Tag: Advent

Reds – Guest Post: Michelle Ortega

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment

Welcome. Today’s offering is wrapped in beauty from my writer friend Michelle Ortega. Her heart and her art are bursting with loveliness. And love.

Michelle and I first met at Tweetspeak Poetry, a community and online trove of treasures for poets and artists and lovers of beauty, merriment, mirth and laughter. And all things poetry.

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Reds

when my longing

to belong

protests my need

to be free

the fracas

that ensues

impedes peace

I dream

this tree

branches high

above me

unsure how

to proceed

I look up

to see leaves
of fire
overhead
pentecostal reds
limbs stretched
wide
to meet
to greet
the beat of
autumn
wind’s
swirlingflutter
roiling dance

in the moment
holding fast
all too soon
the seasons pass

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About The Writer: Michelle Ortega IS. Her passions include mothering, loving on the meek and outcast, writing poetry and photography (in any given order as opportunities arise).”

Why I Long For Nothing Or Why I Want Intangibles This Christmas

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

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I ache for intangibles. I am longing for a filling in of the void. I am craving, in my empty hollow pit,  change and love come down and hope cracked open. Hope poured out. A drowning out of pain. I limp like the war wounded, dragging a limb with chronic pain. I limp with a ghostly pain for Love to seep into the cracked and bleeding places. Heal as aloe on our weary souls.

I look for The Healing Balm with the eyes of my Advent Heart.

I want with a weary wanting.

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And God is good to allow the empty hollow hunger. For me. I am moved. Pushed in my spirit by the Spirit to a place of chronic pain. To seek the unseen. Covered by the fog of self. Love wide open love Divine all Love out-dwelling. Love indwelling. Love Incarnate. Wash over us. This soul ache means I am made for more. For serving man and other.

If you wrap your love, which I too will do. Whisper prayers over paper and bows. Breathe the breath of prayerful change over boxes and bags of packages wrapped in love and lovely. Look out and in. And help me look in and outward too. To find the intangibles in their walking flesh and bone. And breathe new life. To heal the hurting. Calm the storms. Be the love lived out. Hands and feet multiplied. Oh Multiplier of Mercy.

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Oh but I am in my comfort. With the companion of my ache. And I am with my passion, words. I am not there. The Liberia’s with my serving servant friend. Or Haiti. Where the others that I know are walking. I am here. Longing for nothing. But a Christmas with an overflow. From the heart. Joy jumping high like hot grease in the frying pan, cooking up the Sunday bacon. Hope cracked open like the farm fresh egg, yolk of yellow nourishment. Healing spread like the salve of a mother’s kiss on a wounded blood-soaked knee.

Great tidal waves of salty seas. Of grace. Grow feet and walk up on our shores.

And mark the world with Love come down at Christmas. Love. Unfailing Love. And leave us change. By grace. Leave us changed by Grace. Love the battle winner. Love the conqueror. Love the healer of all ache.

Amen?

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Begotten Not Made – Guest Post: Seth Haines

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

I have gathered a few writer, poets, friends for a series of guest posts. Today I am  privileged to have a writer whose work I have marveled at for a little long while.

I could tell you a few things about this fellow Southerner, father of four boys who practices law, writes poetry and oh, is a musician as well. (He left a few things out of his bio, so I added them here. Host’s prerogative.) But his words tell well on their own.
Welcome Seth and his poetry.

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Begotten Not Made

And though he birthed the star alight,
he took to manger underneath
the humbled cry of stifled speech,
of own begotten form.

He suckled there at woman’s breast,
the mouth of God on human skin
he spoke before the world began,
to birth begotten form.

Confined to flesh and swaddled limbs
restrained his own eternal power;
the starry hosts in witching hour
announced begotten form.

And when the kobalt sky was new,
with blushing east and rising love,
creation ceased its groaning song
and held begotten form.

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Seth Haines

Writer: sethhaines.wordpress.com

Editor: A Deeper Church

Contributor: Tweetspeak Poetry

Curator: Mother Letters

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Joining Laura, a Monday tradition.

Living Out The Prequel

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

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Living Out The Prequel

If I am a story
Or a story is me
And we are turning pages
There is this unfolding
My breath is held and
I may forget to breathe

But living does not rest on whether
I remember
Or I forget

It is the mystery of baited breath
God grants me this until the end
And did God feel this way
On the days, one and two
Knowing what he knew of all that lay ahead
Knowing all he knew
About the peonies in shades of flesh and rose and the oyster with its hidden pearl
The sound of rain and rainy drops
Slowly tickling the backs
Of a parched and desert dry cracked earth

Do I know I know not what is to come

But breathing deep and breathing fast
Swallowed up by the fog of a heaviness
Expectant in the coming next
I know as any mother knows
To hold the baby to her breast and sit back
Long and languid, rest in waiting
Love

I know as the salt marsh tide knows
When to ebb and
When to flow
And in its knower
Knows that it will never stop

I know that I am walking
Through the days of prequel joy
Pregnant in expectancy
Of splitting hairs of heavy wait
Of counting stars and counting dreams
Of wondering how much joy a soul can hold

All the while entangled
In a mystery of how will it all end
And when
In the days left in the waning
Of the remaining

Until healing comes to all

Again

And the prequel gives way
To what He has in store

So I will turn the page
Savoring every word
That was
And will to come

Be still
And hear

the prequel

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