Thank God

I am sorrowful.  I am broken.  No need to say.  Many who oppose will oppose to death and in death.  Hearts are deceptively wicked.  Who can understand?  Who can save us?  “Thank God!  The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.” 

 

Baubles of God

Oh, the deep; the very, very deep things of our hearts.  The ecstasy of pain that knows no name, the joys of meaning that can fill our being.  Our hearts’ raptures can be as full as the moon and as there as a handful of air.  Meaning is everything.  As the sky is blue, so is meaning, the color of our being.  We name its house, heart, but who can place the blue of the sky in our heart?  Our heart is the treasure box of our meaning, filled with trinkets of stars, baubles of God, lost jewels from heaven.  Oh, the tender, aching, deep, deep things of our hearts.   

A deer swimming from our yard to Long Island.

 

A Stake Pounded in the Jungle

The earth is a jungle, a force always demanding a reckoning.  It is relentless, defeating every tool we have to tame it, including man.  My lover and I bought twelve acres of jungle 15 years ago.  We carved out about an acre to cultivate and live on.  It continues to grow and push into us.  Our lawn is the small plot we war over, us against the jungle.  The jungle sends out underground roots to reclaim it, seeds of wild plants blow over it, and wild animals see it as their feeding ground, literally eating everything we bring in and plant.  We keep marching over it, cutting back its grasses, planting more flowers and fruit trees. adding nutrients to the soil, tilling, and killing wicked insects.  At best, we can claim a stalemate, but as I have grown older, I am realizing nature will have the final say.  If I were to walk away today, the jungle would have it all back in a year.  

It is a full-time job dominion-ing one acre.  That “sweat of the brow” declaration is a stake pounded deep into the jungle that no human can ever remove.  

Part of the taming is cutting up the jungle 
Sentinels that fall, which also provide us heat in the winter.

 

A Practice Prayer

Once upon a time, in a cosmos, very, very near, there was a God; a real God, not like Superman, but God.  He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present, all the time.  Forget “faster than a speeding bullet,” he thought up light and made it that fast.  He wrote this Book to tell of all the marvelous things he made to make our lives wonderful, like light, love, taste, mountains, blue skies, and baby elephants.  However, the main thing this God wanted us to know was that He is for us, He made us, He loves us, and wants us to acknowledge Him for His kindness, grace, mercy, generosity, creativity, and abundant blessings, which shower us with blessings every day.  It should be easy to be grateful.

A practice prayer;  “I am so grateful for your Word and you leaving me with this great story of you and your love for me, the earth, the cosmos, everything you have created you love and want me to acknowledge you for your kindness, grace, mercy, generosity, creativity and abundant blessings, showers of blessings, rain down on me every day.  Thank you.”

God's sun setting and lighting up our home like a cathedral.

 

Parenthood

Parenthood never ends but becomes an increasingly complex traverse, and ascension of effort and beauty reserved for only those determined to summit.  Patriarchy and matriarchy are laid by at death, left to the effects of the effectual prayers prayed while we were on earth, and continue long after we have left here; those hallowed grounds we have sown. 

Too Good to be Untrue

Is life to good to be true?  I often think this.  “In solemn stillness,” I sit alone and often see “the world in solemn stillness lay”  My window reveals “it came upon a midnight clear.”  Day comes, night is softly laid away, and there it is.  Life, conscious life of living here on earth, the bright blue Shangri-La of life, chosen of all the specks in the cosmos, “Let there be life,” and it has never been anything but too good to be untrue.  God is good.  God is great.  Let us thank Him. 

  

 

Venerated Relics of the Covenant

We are wrapping up our home build, all the main things in place, beds, refrigerator, easy furniture, silverware, cups, bowls, and plates.  Now, the hardest part of all: the boxes of memories.  Where to put 139 years (our combined ages) of boxed up memories.  Some are momentos, some souvenirs, and some, those that mostly fill our boxes, are relics.  These hold such vivid reminders of our life, when life reminded us how grand living could be.  Consecrated events now held in objects of sacredness stored in cardboard boxes of the covenant, the covenant of, let there be life. Life is the most sacred of all, the time of being alive on this earth.  It is easy to say the hereafter is the reality, and obviously, this is true.  But living itself, as we only know it, is as sanctified an experience as we have, and in that having and being come sacred objects, that now confront my lover and me.  Cardboard boxes…so many cardboard boxes, filled with venerated relics of the covenant of let there be our lives.