What is it that you really want in life?
Focus on that.
Focus requires sacrifice,
De-focusing from everything else.
Focus requires faith,
Trusting that focus matters
And that grace will be there
When you need it.
Let go of the outcome,
And at the same time,
Stay committed to the path.
Certainty only comes
After you take the leap of faith,
Not before.
The world wants you
To be a tool for its use.
Refuse.
Hold your brokenness high.
Your bleeding wounds, lift up.
The pain, don't trade it for anything.
It is your living.
Do not fit in,
Especially when it costs you money;
Especially, especially, especially
When it costs you you.
Give up every happiness
To stay wild.
Give up everything
To love the one who sets you free.
An intuition: I worried terribly about the forthcoming affliction of a beloved. I worried and worried as I walked. When the thought, “have faith that God will work miracles,” realized in my mind, a small, yellow butterfly crossed in front of me and fluttered by to my left. I, then, looked to my right and saw another. At no other point on my hour-long walk did I see another butterfly.
We must always trust that, in God’s time, our longings will be met, our worries released. Miracles happen.
No matter how certain our worries feel, even when reason confirms their truth, we must have faith. Miracles happen.
tears, tears,
riptides, fears
swim parallel
not toward
I'd rather swim toward and die
than lie or try to hide
the longing in my heart
intimacy withheld
is there a deeper hell?
it doesn't matter that it's a struggle
my heart is restless 'til it's held
you, your
riptides, fears
hold me away
unheld
I’ll open the window.
You, in your warm way,
Welcome in the nighttime hush.
The heavy words
We’ve carried all week
We’ll offer, quiet, to the breeze.
To a hearer, between us
Won’t be much,
But to a seer will be everything.
In this witnessed solitude
Our spirits have a ballroom.
In the silence between us
They slow dance.
Driving to work in a machine —
(For a machine) that gives me power,
And in other ways, takes my power;
A machine tuned and perfected
Over a hundred years;
A machine upon which
Cultures have fallen
And cultures have formed —
A red cardinal, tiny and fragile,
Darted across the road
In front of the machine
That drives me.
Panic pulsed through my heart.
“No! I cannot, atop this other grief,
Mourn the death of such beauty,
Such life, to the machine.”
All in a wingbeat
With a twisting flit,
Violent volitation,
And agile ascension,
The organism evaded the machine,
And I held tight to some far off dream.
The world wants you
To be a tool for its use.
Refuse.
Hold your brokenness high.
Your bleeding wounds, lift up.
The pain, don’t trade it for anything.
It is your living.
Do not fit in,
Especially when it costs you money,
Especially, especially, especially
When it costs you you.
Give up every happiness
To stay wild.
Give up everything
To love the one who sets you free.
it it pride?
seizes my heart
clings, desperate
to be held
to be known
to be understood
where is the wine
that falls from the skies
to rain dance
to baptize
is letting go
something you do
or something
you don’t do?
is it death
or is it life?
something in me
longs like a child
who lost his mother
where is home?
Inside of me,
A place where wild things roam,
A flock I must shepherd,
A garden I must tend
Through storms and attacks,
Famine, entropy, growth...growth
— Is it not all growth?
Growth to be hedged and pruned,
Encouraged here, enticed there,
To be nurtured into something beautiful.
And what of these thorny worries?
I've let them grow, expecting fruit,
But they've only become a mess.
I try pruning,
But they only grow back stronger.
Instead, I'll try to crowd them out.
I'll scatter, all among them,
Little seeds of prayer, and of faith
That I'll receive the grace
To handle whatever comes, when it comes.
We are an old,
Abandoned shopping mall
Where there used to be
A GameStop,
And a Claire’s,
And an Auntie Anne’s,
And a Spencer’s Gifts,
And a Hot Topic,
And a Walden Books.
We are a mostly-empty building
With an Army recruitment office
And a Ross Dress for Less.
In a dim, forgotten corner,
Past the bathrooms
And janitor’s closet,
A light flickers on.