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.

Inverted Glory

This gift of time, it opens the door for me to walk through. So I step outside, down the snow-crusted street, drifts and ice and shovelled remnants telling the tale of a persistent winter. 

This gift of breeze, it tickles my senses and awakens me to beauty unseen, only tasted in the soul. And why should we be given such a palette of scents? We wouldn’t be the wiser if everything smelled like vanilla, or vinegar, or rotten vegetables.

This gift of sun, it beckons me to look up, look ahead, to LOOK, and see the wonder around me, see through the wonder to the WONDERFUL One who took pains to make it just so. 

And colour plays in hues. And breezes waft in gentle shades. And time slows, turns musical, and the world plays a symphony around me. And I join in, lift a melody line of sighing gratitude, breath falling in time: exhaling thanks, inhaling grace. 

Why does it come so rarely? Why can I not live in this sphere all the time? Why don’t I see the miracle and live in the song all the time? Here, I know I am alive. Why take such pains to avoid LIFE? Why sink in apathy and procrastinated gluttony, letting heavy soul glug along, sapping life and moving slow . . . a slow without intention, a slow without attention, a slow dulled and tired.

But this . . . this gentle walk calls life, draws attention, awakens purpose. Everything looks deeper, as though it really is significant, and can sing me a story. The leaning trees with shadow and shelter, the bridge ahead, the very ice of the lake. 

Snow footprints: they began as indentations, marring the unbroken silence of White’s blanket. Now, they are all that remains of a snow blown into ditch and rock and alley. They started as an interruption on the landscape by adventurers or lovers, exploring the newly formed world of ice. Now, they echo the journey, a brief-lasting memorial, guides and trophies of a secret past. 

And sometimes, glory echoes inverted, in the things that ruin our landscapes and mar our dreams. Sometimes, glory IS inverted, the marks and scars left after the adventure and surgery and soul struggle, these marks tell more than the pristine vista, because they tell of healing, of life still living, of battle and bruise and the fight with evil. They acknowledge something is WRONG in the world, they scream to be made right . . . even while they promise that there is RIGHT, that there is GOOD. Because scars reveal healing, and in each scratch is a story of grace.

 

 

Sometimes, we just need TIME to look for the stories, LIGHT to see their beauty, and EARS to hear the song of glory threaded through each one. 

So, let our souls WALK with You, Lord, the Maker of Song, so we can hear Your music in our own souls, and detect it in others . . . so we can call it out and join the global and heavenly 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

Glory musings, part one

The angelic herald echoes like ­­a sweet haunting, a gentle annual pulse to set our pace.

And it comes like a taunting, when our hard core realities reel chaotic, and blow shredded and shattered like forgotten rubbish: its synthetic rustle hissing through the breeze’s song, resilient ugly tendrils marring the broken scene. The second law of thermodynamics seemed efficient enough for our undoing; why add this man-made grief? 

Isn’t natural pain enough? Why the unnatural weight too? We could barely endure the first, but crumple—utterly undone—under the second’s insidious slashes.

There must be different degrees of knowing, an ebbing, layered sphere of atmospheres we breathe, entering one and leaving another so seamlessly that we live unconscious to the power we inhale. To know you are helpless and hurt, a needy beggar, and to know—the sheer, unreserved, raw state of your reality—the atmospheric conversion.

It’s not just being a country shepherd, a noble, honest task where you content yourself and thank God you can sleep under the stars. No, it’s the outcast, the scruffy thieves and chronic liars . . .locked out at night and avoided in the day. The shepherd: excluded from court cases, their word not worth being heard; shunned in polite and even normal society, their association not worth the potential business or communal risk. Living honest, lowly, and poor wasn’t humble enough: the association of others’ misdeeds hangs irreconcilable on you, a weight unbearable, unavoidable . . .the intolerable synthetic pain.

And there must be varying degrees of living, potentials of capacity we have not plumbed yet, realms high and deep, primed for the expanse of the soul, prepared for possibility, like the echo of a promise.

And doesn’t GLORY pull us deeper, higher, real-er? Doesn’t it create the environment for potential? The capacity for knowing, for living, for joy and for pain find a harmony in the song of GLORY.

And sometimes, it takes the shattering, brutal synthetic to wake us to glory. Because constant pain grows dull, normal (even if it cripples us). But shearing pain rivets us, and makes us know that something is utterly wrong, and something is utterly Right.

And perhaps, in all this chaos, the world heaves and aches, priming for the coming of GLORY.

The smell of snow

The imperceptible shift, a slipping into place, some vast force steals in silent. And we wake to a different world, one hushed and reverent. 

Muted hues quiet the noisy orb, and while everything and everyone still screams and rushes around, the veil transfigures it all, shushing it to the background, bidding it cease striving, telling it, “Be still.”

The landscape has not changed; no blanket of snow hides the shapes of rock and tree, no blizzard winds blur our senses, no extreme temperatures threaten our endeavours . .. and yet, everything alters, because we can smell the promise.

Somehow, the pledge of snow’s arrival sets the heart to rest, and awakens it to lively dance. This paradox slips into cognisance without a syllable, and we grapple for words to describe the transformation. We inhale light and quick, wonder catching our in our breath. Yet we exhale long, the sudden revelation of beauty inviting us to pause and gaze in reverent stillness.

The mingling atmospheres of heaven and earth harmonize, their vibrations unifying. And somewhere deep in our soul, we hear the music. When nature sings clearer than our screaming, false-inflated cacophony, worlds still, and we remember. Sometimes it’s only a whisper, and don’t whispers speak louder than our bustling shouts and crazy winds?  

Words float through the calm. . .  our minds can’t quite make them out, but the heart understands. We look up. We peer beyond our own realm. We aspire soul-ish for a dream outside our experience and cognition.  And sometimes, redemption consists of quiet nods and paced breathing.

A word comes in the pregnant air, almost undetectable, completely unmistakable to those who hear it: Be still, and know that God is God.

Here we rest. Here we wait. Here we live and scurry and endeavour . . . and aspire, listening for the building echoes, watching for the consummation, remembering the promise, and the One Who made it.

Photos courtesy of google images