When did you come to believe
success comes with a scheduled life? When the Spirit rarely sticks to the script! When the Sacred Presence refuses to be restrained! Scheduled or unscheduled, Productive or unproductive, May you come to believe success comes with (and is) the simple consent to Life. A poem I wrote right after a time of listening prayer six years ago. It recently came to mind as I was thinking about meditation. Meditation can calm the mind. In doing so, perhaps it offers an opportunity for the soul to remind us of what it's known & trusted since we were ages five and one! God, I pray that Lainey and Alex come to know You They already do. Okay God, then I pray they come to trust You. They already do. Then God, help them not to forget. (Pause) Amen. A poem written in 2013 about what led me to meditation & other contemplative practices years ago. All my old ways of finding God kept failing And one rage-filled day I stopped trying Sat down wondering if I was worth finding Let go of seeking and began trusting And breathing. Many are the ways seeming right to a man I started recalling My ways kept putting me in charge of the finding who the Psalmist found futile escaping. After a conversation with a man who said he was only interested in meditation if it led to levitation, I went home and wrote this short poem in the fall of 2013. A man once asked me Will meditation lead to levitation? “I don't think so,” I said, “I've been trying to rise above my faults and weaknesses for years!” One day in silent prayer on my quest toward the clouds to touch the face of God I looked down. There I saw Jesus with rolled up shirt-sleeves, mud up to his elbows standing in the place I'd just left. I don't know about levitation but meditation led me back to the sod, for in the place of fault and weakness I saw the face of God. Do you really think more thinking is needed right now? Especially when what we're dealing with is a sickness of the mind! With sad eyes the soul whispers “Stop” (as it always has) Did Saint Paul not say the same to the good folks of Galatia? With a humble heart (admitting the -ism existing in yourself) sit in Silence Without mistaking such Silence for absence or worse, indifference! The soul knows how to wait for salvation from its Source. And do you remember Jesus speaking to his disciples-- What does it take for some demonic powers to leave? Prayer and fasting. So ask, then close your lips and listen. Until clenched fists open until anxiety and anger slip through your fingers Until you receive in your now-ready head, heart, and hands that which you are to give for the healing of this, your world. It came in the gentle breeze
that day, with surprise my soul opened its arms. Another, not the volcanic vigor of many days, with my run to protect my ego-security. A voice in the ordinary speaking of years spent with knowledge and morality impressing, yes, protecting. Insight slipped right into my soul. Repetition now recognition when body is relaxing. A smile instead of shame. Herein is the strength of gentleness, of kindness, of whisper Of the ordinary, Holy Flame! A poem written several years ago with II Corinthians 4:7-8 and II Corinthians 12:9-10 in mind. I'm thinking of Easter and eggs. Not the bunny bearing baskets of rainbow treasure boxes brimming with jelly beans hidden in tall grasses and behind euonymus bushes But of resurrection and of fragility, especially fragility. But we are the resurrection people already! Yes, and not yet. We are as fragile as a newly laid chicken egg. Even the turquoise Easter eggs of the Ameraucana. We choose to dress up our fragility in Faberge or harden ourselves slowly in a boiling cauldron of anger and jealousy. Both crack when dropped or mishandled revealing nothing or hardness. But what if we admitted that we are still not yet even as we are already? Exposed our ordinary fragility that leaks life when dropped or mishandled—by life. What if we proclaimed that we all are broken, the dozen cast aside by those seeking candy, elegance or the sunny-side up? What if we trusted that our Creator chooses what is rejected? Knowing that inside new life is already being formed and the cracks will be a blessing when it's time for it to be born. The following poem was spontaneously written in 2012. God knew I was exhausted by two young children and years of wrestling with atonement theology (unable to put into words my growing inner dissonance with the popular view of the cross). Not being a poet, I was shocked when out-of-the-blue, poetry began flowing. I literally had a pen in one hand barely able to keep up with the free-flow of words and a spoon in the other stirring the kids' macaroni & cheese! A couple of notes about this poem: Philosopher Girard refers to Rene Girard who said the scapegoat mechanism is the origin of sacrifice in all cultures and the Bible both reveals and denounces it. The last word of the poem brings together both John 14:6 and Psalm 119:105. They speak of You paying the price for our sins, of this Ultimate Sacrifice As if Your visible vulnerability were not enough Our Creator, the Creator of all, coming to this land a crying baby boy and leaving a bleeding and broken man What more sacrifice do we want? What is left to be paid? In pain we look for a purpose, the greater the reason the more our pain allayed You say You delight not in burnt offerings, and You neither require nor drink the blood of goats But how can we trust such words to be true? Sacrifice and religion, dare we separate the two, even if it be a marriage of convenience and not of love? We give such reasons so scared for them to fail, but what if we sacrifice reason and find our scapegoating revealed? I tell you philosopher Girard was never so happy as when he put to Western words such ancient discovery! What revelation! To step outside sacrifice, to see her for who she is, tis like naming a covenant new You indeed paid a price Man of Sorrows, and told us to follow You Find life and eternal joy by being well-acquainted with grief You died because of our sins in the manner of a thief It was not Your blood that was needed in order to make us right, but it was Your blood that showed You to be the Way, the Truth, and the Light. Plunge your hand in the sand of this desert you've been walking in. Sit down and rest awhile. Right here in this dusty expanse clothing you in gritty sackcloth. Right now though there are still miles you could roam and just as many mirages of hope. What do you make of your lack of thirst and abundance of tears? Sit down and rest awhile. Plunge your hand in the sand. Deeper. Deeper. Deeper still. Til your fingers sink into rich, black soil. Linger in the loam. Close your eyes, listening as you let your fingertips loll in life's birth blanket. Find the seeds placed in your pocket waiting to be planted by your dirty hand, waiting to be watered in this wasteland, waiting to grow once you've moved on. You'd rather be anywhere but here For when here is not enough surely it's time to be there. Though somehow there always becomes here and there you are again! So be here now. Then you can be anywhere. |
AuthorKasey is a scarf, ball and club juggling spiritual director just outside of Nashville, TN. Play helps her Type-A, Enneagram 1 personality relax, creating space for poetry and other words to emerge. She also likes playing with theological ideas like perichoresis, and all the ways we're invited into this Triune dance. Archives
September 2023
Categories
All
|