Exhaling

Your Way is Your way

            and their way is mine, having crossed over

            to freedom through a parted sea that seemed no way,

            guided by cloud and fire, now my

            gratitude fades into the sand of this wilderness

            that I must traverse;

            I hear my heart whining for Egyptian cucumbers and

            my mind seizes the same old idolatries it once rejected.

Your Way is Your way

            and my way is not, charted by the fear and

            need that blind and compel me to run forward in blindness,

            causing me to stumble and beg for what is not mine to have;

            like a mule, I cannot be lead by what is clear

            nor am I likely to keep moving on principle.

            My own darkness and fallenness are crippling and

            I will not be lifted by Your bright wing.

Your Way is THE way

            and Your Word is Truth, from before the world or I began

            but I cannot run in this Way, crippled as I am

            by my own desires and sense and fear and sin.

            I look to Your covenant of salvation as my only hope;

            Your steadfast love must be enough for me.

            I see what You have given for my freedom and glimpse

            beyond cucumbers and golden beasts and even desert waters

            that I can be saved if only I concede that

Your way is mine.

To know I know nothing

is to know something indeed.

To see I’ve not suffered

is to begin to bleed.

To recognize true hunger

is to prepare to feed.

To hope beyond my sin

is to welcome the tiny mustard seed.

I did not write these today, but I sent them to a friend. And though I wrote them at least a year ago, I will share them now:

We long to be near You

on Your right and Your left

when You say “Follow Me.”

And our consent to go

wherever You lead

must be full and free.

“Can You drink the cup

that I will drink?”

And we impetuously nod our YES.

But the cup that You hold to our lips

makes us recoil

from its bitterness.

Yet You continue to hold it out for us

time and time again

Patiently waiting

through our reticence

until we comprehend

That we must embrace

the suffering

Your love for us

outpours –

We must share

this cup with You

if we would be all Yours.

Tomorrow we embark on a journey anew.

We are always “on the way,” but during these 40 days we are invited to take a closer look at how well we are travelling.

Maybe we need to lighten our load, walk more deliberately, more steadfastly, or reach out more generously to others on the road.

Let us pray to be open to what the Lord is telling us to do, and ask Him to give us the courage and grace to make those changes.

In this pain

is Your call

to look on You

deep within me

and remain with You

in the silence

where You speak

and the darkness

where You wait.

O Heart of Light

hidden here, but

calling to my own

clouded heart!

Clear the cluttered

chambers – empty

them utterly, so that

in them may echo

the rhythm of Your own

Heart, beating steadily

with love

for me…

Holy Innocents, Innocentes pro Christo.

Primitiae Deo, et Agno,

not fruits of the harvest, but

            fruits of the season’s hope and promise -

First fruits sacrificed on the altars of

            the grief-hot hearts of new motherhood, abrupted.

The raging madness of the selfward

still rages on, sees a threat that is no threat,

still sees others as obstacles or objects only,

still spawns erratic fear and blinding obsession,

still boils in the veins, blinding to truth,

still sacrifices the pure, the innocent,

in the self-turned hearts of new motherhood, aborted.

The olive garden is no place for blood
    (nor is solitary prayer to the Father, though
      this may furrow in us the desire)
but in dark hours the Heart is wrung
     so hard
  blood flows with the sweat of struggle
       to surrender
        the very instincts of being
           to the perfect will of I AM.

The body staggers under the weight
      of the will lifted up in sacrifice.

Long ago, we talked of a conspiracy of love and beauty to stand in the face of the nihilism of the day. Pia had me chuckling in her recent comment when she revived the idea. The world needs this. We need each other. And this is still a good meeting place. So.

 Viva la cospirazione!

Starting…. now!

Rainy Haiku

The sun broke through
and made all the drenched forest
glistening crystal.