Blog
Sleepless
Tell me, stars, how often God has shown up for you in your cold existence. Over the millennia, how often has God been your renewal, your hope, your reason for being — or have you died already, unnoticed, your light unrequited?
Tell me, tears, if you ever grow tired of chasing God through life’s pain. Does it weary you to wash the burden of loneliness, again and again, to sink and shudder and plead for comfort that does not come, to trace the path of love’s absence?
Tell me, shadows, how many nights you will pace before giving up the search. What way can you hope to find, what new place of wonder, if God has ceded your spacious mystery to the chasm of fear? Who will want to shelter within you now?
on Psalm 77
Remembering
Remembering, O Light, that your sign of mercy is my sign of trust,
from horizon to horizon, sunrise to sunset, mountains to seas.
Taking a deep breath in, letting trust reach down to my toes.
Remembering, O Life, that your time of patience is my time of wilderness
through tumult and transgressions, and at last into the care of angels.
Releasing a long exhale, reaching wide for the nearness of angels.
Remembering, O Love, that your torn heavens are my torn heart,
breaking logic and sense and explanation for a moment of delight.
Receiving the fragments of heaven, shaking loose the need for repair.
Be generous with signs in the wilderness
and mercies in the morning, O Promise,
until remembering is a steady blessing
that flows like a wide river toward peace.
on the Revised Common Lectionary readings,
cross-posted at RevGalBlogPals
Restraint
The LORD God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.” - Genesis 2:16-17 (NRSV) When the new year dawned last month, my social media feed was filled with people saying...
Ashes
Breath by breath, grief by grief, joy by joy, pain by heart-rending pain these fragile ashes turn and return and resign to the Holy, to the Trembling, to the Deep Mystery, to the Heritage of Relentless Love without which these same ashes could only sift and settle...
Stubborn
Most Holy Judge: for what we plainly know but cannot bring ourselves to confront, forgive us and be merciful to those harmed by the fallout. The truth does not need prophets yet you send them anyway, each one an invitation to understand and repent, to make way for...
Tent-Making
Let me pitch my tent by a lamppost in the snow somewhere in a dream of witches and wardrobes and wonders that taste of delight and courage. Let me roll out a heavy tarp under a mysterious new moon resting alongside the wise wind and the patient oak tree, until...
I Cannot Fly
I cannot fly, O God of the soaring eagle; I cannot even leap with a dancer's grace. But today I can wake and I can rise, and perhaps the strong wind will remind me not to be so rooted in fear. I cannot measure up, O God of the starry heavens; I cannot even pretend to...
From One Grasshopper to Another
It is God who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. - Isaiah...
Tremors
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God. God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved. - Psalm 46:2-5 excerpts (NRSV) My daughter...
Patience
Paul stood up and began to speak: “The God of this people Israel made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt, and with uplifted arm God led them out of it. For about forty years God put up with them in the wilderness.” - Acts 13:16-18, excerpts (NRSV)...
Love, Rise
Sun, rise and welcome the new day I have dreaded Love, rise and stand in the gap of my silent fears I watch the sunrise because I long for your warmth River, rise and carry away this ache of sorrow Love, rise and wash over me with wonder I come to the water because I...
