pencil,
pliable to cautious hands –
worthless in sweaty palms,
squeezing desperately against
the inevitable.
In this reverie to a ghost –
vestibule in an empty house,
birthing only the vestige of coffee-stained
intentions, a writer paces –
penning wordlessness.
In a recent post I began to meditate a bit on what the Psalmist may have been on about in 37:4 when he adjures us to “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
To press into the paradox of these words is to discover two interrelated things. In pursuing those things, ideas, persons we believe to be most satisfying to our egos, the shallow water before getting to the sea of soul, we suffer the law of diminishing returns. We attain, receive, pursue, and sometimes steal in order to buttress an icy happiness that laughs at us mere moments after the fact.
We held in our hands what is now farther away.
The result? Turn up the heat of our pursuit and call it “dedication” or “hard work” or “sacrifice.” The process begins again in earnest, to a fool’s detriment.
Conversely, it means something much odder still. To walk away from delight itself and toward the God of all delight is to forego the very need of desires for which we were previously straining. It is God’s cheeky bait ‘n switch.
To one drowning in desire, grasping hold of the first thing to bear us up is a natural action. But that desire blinds us to the life boat yards away in favor of a shark’s fin inches away. We are saved, but only until it becomes clear the price we pay.
In this season of competing allegiances and dueling narratives, all sparring for our attention, let us journey together on the longer road, bringing an end to all lesser desire, and follow after he whose self-denial gifts us with what we never thought was lost.
Let us risk the farther star; the gift which requires us to keep our heads up lest we trip on our own pursuing feet.
Painting by James Tissot, found here
“Take delight in the Lord,” says the Psalmist, “and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
This is a deceptively easy passage. The fog of western, individualist consumerism however urges us to read this as God simply handing us whatever we want, regardless of its origin, intent, or wisdom in the attainment thereof.
Indeed, God does give us what our hearts desire. But, the beauty and deft insight of this verse is that the heart changes in accordance to what brings delight. As it becomes more centered in the Divine, it leans more readily toward the faces who line the hallways of our lives.
We soften toward their plight, and glow with pride in the accomplishments of others. It begins to shatter for the things that shatter the heart of God, in whom we delight.
And even suffering begins to make some small sense as it becomes contextualized against the larger picture of God’s redemptive enterprise, an enterprise into which we are invited, baptized, and transformed. It is out of that transformation which come the heart’s deepest desires, doubts, despair, dreams, and destiny.
The next time we quote this marvelous gem, especially during this holiday season, let us attend to its more ultimate direction. Let us lean into the God who, in Christ, becomes all our desire and through whom our deepest desires, plunged into the raging love of God’s heart, are fully satisfied.
Car photo found here
Communion photo taken at Yakima Covenant Church (where I am proud to serve as music director)
The day renders well her light to cast,
comes, with hopeful glance, her tidings bring –
haunting dark, like some unholy past
soon yields his woe to this better thing.
Alone, but for his pale, waning grin,
he staggers backward in view of her;
never have his shaking knees remained
full upright. Now they buckle, unsure.
A formal respite, east is yearning,
stolen glances, her scent is bringing
laughter for those whose wild discerning
feeds upon this freshness glad, singing
songs, and dancers too are gathering,
all but mirth and cheerfulness disdains.
Soon, the fretful past’s unprompted sadd’ning,
forced to flee, and only light remains.
As daylight parts dark mystery’s curtain,
there, with courage, we must take our stand;
e’er the burden of mis’ry certain,
comes to pummel, firm, our heart’s command.
Still, with faith, our prayerful souls blazing,
God shall come to squelch what brings our fall;
must flee the night, our spirits’ hazing,
departed, then goodness we recall.
Now, cacophonous voice, full deafened,
silenced is the darkly strident pull
of that which, lying, steals our heaven –
God, his faithfulness, our promise, full.
You and I – we are eucharist.
We are the slow quench and
burn of wine made well from
flaming water.
We are from yeast – all that nourishes
made perfect in a moment,
but only after stealing a well-oiled
gaze into the mouth of dreams.
We are the holy cloth, drawn lightly
upon the lip of the cup, still damp
from shared spittle and wine-made blood.
It is the kiss of the saints
blended well in silver,
refined, reflective.
In the comfortable day, boasting
hours poured into containers shaped by
mystery, there can be no other.
Only a thin breeze of moments –
under your fingers.
_____________
Dedicated to my lover and friend of almost 30 years – my wife, Rae Kenny.
We push out, breath from blue,
like the breaking waves, alone with their thoughts,
and catch ourselves among the reeds.
Passing alone through districts of enchanting knowledge,
we cough up our meal of bones, still hungry to drown
inside a conundrum bigger than our shoes.
______
Our little oceans, best of our times, rimmed ‘round
with shortening days, the noose of our shrinking
humanity; allure, the currency of dreams.
Still, one swims in what one drinks and drinks
what washes down and around all that looks
for more horizon. Let the four-quartered moon
sing what is only heard when deafness prevails.
______
The tragedy of the good, the irony of evil, foisted
upon hearts ill-suited for the journey in.
So it seems that the only way to bleed to life
is in the unmooring of our punctured ships.
There is more room to bleed when splintered lie
our longings, long held, and drawn and bloodied
souls buoy once more upon
______
the silent, soothing sea.
Special thanks to dear friend and colleague, Valerie Dodge-Head for her masterful artwork which inspired this piece.
If we are made in God’s image and God sings, then we should be singing, too.
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Seekers
Spiritual Direction for Integrated Living
From liquid courage to Sober Courage
an anamcara exploring those close encounters of the liminal kind
Collaborating with the Muses to inspire, create, and illuminate
...in such kind ways...
"That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works." Psalm 26:7
Blog for poet and singer-songwriter Malcolm Guite
…in the thick of things
REFLECTIONS & REVIEWS
Seeking that which is life giving.
… hope is oxygen
Homepage of Seymour Jacklin: Writer - Narrator - Facilitator
If we are made in God’s image and God sings, then we should be singing, too.
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Seekers
Spiritual Direction for Integrated Living
From liquid courage to Sober Courage
an anamcara exploring those close encounters of the liminal kind
Collaborating with the Muses to inspire, create, and illuminate
...in such kind ways...
"That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works." Psalm 26:7
Blog for poet and singer-songwriter Malcolm Guite
…in the thick of things
REFLECTIONS & REVIEWS
Seeking that which is life giving.
… hope is oxygen
Homepage of Seymour Jacklin: Writer - Narrator - Facilitator
innerwoven 