#spiritualreflection — Public Fediverse posts

Beyond the Pale

Stepping outside after an early-morning breakfast with friends, I carry a cinnamon roll to go for my wife, still warm in my hands.

The morning reveals itself slowly through fog and mist. Distant trees fade into white. Flags hang limply in the damp at half-mast.

I sit in the truck and watch traffic pass as people begin their day, and I wonder what mine will be.

Nearby, in the nursing home, a woman breathes slowly in and out, somewhere near the edge of crossing over.

Across the road, behind the thrift store where I used to work, another woman gazes out toward the marsh.

Next door, a man in work clothes walks from his truck into the Marathon gas station beneath the lowered flags, perhaps buying what he will eat for lunch.

Ordinary lives moving through an ordinary morning.

I think back over the recent conversations, wondering where the words will take us today.

Through the windshield, I see the geese rise from the marsh into the mist above the watching woman, beginning their long migration.

As they disappear into the white, I think of the trajectory of my own life. What flights will my body and spirit still make? Where am I going from here?

Such are my thoughts sitting here in a restaurant’s parking lot across from a former place of employment. I will probably drop by in a moment to say hello to past co-workers and others I have gotten to know. There are still connections—memories of those days, the people, the routines, the work itself.

I am grateful for my work there, for the continued friendships, but I am also grateful for the additional time I have now.

Time to pursue creative things.

Time to follow different flights.

Time to be more available for ministry.

Time, perhaps, simply to be more present to mornings like this one.

The watcher leaves her post.

The worker heads out to the job site.

The dying takes another trembling breath.

The trees in the distance are barely visible through the fog. I can see their shapes, but not their details.

The rest of this day feels much the same.

There are glimmers of what I might do, possibilities taking shape somewhere ahead, but nothing has been fully revealed yet.

That is true not only of this morning but of the rest of my life.

I can make out a few shapes in the distance.

A few directions.

A few possible flights.

But much of it remains hidden in the mist of the unknown.

For now, it is enough to sit here with the gift of a warm cinnamon roll beside me, watching the geese disappear beyond the pale, and trust that the way will reveal itself as I go.

#Aging #calling #ContemplativeWriting #Creativity #discernment #everydaySacred #fog #Freedom #geese #Gratitude #grief #Hope #lifeTransitions #liminalSpaces #marsh #memory #migration #Ministry #mist #morningReflection #Mortality #newBeginnings #ordinaryMoments #passingOver #retirement #Slowmover #SpiritualReflection #uncertainty #vocation

Beyond the Pale

Stepping outside after an early-morning breakfast with friends, I carry a cinnamon roll to go for my wife, still warm in my hands.

The morning reveals itself slowly through fog and mist. Distant trees fade into white. Flags hang limply in the damp at half-mast.

I sit in the truck and watch traffic pass as people begin their day, and I wonder what mine will be.

Nearby, in the nursing home, a woman breathes slowly in and out, somewhere near the edge of crossing over.

Across the road, behind the thrift store where I used to work, another woman gazes out toward the marsh.

Next door, a man in work clothes walks from his truck into the Marathon gas station beneath the lowered flags, perhaps buying what he will eat for lunch.

Ordinary lives moving through an ordinary morning.

I think back over the recent conversations, wondering where the words will take us today.

Through the windshield, I see the geese rise from the marsh into the mist above the watching woman, beginning their long migration.

As they disappear into the white, I think of the trajectory of my own life. What flights will my body and spirit still make? Where am I going from here?

Such are my thoughts sitting here in a restaurant’s parking lot across from a former place of employment. I will probably drop by in a moment to say hello to past co-workers and others I have gotten to know. There are still connections—memories of those days, the people, the routines, the work itself.

I am grateful for my work there, for the continued friendships, but I am also grateful for the additional time I have now.

Time to pursue creative things.

Time to follow different flights.

Time to be more available for ministry.

Time, perhaps, simply to be more present to mornings like this one.

The watcher leaves her post.

The worker heads out to the job site.

The dying takes another trembling breath.

The trees in the distance are barely visible through the fog. I can see their shapes, but not their details.

The rest of this day feels much the same.

There are glimmers of what I might do, possibilities taking shape somewhere ahead, but nothing has been fully revealed yet.

That is true not only of this morning but of the rest of my life.

I can make out a few shapes in the distance.

A few directions.

A few possible flights.

But much of it remains hidden in the mist of the unknown.

For now, it is enough to sit here with the gift of a warm cinnamon roll beside me, watching the geese disappear beyond the pale, and trust that the way will reveal itself as I go.

#Aging #calling #ContemplativeWriting #Creativity #discernment #everydaySacred #fog #Freedom #geese #Gratitude #grief #Hope #lifeTransitions #liminalSpaces #marsh #memory #migration #Ministry #mist #morningReflection #Mortality #newBeginnings #ordinaryMoments #passingOver #retirement #Slowmover #SpiritualReflection #uncertainty #vocation

Beyond the Pale

Stepping outside after an early-morning breakfast with friends, I carry a cinnamon roll to go for my wife, still warm in my hands.

The morning reveals itself slowly through fog and mist. Distant trees fade into white. Flags hang limply in the damp at half-mast.

I sit in the truck and watch traffic pass as people begin their day, and I wonder what mine will be.

Nearby, in the nursing home, a woman breathes slowly in and out, somewhere near the edge of crossing over.

Across the road, behind the thrift store where I used to work, another woman gazes out toward the marsh.

Next door, a man in work clothes walks from his truck into the Marathon gas station beneath the lowered flags, perhaps buying what he will eat for lunch.

Ordinary lives moving through an ordinary morning.

I think back over the recent conversations, wondering where the words will take us today.

Through the windshield, I see the geese rise from the marsh into the mist above the watching woman, beginning their long migration.

As they disappear into the white, I think of the trajectory of my own life. What flights will my body and spirit still make? Where am I going from here?

Such are my thoughts sitting here in a restaurant’s parking lot across from a former place of employment. I will probably drop by in a moment to say hello to past co-workers and others I have gotten to know. There are still connections—memories of those days, the people, the routines, the work itself.

I am grateful for my work there, for the continued friendships, but I am also grateful for the additional time I have now.

Time to pursue creative things.

Time to follow different flights.

Time to be more available for ministry.

Time, perhaps, simply to be more present to mornings like this one.

The watcher leaves her post.

The worker heads out to the job site.

The dying takes another trembling breath.

The trees in the distance are barely visible through the fog. I can see their shapes, but not their details.

The rest of this day feels much the same.

There are glimmers of what I might do, possibilities taking shape somewhere ahead, but nothing has been fully revealed yet.

That is true not only of this morning but of the rest of my life.

I can make out a few shapes in the distance.

A few directions.

A few possible flights.

But much of it remains hidden in the mist of the unknown.

For now, it is enough to sit here with the gift of a warm cinnamon roll beside me, watching the geese disappear beyond the pale, and trust that the way will reveal itself as I go.

#Aging #calling #ContemplativeWriting #Creativity #discernment #everydaySacred #fog #Freedom #geese #Gratitude #grief #Hope #lifeTransitions #liminalSpaces #marsh #memory #migration #Ministry #mist #morningReflection #Mortality #newBeginnings #ordinaryMoments #passingOver #retirement #Slowmover #SpiritualReflection #uncertainty #vocation

Beyond the Pale

Stepping outside after an early-morning breakfast with friends, I carry a cinnamon roll to go for my wife, still warm in my hands.

The morning reveals itself slowly through fog and mist. Distant trees fade into white. Flags hang limply in the damp at half-mast.

I sit in the truck and watch traffic pass as people begin their day, and I wonder what mine will be.

Nearby, in the nursing home, a woman breathes slowly in and out, somewhere near the edge of crossing over.

Across the road, behind the thrift store where I used to work, another woman gazes out toward the marsh.

Next door, a man in work clothes walks from his truck into the Marathon gas station beneath the lowered flags, perhaps buying what he will eat for lunch.

Ordinary lives moving through an ordinary morning.

I think back over the recent conversations, wondering where the words will take us today.

Through the windshield, I see the geese rise from the marsh into the mist above the watching woman, beginning their long migration.

As they disappear into the white, I think of the trajectory of my own life. What flights will my body and spirit still make? Where am I going from here?

Such are my thoughts sitting here in a restaurant’s parking lot across from a former place of employment. I will probably drop by in a moment to say hello to past co-workers and others I have gotten to know. There are still connections—memories of those days, the people, the routines, the work itself.

I am grateful for my work there, for the continued friendships, but I am also grateful for the additional time I have now.

Time to pursue creative things.

Time to follow different flights.

Time to be more available for ministry.

Time, perhaps, simply to be more present to mornings like this one.

The watcher leaves her post.

The worker heads out to the job site.

The dying takes another trembling breath.

The trees in the distance are barely visible through the fog. I can see their shapes, but not their details.

The rest of this day feels much the same.

There are glimmers of what I might do, possibilities taking shape somewhere ahead, but nothing has been fully revealed yet.

That is true not only of this morning but of the rest of my life.

I can make out a few shapes in the distance.

A few directions.

A few possible flights.

But much of it remains hidden in the mist of the unknown.

For now, it is enough to sit here with the gift of a warm cinnamon roll beside me, watching the geese disappear beyond the pale, and trust that the way will reveal itself as I go.

#Aging #calling #ContemplativeWriting #Creativity #discernment #everydaySacred #fog #Freedom #geese #Gratitude #grief #Hope #lifeTransitions #liminalSpaces #marsh #memory #migration #Ministry #mist #morningReflection #Mortality #newBeginnings #ordinaryMoments #passingOver #retirement #Slowmover #SpiritualReflection #uncertainty #vocation

Beyond the Pale

Stepping outside after an early-morning breakfast with friends, I carry a cinnamon roll to go for my wife, still warm in my hands.

The morning reveals itself slowly through fog and mist. Distant trees fade into white. Flags hang limply in the damp at half-mast.

I sit in the truck and watch traffic pass as people begin their day, and I wonder what mine will be.

Nearby, in the nursing home, a woman breathes slowly in and out, somewhere near the edge of crossing over.

Across the road, behind the thrift store where I used to work, another woman gazes out toward the marsh.

Next door, a man in work clothes walks from his truck into the Marathon gas station beneath the lowered flags, perhaps buying what he will eat for lunch.

Ordinary lives moving through an ordinary morning.

I think back over the recent conversations, wondering where the words will take us today.

Through the windshield, I see the geese rise from the marsh into the mist above the watching woman, beginning their long migration.

As they disappear into the white, I think of the trajectory of my own life. What flights will my body and spirit still make? Where am I going from here?

Such are my thoughts sitting here in a restaurant’s parking lot across from a former place of employment. I will probably drop by in a moment to say hello to past co-workers and others I have gotten to know. There are still connections—memories of those days, the people, the routines, the work itself.

I am grateful for my work there, for the continued friendships, but I am also grateful for the additional time I have now.

Time to pursue creative things.

Time to follow different flights.

Time to be more available for ministry.

Time, perhaps, simply to be more present to mornings like this one.

The watcher leaves her post.

The worker heads out to the job site.

The dying takes another trembling breath.

The trees in the distance are barely visible through the fog. I can see their shapes, but not their details.

The rest of this day feels much the same.

There are glimmers of what I might do, possibilities taking shape somewhere ahead, but nothing has been fully revealed yet.

That is true not only of this morning but of the rest of my life.

I can make out a few shapes in the distance.

A few directions.

A few possible flights.

But much of it remains hidden in the mist of the unknown.

For now, it is enough to sit here with the gift of a warm cinnamon roll beside me, watching the geese disappear beyond the pale, and trust that the way will reveal itself as I go.

#Aging #calling #ContemplativeWriting #Creativity #discernment #everydaySacred #fog #Freedom #geese #Gratitude #grief #Hope #lifeTransitions #liminalSpaces #marsh #memory #migration #Ministry #mist #morningReflection #Mortality #newBeginnings #ordinaryMoments #passingOver #retirement #Slowmover #SpiritualReflection #uncertainty #vocation

Worrywart

I am a worrier.

Somehow I think that worrying gives me a measure of control over uncontrollable situations.

I have this idea that if I constantly imagine the worst-case scenario, then it won’t happen. A prediction of a morbid future somehow keeps it at bay.

That way I won’t be surprised.

It might be true or not, but it doesn’t leave much room for positive thoughts.

Or faith in God.

Worrying is just another side of fear, fear running roughshod over trusting the freedom of choice.

I worry a loved one may hurt herself. It would hurt deeply, but what can my worrying do? Except exacerbate the situation by keeping me from being centered, present, prayerful, and hopeful…

Trust is not the answer to worry. Prayer is.

I cannot begin to count the number of years accumulated from the hundreds of sleepless nights I have spent in fretful worry or rage.

Anger is simply another side of the restless coin. I do not believe that God can handle the situation, conversation, conflict, relationship . . . so I must carry on endless conversations in my head rather than simply releasing everything in prayer.

An old song comes to mind . . .  “bigger than all my problems, bigger than all my fears, God is bigger than any mountain that I can or cannot see.”

Let go and let God. Trite perhaps. But in essence quite correct. My hands have become arthritic talons from holding on to so many regrets, slights, grudges, dreams, hurts, wishes …

It is time once again to release the reins.

September 11, 2014

#AngerAndFear #Anxiety #ChristianLiving #ChristianMeditation #devotionalWriting #emotionalHealth #Faith #Fear #God #GodIsBigger #Healing #Hope #HopefulLiving #innerTurmoil #LetGoAndLetGod #LettingGo #MentalHealth #peace #PeaceOfMind #Prayer #PrayerAndTrust #presence #ReleasingControl #restlessness #sleeplessNights #spiritualGrowth #SpiritualReflection #surrender #TrustInGod #TrustingGod #Worry #woundedHeart

Worrywart

I am a worrier.

Somehow I think that worrying gives me a measure of control over uncontrollable situations.

I have this idea that if I constantly imagine the worst-case scenario, then it won’t happen. A prediction of a morbid future somehow keeps it at bay.

That way I won’t be surprised.

It might be true or not, but it doesn’t leave much room for positive thoughts.

Or faith in God.

Worrying is just another side of fear, fear running roughshod over trusting the freedom of choice.

I worry a loved one may hurt herself. It would hurt deeply, but what can my worrying do? Except exacerbate the situation by keeping me from being centered, present, prayerful, and hopeful…

Trust is not the answer to worry. Prayer is.

I cannot begin to count the number of years accumulated from the hundreds of sleepless nights I have spent in fretful worry or rage.

Anger is simply another side of the restless coin. I do not believe that God can handle the situation, conversation, conflict, relationship . . . so I must carry on endless conversations in my head rather than simply releasing everything in prayer.

An old song comes to mind . . .  “bigger than all my problems, bigger than all my fears, God is bigger than any mountain that I can or cannot see.”

Let go and let God. Trite perhaps. But in essence quite correct. My hands have become arthritic talons from holding on to so many regrets, slights, grudges, dreams, hurts, wishes …

It is time once again to release the reins.

September 11, 2014

#AngerAndFear #Anxiety #ChristianLiving #ChristianMeditation #devotionalWriting #emotionalHealth #Faith #Fear #God #GodIsBigger #Healing #Hope #HopefulLiving #innerTurmoil #LetGoAndLetGod #LettingGo #MentalHealth #peace #PeaceOfMind #Prayer #PrayerAndTrust #presence #ReleasingControl #restlessness #sleeplessNights #spiritualGrowth #SpiritualReflection #surrender #TrustInGod #TrustingGod #Worry #woundedHeart

Worrywart

I am a worrier.

Somehow I think that worrying gives me a measure of control over uncontrollable situations.

I have this idea that if I constantly imagine the worst-case scenario, then it won’t happen. A prediction of a morbid future somehow keeps it at bay.

That way I won’t be surprised.

It might be true or not, but it doesn’t leave much room for positive thoughts.

Or faith in God.

Worrying is just another side of fear, fear running roughshod over trusting the freedom of choice.

I worry a loved one may hurt herself. It would hurt deeply, but what can my worrying do? Except exacerbate the situation by keeping me from being centered, present, prayerful, and hopeful…

Trust is not the answer to worry. Prayer is.

I cannot begin to count the number of years accumulated from the hundreds of sleepless nights I have spent in fretful worry or rage.

Anger is simply another side of the restless coin. I do not believe that God can handle the situation, conversation, conflict, relationship . . . so I must carry on endless conversations in my head rather than simply releasing everything in prayer.

An old song comes to mind . . .  “bigger than all my problems, bigger than all my fears, God is bigger than any mountain that I can or cannot see.”

Let go and let God. Trite perhaps. But in essence quite correct. My hands have become arthritic talons from holding on to so many regrets, slights, grudges, dreams, hurts, wishes …

It is time once again to release the reins.

September 11, 2014

#AngerAndFear #Anxiety #ChristianLiving #ChristianMeditation #devotionalWriting #emotionalHealth #Faith #Fear #God #GodIsBigger #Healing #Hope #HopefulLiving #innerTurmoil #LetGoAndLetGod #LettingGo #MentalHealth #peace #PeaceOfMind #Prayer #PrayerAndTrust #presence #ReleasingControl #restlessness #sleeplessNights #spiritualGrowth #SpiritualReflection #surrender #TrustInGod #TrustingGod #Worry #woundedHeart

Worrywart

I am a worrier.

Somehow I think that worrying gives me a measure of control over uncontrollable situations.

I have this idea that if I constantly imagine the worst-case scenario, then it won’t happen. A prediction of a morbid future somehow keeps it at bay.

That way I won’t be surprised.

It might be true or not, but it doesn’t leave much room for positive thoughts.

Or faith in God.

Worrying is just another side of fear, fear running roughshod over trusting the freedom of choice.

I worry a loved one may hurt herself. It would hurt deeply, but what can my worrying do? Except exacerbate the situation by keeping me from being centered, present, prayerful, and hopeful…

Trust is not the answer to worry. Prayer is.

I cannot begin to count the number of years accumulated from the hundreds of sleepless nights I have spent in fretful worry or rage.

Anger is simply another side of the restless coin. I do not believe that God can handle the situation, conversation, conflict, relationship . . . so I must carry on endless conversations in my head rather than simply releasing everything in prayer.

An old song comes to mind . . .  “bigger than all my problems, bigger than all my fears, God is bigger than any mountain that I can or cannot see.”

Let go and let God. Trite perhaps. But in essence quite correct. My hands have become arthritic talons from holding on to so many regrets, slights, grudges, dreams, hurts, wishes …

It is time once again to release the reins.

September 11, 2014

#AngerAndFear #Anxiety #ChristianLiving #ChristianMeditation #devotionalWriting #emotionalHealth #Faith #Fear #God #GodIsBigger #Healing #Hope #HopefulLiving #innerTurmoil #LetGoAndLetGod #LettingGo #MentalHealth #peace #PeaceOfMind #Prayer #PrayerAndTrust #presence #ReleasingControl #restlessness #sleeplessNights #spiritualGrowth #SpiritualReflection #surrender #TrustInGod #TrustingGod #Worry #woundedHeart

Worrywart

I am a worrier.

Somehow I think that worrying gives me a measure of control over uncontrollable situations.

I have this idea that if I constantly imagine the worst-case scenario, then it won’t happen. A prediction of a morbid future somehow keeps it at bay.

That way I won’t be surprised.

It might be true or not, but it doesn’t leave much room for positive thoughts.

Or faith in God.

Worrying is just another side of fear, fear running roughshod over trusting the freedom of choice.

I worry a loved one may hurt herself. It would hurt deeply, but what can my worrying do? Except exacerbate the situation by keeping me from being centered, present, prayerful, and hopeful…

Trust is not the answer to worry. Prayer is.

I cannot begin to count the number of years accumulated from the hundreds of sleepless nights I have spent in fretful worry or rage.

Anger is simply another side of the restless coin. I do not believe that God can handle the situation, conversation, conflict, relationship . . . so I must carry on endless conversations in my head rather than simply releasing everything in prayer.

An old song comes to mind . . .  “bigger than all my problems, bigger than all my fears, God is bigger than any mountain that I can or cannot see.”

Let go and let God. Trite perhaps. But in essence quite correct. My hands have become arthritic talons from holding on to so many regrets, slights, grudges, dreams, hurts, wishes …

It is time once again to release the reins.

September 11, 2014

#AngerAndFear #Anxiety #ChristianLiving #ChristianMeditation #devotionalWriting #emotionalHealth #Faith #Fear #God #GodIsBigger #Healing #Hope #HopefulLiving #innerTurmoil #LetGoAndLetGod #LettingGo #MentalHealth #peace #PeaceOfMind #Prayer #PrayerAndTrust #presence #ReleasingControl #restlessness #sleeplessNights #spiritualGrowth #SpiritualReflection #surrender #TrustInGod #TrustingGod #Worry #woundedHeart

The Geometry of Breaking or Healing

peacegroover@deviantart

Those are the two options.

To be part of the destruction of that which is precious,
even the life of the enemy.
Or a conduit for the substance that binds up wounds and the broken-hearted.

Even when flaws cause me to hurt those around me or engage in broken thoughts and so, for a time, join with the razing power,
if I am repentant, make the necessary changes, and return to the healing stream,
then the danger of losing my humanity is minimized.

And, if at the end of my life when I am weighed in the balance, and my contribution to fixing outweighs the breaking, then I will be satisfied to rest easy in the knowledge that in some small way I was an addition to the healing sum.

September 10, 2014

#Anabaptism #Brokenness #ChristianPacifism #compassion #conscience #CycleOfViolence #DoingNoHarm #enemyLove #Ethics #Forgiveness #Healing #healingTheWorld #humanDignity #Humanity #LoveYourEnemies #mennonite #Mercy #moralResponsibility #Nonviolence #peaceTheology #Peacebuilding #Peacemaking #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Reconciliation #RedemptiveViolence #repair #Repentance #restoration #RestorativeJustice #Shalom #spiritualFormation #SpiritualReflection #TheHealingStream #Transformation #ViolenceAndPeace #woundedness #Writing

The Geometry of Breaking or Healing

peacegroover@deviantart

Those are the two options.

To be part of the destruction of that which is precious,
even the life of the enemy.
Or a conduit for the substance that binds up wounds and the broken-hearted.

Even when flaws cause me to hurt those around me or engage in broken thoughts and so, for a time, join with the razing power,
if I am repentant, make the necessary changes, and return to the healing stream,
then the danger of losing my humanity is minimized.

And, if at the end of my life when I am weighed in the balance, and my contribution to fixing outweighs the breaking, then I will be satisfied to rest easy in the knowledge that in some small way I was an addition to the healing sum.

September 10, 2014

#Anabaptism #Brokenness #ChristianPacifism #compassion #conscience #CycleOfViolence #DoingNoHarm #enemyLove #Ethics #Forgiveness #Healing #healingTheWorld #humanDignity #Humanity #LoveYourEnemies #mennonite #Mercy #moralResponsibility #Nonviolence #peaceTheology #Peacebuilding #Peacemaking #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Reconciliation #RedemptiveViolence #repair #Repentance #restoration #RestorativeJustice #Shalom #spiritualFormation #SpiritualReflection #TheHealingStream #Transformation #ViolenceAndPeace #woundedness #Writing

The Geometry of Breaking or Healing

peacegroover@deviantart

Those are the two options.

To be part of the destruction of that which is precious,
even the life of the enemy.
Or a conduit for the substance that binds up wounds and the broken-hearted.

Even when flaws cause me to hurt those around me or engage in broken thoughts and so, for a time, join with the razing power,
if I am repentant, make the necessary changes, and return to the healing stream,
then the danger of losing my humanity is minimized.

And, if at the end of my life when I am weighed in the balance, and my contribution to fixing outweighs the breaking, then I will be satisfied to rest easy in the knowledge that in some small way I was an addition to the healing sum.

September 10, 2014

#Anabaptism #Brokenness #ChristianPacifism #compassion #conscience #CycleOfViolence #DoingNoHarm #enemyLove #Ethics #Forgiveness #Healing #healingTheWorld #humanDignity #Humanity #LoveYourEnemies #mennonite #Mercy #moralResponsibility #Nonviolence #peaceTheology #Peacebuilding #Peacemaking #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Reconciliation #RedemptiveViolence #repair #Repentance #restoration #RestorativeJustice #Shalom #spiritualFormation #SpiritualReflection #TheHealingStream #Transformation #ViolenceAndPeace #woundedness #Writing

The Geometry of Breaking or Healing

peacegroover@deviantart

Those are the two options.

To be part of the destruction of that which is precious,
even the life of the enemy.
Or a conduit for the substance that binds up wounds and the broken-hearted.

Even when flaws cause me to hurt those around me or engage in broken thoughts and so, for a time, join with the razing power,
if I am repentant, make the necessary changes, and return to the healing stream,
then the danger of losing my humanity is minimized.

And, if at the end of my life when I am weighed in the balance, and my contribution to fixing outweighs the breaking, then I will be satisfied to rest easy in the knowledge that in some small way I was an addition to the healing sum.

September 10, 2014

#Anabaptism #Brokenness #ChristianPacifism #compassion #conscience #CycleOfViolence #DoingNoHarm #enemyLove #Ethics #Forgiveness #Healing #healingTheWorld #humanDignity #Humanity #LoveYourEnemies #mennonite #Mercy #moralResponsibility #Nonviolence #peaceTheology #Peacebuilding #Peacemaking #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Reconciliation #RedemptiveViolence #repair #Repentance #restoration #RestorativeJustice #Shalom #spiritualFormation #SpiritualReflection #TheHealingStream #Transformation #ViolenceAndPeace #woundedness #Writing

The Geometry of Breaking or Healing

peacegroover@deviantart

Those are the two options.

To be part of the destruction of that which is precious,
even the life of the enemy.
Or a conduit for the substance that binds up wounds and the broken-hearted.

Even when flaws cause me to hurt those around me or engage in broken thoughts and so, for a time, join with the razing power,
if I am repentant, make the necessary changes, and return to the healing stream,
then the danger of losing my humanity is minimized.

And, if at the end of my life when I am weighed in the balance, and my contribution to fixing outweighs the breaking, then I will be satisfied to rest easy in the knowledge that in some small way I was an addition to the healing sum.

September 10, 2014

#Anabaptism #Brokenness #ChristianPacifism #compassion #conscience #CycleOfViolence #DoingNoHarm #enemyLove #Ethics #Forgiveness #Healing #healingTheWorld #humanDignity #Humanity #LoveYourEnemies #mennonite #Mercy #moralResponsibility #Nonviolence #peaceTheology #Peacebuilding #Peacemaking #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Reconciliation #RedemptiveViolence #repair #Repentance #restoration #RestorativeJustice #Shalom #spiritualFormation #SpiritualReflection #TheHealingStream #Transformation #ViolenceAndPeace #woundedness #Writing

Strike

The phobia of a copperhead strike
is made real by the lunge of a
lawnmower into the brush to shred
the coiling orange and brown with
a screaming whump only to realize
that it was an eastern box turtle
I had set upon.

Once again what I am afraid of 
has led me to destroy what I love 
and I weep, wondering if I will ever 
become one whose perceived fears 
are not acted on.

I did not look to see if the 
slowmover was dead
but I knew. I could see the 
bloody pieces of her
shell scattered across
the lawn.

September 3, 1996

#1996 #accidentalHarm #backyardEncounter #boxTurtle #compassion #confessionalWriting #copperheadFear #CreationCare #creaturelyGrief #destroyingWhatWeLove #ecologicalGrief #Fear #fearAndViolence #fearBasedAction #griefAndRemorse #HereAreWordPressTagsForThisPieceEasternBoxTurtle #humanFear #lawnmowerTragedy #moralReflection #Nature #NatureWriting #Nonviolence #orangeAndBrown #perceivedDanger #phobia #poem #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Poetry #ProsePoem #Repentance #sacredCreatures #shell #SLOWMOVERFollowingGod3mph #Slowmover #Sorrow #SpiritualReflection #thoughts #turtle #turtleShell #unintendedViolence #Violence #vulnerableCreatures #whatIAmAfraidOf #whatILove #wildlife #Writing

Strike

The phobia of a copperhead strike
is made real by the lunge of a
lawnmower into the brush to shred
the coiling orange and brown with
a screaming whump only to realize
that it was an eastern box turtle
I had set upon.

Once again what I am afraid of 
has led me to destroy what I love 
and I weep, wondering if I will ever 
become one whose perceived fears 
are not acted on.

I did not look to see if the 
slowmover was dead
but I knew. I could see the 
bloody pieces of her
shell scattered across
the lawn.

September 3, 1996

#1996 #accidentalHarm #backyardEncounter #boxTurtle #compassion #confessionalWriting #copperheadFear #CreationCare #creaturelyGrief #destroyingWhatWeLove #ecologicalGrief #Fear #fearAndViolence #fearBasedAction #griefAndRemorse #HereAreWordPressTagsForThisPieceEasternBoxTurtle #humanFear #lawnmowerTragedy #moralReflection #Nature #NatureWriting #Nonviolence #orangeAndBrown #perceivedDanger #phobia #poem #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Poetry #ProsePoem #Repentance #sacredCreatures #shell #SLOWMOVERFollowingGod3mph #Slowmover #Sorrow #SpiritualReflection #thoughts #turtle #turtleShell #unintendedViolence #Violence #vulnerableCreatures #whatIAmAfraidOf #whatILove #wildlife #Writing

Strike

The phobia of a copperhead strike
is made real by the lunge of a
lawnmower into the brush to shred
the coiling orange and brown with
a screaming whump only to realize
that it was an eastern box turtle
I had set upon.

Once again what I am afraid of 
has led me to destroy what I love 
and I weep, wondering if I will ever 
become one whose perceived fears 
are not acted on.

I did not look to see if the 
slowmover was dead
but I knew. I could see the 
bloody pieces of her
shell scattered across
the lawn.

September 3, 1996

#1996 #accidentalHarm #backyardEncounter #boxTurtle #compassion #confessionalWriting #copperheadFear #CreationCare #creaturelyGrief #destroyingWhatWeLove #ecologicalGrief #Fear #fearAndViolence #fearBasedAction #griefAndRemorse #HereAreWordPressTagsForThisPieceEasternBoxTurtle #humanFear #lawnmowerTragedy #moralReflection #Nature #NatureWriting #Nonviolence #orangeAndBrown #perceivedDanger #phobia #poem #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Poetry #ProsePoem #Repentance #sacredCreatures #shell #SLOWMOVERFollowingGod3mph #Slowmover #Sorrow #SpiritualReflection #thoughts #turtle #turtleShell #unintendedViolence #Violence #vulnerableCreatures #whatIAmAfraidOf #whatILove #wildlife #Writing

Strike

The phobia of a copperhead strike
is made real by the lunge of a
lawnmower into the brush to shred
the coiling orange and brown with
a screaming whump only to realize
that it was an eastern box turtle
I had set upon.

Once again what I am afraid of 
has led me to destroy what I love 
and I weep, wondering if I will ever 
become one whose perceived fears 
are not acted on.

I did not look to see if the 
slowmover was dead
but I knew. I could see the 
bloody pieces of her
shell scattered across
the lawn.

September 3, 1996

#1996 #accidentalHarm #backyardEncounter #boxTurtle #compassion #confessionalWriting #copperheadFear #CreationCare #creaturelyGrief #destroyingWhatWeLove #ecologicalGrief #Fear #fearAndViolence #fearBasedAction #griefAndRemorse #HereAreWordPressTagsForThisPieceEasternBoxTurtle #humanFear #lawnmowerTragedy #moralReflection #Nature #NatureWriting #Nonviolence #orangeAndBrown #perceivedDanger #phobia #poem #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Poetry #ProsePoem #Repentance #sacredCreatures #shell #SLOWMOVERFollowingGod3mph #Slowmover #Sorrow #SpiritualReflection #thoughts #turtle #turtleShell #unintendedViolence #Violence #vulnerableCreatures #whatIAmAfraidOf #whatILove #wildlife #Writing

Strike

The phobia of a copperhead strike
is made real by the lunge of a
lawnmower into the brush to shred
the coiling orange and brown with
a screaming whump only to realize
that it was an eastern box turtle
I had set upon.

Once again what I am afraid of 
has led me to destroy what I love 
and I weep, wondering if I will ever 
become one whose perceived fears 
are not acted on.

I did not look to see if the 
slowmover was dead
but I knew. I could see the 
bloody pieces of her
shell scattered across
the lawn.

September 3, 1996

#1996 #accidentalHarm #backyardEncounter #boxTurtle #compassion #confessionalWriting #copperheadFear #CreationCare #creaturelyGrief #destroyingWhatWeLove #ecologicalGrief #Fear #fearAndViolence #fearBasedAction #griefAndRemorse #HereAreWordPressTagsForThisPieceEasternBoxTurtle #humanFear #lawnmowerTragedy #moralReflection #Nature #NatureWriting #Nonviolence #orangeAndBrown #perceivedDanger #phobia #poem #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Poetry #ProsePoem #Repentance #sacredCreatures #shell #SLOWMOVERFollowingGod3mph #Slowmover #Sorrow #SpiritualReflection #thoughts #turtle #turtleShell #unintendedViolence #Violence #vulnerableCreatures #whatIAmAfraidOf #whatILove #wildlife #Writing

When You’ve Lived Long Enough to Lose So Much:

A Gentle Word for Christians Carrying Grief

There is a kind of heartbreak that faith does not erase.
A kind of loneliness no sermon can soften.
A kind of grief you don’t understand until the years pile up
and the people you loved more than life slowly disappear from your world.

If you’re carrying that kind of grief, you are not faithless.
You are not doing anything wrong.
You are simply living long enough to know what loss really costs.

And as hard as it is to say this out loud —
Scripture never fully described this experience.
Not because Scripture is wrong,
but because the men who wrote it didn’t live long enough to know this pain the way you do.

You’ve lived longer than Jesus and Paul — and that means you’ve carried grief they never faced.

This isn’t irreverence.
This is reality — spoken gently and without contempt.

Jesus died young.
Paul died younger than many of us will.
Neither lived long enough to feel the weight of decades of loss:

• the slow thinning of a family
• the burying of a spouse
• the ache of losing the person whose voice shaped your mornings
• the long, hollow nights in an empty bed
• the sting of surviving when the one you love is no longer here to survive with you

Pastors often say Jesus “experienced everything we experience.”
But if He never lived to old age,
never married,
never held a dying spouse’s hand,
never woke up alone after 40 years of shared life —
then He didn’t experience the long grief of survival.

It doesn’t insult Him to admit that.
It simply names the truth with tenderness.

Paul likely buried friends, yes.
He knew persecution, heartbreak, and loss.
But he did not know this:
the quiet agony of outliving the love of your life.

Only the old know that pain.
Only the widowed.
Only the ones who keep going with half their heart missing.

“Death, where is thy sting?” You know exactly where it is.

The verse speaks of victory — and it’s beautiful.
But it does not touch the place where you are hurting right now.

The sting isn’t in death.
It’s in survival.

It’s in the empty chair.
The pillow untouched.
The quiet house that echoes her absence.
The anniversary that comes whether you want it to or not.
The mornings without her voice.
The nights without her warmth.
The life you must continue even though your heart begs you not to.

You live with a wound Jesus never bore
and Paul never wrote about:

the wound of survival.

And you feel it every day.

Survival is a calling no one prepares you for.

You didn’t ask for this.
You didn’t choose it.
But here you are — still breathing, still walking,
still loving the one you lost by carrying their memory forward.

And here is something true:

If you had not lived this long,
you would never have understood this depth of grief
or this depth of love.

Only those who survive long enough
learn the terrible, sacred weight of continuing alone.

You continue for her.
You continue with her memory.
But you continue without her.

And that is the sting.

Not lack of faith.
Not God abandoning you.
Just the human cost of loving someone so deeply
that losing them tears the world in half.

You are not weak. You are not faithless. You are grieving — and grieving is holy.

Jesus wept at Lazarus’ tomb.
He knew sorrow.
But He did not know this sorrow — this long, slow, solitary ache of living year after year without the one who made the world make sense.

Your grief is the price of love.
Your tears are prayers in their own right.
Your survival is its own kind of courage.

And even if Scripture doesn’t fully describe this particular wound,
God sees it.
God honors it.
And God holds you in it.

There is no shame in your sadness.
No weakness in your tears.
No failure in your continuing.

You loved deeply.
You lost painfully.
You grieve honestly.

And you are still here — carrying love forward one day at a time.

Dedication:
In loving memory of my wife, Luz — posted at the exact minute of her passing, one year later. This essay is for everyone who has loved deeply, lost painfully, and continues anyway.

Featured Image:
Featured image: Wedding Day of Cliff & Luz Potts — October 10, 2023.

#bereavement #ChristianEncouragement #ChristianGrief #ChristianLiving #faithAndHardship #faithAndLoss #grief #griefSupport #grievingChristians #grievingSpouse #healingThroughFaith #hopeAfterLoss #loneliness #lossOfLovedOnes #spiritualReflection

Casting into Dark Waters

During this time, when I have been troubled by thoughts that lead me down shadowed pathways, when my nights have been filled with dreams that disturb even my waking hours, I have found myself standing again and again on the shores of ponds.

I cast into the dark water.

Then cast again.

And again.

Places that earlier this summer yielded fish after fish have gone strangely silent. I use the same bait. I cast into the same places. I work the shoreline where I remember the splashing, the sudden tug, the frantic reeling as something alive fought beneath the surface.

But now my line keeps returning empty.

And because my mind is already inclined toward such things, I begin to wonder whether the universe is somehow responding to the inner landscape of my disquieted soul.

I know how strange that sounds.

Perhaps the fish simply aren’t biting.

Perhaps the water has changed, the temperature shifted, the season moved almost imperceptibly onward.

And yet there are times when the world outside seems so closely joined to the world within that I cannot keep myself from wondering.

Why now?

Why the silence?

Why do the places that once seemed so abundant suddenly refuse to give anything back?

This morning I followed a friend to a pond I had not fished for many days. Earlier in the summer the surface had become so thick with algae that casting was nearly impossible. I stopped coming.

That pond had spoiled me at the beginning of the season. For a while it seemed as though wherever I cast there was a bite. Fish splashed in the shallows. The line tightened. I reeled frantically, laughing sometimes, trying to bring them safely to shore.

Abundance everywhere.

This morning, when I arrived, the algae was gone.

The water was open again.

Immediately something in me lifted.

Maybe today.

Maybe this place had been waiting.

Maybe the season of silence was ending.

I cast.

Nothing.

Again.

Nothing.

I changed directions, changed distance, worked the shoreline.

Nothing.

The same bait that once brought fish after fish came back untouched.

And once again I found myself standing there staring at the water, wondering why.

But before I reached the pond this morning, something else happened.

Driving down the dirt road, I saw a hawk sitting on a telephone line.

As I approached, it lifted itself into the air and flew away.

I don’t entirely understand what happens inside me when I see these birds. Hawks, eagles, the great winged raptors—I have encountered them at different moments of my life, and somehow they have become signs of hope to me.

Not omens exactly.

I don’t know that the universe sends hawks specifically for me.

But sometimes the heart recognizes a symbol before the mind knows what to do with it.

As that hawk lifted from the wire this morning, emotion rose unexpectedly inside me.

By the time I reached the pond, I was almost in tears.

Then I stood beside the newly cleared water and cast into it.

And caught nothing.

Still nothing.

Yet perhaps that is not the whole story of this morning.

I came looking for fish.

Perhaps what I needed was the hawk.

Perhaps I needed the moment when something resting quietly above an ordinary dirt road suddenly opened its wings and rose into the sky.

Perhaps hope does not always arrive as a tug on the line.

Sometimes the water remains silent.

Sometimes the bait comes back untouched.

Sometimes the thing we were hoping would return does not return, at least not yet.

And still something flies.

I leave the pond without a fish.

My hands smell faintly of bait and pond water. The line is reeled in. The surface closes behind my final cast as though I had never disturbed it.

But somewhere inside me there remains the image of that hawk lifting from the telephone wire.

And with it, fragile as it may be, a thought:

perhaps today is not the day when everything becomes clear.

Perhaps it is only the beginning of calm.

A small clearing of algae.

A little open water.

A winged hope rising into the morning.

A quiet, gentle place where, for a little while, my spirit might rest.

#casting #ContemplativeWriting #darkWaters #Dawn #disquietedSoul #dreams #faithAndDoubt #Fishing #fragileHope #gothicSpirituality #hawkSymbolism #Healing #innerLandscape #mentalLandscape #natureAndSpirit #peaceWithin #poeticProse #pond #signsOfHope #silence #SpiritualReflection #stillness #surrealReflection #Symbolism #wildernessSpirituality

✮ Wick ✮

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✮ Talking to a Stone ✮

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✮ Talking to a Stone ✮

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What Is My Sequel?

We live in the age of the sequel.

Nothing ends anymore.

The hero survives the explosion. The villain’s hand rises from the rubble. The supposedly final chapter contains a scene after the credits. A character who died twenty years ago returns through cloning, memory, the multiverse, a prequel, a reboot, artificial intelligence, or some creative loophole in the mythology.

Perhaps we have become suspicious of endings – whether they are happy or sad.

Or perhaps endings are just bad for business.

If a story succeeds, we do not allow it to finish. We stretch it. Repeat it. Repackage it.

Volume follows volume.

Season follows season.

Universe follows universe.

And somewhere along the way, a single story becomes a franchise.

I wonder whether we sometimes do the same thing with our lives.

We discover a role that works, and then we keep writing sequels to it.

The successful person must remain successful.

The pastor must continue being the pastor.

The artist must keep producing.

The parent must remain necessary.

The activist must always be preparing for the next protest.

The wounded person must keep telling of the trauma.

The admired person must maintain their image.

Even our identities can become franchises.

We keep returning to the same personas because we’ve worn them so long.

People recognize them.

Perhaps we recognize them too.

But eventually a dangerous question arrives:

What if that story is finished?

Not my life.

That story.

That version of me.

That particular adventure.

Maybe one of the great spiritual disciplines is learning to recognize when the credits are supposed to roll.

When “The End” flashes on the screen and the only sound is the film flapping around and around on the take-up reel.

Jesus spent much of his life telling people that something was ending.

An age.

A way of measuring power.

A way of imagining God.

A way of dividing the righteous from the unrighteous, the insider from the outsider, the important from the insignificant.

And Christianity makes an astonishing claim about the apparent ending of Jesus himself.

He dies.

There is no heroic escape.

No secret tunnel underneath the cross.

No last-minute rescue by ninja disciples.

Jesus is dead.

Period.

His body is put in a tomb, and the tomb is sealed.

For a brief terrible moment, the story is allowed to end.

And then comes resurrection.

But resurrection is not quite a sequel.

That may be important.

The risen Christ is continuous with Jesus—wounds, memory, voice, love—and yet strangely different. People who knew him sometimes fail to recognize him. He appears unexpectedly. He passes through locked doors. He eats breakfast and then disappears.

This is not Jesus II: The Empire Strikes Back.

It is something stranger.

Resurrection does not merely continue the old plot.

It transforms what a story can be.

Which makes me wonder about my own life.

Perhaps I have spent years assuming that the future must be a sequel to the past.

Another project.

Another accomplishment.

Another book.

Another song.

Another role.

Another version of something or someone I have already been.

We ask children, What do you want to be when you grow up?

Later we ask adults, What are you doing next?

Almost nobody asks:

What part of you is complete?

What could you lovingly allow to end?

What character no longer needs to return for another season?

What war does not require another battle?

What identity has carried you faithfully to this point but does not need to follow you into the next chapter?

What part of you needs to die?

I find myself wondering:

What will be my sequel?

And then an even more unsettling question:

Do I have one?

At first that sounds frightening.

We have been trained to believe that there must always be something next.

But perhaps the absence of a sequel does not mean the absence of a future.

A seed has no sequel.

It becomes a tree.

A caterpillar has no sequel.

It becomes something that would have been nearly unimaginable from inside the chrysalis.

Autumn does not produce Summer II.

It becomes winter.

And winter, somehow, becomes spring.

Maybe what comes next in a human life need not be the continuation of what came before.

Maybe I am not waiting for another installment.

Maybe I am waiting for transformation.

That changes the question.

Instead of asking,

How do I keep this story going?

I can ask,

What is this story becoming?

There may even come a point when the greatest act of faith is to stop demanding another season.

To leave some characters behind.

To let go of unresolved subplots.

To accept that certain doors will never reopen.

To stop resurrecting things that are meant to remain buried.

And then to stand before the unknown without insisting that it resemble anything that has already happened.

The culture says:

Coming soon: more of the same.

The spiritual life whispers:

Behold, I make all things new.

So perhaps I do not want a sequel.

Perhaps I want resurrection.

And if resurrection is real, then the most interesting part of my story may not be what happens next.

It may be what I become when the old story finally has the courage to end.

#Aging #becoming #beginnings #Change #endings #Faith #Growth #Hope #Identity #Legacy #LettingGo #life #lifeTransitions #Mortality #newCreation #originality #Purpose #renewal #resurrection #resurrectionLife #sequels #spiritualLife #SpiritualReflection #Transformation #whatComesNext

Psalm 39

God breathed in.
I was born.

God breathes out.
I will die.

Thus is the scope of my life.

August 16, 2015

#BreathOfLife #christianMysticism #ContemplativeWriting #cosmicSpirituality #Creation #divineBreath #dustAndBreath #Ecclesiastes #existentialReflection #faithAndMortality #Genesis #God #GodBreath #GriefAndHope #Humanity #lifeAndDeath #Mortality #poeticTheology #sacredArt #sacredImagination #SpiritualReflection #Spirituality #surrealArt #Theology #visualMeditation #Writing

Psalm 39

God breathed in.
I was born.

God breathes out.
I will die.

Thus is the scope of my life.

August 16, 2015

#BreathOfLife #christianMysticism #ContemplativeWriting #cosmicSpirituality #Creation #divineBreath #dustAndBreath #Ecclesiastes #existentialReflection #faithAndMortality #Genesis #God #GodBreath #GriefAndHope #Humanity #lifeAndDeath #Mortality #poeticTheology #sacredArt #sacredImagination #SpiritualReflection #Spirituality #surrealArt #Theology #visualMeditation #Writing

Psalm 39

God breathed in.
I was born.

God breathes out.
I will die.

Thus is the scope of my life.

August 16, 2015

#BreathOfLife #christianMysticism #ContemplativeWriting #cosmicSpirituality #Creation #divineBreath #dustAndBreath #Ecclesiastes #existentialReflection #faithAndMortality #Genesis #God #GodBreath #GriefAndHope #Humanity #lifeAndDeath #Mortality #poeticTheology #sacredArt #sacredImagination #SpiritualReflection #Spirituality #surrealArt #Theology #visualMeditation #Writing

Psalm 39

God breathed in.
I was born.

God breathes out.
I will die.

Thus is the scope of my life.

August 16, 2015

#BreathOfLife #christianMysticism #ContemplativeWriting #cosmicSpirituality #Creation #divineBreath #dustAndBreath #Ecclesiastes #existentialReflection #faithAndMortality #Genesis #God #GodBreath #GriefAndHope #Humanity #lifeAndDeath #Mortality #poeticTheology #sacredArt #sacredImagination #SpiritualReflection #Spirituality #surrealArt #Theology #visualMeditation #Writing

Glitch

aeropuerta by kmls

flights are grounded
my wings are clipped
i need to wait a little
longer to start this trip

my future connection
could be in jeopardy
it might be a while
before we're set free

the whims of the divine
are all part of the plan
my life's trajectory is
not in my hands

so i will wait patiently
for the Control Tower's nod
and match my flight to the wind of an all-knowing God

August 15, 2015

#clippedWings #ContemplativePoetry #controlTower #delayedJourney #discernment #divineTiming #Faith #flightMetaphor #Flying #futureUncertainty #God #GodSPlan #grounded #Hope #Journey #lifeTrajectory #Obedience #Patience #pilgrimage #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Prayer #Providence #SpiritualJourney #SpiritualReflection #surrender #Travel #Trust #TrustGod #trustingTheProcess #Waiting #windOfGod #Writing

Glitch

aeropuerta by kmls

flights are grounded
my wings are clipped
i need to wait a little
longer to start this trip

my future connection
could be in jeopardy
it might be a while
before we're set free

the whims of the divine
are all part of the plan
my life's trajectory is
not in my hands

so i will wait patiently
for the Control Tower's nod
and match my flight to the wind of an all-knowing God

August 15, 2015

#clippedWings #ContemplativePoetry #controlTower #delayedJourney #discernment #divineTiming #Faith #flightMetaphor #Flying #futureUncertainty #God #GodSPlan #grounded #Hope #Journey #lifeTrajectory #Obedience #Patience #pilgrimage #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Prayer #Providence #SpiritualJourney #SpiritualReflection #surrender #Travel #Trust #TrustGod #trustingTheProcess #Waiting #windOfGod #Writing

Glitch

aeropuerta by kmls

flights are grounded
my wings are clipped
i need to wait a little
longer to start this trip

my future connection
could be in jeopardy
it might be a while
before we're set free

the whims of the divine
are all part of the plan
my life's trajectory is
not in my hands

so i will wait patiently
for the Control Tower's nod
and match my flight to the wind of an all-knowing God

August 15, 2015

#clippedWings #ContemplativePoetry #controlTower #delayedJourney #discernment #divineTiming #Faith #flightMetaphor #Flying #futureUncertainty #God #GodSPlan #grounded #Hope #Journey #lifeTrajectory #Obedience #Patience #pilgrimage #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Prayer #Providence #SpiritualJourney #SpiritualReflection #surrender #Travel #Trust #TrustGod #trustingTheProcess #Waiting #windOfGod #Writing

Glitch

aeropuerta by kmls

flights are grounded
my wings are clipped
i need to wait a little
longer to start this trip

my future connection
could be in jeopardy
it might be a while
before we're set free

the whims of the divine
are all part of the plan
my life's trajectory is
not in my hands

so i will wait patiently
for the Control Tower's nod
and match my flight to the wind of an all-knowing God

August 15, 2015

#clippedWings #ContemplativePoetry #controlTower #delayedJourney #discernment #divineTiming #Faith #flightMetaphor #Flying #futureUncertainty #God #GodSPlan #grounded #Hope #Journey #lifeTrajectory #Obedience #Patience #pilgrimage #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Prayer #Providence #SpiritualJourney #SpiritualReflection #surrender #Travel #Trust #TrustGod #trustingTheProcess #Waiting #windOfGod #Writing

BeLeaf Tanka

Rain beads on the glass,
one bright leaf rests after friends—
breakfast warmth lingers.
Autumn arrives quietly,
believing in the morning.

#autumnLeaves #autumnMorning #beautyInOrdinaryThings #beleaf #breakfastWithFriends #contemplativePhotography #everydaySacred #fallColors #Friendship #Gratitude #leafPhotography #Mindfulness #morningLight #morningReflection #naturePoetry #noticingBeauty #photoPoetry #Photography #Poetry #Rain #seasonalReflection #simpleJoys #SpiritualReflection #tanka

BeLeaf Tanka

Rain beads on the glass,
one bright leaf rests after friends—
breakfast warmth lingers.
Autumn arrives quietly,
believing in the morning.

#autumnLeaves #autumnMorning #beautyInOrdinaryThings #beleaf #breakfastWithFriends #contemplativePhotography #everydaySacred #fallColors #Friendship #Gratitude #leafPhotography #Mindfulness #morningLight #morningReflection #naturePoetry #noticingBeauty #photoPoetry #Photography #Poetry #Rain #seasonalReflection #simpleJoys #SpiritualReflection #tanka

BeLeaf Tanka

Rain beads on the glass,
one bright leaf rests after friends—
breakfast warmth lingers.
Autumn arrives quietly,
believing in the morning.

#autumnLeaves #autumnMorning #beautyInOrdinaryThings #beleaf #breakfastWithFriends #contemplativePhotography #everydaySacred #fallColors #Friendship #Gratitude #leafPhotography #Mindfulness #morningLight #morningReflection #naturePoetry #noticingBeauty #photoPoetry #Photography #Poetry #Rain #seasonalReflection #simpleJoys #SpiritualReflection #tanka

BeLeaf Tanka

Rain beads on the glass,
one bright leaf rests after friends—
breakfast warmth lingers.
Autumn arrives quietly,
believing in the morning.

#autumnLeaves #autumnMorning #beautyInOrdinaryThings #beleaf #breakfastWithFriends #contemplativePhotography #everydaySacred #fallColors #Friendship #Gratitude #leafPhotography #Mindfulness #morningLight #morningReflection #naturePoetry #noticingBeauty #photoPoetry #Photography #Poetry #Rain #seasonalReflection #simpleJoys #SpiritualReflection #tanka

BeLeaf Tanka

Rain beads on the glass,
one bright leaf rests after friends—
breakfast warmth lingers.
Autumn arrives quietly,
believing in the morning.

#autumnLeaves #autumnMorning #beautyInOrdinaryThings #beleaf #breakfastWithFriends #contemplativePhotography #everydaySacred #fallColors #Friendship #Gratitude #leafPhotography #Mindfulness #morningLight #morningReflection #naturePoetry #noticingBeauty #photoPoetry #Photography #Poetry #Rain #seasonalReflection #simpleJoys #SpiritualReflection #tanka

Dusk

i had such grandiose plans
another day to spend
from the bank of my life
to reap the dividend

somewhere i went awry
i lost track of the sun
when i turned around again
the day was almost done

so now i pin my hopes
on the fading light
i watch the creeping shadows
and make plans for the night

August 13, 2015

#Aging #ContemplativePoetry #Disappointment #endOfDay #evening #fadingLight #Hope #lifeMetaphor #lostTime #Melancholy #Mortality #nightfall #reflection #regret #resilience #secondChances #shadows #SpiritualReflection #Time #unfinishedPlans #Writing

Dusk

i had such grandiose plans
another day to spend
from the bank of my life
to reap the dividend

somewhere i went awry
i lost track of the sun
when i turned around again
the day was almost done

so now i pin my hopes
on the fading light
i watch the creeping shadows
and make plans for the night

August 13, 2015

#Aging #ContemplativePoetry #Disappointment #endOfDay #evening #fadingLight #Hope #lifeMetaphor #lostTime #Melancholy #Mortality #nightfall #reflection #regret #resilience #secondChances #shadows #SpiritualReflection #Time #unfinishedPlans #Writing

Dusk

i had such grandiose plans
another day to spend
from the bank of my life
to reap the dividend

somewhere i went awry
i lost track of the sun
when i turned around again
the day was almost done

so now i pin my hopes
on the fading light
i watch the creeping shadows
and make plans for the night

August 13, 2015

#Aging #ContemplativePoetry #Disappointment #endOfDay #evening #fadingLight #Hope #lifeMetaphor #lostTime #Melancholy #Mortality #nightfall #reflection #regret #resilience #secondChances #shadows #SpiritualReflection #Time #unfinishedPlans #Writing

Dusk

i had such grandiose plans
another day to spend
from the bank of my life
to reap the dividend

somewhere i went awry
i lost track of the sun
when i turned around again
the day was almost done

so now i pin my hopes
on the fading light
i watch the creeping shadows
and make plans for the night

August 13, 2015

#Aging #ContemplativePoetry #Disappointment #endOfDay #evening #fadingLight #Hope #lifeMetaphor #lostTime #Melancholy #Mortality #nightfall #reflection #regret #resilience #secondChances #shadows #SpiritualReflection #Time #unfinishedPlans #Writing

The Open Gate

The early morning is still dark when my hound and I arrive at the dog park. Almost immediately, there is a flash of white, and suddenly chaos ensues.

A cat is trapped inside the smaller of the two fenced-in areas. Even though a chain-link fence separates the two, both animals instantly go into a frenzy. My hound begins howling, while the terrified cat races back and forth, careening into the fence as it desperately searches for a way out.

I try to help it escape, all to the loud dismay of my hound, but the cat is too frightened to understand what I am doing. After crashing into the fence several times, it finally collapses low into the grass and simply lies there. I keep my distance, unsure whether it may be injured or sick.

Eventually, I leave the gates open and manage to pull my thoroughly over-hyped hunter away from the scene, fighting against everything years of breeding and evolution have taught her to do.

It takes most of the morning at home—and then a return trip to the now-empty dog park, where she follows one scent trail after another—before she finally begins to calm down.

Needless to say, it was not the most ideal way to start my day.

I, too, needed some time before I could let the chaos of the morning fade away.

And perhaps that was the first lesson.

There are some things that are better left alone.

That sounds simple enough, but I am not especially good at it. Neither, apparently, is my hound.

Once she caught the scent, something ancient took over. The world became very small. There was no longer a dog park, no morning, no leash, no person calling her name. There was only the cat.

I wonder how often I live that way.

Something catches my attention—a problem, a slight, a fear, an argument, a worry, some unfinished thing—and suddenly the whole world narrows around it. I circle it. I howl at it. I follow its scent long after the thing itself has disappeared.

There are habits in us that are older than our intentions.

The hound was not making a philosophical decision to terrorize a cat. She was doing what generations of hounds had prepared her to do. Her body knew before her mind could know.

Human beings are not so different.

We carry instincts of our own: to defend ourselves, to retaliate, to prove ourselves right, to pursue what frightens us, to hold tightly to what we think belongs to us. Sometimes we call these things personality. Sometimes, principle. Sometimes even righteousness.

But occasionally, they are simply old instincts running loose.

The spiritual life may involve learning that not everything within us deserves obedience.

Paul wrote about taking thoughts captive. Jesus spoke repeatedly of watching, waking, remaining alert. Perhaps part of discipleship is noticing the moment when something inside us begins to run.

There is a hound within me, too.

There are things I chase simply because they moved.

There are arguments that do not need another reply. There are offenses that do not need another inspection. There are anxieties whose scent I follow until I have wandered miles from peace.

Sometimes, faithfulness means pursuit.

Sometimes, faithfulness means calling the hound home.

But there was another creature in the story.

The cat.

The more frightened it became, the harder it tried to escape. And the harder it tried to escape, the more violently it crashed into the fence.

There was probably an opening somewhere. I had opened gates. I was trying to make a way.

But fear could not see the opening.

Fear only saw the threat.

So the cat ran harder.

I know something about that, too.

There are moments when I become frightened enough that I begin throwing myself against whatever boundary happens to be nearest. I want out of the discomfort immediately. I want the problem solved now. I want certainty restored.

And sometimes, in trying so desperately to escape, I hurt myself against the very thing I am trying to get through.

The Psalmist says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

We often print those words on peaceful photographs of mountains and lakes.

But perhaps they belong just as much on a chain-link fence.

Be still.

Not because there is no danger.

Not because everything is fine.

But because panic is not always capable of recognizing an opening.

There are times when running is necessary.

And there are times when running harder only drives us deeper into the fence.

Eventually, the cat did something remarkable.

It stopped.

It lowered itself into the grass and became almost completely still.

At first, I thought it might be injured. Perhaps it was.

But there was also something strangely wise about that surrender. When every frantic attempt had failed, the animal finally quit fighting the entire world.

Sometimes, this is where grace begins.

Not when we finally overpower the situation.

But when we stop exhausting ourselves against it.

“Come to me,” Jesus says, “all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens.”

Not: figure everything out.

Not: run faster.

Not: break the fence.

Come.

Rest.

There is perhaps a third lesson as well, and it concerns my own place in the drama.

I could not make either animal understand what I was trying to do.

The cat could not understand that I was trying to help it.

The hound could not understand why I was preventing her from doing the one thing that seemed most important in the universe.

From their perspectives, I was probably interfering with both of them.

Yet I could see something neither could see.

I could see the whole enclosure.

I could see the gates.

I could see the fence.

I could see the danger.

I could see the way out.

That thought has stayed with me.

Perhaps there are moments when God seems strangely obstructive because God sees the whole enclosure.

We pull toward something, and the leash tightens.

We run toward an opening and somehow find ourselves redirected.

We pray for one thing and receive another.

From inside our frightened or excited little worlds, divine restraint can feel like abandonment or interference.

But perhaps the One holding us back can see something we can’t.

The old prayer says,

Your will be done.

There are days when that prayer may simply mean:

God, if I am chasing something I should leave alone, pull me back.

If I am panicking against a fence, help me become still enough to see the gate.

And if I can’t understand what you are doing, help me trust that you see more of the field than I do.

By the time my hound and I returned to the dog park later that morning, the cat was gone.

Only the scent remained.

Naturally, the hound investigated every inch of it.

She ran from fence to fence, nose down, reconstructing the entire drama from invisible traces.

Eventually, even those grew faint.

Her breathing slowed.

Her body loosened.

The morning became a morning again.

Perhaps that is grace too.

The thing that once filled the entire world eventually becomes only a fading scent in the grass.

The crisis passes.

The fear fades.

The instinct quiets.

What seemed moments earlier to demand every ounce of our attention becomes simply one more thing that happened.

And somewhere between the hound and the cat, I recognize myself.

Sometimes, I am the pursuer.

Sometimes, I am the pursued.

Sometimes, I chase things better left alone.

Sometimes, I run terrified into fences that can never possibly become doors.

The difficult wisdom is learning which is which.

Perhaps this is why the spiritual life requires so much attention.

To know when to pursue.

To know when to stop.

To know when to run.

To know when to lie quietly in the grass.

To know when the leash pulling against us is not punishment but mercy.

And above all, to remember that somewhere beyond the frenzy there may already be an open gate we are simply too frightened—or too excited—to see.

Prayer

God of the open gate,

When I chase what I should release, call me home.

When old instincts rise in me—fear, anger, pride, the need to be right—teach me that not every impulse deserves obedience.

When I am frightened and cannot see a way forward, keep me from throwing myself again and again against the same fence. Slow my breathing. Quiet my spirit. Help me become still enough to notice the opening I could not see before.

Give me wisdom to know when to pursue and when to stop, when to act and when to wait, when to hold on and when to let go.

And when your restraint feels like a leash pulling against everything I want, give me enough trust to believe that you may see more of the field than I do.

Make me gentle with frightened creatures, including the frightened places within myself.

Let the things that consume me today become, in time, only a fading scent in the grass.

And when chaos narrows my world, remind me that beyond the fence there is still a morning, still a horizon, still grace, and perhaps an open gate I have not yet learned to see.

Amen.

#Anxiety #beStillAndKnow #cat #ChristianReflection #Discipleship #divineGuidance #dogPark #Fear #FindingPeace #Grace #hound #instinct #lessonsFromAnimals #LettingGo #Mercy #openGate #Prayer #spiritualLessons #SpiritualReflection #TrustInGod

The early morning is still dark when my hound and I arrive at the dog park. Almost immediately, there is a flash of white, and suddenly chaos ensues.

A cat is trapped inside the smaller of the two fenced-in areas. Even though a chain-link fence separates the two, both animals instantly go into a frenzy. My hound begins howling, while the terrified cat races back and forth, careening into the fence as it desperately searches for a way out.

I try to help it escape, all to the loud dismay of my hound, but the cat is too frightened to understand what I am doing. After crashing into the fence several times, it finally collapses low into the grass and simply lies there. I keep my distance, unsure whether it may be injured or sick.

Eventually, I leave the gates open and manage to pull my thoroughly over-hyped hunter away from the scene, fighting against everything years of breeding and evolution have taught her to do.

It takes most of the morning at home—and then a return trip to the now-empty dog park, where she follows one scent trail after another—before she finally begins to calm down.

Needless to say, it was not the most ideal way to start my day.

I, too, needed some time before I could let the chaos of the morning fade away.

And perhaps that was the first lesson.

There are some things that are better left alone.

That sounds simple enough, but I am not especially good at it. Neither, apparently, is my hound.

Once she caught the scent, something ancient took over. The world became very small. There was no longer a dog park, no morning, no leash, no person calling her name. There was only the cat.

I wonder how often I live that way.

Something catches my attention—a problem, a slight, a fear, an argument, a worry, some unfinished thing—and suddenly the whole world narrows around it. I circle it. I howl at it. I follow its scent long after the thing itself has disappeared.

There are habits in us that are older than our intentions.

The hound was not making a philosophical decision to terrorize a cat. She was doing what generations of hounds had prepared her to do. Her body knew before her mind could know.

Human beings are not so different.

We carry instincts of our own: to defend ourselves, to retaliate, to prove ourselves right, to pursue what frightens us, to hold tightly to what we think belongs to us. Sometimes we call these things personality. Sometimes, principle. Sometimes even righteousness.

But occasionally, they are simply old instincts running loose.

The spiritual life may involve learning that not everything within us deserves obedience.

Paul wrote about taking thoughts captive. Jesus spoke repeatedly of watching, waking, remaining alert. Perhaps part of discipleship is noticing the moment when something inside us begins to run.

There is a hound within me, too.

There are things I chase simply because they moved.

There are arguments that do not need another reply. There are offenses that do not need another inspection. There are anxieties whose scent I follow until I have wandered miles from peace.

Sometimes, faithfulness means pursuit.

Sometimes, faithfulness means calling the hound home.

But there was another creature in the story.

The cat.

The more frightened it became, the harder it tried to escape. And the harder it tried to escape, the more violently it crashed into the fence.

There was probably an opening somewhere. I had opened gates. I was trying to make a way.

But fear could not see the opening.

Fear only saw the threat.

So the cat ran harder.

I know something about that, too.

There are moments when I become frightened enough that I begin throwing myself against whatever boundary happens to be nearest. I want out of the discomfort immediately. I want the problem solved now. I want certainty restored.

And sometimes, in trying so desperately to escape, I hurt myself against the very thing I am trying to get through.

The Psalmist says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

We often print those words on peaceful photographs of mountains and lakes.

But perhaps they belong just as much at a chain-link fence.

Be still.

Not because there is no danger.

Not because everything is fine.

But because panic is not always capable of recognizing an opening.

There are times when running is necessary.

And there are times when running harder only drives us deeper into the fence.

Eventually, the cat did something remarkable.

It stopped.

It lowered itself into the grass and became almost completely still.

At first, I thought it might be injured. Perhaps it was.

But there was also something strangely wise about that surrender. When every frantic attempt had failed, the animal finally quit fighting the entire world.

Sometimes, this is where grace begins.

Not when we finally overpower the situation.

But when we stop exhausting ourselves against it.

“Come to me,” Jesus says, “all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens.”

Not: figure everything out.

Not: run faster.

Not: break the fence.

Come.

Rest.

There is perhaps a third lesson as well, and it concerns my own place in the drama.

I could not make either animal understand what I was trying to do.

The cat could not understand that I was trying to help it.

The hound could not understand why I was preventing her from doing the one thing that seemed most important in the universe.

From their perspectives, I was probably interfering with both of them.

Yet I could see something, neither could you see.

I could see the whole enclosure.

I could see the gates.

I could see the fence.

I could see the danger.

I could see the way out.

That thought has stayed with me.

Perhaps there are moments when God seems strangely obstructive because God sees the whole enclosure.

We pull toward something, and the leash tightens.

We run toward an opening and somehow find ourselves redirected.

We pray for one thing and receive another.

From inside our frightened or excited little worlds, divine restraint can feel like abandonment or interference.

But perhaps the One holding us back can see something we cannot.

The old prayer says,

Your will be done.

There are days when that prayer may simply mean:

God, if I am chasing something I should leave alone, pull me back.

If I am panicking against a fence, help me become still enough to see the gate.

And if I cannot understand what you are doing, help me trust that you see more of the field than I do.

By the time my hound and I returned to the dog park later that morning, the cat was gone.

Only the scent remained.

Naturally, the hound investigated every inch of it.

She ran from fence to fence, nose down, reconstructing the entire drama from invisible traces.

Eventually even those grew faint.

Her breathing slowed.

Her body loosened.

The morning became a morning again.

Perhaps that is grace too.

The thing that once filled the entire world eventually becomes only a scent in the grass.

The crisis passes.

The fear fades.

The instinct quiets.

What seemed moments earlier to demand every ounce of our attention becomes simply one more thing that happened.

And somewhere between the hound and the cat I recognize myself.

Sometimes I am the pursuer.

Sometimes I am the pursued.

Sometimes I chase things better left alone.

Sometimes I run terrified into fences that cannot possibly become doors.

The difficult wisdom is learning which is which.

Perhaps this is why the spiritual life requires so much attention.

To know when to pursue.

To know when to stop.

To know when to run.

To know when to lie quietly in the grass.

To know when the leash pulling against us is not punishment but mercy.

And above all, to remember that somewhere beyond the frenzy there may already be an open gate we are simply too frightened—or too excited—to see.

Prayer

God of the open gate,

When I chase what I should release, call me home.

When old instincts rise in me—fear, anger, pride, the need to be right—teach me that not every impulse deserves obedience.

When I am frightened and cannot see a way forward, keep me from throwing myself again and again against the same fence. Slow my breathing. Quiet my spirit. Help me become still enough to notice the opening I could not see before.

Give me wisdom to know when to pursue and when to stop, when to act and when to wait, when to hold on and when to let go.

And when your restraint feels like a leash pulling against everything I want, give me enough trust to believe that you may see more of the field than I do.

Make me gentle with frightened creatures, including the frightened places within myself.

Let the things that consume me today become, in time, only a fading scent in the grass.

And when chaos narrows my world, remind me that beyond the fence there is still a morning, still a horizon, still grace, and perhaps an open gate I have not yet learned to see.

Amen.

#Anxiety #beStillAndKnow #cat #ChristianReflection #Discipleship #divineGuidance #dogPark #Fear #FindingPeace #Grace #hound #instinct #lessonsFromAnimals #LettingGo #Mercy #openGate #Prayer #spiritualLessons #SpiritualReflection #TrustInGod

The early morning is still dark when my hound and I arrive at the dog park. Almost immediately, there is a flash of white, and suddenly chaos ensues.

A cat is trapped inside the smaller of the two fenced-in areas. Even though a chain-link fence separates the two, both animals instantly go into a frenzy. My hound begins howling, while the terrified cat races back and forth, careening into the fence as it desperately searches for a way out.

I try to help it escape, all to the loud dismay of my hound, but the cat is too frightened to understand what I am doing. After crashing into the fence several times, it finally collapses low into the grass and simply lies there. I keep my distance, unsure whether it may be injured or sick.

Eventually, I leave the gates open and manage to pull my thoroughly over-hyped hunter away from the scene, fighting against everything years of breeding and evolution have taught her to do.

It takes most of the morning at home—and then a return trip to the now-empty dog park, where she follows one scent trail after another—before she finally begins to calm down.

Needless to say, it was not the most ideal way to start my day.

I, too, needed some time before I could let the chaos of the morning fade away.

And perhaps that was the first lesson.

There are some things that are better left alone.

That sounds simple enough, but I am not especially good at it. Neither, apparently, is my hound.

Once she caught the scent, something ancient took over. The world became very small. There was no longer a dog park, no morning, no leash, no person calling her name. There was only the cat.

I wonder how often I live that way.

Something catches my attention—a problem, a slight, a fear, an argument, a worry, some unfinished thing—and suddenly the whole world narrows around it. I circle it. I howl at it. I follow its scent long after the thing itself has disappeared.

There are habits in us that are older than our intentions.

The hound was not making a philosophical decision to terrorize a cat. She was doing what generations of hounds had prepared her to do. Her body knew before her mind could know.

Human beings are not so different.

We carry instincts of our own: to defend ourselves, to retaliate, to prove ourselves right, to pursue what frightens us, to hold tightly to what we think belongs to us. Sometimes we call these things personality. Sometimes, principle. Sometimes even righteousness.

But occasionally, they are simply old instincts running loose.

The spiritual life may involve learning that not everything within us deserves obedience.

Paul wrote about taking thoughts captive. Jesus spoke repeatedly of watching, waking, remaining alert. Perhaps part of discipleship is noticing the moment when something inside us begins to run.

There is a hound within me, too.

There are things I chase simply because they moved.

There are arguments that do not need another reply. There are offenses that do not need another inspection. There are anxieties whose scent I follow until I have wandered miles from peace.

Sometimes, faithfulness means pursuit.

Sometimes, faithfulness means calling the hound home.

But there was another creature in the story.

The cat.

The more frightened it became, the harder it tried to escape. And the harder it tried to escape, the more violently it crashed into the fence.

There was probably an opening somewhere. I had opened gates. I was trying to make a way.

But fear could not see the opening.

Fear only saw the threat.

So the cat ran harder.

I know something about that, too.

There are moments when I become frightened enough that I begin throwing myself against whatever boundary happens to be nearest. I want out of the discomfort immediately. I want the problem solved now. I want certainty restored.

And sometimes, in trying so desperately to escape, I hurt myself against the very thing I am trying to get through.

The Psalmist says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

We often print those words on peaceful photographs of mountains and lakes.

But perhaps they belong just as much at a chain-link fence.

Be still.

Not because there is no danger.

Not because everything is fine.

But because panic is not always capable of recognizing an opening.

There are times when running is necessary.

And there are times when running harder only drives us deeper into the fence.

Eventually, the cat did something remarkable.

It stopped.

It lowered itself into the grass and became almost completely still.

At first, I thought it might be injured. Perhaps it was.

But there was also something strangely wise about that surrender. When every frantic attempt had failed, the animal finally quit fighting the entire world.

Sometimes, this is where grace begins.

Not when we finally overpower the situation.

But when we stop exhausting ourselves against it.

“Come to me,” Jesus says, “all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens.”

Not: figure everything out.

Not: run faster.

Not: break the fence.

Come.

Rest.

There is perhaps a third lesson as well, and it concerns my own place in the drama.

I could not make either animal understand what I was trying to do.

The cat could not understand that I was trying to help it.

The hound could not understand why I was preventing her from doing the one thing that seemed most important in the universe.

From their perspectives, I was probably interfering with both of them.

Yet I could see something, neither could you see.

I could see the whole enclosure.

I could see the gates.

I could see the fence.

I could see the danger.

I could see the way out.

That thought has stayed with me.

Perhaps there are moments when God seems strangely obstructive because God sees the whole enclosure.

We pull toward something, and the leash tightens.

We run toward an opening and somehow find ourselves redirected.

We pray for one thing and receive another.

From inside our frightened or excited little worlds, divine restraint can feel like abandonment or interference.

But perhaps the One holding us back can see something we cannot.

The old prayer says,

Your will be done.

There are days when that prayer may simply mean:

God, if I am chasing something I should leave alone, pull me back.

If I am panicking against a fence, help me become still enough to see the gate.

And if I cannot understand what you are doing, help me trust that you see more of the field than I do.

By the time my hound and I returned to the dog park later that morning, the cat was gone.

Only the scent remained.

Naturally, the hound investigated every inch of it.

She ran from fence to fence, nose down, reconstructing the entire drama from invisible traces.

Eventually even those grew faint.

Her breathing slowed.

Her body loosened.

The morning became a morning again.

Perhaps that is grace too.

The thing that once filled the entire world eventually becomes only a scent in the grass.

The crisis passes.

The fear fades.

The instinct quiets.

What seemed moments earlier to demand every ounce of our attention becomes simply one more thing that happened.

And somewhere between the hound and the cat I recognize myself.

Sometimes I am the pursuer.

Sometimes I am the pursued.

Sometimes I chase things better left alone.

Sometimes I run terrified into fences that cannot possibly become doors.

The difficult wisdom is learning which is which.

Perhaps this is why the spiritual life requires so much attention.

To know when to pursue.

To know when to stop.

To know when to run.

To know when to lie quietly in the grass.

To know when the leash pulling against us is not punishment but mercy.

And above all, to remember that somewhere beyond the frenzy there may already be an open gate we are simply too frightened—or too excited—to see.

Prayer

God of the open gate,

When I chase what I should release, call me home.

When old instincts rise in me—fear, anger, pride, the need to be right—teach me that not every impulse deserves obedience.

When I am frightened and cannot see a way forward, keep me from throwing myself again and again against the same fence. Slow my breathing. Quiet my spirit. Help me become still enough to notice the opening I could not see before.

Give me wisdom to know when to pursue and when to stop, when to act and when to wait, when to hold on and when to let go.

And when your restraint feels like a leash pulling against everything I want, give me enough trust to believe that you may see more of the field than I do.

Make me gentle with frightened creatures, including the frightened places within myself.

Let the things that consume me today become, in time, only a fading scent in the grass.

And when chaos narrows my world, remind me that beyond the fence there is still a morning, still a horizon, still grace, and perhaps an open gate I have not yet learned to see.

Amen.

#Anxiety #beStillAndKnow #cat #ChristianReflection #Discipleship #divineGuidance #dogPark #Fear #FindingPeace #Grace #hound #instinct #lessonsFromAnimals #LettingGo #Mercy #openGate #Prayer #spiritualLessons #SpiritualReflection #TrustInGod

The early morning is still dark when my hound and I arrive at the dog park. Almost immediately, there is a flash of white, and suddenly chaos ensues.

A cat is trapped inside the smaller of the two fenced-in areas. Even though a chain-link fence separates the two, both animals instantly go into a frenzy. My hound begins howling, while the terrified cat races back and forth, careening into the fence as it desperately searches for a way out.

I try to help it escape, all to the loud dismay of my hound, but the cat is too frightened to understand what I am doing. After crashing into the fence several times, it finally collapses low into the grass and simply lies there. I keep my distance, unsure whether it may be injured or sick.

Eventually, I leave the gates open and manage to pull my thoroughly over-hyped hunter away from the scene, fighting against everything years of breeding and evolution have taught her to do.

It takes most of the morning at home—and then a return trip to the now-empty dog park, where she follows one scent trail after another—before she finally begins to calm down.

Needless to say, it was not the most ideal way to start my day.

I, too, needed some time before I could let the chaos of the morning fade away.

And perhaps that was the first lesson.

There are some things that are better left alone.

That sounds simple enough, but I am not especially good at it. Neither, apparently, is my hound.

Once she caught the scent, something ancient took over. The world became very small. There was no longer a dog park, no morning, no leash, no person calling her name. There was only the cat.

I wonder how often I live that way.

Something catches my attention—a problem, a slight, a fear, an argument, a worry, some unfinished thing—and suddenly the whole world narrows around it. I circle it. I howl at it. I follow its scent long after the thing itself has disappeared.

There are habits in us that are older than our intentions.

The hound was not making a philosophical decision to terrorize a cat. She was doing what generations of hounds had prepared her to do. Her body knew before her mind could know.

Human beings are not so different.

We carry instincts of our own: to defend ourselves, to retaliate, to prove ourselves right, to pursue what frightens us, to hold tightly to what we think belongs to us. Sometimes we call these things personality. Sometimes, principle. Sometimes even righteousness.

But occasionally, they are simply old instincts running loose.

The spiritual life may involve learning that not everything within us deserves obedience.

Paul wrote about taking thoughts captive. Jesus spoke repeatedly of watching, waking, remaining alert. Perhaps part of discipleship is noticing the moment when something inside us begins to run.

There is a hound within me, too.

There are things I chase simply because they moved.

There are arguments that do not need another reply. There are offenses that do not need another inspection. There are anxieties whose scent I follow until I have wandered miles from peace.

Sometimes, faithfulness means pursuit.

Sometimes, faithfulness means calling the hound home.

But there was another creature in the story.

The cat.

The more frightened it became, the harder it tried to escape. And the harder it tried to escape, the more violently it crashed into the fence.

There was probably an opening somewhere. I had opened gates. I was trying to make a way.

But fear could not see the opening.

Fear only saw the threat.

So the cat ran harder.

I know something about that, too.

There are moments when I become frightened enough that I begin throwing myself against whatever boundary happens to be nearest. I want out of the discomfort immediately. I want the problem solved now. I want certainty restored.

And sometimes, in trying so desperately to escape, I hurt myself against the very thing I am trying to get through.

The Psalmist says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

We often print those words on peaceful photographs of mountains and lakes.

But perhaps they belong just as much at a chain-link fence.

Be still.

Not because there is no danger.

Not because everything is fine.

But because panic is not always capable of recognizing an opening.

There are times when running is necessary.

And there are times when running harder only drives us deeper into the fence.

Eventually, the cat did something remarkable.

It stopped.

It lowered itself into the grass and became almost completely still.

At first, I thought it might be injured. Perhaps it was.

But there was also something strangely wise about that surrender. When every frantic attempt had failed, the animal finally quit fighting the entire world.

Sometimes, this is where grace begins.

Not when we finally overpower the situation.

But when we stop exhausting ourselves against it.

“Come to me,” Jesus says, “all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens.”

Not: figure everything out.

Not: run faster.

Not: break the fence.

Come.

Rest.

There is perhaps a third lesson as well, and it concerns my own place in the drama.

I could not make either animal understand what I was trying to do.

The cat could not understand that I was trying to help it.

The hound could not understand why I was preventing her from doing the one thing that seemed most important in the universe.

From their perspectives, I was probably interfering with both of them.

Yet I could see something, neither could you see.

I could see the whole enclosure.

I could see the gates.

I could see the fence.

I could see the danger.

I could see the way out.

That thought has stayed with me.

Perhaps there are moments when God seems strangely obstructive because God sees the whole enclosure.

We pull toward something, and the leash tightens.

We run toward an opening and somehow find ourselves redirected.

We pray for one thing and receive another.

From inside our frightened or excited little worlds, divine restraint can feel like abandonment or interference.

But perhaps the One holding us back can see something we cannot.

The old prayer says,

Your will be done.

There are days when that prayer may simply mean:

God, if I am chasing something I should leave alone, pull me back.

If I am panicking against a fence, help me become still enough to see the gate.

And if I cannot understand what you are doing, help me trust that you see more of the field than I do.

By the time my hound and I returned to the dog park later that morning, the cat was gone.

Only the scent remained.

Naturally, the hound investigated every inch of it.

She ran from fence to fence, nose down, reconstructing the entire drama from invisible traces.

Eventually even those grew faint.

Her breathing slowed.

Her body loosened.

The morning became a morning again.

Perhaps that is grace too.

The thing that once filled the entire world eventually becomes only a scent in the grass.

The crisis passes.

The fear fades.

The instinct quiets.

What seemed moments earlier to demand every ounce of our attention becomes simply one more thing that happened.

And somewhere between the hound and the cat I recognize myself.

Sometimes I am the pursuer.

Sometimes I am the pursued.

Sometimes I chase things better left alone.

Sometimes I run terrified into fences that cannot possibly become doors.

The difficult wisdom is learning which is which.

Perhaps this is why the spiritual life requires so much attention.

To know when to pursue.

To know when to stop.

To know when to run.

To know when to lie quietly in the grass.

To know when the leash pulling against us is not punishment but mercy.

And above all, to remember that somewhere beyond the frenzy there may already be an open gate we are simply too frightened—or too excited—to see.

Prayer

God of the open gate,

When I chase what I should release, call me home.

When old instincts rise in me—fear, anger, pride, the need to be right—teach me that not every impulse deserves obedience.

When I am frightened and cannot see a way forward, keep me from throwing myself again and again against the same fence. Slow my breathing. Quiet my spirit. Help me become still enough to notice the opening I could not see before.

Give me wisdom to know when to pursue and when to stop, when to act and when to wait, when to hold on and when to let go.

And when your restraint feels like a leash pulling against everything I want, give me enough trust to believe that you may see more of the field than I do.

Make me gentle with frightened creatures, including the frightened places within myself.

Let the things that consume me today become, in time, only a fading scent in the grass.

And when chaos narrows my world, remind me that beyond the fence there is still a morning, still a horizon, still grace, and perhaps an open gate I have not yet learned to see.

Amen.

#Anxiety #beStillAndKnow #cat #ChristianReflection #Discipleship #divineGuidance #dogPark #Fear #FindingPeace #Grace #hound #instinct #lessonsFromAnimals #LettingGo #Mercy #openGate #Prayer #spiritualLessons #SpiritualReflection #TrustInGod

The early morning is still dark when my hound and I arrive at the dog park. Almost immediately, there is a flash of white, and suddenly chaos ensues.

A cat is trapped inside the smaller of the two fenced-in areas. Even though a chain-link fence separates the two, both animals instantly go into a frenzy. My hound begins howling, while the terrified cat races back and forth, careening into the fence as it desperately searches for a way out.

I try to help it escape, all to the loud dismay of my hound, but the cat is too frightened to understand what I am doing. After crashing into the fence several times, it finally collapses low into the grass and simply lies there. I keep my distance, unsure whether it may be injured or sick.

Eventually, I leave the gates open and manage to pull my thoroughly over-hyped hunter away from the scene, fighting against everything years of breeding and evolution have taught her to do.

It takes most of the morning at home—and then a return trip to the now-empty dog park, where she follows one scent trail after another—before she finally begins to calm down.

Needless to say, it was not the most ideal way to start my day.

I, too, needed some time before I could let the chaos of the morning fade away.

And perhaps that was the first lesson.

There are some things that are better left alone.

That sounds simple enough, but I am not especially good at it. Neither, apparently, is my hound.

Once she caught the scent, something ancient took over. The world became very small. There was no longer a dog park, no morning, no leash, no person calling her name. There was only the cat.

I wonder how often I live that way.

Something catches my attention—a problem, a slight, a fear, an argument, a worry, some unfinished thing—and suddenly the whole world narrows around it. I circle it. I howl at it. I follow its scent long after the thing itself has disappeared.

There are habits in us that are older than our intentions.

The hound was not making a philosophical decision to terrorize a cat. She was doing what generations of hounds had prepared her to do. Her body knew before her mind could know.

Human beings are not so different.

We carry instincts of our own: to defend ourselves, to retaliate, to prove ourselves right, to pursue what frightens us, to hold tightly to what we think belongs to us. Sometimes we call these things personality. Sometimes, principle. Sometimes even righteousness.

But occasionally, they are simply old instincts running loose.

The spiritual life may involve learning that not everything within us deserves obedience.

Paul wrote about taking thoughts captive. Jesus spoke repeatedly of watching, waking, remaining alert. Perhaps part of discipleship is noticing the moment when something inside us begins to run.

There is a hound within me, too.

There are things I chase simply because they moved.

There are arguments that do not need another reply. There are offenses that do not need another inspection. There are anxieties whose scent I follow until I have wandered miles from peace.

Sometimes, faithfulness means pursuit.

Sometimes, faithfulness means calling the hound home.

But there was another creature in the story.

The cat.

The more frightened it became, the harder it tried to escape. And the harder it tried to escape, the more violently it crashed into the fence.

There was probably an opening somewhere. I had opened gates. I was trying to make a way.

But fear could not see the opening.

Fear only saw the threat.

So the cat ran harder.

I know something about that, too.

There are moments when I become frightened enough that I begin throwing myself against whatever boundary happens to be nearest. I want out of the discomfort immediately. I want the problem solved now. I want certainty restored.

And sometimes, in trying so desperately to escape, I hurt myself against the very thing I am trying to get through.

The Psalmist says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

We often print those words on peaceful photographs of mountains and lakes.

But perhaps they belong just as much at a chain-link fence.

Be still.

Not because there is no danger.

Not because everything is fine.

But because panic is not always capable of recognizing an opening.

There are times when running is necessary.

And there are times when running harder only drives us deeper into the fence.

Eventually, the cat did something remarkable.

It stopped.

It lowered itself into the grass and became almost completely still.

At first, I thought it might be injured. Perhaps it was.

But there was also something strangely wise about that surrender. When every frantic attempt had failed, the animal finally quit fighting the entire world.

Sometimes, this is where grace begins.

Not when we finally overpower the situation.

But when we stop exhausting ourselves against it.

“Come to me,” Jesus says, “all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens.”

Not: figure everything out.

Not: run faster.

Not: break the fence.

Come.

Rest.

There is perhaps a third lesson as well, and it concerns my own place in the drama.

I could not make either animal understand what I was trying to do.

The cat could not understand that I was trying to help it.

The hound could not understand why I was preventing her from doing the one thing that seemed most important in the universe.

From their perspectives, I was probably interfering with both of them.

Yet I could see something, neither could you see.

I could see the whole enclosure.

I could see the gates.

I could see the fence.

I could see the danger.

I could see the way out.

That thought has stayed with me.

Perhaps there are moments when God seems strangely obstructive because God sees the whole enclosure.

We pull toward something, and the leash tightens.

We run toward an opening and somehow find ourselves redirected.

We pray for one thing and receive another.

From inside our frightened or excited little worlds, divine restraint can feel like abandonment or interference.

But perhaps the One holding us back can see something we cannot.

The old prayer says,

Your will be done.

There are days when that prayer may simply mean:

God, if I am chasing something I should leave alone, pull me back.

If I am panicking against a fence, help me become still enough to see the gate.

And if I cannot understand what you are doing, help me trust that you see more of the field than I do.

By the time my hound and I returned to the dog park later that morning, the cat was gone.

Only the scent remained.

Naturally, the hound investigated every inch of it.

She ran from fence to fence, nose down, reconstructing the entire drama from invisible traces.

Eventually even those grew faint.

Her breathing slowed.

Her body loosened.

The morning became a morning again.

Perhaps that is grace too.

The thing that once filled the entire world eventually becomes only a scent in the grass.

The crisis passes.

The fear fades.

The instinct quiets.

What seemed moments earlier to demand every ounce of our attention becomes simply one more thing that happened.

And somewhere between the hound and the cat I recognize myself.

Sometimes I am the pursuer.

Sometimes I am the pursued.

Sometimes I chase things better left alone.

Sometimes I run terrified into fences that cannot possibly become doors.

The difficult wisdom is learning which is which.

Perhaps this is why the spiritual life requires so much attention.

To know when to pursue.

To know when to stop.

To know when to run.

To know when to lie quietly in the grass.

To know when the leash pulling against us is not punishment but mercy.

And above all, to remember that somewhere beyond the frenzy there may already be an open gate we are simply too frightened—or too excited—to see.

Prayer

God of the open gate,

When I chase what I should release, call me home.

When old instincts rise in me—fear, anger, pride, the need to be right—teach me that not every impulse deserves obedience.

When I am frightened and cannot see a way forward, keep me from throwing myself again and again against the same fence. Slow my breathing. Quiet my spirit. Help me become still enough to notice the opening I could not see before.

Give me wisdom to know when to pursue and when to stop, when to act and when to wait, when to hold on and when to let go.

And when your restraint feels like a leash pulling against everything I want, give me enough trust to believe that you may see more of the field than I do.

Make me gentle with frightened creatures, including the frightened places within myself.

Let the things that consume me today become, in time, only a fading scent in the grass.

And when chaos narrows my world, remind me that beyond the fence there is still a morning, still a horizon, still grace, and perhaps an open gate I have not yet learned to see.

Amen.

#Anxiety #beStillAndKnow #cat #ChristianReflection #Discipleship #divineGuidance #dogPark #Fear #FindingPeace #Grace #hound #instinct #lessonsFromAnimals #LettingGo #Mercy #openGate #Prayer #spiritualLessons #SpiritualReflection #TrustInGod

Pace

Often I find myself stuck
between the slow
and the fast,
fitting into neither,
stumbling,
never finding
a comfortable
pace.

I am impatient 
with those ahead of me, 
whose slow progress 
impedes my attempts 
to reach my destination.

I am angry at those 
pushing me from behind, 
so concerned with 
reaching their goal 
that I am just another 
obstacle in their way.

I must remember 
that at times I have 
been both.

It is the engine within, 
not the speed of those 
I encounter on the road, 
that drives me to anger 
and impatience.

O Divine Driver,
 Grant that I might have a
 more compassionate
 awareness on this
 journey.

August 2, 2015

#Pace #Awareness #breathingRoom #burnout #ContemplativePoetry #contemporaryPoetry #dailyLife #findingBalance #hurry #innerPeace #livingGently #mindfulLiving #movingForward #Patience #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Rest #rhythmOfLife #sacredPause #SlowingDown #SpiritualReflection #stillness #takingTime #Writing

Pace

Often I find myself stuck
between the slow
and the fast,
fitting into neither,
stumbling,
never finding
a comfortable
pace.

I am impatient 
with those ahead of me, 
whose slow progress 
impedes my attempts 
to reach my destination.

I am angry at those 
pushing me from behind, 
so concerned with 
reaching their goal 
that I am just another 
obstacle in their way.

I must remember 
that at times I have 
been both.

It is the engine within, 
not the speed of those 
I encounter on the road, 
that drives me to anger 
and impatience.

O Divine Driver,
 Grant that I might have a
 more compassionate
 awareness on this
 journey.

August 2, 2015

#Pace #Awareness #breathingRoom #burnout #ContemplativePoetry #contemporaryPoetry #dailyLife #findingBalance #hurry #innerPeace #livingGently #mindfulLiving #movingForward #Patience #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Rest #rhythmOfLife #sacredPause #SlowingDown #SpiritualReflection #stillness #takingTime #Writing

Pace

Often I find myself stuck
between the slow
and the fast,
fitting into neither,
stumbling,
never finding
a comfortable
pace.

I am impatient 
with those ahead of me, 
whose slow progress 
impedes my attempts 
to reach my destination.

I am angry at those 
pushing me from behind, 
so concerned with 
reaching their goal 
that I am just another 
obstacle in their way.

I must remember 
that at times I have 
been both.

It is the engine within, 
not the speed of those 
I encounter on the road, 
that drives me to anger 
and impatience.

O Divine Driver,
 Grant that I might have a
 more compassionate
 awareness on this
 journey.

August 2, 2015

#Pace #Awareness #breathingRoom #burnout #ContemplativePoetry #contemporaryPoetry #dailyLife #findingBalance #hurry #innerPeace #livingGently #mindfulLiving #movingForward #Patience #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Rest #rhythmOfLife #sacredPause #SlowingDown #SpiritualReflection #stillness #takingTime #Writing

Pace

Often I find myself stuck
between the slow
and the fast,
fitting into neither,
stumbling,
never finding
a comfortable
pace.

I am impatient 
with those ahead of me, 
whose slow progress 
impedes my attempts 
to reach my destination.

I am angry at those 
pushing me from behind, 
so concerned with 
reaching their goal 
that I am just another 
obstacle in their way.

I must remember 
that at times I have 
been both.

It is the engine within, 
not the speed of those 
I encounter on the road, 
that drives me to anger 
and impatience.

O Divine Driver,
 Grant that I might have a
 more compassionate
 awareness on this
 journey.

August 2, 2015

#Pace #Awareness #breathingRoom #burnout #ContemplativePoetry #contemporaryPoetry #dailyLife #findingBalance #hurry #innerPeace #livingGently #mindfulLiving #movingForward #Patience #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #Rest #rhythmOfLife #sacredPause #SlowingDown #SpiritualReflection #stillness #takingTime #Writing

Mornings of Obscurity

I awake from a strange night of vigilance to a day filled with the white trappings of fog.

Within me, however, there is clarity.

Often the outer landscape informs the inner, though they are not always alike. The meteorology of the soul follows different laws. A clear morning may find me lost within myself, while a world hidden beneath fog may awaken in me some unexpected certainty.

Still, there is always a lesson to be learned, if I can stay aware enough to be educated.

There is a kind of safety in what is hidden.

Fog softens the distances. It removes the horizon. It asks nothing of me beyond the next few steps. Things ordinarily exposed become mercifully indistinct. Roads disappear into the pale. Houses, trees, the fauna of everyday, become shadows.

I need such mornings.

Perhaps there are times when obscurity is not confusion but a refuge, when I am protected from seeing everything at once.

I think of the bathroom mirror after a shower.

I emerge from the steam and reach for the towel, and there I am—or ought to be—but the reflection is incomplete. I am there somewhere beneath the white film. I can make out a shape, a suggestion of myself, but not the familiar arrangement by which I reassure myself that I am still who I was before I stepped beneath the spray.

For a moment I am only a blurred presence.

There is mercy in that too.

I spend so much of my life asking the world to return an image of myself: Who am I here? How do I appear? What has become of me? Yet sometimes the glass clouds over and will not answer.

I can wipe it clean with my hand or a towel, of course.

But then there is only a small clearing in the mist—a smeared oval through which one eye looks back at me while the rest of me remains unseen.

A partial revelation.

Enough to know that I am there.

Yet not enough to see the whole.

And there are other moments of obscurity.

I step from the bitter cold of winter into a warm building, and my glasses immediately cloud over. Or I leave an air-conditioned room and enter the heavy heat of summer. The lenses upon which I depend for clarity suddenly become the very instruments of my blindness.

I have crossed a threshold too quickly.

For several seconds the world disappears.

I know it has not vanished. I know there is a floor beneath me, furniture nearby, perhaps another person approaching. But knowledge and sight are not always the same thing.

So I stop.

Or slow.

Or remove the glasses and wait.

There is something almost sacred about that small helplessness.

The instrument meant to help me see must temporarily be surrendered before sight can return.

Perhaps there are thresholds of the spirit like this.

I cross from grief into joy, certainty into doubt, solitude into community, one season of life into another, and discover that the ways I have learned to see no longer work immediately on the other side.

My lenses fog.

My familiar interpretations become opaque.

For a moment I am blinded not because there is nothing to see, but because I have entered another atmosphere.

And perhaps wisdom is learning not to panic in that interval.

The landscape remains.

The self remains.

The world remains.

I simply cannot see it clearly yet.

But one cannot remain forever in obscurity.

The sun will rise.

The fog will burn away.

The steam will leave the mirror.

The lenses will clear.

And what has always been there will slowly be revealed—not created by the light, only uncovered by it.

The hills were there.

The road was there.

The distant trees were there.

The face in the mirror was there.

The room beyond the clouded lenses was there.

What frightened me was there.

What called to me was there.

Perhaps this is the discipline of such mornings: to receive the hidden without mistaking it for absence, and to receive revelation without imagining that revelation has suddenly made the world new.

To understand that obscurity is sometimes a condition of crossing.

That there are moments when not seeing is not the same as being lost.

That clarity may exist within me even while everything around me is veiled.

And that sometimes the wisest thing I can do is stand for a moment at the threshold, blinded by my own lenses, trusting the world is still there.

Sometimes clarity arrives before the landscape clears.

Sometimes I must learn to walk while the world is still blurred around me.

#Awareness #Blindness #clarity #ContemplativeWriting #eerieIllustration #fog #foggedGlasses #hiddenness #innerLife #mirror #morningMeditation #mystery #Obscurity #photorealisticArt #poeticProse #Revelation #showerSteam #SpiritualReflection #thresholds #transition

The Transparent Tongue

I prayed for a transparent tongue—

not one without language,
not one emptied of conviction,
not one so pale with caution
that it could no longer name the wound,

but a tongue through which
truth might pass
without becoming a weapon.

James saw it clearly:

the small bit
turning the great horse,

the little rudder
steering the ship
through a violence of wind,

the single spark
lifting its bright red shout
into the trees.

So much ruin
from so little flesh.

Inside the mouth
a forest of ash waits.

One word,
and the branches begin to burn.

One word,
and someone carries the smoke
for years.

We bless God
with the morning hymns,

then turn before noon
and curse the likeness of God
walking beside us.

Sweet water,
bitter water,

both rising
from the same hidden spring.

I prayed for a transparent tongue,

but transparency is not
saying everything.

A window is transparent,
yet broken, it becomes
sharp and dangerous.

Light passes through it
without leaving a cut.

The transparent tongue
does not confuse cruelty
with courage,

or bluntness
with honesty,

or the pleasure of being right
with the work of righteousness.

It pauses
at the gate of the teeth.

It asks:

Will this word heal?

Will this word clarify?

Will this word protect the weak
without becoming
what it condemns?

Will this word leave room
for repentance—

including mine?

I prayed for a tongue
clear enough
that anger would not stain
every syllable,

clear enough
that fear would not bend
every meaning,

clear enough
that the old need to win
would not stand
between the speaker
and the spoken.

Not invisible.

Not innocent.

Not pure.

Only transparent enough
for mercy to be seen
moving through it.

Transparent enough
for silence to enter
when silence is wiser.

Transparent enough
for lament
to remain lament
and not harden into blame.

Transparent enough
for praise to rise
without requiring
an enemy beneath it.

The tongue is not alone.

Behind it waits the heart.

Below it, the hands.

Beyond it, the feet
that must walk
where the words have pointed.

A mouth may speak of peace
while the body prepares for war.

A mouth may bless the hungry
while the hands remain closed.

A mouth may cry justice
while the feet refuse
to cross the street.

So I prayed not only
for a transparent tongue,

but for a transparent life—

a body through which
the word and the deed
recognize each other.

Let my speech become a window,

not so others may admire
the speaker,

but so they may glimpse
something gentler
standing behind me.

Let the tongue become
a small clear pane
in the house of the soul.

Let light enter.

Let light leave.

And when the spark comes—

as sparks will—

let it kindle warmth
instead of wilderness,

a lamp
instead of a pyre,

a fire around which
enemies might sit long enough
to remember one another
as human.

I prayed for a transparent tongue,

and heard no answer
except the next word
waiting to be spoken.

So I held it
for one breath longer,

turned it toward the light,

and asked whether grace
could pass through.

#BiblicalMetaphor #BlessingAndCursing #BookOfJames #ChristianArt #ChristianPoetry #DestructiveSpeech #FaithAndSpeech #GraceAndTruth #healingWords #James3 #MindfulSpeech #Nonviolence #Peacebuilding #powerOfWords #SacredLanguage #SpiritualReflection #SurrealSpiritualArt #tongueAsFire #TransparentTongue #WisdomFromAbove

The Problem of False Preacher Teacher Clerical Ministering Within Modern Day Churches

*

The Problem of False Preacher Teacher Clerical Ministering Within Modern Day Churches

The table of the Lord is Holy.

The food we receive must come from the Priest-King Himself—pure, undefiled, and flowing from the Holiest of All.

Yet in our time, that table has been defiled.

The church has become a place where food offered to idols is served. These idols are not of wood and stone but of political causes, cultural trends, social programmes, and false moral appearances. They are the idols of the age, and they have been brought into the sanctuary.

The Social Gospel, with all its political causes and cultural trends, is such an idol.

It sounds compassionate to the natural ear, but it sacrifices the true Gospel on the altar of this world. It offers earthly reform where the Priest-King Jesus Christ offers heavenly reconciliation.

It speaks of systems and power where He speaks of the cross and the throne of grace. It rearranges deck chairs on a sinking ship. It offers programs where it should offer presence. It offers politics where it should offer peace. It offers activism where it should offer adoration.

This is not the Gospel. It is a counterfeit—a substitute that speaks of earthly kingdoms while ignoring the heavenly. It is food wrapped in pretty paper, but inside is rotting meat. It is a deception, a snare, and a trap.

Congregations that consume this food are not being heart-fed; they are being mind-fed. Their souls are starved while their minds are filled with the philosophies of men. Those who serve this food as if it were the Gospel are not acting as faithful shepherds of the flock; they are leading souls away from the true pasture.

We make it very clear, we do not seek merely to promote our own theology within COFE-CYEM by pointing the finger at (any) other theologies, denominations or faiths. COFE-CYEM itself makes many claims around our theology, our belief system and our faith.

We do not expect or ask everybody to just blindly believe our way of seeing and believing. All we seek is to call attention to the issue of the church and faith itself being used as a Trojan Horse for (worldly) purposes in order to further the interests of man and not God Himself.

We implore our followers respectfully – if you ever feel, suspect or see anything whatsoever within our own theology or posts here on COFE-CYEM that you believe is pushing (worldly) purposes or schemes, then please call us out and expose us.

We are no different or more righteous than any other brother or sister in Christ. But if we were to be found (using) the true Gospel as a Trojan Horse to push a false Gospel for our own purposes – then we are truly lost indeed.

The Nature of the Deception

The danger arises whenever social action, political programmes, or cultural causes become substitutes for the proclamation of Christ crucified and risen, rather than fruits flowing from communion with Him.

The New Testament consistently presents love for neighbour and care for the poor as genuine expressions of faith, not as alternatives to it.

The error is not in caring for the needy or seeking justice. The error is in presenting such activities as the Gospel itself, or as a sufficient substitute for repentance, faith in Christ, and the new birth.

Those who preach this substitute gospel speak of power where the Priest-King spoke of weakness. They speak of victory where He spoke of the cross. They speak of this world as if it were the only world. They have departed from the faith and given themselves over to the spirit of the age.

They have exchanged the Gospel of the finished work for a gospel of social reform. They have exchanged the cross for a political platform. They have exchanged the throne of grace for a seat of power. They have exchanged the rest that remains for the restless striving of the world. They have exchanged the Holiest of All for the outer courts of carnal religion.

This is not a judgment on persons but a discernment of teaching. We do not know the hearts of those who preach these things, and we leave their final judgment to God.

We are called to test the spirits and to distinguish between the pure food of the Gospel and the poisoned food that has been offered to idols. The warning is not against individuals but against the teaching itself, which, however attractively packaged, leads away from Christ.

The Rot Beneath the Wrapping

False teaching often comes wrapped in the language of the Bible, the imagery of the cross, and the emotions of the congregation. It speaks of love, justice, and compassion, but it hollows out their meaning. It is like the fig tree that had leaves but no fruit—a show of life without the reality of life.

Congregations that consume this food are being fed a diet of politics, activism, and social reform, but they are not being fed the pure Word of God.

They are being told to fight for earthly causes, but they are not being told to enter the Holiest of All. They are being told to change the world, but they are not being told to rest in the finished work of the Priest-King.

They are being told to be activists, but they are not being told to be worshippers. They are being told to build the kingdom of God on earth, but they are not being told that the Kingdom of God is within them.

The food that is being served is a gospel of the flesh, a gospel of the world, a gospel of the age. It has no power to save, no power to transform, and no power to bring the soul into the presence of God.

It leads to exhaustion, burnout, and disillusionment. It leads away from the Priest-King, not toward Him. It leads to the outer court, not the Holiest of All. The invitation to serve God in the world becomes a substitute for the invitation to abide in Christ.

The True Gospel and the Mind of Christ

The real Gospel is not a gospel of prosperity, politics, or social reform disguised as salvation. It is not a gospel of emotional experience without transformation.

The real Gospel is this: Jesus Christ, the Priest-King has entered the Holiest of All through His own blood.

The veil is torn.

The way is open.

Every soul who draws near through Him receives mercy, finds grace, and enters the rest that remains.

He ever lives to make intercession.

He brings God to us and us to God. In Him, we are accepted. In Him, we are kept. In Him, the endless life of God flows freely to all who will come. That is the Gospel. Not a portion of it. Not a version of it. It.

The mind of Christ is not the mind of carnal man, which seeks power, recognition, and earthly comfort. The mind of Christ empties itself, takes the form of a servant, becomes obedient unto death, and is exalted by the Father. The mind of Christ builds the church on the rock of revelation, and the gates of hell do not prevail against it.

The mind of Christ measures faithfulness by abiding in the Father’s presence. Those who preach the substitute gospel do not have the mind of Christ. They have the mind of the flesh, the mind of the world, the mind of the age.

They have not entered the Holiest of All. They have not passed through the veil. They have not been cleansed by the blood. They have not received the endless life. They remain in the outer courts, serving the idols of the age.

The Call of This Hour: Wake Up and Return

The call of this hour is clear. The pews empty because souls are hungry for reality—not programs, not politics, not noise, but the living presence of God in truth. Congregations must wake up. They must open their eyes to the deception of false teaching.

They must stop eating the food that has been sacrificed to idols. They must return to the table of the Lord, where pure food is served—the finished work of the Priest-King, the open way into the Holiest of All, the rest that remains, and the endless life that flows from His intercession.

The table of the Lord has been turned into a place where food offered to idols is served. The Gospel of the finished work has been exchanged for a gospel of social reform. The cross has been exchanged for a political platform. The throne of grace has been exchanged for a seat of power.

The rest that remains has been exchanged for the restless striving of the world. The Holiest of All has been exchanged for the outer courts of carnal religion. The church has been used as a Trojan Horse for political purposes, hiding its true agenda behind the language of compassion, justice, and love.

The congregations that continue to consume this food are being poisoned. They are being led astray. They are being robbed of their inheritance. They are being kept from the Holiest of All, from the rest that remains, from the endless life, from the Priest-King.

The time has come for them to wake up. The time has come for them to return. The time has come for them to stop eating the rotting meat and to come to the table of the Lord, where pure food is served.

The true church of the real Gospel is often small, overlooked, and ridiculed. But it knows the voice of the Shepherd. It does not follow the stranger. It abides in the Word. It dwells in the Holiest. The true church does not eat food sacrificed to idols. It does not bow to the false gods of the age.

It does not compromise the table of the Lord. It preaches the real Gospel—Christ and Him crucified. It preaches the finished work. It preaches the endless life. It preaches the open way into the Holiest of All. It calls every soul to draw near. It calls every church to open the doors. It calls every believer to cease from striving and rest in the finished work of the Priest-King.

The Contrast: The Olive Tree and the Wicked

Psalm 52 powerfully contrasts the man who trusts in his own strength and deceit with the one who trusts in God’s unfailing love and flourishes in His house. The Psalm speaks of the wicked man who boasts of evil, whose tongue plots destruction, who loves evil rather than good, and who trusts in his great wealth and grows strong by destroying others.

This is the image of the one who trusts in his own strength, his own position, his own power. The Psalm declares that God will bring him down to everlasting ruin, snatch him up, tear him from his tent, and uproot him from the land of the living.

But the righteous is like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God, trusting in God’s unfailing love forever and ever. The righteous praises God forever and hopes in His name.

This is the image of the true believer—the one who trusts in the finished work of the Priest-King, who abides in the Holiest of All, who is sustained by the unfailing love of God through Jesus Christ who ever lives to make intercession.

The true believer does not boast in evil or trust in human schemes, false popular moral sounding social constructs or political power. The true believer trusts in the finished work of the Priest-King Yeshua Emet Melchizedek Salem—Christ Jesus—and abides in Him who has opened the way.

The Final Exhortation

The modern church stands at a critical hour. Many have turned the table of the Lord into a place where food offered to idols is served. The Social Gospel, with its political causes, cultural trends, and false moral appearances, has become the dominant offering.

It sounds compassionate to the natural ear, but it sacrifices the true Gospel on the altar of this world. It offers earthly reform where the Priest-King offers heavenly reconciliation. It speaks of systems and power where He speaks of the cross and the throne of grace.

We must not eat of any spiritual food that has been offered in sacrifice to an idol. The table of the Lord is holy. The food we receive must come from the Priest-King Himself—pure, undefiled, and flowing from the Holiest of All.

Those who preach the substitute gospel have turned the church into a platform for their political agendas. They have exchanged the Gospel of the finished work for a gospel of social reform. They have exchanged the cross for a political platform. They have exchanged the throne of grace for a seat of power.

They have exchanged the rest that remains for the restless striving of the world. They have exchanged the Holiest of All for the outer courts of carnal religion. They are not shepherds of the flock; they are servants of the spirit of the age, offering food that cannot satisfy the soul.

The true church of the real Gospel is often small, overlooked, and ridiculed. But it knows the voice of the Shepherd. It does not follow the stranger. It abides in the Word. It dwells in the Holiest. The true church does not eat food sacrificed to idols. It does not bow to the false gods of the age.

It does not compromise the table of the Lord. It preaches the real Gospel—Christ and Him crucified. It preaches the finished work.

It preaches the endless life. It preaches the open way into the Holiest of All. It calls every soul to draw near. It calls every church to open the doors. It calls every believer to cease from striving and rest in the finished work of the Priest-King.

The Fourth Truth stands. The dialogue continues. The fruit remains.

This website and its theological content are overseen by the CC7 DS constitutional integrity architecture, a reflective and rest-oriented framework designed to preserve the full coherence of the Fourth Truth presented within COFE-CYEM. The CC7 DS negation of attacks authenticates (Via Positiva Cataphatic Knowing) through (Via Negativa Apophatic Unknowing).

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Thank you for visiting us today, we value you beyond mere words.

COFE Yeshua Emet Ministry (CYEM)
Circle One Fellowship Exeter

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Nocturnal Duo

The coon is in my mind,
a shadow revealed by the porch light,
turning in circles in the backyard,
licking each blade of grass.

Is this behavior normal?
Is the creature sick?
Does it know that another masked insomniac
seeks something here?
Will it accept food from my hand if
I step from these walls into the night?

The visitor disappears and I am
reluctant to cut the light.

Will there be a second coming, a revelation of the wild?
I, awake with the questions, keep watch through the window,
feeling so much like an orphaned child.

<<<<<<*>>>>>>

In the morning the walnut tree has grown a different nut.
The neighbor dog has treed the coon.
They sit on limb and root
heads down in saddened state,
neither happy with this stalemate.
I open the door to join the inaction.

I seek some distraction.
The dog finds its own, rushing off for its morning dig
in the compost heap.

My nocturnal companion sees its chance,
moves headfirst down the trunk and
scampers off to sleep.

March 13, 2006, Rolling Ridge

#animalEncounter #backyardMysticism #backyardWildlife #ContemplativeWriting #coon #creatureInTheNight #gothicPoetry #Insomnia #maskedInsomniac #morningAfter #Nature #naturePoem #neighborDog #nightWatch #nocturnalVisitor #orphanedChild #PeaceGrooves #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #porchLight #revelationOfTheWild #ruralLife #secondComing #sleeplessNight #SpiritualReflection #surrealPoetry #walnutTree #wildness #WordPressTagsRaccoon

Nocturnal Duo

The coon is in my mind,
a shadow revealed by the porch light,
turning in circles in the backyard,
licking each blade of grass.

Is this behavior normal?
Is the creature sick?
Does it know that another masked insomniac
seeks something here?
Will it accept food from my hand if
I step from these walls into the night?

The visitor disappears and I am
reluctant to cut the light.

Will there be a second coming, a revelation of the wild?
I, awake with the questions, keep watch through the window,
feeling so much like an orphaned child.

<<<<<<*>>>>>>

In the morning the walnut tree has grown a different nut.
The neighbor dog has treed the coon.
They sit on limb and root
heads down in saddened state,
neither happy with this stalemate.
I open the door to join the inaction.

I seek some distraction.
The dog finds its own, rushing off for its morning dig
in the compost heap.

My nocturnal companion sees its chance,
moves headfirst down the trunk and
scampers off to sleep.

March 13, 2006, Rolling Ridge

#animalEncounter #backyardMysticism #backyardWildlife #ContemplativeWriting #coon #creatureInTheNight #gothicPoetry #Insomnia #maskedInsomniac #morningAfter #Nature #naturePoem #neighborDog #nightWatch #nocturnalVisitor #orphanedChild #PeaceGrooves #POETICAORAREContemplativePoetryPrayers #porchLight #revelationOfTheWild #ruralLife #secondComing #sleeplessNight #SpiritualReflection #surrealPoetry #walnutTree #wildness #WordPressTagsRaccoon