I find You, finding me: Your undiluted Compassion
is no imagined strength.
in the stillness…
Tag: Christ
Fantastically torn pages
We are each other’s story wrapped in tangles; edgeless momentoes of each other. We are fragments of stars and streams & oaks running ‘neath trees planted by torrents of living Waters...
pic : pickled stardust, unsplash
we are songs broken every day, as at dawn. We are wars. We are Seekers of Light, in the dark. Tossed by many storms, or the storm itself, we are lovers/ haters …
weavers of each other’s chapters: the fabric of skies and times,
we are choices, we choose: we write hues we may not know we know. We are fantastic/ fantastically torn. We are lovable, loved, bored, despised, cast out, downtrodden, we are more than we suspect: Stores, hoards …in the sands that mingle our beauty with the tidal currents that run our fingers. We know/ do not know the seabed of our blessings, we race eagles in the skies of our mind; we dive deep in the oceans of each day, we host the pearls we find, in each other’s eyes, or not; we are mysteries, we are
tribes of one blood, one breath, one chord pulsing us tight, one gravity: we leave the way we arrive, to territories we dare suspect, uh –
we know we are more than angels and the sun. We are the created: beyond visibility – blest to the toes of a soul / our soul, we may not have yet met: do we know we are blest, do we know…
the storey of a soul
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Prompt FMF writers: Story
Airpoet Sunset (love that typo:)
My pics don’t half capture what we saw two evenings ago at our Kempegowda sky. With zero city silhouettes, no trees, just this blaze of light we’ve all seen before, but this one ruled!
It had been a long day, we were hoping for a spot of coffee & chat. But time runs: you don’t get to ask an airline to wait. ( The last Noel &I did that we kept AirIndia waiting a good five+ minutes; am not telling that story right now😧, they were polite and furious).
But heaven knows.
Heaven knows when a woman is about to have a meltdown. They know. My Noel is Mr. Tenderheart but practical. I’m saying “lookat that sunset“, he’s looking at Time. Where park this. How get to point B.
I’m thinking, does the guy love me? He’s sighing and grabbing steering wheel with eyes like a scared reindeer. Scared I’ll go do my thing. And ‘thing’ is my poetic self wanting to lie in the road and look at the sky. What he’d do is first check if that space is clean/ safe/legally clear…all that. Ofcourse. Is what great husbands do;
im just saying heaven knows how to sort us. They filled the skies with gold painted words I am learning to read.
At home last night we talked of how the skies are our keepers, how they shock us into their Point of View. At our Contrasts.
Have you had a very hot day, and got in the rain? And how that fell in your face like kisses from heaven; haven’t you too been hugged by an old person; they looked like your parent did, and you felt a piece of the Eternal holding you? Haven’t you too at least once, been smiled at by a total stranger at a bus stop, and felt the urge to smile back and it was indescribable friendship, random yea, but an ode to the Visible Unseen?
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.
— Albert Einstein
So I experienced renewed friendship with the sun : twas a glorious Stranger smiling at us, at a rushed Port, where there’s that thin fine line between here & eternity, between Time zones, latitudes, clouds, beneath / above. There are safety checks, safety measures. Waiting lounge. Departure, Arrival. Life in Transit. It is all of us, seen as with Bird’s eye. Everything suddenly miniscule. A paradigm shift of reference. One gets to congregate with all that blue. All that expanse. Acres of the heavens. Turbo speed is the closest we come to that kind of mileage. But deep within, we soar higher than we admit.
The nations are as a drop in the bucket, my Scriptures read. What is man …?the first Astronaut on moon quoted from the Psalms. I was a child, now am grown and the more I stare at life, the more am startled by beauty, by pain, by comfort and chaos, and by the rain that falls equally on us all, like the untouchable Light, the way It pulses at emotions, reaching in the iris of human fatigue, esp at dusk.
"Don't think about why you question, simply don't stop questioning. Don't worry about what you can't answer, and don't try to explain what you can't know. Curiosity is its own reason. Aren't you in awe when you contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure behind reality? And this is the miracle of the human mind - to use its constructions, concepts, and formulas as tools to explain what man sees, feels and touches. Try to comprehend a little more each day. Have holy curiosity." A.Einstein
To Dance with the Fabulous Unseen
In response to the Five minute Friday’s “Choose“
Light. Shining. Via our son’s blindness? This is not what we yelled for at altars. This is not what we asked …
the Almighty, and when He never answered we sulked hard at the unanswered prayer.
This dawn am staring at how I’ve misunderstood the Act of not getting what I asked, and how it morphs me into a person one would never prescribe for their self… cuz the basic human request (esp this parent’s) is pretty self focused.
Watching him in the Light of a growing sun or dusk, is staring at his Joy not dependant on external conditions, as I am. He doesn’t know how blindness separates the seen from the Unseen.
What’s it like for him to never see my face, but touch me and experience my love for him? To never see the sun but feel its warmth in his skin. Am humbled this morning at the hugeness of Light,and how it can spill out of even my own response…re-writing my own thoughts that spiral down, and oh into the Unseen Dayspring in the cellars of inner blindness;
often I Choose to pursue sadness. But on days as these, the Light hits the shutters of my mind, leaving me no Choice but to dance with the fabulous All Mighty Light.
🌿🌻🌱
Super Power (tears for Peace)
I’ve received hate, evil, disaster, discrimination, cruelty
but with Compassion … one is startled into a new order of things.
Call it Love, Grace, unmerited favor.… It breaks me out of old mental patterns into New.
It ruins Ruins, breathing Life into Carcasses of Joy.
Compassion weeps Fire in the ashes of our tears for Peace… Yea
we’ve eaten at Banquets of Hate but one tiny morsel of true Love, startles us forever
into a Dimension that can pull us out of traditional puppetry..
i prayed for a prayer
burn my lips with verbs that do nothing but peace Abba.
I responded to a Skeptic not realizing this was going to be more than sweet poetry shares…
Poetry partnerships are responses to each other’s poem.
I hadn’t a clue that the articulate, kind eyed Skeptic’s Kaddish was agreeing to many extra miles just to be seen with my Yeshua verses.
In his Post David Bogomolny says,” Yes, I responded to Faith Poetry.”
“…I mean, really, one of the main reasons I avoid such poetry is because I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. What would be the point of responding to a true believer’s sincere God-loving poem with my skepticism? What would my cynical response accomplish? And- believe me, I have almost nothing left in me today but cynicism…” David Bogomolny, Skeptic’s Kaddish – ben Alexander David.
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I’m a ‘Faith Poet’? Now I know, thank you David. Love the description.
‘He didn’t want to hurt me’ … ben A.D. Ah’m. You don’t see my cactus heart – I’d have been the original doubting Thomas’ daughter had it not been for What we been staring thru’ the dark at !
David writes with skilled ease and forms I never knew existed. Like it or not, this impatience at “faith”, coupled with careful toeing of thin line between here and the Shekinah, is fascinating; his Kaddish of grief, at loss of his father, the renowned Israeli American Mathematician +, Alexander Bogomolny is a Prayer Wall all by Itself. These are lyrics of beauty in ashes. It stirred me to look closer at scepticism. After months I was blogging again and two passages from his Skeptic’s Kaddish ran at me; both are necessary to Everything.
“Papa…in describing you …I have sometimes invoked an image of you as the “genius version of Forrest Gump” because you lived through so much momentous history but remained unruffled by it. You innocently savored life’s little details and exhibited a childlike fascination for moments that went unnoticed by most. It seems to me that your life experiences were filtered through your soul before ever reaching your mind.“
His other line : “… it feels to me as though nobody has any interest in listening to those with whom they disagree politically …..”
Two random readings from a professing skeptic, and neither felt hostile to a Bible hugging momma (me);
so. We did a couple of back and forth Poetry shares. One cannot presume to know another’s journey;
as for me, it wasn’t my Ma’s insistence nor Dad’s that provoked me to stare in the Unseen. Left to myself I’d’ve been the Skeptic of skeptics, you’ve no idea. I didn’t find heaven in the pews and baptism pool till a certain clearing of my mind began. The Unseen was right there beneath my own skin and the veins of leaves, of Life;
like a Poem in our mind that becomes a written word, I stared in the dark: this is how the Unseen world works for me, this is my definition of Faith. “ ..so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” Hebrews 11.
I find God staring at my own narrow ways through other humans who can forgive one another too. Love like that hurts like little else can. And it wrecks me to pieces, in a Peace that defies defect. Nothing missing, nothing broken – Shalom. Peace.
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Our local Sati, Dowry deaths to mention a few, had begun to build me into a museum of crime records. It is not impossible to go there. I could not forgive that everyday there’s a grisly rape, an honour killing, there’s war & sins of the powerful / ‘righteous’. One summer holiday between Anne Frank and Jungle Book, I came across Corrie Ten Boom’s Hiding Place:
the power of Forgiveness mingled with Love that asks nothing in return but a certain giving: this is an act of Soul. Without which we are….what? And if we do have Soul, we are miles more than meets the eye. Sigh. Yes!
Then we could not limit our self anymore nor stay indifferent to evidences of Life beneath surfaces. Maybe we would begin to listen to each other, know why we are what we are. We are more than a few dimensions. We are minefields and diamonds that surface from generations of bruises we carry like tattoos in our skin, and stars we seek.
Sheer relief : I didn’t have to play God anymore. I gave up my panel of Controls. One could swing a hammock in a desert if you could find two good trees! There would be dust storms, there would be songs. And there could be nothing missing, nothing broken inside-out if you dared. It would be tiring. Uneasy. No blame games. Only Grace.
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I am grateful for people who believe what they believe with an honesty that is unafraid to look at the Unseen. People like David who is a true ….Tolerant?
May you be startled.
You deserve the best.
Outgrowing hurt
That moment you’re aware you’re being watched
…that He is aware of you.
He knows you by name. There is nothing that can shake away that moment. The Creator creates it, designer made for you. You look up to see Him gazing down at you.
There’s no need of the sun, there’s nothing under the earth. Everything you knew pales in the Presence of This Presence that overwhelms all else. You are aware that He is aware of you. You are loved, regarded with Eyes that know things we humans can only try imagine.
“What can separate us from love like that?”
adapted. Bible.
As June comes to an end, we are officially past mid 2022. May we know how deeply the Father loves us that He gave His son to take our stripes. We believe in everything else but the most beautiful story of Love. Why. Why not.
We cannot see Him, nor satan, yet both are incredibly palpable in our lives. We get to choose whom we serve, the Tormentor or our Beloved. I guess all of this will best come to light that moment we pass through the veil between life and death
Till then, what am I most aware of ; what grabs my heart and soul. In the secret place of the night mist or early dawn, who am I, whose am I.
SEAHORSE, my friend
He was real, I was young enough to love him for what he was, a real sea creature in the early waves, Bay of Bengal. Through the years, he has followed me, city after city, lane after lane, along with a certain “Harrison” Aussy Life Saver/priest who took me to the Shoulder of a wave. The two become one in a world of creative fiction, where the real story is one about Trusting the One Whose Shoulder we may lean on with the heart of a child. Do check preview attached👇🏼
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx34iC8LUFTwW5neG50OzJ-4jN7iSFBwvF
Dew Fall
…on our blinds, our mind – shuttered.
on our veils, our vales of shadows –
sparkle our dust with the Life of Your Light,
Fall, Dew, fall.
Heal
when we do, we will be changed,
These days there are no words enough. We will heal when we heal;
we will die and birth either hate or more love:
the kind that is conceived in days like these when our children kill our children. What state is that?
Words fail. We sit in the grass that bears our babies – these are days of a state we never knew; days we blame God not hell; days we turn away from the Forgiver, to the Taunter of humans.
Father forgive us. Father, heal.
‘The Cokeville Miracle’
True life stories have a way of leaving you staring as movie credits scroll down your Living room:
after you get a glass of cool water, you re- live some of the scenes you just watched, then get back in current reality, a little re- arranged. This Movie had that effect on me/ us. I forgot to have a coffee;
👆🏼 90+ kids prayed, as terror unleashed around them, and then the 3rd dimension breaks loose, really?
Why isn’t this taught in our textbooks? Why are we systematically worried about stepping on anothers’ cultural toes, for tipping each other off on the greatest Essential ever – the presence of Heaven right in our personal hells?! Why is the God a ‘boring old man’ & better substituted by Red caped Santa, when the Real Deal is by far the very thing our wildest dreams scream for?
Strange things happen when we pray. “It doesn’t change things always, it changes us for things.” Famous Quote – they knew what they were saying. Yea strange things….
“miracles” : not just shopping lists ticked off by a celestial Arm, but soul details refurbished, “inners” thwacked back into breath.
If you’ve lived enough like I have, if you’ve watched your blind son dance in the rain (he’s got the whackiest moves😀), if you’ve watched him heal from seizures only to be impacted by Meds’ side effects in ways I’d rather not enlist here- zero assistance from more Meds, and dear Docs wondering whether we are training him alright or not, for now he manifests personality issues,
but then he is, steadily better, I’m saying “steadily”, cuz yesterday was a bad day. Pardon my short forms and zero editing skills. I blog best on the run, its a Mom- human hehe; a daughter of a Father Who hears my Prayers. I deliver them 9-5, a rant, a Psalm- a song on the hinges of Faith!
For there are days of zero strength, of numb disbelief, trauma, shock. Days I wonder why everyone is mad in the newspapers, why is life political…
and then there are the Miracles, they start like a small fire somewhere in the midriff, in the back of my tongue, a taste of a certain sweetness unimagined-
it is the start up of miracles. It beats what could happen if all were well with everyone, I mean factually, physically. In the presence of a not so cool moment, a sudden wellspring of joy, is not an imagined App, trust me, it is the Fact of the Act of Prayer. He does it every single time. Every single time.
“No, blood does not matter anymore”
We have had tea together a thousand times in these cane chairs facing her curry leaf tree and windows hung with old silk curtains.
Sia is a good woman with friends and folks who love her; why wouldn’t they, she is not just strikingly entertaining, she is one of the loveliest persons I have ever met. Dark long classic almond eyes in a determined oval shaped face set in wheat gold skin you want to paint! ( I’ve tried painting Sia and will try again; she is a hundred stories and I must wait to capture all their colours, oh she’s generous with comment and has booked a canvas from my battered easel). I was saying though, beneath that nice surface is soft steel, easier to break than I suspected possible.
“I should not insist on being loved by my only sibling, but uhm, who said blood is thicker than anything else? It is a liquid and it can dry up like a forgotten river.”
Sia talks that way between better days, so I’m not all surprised, and yet today the moment simmers like her eyes: they brim with aloneness.
“One should know they are not needed or loved anymore, but I still hang on, I follow my sister, I wait for her to come home, I remember our childhood too much, now…it changes? Because...?”
I have not one nice warm thing to say. Her gold lemon tea with mint leaf waits in white ceramic; I cannot breathe, her hurt has to ebb. It doesn’t.
“..is alright,” she continues as if she heard me. “Let’s have that mint from my herbal pot, hehe!”
Just when I was settling into her sorrow she turns into the rising sun.
“You know, Ray. I do not feel bitter anymore?! They do not want me, that is fine. We fight for those we need to keep. Once that is not there anymore, what is the fight? How is the painting coming up?“
“What painting?!” I ask without thinking and her face blows up in laughter. Without warning, Sia Mayben is a skyful of crackers!
“This is what I love best about you, girl. You are not picking problems, you do not care, you walk in a Light that is not the sun.”
I do?
“…and there’s a God and He loves you, loves me. My entire life I hate Him, but He never leaves. Never. Nah….Yem! ” She says that for ‘yes’ occasionally, it’s her unusual upbringing; I will never know where she totally grew up in. She sounds like ghettos sometimes- raw, dismembered, and then she is a fountain of healing.
Today for some reason I’m the cause of her healing? I said / did nothing, but the woman isn’t listening. At 80+ she’s earned that right. She talks about her dead sis like she’s there in the next room, then she turns into the Psalmist.
I promise to finish her painting as soons I get more time between comforting Kitsy our second daughter whose Crayfish ate up her beloved Molly– I didn’t dare tell her ‘I told you so’,
Oh but I did tell her,
that, and our youngest fantastic blind 21 year old declaring hatred for his walking cane-
yes, must paint Sia. She is the color of an earth poised to smile: the blood in her runs deep as a river that never forgets. Did her sister really not love her? I’ll never know – Alzheimer’s is a deadly treasure trove.
Though, it makes Sia all the more a mystery to peer through – at a world aching for rest.
“Blood doesn’t matter …” Is a sentence laced heavy with truth. I know at least 2 adopted human beings whose love is not enarmoured by genetics.
Weaving my way back home between Bipolar auto rickshaws and pre- monsoon showers pelting the sidewalk, I can’t help feeling Sia’s feelings. Yem. There’s more that matters, than just blood.
It is so early I can hear my heart
Pre-dawns do that. It wakes you up to beauty and quiet, rest and hope.
Have a day of peace and joy, yea we are that privileged.
Reflections
Thoughts on a new May day! No pun intended😅 have a blessed day. Did this for our online fellowship – church, and personally startled all over again by the massive arm of God’s Love that leaves none out.
The power of belief
It can turn you and me into ‘threshing machines’ (Is 41.15); thresh away doubt in the amazing love of God. I’ve seen hate and I’ve seen indifference, but
nothing shakes my core like the Presence of Him who can touch my heart of stone.
..nothing moves me like the Fountain of His tender mercy new every morning. Oh nothing shakes me to the core like His still small voice insisting, pursuing my weakening breath, pleaing that I look away from stubborn doubt into His permanence.
Sacred Whisper
It called,
like It had a thousand times but today It included me in Its Light. It wore my hands and feet, and ignored the shadows of death, the insanity of the night gone. Then It said my name. Like It says yours, this is none other than the Spirit of the Living Loving God. It calls…
Pieces of God
Her eyes sparkle then dim as he walks out and leaves her to pay their bill. I didn’t dare take a pic while they were there.
Next to us a couple (late 30s?)….her eager smile full of pink lipstick; his laughter, …careless? The Cafe reeks of a few worlds the names of which I try find, they’re there in my sensitivities.
Another couple exchange photographs in their mobiles, then he stares long at his phone; she beams at him, waiting, then looks at me. Her paper thin cheeks crease in a smile that reveals one broken tooth, was I imagining that? What do I know except that we are pieces of a Life too complex to understand just yet and yet, aren’t we each fantastically full of pieces with or without God.
I ask our eldest daughrer Vi, why Cafes draw me so hard and she grins back, “Oh its stories…ma?” Hmm,
this is real, raw; they unmask certain some unseen things?
One solitary diner talks into laptop, two humans across the long low roofed cafe huddle in peppered ponytails and bright colors, a couple with resting faces burrow into gaudy salads:
people with words, or none, via a miracle of timing: we have coffee together celebrating a victory, a sadness, Hope…
Outside, before our flyover:
👇🏼
a flower seller insists we buy her 2Roses. Kitsy our second daughter returns one rose to the girl who flares with the indignity of that. The dignity of Humility, oh. She receives her Rs 50/-, not thinking she could’ve priced it a bit more; didn’t dare offer her another note, her jaw defies pity?! This is new in my country of a billion contrasts and every contrast falling in me like a psalm;
like pieces of God brewing our attention to detail: perhaps we have misunderstood a few events between here and heaven? Perhaps what we call pain and suffering are truly Bridges into God raw real, screaming for Peace with man….
“Joy?”
I get a forward on “Feeling Joy no matter what” and I’m thinking “Nice!” but the weather is neat pools of red mud where they’re digging up new roads around our address. Yes, the rains give us poetry too, if you’re like me when we aren’t reading on bombings at Borders and what Price Gurus are saying in our Newspaper dropped off at shoe rack outside. Yes yes, an Indian- Must-have (shoe rack outside door) has come in handy after the Virus! All this, but Joy: not trending Reel – 30second replay of Insta-joy, but an “underground river” the forward implied.
Ummm.
So. I’m backing into every overload of goodness the Lord ceaselessly forwards our way:
am doing what I can to true and serious Follow Him so His Updates happen on my Homepage asap. Serious …
without those Notifications I’m stewing bad news bits or Reels of puppies falling asleep & local Funny people (even Jordindians, a few ‘Jalals’ – they’re not all courteous)😏
But Joy – that’s the real deal. Not pieces of this and that, but the Act of the Psalmist hisself, tripping via my Times, raking in spadesful* of Green Pastures with Him Who alone can Unblock the Light.
* spadesful, or spadefuls?
& this is a Draft I’m posting unedited. Is Joy optional? I think so. We never add it on as a Must-have, only because it is a commodity not available off the shelf, unless we Follow the One Who made us all,
He’d have it in loads. Anyone Who created our puppies and furry friends would. Oh I hear at least three of my friends hoot at that.
Whatever it is we follow, will follow us wherever we are headed.
I’m looking at the aspect of Joy.
🌿🕊⛓️🌿⛓️🕊
Re-generate!
Is it even a horse? Maybe not. Inspired by
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C.S.Lewis’ ‘Winged Horse‘, re-wiring the way I look at Renewals:
worn out earth route replaced by sky map – wings; brain fatigue, taken on by new oxygen!
Who said anything against that, Bro, take a walk in the direction of newnesses. “Racham” Love beyond Love. I found that in a Hebrew Translation of the Love of God, beyond parallel. Love like that speaks to worn out sinews of humanity; to its war-birthed monsters of chaos. Ay, Racham, a Love that breathes into my empty spaces that would other wise fill with death.
Have a blessed day, may Christ meet you totally.
Resurrection Theater!
20 mins, 7 moments at the Cross and 7 after;
14 voices from different continents & clocks, with the Single Theme of God’s heart for Humanity.
Listen closer to the Cross
D’you hear It’s Whisper ?
Prayer Ballad
Stoked by Prayer Requests from the Ukraine and our very own home fires. Dearest Lord is Your kindv Love impossible in these times?
The Greatest Love
Nothing stares me in the face like this Reading; today and always but esp today, wishing you the Greatest Love ever🌷It commits us to a whole different kind of strength (read below)
“commit” (thank you FMWriters)
The strength to not strike back, hate. The strength to love in the face of indifference, “…hold on to that for which Christ laid hold of us…”
“Redemption”
Oil says it better than my fingers, Grace says it best: flowing like blood, in the vein of us- humanity. The Oil of Grace.
The greatest strength is not the power to kill, but to return love for hate. He made redemption possible for the very ones who gambled on His clothing while He still breathed.
Not my favorite theme to paint, for Its demand on mood and line, but this time It called me, “…into participation & companionship with His Son Christ Jesus our Lord.”(1Cor1:9). Everyday it changes me, every day it teaches me to forgive, love back, hold on to what held me, holds me.
‘Go to the ant thou sluggard,’ He said
At the Pet Sanctuary we met Hedgehog with soulful eyes (tattoos belong to Guide).
of a Single Hand that meshes all Species in one stroke.
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Every piece of Light and Thought, all War & Crime,
Evil itself reflects what it opposes. Violence turns our eye on Peace, Hate drives hard a case on Love, Disbelief singularily champions a running away from Belief 👉🏼in the very Thing all Creation points to.
When we go out into a universe full of Footprints of the Unknown,
It stares us in the face – this Oneness written into all Living Features:
patterns of Interaction, of Bonding or not, of Phonetic / other Exchanges between the bars of Cages and Pens
things we are not prepared for, things that happen when a rabbit and turkey, gosling or rescued pony meet your whisper, with a sound that can only be described as the Language of Creation~
in syllables that connect us all in one shared Room called Planet Earth;
each of us with unique fingerprints and more ‘unique’ we haven’t even begun to know,
🌷🦓🦗🍂
every eye and tongue of us flora, fauna and homo sapien: inimitable, no matter the sophistication of stem cell theories and other.
The older I get the more gawk-eyed I am, about how little we care about where we’re headed after we leave all this-
that world beyond what human iris can now see,
“I lay hold of that for which Christ laid hold of me...” Philippians 3:12.
“No be afraid!”
Luke 2:10.
We bought this crib at a Home where they made tiny clay models depicting the lowly birth of Jesus among other things, but this 12 piece set caught our eye.
Sis Sarai* introduced us to inmates with disabilities: they wheeled in, limped, muttered and some smiled hard. There was Lila, with a withered hand and she beamed like a Lighthouse in the dark proudly displaying each shining member of the crib. She too had worked on these miniatures, the woman said in slow Hindi and some English.
Lila recounted the Bethlehem story, “No be afraid,” her voice shaky from an illness as she mimicked the Angel! One or two inmates yawned. Another looked away. Amazing how a picture can retell an old story and you understand a little more today than ever before.
The details blur then re-assemble.
After all these years I revisit the fearlessness in this round eyed woman with the one little arm, as they sang “Away in a manger” & Silent night, in unsteady candle light. We were at their Carol service; after a Bible-reading Lila prayed simple words of trust in the Lord Jesus who taught her to be unafraid.
Our eldest, Vihan was almost 4 years old that December: I, recovering from a chronic fever knew about Fear from Hospital waiting rooms and labs as my husband and I awaited more of my test results over and over,
here at the Home now, we received the Good News of our Savior’s undying Love as if for the first time, via a ‘destitute’ woman with one good hand and 1000 watt smile;
no special powers to these tiny clay folk still in our celebrations each year;
as we bring out ‘Christmas- decor’ 2021, go cherish the Good News of this Unstoppable Cradle King that no hell could prevail against, for you and me and all for Humanity: lest we forget.
My spirit fills with gratitude that over the years, Christ has not stayed in clay, but has gazed into my life with very real Presence. The reality of Christmas is fantastic: this Christ that grew to take on a Cross, a Resurrection Garden; He would walk through walls to get through to my heart of stone.
May the heart of you be warmed this season, with True Love from the Manger.
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* All names changed.
December 2021, God knew!
God knew. That the sea would rinse things I didn’t know were there: an aloneness that comes with a trial, He brought it all out and rebuked it, His sea salt burned it away, hehe!
Mountain forest trail, thru Kudremukh mist & heavy close foliage. It was another world- heady, strong scents of wood moistened with dew; local springs in moss. Am still speechless. Utterly. Like God took my heart and laid fresh terms in there. The Light fell thick unsplintered and very very close, with His Presence. You couldn’t take it for granted. It had It’s own pulse, you needed to listen, to the song of that- to His Breath breathing deep. Something dead in me rose. Unsure what it was- something essential to human existence. His finger deep in my spirit, healing a bruise. Now I know why God called Moses to the mountain. He was afraid of it, like I was, shivering at its sheer cliff. It is a thing to overcome, a fear to face, even master. Here he met His true spirit Father. Here, a challenge was given, here a deal was made to live again against all odds.
Prayer is that hanging bridge between us
and the Trinity! Nothing is too hard for the
Lord; in fact the moment we are suspended in new difficulty, we are closer to Advantage in Christ! Vihan took this pic as we went thru terrific mountain forest trails. Was scary beautiful, we were clinging to His arm. One wrong move, or Johann in a tizzy, (he was next to Noe driving) – could’ve sent us down a ravine no jokes. But God. We are still in the momentum of that mountain route. How deadly life can be, but how huge is His Presence.
Family wedding at Coorg.
Hand writ prayers
I’ve never been a Collector of things, not even of my paintings which lounge wherever they find space; maybe the most passionate of my ‘collections’ were bus tickets for some reason; I was age 5 and remember hoarding them from the two families we lived around at Wilson Gardens. Then were feathers at pre-primary school, Christmas cards a little later, shells, pressed flowers and leaves. Now recently, I’m collecting something new…
…. thick note paper or hard edged sides of boxes, oh cake boxes, anything that can cut in neat squares and be written on in bold ink without being washed off by the sun on frig or table tops and walls where they will find places.
My Gran & Ma* had this habit of writing out Scripture verse in the back of Bibles, in new diaries and older ones;
I watched as I did my ABCs and grew into a bit of them*, writing down Scripture, as Prayers.
Words of the Psalmist, Moses… they all became my own as I moved in time and space. With every house -shift I’d find these boxes of Verse fading, curled, breaking and they were hard to throw away.
Now I realize what a part of my life they are, how they’ve bridged me over many waters: these borrowed prayers and promises from Genesis to Revelations: Epistles of Faith, Hope & Love from via the Throne Room where deserts turn to Eden with the knowing of the Giver Himself: a knowledge bigger than human request.
So here I am, in the 11th month of 2021, an avid collector of paper given on days I knelt to pray but no words arrived except a wilderness maybe. God never can resist a human heart that waits waits. So He gives me these little notes, on the stone tablets of my heart: writ with His voice, His peace.
Who can resist God when He speaks? What can separate us from Love that would send His son to a Cross to die for me that I might even look His way, at His Life –
Or even experience this extreme Friendship, no matter the insanity of the days we are in.
“
They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount on wings like an eagle. They shall run and not be weary, walk and not faint..."
👆🏼New verse emerges as November rain fills sky and earth with that extra nip in the air typical of an Indian year end. My taste buds are definitely returning, and sense of smell. Today I smelt a little mint, but none of the soaps yet. Body aches and low grade fevers recede. Have we had Covid? Who knows.
There’s a new variant arriving tomorrow, call it:
“9j*1.6G1L℅HeH/vs” hehe.
It is good to feel laughter rising in my soles again, it always happens when Christ sends His Notes to read, re- read: they grow Joy and some other Words human may ignore for sounding ‘out dated’.
And still, it is what it is: the undiluted power of PRAYER.
Do check this Beautiful read in Blogs: ”A Father’s Prayer”
Have a seriously blessed up November!🌾
And hey, I just got note from fellow bloggers that could not comment here, for not being on WP.
Do let me know if that’s you too @ idialects102#gmail.com
🕊🌾
R.
For FMF Writers
Innerdialects 
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