Soulful Sunday

August 26, 2013August 27, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 6 Comments

My eyes have seen the light
Dancing like flashing Christmas lights
At Lowe’s
Late August
Walking on water, sparkling
Diamonds under glass at the jeweler’s on King
Twitchy groom making his selection
From the choice of rocks and chips
Mid-day fireworks on display
Fall jump-started herself
Showed up early
Sunshine played a symphony
He says
It is the prettiest day of the year
Cliche
Until you both realize he is right
Subjective, perspective
Introspective
We pass almost no other
Just we two
For awhile
After we sang
“They’ll know we are Christians By Our Love”
Standing in an old white church
Could it be this includes
The way we love God art
Too
This was before he placed
The gifts from the sea
Battered up
Into the pan
Caught with his hands
This was before
Statistics on the couch
And feeding the dog
At 17 you can choose math over
Madness
And we missed all the fuss and grinding
On the boob tube
Mother called it that
Now maybe it really is
This was before night fell
With a blackened promise
Of healing hands and new Monday’s
Come after soulful Sunday’s
That preacher sure did nail it
Words about lifting up
If Sunday had hands, a pitcher’s grip
A steady grasp
Toned biceps
And a six-pack
I could swear it raised me up
Sunday
You are something else.

Joining Laura Boggess, Jen , Heather and Michelle

Beautiful And Lovely Finds Along The Way

August 3, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 3 Comments

I am looking back, into the glass of the rear view mirrored lens of lovelies. These are some of the beautimous things in my remembering. I want to share with you.

1. A Lovely Film — “Quartet”. You may watch the trailer here. You’re most welcome.

2. A Lovely Poem — Today at Burnside Writer’s Collective there is a beautiful poem entitled “This Ain’t Rocket Science” by John Blase. I am fond of his poetry. All of it. This piece is lovely. If you want to read more of John’s poetry he blogs at The Beautiful Due. There are beautiful poems just waiting for you there.

3. A Lovely Line From A Book — I am reading several books at once, alternating between books on poetry, fiction, non-fiction, you name it. This from “Writing Poetry From The Inside Out: finding your voice through the craft of poetry by Sandford Lyne”:

All of this is to say that, for the person who works at writing poems, life is never again the same. Seeing is not the same. Hearing is not the same. Thinking is not the same. Remembering is not the same. And dreaming is not the same. Everything is bigger; everything is more palpable.”

4. A Lovely Classic — I am slowly reading this Thomas Wolfe classic while I am “home again”. So, in fact and ironically, you can both go home again and read a tome entitled you can’t when you can when you have a propensity for shorter and much pithier writing styles. I may finish it one day, perhaps before my children have children.

6. A Lovely Childhood Memory– Oh does this book bring back wonderful childhood memories. The illustrations by Maurice Sendak are whimsical and wonderful. And the humor and message for both children and adults on being well-mannered is marvelous. I highly recommend it. You are welcome, my dear.

7. A Lovely New Memory – Visiting The Chapel Of The Prodigal to see the lovely fesco with my mother while a music student practices the piano. Looking forward to this next season of Downton Abbey. Mother is too. We sat and listened to the theme from this Masterpiece Theater Classic while we soaked in the glory of the fresco.

8. A Lovely Scene From The Natural World – This Oak Hydranga takes my breath away. every. single. time. I walk by. Glory be.

9. A Lovely Idea Well Executed – Emily Freeman from Chatting at the Sky blog has a monthly link up entitled “What I Learned This Month”. Visit her blog and read some rather interesting lists of things learned in July by her readers and fellow bloggers. You may especially enjoy my friend Shelly Miller’s list of July “things”. Shelly blogs at Redemtpion’s Beauty and her list can be found here.

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I am on instagram @graceappears and on facebook. It would be lovely to see you there.

Beautiful Broken

March 28, 2013March 28, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 10 Comments

Maybe the best way to write of the broken, to tell of the broken, to bleed words of broken, is in a broken way. And that is all I have any way. Outside of The One Who Makes Things Whole and New. The Great Restorer Of All Broken.

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Why do I miss the beautiful in the broken, when the broken is the beautiful. At first glance I saw a dried flower. Crooked, bent and missing petals. At second glance I saw through a lens of grace and true beauty.

I played and basked in the warm early Spring sun, wrapped in layers of warmth. My body warmed by clothing. My soul warmed by her children. Their creativity and passion for living called out to me. Called out to my needy soul. Their invitations to enter into a world of imagination were beautiful and trusting. We had never met. But we were lost in the world of playful discovery for two of the happiest hours of my week, this Holy Week. I was renewed, my dry bones in need, by two children who took me from my broken adult world, into their precious world.

My joy came from their contagious child-like joy. To see through the eyes of little ones with their unbridled thirst for twirling and running and dancing. For going as high in the sky as the swing will go. Brave and bold. Their hunger for a story of imaginary brides and their clover bouquets. And eyes that see dirt as a canvas.

I looked at the dried hydranga. And though it is my favorite flower and the one that I long to see bloom in the spring, I missed the beauty upon first glance. And then the artist eyes of Kelly revealed the beauty to me, anew. Fresh. Glorious beauty in the broken. Do you see the transformation from broken to beautiful. The tender way her fingers hold this fragile flower.

How many times must I be shown the beauty in the broken.

He reveals it to me fresh and new, in His patient way. And I am a child learning again.

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I keep returning to this picture taken by a friend, my dearest. I have spent time staring at its broken beauty. The wall is gray, the day was
gray, the one when we stumbled on this wooden cross. But what shines through is the rugged beauty, tilted beauty and simple truth about the cross. Here there is no gold, nor diamonds or even turquoise or silver. Here there is wood, faded and barely hanging on.

There is beautiful broken redemptive love shining through the gray.

And I am learning to see the beauty in the broken. And to seek the broken and find true beauty there.

That is what I am and He loves me in my broken, shattered, imperfect, fragile state. And sees even me as beautiful.

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The new life is seeking to push through the cold dark winter that does not want to end. And daily I am wrapping around the needs of the broken
lives of friend. We pray for each other. Cry out in pain to one another. Please, please pray.

And I write down the names and the list is long. And I read the news and shutter and walk away. At the brokeness. At the pain and despair.

But the beautiful part is that He knows, sees and feels every ounce of my pain and hurt. That my trembling is held in the hands of the Healer. And that He hears the weakest of prayers and the feeblest muttering of my heart as I intercede for my family, friends, and strangers.

We are broken but held, broken but heard, and broken but Loved.

And I can take it all in my broken strides and my limping gate to an Easter cross where the Savoir arises from the dead and the broken body is made whole.

There is so much glory in the broken.

And I am learning to seek understanding as I wait for the re-creation of broken to whole.

As I look upon that wondrous cross…

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I see beauty and my heart cries out for Him.

He is making everything Easter new. That news is worthy of loud praises, shouts of Alleluia and twirling and dancing like a child, a child of God. Write it down, in the dirt of the earth. Write it down and remember.

Finally, I am learning again and again to see through a lens of His amazing Grace, the beautiful in the broken.

With and through the eyes of a child.

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Joining Michelle and Jennifer

Into The Beautiful

March 20, 2013March 21, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 7 Comments

The broken shards, the razor sharp edges , cut like jagged glass. And we bleed. We bleed red, we bleed tears, we bleed fear and trembling.

The spinning earth throws us into a tailspin, head long into her tail winds. Upright vertical, we now are nearly horizontal. Stretched by the force of gale force winds of living.

We walk limp and slant. We walk bent and drag our weary cane, invalids on the life march.

Without Your beauty. Rust and all.

Frame for me the beautiful every time and everywhere. Share your canvas, ripe and waiting.
And let me paint with You.

Lend your kaleidoscope eyes to me. To see a sky while still barely breathing. Battered from the power of beautiful. Shaken by creation’s power. Every single time. You repeat and re-repeat your holy masterpieces. And form them into new again.

Point me toward the beautiful so I can see as you.

Hold me in the beautiful, while frayed edges of my soul seem faint and frail and close to death. Mark the God art everywhere and peel the scales from my blind eyes. Take the old and make it new, once again. you create and re-create at speeds which dizzy human flesh, spinning life in your formed beautiful.

I lay awestruck in the path of creation’s beautiful. Its blazing trail of color, texture, shape and form.

Heal me with Your beautiful. Cradle me in the woven glory of your hands. Shelter me in storms of lovely where brilliant moons and radiant light drip down on life lived here. Walk me toward the beautiful. And lay me down in sheets of white linen crisp and cool. Where I can slumber in the beautiful with knowing of your holy steady hand.

Rock me roll me into a holy beautiful, where I can dance with You. And wake to waltz in fields of beautiful, growing outside the portal of my world.

Teach me, show me beautiful, when broken cries come look at me. And help me see Your beautiful in the midst of raging deadly seas.

Just wrap me up in rags of sacred lovely. That bind my bleeding wounds. And let me feel your healing hands surround me as I lay there soaking in the salty waters, beautiful on sandy shores of grace.

Wash me in the white hot beautiful, clean, awake and ready to receive all beauty made by you. Remove the blinders on my eyes which block the morning dew and green spring new. That shadow, hide the up and coming shoots of Earth’s new offerings.

And point me toward your beautiful, in broken, shattered, hurting places.

Teach me how to find the beautiful. Paint it, write it, sing it out. Loud enough to echo toward the deaf ,yet soft enough to whisper with a sweet I love you.

Just spin me, twirl me, brace me in the broken beautiful so I can weave a masterpiece of beauty. And point always back to you.

With your gentle hands of grace.

Lead me steady straight

And cross me over mercifully,

Into beautiful.

I’m asking God for one thing, only one thing: To live with him in his house my whole life long. I’ll contemplate his beauty; I’ll study at his feet. – The Message, Psalm 27

Joining Emily and the group of writers there that have become friends at Imperfect Prose on Thursdays. Come by and read, visit, quietly or drop your own words into the link up there. Emily’s is the place for grace.

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