as a weaned child, rest your head on the beach between this & the eternal. measure how deep we go…
back to when we saw our first sun rise, a mother smile, a father breathe his last breath.
where does sadness exit, or soul. or my child’s tears when I touch him, or an old man’s tears, & a beggar’s invisibility:
am startled at What stares back; i got used to war,
Pic- Karsten Winegeart, unsplash
not this. this opposes black&white lines. This breathes between the lies. A Wound that heals. A piece of healing spit in my eye, a bloodied whisper in my riot: forgive. Forgive. Let go. Forget. Breathe. Exhale. Inhale. Be loved. Live, live, not carcasses in the wind –
but arrested by Rest. the greatest temptation is to stay unwanted, unloved. Ay, am staring hangjaw at sacred choreography, “… walk on water? Nay, dance, dance…”
Gopalpur on sea, East Coast India; searching for childhood footprints; change can be beautiful. pic taken by my sis Doc Li, 2023
Thank you D’verse for provoking Prompt : Place & Space
Last week a local Book Store took me back to the first library I ever met. Dad insisted it wasn’t haunted, the local Doc said it was! I was five and deeply interested in everything, esp the smoking lady ghost they said visited the Bungalow’s oval mirror, next door.
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We were on an island where Dad worked. The Inspection Bungalow was a tiled few rooms with green faded windows, and attached library that cooed with pigeons in its shutters. Here I met the aroma of old pages running with silvery book worm.
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Most Sunday afternoons we visited the Library where dad got his PG Wodehouse & Perry Mason. Later in the noon he’d joyfully run us thru’ something new Jeeves just said. Ma would find her stash of back dated Good housekeeping magazines, and Georgette Heyer. She was this romantic, and loved reading out bits to me between blushes. She and dad were childhood sweethearts – still hopelessly in love with life, with the island we were on, with dangerous river crossings, with people of all types…..places, and oh books, even if it was the telephone directory:
books made one exist on a plateau with a globe full of footprints, heart prints..it made us a brotherhood of individuals getting to know one another. It was a priceless place, free of territorial rights and assoc wars ;
Yea, the Library, outdated as it is now?- will always resurrect that part of me that dares shadows and ghosts that boo. It tickles the ribs of shutters I create now and then and let’s me into the aroma of buried pages.
Meanwhile what I found in Blossom Book store here 😅
Tucked away in a shadow, 👆🏼 found this beauty (I have an older Ed., gifted to me by a visiting Belgian artist who lived in an underpass in Mumbai). She & husband had left home to be here in India and help the poor, the best they could. They later adopted twin girls from Kerala. Yeah, all this takes me back to roots that grow our pages, ya.
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…
the sight of vision, the hearing of the muted, the sense of loss, the smell of hope,
the unseen tomorrow….these and some
stir my ‘heart ‘ – ah that organ of awareness we’ve placed somewhere ‘tween head & rib.
And oh when my spirit opens itself to pray…
what words could describe the Sensory of Prayer? We as a Race are sands shifting in the growing Light of Dawn,
Mike Haupt, thank you for Pic!
the growing Life of Light in my dark: the sight of things I touch in my core, by a power they call Faith…. what is that described? Must I describe it, for who? Why write, share moments broken from ‘accepted’ norms, why care, why heal? Why kneel, why weep joy,
Why bless for curses; why Love for hate, why rejoice in suffering, what is this; hell heaven, Christ, Lucifer and the Spirit of every man and woman and child – running deep from what we hide, deny
Hidden, in His quiver, you thought you were forgotten. You’re there for that one choice moment, polished chosen arrow;
time & tide sifted, ground, broke you – seasoned your edge- today you think you live in the shadow of others; ha, know this, you are one set apart,
Unsplash
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…for a Time such as this, for a day in a thousand, for a task you alone can do. He knows you by name, you are Designer-ware, made for specificity. You are needed, blest, crucial important, you mayn’t see it Lil arrow,
you are deadly to the foe, deadly to the very thing trying to destroy you. It is time to go out, fearless. You are a force to reckon with, a Season all your own. Go on polished arrow, fly in His skies, shine!
Nan always remarked how movies took their banners from the Bible:
Armor of God, Armageddon, Judgement day, Apocalypse, …? Any other?
As we put together sunday fellowship vids, it crossed my mind how much easier it is to share core values and faith than ever before,
But too, how much more hard we are in places, as a human race. God is used to being misunderstood; we are still getting there. I am as simple a human as you can get to meet, love family, love God. No agenda. Lifes short, and I mean short. If I knew a good Bakery or store, I’d tell you. If I heard a good story, I’d share. No ones perfect, we are messy, messed. We fall, rise, hobble. We are hurt, we hurt. We are innocent and we are guilty of being human. But I’ve walked and wrestled with more angels and demons than I can say. And I’ve been loved by the Christ.
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And I’d thought this Cross was a symbol of suffering: but It is more. It’s a coat hanger for my soul…. but more, more! Now and then, I’m shredded by life. Now and then dragged into chasms alone… so I thought. So we think, we humans.
We are suicidal, sick, disabled, dependent on human resource; we are hostage, we are criminal. But
You standing next to me, in me: crossing out evil, negating my dark;
You pouring words through my lips of clay,
You rinsing my hands and feet o’er and o’er; You saying words in my ears I could not have found on my own. Words like a 2edged Sword- one edge cutting away death, the other granting me life:
You, shining a trillion times x infinity- more than all our suns: Your Light stark blazen smashing every last snicker of evil, every stinkn’ shroud casting its net in my bones, in the soul of my nation, my borders, my dregs… blazing with Your light…. personified by the Cross.
This Cross more potent than Light as we know it, Its reach deadlier than sin and hell; what force can separate me from its Love nailing me to Its heart, Its Heaven, Its Immortal Vein? ….NOTHING. NOTHING. NOTHING. IT IS THE BRANDING FIRE OF GOD, IT holds my breath, my pulse my all. My all.
How many footprints are we, how many miles, how many stories writ or half made, waiting, stalled,
how many lanes are we, bylane – gullies, routes, detours: how many doors have we done, thresholds; how many
shores laced with each others drift: how many piles of chatter, players of games in the sands we walked, how many grains of day and night, how many clusters of seconds, of hours:
how many stacks of us, strangers together, like a planet full of pile.…
blue, the colour of our global roof, the essence of emotion, a Jar of heaven that turns tears to the Dew it returns, every morning. I’d call it ‘Tears of heaven…?’
The Alchemist :”From our tears spring the life giving dew that nourishes life!I hope you have a beautiful week ahead!“
https://rakupottery.ca/ The Alchemists Studio The meaning of Alchemy: chemical science and speculative philosophy aiming to achieve the transmutation of the base metals into gold, the discovery of cure for disease, and discovery of a means of prolonging life
Yesterday on our way to another part of Bangalore city, we got stuck in a crowd of 1 lakh protesters with banners, national flag, slogans being quietly yelled, all in simmering polite refusal to accept a recent political statement regarding Citizenship in our country. There were armed cops lining the entire route, khaki and guns at rest but ready. Section 144 is not a pretty section to be found in a march of that number, however accidentally. My husband would be calm in the Red Sea. Not me. An hour of that, and a detour home, I was thinking, dearest God, it is that time to pray for each other, I mean real prayers. For wisdom, peace, love, respect, safety, protection,harmony.
Dont ask me how we got detoured somewhere along this surge. It’s a miracle when you can safely get safe, though it’s also a beautiful thing to watch hundreds come together with love for each other, in a time of need.
Where are we headed this 2020, I’m scared to ask, think,imagine. What’s it going to be like for all our children? Will the world they inherit be kind to them; will they have space and time and support to pursue their dreams, will they be able to live, forgive, love? All our pretty poetry and wishes can sound like beautiful broken things. Yeah, it’s not an appropriate post for a season of cheer, but this is also a season of comfort. I choose to believe in that Comfort.
The Psalmist talks of tears collected in a bottle, poetic imagery/ real
all of which and more is graphically depicted in a must-see Movie THE SHACK.
Do not watch this one if you’re in the mood for sweet-nothings under mistletoe and fests in joyful carol. The Shack is 2 hours of one man’s acquired mistrust of God, having lost his little girl to a murder that leaves no closure; his own past a mesh of abuse/ disaster parenting. It is constructed in a way that can be controversial (depictions of God as ‘Comfort’ took me 2 viewings to understand. Wonder & awe at what divine reality is really like!)
Thankyou Alchemist Studio for your beautiful expressions of alchemy.
Recently I did a few paintings for a book on humans in bondage to abuse. In the process of that, one of the editors asked if I could work the Cover painting on the famous Japanese art Kintsugi, (also known as Kintsukuroi- the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. Wikipedia)
What I finally did for that Book cover ofcourse was not a human face melded together with gold, though I would have loved to, (haven’t worked with gold leaf paintings yet).
Yet, fascinating that the very things we discard, as the breaking points in our day, could be our turning points.
Is this post flowing all over the place… perhaps yes. It’s a busy morning, we slept late last night(3 am?), theres a fair amount of action today, there are people who will be in tomorrow, cooking, serving, laughter and joy. Woven in the weave of all that theres the quiet of answers waiting, questions unasked, healing, scars, memories of loved one lost, a photograph on the wall, a melody that lingers from childhood, a recipe from Ma’s kitchen, a hug I wish I could receive all over again. This time around there’s the sense of new beginnings, a letting go, a new holding on. Even a new respect for the wounds that got us here. Healed by a wound. Sigh, but happily.
Hey, let the Alchemy of heaven seal us with new beginnings. For me it’s the story of that first Christmas that is an awakening. It’s a prayer in the stars. “Dearest Lord Jesus, let the blood that flowed from the Cross kiss my scars, let the breath of God breathe into me, I cant do this on my own, hold me with life anew, I’m hurting alone, I’m leaning on You. You. You. ”
Look closer look close, we are more than 206 bones, we are more than hands and feet of clay or stone in gardens of love and hate and war for peace; we are breathers of each others carbon and makers of tears, we are not insignificant to the rituals of history, the passing of time; we are not lesser than kings and priests of angel or dragon kingdoms- deep within or in the surface of our nailskintones we are not common, we are rare and more than the sum of the law of everything, we are not nothing, we are more than we dreamed or hoped..
Innerdialects 
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