How shall I pray?
Are tears prayers, Lord?
Are screams prayers,
or groans
or sighs
or curses?
Can trembling hands be lifted to you,
or clenched fists
or the cold sweat that trickles down my back
or the cramps that knot my stomach?
Lord, help me!
Help me to accept you as you are, Lord:
mysterious,
hidden,
strange,
unknowable.
Lord, help me to trust you.
8.14.2011
silver valley reflection
What does it mean to be loved, or to love someone?
Like when you're at the fair and somebody plays some ridiculous-odds game to win you a completely silly and in a normal context childish stuffed bear, but you just feel happy and proud. Or when you have a partner for all the roller coasters, someone coaxing you into cold water, because they know you're a wimp when it comes to anything less than 85 degrees but they also know you'll jump in if properly encouraged.
Someone who is rarely angry with you, and never scary, but if they do get upset you are immediately convicted and repentant, because their word really matters. Someone to hold your hand when your blood is being drawn or you're getting an IV, even though you've had it done a hundred times before alone, and you were okay. Someone to care for you when you're sick and take you seriously.
Someone to feel safe with in a foreign city or a late night. Someone to share the rising moon and owl call, the coyote dance and the sound of the river where you're camping. Someone to talk about things with, like aren't caves crazy? And can you imagine waiting out a wildfire in a tunnel for a week, or the feeling of a friend lost in the woods even for only 20 hours, or what it'd be like to stumble onto a hibernating grizzly?
Someone to kayak and canoe and rockclimb and hike with. To go on bike rides and road trips and almost kill each other but then make up at the top of the pass, or when you first glimpse the ocean. Someone who listens to you and engages you and questions you and shares with you, stories and thoughts and questions. Who also calls you out when you're being ridiculous, or petty or selfish or elitist or bossy, all of which you can be.
Someone who adores your body, and tells you so, in a healthy, celebratory way. Someone who gets your commentary and adds humor to the rough and the awkward and the strange and the heartbreaking. Someone who doesn't need to have an opinion about everything and helps you to know that you don't either. Someone who holds you and protects you and trusts you and wants you. Or maybe desires you.
Maybe these things are the way of love, yes, but perhaps, I would argue, to love someone the most is to let go.
Like when you're at the fair and somebody plays some ridiculous-odds game to win you a completely silly and in a normal context childish stuffed bear, but you just feel happy and proud. Or when you have a partner for all the roller coasters, someone coaxing you into cold water, because they know you're a wimp when it comes to anything less than 85 degrees but they also know you'll jump in if properly encouraged.
Someone who is rarely angry with you, and never scary, but if they do get upset you are immediately convicted and repentant, because their word really matters. Someone to hold your hand when your blood is being drawn or you're getting an IV, even though you've had it done a hundred times before alone, and you were okay. Someone to care for you when you're sick and take you seriously.
Someone to feel safe with in a foreign city or a late night. Someone to share the rising moon and owl call, the coyote dance and the sound of the river where you're camping. Someone to talk about things with, like aren't caves crazy? And can you imagine waiting out a wildfire in a tunnel for a week, or the feeling of a friend lost in the woods even for only 20 hours, or what it'd be like to stumble onto a hibernating grizzly?
Someone to kayak and canoe and rockclimb and hike with. To go on bike rides and road trips and almost kill each other but then make up at the top of the pass, or when you first glimpse the ocean. Someone who listens to you and engages you and questions you and shares with you, stories and thoughts and questions. Who also calls you out when you're being ridiculous, or petty or selfish or elitist or bossy, all of which you can be.
Someone who adores your body, and tells you so, in a healthy, celebratory way. Someone who gets your commentary and adds humor to the rough and the awkward and the strange and the heartbreaking. Someone who doesn't need to have an opinion about everything and helps you to know that you don't either. Someone who holds you and protects you and trusts you and wants you. Or maybe desires you.
Maybe these things are the way of love, yes, but perhaps, I would argue, to love someone the most is to let go.
8.13.2011
sisters in india
Elle and Rita's writing from their current pilgrimage through India is worth reading, if you have a minute.
I know I only post in other people's words these days, but this quote got me:
"If you keep telling the truth, regardless of how embarrassing, it'll have a profound effect on you. It'll begin to free and heal you. And you'll actually begin to behave like less of a neanderthal.''
I know I only post in other people's words these days, but this quote got me:
"If you keep telling the truth, regardless of how embarrassing, it'll have a profound effect on you. It'll begin to free and heal you. And you'll actually begin to behave like less of a neanderthal.''
8.11.2011
3am / gregory alan isakov [listen here]
well it's 3 a.m again, like it always seems to be
driving northbound, driving homeward, driving wind is driving me
and it just seems so funny that i always end up here,
walking outside in the storm while looking way up past the tree-line
it's been some time…
give me darkness when i’m dreaming
give me moonlight when i’m leaving
give me shoes that weren’t made for standing
give me tree-line, give me big sky, give me snow-bound, give me rain clouds
give me a bed time…just sometimes
you were my friend, and i was the same
riding that hope was like catching some train
well now i just walk, i don't mind the rain
but i’ve been singing so much softer than i did back then
the night, i think, is darker than we can really say
and god’s been living in that ocean, sending us all the big waves
and i wish i was a sailor so i could know just how to trust,
maybe i could bring some grace back home to the dryland for each of us
say what you say, you say it so well
just say you will wait, like snow on the rail
i've been combing that train yard for some kind of sign
even my own self, it just don’t seem mine
give me darkness when i’m dreaming, give me moonlight when i’m leaving
give me mustang horse and muscle, 'cause i won't be going gentle
give me slant-eye looks when i’m lying, give me fingers when i’m crying
and i aint out here to cheat you, see i killed that damn coyote in me…
driving northbound, driving homeward, driving wind is driving me
and it just seems so funny that i always end up here,
walking outside in the storm while looking way up past the tree-line
it's been some time…
give me darkness when i’m dreaming
give me moonlight when i’m leaving
give me shoes that weren’t made for standing
give me tree-line, give me big sky, give me snow-bound, give me rain clouds
give me a bed time…just sometimes
you were my friend, and i was the same
riding that hope was like catching some train
well now i just walk, i don't mind the rain
but i’ve been singing so much softer than i did back then
the night, i think, is darker than we can really say
and god’s been living in that ocean, sending us all the big waves
and i wish i was a sailor so i could know just how to trust,
maybe i could bring some grace back home to the dryland for each of us
say what you say, you say it so well
just say you will wait, like snow on the rail
i've been combing that train yard for some kind of sign
even my own self, it just don’t seem mine
give me darkness when i’m dreaming, give me moonlight when i’m leaving
give me mustang horse and muscle, 'cause i won't be going gentle
give me slant-eye looks when i’m lying, give me fingers when i’m crying
and i aint out here to cheat you, see i killed that damn coyote in me…
8.03.2011
''Seek the real--with everything that is in you. More than life. More than breath. More than health. More than blessing. More than gifts. Ask for love. Not just once. Over and over for the rest of your days, till your voice is hoarse, and with shriveled hand you point to your own aged heart and with one dying word whisper, 'More.' ''
-Beth Moore
-Beth Moore
8.01.2011
''Alas, another form of tainted trust is dishonesty with Jesus. Sometimes we harbor an unexpressed suspicion that he cannot handle all that goes on in our minds and hearts. We doubt that he can accept our hateful thoughts, cruel fantasies, and bizarre dreams. We wonder how he would deal with our primitive urges, our inflated illusions, and our exotic mental castles. The deep resistance to making ourselves so vulnerable, so naked, so totally unprotected is our way of saying, 'Jesus, I trust you, but there are limits.'
By refusing to share our fantasies, worries, and joys, we limit God's lordship over our life and make it clear that there are parts of us that we do not wish to submit to divine conversation. It seems that the Master had something more in mind when he said, 'Trust in me.' ''
-Brennan Manning
By refusing to share our fantasies, worries, and joys, we limit God's lordship over our life and make it clear that there are parts of us that we do not wish to submit to divine conversation. It seems that the Master had something more in mind when he said, 'Trust in me.' ''
-Brennan Manning
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