Tag: Healing

One Plus One Equal Three

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

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One Plus One Equals Three

Twice yesterday I sat still for a long while
We were three each time
Two plus me
One and one
Plus me
Made three
I learned to listen again
In time I had learned to forget
But the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Are good reminders
The Trinity heals the deaf
And the blind
And like me
Those who once were blind but now they see
The power in a listening ear
We can learn by faith, old dogs and old tricks
I’ve had ears to hear since ’59
I just forget sometimes
To see what a gift it is
To listen
To one or two or more
Gathered here
There is not one of us who doesn’t love
To be heard
Safe to say the hurting want to be heard
So bad it hurts
Some days my dog listens better than I do
Grace says I am here
And I can hear you
I’ve had these ears since ’59
And grace will lead me home
Blessed are those who listen well
I am pretty sure Jesus would say that or said that or maybe he did
And I just wasn’t listening

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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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The Delicate Task (Plus One)

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 1 Comment

Orange Truck, puddles and clouds

On Your Leaving

If I were to write of your goodbye, it would sound something like this
(I dreamed of loss last night, stammered the haunting memory of the nightmare
Over coffee in the kitchen with your father, I spoke of a baby left behind in the snow)
And so in fact, it is nothing like that, but more of a chilly release of you into the cold
While I am still so warm
(And yet, the dream still haunts me)

In the knowing that you will change
And truly
I always loved you just the way you were

I am numbed by the pain of void
You were you
And I am me, plus you
Sounds so simple, perhaps it always was
You will forgive me I trust, for everything that occurred
Before your leaving came upon me
We were two, close to one
On occasion

I wept
But then you know that, I am sure
You have known me, well
In all the small goodbye’s that have been said
You quietly studied the lines on my face
Tear tracts tell good stories of what lies beneath

Please read between the lines
Knit together were we, not as womb and child
But by a deep love
The thread of which is unbreakable

In the Spring, when you return
Change will have visited me

Because you left
Me loving you
Just as you were
(Because the dream still haunts me)
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall
The snow is heavy on the trees where you are

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Honored to have a poem of mine,The Delicate Task, over at a beautiful new community of words, The Mudroom Blog (click here to go there). I would be honored if you would join me there to read this piece of poetry in its entirety:

The Delicate Task

I watched his hands, a gentle blend of weary

Each line, earned, every callous worn like a medal of honor

The request, brave and earnest

His response breathed through his fingertips, whispers waft and billow

Through the labor of his hands

His yes, a gift of patient, steady love

I look away, the chore asks for silence…..

(click here to continue reading The Delicate Task at The Mudroom)

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Joining Laura today for Playdates At The Wellspring

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Why I Long For Nothing Or Why I Want Intangibles This Christmas

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

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I ache for intangibles. I am longing for a filling in of the void. I am craving, in my empty hollow pit,  change and love come down and hope cracked open. Hope poured out. A drowning out of pain. I limp like the war wounded, dragging a limb with chronic pain. I limp with a ghostly pain for Love to seep into the cracked and bleeding places. Heal as aloe on our weary souls.

I look for The Healing Balm with the eyes of my Advent Heart.

I want with a weary wanting.

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And God is good to allow the empty hollow hunger. For me. I am moved. Pushed in my spirit by the Spirit to a place of chronic pain. To seek the unseen. Covered by the fog of self. Love wide open love Divine all Love out-dwelling. Love indwelling. Love Incarnate. Wash over us. This soul ache means I am made for more. For serving man and other.

If you wrap your love, which I too will do. Whisper prayers over paper and bows. Breathe the breath of prayerful change over boxes and bags of packages wrapped in love and lovely. Look out and in. And help me look in and outward too. To find the intangibles in their walking flesh and bone. And breathe new life. To heal the hurting. Calm the storms. Be the love lived out. Hands and feet multiplied. Oh Multiplier of Mercy.

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Oh but I am in my comfort. With the companion of my ache. And I am with my passion, words. I am not there. The Liberia’s with my serving servant friend. Or Haiti. Where the others that I know are walking. I am here. Longing for nothing. But a Christmas with an overflow. From the heart. Joy jumping high like hot grease in the frying pan, cooking up the Sunday bacon. Hope cracked open like the farm fresh egg, yolk of yellow nourishment. Healing spread like the salve of a mother’s kiss on a wounded blood-soaked knee.

Great tidal waves of salty seas. Of grace. Grow feet and walk up on our shores.

And mark the world with Love come down at Christmas. Love. Unfailing Love. And leave us change. By grace. Leave us changed by Grace. Love the battle winner. Love the conqueror. Love the healer of all ache.

Amen?

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