Epiphany Star #1 NFS

11-28-12

Let’s face it.  I don’t want to journal every day or pay or put the piano out again because I’d rather be stuck.  And not let it flow through me.  And not get over it and move on.  If I had someone to talk to to know others do this, get this.  I want to be with people who really love Jesus and want to be with him – and be like him – like I do.  My experience has shown me I can’t expect that.  Yet I shouldn’t judge and I know I am not perfect.  In any case St. Peter’s is the only place I really belong.  It is my home and my family is there.  So if it took me six or seven years to finally spit that out, ok.  I will never be able to explain or understand what being in that nave alone with Jesus in the Host means for me.  And if I write songs and poems and paint and it all goes seemingly nowhere.  Maybe none of it was intended for man anyway.  Maybe it all belongs to Christ first and will never see the light of day or the praise of man.  And that is just one thing I need to learn to put down.  And God will move with and in all these things as he sees fit.  But it’s not for me to act and insert myself into.  I think I learned that.  I need to really turn back to doing what I do directly for the Lord first and not the praise of men.  And stop seeking confirmation in humans. 

For all the times I appropriated the Lord for myself.  OK so knowing I’m right and wanting to share it isn’t the same as God leading me to share.  It’s just me wanting to show people I’m right and use God as a thruway.  I have to stop being so self righteous and thinking I’m better than everyone in my faith walk.  God please send me someone that I can really connect to in knowing what your will looks and acts like in our lives.  Help me to stop using the old days as a sanctuary and move on.  Help me to know you put me here for a reason and if I don’t pray there’s nothing to be done to change the situation.  I need to let go of wanting it to produce something.  Wanting an outcome – a thing to show off at the end.  Perhaps it will be nothing but how God changed me to be more like him.  Which is better than anything.  I still don’t understand how that feeling of zappy excitement and connectivity works in the middle of all this.  I want to be in the house of the Lord more, doing his work and surrounded by people who want nothing more than to serve him.  People who are the church, not church is something that we do.  In the end I have to turn and face God for who I knew him to be in the first place which will/may put me in a place of reacquaintance when I should not have fallen away to start with. 

undated 2005

Things I thought the Lord said in prayer.

“You’ve been a good girl but now I want you to be a big girl”

“You fail me in not loving yourself”

11-20-12

Most people don’t even care if they are following God’s plan for their lives or they accept what someone else tells them it must be and follow that.  Isn’t the further question – don’t we just NOT know what it is.  Did Jesus’s life “have a plan”?  One verse about a plan – in Jeremiah – out of context.  God knows the plan.  Doesn’t mean he tells us.  So the plan is a focus of man trying to make God’s will for our lives make mortal man’s sense. 

To wake up in the morning there is no plan but that God is there is existential, if not prophetic.  Literally “what is it you would have me do” becomes unanswerable.  It is “what is it you would have me be” becomes the question.  “DOING SOMETHING” is not an issue.  It is for our flesh.  NOT his will/walk for our lives though we we all struggle wherever we are put.    Period.

Me – thinking I am not ready yet or not where God wants me to be.  Wishful thinking.  This is where I am and the reason is not for me to know but to be his hands and feet in the world where I can.  And perhaps to indulge myself more where he is near.  Perhaps the world will realize I don’t want to be anywhere more than in worship.  But that’s not the point.  Just to be there.  Let me admit I am just in love with being near the Lord when I can be.  And let it go and not worry about what it means.  Or what people think or what their motivation is.  Just start there.  All the other things I could be doing are semi worthless.  If I don’t plan my days out of guilt — but where do I want to be most.  In the holy place. Ps. 84. 

Start there.

My journey of faith comes down to, I want to be with people who want to be in God’s presence as much as I do and will make changes in their lives to see to it he is there as much as possible.  That is all.

11-20-12 after Eliot “it is you who must kneel . . . England, or nowhere”

You and the dark and the clock and your breath

Wishing your heart could open like a flower

And there, knowing you don’t know

Knowing you don’t know

If there is nothing to say or everything to pray

If all of the world’s burdens are worthwhile then

or if it is for you to listen

Have to admit you don’t know

Just like everything else, it’s about

getting over the initial struggle

getting mind to bend and heart to lean and fall

In the direction the wind blows that day

getting pride to become transparent

so it can be pushed aside and eventually disappear

getting to where the moment

you and the dark and the clock and your breath

Is imbued with the presence your heart thirsts for

Where it means what they were all meant to mean

In the first place.

 

11-19-12

Things are not happening with God.

They are happening in me.

It is not that God is new.

It is that he makes me new.

What others put on God is what they want to change in the world/themselves

but they don’t want to change.

God changes us if we let him.

Makes us  more like him if we let him.

And then we are not like us.  And we like us the way we are.

We say we want to be like him and then go away and act like us again.

We know what it is to feel he is near but we don’t want it to make us feel uncomfortable or less proud or less ourselves, secure.

It is only in his presence (recognition of it) we realize the valuelessness of being ourselves.  His love melts away the need to be us.  We take years to craft an identity his love melts in one tear.  One breaking light, one breeze, one pin-prick.  We are dissolved in his love.  That is hard to take the first 20 times or so.  Then you realize there is no point in trying anymore because you are frail and futile and so unworthy of his grace and are hollow without his peace.

When the inner war is over and there are no more words to say.  When all your thoughts are transparent before him and your life becomes a prayer.  You reflect his love entirely.  Now you are more like him.

 

The hot spring turns over

refreshes reveals

cleanses the brine

doesn’t make sense

Will the marshy places always be undrinkable

Will they always be left for salt?

 

10-9-12

Maybe after all this time I have had placed it on me that it’s to ok be this spiritual and for me it can make sense.  I have distrusted all my own intentions or I believed the tempter telling me that my motives were selfish and fleshly and I still can’t feel clear.

But today in saying it out loud and realizing I might be starving myself, staying directionless, unfocused

I only ever really had one dream and it was was to share my songs with the world

I would never have the nerve to bring it forth on my own.  I can’t tolerate self promotion

But is all I have been given just to have them be sung to myself and God?

or are they all just for me and as Elaine said I am not even listening to my own song?

What is missing in me is my own life.

and even if I were to give my whole life to the Lord I can’t decrease to the point of vanishing.

10-4-12 painting the swamp vision

The key is in the surety

Ye receive not because ye ask not

and when ye ask ye ask amiss

 

But to approach the altar as the bench

State your case as if it were the last judgment

Beg your plea as if your soul weighed on it

But just as importantly his character

Although no one has asked God what are you doing

How many have challenged his intentions within our paths!

More than I can hear, these people

I did not birth them, what am I to do with them?

 

this is the assertiveness, the vulnerability

to say I can’t do this for these people God

so that he can say I gave you words and a mouth and my Spirit.

So there will always be doubters

But if God said it, surely it will come to pass

Sooner or later, it will come to pass.

You will be you, the way will find you

what you were to be will make sense in that place and time

so that it can come to pass

Though the vision is delayed

Wait for it, it will not tarry

God does not tarry as some say

 

Habakkuk-

Write the vision,

make it plain on tablets

that they may run who read it.

For the vision is yet for an appointed time

Though it tarry, wait for it

It will not tarry

(in my mind this echoes)

(then I opened to Psalm 107: 33-38

he turns a desert into pools of water)

I don’t need to interpret the vision

I only need to write it so a runner may read it.

A fresh hot spring flowing up from within

a brackish swamp tangled with

weeds – overflowing the banks

bringing vegetation to the dry land

9-17-06

O God you have come to be our bread

But have we become bread for you

Have we waited upon you here

So you could consume us too

 

Have we let your Spirit leaven us

Have we waited until you wanted us to rise

Have you kneaded us like clay in your hands

Till we became good in your eyes

 

Have we given ourselves to the least of these

Have we allowed ourselves to be

Broken, and poured out, offered up

As you said “Take this . . . take me”

 

And as we take for granted to consume you

Lord, do we count on you to consume us too

The sacrifice, the feast, not reversible

But simultaneous, duplicitous, mutual

 

If we have swallowed you, we are you and yours

If we are your body, what we are and do and say is you

 

We re-present you to the world

not in sacrifice but in victory

your body broken, your blood spilled

Rises up to praise you and give you glory

Rises up to serve true to you

Or can it impoverish your gift by what we do?

what you do on this earth, it is no longer up to you

because you gave us everything you could

2-8-06 reprise and part 2

the core of expectation must be

that every day is an opportunity

for a new unveiling

for the capacity

of our hearts to be changed

to his image

 

If we are worthy

None of us are worthy

that’s the point of worship

the only response to grace

we have – however pathetic.

Because if we don’t at least try

he can’t touch us and change us

 

Every moment embued with opportunity – the walk

result of prayer time that listens –

let us never take it for granted.

Tarry, but with expectation

for who knows?  Joel 2:14