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Memories of colors to brighten our grey snow-drenched days

This is full-filling work, this loving of you. This emptying of myself. It's like a siphon. The small sacrifice and draining out of me pulls in the holy living divine and the love pours on and on under the unstoppable weight of eternity. I think I could stay full up this whole life, pouring out daily for you. Bending to serve daily for you. And this bending to serve is not an expectation of gender but a condition of the healthy soul, the king of kings told us with his hands when he came and washed feet. Words are like glass vases, sometimes beautiful but always empty on their own. I will fill my words with my hands, with callouses and tears, quiet sighs and silent embraces, with scrubbing base boards and vacuuming corners, with washing dishes and picking up shoes, with lingering looks and rubbing out your tired bones. When our king's love let nails hammer right through his hands, it shattered any words that could have ever hoped to hold, and the love hangs in the space and the essence of every thing, and with my hands and feet and quiet things I'm gathering that burning love in pieces and wrapping it in fragile words so we can sit and awe at it until it shatters words again and our hands start gathering new ones. That same love breaks me right open. It seems like the world would rush right in to the soft and tender and tear it up but not even the strongest grasps of fear are any match for the roaring flood of love that streams heavy and alive through all the broken places. I am safest when I am cracked and bleeding out. You draw out that first sacrifice and the holy rushes forth and the tumbling waters are singing songs of Shekinah Glory. As your hands and words move daily mundane motions they stir upon the cords that run along the underneath of everything and strike the chords of holy music, holy love, and all the eternal bones of everything resonate and I am the glass that shatters in the singing. I think the goal of all our growing is this breaking. All our Epiphanies become a knowing of a daily living, a simple daily breaking of bread and souls, a shattering and pouring out that starts anew every day and brings new glories before every sunset.

The cliche words and regurgitated poetry publically blasted could make me cringe-- Or I could listen Hear the underneath Feel the swelling awe that bursts right out from you that begs to be shouted, not for any fame but because it burns too bright too hot to hold. A soul whose poetry was too long stifled grasps at old words, remembered pieces stitched together to somehow cup a bit of the stream that rolls ceaseless by carrying days and life and memories away, away, away... Mostly I am looking for vulnerability and the veneer of polished confidence rings hollow But I know better than anyone how naked it feels to write those raw words, how it feels like maybe you'll bleed out right there on the page And the trueness of an artist isn't the ability to judge But to hear

It grows slow as falling snow.

The weight of it all. The flakes are small and light and beautiful, and I want them all, and I take just another, just another, just another...

I think I hear my branches starting to creak. There's a sagging in my shoulders and my smile.

You can get crushed under the weight of too many beautiful things. Of trying to grasp too much, have too much, hold too much. But if all the trees hold onto all the snow and lose all of their branches, where will the birds find to rest?

Sometimes the wind blows sudden and sideways and almost knocks me off my feet, but I can't hold onto the snow then and it hurts bitter cold, and I feel bared and vulnerable but I remember where my roots are and there's a lightness that comes from the emptying.

But sometimes it's softer.

Sometime's it's laughing deep and full with friends that shakes all the snow off.

#sunrise #beautifulcommute #photography

What colors would erupt in our grey-cloud hearts if we threw open the curtains and let the light flood right in? The most vibrant colors come from the most vibrant light.

#photography #poetry #beautifulcommute #more #thanksgiving

My head's bowed and I almost miss it. Bowed and tired, bowed and searching, bowed but not praying. Fighting flickers of guilt and not-enoughness and yesterday was gray and overcast and maybe I thought the colors had already fled for winter. And I'm so late. Not productive at work, not creative enough at home, and feeling hollowed and feeling emptied because the ones that know my soul are so far away. And it's the corner of my eye that knows and drags my head up because I'm on the bridge, that bridge, my favorite bridge, a grey bridge yesterday, and it's that feeling like when somebody tosses something at you and you don't see it until it's right on top of you and you scramble to catch it and you almost don't, but you get a hold of it and you've got it and it's there-- The trees all along the river bank are fire-colors, gold and red and blazing orange, and the sunlight glows along brick and glass buildings and the sky is cast wide with the ribbed belly of the clouds all blue and white in the prettiest fall sweater, and the water ripples so alive. And not far past are three colorful children bouncing down the sidewalk hand-in-hand or chest-to-chest with two colorful mothers, all scarves and stripes and gloves and pompoms, and there's a bright red tree softly waving leaves in sunlight that turns the air to gold-- And the bitter cold of the bus stop makes the warmth of the bus all the sweeter, and all that is worthwhile is well. God's grace for me today is wild and colorful and alive and enough. And all that is worthwhile is well.

The sky is overcast but there is sun at my fingertips Beams of blazing solar tangled up in carbon beads that strung at gaping distance shake violently with all the life they hold Every atom here is made of stars And every thread is made of sunlight

#photography #fragment #sunlight #flowers #poetry

The sun cozies up in blanket clouds and fades into the graying sky and I’m finally homebound.

#sunset #longday #beautifulcommute #clouds #sky

Overcast

Today the clouds hang heavy and turn all the colors gray, and the air feels too thick to breathe, and it seems like maybe all the little beautiful things are swallowed up.

And I'm staring out the bus window, (late because overcast heaviness made it hard to just stand this morning) and I see it -- a little bunch of pale yellow flowers growing in the concrete cracks of the median between crumbling asphalt lanes.

When it was fresh poured, the concrete lay thick and gray over the dirt and maybe it seemed as if there were no chance for life anymore at all.

But it's the clouds that are always shifting and splitting and passing, always passing, and it is the sun that is always steady, always still, always burning, always easing the clouds away from behind.

And today the concrete is crumbling, and today beauty grows from the unseen underneath.

#clouds #flowers #beautifulcommute #seeds #growing

Even in October, there are flowers still blooming brave by the bus stop. ^^

Learning

Twenty four hours now and every breath is full of longing.

It’s been five weeks since I last held my best friend of six years, my Man. Being away is hard.

Saying that, is its own struggle. Aren’t I supposed to be stronger? Aren’t there many many much harder things, literally struggles for breath and longings for food right this national, global moment? Yes. But this is still hard for me. And God cares about every little struggle.

But as I long, the same voice that tries to justify that my hard is hard enough to complain about cuts sharp — “You’re immature, infatuated. Don’t the saints long only for God?”

But quieter in my longing I hear an echo — an echo of God’s longing for every heart, for every single heart that ran so deep it brought him to shaking, suffering, humiliated death. And I hear it soft.

It’s not this OR God, it’s God IN this.

Instead of God demanding “Love me like this” he is whispering “this is how I love you.”

With abandon. Enough to ache. Enough to weep. Enough to long.

Somewhere along the way I misplaced knowing that God feels, wildly, passionately, perfectly, unfathomably. I love wisdom, and wisdom does make fences, but I’m relearning that those fences are so my heart can breathe safe and I am free to feel.

If every pang of longing reminds me that my God aches with longing for me, for every soul, what is not holy, what is not lovely, what is not pure about that?

This God doesn’t want me to rid myself of these mundane loves, he wants to own them, to breathe his spirit into them, to be in every little thing.

God in my art. God in my stories. God in my commute. God in just how much I love this man.

So I will love, and I will long, and I will learn.

#learning #god #smallgraces #longdistance #love #relationships #christianity

The 1 Bus

When my Man is far away and mom-hugs are farther and my roommates feel like strangers (despite being true and beautiful sister-friends) and my sense of belonging is ruffled by clothes strewn everywhere but nothing on the walls, how is it that the 1 Bus feels like home? From these blue plastic seats of the 1 Bus I have seen a many great and hidden things. I set aside, I schedule, I reserve this time on the bus for looking. And I see. Sometimes in the sunrise. Sometimes in a stranger's blue suit with red tie and ponytail, sometimes in a driver's kindness, or his warm and wide-grinned "Go make that money!" Sometimes in making my connection in two minutes, or in waiting fifteen, in pastel clouds over quicksilver water, the happy giggles of a child sitting next to me, flowers on the roadside, clouds lit up from inside, the offer of a traded seat, and often, so often, in the sifting and cradling of my memories. I see great and hidden things. I keep company with God. We walk and look together, like a father and a daughter in the field, and I find a ladybug and he tells me all about it, and then I blow its wings and it flutters off so I can go bury my face in the wild flowers and run with the breeze. Men have laid their lives on altars of success and poured out their dreams and hopes and visions with all their blood to find eternity. And yet somehow I breathe it every weekday morning.

#MBTA

Boomerang

boomerang slicing back through space The snapping arm and tearing heart of throwing free to fly Turning away and hit from behind with gut sick throat ache stuck right between ribs that safe caged the heart and kept everything out but that whirl-back shot But the heart thrashes wild now gushing out foolish pretense and steps running back the familiar way slick with pride poured out and at the next footfall the ground holds the brave shoulder and the high head in bled-out puddles of soul awakening amniotic and sobs crack tears on virgin cheeks still tremble shiver breathes fresh air in the newly empty places wonder-eyed awake

Fall Retreat 2014

This color lives It is the long, slow inhale of the rising sun stretching first tentative rays shattered and scattered and broken until all that remains is the fire of it

#sunrise

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