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.
Tables
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.
Petra rabbit who taught us a few hops😅
“What can separate us from love like that?”
adapted. Bible.
Plantain leaf (plate) waiting for breakfast, Coffee house, Bangalore
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.
World Music day, past week @Alliance Francaise🎶 “Amazed by Grace”🎶
Touch me Lord, deep within the fractures of my territory. Cleanse me here where darkness hides, but You know! You know every battle wound, curse & bleed. You who hears my cry, unlock my joy, fill my eyes with your Light, my ears with Your Life. Father God, liberate my sensitivities; may I need none else but You: Your gaze, Your embrace, Your absolute Friendship; all my citizenship in Your Kingdom-unshakeable, within this heart so easily broken.
Un break me Lord, forgive the sins of our fathers, melt my stones, rebuild my body as Your Temple. Healing God, birth me anew, regenerate me: only You can, only You.
watch Peace like a Sword touch us thru’ mask & glove, slash open our eye to look look close:
at Us …..gone is yesterday’s menu. Here the old is changed to a new me & you
ne’er mind the virus of fear* : brother, sister may it* serve as servant, not master.
In this Place may we see who we are – stripped of all the roles we’ve played,
here in the seeming cruelty of these days, may we be what we’re groomed for ….
in this new Quiet, away from trending news, may I commit to defeat Giants that kill my immortal nature: please help me be the Person I could be- praying for friends, foe, neighbour…
here, look to Him who made us for these days
in this Hiding, I need I need to ask not just for family, but for my 7 billion: not just for health and food, but please, for the Power of Peace– nothing missing, nothing broken~
ay, we all die sometime….who knows Cause or Clime. It’s not the biggest scare… to die, but what after?
So, I ask that we receive True Love, yes yea, that you and even I, be persuaded against Blind disbelief, that we are Beloved of the Father.
Here in the Secret place of the Shelter of the most High: may you & I,
My daughter took this pic of me the day before her 25th bday Oct2019. Now its all changed so fast. Did you even know we’d miss our little easy trips in a time when there were no ‘untouchable surfaces’?
We grew from ponytails and little shirts to grown up wear & tear. We learned to rise when we stumbled; learned to be patient with new fatigue. We got new ways of doing old things. We matured, we regressed, we sat down and broke a little then mended. Hey. I’m not giving all that away.
God and life taught us how to take pressure, ride it like a bike to the beach somedays! Now I must sanitise my trips every which way one can and cannot imagine, fine. But I’m not adjusting my inner balance, I’m not going to make any ‘Covid’ feel it owns me, in any grip of fear. Not going to let my home believe for one moment we are victims, though we must be careful of a whole new array of things. We will not court dragons and dance with demons, but we will not forget we walk among angels.
I am not about to go from being a child of God into a frightened bear: a sore one with claws that gnaw my insides, hehe no. I will remember the ways in which I’ve grown and outgrown childish thought processes: oh no, there’s no monster under our bed. There may be a physical threat, but not anything that dare touch our spirit.
So we cannot go out as much but we can go in and remember everything else.
Everything else better not be forgotten for the sake of a sick virus. Nope. I like to think of the Human Self as a person totally under the control of One who brought you & me this far. That’s all I’m thinking on. It frees my mind. It reminds me of when I first learnt to bike.
We were in Gujarat, western India. Dad told me he was behind me….. he wasn’t. I was so sure he was there, I went on ahead. Was a few minutes before I realised he wasn’t holding on. He was there a few meters away, but I was on my own. It did not matter though, I still felt he was holding on. There was no new aloneness. He was right there.
I feel that now, the heavenly Father who brought us this far, mayn’t be visible but He is there. The ride ahead may have its bumps, but we got this life, this bike: we got our lessons, we can’t lose it now, we cannot forget….
“FOR YOU MY GOD, HAVE GIVEN US THE SPIRIT OF POWER LOVE AND DISCIPLINE, NOT FEAR AND TIMIDITY…!”(quote,Bible)
I haven’t understood this – as much as I have during this past year: I’ve bitten into Its wood, Its Bleed. Its brutal honesty.
How do I identify with It’s utter ‘Insanity‘..
And out of every wound, a garden grows. Oil, RN. …
Why did the Christ do what He did, how does It help Humans?
When you break thresholds of pain, there is no pretence: Here you might forget what you knew & be provoked enough to see the Unseen:
~(Rejection is one of the Experiences one might process here,
~ Severance from human praise/ recognition.
~Acquired values re- group.
~When all is shredded, stripped naked, the human spirit is truly alone with his/ her source. Here there is no ‘I’ except in Its best possible way.
~Here, is ‘abandonment’. Buddha tried it, our wise men and sadhus go to the mountains, some sit years under a tree, in cave, for that ‘enlightenment’). ~When all human support is withdrawn, all expectation, one is free. Freed.
This takes you to another Place: some have names for it:
~A place of Quiet, where human standards/ learned behaviour/symptoms of dis-ease cease to control you: this is a new Place. We aren’t familiar with Its one Event: Friendship with the Invisible Friend.
♡ This is a zone where pain is Highest Common Factor; one thanks it for bringing them here.
This ‘here’ begins to re-arrange one’s own personal rules:
◇ You stand unafraid of ‘Alone’; free of human bondage, from Conditions required to be Happy. Happy is a 1% of This. (Wounds lose their power over you: you stop chewing on them).
◇You heal. Your scar makes you a new you: gravity isn’t existent in your dreams, your prayers. Nor human embrace/ respect. You transform.
◇You experience Beauty, Love. Acceptance. Courtesy to each other, unconditional of returns.
Christ of the Cross is more than printed religion. His Cross is an impossible to fully comprehend just yet un- negotiable symbol of the power of emotional (often physical) healing.
It changes the soul of your fibre, It bares to you your neighbours‘ soul, as your priority.
It smashes ego, but elevates respect for even you.
It raises the bar on compassion, It bends your nature to forgive; It shows you how negating pride is, how devastating to your purpose, & how lust wipes out life.
It exposes devices of Fear.
The Person of the Cross takes my itinerary: re- routes cowardly escape plans, away from selfabsorption/ destruction.
♡ It is unafraid of ‘loneliness’. It needs that space for progress.
I do not need my burden of being right all the time. I am a learner.
I appreciate the struggles of humanity/ blest by fellow-creations. Gratitude begins. It is a river of music and joy, of Forgiveness and lack of self adoration.
I look outward, I look within. It takes a certain recklessness to cut umbilical chords of acquired selfishness..
run barefoot through it, sing, worship, be all I was meant to be, whipped of discourtesy to the kingdom of God within us each, for free.
Here, I taste a new thing, a certain change of needs. The taste of dying selfishness, a resurrection of new eyes, looking away from dead habits.
And this: I see my heart, my core. There is a lot of condemnation. It is the worst kind of ‘nation’, the worst virus. I must shed that snakeskin, & forgive wasted time in order to forgive/ bless anything else.
All of this, courtesy of the Cross.
There’s more, a Designer more. Your prints differ from mine. We are nothing, and everything. Let’s not underestimate each others power in this life. You have my respect, I love you anew: you …flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone.
I don’t understand much, but my iris and iota are changing. Our blood, our DNA, are transient gifts, for specific use. I don’t want to miss a thing about this existence, nor misunderstand a single experience. This isn’t about my portfolio, my pitch, my bacteria, my journey is perhaps just an invisible weave in the tapestry of you.
We don’t have to understand flowers and bees and the generation of birds and black holes, or meteors flying around @ 20,000kms / minute? to let out the miracle of healing:
let it out of human-made cages, and let our songs sing,
Or let that song break our acres of deafness…
Or blindness. Have you watched a blind person listen to a song? Or a deaf person lip read? Or a lame one watch others’ running feet?
Sometimes we lose a little to access Treasures hidden in dark places. We are each others’ at the Cross. I went there to complain, and He points me to my brother, my sister: their shadow is my face.
I do not even want to understand it, it is complicated and not ‘nice’: if someone does understand it all then it’s not all they’ve seen. Here we must cling to no shame, or pretence : I understand how little I like the way Christ loves everyone equally.
Ugh, the Paradox of True Love:
♡ It provokes hate, because mankind lives to love self. If we worship anything, it is mostly a method to gain favour in the eyes of gods of wealth and superiority.
The Cross’s two beams intersect at the crux of the need for love. I went there for comfort, and He asks that we comfort one another. That’s why the Cross is hated. Misunderstood. Read as a symbol of weakness. Try forgiving/ love….when your thresholds of pain are at break neck maximum.
I know, tough. We lack that genre of maddening courtesy. We try, we stare.
If you zoom in, you’ll see those Lotus low left in tiny pond at Cubbon Park here in Bangalore city. India. Warm warm day, 28 degrees already!– lunch and ice cream in the shade. Too much fun to take pictures, but we got a few.
2 weeks ago, Haven fellowship @ Cubbon Park. …
March always feels like sunshine warming herself up from cold waves and February mist/rain.
March’s flower- Daffodils, (in India its called Nargis), oh what beauties these are too, ‘Heralds of Spring’! As we get a new sunset, my heart fills with new colors. It’s like we must determine our flavour. What tones would you choose, what Flower/ (flavour) would you be?
Not a question I’ve thought of before,
NetPic. .
but today…..a young person at our Haven fellowship; all he could talk about was the Love of God, and how on earth did God love like that? He asked.
The more I listened to him, the more it struck me how different he was from the rest of us with issues at finance, or health! This guy, (I’ll call him Len) got eyes like liquid stars when he talked of the Love of God that drew him in. He spoke a few soft sentences and it went round and round that one thing: the Love of God.
Unrelated pic? But another of God’s touches of Love: little Chikku adopted by my cousins Shirl&Dan. At their table. …
After we went each into our lives, post service, there’s that gentle fragrance, of the touch of God. Like Light and Rain that falls on the good, the bad, the ugly. Nothing changes the way It falls in at us.
As this new month arrives, I’m feeling all blessed- up grateful for the flavors life brings in. Unsure of my own flavour, but I’d love to sample more of the Aroma of Christ:
how He is Manna and Dew in our days, how His Love has no limits, limitations. How It overwhelms all other love, need, want, showing me a pathway of peace and one that does not misunderstand my place in it all.
Tokens of His care, for ‘the littlest of these...’ (Thankyou ShirlDan; hope your infant squirrel Chikku won’t mind breach of privacy?) ….
As I wrap this, a lone bright star twinkles through branches of trees outside. Another month approaches, I love the way a new month feels, especially this one. Fragrances of Lent, of a Father Heart with room for us all.
It is almost too good to believe, the whole story of ‘Easter‘, the Cross, Gethesemane, the Passion of Christ for us each. We tend to lean on our own needs and their fulfillment, more than what is,
or perhaps tend to misunderstand why this or that happened in our lives. Why there is war, or crime, illness, loneliness, why something is the way it shouldn’t be.
My sister’s Gulmohar tree with shoeflower, last month at David’s Pasture. …
And then there are people like Len, all still in wonder at the Love of God.
I’m basking in those four words, THE LOVE OF GOD. Maybe it’s fragrance is best expressed in Joy? And I’m lending myself this, for the next 30 days. Maybe that’s the truth of Lent. That we take for free, not just as a Lending, the absolute Joy that comes from knowing how deeply we are loved by the One that made us, each, so intricately complex, every cell and thought process. How magnificent the aspect of each human, far more than lilies of the field, or all the blossoms in every tree, ever. I find myself staring at humans. Irises. Brows. Fingers. Smiles.
Laughter. The fantasticity of Births. Deliveries. Pain. Relief. Grace. Healing.
The way my friend Maya looks when she’s happy. Uncle J’s stillness. Light in the Gulmohar tree, and Dina’s voice when she prays. The hush of waiting…..
“Even a mother may forget her child, but I will not forget you..” quote, Bible. Pic – Sis Shirley and furry babe Chikku. …
it’s all too much beauty stacked in one life, and I’m bursting grateful for the opportunity to see it all. Not just the shiny bits but the grey of dawn as I wrap this.
Gratitude: it’s the flavour I want to be, for it delivers one to Joy.
idialects@gmail.com, updated in Contacts. Apologies, this Blog is taking a while to update. There’s some mail still going to my old blog address. And I don’t understand how 2 or 3 of my Blog friends are unable to see any email from here. If that’s you, please do let me know. Thanks! 🌻
Oh thrilled to have found a favourite happy place in my own world of shadows and valleys of doubt. Here I find not just beauty and reality but a peace that comes from knowing we are pilgrims in an earth that will fade away before we see that Perfect Light of Christ. Lorraine, thankyou for allowing me to post your work here. Stay blest beautiful one.
“And let perpetual light shine on them,” Those words I heard today, Not expecting them to come, Quite suddenly they pierced the air, I raised my head, Looking to the heavens As if to take in all my memories, The joy, the pain, the laughter
Suddenly all were one, Joined together seamlessly, Chickens, corn and sandpits Apples, nuts and tractors in the fields, Starry nights that made me ask “Where is God?” And in my child’s mind’s eye I saw Him beyond the stars Swathed in mystery And yet So simple Here, in the evening of my life I sat, re-connecting with my past And all of those who went before me, On them and on all my memories the words did fall, “And let perpetual light shine on them….”
…..
Hello and welcome to my site.
My name is Lorraine Lewis, and I am blind. I became blind in 2016 as a result of a very serious and advanced cancer, and the treatment that I received.
In 2013 it was touch and go whether I lived or died, and there began the loneliest journey of my life. A true wilderness experience.
Now, I am in remission, but as well as being blind I am unable to walk, and am wheelchair bound. My husband too is wheelchair bound, and we face daily challenges just to survive. The wilderness experience, with all its difficulties and obstacles continues, but somehow or other we get through.
In the midst of all the pain and suffering, and the deepest loneliness I have ever known, I found a well deep inside me that I did not know I had until I started to drink from it. It was not a physical well, but a spiritual one, and I would like to share with you in various ways, my journey in the wilderness of cancer, blindness, and inability to walk. Along the way we may meet deep pains and sorrows, but also a depth of joy that defies everything that life has thrown at me.
Here, on this site you will find Poems and Reflections that will bring you into my world, and that may touch your world. And as we journey, we will find that even in the wilderness we can be enabled to drink from the Fountain of Life.
“Love knows no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps over obstacles penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”
Maya Angelou
Lorraine’s poems, blogs and reflections are from her wilderness experience of having cancer and being blind. “The wilderness is a very isolating and lonely place, with many hardships and sometimes seemingly insurmountable difficulties to face. It is a place of suffering and this site reflects the many struggles that any of us can undergo in our differing wilderness experiences. Despite the pains and the darkness of the wilderness and desert places, the stars can still be seen, and even deserts can bloom, so along the way, there will be gems to be found. I have chosen to use the Cross as a symbol also, because I have discovered that for me, the way through suffering was and is to be found in the Cross Although that is a Christian symbol, the wilderness or desert experience can come to any of us, no matter what faith we hold, or even if we hold none. So I hope that as Maya Angelou says, there will be no barriers, and that all of us, through our sharing, can find our way through, appreciating the gems that we find on the way whilst not denying the suffering that we go through. May we all learn to look to the stars, and see how brightly they shine out in the darkness, and take heart and courage...”
http://blindwilderness.wordpress.com/ Seeing Comes from within Deeper than eyes can see Pain makes you see much more clearly For pain Makes gold That has been tested in the fires That gives insight to hearts On paths untrod Before
Thank you Lorraine, oneday we will meet, if not in this life in the next, when you and precious people like our son will see not just all our faces but His…
where the rest of humanity too will see what we never could not before, blinded by the nether lights of human comprehension. Oneday we will see through that dark glass, face to Face.
…
Here’s another one I love of Blindzanygirls’ work, oh every one of them leaves footprints of a thing I’m learning to hold….GRACE.
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