monday grace and prayer

You say grace before meals.

All right…

But I say grace before the concert and the opera,

and grace before the play and pantomime,

and grace before I open a book,

and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip

the pen in the ink.

- GK Chesterton

Where do you need to say grace in your life?

Where do you need to accept God's grace?

Where in your life do you find it the hardest to believe in grace?

Have you been believing a lie about God and his grace?

Think of a time when you received or gave grace...What did it feel like? What happened?

Most Gracious God-Dad,

We pretend like we can't run to you when we fail- but you're gracious.

We think we have no worth- But you gave it to us.

We act like everything depends on us- But it depends solely on you. And you love us.

Thank you. Help us to receive and even ask for grace this week. Yikes! Help us to be brave.

Amen.

Why trees

I love to talk to people. I love having conversations that build and grow and excite me with new revelations and thoughts. I love sharing where I am in my faith. I do however, embarass myself sometimes with what I say, or the length of time I just continue talking, not fully articulating what it is, too excited to think before I speak, flailing my arms and twisting my face.

A couple of days ago I was talking a lot during a life-group Bible Study. I was talking too much. Part of my compulsion to talk is that I process out loud. Anways, I don't have a lot of grace for myself in this. Later in the night I had a little epiphany about it. I don't have many other friends who want to sit around with me and just talk about God. I could fill my whole day with it. When I do finally get my once a week chance to talk and share, I gorge. This little realization gave me so much peace and forgiveness. It is hard to be tender with oneself when you are a "needs less" rather than "needs more" person. I don't need to share more or risk more or talk more. I have intensity and obnoxiousness and loudness. I need so much less of those things.

Part of why I love trees relates to this in a round about way. They take up space. Sometimes a lot. It is often in an inconvenient area of town that a tree decides to branch out and fill up as much sky room as possible. A tree that is tangled and knotted with branches dissecting into more branches is so beautiful to me. The more they put out there, the more I appreciate them.

I don't have much of a vocabulary. But I do have passion for the things I write and speak about.
To put my little thoughts out into the world is always a risk. May I be reminded by possibly the second greatest creation ever that growing big and branching out isn't neccessarily a bad thing. I may not be able to change it...And maybe God doesn't really want to.

under the sun

"...I wanted to see what was worthwhile for men to do under heaven during the few days of their lives..."

The few days.

Although I can't see ahead of me I imagine it to be a string of memories. Maybe 20 more, to be a bead on my life necklace. When I really think about it, the past 24 years are reduced to a few days I keep with me. They loop around in my head, almost daily: the first memory, of standing in Medicine Hat on the sidewalk, barefoot. Ants making hills in soft brown sand between the cracks of cement. There is the smell and feel of spring in Kimberley, of walking home from school, running on the field grass. There is the memory of deep confusion and loneliness. There is the memory of pure joy, dancing around mirror lake alone at night. They are all just a few days of significance.

Life for me is really just getting into the swing of things. I'm not able to look back on 50 years and finally understand. I do however, when hearing this verse, think about making my days count. Really. Not even just for God (when is a day not for God? If I'm up and smiling its His doing!) but to know I've really lived. I live in a country where I can have anything I want (well, besides clean air silence and sequoia trees) and have health and a pretty good functioning brain (talk to me after school is done). Yet, because everything is at my fingertips, I don't want to sit back and say I'll do it when the sun is out. I don't want to waste.

Then I realized it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him- for this is his lot. More-over, when God gives any man wealth and possessions and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work- this is a gift of God.

I guess for me, the best way not to waste my days is to appreciate them. To say thank you for them. To acknowledge the gifts that have been given to me- the challenges God has presented me with. I pray God continues to fill me with His gladness of heart.

Spirit

Spirit

You are a reckless creative resident within me. I don't know how to address you.

Take my silence as respect. Take my silence as apology.

Take my silence as a plea. I love you.

Don't ever leave me. Don't ever leave me.

Carry me..

Instead of studying today I fell asleep in the hot sun for 4 hours. My exhaustion level is peaking. It isn't just school either, meaning the workload. It is the difficult social interactions with the hurt confused angry unforgiving prideful and fearful. It is the self examinations to find I'm pretty much in the exact same boat. It is the questions I have, the concerns for others, the prayers I am still waiting on. It is the frustration aimed at myself for not being able to see past all of this.

The verse chosen for me this year is Isaiah 46:4 "Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you. I will sustain you and I will rescue you."
How can I be like me when I have this kind of promise? I'm a special case. But just in case you are too...Here is a song that goes through my head a lot. "River Constantine" by Jars of Clay

Carry me, your love is wider than my need could ever be
Come to me, and I will walk along your shore line
Feel your crashing waves sing in time
With the beating of my heart

Pour out, come down on me
Pour out, come down on me

River deep, could I know you as well as you know me?
Constantine, will we travel faster farther
than these legs could ever trustworthy be?

Pour out, come down on me
Come down, pour out on me


* picture by Beatrice Alemagna

Save us from

Save us from night,
from bleak open highways without end,
and the fluorescent oasis of gas stations,
from the gunning of immortal engines past midnight,
when time has no meaning,
from all-night cafes,
their ghoulish slices of pie,
and the orange ruffle on the apron of the waitress,
the matching plastic chairs,
from orange and brown and all unearthly colours,
banish them back to the test tube,
save us from them,
from those bathrooms with a moonscape of skin in the mirror,
from fatigue,
its merciless brightness,
when each cell of the body stands on end,
and the sensation of teeth,
and the mind's eternal sentry,
and the unmapped city
with its cold bed.
Save us from insomnia,
its treadmill,
its school bells and factory bells,
from living rooms like the tomb,
their plaid chesterfields
and galaxies of dust,
from chairs without arms,
from any matched set of furniture,
from floor-length drapes which close out the world,
from padded bras and rented suits,
from any object in which horror is concealed.
Save us from waking after nightmares,
save us from nightmares,
from other worlds,
from the mute, immobile contours of dressers and shoes,
from another measureless day, save us.

- Roo Borson

Just you.

Just your presence God.
Just you.
Not the pleasure of it
Not the joy or the peace
Not the rose outlook
Not the answers

Just your presence God.
Just you.
Not my imaginings
Not my boxes and ideas
Not what I want to hear
Not what I am comfortable believing
Not because I am sick of my own weak presence though I am

Just your presence God.
Just you.
Not in a form I think I know
Not at a time I make room for
Not because I am anxious

Not because I should
Not because of anything I've ever done or not done or attempted
Not because I love you
Not because of anything to do with me at all

Just your presence God.
Just you.