journal - poem on loyalty, prayer list, and poem on prayer

June 6, 2011

Loyalty.

I wanted to spew my colors

To make the world, richer, fuller

I wanted to be a life

Fill the space around me with my shades of light

Then God told me to keep my heart

Keep those rays within my guard

He wanted me to grow in faithfulness

Faithfulness can seem so colorless

But I have learned that holding in

Makes me dark within

Deepens my heart's hues

And life is richer when I'm me and you are you.

(Spewing is pale

Venting is rabid

Splashes of lightning

Like lifeless gale.

Holding is rich

Keeping is powerful

Guarding our souls

like potent reservoirs.

Concentration is strength.)

praying for bekah and josh today.

praying for liberation from ancestor worship

praying for liberation from spirit appeasement

praying for unity in our home

praying for school tomorrow

prayer.

i'm standing here as tall oaks bend over in thoughtful gaze

they look at me as though something has happened today

their arms so twisted in agony and painful tears fall as they play, it's august

but august brings winter, and winter death - something i've come to know as standing right here, 

i go my way.

i don't stop to, look its way, but it comes with me

and no matter where i go, where i pause, it's over me

here. i'm still here. it takes forever, to go anywhere

but it takes even longer to stay where you are.

i like to think that tears falling down, from oak to the ground

don't stay. they run away.

like waters drunk by thirsty ground, they're drunk down

eagerly. they are needed.

and i too am needed here.

maybe i can catch the fluttery tears without breaking them

they are crisp from the heat of the past season

they fall without reason. maybe i'm reason enough

for them to fall and be caught

i think i know. i know something that sustains me.

keeps me here even longer than the tears that fall onto me.

the eyebrows cringe, wrinkles stare stolidly, and tears continue to come down on me.

oak tears are much like mine, but they come from me, when i die. 

i know. i know. something that keeps me here as we

enter into eternity. i wear. i wear something that sleeves me like a shirt sleeves a body, cause i am only an arm.

And since I'm just an arm...I can't ever really cry cause i have no eyes. i just feel the throbbing of sobbing chest and wrenched blue heart, fading into obscurity. 

those are the times that i finally feel alive - when i feel the oak leaves fall, onto me. when i feel the tears of God fall. on my wrist. they have fallen so long in my life, that i've come alive and they have stopped. i have outlived them. only because. they have fallen. and when the seasons have changed, and i too have fallen, maybe i too will cry along with them. and our tears will fall on the heads of others who stand under oak trees, long bent over, in prayer.