Estampes

    I turn my face to the bright face of the sun and almost immediately, I shut my eyes against its blindness. In that brief millisecond I close my eyes to shield them from the sun's light, a flash of that orb's shape appears behind my lids. I blink once, it is there. I blink twice, it is gone.

    A streak of lightning illumines the sky and I lie in bed, waiting for the next one to strike. I can never tell when it will. And then, one second the darkened world is exposed, and the next it is returned to blackness. The only sign to indicate the flash occurred was the rumble of the ensuing thunder.

   I listen to the scintillating melodies of Debussy and something stirs. Beauty and emotion stir but what precise beauty and emotion? I flounder and scrounge for the right precisions of beauty and emotion that impress me.  And, just at the very brink of my discovery, the music subsides. It always ends. The impression lingers on but it soon fades away.

   Rolling around and around in my mind is this: Fleeting, fleeting, life is so fleeting, full of fleeting impressions. Yet, Christ is the counteraction, the Element, the One Person in life that does not fleet. He lasts forever; He is forever. He always was. Still, he is to me the flash behind my eyelids, the lightning streak across the sky, the un-grasped melodious impression. He is to me fleeting because I catch Him in waves.

Blundering

I blunder on and poorly respond.
I want to be one that is there and knows how to be there well.
I stand there staring at my hands and racking,
Racking my mind for the best response:
Silence is all I come up with.
I suppose silence is all that is required.
Yet, at times, it seems too miniscule.
Is humanity intrinsically wired to fix?
Because if my hands are not accomplishing fixture, I wish to cut them off for their uselessness.
It is a good thing my Christ knows how to response, how to fix.
For this feeble, blundering man just continues,
continues to blunder.

Shame for thinking of me, shame for still not finding the right response.
Is this real concern and love or just vanity?

Rest in the One who treasures the tiniest sparrow,
who counts the grains of sands,
who knows the number of hairs on my head.
The One who never leaves nor forsakes,
who knew me from the beginning,
who fashioned me, breathed life into me.
The One who grants the desires of my heart and who says gently, "Come."
Who better than He to care for those I don't know how?

Anxiety absolved, Rest resolved.

Novels of True Life

    I finished reading East of Eden by Steinbeck today. Or rather yesterday. It's funny. I still feel suspended in the space of its pages, and edited in the edifices of its story.  As I read, I was rocked by its raw contents, and its painful reveal of true life. I lay dazed, as if I had actually jumped into the book and taken up residence among its characters. And when coming to, residuals were there.
    The residuals have played into my actuality. Today, or rather yesterday, was like a novel. An unfathomable took place and I was rocked. But this time, it's not from the dictated vantage point of a novel where I can feel rocked by the pain as I read, only so far as how well the author describes the instrinsic of his character, but escape it by snapping the leaflet shut. This is my true life. No novel involved.

Nameless named

A name, nameless; a stride, tameless

A wanderer of this earth, nomadic and vagrant.

Rancid this no-one, this no-place, this no-where,

Ever since the Fall, the colossal Pall.

Oh Father in heaven who absolves the nameless, 

tames the stride,

Washes the rancid, 

fragrants the vagrant--

Root me with abandon.

To emulate thy Name, 

and walk according to thy stride.

Joyful am I.

This no-one, this no-place, this no-where

has become someone - has a someplace, a somewhere.

someone, in The One; someplace, in mansions of glory;

somewhere, for all timeless Eternity.