To recall a pen . . .

I complete another list to one thousand of the never-ending gifts, and start in again at number one. I begin a new journal, an inch of perfectly blank pages waiting, aching, to be filled. No time to watercolour these days; it’s all I can do to scrawl words, most of them not my own. 

Thoughts come as impression, with colour and taste and dimension, but all in cloud and light haze . . . just beyond the reach of logic and deduction. So while I wait for words, the Words of my God comfort my soul, even when I trust feeble and doubt the power of the words I copy.

Does writing the Word make us believe it? Seldom do the flashing epiphanies release and burn and heal all in a moment. Rare that light bursts through and dispels all known darkness.  Writing does not transform; copying does not equate consciously living the Daily Bread. But it initiates absorption.

Light comes most often through the pin-prick holes, the gaping chasms, the “all that’s wrong and unfixed and embarrassing and wordless” vents of my soul, where wind sweeps through and stirs cobwebs, and brushes clean, and casts up dirt, and lets me know I need, that at my best, I am a beggar. 

So I write Word, because this is what I know to be True, even when I doubt it, even when I don’t live it, even when I can’t see or feel change as a result of its recitation. At the end of the day, this is what God has given, God Who spoke the world into being with Words, Who came as WORD made flesh, Who lives Word through my flesh, because all lives to fulfill His Word.

And I write prayer, the echoed impressions of soul, barely audible. Sometimes confident and soaring, sometimes whimpering in terrible pain, always quiet as a pen stroke. And does writing prayer, responding to the Words of God make me believe what I pray, make me confident and happy and at ease with all in life? Infrequent my recollections of morning requests for glory and grace. My concentration span wanders down other corridors instead. 

Writing Word, writing prayer . . . I do not notice the instant change, but it alters memory. I write, because I forget, because I want to remember something good. And when I look back, I remember what I felt. The soul impressions linger, but the words are what I recall.

And memory alters belief. When I look back over scribble and struggle, I see the Words He spoke in my wordless groanings. And in His Words, I trace His way, and find my path.

We have a choice in what we remember. How else could we block painful memories? Why else do we reminisce past occasions, over and over, till they are perfect and golden and untainted? 

We write, so we can remember . . .  and for all coming behind, what better gift to leave than the WORD, interlaced in life’s pain and flummox, the stabilizing thread holding us together?

“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever.”

 

African Grace

Five years ago, I woke to African winter, the Moroccan chill persisting heavy in the tile-floored, plaster-walled apartment building. That sour smell, tannery leather, permeating the air by the closets and doors, where pointed slippers waited for children’s feet.

 

 

The sing-song, harsh Arabic, spoken rapid and forthright. The broken English of flirting men (and aren’t we all broken, not knowing what we want, aware only of our hunger, and our pulsating wish to be happy?).

 

 

Rounded woman walk with rounded steps in flour-sack jelabas, traditional garb meant to preserve modesty and prevent lust. (And don’t we all cover up our warped-ness? The inexplicable mix of good and bad wrapped in our souls, aching to be sorted and set right . . . and we cover and compensate to protect ourselves and others from our brokenness.)

 

 

Bagged garbage plopped on corners and edges of wide cobbled sidewalks waits removal . . . sometime. This cultural mindset does not make room for proactive stewardship and preventative measures—it’s fatalism all over, and life does not stand much chance of getting better. (And don’t we pile soul garbage along the edge of our heart pathways, just so long as we have room to squeeze by and still function, we consider ourselves okay? And all the trash we don’t know what to do with, and the stuff that clutters, we hope Someone can clear away or recycle . . . before summer heat makes it stink). 

Black eyes stare wide behind ebony lashes, gawking at the fairer-skinned, blue and green and brown-eyed children walking with me. (And don’t we find the unknown, un-possessed, un-assumed beauty entrancing? How often we look so far out of our league to compare, that we miss the humbling, ordinary beauty of grace, the whisper of mercy, spoken over us every moment? And don’t we cheapen our potential for happiness by always looking at someone else, instead of looking into the eyes of the SOMEONE Who made us, and freely offers us life in His hands? And what grief we inflict when we refuse His gifts, His outstretched hand, because His hands were torn with nails and scratched deep with thorns, and to receive from Him means receiving pain AND joy as gifts. Receiving means to Trust Him more than trust the gift. And we’d rather not take the risk). 

The street bustle: not because people move fast, but because people walk everywhere. My casual gait propels me faster than the local pace . . . and I wonder if these people have purpose outside of their daily tasks and errands. And two sides of the revolving coin show themselves: how often do I spin my tires in an effort to look productive and feel like I’m going somewhere meaningful? And, how often do I sink into a routine’s confinement, letting a circumstance, instead of the Reality of a loving God, define my life?

And these pictures, cured and understood over time, continue teaching and speaking, and saying clearer that soul-film is thin, and life crust is fragile, and under each blinking eye waits a heart in pain, longing to be found, to be heard; a heart waiting to wake to beauty and joy.

 

 

And in the ordinary, the hum-drum, this is where Grace beats her rhythm . . . for the song of glory.

Paradox`s story

Once upon a time . . . . there was a story.

And the world is filled with stories: some true, some tale. And the stories we embrace indent our soul and mould our destiny. 

 

Because the stories we hear, and the stories we tell, live bigger than us; and whether we know it or not, our belief ushers us into the story we accept. 

And in the utter end, there are only two stories we will tell, and we will live. One story says the world is chaos, and we alone must muddle and reign and suffer and rule; that we are all there is, whether our best or worst, and our only hope is ourselves. 

The other story says the world is chaos, but the One Who made the world enters the chaos, and redefines it with His reality; and we are not left alone to our own devices, because someone from beyond us transcends our noise and makes sense of our senseless pain. 

And our lives echo the stories we believe. That’s why we have to know what story we trust, and what story we live. Because to settle into an alone story is tragic, and to live as though there is no story is to not live at all.

We were made to live in a together story . . . and that’s the only reason we can believe it. 

Close your eyes, and see it. Quiet your heart, and hear it. Still the clamour, and enter in . . .

This is the mystery, the paradox of grace. This is our story.  

With help from Google images

A walk to remember

I set out to discover, to find a walk for my soul, a way to remember. It’s a journey within a journey: and isn’t this how life spins us? 

Mist rises from pond’s mouth, living air sighing happy at the sight of sun, and my soul rises to breathe it. 

First lines of the day’s new song penetrate the world in shimmering rays. It’s an ancient melody, an aching ballad, a groaning hope. The aged earth sings it fresh to its Creator in this autumn, the first time for this day, the same as each day since her inception. And doesn’t the habit of mercy meet us new, and old, each day?

Dependence on fresh graces can stagnate into assumption and dullness, unless we receive eyes to see. It humbles us, making us a forever student, one who always needs more than they know. But it makes us alive, hunger beckoning us on, because we have tasted this goodness. And doesn’t grace upon grace spiral up like this, where we come around again and again to the same beauties, always new? 

Guidance and boundaries dot the walkway, and grace isn’t so much a tight rope to be nervously balanced as it is a fenced enclosure, in which to dance. And how often do I listen for the invitation to celebrate? 

Walnuts scatter across the path, seeds fulfilling their destiny, many of them disintegrating into fertilizer, never to realize their potential. And how many of us rot away? And how can we help it, unless we are rescued and planted? One road leads to ultimate death, the other to fruitful life. And how many lives pass through time’s ebb, never living the glory of resurrection? How many victims never get the chance to even breathe this air? How many lives snuffed out so soon, so needlessly . . . and the world can be cruel. 

The path winds upward, and it has to. We have to know there is something above, something more, something to dream for. It requires more energy to climb, and round the bends; and often the dullness of resignation calls louder than the pain of hope.  And don’t we have to know that there is something good ahead? The breeze tells us, the sun invites us, the path beckons us on. And isn’t the path itself a mercy? 

I find the long road. I turn right and follow it to the end.  It’s a raised embankment, with deep ravines on either side. And isn’t grace a highway between two ditches? 

The road ends sudden, cleared and built for a purpose fulfilled, and that is all. And it is enough. Some journeys end abrupt, and we cannot retain sight or use of all the paths we walk. Each leads on to another road, and if we stopped and built cities, the journey’s wonder would die. And how often do I settle for the safety of apathy, of a life so protected from pain that I lose a reason to die, and a reason to live?

I turn and retrace my steps, remembering, following back, so I can walk again, and travel further. And in remembering, we are re-made. The pieces fall into place, the melody played backwards teaches us what we could not know while questing ahead. 

And the paradox of grace tells us what we could not hear in the clamour, in the deafening pain, and the anguished silence:

“Yet I will still hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease.

Great is His faithfulness; His mercies begin afresh each morning.

I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in Him.’

The Lord is good to those who depend on Him, to those who search for Him.

So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.”