LISTEN

WHAT DO YOU FEAR?

What do you fear? Disappointment? Insects? Elevators? Abandonment? Darkness? Zombies? Being different? Needles? Bad reputation? Disorder? Sharks? Bright colors? Cockroaches? Growing up? School? Heights? Leeches? Decisions? Losing loved ones? Public speaking? Misery? Spiders? Doctors? The future? Clowns? Ridicule? Sickness? Bats? Being kidnapped? Vomiting? Sexual abuse? Marriage? Isolation? Styrofoam? Conformity? Natural disasters? Traveling? Losing your memory? Being unappreciated? Not being good enough? Being hated? Commitment? Losing rights? Betrayal? Vacuum cleaners? Dreams not coming true? Taking risks? Rabies? Escalators? Blindness? Vulnerability? Social situations? Enclosed spaces? Monotony? Trusting? Condemnation? Self-imperfection? The government? Wild animals? Being stared at? Not reaching potential? Childbirth? Mummies? Strangers? Breaking your heart? Cats? Losing respect? Pregnancy? Appearing weak? Falling? Unstable life? Moths? Calories? Self-destruction? Being underestimated? Men? Not losing weight? Rain? New technology? Food poisoning? HIV/AIDS? Ladders? Dentists? Tapeworm? Loneliness? Dogs? Being nobody? Chemicals? Not reaching goals? Poverty? Being forgotten? Reality? Bad breath? Fish? The ocean? Wood-ticks? Bad odors? Fire? Intensity? Demons? Sunlight? Unstable structures? Sex? Large crowds of people? Not being loved? Bellybuttons? Easter bunny costumes? Germs? Woods? Crabs? Judgement? Being without your phone? Graves? Religion? Heat? Losing freedom? Being abducted? The stomach flu? Intimacy? Answering phones? Weapons? Sleep? Relationships? Newness? Ghosts? Love? Water? UFOs? Dolls? Being stranded? Snakes? Blood? Mosquitoes? Cancer? Foreigners? Planes? Forgiving? Heaven? Being buried alive? Rejection? Women? Hospitals? Doubt? Frogs? Obesity? Rape? Car crashes? Blushing? Diseases? Letting go? Being owned? God? Coldness? Being touched? The unknown? Medications? Nudity? The number 13? Poison ivy? Bridges? Dancing in public? Injustice? Hell? Dying? Birds? Swallowing? Failure? Pain? Aging? Dirt? Radioactivity? Wasting your life? Change? Loud sounds? Shadows? The house burning down? 

Sometimes, my fear paralyzes me. It takes far too long to convince myself to get up and dressed. I hide, because I am familiar with pain and I cannot bear the humiliation. Somedays, it eats at me and I feel nauseous. I don't want to be afraid anymore. Afraid to be vulnerable, to be weak. Afraid to be ugly, let people see, let God come closer. Afraid to let people hear me sing. Afraid to try, because I might not make it. Afraid to desire God's will for me, because last time when I surrendered to His will, it brought me pain that I can still feel. At the same time, I know His will is perfect, I trust Him, and I am learning that it is good to fear God, that the fear of God brings life.

"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

-Isaiah 41:10

I AM QUIMBY

The dog and I danced in the basement. Too much dancing, I was feeling dizzy. 

I turned the music down and two steps at a time, took the stairs for the kitchen, intent on filling a glass for my thirst, but when I saw the breathless, I forgot about my thirst and ran wildly about the house to fetch my camera and its pieces. The breathless was spilling over the wooden floors from the front window that faced the west. I grabbed my brothers cap, my forest coat and threw myself out the door, forgetting shoes, racing across the snow to the tree, camera swinging around my neck, swinging my legs into its boughs and hoisting myself up. The neighbor working on his truck across the street had set down his box and watched. Perhaps stared. 

The sun from the treetop was a sea of gold.  Amen.

SOMA

This. This is beautiful. 

http://vimeo.com/22754743

NEAR TO ME

A.W. Tozer says, "It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply." I wanted who I was; my confidence, my gifts, my personality to make me usable to God, not my weaknesses and brokenness. 



"The LORD is near--close enough to touch--to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed of spirit."

// Psalm 34:18

how thankful I am that He is near, m

TODAY

All I want to do is row deep into the sea and fish and fish and...

fill it with tears

DAVY

If you have not yet read A Severe Mercy, I will take a moment to persuade you:

Read it. 

Or you are stupid.

It's a story of Van and Davy's love, their uncompromising, unquenchable love, divine and human; their lives of poetry, their valiant search for the heights, for radiance, for beauty, for God, and their unfailing hope that broke through tragedy. 

I recently re-read it (for the third time) and was struck by Davy, in the hospital, dying of cancer. Her husband writes:

"Davy, too, was saying farewell to the wind, farewell to the wind and sky, watching it all go, fade away, die--and thanking God. And yet she was human, heart-breakingly human, and she did not want to die.

She obediently did everything the doctors and nurses told her to do: everything except to stay in bed when someone else was in need. Over and over again she was discovered out of bed in the night, sitting beside some other patient who was suffering, soothing her, holding her hand, praying for her. The doctor told me to persuade her to stay in bed; and Davy would look guilty and grin and promise--and then she would hear a sob or a cry in the night. Later, I was to get dozens of letters, some almost illiterate, from people who had been in hospital with her, saying that she had helped and sustained them. One said she was like an angel of God. 

   The nurses loved her and hospital servants, too. She enlisted my help to make a grand medal 'for faithful service' for one of the black maids, who wore it proudly. Many of the nurses were praying for her. There was on nurse, especially, named Joan, whom we called St. Joan, who loved Davy and was loved. St. Joan was young and swift and valiant, and the name fitted her. Davy never lost her gaiety and sense of humour. People laughed to be around her. Someone gave her a floppy-eared creature which was always spoke of as 'St.-Paul-the-dog-or-rabbit'; and she used it to speak 'aside' to about how kind people were. It is simply true, without exaggeration, to say that she was a tower of strength to everyone--nurses, doctors, ministers no less than friends--all drew strength from her cheerful, brave, deeply loving spirit. Love shone forth from her; and love not only begets love, it transmits strength.                                                                          
It might be appropriate to say here, although I was not to know it until the end, that the hospital--the Virginia Baptist Hospital--would not take a penny for all their care of her over months, not even for the meals they occasionally brought me. They said that Davy had done more for them, for their nurses and other patients, then they had ever been able to do for her. And Dr. Craddock, in my opinion a deeply skilled doctor as well as a deeply Christian gentleman, who with his partner saw her daily during all those months, also refused all payment. I didn't ask either doctors or hospital for help and didn't expect it; I had made arrangements to borrow. Goodness and love are as real as their terrible opposites, and, in truth, far more real, though I say this mindful of the enormous evils like Nazi Germany. But love is the final reality; and anyone who does not understand this, be he writer or sage, is a man flawed in wisdom. 

Davy strove to do God's will. More important, she strove to make her own will conform to God's will: to will what He willed. Her prayer--and mine, too, often--was the prayer from one of Charles William's novels: 'Do--or do not.' She wanted, humanly, to live; and she, humanly, feared death: yet she was surrendered to God." 

{pg. 163-64}

I desire to be that surrendered to God... to know that severe mercy. 

SPRING WILL COME AGAIN

I promise.

WHEN I COLLAPSE

what is this that burns?

i touch it, my hand turns to porcelain 
the glass reflects a new face

where to? why must i -where? where God?

faintly, a whisper, but i cannot hear: not yet, there is too much noise now.
i am Rome, i am Eden. fallen, lost.
the song swells between the crevice:

--Mmmhush, hush: take my hand, I want to show you something, something here, here, 
Be here, be still. 
I want to show you, I want you to hear.

but!--but! i cannot see! i cannot hear! i have nothing to offer... i lift the shards, the broken pieces: begging Him to see how broken they are; how broken i am.
--No, no you are wrong, my daughter

you cannot hear, you cannot see, but you can be

Be here, with Me, my beloved daughter, trust Me. 
Let Me be your eyes, let Me be your heart... let Me.

but!--but! i am weary! i am faint! i cannot stand... i cannot... 

--O, beloved

you are weary, you are faint, come

follow Me

A SCAR

For a moment, I didn't belong in time.
With eyes shut, I lifted my face, letting my skin drink in the warm light. The sun face was slowly being tugged behind the two peaked mountain, as if to sleep, like a gleaming coin tucked in a leather pocket. I sat under the shadowless, deep breathes: seeing again, thankful again.
Three voices joined into song:

the first, surrounding me from overhead, beneath the brush of skeleton branches, birds. The second, farther, a gentle trickling; the ceaseless icy mountain flow from the fountain. the third, still farther, the river's timid climb from the heights, cradled by the rocks.
I read something there in the final pages of 'The Four Loves.' Something simple, something I had known before: that God loves, not because I am lovable, but because He is Love. Love is not that I -- human creature -- loved God, but that He Loved me: us.

"In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give."

Love is a gift, a gift given and the act of giving. And in the giving, receiving. Love, in the God-sense, is inhumane, Divine. How can a mere man love his enemies, his superiors, morons, the sulky and sneering? -- frankly, it's impossible, unless God enables him to. Love does not exist outside of God and that love is a grace.  
With winter's shattering beneath the fist of spring, the three songs, my naked feet (at last!), His generous light framing the crest of the mountain: I understood. I understood how He could be Love. Sadly, I've already forgotten my fistful-grasp and now merely remember it. The memory is a scar, though a beautiful scar.

In the final pages: "There is no escape along the lines St. Augustine suggests. Nor along any other lines. There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. but in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."

"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date."

Learning to love,
Moriah