Pendulum

If you know me only a little even after reading these pages you'll know I have an abiding love for trees. Tall, silent great guardians in winter and summer bringing solace to me when I ever most needed it. Well...not the trees exactly but the end design of all my wanderings and walking and prayers and conversations in tune with God. The trees are a kind of connection between my heart and God and where my feet usually lead me by the time I'm finished talking or by the time God is finished talking to me. Strange how God will plant a certain affection for a singular tree that I'll admire in some singular fashion in different seasons of my life. Anyway there is this beautiful alighted tree near my friend's house I'll pass by so often. Its very tall and full of life and deeply beautiful. If things in this world are like pieces of well placed furniture in a house let that tree remain my armchair. So, the tree imagine is a most beautiful thing like joy you can open up in a box whenever you desire it just by laying your eyes on it.

And the other day I hear a sad true tale that unravels me from the core and renders me off balance. I think to myself how in congruent in life the bitter and the honey. I think to myself stupid beautiful tree and how it mocks me resting so peaceful on the same earth where Godlessness can ruin us. I pace back and forth from angry to sad. I swing like a pendulum for a day before resting in prayer. And I'm emotional and feeling dramatic about it but I'd loathe to turn cynical. Though there are those that would believe cynicism wisdom and kindness weakness. I pray...lead me to where God reigns...just lead me to where God reigns....

BluePrints....

Words drip and cascade and at times almost thunderlike roll out of me. Every day lately, I watch the drama of clouds serene or fantastical or carrying an ominous dark quality and I reflect on them as if I were a great painter. I walk into gardens of silver trees and fragrant hushed flowers and think about eden and wonder if the angels held any curiosity about this unbroken cord still guided from God to man. I remember a conversation with Bob about how this world and the reality of it is nothing but well placed furniture on a stage for God and us to move about in but Bob said it so much more elequiently than I. I'll lie in my room face buried in the floor and offer praise and ask for Christ's redeeming quality to fall on me. I seem to walk around with a fastidious energy that is calmed in the presence of God. I still try to paint whether the canvas rendered is any good at all just to endure and release some of this radiant passion. Perhaps I should leave it only for my words or let God direct it into higher goals. I pray about that too. I listen to music and read and work and write and love and keep to some sort of schedule. And after reading all this and compiling yet more words I think my fate is to always be creating and writing and pouring out. God willing the efforts will at least bring some peacefulness to God and man. Michelle says that our steps are ordered and that nothing will stop certain events in our lives. My blueprints reveal I'm to think in poetry and glory in walks of prayer in silent gardens.

Quote....

"Its a great madness feeling everything from the deep pools of dreams."


I had this thought after walking home yesterday. I went straight away and doused my hands in hues of blue paint and threw my madness down onto a canvas.

On a tightrope between dust and dreams....

I don't know why but I seem to write things here that are beautiful and cryptic. I'll talk about the older faded stories of my life as if they were once scattered dreams in a lost diary or describe a phoenix burst of emotion that I'm in the midst of raging through or walking on a cloud from. I have this tendency to view the world like an impressionistic painting. Thinking of color...illumination fascinates my soul. When I was in Manhattan a few weekends ago I sat with a fancy dinner underneath white table cloths and soft orange lights that made the blue and gold wine bottles on the bar glow like the hues in Picasso's Starry Night. A few hours before we had taken a wrong turn on the subway and ended up in a lovely Latin barrio. We passed a sunny park where a few old gentleman took out their conga drums and Spanish guitars and began singing. Kids spoke Spanish on the streets. We turned on the corner of an outdoor cafe where couples laughed and danced to live salsa music. Lovely memory. When I sleep at night my dreams are like half erased sketches to me. My grandmother is dying and I have to think about when my life will be living without her soon. She loves Jesus so completely. I send her cards in the mail and go home when I can to visit. I'll remember moments in time with her that have made parts of me...we'll me. How does that happen exactly and how does one forget and remember so easily? Today I remembered a boy I had forgotten from college I don't think I ever told anyone about. His name was Micah he was tall and thin with dark black lashes and curly hair. He was a christian and we talked about his name and the prophet it was taken from. He was creative and funny and I remember half way through the course realizing that he had one blue and one brown eye. I told him I hadn't noticed till then and he said he was a little self conscious about it but I remember thinking how unique and beautiful it made him look. How well it seemed to fit his character. I can't remember if I told him so or not. Funny thing what a day brings.

Cold Rush

Pluck at my bare heart like a chord from the silver strings of your sojourn guitar. You play it like its your lover's last song and sling the nature of your craft along your hip like the gypsy you are. My soul tastes the colors of stained glass windows and finds comfort in the silence of statues carved by sculptors muscled hands who chip away their life into stone. I'm a little restless surrounded by grey walls in the morning light and when the sun rises. Oh God come and speak to my impassioned nature. I want to dance in firelight and sing hallelujahs outside my door and paint with my hands and carve stone and walk closer to you than I did before. I want to speak to angels whom I know are there even though I don't see them. There is something beautifully longing in this heart and it feels like stars being born. Christ lives in this sinewy temple and I feel his freedom and his likeness resting inside. The hallelujahs don't ever seem to be enough but somehow they are. I have had these strange and powerful fleeting thoughts lately of joy and light and your love. As if you and I were drinking down the sun in a coffee cup and you say my name as if I'm you're only one...you're one and only and I think to myself I can do anything, anything at all if your winding up my clock or putting the wind in my sails or breaking down the door or whatever it is that you do so well. And I find it humbling and terribly strange.

Eclipse of God....

Whenever I go to church lately and stand and listen to notes rising up from the choir- notes out of the housed chests of men praising like hidden winged treasures in a sand dollar, these notes shatter my false illusions about this world.

I stood in the shadow of a long hallway once with only a sliver of light from a room the choir was practicing in. I was drawn too the praise as if an angel had guided my hand there. It seemed so late in the half light as I lifted up my voice too while we sang accapella on the other side of the wall between us. They practiced as I praised and I felt awash in it so much so I'm not sure how my feet carried me home that night.

But lately, at church my spirit so full of joy can not even seem to sing or make a sound at all. I can only seem to be thankful and weep near the alter so close to my shod feet. It happens that way feeling so close to the God who is no more only a reflection of the things that I see but is a part of them. Who is so near to me I feel I must move my breathe to a hushed and humbled "Amen" for the truth of it and there are times when all my spirit inside can do to acknowledge this truth is weep a little at it. At work a few weeks ago I had a conversation about how I felt about how I looked. I told them this..."I always believed I was beautiful no matter what other people believed or thought about me....because I know God created me, and if God created me then I am a part of God and he is a part of me and God is everything that is beautiful."

If heaven is like a man with buried treasure then I'm in for a pence and in for a pound.

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

Getting the stars out of my head....

I get tangled up in thistled thorns and find myself walking through low burning brush fires. There is ash falling like snow as I move towards sun ripened gardens. And it feels like stars are bursting in the back of my brain somewhere. I beleive the universe marches with all the precision and elegance of a gilded pocket watch. Then symphonies start to comply as I walk past sparrows. I keep wishing I could ask Monet how he caught the light and wonder if I should dare put my hand to the same tasks. I can't draw anything so satysfying nor do I have the patience for the process of things. The smooth stone of a moon set last morning with an orange etherial glow. And I think I need to gulp down new words or worlds either would suffice. I keep putting my words on a pedastal but they keep falling back down on me. Dear God I've been writing letters with a heavy red wax seal on them did the Angels tarry them off to your door? Why the imagination and no map, sealed letter or telephone call to follow it up? I keep remembering reading to Karma in the hospital and John whom both cried at the beauty of my stringed sentences. I need a tool kit out here in the wilderness. Some direction and assurance would be greatly appreciated. Let me breathe in art and build something. I don't care about my little ducks being in a row anymore just speak to me.