Something has been happening to me, and while I am quite aware of some things, others have caught me unaware. I've compiled mental notes that could fill drawers, and just this week I decided that many of my observations might just be true, and the result of believing them could be rather liberating. I'm reticent to proclaim my broad generalizations, but it's seemed that with these severalfold revelations has come the compounding realization that silence is what has bound me up, and is what often keeps me [and others] down.

Our sweet little ladies book club begins this Monday, and our first short story has been like a fence row hemming in a reality I've just come back to reconsider. I have been distracted, friends, by many things. In this little tale, the author beckons continually to the kernel essence of a man, and his method of enticement is in portraying a door, behind which lies all manner of perfection, contentment, love and bliss. Throughout the story, his true seeing eye darts from clarity to malignancy, and shutters more often betwixt the two. At times he recalls this door with such obscurity that he is unable to discern whether his memory has served to betray of bolster him, and his mind richochets herein for the entirety of our time in the pages. The story is somewhat tragic, and altogether enigmatic, but as I said, its posts have bordered and closed me in in a fantastically unexpected way.

Congruently, I've been in 1 Thessalonians, and while I've skinned my knees on several painful passages, 4:11 has been the canopy atop the shelter I've been missing. It reads: "and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we have commanded you." I tell you, as this verse has seeped in my soul, so many nagging, unrelenting thorns have been loosed and withdrawn by this healing tonic... To be continued tomorrow...

I returned south after a short respite in Pennsylvania, and realized quite quickly that I was here for some strange reason. I know not what I'm to do any more than when I came, but as I rolled down the street, my mind took to its word arrangements, and those sweet, sorrowing, baby-mama's ellicited a tenderness I wouldn't have known otherwise. There is history here, and amidst the sorrow I feel and perceive, there are greater strands of faithfulness that lace and tighten me to the things I cannot see.

It seems I can become enamored with anything that inspires, and thus, the quasi ghettoes and racial blends of this place draw and keep me still. I spin into such anomalies, and study them until I am able to trace eternity therein. I am consistently struck by sorrow, and the untamed driftings of humanity. It seems they are set always upon the foreground of harmony and order, and I am ever-stunned by the paradoxes that are wed in every scenario of this life.

Evermore, I perceive the proclivity in myself to slip in this sorrow, and akin to my kind, I allow lies to burrow and attach themselves in the created crevices where hopes oozed and evaporated in their want of expression and consummation. The fight is fierce, and this dogged youthfulness rises up and attacks despair, while being knocked down with the same sort of bullheaded tenacity characteristic of youth. I am aging though, and it seems disappointment, sorrow, and despair ought not malign me with such a ferocity as they do, and yet I find myself kicked by them, and as inspiration would have it, I am drawn in, and held here...

The Views Beyond

My best days seem to be when a memory dislodges and ascends to the forefront of my mind, where it then fills and nourishes the present with all the joy and fulfillment of the past. I tarry in memory as a vagrant takes on towns.

It seems the present never supplies time enough for reflection, and while we're seeking to savour and enjoy it, we are hardly ever able. I think this is okay, for I love little more than this type of retreat. It seems that the glance within acts as autumn sun, which takes the verdant shoots of summer, and infuses them with a gilding that adorns the more permanent landscape of winter. Memory allows us to bedeck our lives with the presence and acknowledgement of God in them, which takes simple circumstance, weaves sovereignty and truth within them, and casts the temporal into the eternal. Our hearts yearn for this, and we were Created with this in mind.

An ache is present which I cannot identify, and while my pen has been absent from the page I've been trying to sort this all out. A few weeks back I was walking the trails, and the scent of pine was so very strong, that it knocked me clear out of my senses. I imagined unrolling the mantle of earth and crawling under that great blanket of sod -- just to be nearer. I wanted to scale mountains and sleep on top of them -- just to feel. I needed more closeness, more intimacy, and His Creation beckons with a most powerful magnetism that draws me closer still, and yet never close enough. He satisfies, always give more, and yet it's never enough. I want -- I need so much more of Him.

I read this morning in Romans 8. I was struck deeply that the Creation is groaning and longing to released to the glory of the Sons of God, and while my flowers smile and arch with joy toward their Maker, they too long to be released. With the continual dawning of more "natural disasters" and catastrophic events, I question little that Creation indeed is churning and moaning to be set free.

Further down in Romans 8 we read, "In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words." I say thank you, Lord, for I know not even what presses me down, and know that only You will raise me up.

My dad wrote an email yesterday on the day of his 32nd wedding anniversary. He spoke of those years ago, and how he could have never imagined what would have come out of their union. He spoke of time's fleeting, and how he could see that he'd aged, but he couldn't really recall when it'd happened, or even what he used to look like. It was so very beautiful to me, and taking it all to heart, I ask my heavenly Father what it is He'd have me to do while sojourning briefly on this earth. This theme leads me to Moses...

I visit psalm 90 often, and it's lessons always reach me in my throat. I am likened to the withering grass, a three hour watch in the night, and all my finished years are exhaled in a sigh... My life passes as dandelion seeds in the breeze, and if fortunate, some love may linger as perfume on one's sleeve. I am a vapor and I live as if an eternity. It is toilsome to consider, and yet the answer is simple: "Let Your work appear to Your servants and Your majesty to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; and confirm for us the work of our hands; Yes confirm the work of our hands." (vs. 16, 17).

Very little matters but a clearer picture of this. The present, with all its claims and boastings, too will pass away -- and so very quickly! In every sphere we seem to live out of what we do, and accomplish, instead of who we are. We've abandoned the unseen, and set up camp by sight. I spend more time pining over what I don't know, instead of doing what I do. I forget that when I don't know the big picture, I am to simply do the next thing. Spring has never not followed winter, and as surely as unseen life pushes through frozen ground, so too will my life continue to sprout and grow in the care of a benevolent and loving Creator. So, like Moses, I ask the Lord to "teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom." (Vs. 12).

"I will wait for you" by Official P4CM Poet JANETTE...IKZ

Green Pastures ~ Audio Only ~ Emmylou Harris

My heart is biggest when Creation is in view, a raspy (and strangely melodious) voice instructs, a mandolin plucks out my shiny loves, a guitar fills in my days, the bass plays out my sorrow, and a fiddle binds them all up in memory. All loves rise, and all things savory come to mind as those green pastures come in view. There are sparkly loves, and atriums reserved for piano and cello, but in my simple, land-loving heart, I am most enamored with imperfectly perfect songs such as these. I cannot wait to go on home to green pastures.

The Trio : Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt : To know Him Is...

I grew up on this song, and when I stumbled upon it tonight I just had to post it. Three greats here, only perhaps in a questionable fashion era... Nevertheless...