Psalm 77

Poetry, Uncategorized

I’ve called and cried
hoping You would listen,
Spread my arms and
waited for you to answer.

Where is grace?
I feel lost and out of place.

Oh so slowly
As I’ve given up
you have found a way
to pull me close.

Where is grace?
I feel lost but have a taste

My heart you’ve changed,
so I won’t grasp
for what I long,
to what is gone.

For where is grace
when I feel lost and out of place?

In that taste.

To My Father

Poetry, Uncategorized

The autumn colors flown from the trees
assaulted by the frigid  breeze
though we were
sheltered in the lea.
As an eagle soared high
in the clear cerulean sky
we lay my father
gently in the ground.
In the sweet earth
on  which he had toiled
for so long.

He was our father
he was our friend,
and with our tears
sprinkled in the golden grass,
we lay the quiet words
and sparkling  eyes’
the laughing voice
and gentle hands,
we lay the heart
that loves us still
gently in the ground.

 

My father, probably the kindest man I ever met, died on November 13, 2017 at the age of almost 98.  His funeral was held just over a week later, on a clear cold day.  1 Corinthians 13 says that “love never ceases” and I believe that.  He was a good father.   I miss him.

Page Turned

Poetry, Uncategorized

The page was known…
   read and reread,
   underlined, annotated
   illuminated…
   …reread again.
then ribbon lifted
   and hollow formed beneath the page,
a cave of sorts, with life inside.

Slowly the hollow became sky
as the page lifted clear
   and floated
   …to gently settle next
   to what had been.
Ready now to be read
   were these new words
   to this old story,
…enter now, they called to me.

The first not forgotten
…nor unimportant,
but leading the way,
for what is now.
This character that I have entered,
coauthored with a Greater.
These new, fresh words,
shimmer and wait,
as though by my living
…will they be fixed to the page.

A week ago I had an opportunity to retreat.  This is my way of mining and remembering the gift of the weekend.

 

Beware of Halloween

Uncategorized

Growing up, we didn’t trick or treat. Halloween was almost … vilified?… in the 90’s by the Christian community, though not in our house directly– being raised by introverts meant that we remained at home whether we wanted to or not. Right Mom? As a child, I understood that it wasn’t about worshipping the devil or harmful mischief; this was about candy! And what child doesn’t want a night filled with that?

Now, 25 years later, I have come to a realization. I missed out on not only years of sugar highs, but also a very important aspect of the trick-or-treat scene: community. Tonight as I walked the streets with my kids, temporarily known as Mr. McFeely and Mr. Rogers, I realized that this was such a prime opportunity for building a neighborhood with people in a culture and country that encourages us to be suspicious of everyone around us.

If I listen to the hum of politics, I hear quite clearly above the rhetoric a call to solidarity against the other. Them. Those people. You. Because if I search hard enough, I will find some topic on which we disagree. But don’t we have that backwards? Shouldn’t we be looking for what we agree on? Things we have in common?

Tonight I witnessed strangers, men and women, young and old, give my children almost five pounds of goodies. Why? Because they looked cute? Well, they did, but that is a given. Because it is tradition? I think there is more to it than that. I think people enjoy being apart of something outside of themselves, and today, sadly, that is a rare occasion indeed.

So, beware of Halloween, it might make you think.