Journal
Tag: Love
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..
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.
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.
sudden, like a miracle. Suspicious, I peer at It.
It seeps out like new petals, like the spread of new colour. Laughter tinges Its Stem. I sulk in the shadows, refusing to let go of the dark, it was my safe place but now Joy begins to bud! I believe that I cannot believe: whoa….the greatest war on the human spirit divides me right here : this firm insistence on the denial of the Touch of the Healer.
The room trembles with Peace, the mind of me reverts to memories of illness. God has never not walked right into my broken heart, He has never once left me alone. I have been touched over and over by the Hand of God and yet how deep is shallowness of the human, that I would resort to past sickrooms rather than remember the million miracles that are my itinerary.
As a new day begins I’ve never been as summoned by God as now. It doesn’t feel normal. It doesn’t feel safe. Hehe. My inner being revolts with the five senses. You know there are more than five. The sixth and seventh and nth sense are summed in Words we sniff at like wines tasters and net browsers: there’s Faith and Hope and Love. The greatest of these is Love:
not the transient self absorbed love that feeds need, but the Love of God that can walk right into a human room and lift the roof off with His Presence. The roof off our fire escapes and others. I’m grinning at the visual of that, as a new emotion unfurls. Faith is a substance. A fact. Not an invisibility. It bears root and stem and blossoms…
hey. Have a blessed day
Innerdialects.
(Also do check out Jon Bloom ‘s Article on Belief; found his website yesterday, am so grateful for the read).
Today we faced a particularly difficult day with a young one who’s coping with medical challenges, we were worn out with love. Never used those words before, but there it was. As we huddled together in a quick call on the God Who made us all, these words went thru me, “…help us wrestle as we wrestle with our angel,” . This was in a way, our Lil Angel of Tough, teaching us lessons we didn’t know, but we were learning.
Sometimes we wrestle with an angel: the angel of pain, aloneness…look close.
Watch what happens.
Ach..Jacob wrestled with the Angel of God, He hurt his sinew, then pointed to a longer, tedious hazardous route in his journey, via southern Gilead, a den of thieves. What did the Angel whisper that Jacob obeyed, what did the hurt sinew do, but strengthen him to become Israel?
And when it was getting to dawn, Jake holds on to the Angel, “I will not let you go until you bless me…”
What secrets hide in such places that regular comforts fail to offer? Here we may falter, fail, recline in fear, doubt.
Worse. Often in our tangle with doubt, our greatest “Ally” will encounter us, even disable us till we realise the disabling process was enabling certain instincts we could never have guessed were within, just waiting its moment to be birthed. Now we are yelling, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” It is a miracle all by itself to be here where we now see what was needed the most.
The encounter breaks us, before taking us higher …like dawn. Oh like dawn.
There was Daniel, fatigued by an angelic visit he laydown exhausted, fevered. What more shall I say, we are ‘surrounded by a host of Witness more than we know’. Moses blanched white to the roots of his hair after a Tent meet with the God of Sinai.
Today if we’ve wrestled with a personal ‘Angel’, look in the mirror of the soul and soon oneday you will stop fighting the Challenge that was here in the first place to teach us to lean not on our own Fears, but on the One Who is above all human bondage.
Here, cherish Him, the Risen Savior Who lives that we too might stand ten feet tall, like standing grain,
It is not for nothing we wrestle.
The bird was there waiting, asking to be noticed. I stood staring at him against that blue sky and early moon all stark naked Reminders that Life went beyond gravity!
Ramona was buried yesterday;
her husband and two sons stood tall by her grave: on Zoom it was surreal. A Mumbai cemetery rich with songs we sang as kids, about the Risen Savior, & oh where was death’s sting?! Ramona’s warm brown eyes and soft skin seemed closer, her easy laughter, subtle jewellry and gentle lip gloss mouthing words of love for Christ. We hadn’t met in years: but her passing brings me closer to the Reality of what the Cross does for us, 24x7xn! I’m feeling many Seasons in one, but especially Summer: warm like the embrace of the Father in a Time of fear, His Gospel of Peace.
Death is demanding.
It is not silent. It is an open conversation with what opposes Peace. It breaks us, it seals us to the ‘Unknown’. And we can turn our faces to all our walls all we want, but nothing buries Life. Love. Joy. The invisible presence of That. Of turning away from sin. Of repenting, and letting us be re- created in Christ. That Peace with God in Christ, is Peace.
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One of the last times I met Ramona we were at a beach; it was dusk on a busy shore. I don’t remember that we spoke many words, but what she and I utterly had in common was Christ:
the Christ Who found us in different rooms, in different differences, bridging barriers, crashing statements, limits.
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How does one describe a place where Gravity does not exist, where Peace is no longer just a temporary Live-in partnership;
how do I bare my heart, except say it like it is:
The Cross doesn’t crucify me, it BARES MY SIN, THEN bears IT. The Cross shuts up satan: his War against our absolute eternal fulfillmenT.
OUR PEACE! THIS IS THE GOSPEL OF PEACE.
The mark of Christ is nothing like the beasts’:
Christ freeing you & me from short term satisfactions: Quick Fixes, begging for more. Not just blank-eyed druggies’, but Humanity altered by self abuse, by others’.
I was once confronted by a Nun(school principal) on why I followed Christ. You did not mess with Mother Grace, and as she looked in my face for a reply I said what had happened. “No one else came here looking for me…. “
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Eternity pursues me, there’s a Name on It. Christ’s. There’s a Heaven even among us when we reflect True Love. And there’s a Hell horrific and more as the ones we rehearse on earth: of the worship of cravings. Every Dance, is arms reaching for the Invisible Partnership we know deep within, exists.
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When I was carrying our first child, this horrific incident with the vegetable cart man happened:
one morning he was in the ground under the row of eucalyptus trees, writhing like a snake, a death rattle sound in his throat, it filled the entire noon; the man’s white shirt and pants, always spotless but not on that day. My mother asked me not to look. An expectant mother best not see such things, she said. But this was Ramu our friendly veggie man. They were getting someone to exorcise him, and it took till past 4 pm; a week later I met Ramu, now he was half his size.
Evil itself reveals the very presence of God, not one appeased by sacrifices. He is Light (we are all yet to be able to even look at Its lesser form: the sun):
He Who is Love, of Peace, Joy: three things satan cannot stand, leave alone claiming our Place by the blood of Jesus Christ His Son. Try it.
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But Ugh:
the incredible Power of Doubt: it can derail us totally.
Why consume the deadly whispers of satan when we have Christ’s Words that can do ALL for us? If we only knew the extent of This here.
Eternity is Real, and I am encouraged today to make it a huge part of my daily schedule. Yea Ramona, death has no sting, the grave no victory.
Christ took that.
With Him it is Eternal DaySpring.
FMF Writers: this went beyond 15! (‘Summer‘ and what the Word stoked). Thank you my fabulous creative friends.
Yes, a page off my diary as I listened to today’s word,”Do not be afraid“; this arrived without notice as poems do? Do take a peek if you can bear the blurry!
Part of our Fellowship’s zoom candle light carols night, this was our fam’s medley of old carols and new harmonies improvised; wishing you a blessed day today and always; may the Lord of Light, Peace, Joy & true Love fill your days with His Song, all of now and the days to follow, stay precious!
The room gasps: outside our window beneath a hunch of trees, it’s there. In a rush of light & stillness … a Bouquet from the King, in a fuss of forest early evening mist. “For you.” He whispers;
I fling my mind down and lunge to where we get a closer angle: this pic doesn’t do justice to what real-time iris sees in 360 panoramic degrees of an October going to November, in the wake of ..
***
.. of Year 2020 tip toeing on all our nerves. I’m certain 2020 feels bad by now, and we aren’t breathing easy yet, not me. Woke up this morning feeling like I’m on Mt.Everest and scared to look down….
then He sends us a Bouquet among 295+ shades of green tender/ savage noon light.
Heart slamming our ribs we stare at His bouquet staring at us in equal devotion: every curl, petal and sepal, a startling testament of Him, His unshakeable Kingdom around our little planet.
I look up at Light filtering through nearby trees and see another Bouquet closer: its orange blossom flushed with rain. These trees were always here, now they are no longer just trees,
they are Messengers from the Creator: His voice in startling tones I never really thought were specific convo with me, in this here tiny moment no one else might even notice. Vihan, my daughter grins and says, “Yeah Ma, you’d catch this! Now pl Blog post it? “
The picture we managed here, barely captures what really was, pulsing with His 7D Presence! I needed to share it with you this eve of November: a Bouquet for you from the King.
***
May you too be startled by wild insane Events in corners just waiting for you to notice Him-
notice His Messages of Unblinking Love, no matter the forecast. Nothing mortal compares with His presence- NOTHING.
Not even who, but what am I, the boy asked looking at the floor, his eyes flat with nothingness. What had happened here, would stay with him till the end of that day. And when it spilled it was like lava, every word singed our ears. There had been self abuse and total lack of feeling to anyone even himself. He could not trust himself. He believed everything negative ever said against him.
I’d been brought up to a level of humility necessary to be good civilized people, but this beat all civil existence. He would not believe anyone could love him and he stared through my face when I said God loved him. He was not more than 24, and looked old. Old eyes and skin. He’d cut himself, done drugs, done things he felt nothing to reveal. He had died inside. They’d told him he was a waste, a shame. I didnt know how to reach him, but prayed that night.
The next day, he was smiling… it was near dusk and inmates were getting ready to go indoors. Someone had talked him out of his mess. I never knew who it was, but he told me in no uncertain terms that he believed God lives and loved him. I must’ve stared open mouthed at him because he laughed out loud and looked so happy. Only God could have worked that miracle. Twas like he was being held by a super power. I will never forget how that looked. That’s how it looks to be held by a living God. It looked fearless, free and unarguably happy!
And I’m thinking now, what are we, what’ m I, but Beloved of God…
***
Listen close and you will hear a bus, a neighbour’s drill….. yea was recorded in a tiny home studio, at a time of transits. This Album was worked off a Psr 630(keys), and my undying love for Theatre: it is perhaps who I am without choir costume and acquired taste… just all my voice & human pulse. It is the rough of pavement psalms and His pursuing love; (thankyou ABBA Father for being Who You Are: creative, generous, incredible!)
my daughter insisted we put it out again(released 2004,Mumbai). We even found lost Master tracks…. thanks hon risking this one on your channel💔
***
Often we might go barefoot in trails where we are in the enlarged presence of Other Intelligence. Here we strip protocol, and might hear a Reply. Here I knelt unashamed of my crying need for Christ alone: for Yeshua who gave His life for us, for me…
for the local prostitute who walked around our bus stop. She’d mock me with an inscrutable stare; oneday I saw her in an outfit I gave away to our building watchman for ‘his wife back home’ he said;
now this street girl knew it was my dress she wore, she watched me recoil, watched my righteous indignation. And then I sensed God watch me: my superior brows rise in ‘whoa’ as if the rest of us mortals were such perfection!
This one is because of that street girl.
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Would, should, but could? That’s the option that hangs between abilities. Can you walk? Could you cross that river? Can you trapeeze? Could you bungee jump? Can you breathe? Could you live? Can we agree? Could you accept one another? Can we not kill? Could we not hate? Can we care that we dont care….
here’s where it should be ‘would’ve, but could becomes the more used word, because we may say, “Nah I cannot!” “I could not.”
I’ve never done a repost this way: as someone suggested, here’s my take on “Mercy:…is this? “
…he knew where it was. Day after day he watched her sit outside; he reached in that small ledge over the gutter- stood on the chair, then on his little toes … for that jar. The woman had no recall. Sickness had taken her mind away. She just knew this was somehow her home. Her family had gone in the plague. People passed by in the street, but no one stopped to ask. Except the little boy.
Ah there it was: a rusty old key, in that jar. He carefully brought it down; the woman smiled at nothing in particular. The boy looked familiar. Even the chair. She looked down at her hands but would not take the key.
He took the cement steps to her front door, then called the woman in. It was cool inside. He found water in an earthen jar;
the woman felt his smiling eyes and grubby fingers help her drink that water. It slaked a Thirst within; as she drank deep it was like a River quenching her parched days and nights searching for something she had lost but didnt know where to look to find it.
The Water went down her throat, first a trickle at a time, then more. She drank till the water jar was empty and till it swelled her death with Life.
She stared at the boy and felt Breath in her bones throb with newness. The boy grinned back and sat on his haunches, waiting, waiting.
Suddenly she knew this was her grandson. He had been there everytime she locked herself out; like Mercy pursued, like the Love of God : ’twas the Key to Life. Love like that was new. Twas like this child that had not rejected her. Like a God that had died for her. Words from sacred pages she had once read, returned. When the woman prayed a line, her own whisper startled her and the boy. He sighed a happy sigh then settled in the floor. He loved his Naana and the Words of life that spilled from her lips. “Lord You are my Shepherd ..I shall not want anything. You make me lie down in green pastures...”
Yes it came back in bit by bit, images, faces, indifference, pain. Even the face of her sons, her own children as they turned her away. But it was too late now to hate. Mercy did that: It hid its Key in secret places in the mind: Its Words of Life that cut away unforgiveness like a sword.
The woman laughed then cried: Re-awakenings were bitter, but oh so sweet if you found the Key!
…….
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https://chronic-joy.org/10000-reasons-when-gratitude-kickstarts-joy/
by Chronic Joy® | Illness, Parenting | 2 comments
y 👈Audio
GOD LACKS NO CREATIVITY EVEN IN THE LABOR ROOMS OF CHANGE
Two years ago our gentle teenager began to steadily turn into a stranger we could hardly recognize. A new medication put an end to his seizures a year later, but the trial had just begun.
We broke into raggedy worship … surrounded by the prayers of dear family and friends. ~ R.Noel
God lacks no creativity even in the Labor rooms of Change!
Two years ago our gentle teenager began to steadily turn into a stranger we could hardly recognize. A new medication put an end to his seizures a year later, but the trial had just begun.
Light fell through the Emergency Room’s glassed-in ceiling and onto Johann’s face as he sang, “Whatever lies before me, I will be singing when the evening comes. Bless the Lord oh, my soul …10,000 reasons and forever more …” 10,000 Reason. Matt Redman
Johann sings while waiting. Ah, yes. Blindness isn’t easy on any count, but today I froze as he sang the words – “When the evening comes???”
As he waited on a stretcher near the CT scan unit of Nimhan’s Hospital’s Neuro Science Department, an orderly changed the sheets to Johann’s favorite color – lavender. How could she have known? Was this a sign that total healing would follow? Johann, now 19 and blind from birth, can detect a few colors and has light perception.
“Ma, I love the lavender …” he said.
I bit back tears, nodding a muffled reply.
When Johann’s seizures finally stopped, his aggression began. He was 18. “It will pass,” friends said.
The girls and Johann had a beautiful childhood, sharing music and fun, sharing games with a brother they were proud to be seen with. Now there were blows, bites, scratches, rage, and verbal battery. We went to parks on sunrise picnics, did road trips, prayed, wept, clung together as a couple, and individually with each of our girls. But when we went out in twos, Johann would scream in panic, running past the gate in search of us.
A kind new doctor changed Johann’s medications gradually while withdrawing earlier prescriptions. Dearest Lord God, now we must have withdrawal combat too?
“Brace yourselves,” the doctor said, his face filled with a compassion that scared me. The months that followed were a Gethsemane place for us. Here we would taste the bittersweet of Job and Daniel, “Even if You slay me…” Job 13:15, Daniel 3:14-18
Johann adopted us at age one. We were all being brought up together by God in His Kindergarten of Faith, but now, was He letting us out on our own?
The first hint of Johann’s illness started around his school final exams. Johann refused to touch his Braille. His dimpled grin receded faster as December stretched into January. We guided him to hand write, “I know my Redeemer lives…” then pinned it up where we could all see it. We were clinging to sanity.
“How long?” I frantically texted our second daughter, Kitsy, who was across the room. To avoid trigger words, we texted each other.
“God won’t put something in our laps that we cannot handle. Unsure how long Ma, but I’m willing to wait,” she replied. Was it just yesterday that Kitsy had screamed, “I – I want my brother back!” Now she was beaming and serene?
This is what happens.
One of us sinks, but another perks up with unthinkable faith or Scripture leaps out from a calendar. The movie, Hacksaw Ridge, spoke volumes to us. It is easy to fall into self-destruction, but God lacks no creativity even in the labor rooms of change.
Johann sings with the voice of an angel. His seizures took that from him, but from the pit of that hell, he began to sing again,10,000 Reasons, a song that brought me to tears. Johann was singing! Yes, with a crackly sandpaper voice, but he was singing!
We broke into raggedy worship, in the midst of cushions-flying-at-our-heads-and-worse, but surrounded by the prayers of dear family and friends. Often, I would stare at the predawn sky. God was and is present, like in those days, those three silent days after Gethsemane: “… a Rose trampled on the ground, He … thought of me most of all.” (Above All, Michael W. Smith)
Lord please help me through the noise of my questions. Give the girls some joy today. Help my husband, Jeff.
About this time we also experienced professional setbacks. Could it really get any worse? It could. You cannot re-route through Gethsemane if you want to finish with colors.
Some of my own prayers irritated me. “Thank you Lord for the trials You send us.” Gratitude was the best thing we could do – thanking God for a little bird in the window, for a relative who sent a gift, for a glorious sunset, or even for Johann’s question, “What is happening to me?”
Yes, it did and some things I have no words for.
I began to blog and paint again. A friend called asking why I had dropped off social media, and asked if I would consider an art book contract with a Christian publisher. The theme? Hope for the Hurting. My head said, “No,” but God nudged me to say, “Yes.” So I did.
Jeff started painting too, and though he is not one to be poetic, he titled it, Autumn Blush. It was soul harvest time. Our daughter, Kitsy cooked offerings of love. This once hyper, young teenager was turning out exotic recipes in the midst of COVID-19 lockdown rationing. Our eldest daughter, Vihan, had begun a fellowship for those her age and older, and we now joined her online — not easy to do with Johann intolerant of a particular chord on the guitar or insisting on rocking right in front of camera, yet his presence reaches more people than we think possible.
As I write, light falls through the curtains and Johann asks what I’m doing. I tell him I am writing about his song, 10,000 Reasons, and he smiles his lop-sided smile.
Outside a Koyal bird calls. There will be rain tonight after a sweltering Indian day. Ah, Lord God, more reasons to bless Your name even if our son isn’t well yet.
“Sing like never before, Oh my soul.”
Worship Him for His Spirit of matchless comfort in the presence of our frail humanity.
Unconditional healing is God lifting our innermost being, no matter the ordeal. Oh, the awe of holding hands with God, of being loved by Him in the midst of pain, learning to love Him back and to love each other unconditionally, like He does.
We are learning.
y 👈Audio. Read by RaylaAudio Player00:00
We were in tears recording this. It was a healing all by itself. … Very special hugs from our son who knows you are praying… ~ Rayla Noel
Rayla Noel lives in India with her husband, their three children and a God who never runs out of Creative Ways to help them graduate from His School of Faith.My Grace is sufficient for you; for My Power shows best in weakness. 2 Corinthians 12:9 AMP
I’ve been intrigued by Olivia Laing’s article ‘How to be alone’, which yelled for attention in my Google search for global pulse few months ago.
***
We have been a planet of People Groups: Consumers/Givers/Sitters/ Standers/ Travellers/ Chatterers… We talked of things we knew;
now it feels like we are Letters we never knew we could write, read by people we may never see, and it all breathes close enough to be real.
Quoting O.Lang, “The weird gift of loneliness is that it grounds us in our common humanity. However frightened we may feel we have never been less alone.”
(Her words stand tall and stark among all our comment on life issues, ach! Things more devastating than Covid: racism, depression …after the Mr. Floyds and recent spate of suicides, oh Economic crises et al, we know better);
Lang covers Ed. Hopper’s painting ‘Night Hawk’, along with twitter’s colorless version of Hopper’s Hawk in the age of Coronavirus..’
Ugh but yes, the aspect of Colour draining from us as we grow 3 feet from each other and gaze at new leaf, beetle, ant for sweet newness,
this is war on wars of Likes, Shares, Claps, War on self impositions where we once screamed to be heard, known, read…
Today there’s a mirror on the wall and it edits nothing of our Global Face staring at Us like never before:
a Stare that visits possibly once every Era.
And this. That we have never been less alone:
here I am every human, mid new madness and uncertainty:
this new Status is louder than the noise of everything else we’ve known. May we all live to look back on these times as vital chapters of Emotional Civilisation…..if we have the time to….(more) ..
I look in the mirror and see a new me, she is unafraid of honesty…. time is way too short to waste in formalities. We are more than paint and walls. We are more than conquerors through Him who loved/ loves us so wide and deep and long… it reaches through all my anxiety…
Love like that makes me need a moment alone, to just digest the Unseen. Its where we are each headed: Its Face is pure unadulterated Love. Love unlike ours’ …Pursuing, waiting, healing, forgiving, eternal & beyond the embrace of a Society that is perhaps too numbed to not be suspicious of Power like that. Choose Life or Death, Love or Hate, indifference and acceptance. How many choices have we left? How many days in which to choose…
yea may these be vital moments of Emotional Civilisation.
Rayla N.
…
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To hold on to the good in us. To remember mercies and love. And faithfulness. It’s that time to practice peace. And pray like we believe prayer works. It does. Everytime we healed, someone prayed. Everytime our heart of stone melted, it was someone praying. Someone changing the stone of us into a pleasant pasture. What a tragedy that we believe drug- related elation, rather than what made us. It is time
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..to rest, lean on the magnitude of true Love. I have lived a while now. I’ve seen good and bad and ugly. In you and me. I have eaten nice days that melted down to garbage. And I’ve been kissed by green pasture still waters, my soul has tasted of the Lords goodness and old fashioned as it may seem to someone’s intelligence, darling all our intellect cannot even begin to explain the goings on of mortal breath.
Yep. It’s time to pray. To know God is there here within the arms of our screaming need; Lord heal our lands, our diseased core. Why we fear death is because we know there is more beyond these days, & all our material ways. ‘Neath clothes and head and shoulders & knees & toes, we are creations made. We are more than bags of bones descended from ape and tapes of theories. We are more than doctrines and philosophies. In the core of your pillow you know, you know… in the stark of night, you look out your window asking the meaning of it all, and you know there is more. There is your beautiful mind and it will not die in a box. It leaves into territories we must seek now before late cannot get later.
It is time beloved, to not just pray for life but that also in death we will be safe. We are more than corpuscles and conditional peace. What are we, what is man, his woman, her child: do we know?
In the core of the night with stars, we wonder twinkling star shining bright, what you are…? Just dust. We are more. We write and deduce, we think and celebrate. We justify and keel. We are storms and wars, deciders of things we negate, but this:
a little piece of virus has us running like rabbits into our holes where we beg grace. Our theories and kings, all our horses and men, cannot put us together again.
In our distress we become murderers. Killers of decency. Not just now but thru’ history we read that when we are pushed beyond limits we are limited in our morality. Then we know there is good and bad. If there is good there is a Source. And it’s not us. There’s evil and there’s a source and its not us.
Something made a nice man a demon.
Something made a terrible man an angel.
Get a little closer, listen to my breath. Tell me the source of that and I’ll tell you the source of what draws humans together in the presence of a crisis. There is a Power wider than the girth of the earth spinning on an axis at her tummy. There are polarities geographically, spiritually. We have tasted the bitter dregs of evil and we have sniffed a sniff at some good. We have accepted the powers of Ugh but we are suspicious of God because He wouldn’t like us nestling with Him with all our horns and tails on.
We hate the idea of a Christ that upset the grave. “Bah humbug!”
We suspect His love that spurns evil. We would believe every other, not Him. Though we thoroughly blame Him for all the evil we invited in our living rooms. I’ve done it too.
But it’s time. Time to wipe our glasses and shed embarrassment at being created. The grave has no shame. That last word belongs only in this fleeting land of human existence.
..
Refresh my soul, let the doors of you, open to Peace. Let everything within breathe Grace. May our mind lean on Him whose mercies never fail, they are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness. Greater than all my bounteous lack. His power in my weakness, oh the fact of that. Not I but Christ in me, not the dark, but the Light in me. ReNew every morning soul, stay blest.
**
LIVE Acoustic Originals from her Collection of 200, Vihan Damaris also talks on the things you ask about : UTube, 6pm – 8pm LIVE 23rd April, Indian time.
Wherever you are in the world, you are invited. 😃
It is there in the seams of us
in the hinge of my shadow sitting, of
lashed eye in naked street,
‘tween closed border & shut teeth,
..of all the ill we may conceive,
this might be the final viral of this age,
soul Rage.
***
FromWhat to do when you’re in a rage and ready to explode,.Pic V. Amano. Unsplash.
Stay precious, stay blest.
Last month I wanted to look closer at this legendary masterpiece of Auguste Rodin’s, and found that it was a Type of Dante’s Poem, gazing at the portals of hell…. am I wrong?
There wasn’t time to dive deeper into that, we’ve all been flung a little further in at a new kind of emo/physical torment with Virus related issues. We’ve never been closer, in this new kind of loneliness, all of us together in a new kind of isolation, we’re like a Shadow of yesterday going into tomorrow, staring at Us all as through a glass, gazing at each other as if we’ve never seen us before, sans all the action. It’s a new kind of day. We’re unafraid of words we used to be afraid of. A friend who never asks for prayer, asked. What are we all thinking as we face another 24 hrs, an extended Lock down, or more news coming in from frontlines, where people are facing way more than emptied food shelves….
I got this ( pl see below Thinking Man). It isnt all gloomy. In fact, in it’s own heart rending way, the following words change me….
Pray for Italy🙏🏻
“From Dr. Julian Urban, a 38 year-old serving in a hospital in Lombardy, Italy:
—LIGHT IN A DOCTOR’S DARKEST NIGHTMARE—
Never in my darkest nightmares did I imagine that I would see and experience what has been going on in Italy in our hospital the past three weeks. The nightmare flows, and the river gets bigger and bigger. At first, a few patients came, then dozens, and then hundreds. Now, we are no longer doctors, but sorters who decide who should live and who should be sent home to die, though all these patients paid Italian health taxes throughout their lives.
Until two weeks ago, my colleagues and I were atheists. It was normal because we are doctors. We learned that science excludes the presence of God. I laughed at my parents going to church.
Nine days ago, a 75-year-old pastor was admitted into the hospital. He was a kind man. He had serious breathing problems. He had a Bible with him and impressed us by how he read it to the dying as he held their hand. We doctors were all tired, discouraged, psychologically and physically finished. When we had time, we listened to him.
We have reached our limits. We can do no more. People are dying every day. We are exhausted. We have two colleagues who have died, and others that have been infected. We realized that we needed to start asking God for help. We do this when we have a few free minutes. When we talk to each other, we cannot believe that, though we were once fierce atheists, we are now daily in search of peace, asking the Lord to help us continue so that we can take care of the sick.
Yesterday, the 75-year-old pastor died. Despite having had over 120 deaths here in 3 weeks, we were destroyed. He had managed, despite his condition and our difficulties, to bring us a PEACE that we no longer had hoped to find. The pastor went to the Lord, and soon we will follow him if matters continue like this.
I haven’t been home for 6 days. I don’t know when I ate last. I realize my worthlessness on this earth. I want to use my last breath to help others. I am happy to have returned to God while I am surrounded by the suffering and death of my fellow men.
Pls pray for Italy”
****
And may I add, pray for our neighbours, each other, ourselves. For international wisdom and tact as we go forward.
Pray with peace.
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‘..
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.
The Person of the Cross takes my itinerary: re- routes cowardly escape plans, away from self absorption/ destruction.
♡ It is unafraid of ‘loneliness’. It needs that space for progress.
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.
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.
We were all there: Alice of Wonder, you, me, even a Cat…
…us, behind a glass Wall, suddenly we were the audience, one body reaching to the Thing :
we peered through darkness from parched fires in our eye, smoking ash of our soul. The Thing breathed Life..
nothing dared It’s route. What are you ??? We screamed in the mute throat of our Silence. The Vision heard.
Love, It said, I am. It raked our ash with Nails as if from a Cross bleeding love.
I wake, with new words: “Now we peer through a Glass darkly, as in a dream….“
.
@innerdialects with more Inlinkz Writers
100 words.
Friday Fictioneers Rochelle Wisoff-Fields-
Before the sun sets today I need to repost from Lorraine’s Blog: Blindzanygirl
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.
I hope that you enjoy visiting this site, and that you find it helpful.
….
“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...”
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.
Its been released! Asha– Journey of Hope, featuring my Cover and 8 paintings along with others’, in a slim back gorgeous Book that anyone anywhere might be intrigued by…
If you’ve ever been there, in the throes of trauma, you’ll feel this. The Paintings are perhaps personal windows, illustrating soul stirring Bible study Leads on the fact of Divine healing via the Gospel of John’s 7 “I Ams“. Written by some of our finest Contemporary Writers.
The above Paint theme* was inspired by the Song of Solomon, portrayed as the human spirit, now embedding in His Vineyard; Rejection is rejected.
Will post a Review shortly.
*Set me as a seal over Your heart:
I AM THE VINE, YOU THE BRANCHES. His Presence/His Acceptance and Divine Support.
Read on, for my personal footnote with above image of Vineyard painting, if you’re wondering what that handcuff is doing in a Vineyard, with Scarred hand….(not part of the book):
Reading the Gospel of John in the light of these themes is visiting a cellar deep within, for me. Familiar text and images merge as John’s chapters reach between lines and push boundaries between Seen and Unseen worlds. Blue-green vineyard violets seep like tears on canvas: Rejection is rejected;
the Word crowds my canvas with VINE as the palms of two people facing each other, rest – one being released of handcuff, the other with a scarlet Scar. I’m a whole new essence, a new Cask of outpour. For any of us with scarred identities, Heaven signs that dotted line endorsing us as first citizens in the unshakeable kingdom of God. This is the permanent secure address of the Vineyard of Engedi (Song of Songs). Mathew Henry’s commentary on that book reads like a Song of Evangelism). Ezekiel’s’ River of God’ cleanses out Dead sea’s putrid En-Gedi Banks, turning it fertile! The whole Bible pieces together with the promise I AM THE VINE YOU ARE THE BRANCHES. ‘Set me as a seal over Your heart’ is today’s scream for God.
Raylarn.
Will be posting more of Asha here, but truly excited about the impact of a Book like this one, Published purely for those of us hurting in silence.
…
We meet Mangula* in a little town outside Bangalore….where exactly is she from? Half Kannada, Telugu, Tamil…she doesn’t know. How many people groups are we in this busy Peninsula India? At least 70, I hear .
I get permission to tell her story, take her picture. Mangula is thrilled, unashamed, why should she be? She’s done nothing wrong, only given good in return for the trouble she’s received. A feisty, 64ish (maybe), you never know, she could be much older or younger:
M. is General dishwasher at the home here where we’ve been these past 10 days;
…is also garden lizard/ squirrel Chaser, Chef, Masseur. (Ahm, snake killer too if the occasion so arises). Will sing along with any song you are singing, in monotonous hum. Origin? Hard to say. Telangana, Kannadiga... she speaks a marinated form of sub languages, but her story is beyond my head. (Retold with permission). Maybe I should just call her Mingu….?
Has two surviving children:
one of whom is her daughter Aasha who died young after a life of abuse from a man outside her community. The runaway marriage ended in him asking Aasha to go to the city looking for a ‘well paying job.’….which was a round of hotels and nightlife that left Aasha with a HIV+ baby girl. Husband now gets himself a new wife, while also occasionally thrashing some pocket money out of mum-in-law Mingu. And I mean thrashing. Ming’s daughter Aasha didn’t live beyond that monsoon when she fell seriously ill….
Mingu tells me this as she carefully pours eucalyptus oil in my shoulder blades last evening; the massage is welcome. She has the fingers of God for achy sinews. Her speech can get coloured with words for the bad men in her life, for her husband who brought home another wife, and Mingu had to leave with her then infant. Recently the old man died and she had to ‘pay her respects’ ... in a 3 day ceremony, with 2 other ex wives. The 3 widows dressed as brides were given a turmeric bath, (wore red glass bangles that were systematically broken), then a river bath in which she near got drowned, following which she caught a lung full of cold….
She pauses mid-eucalyptus massage, I’m feeling so much better for the treatment but cannot understand how she gets through the day…
her silence is heavy, is she crying? M’s skin is like hardened leather, the voice soft with cares. There’s a grand daughter, Simi…..
every month Mingu gets tablets for the girl Simi, from a Centre 30 kms away on a bus that costs her Rs 300/- to and fro. Simi is 16, tall, with dark knowing eyes and a mouth that can spin tales, fight like a cat- you know she’s had it rough. Step mom hates her….
…grand daughter here is a wild one, looks 25. Long story-
last month she got married to an 18 ish year old from nearby village, and he swears to love her to his dying day. His ‘awful Ma who demands a dowry‘ doesn’t know about the Simi’s HIV+ ness. He works in a factory, has a Cycle and ‘Quarters’ to live in.
Ming is pleased at her grand-son-in-laws’ ways. He now has a small house near a local church, with music all day coming in through their window.
It is a treat to listen to the woman, her tears and soft rage, her gratitude to a God she hasn’t seen, and her zest for life.
Last night as we watched Romedy Now.…it went to midnight, Mingu in a head scarf; we hugged/wished each other Happy Valentine’s as families do. Ming grinned with all her white teeth, she hadn’t a clue what/ who Val was/is…..
and I’m a little guilty at being so smug in even saying/ wondering what Ming thought of the word, Love. How could I translate the word ‘Beloved‘ to her; ‘Love’ was, is only what others gave her, give her.
This is another post I’m unsure how to finish, or why I titled it the way I did. Women like this one, they might live a life thick with details they can’t really say, but they have my respect.
….
*Names have been changed.
Isn’t that such a beautiful thing
the Cusp of Spring?
…..
India, soil of my bones: song of my soul. Heal my darling One who birthed my verse, my hunger, my thirst…
It gathers me,
these Leaves of days in a year of prayers
that changed even me,
Abba Father, thankyou.
Innerdialects 
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