Tag: #CharlestonStrong

Both Sides Of My Mouth: Lamentations and Praise

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 1 Comment

joy boat leland

Both Sides Of My Mouth: Lamentations and Praise

Don’t call me duplicitous
Call me human
As I look to the Divine
Rent in two
Ripped and torn
Half here and half there
With a mouth full of lamentations and praise
I have pushed the cheek full of both
The tongue is muted in the mystery of the days
Hoarding the praise, as if it would leave me wanting
Malnourished because of its lack
In a diet
Heavy with lamenting

Heat and heavy hang in the air
It is summer and it is the South
But it is filled with grief and loss
So it is heavier and hotter and more burdensome this year
Rife with pain
Heat and heavy hang here
Suspended in the invisible netting of  time

But I have a place to hold on to both’s and and’s
Do not call me names
Filled with an unknowing
The Psalmists knows this place well
Where they dwell
Across the pages
One from the other
Lamentations and Praise

I will raise a hand to wipe a tear
And I will raise another to point to that which is worthy of praise

C0-inhabitants
Side by side
Prayers running over the cup
I am weak and can barely lift it to my
Two lips
One whispers grief
One praise

Lift the cup for me
And I will life the cup for you
I am drying tears
They mix with sweat on the brow of the mourners

We cannot turn the page, yet
We are called into a time of grief
Joy will come in the mourning

Perhaps: A Prayer

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 1 Comment

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Perhaps: A Prayer

If I speak at just the right time
With just the right words
With well-chosen volume, tone, tenor and pitch

Perhaps
There will be an ear to hear the real sorrow in my heart
Of the one’s who bear a real generation after generation hurt

Perhaps
If I pray at just the right time, under the steeple that holds all the people
With well-chosen words
In four-walls, holy and hallowed, sacred and filled with appropriate  thee’s and thou’s

A crack in the hardness will melt a bit
Mercy and grace will find a way through it
Healing will look and find her way in

But what if I do
Much more than I have
Bearing more weight than the things that I’ve said
Imagine each of us
Able
Perhaps
To do and make change
Touch someone, reach someone
With acts of reconciliation, healing and love

Every word
Every prayer

Maybe they will be multiplied over and over again
Rippling and ebbing
Flowing from this shore to that shore
East coast and west coast
Flooded in acts of loving our neighbor
Asking forgiveness
And simply doing the one thing we all can do
Love

Love is a verb
Do justice, love mercy

Make my days matter
Multiply my remaining
Give me a heart for the hurting
And place me on roads inward to work toward
A long season of sacred healing

Take all I have
And use it for good
Amen
And amen, again and again

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