Color Me: Weekend Poetry

March 15, 2014March 16, 2014 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 1 Comment

Color Me

The color of mercy, royal aubergines and plum
Whimsy, fuchsia, lime and auburn
Reds, fiery wild and burning free
Navy, calm and self-assured

And when the last color is pulled from the box
An attempt to shade and cover-up
To re-make what is simply there
Erase it all and start again
Wipe it void and color-free
White, make me white
And free from pain and sin
Make me new
This Lent
Prepare my soul to meet The Christ,
The Empty Tomb, The Cross

Color me new
Color me anything but me

Prepare me
Easter new

And then send me out to color wild and free again
Outside the lines
Of timidity and fear, constrained and shackled
Held by death and sin
Send me out free
To make art and serve
Spilling forth Hallelujahs
In turquoise, rose and marigold

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Joining Sandy and Deidra for her Sunday Community

Somewhere Between Lamentations and The Psalms

January 20, 2014January 23, 2014 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 9 Comments

Somewhere Between Lamentations and The Pslams

I am dancing between the pages
Of Lamentations
More of a slow forced march
I would rather laugh
Like a crow, turned toward the sky
At the sun pouring in
At the squirrel on his high wire act
At bird chasing a cat
And a dog chasing his tail.

But I am in the pages of weeping
Where the heart plays the re-runs
And the soul forgets the grace
And mercy drips from the faucet
Like summer’s drought.

I know there are pages to turn
And the fingers are quick
But the heart is slow

To find itself in the
Pages of rejoicing

But when I recall
The chapters of joy
Highlighted and hope
And a three year girl
Who called them P saums

Then I am in the pages
The ones filled with the love
Of Christ
The wiper of tears
And today they are mine

Joining my beauty seeking friend Laura and on Thursday with Lyli.

A Tale Of Two Churches, A Tale of Two Holidays

November 25, 2013November 25, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

A Tale of Two Holidays

It is snowing in places which don’t see much snow. And there is a white out. An indistinguishable cloaking of celebrations. Is it Thanksgiving time, is it Christmas time. They are morphing and blending into a hybrid one. She can see a blur of holiday on the horizon. It is one, no it is two.

Yesterday we bought lights. I said we can hang them but not plug them in. Preparing, but straddling. Doing something, but remaining decidedly present in a Thanksgiving mindset. I am glad we did neither. Because for our home, spiritually and physically, we slowed down for Thanksgiving. We freed up mental space, spiritual room for more of Thanksgiving.

Unless I burrow down and turn off more of the world, I will continue to hear and see early Christmas. And that is okay, because I can look to and dwell on the birth of Christ in the rooms of my heart. And prepare Him room.

But I want a Thanksgiving-tide a season focusing on everything that is. I want a little separation of heart space. To be a thanksgiving family. To be a thanksgiving mother. To focus my energy for a least a few more days on extreme gratitude. So that I can fuel up my heart for the other 364 days, to be a year-round person of thankfulness.

In just a few more days it will be Black Friday. Admittedly I want to hide, run away from all that day represents. I can choose not to participate, yes, always.

Maybe one day the day following Thanksgiving can be re-named “The Day of Residual Thanks”. Where we are so full, not of food and excess, but of gratefulness and gratitude that it spills out. Everywhere. Marking the world, telling other souls of what joy is found in living a life colored grateful. Not black. But the colors of extreme joy. For whatever we have. For just what we have. And just be. A Thanksgiving People, once again.

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A Tale Of Two Churches

She stepped off the front stoop of her little brick
home

Turned right, past the prayer labyrinth
Walked, thirty seconds
in her Alice gait, I am late for a very important date
blown by brisk winds at her back

Turned the knob of the old door, worn and gray
And entered into a sacred salty Sunday
Sanctuary, the church named for a saint

taking her seat beside him, it is now almost their pew
doing that claiming a seat thing that Protestants like to do
Wriggling in close to him to warm her soul, her body
too, touched by the cold
Her seat, worn red velvet, she thinks to herself
Frozen in time, there is nothing in this world she could possibly
Need, she is here
Saying the Nicene Creed
And the Eucharist and the Hymns
Hemmed in by him and extravagantly humble stained-glass
Blinded by beauty, familiar
She is home
Where the baby garbles a sweet uh-oh
And the gray-haired lady,so regal and tall and very very old
Coughs and clears her aging throat
Where the sermon sings truth where good news comes giddy
announced to the almost full pews
“we bought a water buffalo.”
Oh she is home.

But when she stepped off the stoop
She could have turned left, too
Turned the key on the SUV
Turned left then left again on Hightway Seventeen
Driven down the four-lane road
Littered not with trash
But with splattering scenes of the sea
And salt marsh grass
Yes
She could have turned the door
Of the rather new church
Built with the reclaimed
Wood, to look old
Starred at the old rugged cross
While listening to the very new
Songs of praise

She holds a dual-citizenship
Feels a bit bilingual
As her heart lingers
Straddles two sanctuaries
And she wonders
Whose idea was it
After-all
To be forced to make a decision
About church and worship.

She may be a very long while
In this place
Of indecision, spiritual ambidextrious
Raising her hands, no, now leaving them down
Living within the body of Christ
A soul without the physical walls
Of a holy home.
Stretched, yet happy
Halved, yet whole
Wandering, yet not lost
No not at all.

A member of the body
The body of Christ,
Alone.
And she is at peace at last
At home.

Joining Laura Boggess at Laura Boggess dot com for Playdates At The Wellspring

And Michelle DeRusha at Michelle DeRusha dot com

Church

November 11, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 16 Comments

Church

A place for dry bones to shake rattle and roll in the spirit of the Lord
Among a cast of hundreds of women who were strangers
Strangers I tell you until hours before
A foretaste of heaven
Look to your right and to your left
Look with the eyes of your heart
The countenances shine like you have stepped to the other side
This is the Hyatt for goodness sake
This is a hotel, glory be
Sisterhood deep and wide like the mighty Mississippi after the rains
Came for forty days and forty nights
Shoulder to shoulder breaking bread
Singing standing, singing sitting, singing dancing
And there were tears
No shortage of the salty rivers of release
Each drop a celestial star, blinking, twinkling
A milky way of mothers and others.

A room
Small and crowded
Where you listen deep and hard and squint and furrow
Your eyes and brow
Like a net, you cast your soul to catch every single drop of good words
About art on the other side
Of the cross
You meet a woman
A sister
She is waiting in another repository of words to tell her story
And you listen
To why you breathe and make and write and why it matters
And a sister jumps up and ends the talk in prayer
Preach it sister
Preach it
Worship, in a small crowded room
Hearts seeking to make art to His glory
A gathering, communion of saints, prayer
A good word delivered
Focusing on Him
In a downtown Greenville hotel.

And we rush out
Discuss how very late we are
We are late paces from the house
We are at the door
Their dog is lying in wait for church to let out
And her bike with the artful basket
Propped up on the side of this old
Church
We slip in, slither in a pew, the sermon
It is well into the resurrection story
Of life and death
You could hear a pin drop among the sea of graying
I cast my net
Eager for words of living and dying
Shoulder to shoulder, twenty-five years
And a baby cries
And the organ plays
And we speak to the preacher on our way out
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost
As it was, it shall forever be

The dog picks up his people and they go home
Church is out.
And we breathe deep the glory from our time
In church.

Joining Laura at Laura Boggess dot com

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Church

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