Saved by Grace

Saved by Grace

Sunday, December 4, 2016

WHoly Ground

Brother Moses, what did you feel at that burning bush?
Watching this living thing consumed and not overtaken to death.
What was it like to feel the warmth on your skin from the eternal flames of life upon life.

You stopped. You considered. Something changed for you that day.
You SAW that the ground you were standing on was Holy.
That maybe this ground you have been walking on has been Holy this wHole time
You just were blind to see it

Moses, my friend, tell me, what was it like to come in union with the Holy?
To feel ONE with the grass beneath your toes.
To feel roots grow down through the magma to the core where earth and heaven meet.

Tell me, did you ever put your shoes on again?
Tell me, how did you walk in this world of already and not yet.
This land of consolation and desolation.

Tell me what it was like consuming the bread of life and affliction,
How did it taste to break it on your teeth and swallow it whole.
How did it leave you full and empty?

And the cup of sorrow and salvation,
What did the sweet and bitter taste like on your lips,
How did it quench your thirst and leave you breathless

Tell me, father Moses, so I too can taste and see the Holy of Wholies
Tell me you will, will you?
Dance with me there?




Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Flying Song

Daddy what would you sing to me
Mommy what would you sing
What would you sing to your baby girl?

I love you
I love you
Whatever you do

Go fly my child
Go fly my child
I gave you wings
So you can fly

I will cry my child
I will cry my child
But don't you come flyin back to me

But if you cry my child
When you cry my child
You can come flyin home to me

Wherever you go
Whatever you do
I will think the world of you

When I am not your home
And you are feeling alone
You can always come flying back to me.

And we will sing:

I love you
I love you
Whatever you do

Go fly my child
Go fly my child
I gave you wings
So you can fly

Just know that you can't stay
And I will never make you pay
When you come flying back to me.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Being an Observer of Magic

Observe: notice or perceive something and register it as being significant

I sat with this man, this old man with a scarf, that is the main character in the game "what doesn't belong here". As he smoked a pack of cigarettes and sipped on espresso and seltzer, he told me of magic, of hope that is real and his years of pretending. I saw that there are options:you can pretend or you could actually experience beauty in the hands of grace before a meal. Beauty in the way a home embraces you with its color and warmth, the kind of home you encounter a couple times in a lifetime.

As we talked about the impoverished lifestyle of the "famous" street we were on, the sound of liquid streaming on the pavement behind me distracted me. I turned and sure enough it was exactly what I had imagined, yet in a different form. A large brown hound dog was urinating on the pavement right in front of the coffee shop where the man with the scarf and I were talking about the magic that seemed dead in this place. We both leaned back in our chairs and wailed with laughter as I caught his half astonished half disgusted mouth drop at this sight of this rabid beast turned pet making his mark. This dog had no idea how profound his action was at that very moment, he was only responding to nature.

The statement he made is that there was no room for nature on this famous street, only room for cold plastic seats and tattoos that tell half of a story the holder never cared to finish. Therefore it is etched on the authors skin for eternity, hoarded selfishly, never to enter the ears and hearts of humanity around him starving for that half chewed story that he gave up on.

I wanted to believe this man in the red scarf. I wanted to believe that magic does exist, a part of me was picking up on the magic inside of him. The stories he had made from being an observer in his everyday life. We don't have to live in the mundane, we can create and experience magic everywhere because it is inside of us!

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Ocean Endings

Why does every good thing
Come to an end?

I will make it last
If I just change out the water
If I breathe into your lungs
Will you stay a bit longer?

Every magical night
And soft lullaby
Slowly becomes quiet. Still.

Then the silence.

Why is the silence so loud
So vast. So lonesome.
It faithfully points to the Truth
Like a river flows to the Ocean

Has the truth ever been touched
It stands as a virgin does
Seductive and Pure
Never to be found in a sentence

It is as mysterious as the wind:
It's beginning rush with anticipation in its wings
The bumps rise to the skin and it is gone.
Washed away in another drop of sweat

The only way to bring it back
Is to set a date with the river
To jump in
And the rivers calendar is full with openings

To make a reservation you must forget how to swim.

Ocean party of ONE your river is now available.

Saturday, May 21, 2016

Honeysuckle

Smells of honey and sweetness fill my nostrils. The air is thick and the stands are full.  Orange dirt is under my finger nails as I reach for the bush behind my brother’s baseball field.  I pinch at the long prism and pull it from the stem, racing to put my lips around it and suck the juices from the vine.  “mmmmm” as I feel my delight turn to sound for the outside world to hear from my chest to my throat up to the vibration of my mouth.  The quick rush of sweetness surges into my tastebuds as I look over into the grey and blue eyes of my childhood friend who is mirroring my every move. His eyebrows rise high on his forehead and creases are forming in his rosy cheeks as the corner of his mouth rise.  His hair is dark auburn and wet around his face.  A slight breeze sends the white and yellow buds whispering, beckoning to us, and the ting of the metal bat brings us back to reality.  Patrick’s puffy freckled wrists reach up to grab another thistle from the leaves, as the breeze sends my hair dancing to tickle the back of my neck. We reach for another.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Home

Abba. Give me a word today.
It seems you have left me in the grey.
Come back home to me And
I'll come home to you

Mama. Give me a sign today.
I can't see with your back to me.
Turn around
Let's dance in what's found

Brother. Give me a hand today.
For I am weary and broken down
If you turn that ship around
I'll come swimming to you

Family. I will give you the Truth.
I have left home, turned my back
My ship has sailed

Home. Where are you?
The waters now you are
I still see your face in the tides
I hear your songs in the wind
But I'm gone.

Abba. Give me a word today.
I am home at sea with you
You are mine. I am yours.
Dancing to the beat of the unknown.

Saturday, March 19, 2016

The Unspoken Speaks

She is there
She waits
With her head down
She waits
Not knowing if she is giving up
Or taking a break

Sick from all the unspokens
All the filters, the mazes
The weaves and blind turns
She is naeusous 
Motion sick

She used to love roller coasters 
Now they are too real
The ins and outs and upside downs

The yes's and no's 
The supposed to's the shows
The grudges felt but not heard or spoken

The vibration, the tremor of her voice
Coming from the inside out
She has a choice
She purges. She lets go
The ride slows down

She can see, she can feel
She lifts her head
It is real. 
She is here.

Alive and dead
Empty and fed





Thursday, March 10, 2016

Proverbs 17 Woman

The highest woman on the ladder, who can find.  
The one with the scars is the most divine.  
Except for the scars are on the inside for none to see.  
For all the Yes’s she gave in word and deed.
What does she lack?  No one knows
Except for the stains on her sheets and pillows.
Proverbs 17 women who can find
The most noble, hardworking, and divine
She gets up before the sun and takes care of everyone
But what does she do when the day is done?
Does she lay under the stars and wonder who is there
If she says No, will someone up there will still care?
The highest on the ladder, who can see
She is too high, even for me.

Monday, February 29, 2016

H O P E


There has been a tragic number of suicides in the Nashville area this past month.  I wanted to write a bit on this awful torment with hope that is ripping these beautifully broken people from our world.

No one commits suicide because they are hopeless.  They commit suicide to kill the hope that refuses to die inside of them.  The hope that comes with each breathe in and breathe out.  Hope will not stop fighting to live.  It is painful to hope.  To hope that we won’t leave lonely with this person again, to hope that there is good in the world, to hope that that good will find us, to hope to find a husband, to hope to have a child through previous miscarriages, to hope that this next surgery will get the cancer out, to hope that I will love being at my job tomorrow, to hope that someone will find me worth being with, to hope that someone will come when I call, to hope that the kids at school won’t make fun of me again.  It is painful to hope because the hope can leave us disappointed and heartbroken, the hope can make us feel stupid or like there is something wrong for wanting, like we are misfits or outcasts.  

Why would we have this hope for something or in something that never seems to be met, or met fully? 

Hope stirs inside of us the need to grieve for all the “not yets” that we experience here on this earth.  If we don’t have people that are familiar with grief and that can hold a space to allow us to grieve our hearts, we become sick and we begin to practice hopelessness. We make fun of hope, we turn it into a childish memory that no longer exists for us.  Life is mostly mundane, a rhythm of night and day with moments of great splendor and fulfillment but always with a side of sadness for that which is not met.  

My hope for you reading this is that you will continue to practice listening with each breathe in and out what the child inside of you is saying, is hoping for, and is needing.  That child is dying to be heard in your hopelessness.  That child is resilient and will not stop tugging on your shirt to come and play in the field of dreams, where life is tragic and God is faithful.  I beckon you to return to how you were made, return to the child inside of you, return to your heart that is beating, pumping oxygen rich blood through your veins, and your lungs which receive deeply and pour out with the faith of the next inhale.  There are many stories in there waiting, hoping to be told.  Do you want to live or just survive?  There is a part of you that wants to live if you are reading this blog.  Start a conversation with that part of you today!

Saturday, February 20, 2016

Kenyan Kingdoms


I wrote a poem on how Kenya showed me what the Kingdom of God is like…

The Kingdom of God is like a little orphan boy in rags showing up day after day, rain or shine, walking for miles at times to hear and get a hug from his new friends that have something to give him that he knows nothing about.

The Kingdom of God is like the rainfall that will bring a small poor village floods of destruction but will pour down something else that they never thought possible; as one by one they begin to dance in it and the very thing that was bringing them into a deeper poverty was catapulting them into a mystery of the wealthiest life.

The Kingdom of God is like feeling like you have nothing left to give, feeling so dry in a desert place and pushing forward, its like you are having dreams of a streaming river so you press on not knowing if you are starting to become delusional or if that dream was even real; then you see it from a far.  You see the river, the water that you have been dreaming of and craving and thirsting for, and it all begins to make a little more sense and then its gone again and you press on, because that little glimpse reminded you of why you were still walking and what was soon to become reality.

The Kingdom of God is like being overtaken in your deepest fear and pushing past it to find something in yourself that you have never trusted before and barely knew existed, to find a power that is only to be found with complete surrender

The Kingdom of God is like a child finding shelter and comfort from the storm in your arms, under your umbrella, in your presence, when you find in the simplest ways that you are capable of being that person to another precious life in this world only because your heavenly Father has been that for you over and over again.

The kingdom of God is like seeing an elder man walk to the front of the church after preaching the message the Lord put on your heart and watch as this man, after a long life of running, goes to His knees in front of everyone and cries for mercy.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like living like no one is watching, but ONE.



I hope you all get a chance to dance in the rain and experience the kingdom this weekend!

Monday, February 15, 2016

Monday Musings

How to Read Backwards

The end. The price is paid.  It is finished.
The sparrow for a penny you say,
What does that make me?
You have numbered the hairs on my head,
Do I come at a price?
How many shekels does he pay
Did I do a good job
Do I get a tip? A raise?
I must increase my worth he whispers.
So it’s a fixed price you say.
I don’t feel fixed.
I feel broken. In fact.
Let’s talk facts.
You came to fix me right?
Like the coldplay song.
You have come to fix my insides of the net worth’s that entangle me
The rise and the falls and
You remain the same
The breath in and the breath out 
Through the receiving and the giving
The input and the output
The day and the night
The joy and the pain
Your death and Your life.
They are all the same
The cost remains the same.
And the cost is great.
The cost is found in the third cry of the crow
The call of a son for His father
The final breath out upon the earth…
So he says I am 50 shekels
For him to turn on me, for my very soul.
He can have my body, but
My soul will never be his.
My soul belongs to someone he has not known in a long time.
He spoke to you when he was a boy, 
You are now a stranger to him.
That is why he can pay for my net worth but 
It will never be fixed for him
Until he talks facts with that old stranger
Watch the birds of the air
They will lead you
To the Raise you are looking for, 
That I searched for in you, 
Once upon a time…

- paid for prophet