What Runs through our Veins

We call our kin - blood. 

What is this life that runs through our veins?

~

"For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an

atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul."

Leviticus 17:11

The Unseen

I believe in days punctuated by thankfulness, by fullness, and the complicit giving of our time and our bodies to the Lord for restoration through the dark hours of night. 

This so we may look up at the sky the next day in fear, trembling, and overflowing with love.

"I lift my eyes up, up to the heavens, where does my help come from?

My help comes from you, maker of heaven, creator of the earth."

I feel so fortunate to witness, with these imperfect eyes, what the Lord allows me to see, as well as the things he keeps from me: the unseen.

Where do hearts break? 

When do shadows fall? 

Whose anger thumps loudly against the heat of the earth?

~

Where is the space between a hug?

When do smiling faces turn toward one another?

Whose little feet bounce rythmically against mama's lap?

Dare I thank you more today than yesterday?  And how much moreso tomorrow?  I can only dream of what the close of my last day here on your earth will bring.  What fullness my heart will feel, and what gladness for every blessing, both seen and unseen.

Pbbbt

President's Day is drawing to a close and we'll be back to work tomorrow. Pooka has something to say about that...she will miss us dearly.

Love Lyrics

I watched last year's Jane Eyre this evening and my heart is adrift in the muck of romanticism and the flight of a soul on the wings of passion.  So I plucked an old book from my shelf - one given to me over ten years ago that I still treasure.  It is a beautiful book indeed.  Its binding and printing, something of a marvel to me all these years.  Mostly due to the red and black, two-tone printing which I presumed a rarity for the print date: 1905.  The "life pictures" are also a thing of simultaneous amusement and captive dreaming for me whenever I pick it up.  I am doubtful now, that either of these things truly made this a needle in the haystack of the Bay Area used book marketplace, but I delight in it none-the-less.

To-night, against my pillow, with shut eyes,

I mean to weld our faces - through the dense

Incalculable darkness make pretense

That she has risen from her reveries

To mate her dreams with mine in marriages

Of mellow palms, smooth faces, and tense ease

Of every longing nerve of indolence, -

Lift from the graver her quiet lips, and stun

My senses with her kisses - drawl the glee

Of her glad mouth, full blithe and tenderly,

Across mine own, forgetful if is done

The old love's awful dawn-time when said we,

"To-day is ours!" . . . . Ah, Heaven! can it be

She has forgotten me - forgotten me!

Clefted and Covered

There is nothing we can say or do, no gesture on our part that can save us from ourselves.  The only credit in our favor is that we have been chosen: covered by the eternal and perfect love of our Savior.  The blanket of His love lays smooth against our jagged edges - our crevices and vacant ravines filled and evenly matched against our parts and pieces which He christened useful for our time here.  Accepting that our failings and flailings are a part of His plan for us to reach out and pull His love around us - to shroud us, comfort and protect us, is often more difficult than using our peaks and relying on what we think is our own strength instead of trusting in the completeness of the story written for our life, before our life, clefted inasmuch as we are.



The World's Heart Beat

He remembered Alejandra and the sadness he'd first seen in the slope of her shoulders which he'd presumed to understand and of which he knew nothing and he felt a loneliness he'd not known since he was a child and he felt wholly alien to the world although he loved it still. He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought the world's heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world's pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.

From, All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

Glimpses of Valentine's Day

This Thorn

Thank you for this torn embedded in my flesh
I can feel the mystery, my spirit is made fresh
You are sovereign still and forever wise
I can see the miracle opening my eyes

To a proud heart so quick to judge
Laying down crosses and carrying grudges
The veil has been torn
And I thank you for this thorn

Thank you for this thorn fellowship of pain
Teaching me to know you more never to complain
Thank You for this love planted in my side
Faithful patient miracle opening my eyes
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/t/twila_paris/this_thorn.html ]
I never thought I'd say it without reservation
But I am truly grateful for this piercing revelation
Of a proud heart so quick to judge
Laying down crosses and carrying grudges
The veil has been torn
And I thank you for this thorn

And if You chose to take it, I will praise You
And thank You for the healing in Your name
But if it must remain, I thank You for Your rod
Evidence of Father-love for a child of God

I join You in sorrow
So much less than You have borne
And I thank you, really I thank You
Lord I thank You, I thank You for this thorn

The Thorn by Twila Paris

A Dark Sky

For thou art my lamp, O LORD: and the LORD will lighten my darkness.

2 Samuel 22:29