קָוָה

i am beginning to understand that this aching, clawing, relentless longing in me is the realest prayer i have, my truest prayer of all.

beginnings.

"the man who sweats under his mask, whose role makes him itch with discomfort, who hates the division in himself, is already beginning to be free." 

-thomas merton.

begin.

"one must take off her fear like clothing;

one must travel at night;

this is the seeking after God."

-maureen morehead.

begin.

oh L-RD,

"begin in mercy a new work of love within me.  say to my soul, 'rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.'  then give me grace to rise and follow You from this misty lowland where i have wandered so long." 

in the mighty and gentle name of Jesus,
amen.

she will turn.

"sad words are just another beauty.  a sad story means, this storyteller is alive.  the next thing you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile."

-chris cleave.

also.

i wanted
the past to go away, i wanted
to leave it, like another country; i wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
i wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; i wanted to know,
whoever i was, i was

alive
for a little while.

***

also i wanted
to be able to love. and we all know
how that one goes,
don't we?

slowly.

mary oliver.

why. who.

"woman, he said, why are you weeping?
who is it you are looking for?"

-Jesus, after His mighty resurrection, to mary in her grief.

february 21.

"when you pass through the waters, I will be with you."

-the Lord, isaiah 43.

sweeter than.

"laughter is holier than piety, freedom sweeter than fame."

-tom robbins.

voice.

let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones you have crushed
rejoice.
hide your face from my sins.

create in me a pure heart,
do not cast me from your
presence
or take your Holy Spirit
from me.

open my lips,
and my mouth will declare
your praise.

psalm 51, excerpts.

dear heart,

always remember.

a name
is not a leash.

the uses of sorrow.

"someone i loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

it took me years to understand
that this too, was a gift."

-mary oliver.

so be it.

"Of all the arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as 'Careful! This might lead you to suffering.'

To my nature, my temperament, yes. Not to my conscience. When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Jesus. If I am sure of anything I am sure that His teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities. I doubt whether there is anything that pleases Him less.

We follow One who wept over Jerusalem and at the grave of Lazarus. Even if it were granted that insurances against heartbreak were our highest wisdom, does God Himself offer them? Apparently not. Jesus comes at last to say, 'why have You forsaken me?'

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.

We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armor. If our hearts need be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it."

-excerpts, cs lewis.

"do not stand idly by.

I AM the Lord."

-leviticus 19.

2012.

the Lord is gracious and righteous;
full of compassion.

when i was in great need, He saved me.

in my anguish, i cried out to the Lord,
and He answered by setting me free.

be at rest once more, o my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.

excerpts, psalms 116, 118.

tension.

sometimes the worst thing for faith is our ideals.

the beauty of following Jesus does not grow from His removal of life's messiness;

the weight and the power and the glory of following Jesus manifests in the fact that amongst all of life's chaos and failure and struggle and tension,

the power of the resurrection, the living Word, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the gentle One, Victor and Shepherd and Defender, King of all kings,

MESSIAH,

resides with us in the midst of it,

and breathes, speaks, creates,
resurrects

new life.

(amen).

new dimensions.

"a purely ethical monotheism in which God, the guardian of moral order, keeps the world subject to the law, would restrict the scope of God's knowledge and concern to what is of ethical signifigance. God's relation to man would, in general, run along the lines of a universal principle. the divine pathos alone is able to break through this rigidity and create new dimensions for the unique, the specific, and the particular.

it is not law and order itself, but the living God who created the universe and established its law and order, that stands supreme in Biblical thought.

before the Torah, the covenant was.

prophecy is a reminder that what obtains between God and man is not a contract but a covenant. anterior to the covenant is love, the love of the fathers, and what obtains between God and israel must be understood, not as legal, but as a personal relationship, as participation, involvement, tension. God's life interacts with the life of the people. to live in the covenant is to partake of the fellowship of God and His people. Biblical religion is not what man does with his solitariness, but rather what man does with God's concern for all men.

the gulf that separates man from God is transcended by His pathos."

-abraham joshua heschel, excerpts.

forgiven.

"then he turned toward the woman and said to simon, 'do you see this woman? I came into your house. you did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. you did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time that I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. you did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven - as her great love has shown. but whoever has been forgiven little loves little." -Messiah Jesus, luke 7.

----

"but to me this is a slight matter, that i am judged by you or by any man. i do not even judge myself." -brother paul.

----

"be strong in the grace of Jesus." -brother paul.

here am i.

i want to be like elijah,
full of zeal.

i want to be like isaiah,
undone by the high and holy vision of God,
answering, 'here am i.'

i want to be like leah,
turning my wounds into praise.

"but now comes the greatest wonder that the world has ever known. in the very place where we have fallen away from God, where we have become dead and unreceptive to God, in our guilt, God's goodness searches us out, and is revealed to us again as the eternal promise of God, in Jesus Messiah, which far surpasses all guilt and all life. only the person who, in the darkness of guilt, of unfaithfulness, of enmity towards God, has felt himself or herself touched by the love which never ceases, which forgives everything, and which points beyond all misery to the world of God, only such a person really knows what God's goodness means."

-dietrich bonhoeffer.

-----

as God slowly leads me away from my murky fog of guilt into the piercing and gentle light of Jesus, my soul begins to live and move and find its being in His atmosphere of goodness.

and my heart beats, He is good, He is good, He is good.

amen.