Shifting Paradigms
Tag: Gifts
The Spice of Love
He by the fire
And I all folded up
under Tartan holding mug of dark hot piping black
Designing gifts of love
And I can see the yellow,house
Through window pane
And wonder
How you multiply a batch of baked and make it fill up all the cracks
And holes of days throughout the three
six
five
when quietly we live across, beside
Angled on this street so quiet
How do we add enough to make up for lost words
A silence living in the quiet days and nights on quiet
Street, we chose, they chose
A peaceful avenue of still
Which spice can shake out love come down
And fill a heart up full to overflowing
And say I love my neighbor, golden
As myself
Its not the dozens from the oven’s
heat
Its simply love of Christ poured out
And empty handed we could go and take
A batch of baked up
served up
cooked up
Christmas Love
And when the days that roll around
and cause a heart to spill
resolve
and resolutely
make a list
of all that will be different
in the year
the one
found when the page
is
turned
and
twenty thirteen
has a way of making all things
new
a wish can roll right off the heart
as I stare at the house
yellow through my pane
that I would deliver
Christmas Love
On all the days
Not simply one
To all the doors
not simply mine
that
sit in wait
for Christmas Love
Come down
All year
Round
Delivered Daily
not just sprinkled in one batch
no, love come down all year round
I stare at yellow through my windowpane
*****************************************************
Joining Amber at The Run A Muck for her concrete word prompts. The Spice Of Love was written out of the word prompt cinnamon.
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This I Will Always Remember
I want to start a list of all these things. The things I will remember, always.
I want to entitle it something simple like, “Things I Will Always Remember.”
I want so desperately to go back and fill the pages with lovely memories of the cherished past. And to collect them in one leather bound place with gold embossed lettering.
Things I will always remember.
And I wonder if I have the discipline to keep filling the pages as I live forward. To fill the white space up with lines , phrases and photographs of these times. The ones emblazened boldly on my heart. And in my memory. In the crevices of my story. In the cracks of my life.
I know I can start today by and in His Grace. I can begin a list of these things I will
always remember.
These moments that dance and sing and take our breath away.
The ones that fill us up so we can pour back out. Those that breathe life into us so we can breathe life into others.
Those that restore and rebuild.
That define us and mark us with beauty.
The ones which we record in technicolor in our memory to pull out on the black and white days, the grey ones too. The ones where we can’t see the grace. The days when we get stuck and can’t remember the beautiful we promised we’d always remember. We swore we’d never forget.
I know that by His grace I hiked a mountain hemmed in by ones I love. With ones who love me back with a deep unfailing love.
I hiked Lookout Mountain with my 74 year old father and my 11 year old niece. And Shadow came too. The rescued dog. The furry family member who is his name to my father and mother.
I look back in my mind’s eye over the pictures and over the moments on the trail and I see so clearly now. How the walking up is life. How the hiking along side one another is life. How the journey is what we do daily. How we are given the opportunity to live well in community. In family. In relationship.
How God tethers us to others to teach and build up. To strength us. To grow us. To challenge us.
We can choose to do this daily. In love.
We can choose to get up and go out to seek the relationship challenges.
We can choose to speak a word of encouragement and be encouraged by others who are walking right beside us. We can be life givers and hope builders. We shared one bottle of water between the four of us, and it was just enough. Under the shade of the green canopy, a sip here and there was all we needed.
Just being with was gift.
Just the presence of the others blessed.
I am grateful that these two spoke encouragement to me and that they undergirded me and accompanied me in on this hike.
It wasn’t easy, the trek up. But it was important.
It was vital for seeing life this one particular way. It gave clarity. I see with a lense focused on journeying in community and in love. The lense is angled and tilted and pointed to perfectly see things this way. On this trail.
To see this life and its relationships.
Again. Anew.
How grace extended to one another on the huffing and puffing parts brings joy to the journey.
How stopping and resting and extending hope, breathing life into each other’s weary souls, its what makes the journey joyful.
I will always remember my father’s cheerful spirit on the trail. His strength and stamina and joyful spirit pushing us up and on.
I will never forget extending hands out, holding on for the hard rocky part. I will remember forever my heart beating hard at the top as we took in the views. Resting after the tiresome parts to savor. To stand in awe of the God-beauty and savor what we had come to soak in at the mountain top.
My book will add this memory to its pages. The book written for now in my mind with gold embossed lettering on the spine.
This I will always remember.
And counting gifts with Ann today too. These gifts I will always remember. I am grateful to have these things in my life, to count, to savor, and to always remember:
*a week of getting to know my niece, her heart, her humor, her sweet sweet spirit
*for all the things I learned from an eleven year old which I could never learn from a book
*for that split second moment when I embraced my husband after a long absence and how the spark and beauty of the moment lasted for hours in my heart
*for the sound of running water over rocks outside my bedroom window for days and days of endless joy
*for cool nights and cool mornings and lots and lots of green canopies
*for an endless supply of inspiration for my photography, thank you Lord for your God-beauty, your creation
*for fresh blackberries and one summer cobbler
*for an “A” in chemistry for a hardworking child
*for a very social monarch butterfly which let me take what felt like a million pictures of him (cannot wait to share the picture here)
*for a daughter who loves the mountains and how late night trips to the Blue Cone for ice cream is her idea of summer nighttime fun.
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The Big Yellow Metaphor
{This post is part of an ongoing series reflecting on my experiences on a wild and wonderful journey. A big colorful artful adventure, one from New York to South Carolina as part of a team on The Art Bus Project roadtrip.}
Audrey. And others. They were my teachers.
I just went to summer school. And my classroom was a big yellow school bus.
The bus, my classroom screams loudly the lessons over the din of heavy black tires on I-95. Yells out over hot highway with her yellow zippered lines marking the lessons. Shouts Truth over the swoosh of passing eighteen wheelers in the fast lane and the screech of breaks on near missed turns. Through tolls and toils she lays out the lesson plan to her student held captive within the yellow walls.
My team members on The Art Bus Project, part of the teaching staff. I a student, a sponge soaking in the lessons. Some hard. All good. Life teaches well along the way. In the messy living.
The old, big, gas-guzzling, loud and sometimes hot classroom is a good teacher too.
When God calls us into ministry He is good to change us. And challenge us.And He is wise to teach those he taps . To instruct those whom he woos to come along for the ride. Moving us from Point A to Point B, never leaving us where we were found by Him. Transforming lives with Grace. Mercy moving us along. Increments of Truth and more of Him, measurements of movement.
And He is a gentle teacher. Loving His children and wisely never leaving His rag tag band, His co-laborers, His students of Grace unchanged. He lovingly shapes. He gingerly molds. We show up in a place carrying the now of what we know on our backs like a Patagonian hiker ready for a trek. He adds whats important, filling the pack with more of Him. The weight of the important strengthens the sojourner’s back. Shoulders stronger, legs less wobbly, back braced for carrying the significant.
We show up ill-prepared. He refines the red clay of the soul on the spinning potter’s wheel.
And He uses His people in a beautiful way. There is no circumstance on the journey that He has not known. There are no combinations of facts or missing pieces which leave Him caught off guard or suprised.
So when I say yes and I show up He tilts the lense and sharpens the perspective. Divine fingers wipe the fog, remove the smudge on the window to the world. And over the shoulder on the looking back, He speaks. In the ear of the rewinding mind, He teachess.
And He takes one little, two little , three little travellers and more and binds them together over the bumps, through the wrong turns, past the monuments, through the dark tunnels, past the missed stops, and onward on the road of learning.
The one about Him. And the one about us. And the one about the others along the way. The ones with the hurt and the pain. The ones with no one to listen and no one to care.
The weary woman on the way home, eyes blurred from hours in the office. The mom with a whispering heart, bruised by circumstances. The tender recovering soul who in her young life as a mother to two is now a widow and hurting. But aren’t we all. And who doesn’t.
The eager child with the can of spray paint, eager to find a place to write and express. His name,his identity on the black asphalt, on the sides of the yellow walls. He teaches to listen and look for signs. They have a voice. They want to speak. They want to shout.
They all have a story to tell.
And we would do well to listen.
And we would be more like Him if we did.
{Counting gifts today with Ann over at A Holy Experience dot com. And linking up here at the Extraordinary Ordinary and here with Michelle and also with these two ladies here and here}
* the gift, possibly a first and a last, but hoping not, a mission trip with my daughter
*watching her serve, use her gifts and leave childish ways behind….way behind
*watching my daughter grow more and more into the woman God has purposed her to be
*meeting a freight container full of new friends this week, well I am prone to hyperbole
*seeing new places, exploring new corners, falling in love with the art of discovery all over again.
*regaining my sense of adventure and inquiry
* Asking and accepting the privilege to pray for two women, God grant me faithfulness to pray faithfully and diligently for their circumstances
*Eight new puppies in my world
*Watching my son care for the furry babies and seeing how nurturing He truly is
*getting a text from my son at camp that he is homesick. An unexplainable gift.
*counting down the days until we trek up to our beloved mountain home, where memory lives, and story waits to tell us more of the past, the present, and lend hope to the future
* new inspiration from new twitter folks, a welcome surprise. Reading tweet after tweet of words pointing toward the Father
elizabeth w. marshall 