Photo of end of season Rudbeckia, Vancouver

Dec. 14, 2011
'Tormented' is the word that comes to mind
But I will do them a kindness
And answer, 'Okay, and how are you?'
I do not know how to live with this.

Cruel love, your loss destroys
and cripples that within us
that tries to love but understands no longer
what existence even is.

You cannot drown sorrows;
they live on and on,
surviving your burbling attempts,
your bumbling and stumbling attempts,
their horned heads rising
behind every bluff you call.

And the tears keep flowing
just like those trick candles
which, though you keep blowing,
remain aflame.

I remember a moment
not two years ago,
bending over my flowerbed
and recognizing contentment
as I gazed on my life.
Gone, now,
and the flowerbed had gone to weed
long before the first snow
mercifully covered it,
neglected and forgotten,
overshadowed by grief.

The others speak of comfort as if comfort can exist
after cataclysmic trauma, after losses such as this.
Please don't try to lift me as my heart has not yet healed
It was melted in the fire and has not yet re-congealed
It was shattered 'neath the hammer and has not yet crystallized
It was dissolved into a dew and has not yet materialized
It was torn apart in the attack and still lies strewn around
It was paralyzed and still remains so from the sudden trumpet sound
It was ground to dust and pebble between the millstones of disaster
It was tumbled off its pedestal like shattered alabaster
It was frozen when the icicle of death fell from the blue
It was tangled in grief's coiling net and has not yet struggled through
It lies beneath the waves of chaos suffering from the theft of love
Awaiting some all-healing spirit hovering above

In my pain, in my panic
I ran too far, or was I thrown?
Just can't get up, can't find my way back
to where I was, and the peace I had known.
All my past is previous lives,
all now changed beyond repair.
How to go on with awful awareness
that what I thought solid was solid as air.
What if I should loose my mind
like an arrow from a bow;
what place would it come to rest in,
how far would it fall or go?
What if I start talking hard,
saying nothing really matters.
If life's so cheap of someone you love,
what is constant? Everything shatters.
What if I scorned all claims of purpose,
seeing through all sorry games,
like working, thinking, eating, marrying,
giving, taking, what remains?

Isaiah 40:3 On Advent

Even the valleys within me, Lord,
Especially the valleys within me,
Some day to be leveled:
I say let the work begin.
For in me are such valleys
As frustrate the best map makers,
Except for the Master map maker
Who easily finds the way
To prepare the road within me
Beginning this very day.
And in my accursed weakness
I welcome the construction
And smile but meanwhile behind me
One foot is busy digging,
Always making the valley deeper,
And knowing it should not be thus.

First of Advent
Let hope begin again

Keep your heart open, as well keep your eyes
Though dark be the clouds and heavy the skies
There may come an omen of possible peace
Hope may yet return: watch for the red leaf

If ever a father's prayer is listened to,
If ever a mother's prayer is heard:
These are the promises that You have spoken,
These are the promises, You gave Your Word.

I hope less. I wait more
in silence unknowing
before a closed door.
I see less. I ask more.
I guess no God's will.
I seek less. I keep more
inside, dark, and try to be still,
the stillness the first step
before we can know.
And what lies beyond death
only dying will show.

 

Come walk in the woods in autumn,
the beckoning branches call.
Come see the beauty of the autumn sun
as it shines through leaves, as they glow and fall,
and the tall dried grasses whispering low
of the shorter days soon, and the coming snow.
As the nights go by, the days grow thinner,
the song will change: come walk in the winter.

I stood with the trees but the trees didn't care,
just fluttered their leaves to the moving air.
I stood by the creek as the tears ran hotter,
but creeks don't care, just move their water.
I stood in the shade of a passing boulder,
unmoved and unmoving; we grew silent and older.
I threw myself down in the arms of the grass,
but it whispered apologies and let me pass.
Nothing in this world can answer my heart
(how many the questions when once I start).
Nothing in this world can calm my grief
(how brief the glory of the flaming leaf).

"Be slow to pray. Praying most often doesn't get us what we want but what God wants, something quite at variance with what we conceive to be in our best interests. And when we realize what is going on, it is often too late to go back. Be slow to pray." (Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles: the Shape of Pastoral Integrity, p. 44) quoted in Prayer: Does It Make Any Diffrence, by Philip Yancey.

I hesitate to wake today,
for fear I may meet God,
and any meeting lead to knowledge
wider than I thought.
To stay would be the comfortable,
easiest of things;
God could be out there anywhere
and draw me with strong strings.
Oh, never mind, the truth is now,
for even as I slept
the Lord was lurking deep within,
preparing me for depth.

2:08 a.m.

He doesn't even have existence anymore.
Must he lose even my remembrance of him?
Just because it hurts me to think of him
And how unfair it is that he was cut off
Like a voice in mid-song
And how it hurts to miss that music that he is not anymore,
does that mean I can stop thinking about him?
Just because I am tired of the bone-jarring sobs
The soul-shaking breath-taking stomach-aching sobs,
Does that mean I can turn over and rest in sleep?
Wildly loved, now passionately mourned.
Deeply needed, now painfully missed.
I don't understand but i'll stay awake anyway.