Sea-Glass Prayer

I feel like a piece of sea glass. I know my sharp and dangerous edges are being worn away, but it feels like my clarity of color, and the smooth surface of my heart's mind are being worn away as well. I am so tired, and I want the carefree abandon of those days when my sister and I played in the forest and swung on the rope and climbed the plum tree. The merciful love of my God has lifted my burdens, and the yoke of Christ is not heavy because of His strength. But I am still yoked, and I am searching again for the joy in it.

I don't cry anymore.

I used to cry all the time, and I miss the relief of salt on my cheeks. I don't like that I can't immediately see what a blessing it is to be yoked with Christ, the Lamb of my Father who is perfect and yet bears the scars that should mar my own body.

It seems like such a vain and selfish thing, to consider this time as a student a heavy trial. I am clothed and fed every day. I do not have to watch my children die of disease, hunger, and violence. I sleep under a wealthy North Eastern sky every night, warm and protected from the evil of my world. I labor at learning - not life over death. I am so blessed, and I am weary only because of the responsibility which accompanies those blessings.

God where am I? Why so downcast, o my soul?

A Time To Keep, And A Time To Cast Away

I have to remind myself now to be delighted by those small things that I always used to stop and admire without even thinking.

The way the wind caught my scarf and swirled around the colors of blue in space reminded me of that the other day. It was beautiful - it lasted only a moment, and it had no meaning, but I enjoyed it. As I walked out into the dark cold of a New England evening after work a few Thursdays ago, I heard someone walking toward the library, and whistling. It was the most beautiful sound I had heard since the empty silence of the mountain tops last summer; I've never experienced such a piece of music.

Some things are good to outgrow - frightened insecurity, a dislike for blueberries. But some things we must never leave behind us. I can't ever be too old to catch a butterfly; to enjoy the chase, and the look of her painted wings just as I always used to. I mustn't ever forget how lovely the sandy-smooth feel of the sidewalks in summer is, or how worthwhile a moment is with your eyes closed in a patch of sunlight - even if you have stopped in the middle of a walkway to soak in its glory.

As we get older, we learn to love things like poetry, and stillness - coffee and old artwork, prayer and long discussions. Things that made no sense when we were young. We couldn't sit still - even when we were exhausted, there was no appeal to sleeping, because there was so much to be awake for! Outside, we would run just because our legs had the energy for it. We would throw rocks into a pond just because we liked the sound of its plop or splash. We snuck extra cookies and licked off the cake frosting just because it tasted good. All of our joys were purely delight, and they only lasted for a moment, but that did not hinder us from pouring everything we had into obtaining them.

We knew little of the wisdom of a brown-paged book with its musty smell when we were small, but we have grown to. We now understand why the world sees a diamond more beautiful than a pebble, but by that, we might be stripping the pebble of any beauty she has at all?

Our maturity is beautiful, as our childhood was. Some things we have lost, however we have also gained. I should not mourn for the lost things too greatly, because for everything there is a season. But some things I should not cast away entirely, and I still miss my child's eyes.

Oh God,

Down in a green and shady bed,

A modest violet grew;

Its stalk was bent, it hung its head

As if to hide from view.

And yet it was a lovely flower,

Its colour bright and fair;

It might have graced a rosy bower,

Instead of hiding there.

Yet thus it was content to bloom,

In modest tints arrayed;

And there diffused a sweet perfume,

Within the silent shade.

Then let me to the valley go

This pretty flower to see;

That I may also learn to grow

In sweet humility.

The Violet

by Jayne Taylor

Melt down my silver and gold.

Witness

The windows constructed into my soul

are not to let in Your light, for

within is where Your light resides,

but rather to let your light out,

and be seen by those outside...

Consider the lilies.

They do not labor or spin.

And yet,

how they are clothed in the greatest splendor.

Do not worry.

Do not fear.

Because not even the smallest sparrow is forgotten.

Are you not worth more than feathers?

Adrift somewhere

A DOOR just opened on a street—
I, lost, was passing by—
An instant’s width of warmth disclosed,
And wealth, and company.
The door as sudden shut, and I,	5
I, lost, was passing by,—
Lost doubly, but by contrast most,
Enlightening misery.

There may be an Emily Dickinson poem for every emotion and circumstance I experience...

...where am I?

I don't know what His voice is saying.

I thought I knew,

and I worked so hard to follow.

But the door is no longer as obviously open,

and I am 'doubly lost.'

I am waiting on You!

There is a question mark in my mind as I do so,

but I am waiting on You.

Could You please give me joy in this?

Descend upon me and make my soul be still?

Certainty

I have remembered what else is written in ink:

By grace alone.

Never will I forsake you.

The Saturday outside my window

Miss Emily.

Like Rain it sounded till it curved

And then I knew 'twas Wind --

It walked as wet as any Wave

But swept as dry as sand --

When it had pushed itself away

To some remotest Plain

A coming as of Hosts was heard

It filled the Wells, it pleased the Pools

It warbled in the Road --

It pulled the spigot from the Hills

And let the Floods abroad --

It loosened acres, lifted seas

The sites of Centres stirred

Then like Elijah rode away

Upon a Wheel of Cloud.

There is wind and rain today, and I love the rain so much. I am trying to be more careful using the word 'love' - expressing affection, affinity, preference, pleasure and joy is so easily done with the word love. But love is a sacred thing; no one understands it fully. It isn't a silvery thread woven through our universe, but rather the very essence of the good and beautiful and lasting things that compose our existence. God is love.

So I suppose I should say that I have that have a very great fondness for the rain.

I always write when it rains, and I could try and describe what is so beautiful about it each time the clouds cover the sky.
There is something I like about the soft lights that have to be turned on in the middle of the day. I like how everyone curls up - at a table in the kitchen, on a sofa, in someone's arms - and set about what they are doing in a little less urgent way. The rain makes you slow down, stay inside, and dwell for a little while in calm quiet. My heart is the most full, the most content in that kind of unhurried peace. The light is lower and gentler, the sounds are hushed and everyone seems to recognize that the world is not so important as we think it is. We are in a state of rest, even as we go about everyday work, or sleep, or play.

Knowledge

On a page of penciled writing,

Varying in value and thickness, erasable words are recorded in rows. In columns, scribbled in the margins; some writing is emboldened and underlined, some slashed through and crossed out, some completely rubbed away and written over.

In the middle of this page are three words written in unadulterated black ink.

God is love.

That is my immovable truth. Regardless of what else I scribble, question, consider, challenge, destroy, or discover, this is what I am built upon.

I want to continue exploring the pencil truths, and perhaps eventually there shall be a more words of ink written in my heart. I know that I have much to learn and I am a child. While I am enjoying the transience of my erasable ideas and learning from them, I must also be aware of the importance in discovering God's permanent realities. I have to seek out the stones, while sifting sand through my fingers.

And through everything, I must remember that there is very little I need to know and understand. I am a little girl, I must stay a little girl, and come to sit at the feet of Jesus. A little girl who knows nothing more about Him but that He loves her, and she can love Him in return.

Plagiarism

I see something beautiful, something good, and I want to adopt it as my own. I want to grasp it and weave it into my own identity, even if I must rearrange the good and beauty I already have.
I see us all – myself especially – striving so desperately to avoid cliché, yet sometimes it is true of you and you can’t. It may be cliché for the simple fact that it is such a widely recognized truth that too many people have identified with, or an artistry which has transcended the subjective eyes of too many beholders.
Why the urge for definition? Why do I want to create something that is beautiful but most importantly, unique and different from the other beauties I see? I desire a winsome color and symmetry in my own being; a depth of goodness, an iridescence and luminosity - but I want it to be rare and unique. Understood by someone - but I want it to originate in me and remain uncommon to the world surrounding. Why is this?
Many answers rise to the surface of my thoughts.

I must always be who God wants me to be, even here in this arena - I must not try to define my personality, to shape it differently from what it is into what I want it to be, just because I like how He designed another's better.

Heavy rain

The complete peace that settles in the bottom of my soul, and then fills it entirely, has accompanied the weather, as it always does. One rarely comes to call without the other.

I look out my window. It's a dark afternoon, the rain is pouring heavily, and so I get up from the floor where my sketchbooks and pencils are spread out to make tea. The lounge is empty, and so once the water is heating, I walk over to the great bay window to look over the quad. The sky is flat grey, sending down cold, fast, heavy drops and darkening the sidewalks, the roofs - the grass is darker green, the forest is thicker.

Suddenly something small flies past the window; it comes back, circles around, and a honey bee lands on the brick ledge just outside. It crawls around the space of dry shelter, jerking and flicking its legs as it moves away from the rain, and its wings droop.

Breathing in peppermint steam, I hold the warm cup of tea between my fingers and think about being in the world.

The music I listen to doesn't destroy my earnest effort to think on good and excellent things, though most of my lyrics are secular. Hearing friends swear and joke crudely doesn't tempt me to do the same, and doesn't diminish my affection for them. Watching films with messages that are contrary to the truth I know isn't damaging to my faith. Reading books and hearing lectures with views and opinions that conflict with mine don't anger, but rather intrigue, and encourage me to know and question why I believe what I do.

None of these things - music, films, lectures, people who don't believe - are necessarily stumbling blocks for those with the knowledge that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 8. But they are all individual raindrops that can at times either fall soft and light, or hard and heavy.

Sometimes we have to stop and dry off our wings. The rain that didn't seem to hinder us at first is making it difficult to fly, and so we must find a place out from under the open sky, and let the water leave our wings.

In those moments we must retreat to quiet, to simplicity, and to uninterrupted stillness before Elohim, our Father and Great Love.

Quiet isn't silence

Someone is practicing a music piece in Phillips; I can hear it through the open window. A distant, urgent, grey sound rises and then fades; a flock of seagulls has passed over somewhere high above. I can hear life as I sit here with my open books. Birds are somewhere among indistinguishable sounds of water, wind, trees, sunlight, and human voices. Laughter, conversation, yelling, footsteps.

First teardrops

They fell today, unexpectedly, as usually happens.

I love my family, and being so far from them reveals new aspects to that love, new ways to see the how they have been loving me all my life.

I am truly happy where I am. God has brought me to where He wants me, and He has taken me far from what I know, far from what is comfortable. And even amid the tears, my heart is rejoicing. This too is new, and beautiful - because the testing of my faith is creating in me a perseverance that in its full effect, will allow me to be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. I have been learning to shed my timidity when facing the prospect of attaining perfection - I have been called to strive for it. Not the perfection of God, but the perfection of His design for me. Rising up to fully occupy the original vision of what a woman is to be - I should pursue that for Him with all my heart.

It is the love of God, my creator, that my heart cannot live without. My soul needs His arms to enfold me, and nothing else. My heart wants the people, and desires their love; I wish and hope for the support, devotion, and care of His other creations - but it is the Lord's love that I would die without.

I am beginning a new.
There is something so beautiful about a blank white sheet of paper. Something lovely about an empty journal, something nice about a completely unmarked page. I run the tips of my fingers over the new keys of my laptop, and am reminded of that feeling as I look at the empty desktop, knowing the memory is unburdened, the folders have nothing in them.

So few of us hold mustard seeds.

"But remember too that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It is the belief in things not seen."
...President Barack Obama.

I have to disagree with the President.
...actually, with the first sentence of that quote.
Faith is the complete absence of doubt, in the face of no physical evidence.
Thats what makes it seems so insane to some.

Henry James

Soo, I have kindof already filled my blog quota for about a year....but, I couldn't resist putting up this quote:

"Summer afternoon - summer afternoon...the two most beautiful words in the English language."

Its even more true when we haven't reached summer yet.

I will go before you
and will level the mountains;
I will break down gates of bronze
and cut through bars of iron.
I will give you the treasures of darkness,
riches stored in secret places,
so that you may know that I am the Lord,
the God of Israel, who summons you by name.
For the sake of Jacob my servant,
of Israel my chosen,
I summon you by name.

Oh my God. Can't you just hear the force behind those words?

Elated step of faith

Excitement!

I put my deposit and acceptance slip in the mail today.

A Gordon College sticker now waits impatiently on my desk to be adhered somewhere....

Shaken from Sleep

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light, because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.

So live by the truth.

The truth is that death has no hold.
When your mind argues you can't help it; sin is ingrained in your nature, its not truth. You can't live in darkness any longer, when the Spirit dwelling inside you is Light. The corrupting decay of this world's death is repelled from the radiance of the Spirit, so abide in that light. Remain within that sphere of untouchable purity.

Fear has been cast out.
Step into the light with no hesitation, because you have nothing to be afraid of. If you expose your failure to the light, nothing but forgiveness and supportive hands will lift you up, because that light is made up of perfect love. Confess with honest open hands, and experience your life of freedom and beauty again.

Temptations are not failures.
Temptations play with the weakest parts of your spirit, but when you are weak, you are at your strongest, because you have nothing to rely on, nothing to grasp at, but the strength of God. The Spirit dwelling in you, is the Spirit that called the universe into existence out of nothing. And with that power, nothing is insurmountable. Nothing is invincible.

The past can't touch your future.
The victories of today's success do not redeem yesterday's miserable failures - only the pure blood of the one who gave us our redemption does that. But the new mercy of this victorious morning erases your guilt, and sets you on your feet to press forward.

You are loved.
Perhaps if this concept could be grasped in a stronger and surer way, we would not struggle so much. We would pour out our souls with eagerness, we would use every ounce of strength we had to follow the truth, and bring honor to God. We only understand human love, and that love is tainted with self-interest.

You are weak.
You cannot leave behind your love of darkness on your own. You cannot vanquish the evil of your heart with your own hands; you have to give it to the capable hands of God. You don't have to prove your desire for a new life by staring into the face of the enemy with no one by your side - Christ has passed that test for you. Surrender, and put on the armor of the Spirit. We can be radiant, but not until we step out from the darkness and allow ourselves to be broken down, stripped bare, and clothed in beautiful Light.

The truth is, the end has already been written. The night is nearly over, and the day is almost here. This battle will be won by the Army defending truth.

So are you going to fight with them?

Please, God.

I'm not strong enough to hold everyone together.

Don't let go of any of them.