Tag: Faith

Gazing At The Ordinary Marvelous

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

Today is Day Poetic 

Have you noticed a little quiet pause. Is it bending or breaking the 31 Days “code of writing to triple up” one post to cover three days in the series. Ah, I have been living and traveling and noticing. And thinking of this place and space while it was quiet. Were you out noticing while it was quiet? Have you even noticed that I was gone?

Today is Day 21 ( and 20 and 19)

wpid-IMG_20130814_185820.jpgGazing at The Ordinary Marvelous

I have wondered through a maze of noticing
Sat on every word unfurled from  preacher’s lips
Not mine, on prayer, unending
Every note, black, ballet dancer up and down
That old red hymnal, still smells like memories of Methodist
Smells a certain way
Doxology dances off the yellow pages, runs rifts
Of remembering ordinary marvelous
Weaves a red thread through the years and days

And I have wandered through a maze of bittersweet
Returning with my fragile heart and mind
I long to change a memory
Bur, for all my trying I can’t rewrite it
Into something better, brighter, sweeter
Babys at the alter, dipped in sacred fonts
Will stir the waters that run deep
Inside a mother’s  broken heart

I have wondered through the winding
Roads that lead me home to Woodland Heights
Where I am met with fond recalling
Early morning, late at night
Bookended by the generations
Stories that go on and on, echoing down the mountain
There are no secrets anymore
Rolling tires crunch  crush the brittle leaves
A slow and gentle breaking
On this road to my returning
I have come back home again, met by autumn’s gold dust shining
She opens wide the door for me.

Everything is ordinary
Marvelous as it should be
Concentric circles of recalling
Spokes that find their way back to the center
Tines which gently poke inside, time and time again
Urge me to recall while listening to the echo of
The winsome valley train

Everything is marvelous
The circles spin like hands clockwise round the rounded clock
Face the moments, ordinary
Savor all the pieces of the past
Colliding with the present
All this noticing
Never seems to stop
For if it did and if it were
If the door to my eyes and memory
Were to close and come to final rest
Death would meet me at the end of marvelous
Where all the ordinary  settles into peacefulness

While time presents herself
At daybreak, new and wondrous once again
I  go forth to gather
All the ordinary marvelous
Where we sing  loud and joyful
A searcher’s song, a hymn of praise
Let Noticing her loud and lively anthem raise.

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(To read all posts in this 31 day series, The Art of Noticing, click here to land on Day One and a listing of all posts) I am joinging The Nester at The Nester dot com for October. Click here to check out some of the other writers/bloggers who are accepting this writing challenge. There are some wonderful writers participating in several cool categories.

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Joining Laura Boggess at Laura Boggess dot com . It is where I go on Mondays for a writer’s Playdate.

Entanglement – Noticing Jealousy

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

wpid-IMG_20130830_200328.jpgToday is Day 18

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Empty beach shadow profileEntanglement

It comes in waves. But mostly it remains at sea.
Mirrors and mimics the tides.
Mercifully stays off shore for long and healthy seasons.
Recedes.
Replacing white-capped waves with tranquil seas.
And then the storms come
Churning up the waters,  turbulence sucks and spits and spins
Water spouts pop up in the darkest of spaces
Blow backwash in the pristine open air
Monstrous waves drown out joy
Bury hope beneath the weight of the abyss
And the wailing begins, again
Doubt is dumped like heavy silt
From the bottom, ocean’s floor
Wind and waves roar
Splash mockingly at me
Pieces of the soul, taken by the raging sea
Deposits broken bounty on the rock
Sun burned now they shatter
Cracked and brittle, bleached out
Under the blazing sun’s
Hallowed blinding rays
Unrelenting heat
Fire
Of the belly, from the pit
Killing off
All that  once was good
Replacing it with death

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It comes in waves
And when it does it drowns
Out perspective
Washes away
The gifts
Dilutes the passion and the art
Water logs the spirit
Dampens the soul
Like wrinkled flesh
The blessings
Now seem water logged
And repetitions of the sinful same
Bury treasures
The sea soaked soul
Her watery grave
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It comes in waves.
A gentle ebb, a gentle flow.
She scurries shorebird like
Running from the watery fingers of the waves
Seeks shelter from entanglement in
Nets of grasses
Jelly fish, the stinging nettles
Out to harm and weigh her down.

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And so it will be
Like the sea
Forever prsent, as the tides
An ebb
A flow
An in
An out
She seeks the shelter more, not less
A place of safety in the arms
Of  Creator of The Sea
And claims her prize
She runs from pride
In calm sweet waters
Now
And dives deep boldly into
Pools of  calm sweet grace
A ring of mercy safely round her neck
The  Saver of Her Soul
Floating now, in peace, atop
Wave on wave of His amazing grace.

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Ready Set Go Notice

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Running Errands As A Middle Aged House WIfe

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

 Today is Day 17

Welcome to The Art of Noticing. A 31 Day series exploring what it means to notice all that God has for us as we live richly, deeply in the  folds of the everyday. We are a little over half way there. I don’t want this journey to end. If you’d like to subscribe there is a tab for that at the top and at the bottom of the home page.

Ready. Set. Go Notice

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Running Errands As A Middle Aged House Wife
A few hours ago I did not yet know

The lady at the drive thru
Missing teeth, at Bojangles
Or the man at the Rite-Aid missing one or two too
I wish I laughed harder at his attempt at humor
I stink at faking it
It is easy to look away
But kindness rested in their gaps
And I drove away feeling the need to
Breathe prayers,
Humbled am I, the one who got the full set
And as of now keeps them
And I am not handing Diet drinks through the
Drive-thru to the lady
Who is worried more about the shade of white
When  she is bound to worry about the number
Especially the ones in the front
Dental hygiene is expensive yall
Noticing comes at a cost
And it is to stop and give thanks
For things like
Teeth
Noticing reveals the least of these
The meek shall inherit the earth
And the man at Publix carried my pumpkin to the car
Almost an hour’s wages
Heck, that’s just a guess
The rest I know
And I am humbled
And wonder how to squeeze the love of Jesus
Into a drive thru window
Convo
Next time instead of have a nice day
I can say
Tell me how I  can pray
Noticing does that to you
Cold water in the face
And all that jazz
I swear if I could have given some of mine away today
Like quarters or dollars or grace
I would have given away a  tooth
Maybe two
I swear I wouldn’t miss them
These guys were kind and gentle
Just missing  a few teeth.

Wink, Blink, Nod and Noticing

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

Today is Day 16

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Wink, Blink, Nod and Noticing

She noticed between blinks
And after she wiped the sleep
From her eyes, deposited in the dead of night
By the one who comes when she dreams
The same one who deposits poetry on her pillow
Or so it seems

She added a second to her gaze
Stared long enough to penetrate the foggy haze
Caught with her net the moments and minutes
The instants worth saving suddenly seem infinite.

She felt it in breathes,  found more in between beats of her heart
They slipped from the shadows, these new moments she now
Noticed, every
Wink, blink and stare
Time floats through the air
Sails with the greatest of ease
While we are sleeping and eating and saying our prayers.

She noticed that it was the smallest of things
That she held  both tight with all her might
And had carelessly missed, they slipped
Through  her fingers and into the cracks
This new realignment, adjusted her heart
To see all that was precious, tiny and small

The voice on the phone reminded her of this
And she, the detester of cliche and worn weary phrase
Adopted the words in heart  that day
Anyway
As she travelled half blind down the highway
Shrouded in worry, dwelling on things she had missed.

This is not a dress rehearsal
This is for real
Do-overs are rarely part of the plan
This is it, this is all, this is the real deal.
This side of heaven, it’s gift to hold loose in our hand

For all the grace and forgiveness
She soaks in like a dry rag
She’s comes to know
In the blink of an eye
And  a wink of her soul
As she nods her head at the truth
Of what she’d been told.

This is your life
Don’t blink
Act One
Act Two
And the final one too
What you are doing and saying
From New York, to Paris, to Kalamazoo
It is true

It is  now
This minute
Though paved with His goodness and  oodles of  grace

She was reminded
She is breathing and living
These days of her life
So she vows to renew
Her vows
To soak in and notice it all
Including not excluding the pain
And suffering
Disappointment and shame

And that makes the road
The one paved with grace
More important than ever
As
She recalls the valuable

Advise of a sage
Who told her repeatedly
This life, it  isn’t a race

We are winners
Sojourners, journeymen
Fellow travellers here

Noticing
Noticing
Noticing it all
From the moment the sun breaks
Until nightfall
And more important than anything else, the middle
The moments, the center, the time in between
These are the greatest, the smallest
The most important
Small things.
The repetitions of extraordinary
Ordinary
Daily routines.
The cream of an Oreo
The jelly in a jelly doughnut

Wink and its over
Blink and its gone
She’ll lay her head down
On soft goose down
And nod off tonight like she does every one
Knowing tomorrow she’ll vow yet again
To go forth from slumber
A new song she’ll sing
A song filled with promise and hope
Into the land that has a new name
Wink, Blink and Nod
And now
Noticing.
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Ready, Set, Go Notice