An Overture Untitled

The world is alive today in swelling fullness,
life upon life upon death.


The clouds were played and arranged
by a string quartet,
and the veiled winter sun
the woodwinds proudly array.


(In my Love, the King,
      is all magnificence--)


He opened the heavens,
opened his hands,
and what is invisible poured forth.


If our hearts were but right
      we might see!
If our hearts were but right
      we might hear!
Or perhaps it is not our lot,
and perhaps it is not our lot.


The symphony surges,
swirls above and throughout
      (we keep to our quiet lives).
The triumphal march soars,
sweeping loudly to proclaim
      (we keep to our busy lives).


The resonating cello
left its song within my soul.
It sings sweetly and strongly
of sorrow and lament
and a throbbing ache
of strange, unspeakable joy.


The world, my dear,
is alive today,
and the silent love of a King
(life upon life upon death).

A Request

A group of friends from my home church is currently in Thailand right now on a short-term mission trip.
Please pray for them, as they are experiencing spiritual warfare these past few days.

Here is the link to the blog for their trip, in which you can find their prayer requests and learn more about what they're doing. http://rejoice2012.wordpress.com/
In addition, one of the team members is recording the journey from his personal blog, which you can read about here: http://jonathanrgray.blogspot.com/


This is completely irrelevant, but while I'm dishing out links, I'd like to make a quick shout-out to my sister, Jessica, who recently started a blog as well.  She has some insightful and provoking poetry, musings and quotations (mostly poetry), as well as some pretty photos on the side :). So if you're interested and/or know her and didn't know she was blogging (I didn't find out right away myself), check it out! http://j-stein.blogspot.com/

Till next time, God bless!

allison

Disquiet

When all that she saw was less than she knew

and she was forced to pass by what she yearned to go through;

when all of the stars in the purple-black sky

wished to grant her wish that she might fly;

as the hollow bark of the old canoe

so her soul felt dull and empty too;

Her lips speak words she knows but can't feel;

beauty exists, though somehow less real;

she holds tight to the window—can't and won't fall—

the lament and joy of her voice grow small;

the world is spinning and color going flat

and her music is shrinking—

    and she sits,

            she goes,

                   she is,

                     she loves,

    confined in a tattered canoe.

Communion

- n1. an exchange of thoughts, emotions, etc 2. possession or sharing in common; participation 3. (followed by: by, with) strong emotional or spiritual feelings (for): communion with nature 4. a religious group or denomination having a common body of beliefs, doctrines, and practices 5. the spiritual union held by Christians to exist between individual Christians and Christ, their Church, or their fellow Christians [from Latin commūniō, general participation, from commūnis, common] (From World English Dictionary, accessed at Dictionary.com) We eat the body (of the bread) together as the body (of believers) because of, and to so remember, Christ's body (broken for us). Communion.

Static

       The muse has muted

the writer so the writer

has nothing to say.

"Living with Contradiction"

"I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the greatest heights.  It is when things go wrong, when the good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present....


We need to say 'Thank you' whenever possible, even if we are not able to reconcile the human creature's free will with the Master's working out of the pattern.  Thanks and praise are, I believe, some of the threads with which the pattern is woven.


...Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being."

                                                                        -Madeleine L'Engle, Two-Part Invention




"Mysticism keeps men sane.  As long as you have mystery you have health; when you create mystery you create morbidity.  The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic.  He has permitted the twilight.  He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them.  He has always cared more for truth than for consistency.  If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them.  His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that.... The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand.


...The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything.  Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility."

                                                                      -G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Library Window

(I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and have been too busy to edit and post it. But I think I'm going to just post it anyway.)

Outside, the first fearsome winds of winter

   berate and bully barren trees,

   howl round stolid buildings of brick,

   whip the faces of lonely passers-by.

I am driven in, into the hushed realm of tables and chairs,

   surrounded by stacks upon stacks of books

   emanating scents of old yellowing paper, ink and binding,

   kept company in quiet isolation by coffee, books, and unwritten words.

Finals and ominous, gleaming, tell-tale letters loom ahead,

   mostly ignored, or kept on pretense of such

   (as I wish they did not have such power over me).

And the existential crisis of the culminating three weeks wells within me,

   asking, “why am I here?” and “why do I care?”

   and “what does it matter?”

A bright and glorious sunset is strewn across the sky,

   the skeletons of trees silhouetted against,

   ribbed with the reflections of narrow fluorescent lights,

   transparent towers of commentaries superimposed over brick dorms and purple sky.

The window-scenes dim, fade into thorough darkness;

   the books crowd closer, impel my fingers to type faster,

   hot coffee inspires, enlivens my veins,

   and estrangement from the world enforces productivity.

The Acrobat and the Abyss

  I was on a journey, and had walked for many miles when my travels came to an abrupt halt as I reached the edge of an abyss.  As you can imagine, I found this not a little disappointing, and stood there for a long while wondering how to get across.

To my astonishment, however, I noticed a tightrope stretching out from the cliff edge and, slowly, a man pushing a wheelbarrow across the rope toward me.  In the wheelbarrow sat another performer.  By and by they reached land: the performer jumped out of the wheelbarrow and went on his way.

I stood at the edge of the chasm, and the acrobat smiled at my amazement.  “Don’t you think I can do it again?” he asked.

“Certainly,” I replied with sincere gravity and awe.  “Of course I believe you can.”

The acrobat repeated the question, and when the answer was the same, he pointed to the wheelbarrow and said, “Good!  Get in, then, and I will take you across.”

To be sure, I felt a brief pang of trepidation, but this I took as a child, with the surging thrill of adventure.  “Truly?” I cried, apprehensive and overjoyed.

“Indeed,” he said, smiling to see my eagerness.

Hereupon I leapt into the wheelbarrow and settled myself for the journey.

Time passed and the acrobat pushed me over the tightrope for what seemed endless miles, never varying in speed, never becoming weak or fatigued.  For all this, however, we surely had more than three-quarters of our journey yet to travel.  Infinitely the rope stretched before us—I could see no end near or otherwise.  I twisted my head around to peer behind, and saw that the opposite cliff from whence we’d come had disappeared, too, and there would be no returning.  Below, the dark of the abyss; above, the clouds congregated as for a rainstorm.

Where I had previously felt such peace, the chill of fear crept into my heart.  How terribly alone we seemed.  How awfully long and hard this journey was!  What if I was too heavy and the acrobat grew tired?  After all, he had only finished pushing someone else when I came along.  I felt as though I ought to help, but I had no skill or experience and the chasm fell so dreadfully far below.

Who was this acrobat anyway?  To be sure, it felt as though I had known him forever.  Certainly he kept on most prodigiously.  But no one had told me how vast the tightrope was, how uncomfortable the wheelbarrow’s wood became, nor how the rain and wind could sting.  And there were so many things about the acrobat I did not know.

Despite my deep breaths and rationalizations, I began to tremble, and my fingers gripped the wheelbarrow with all the strength that was in them.

Fog enveloped us.  I was cold, wet, and afraid.  I thought we were still moving, though it was hard to tell, and panic rose in me when I realized the fog obscured my acrobat completely from my sight and all but muffled his quiet voice entirely.  And, shivering, I began to weep.

Could he hear my cries?  Surely if he heard he would he not comfort me?  Or would he be irritated at my lack of confidence and berate me—if not in word, then at least in thought, saying to himself, “What an ungrateful wretch this girl is, when I have promised to bring her across the abyss and am giving myself entirely for her.”

I wanted to be strong and bear the cold and wind and rain with patience.  I wanted to be a child, weak but secure in my daddy’s lap, comforted and loved.  But I was neither of these, and I was helpless and confused.

Every once in a great while I thought I heard whispers that sounded like, “I love you,” or “I am still here.”  But I could never be sure, and was afraid it might be my imagination.

And I sat, huddled and miserable in the bottom of the wheelbarrow.  The acrobat, I think, kept pushing, for we never once wavered on the thin line.  And so we kept on.

(A personalized retelling of the story by Morton Kelsey)

the deep longing

Do you ever feel that deep longing?

Does the yearning of your soul ever fill you until you feel it with all that you are, and it is a pulling, expanding ache within you?

Until you are sure that to glimpse something beautiful or become witness to some sorrow or pain might overwhelm you with wordless emotion?

It is hard to put the longing into words...indeed, it almost seems sacrilege to do so.
But I think this is a holy longing.

I think this is the longing that keeps us coming back to God and hoping and praying for redemption and restoration, for all things to be made right.  How long, O Lord?


This longing keeps us alive. Its pain is a form of hope—it reminds us that there is something more, that this world and its pain are not ends in themselves; that God will restore us to Him, restore our relationships with one another, restore the world to peace free from the cataclysm of drought, hurricane, earthquake, famine, war.

The medieval abbess and mystic Hildegard of Bingen wrote of this longing, and her words are an encouragement to me:

Like billowing clouds,
like the incessant gurgle of the brook,
the longing of the soul can never be
stilled. 

It is this longing with which holy
persons seek their work from God. 

Perhaps God also uses this longing to not only keep us seeking Him, but to bring us into participation in bringing about His work of redemption. Whether through proclaiming truth, creating works of beauty, or working to alleviate suffering, perhaps this longing serves as an impetus toward our personal involvement in God's work.  Perhaps that's part of what the Kingdom is all about....

To the November Moon and Kelley Goewey

The lonely full moon floats

  In an indifferent, all-black sky

  above the busy, purposeless

  to-and-fro of red and yellow

  lights on the expressway.

What are you seeing,

  O wide, wide-eyed Moon?

What are you trying to say, Moon,

  with your round open mouth?

Would you impart whispered secrets,

  lumined slivers of wisdom

  could we but hear your voice?

Are you singing to us, O Moon,

  the lullabies of the cosmos,

  were the deafness of our ears to fall away?

Somewhere, at a lonely desk

  in an indifferent room

  with the moon's full face serenely shining above

A girl catches glimmers of something more

   and silently scribbles poetry.