WordPress Daily Prompt: have you ever performed on stage or given a speech
Yes, I have performed even my Tefillah* on stage & ones in streets & inside my teeth.
Ma would weep.
For me praying used to be racing sandslopes to where the sun was still in grey waters waiting to give me gold:
a gold that took everything,
It still seeps my tides of Will & Time: a refining Fire mill.
Later I saw grown ups pray / rocking at walls, then walk away; but do watch when a Prayerer sways: each sway is a flame that is given away, not necessarily warming only the Prayerer.
***
Yeah though shhhhlisten I have the deadliest condition : unanswered prayers. These mutate at Change;
I do not wait for You, God, for togetherness’ sake, my Asking only dictates!
Forgive me, Abba
I’m returning, racing to where You wait, like the silence of the sun, unchanged.
I’ve seen too much to dismiss the Dawn that brought me here: my best Tefillah is yet to be
where Abba burns the dark to dance with me,
in the firemill that changes the Asker.
***
*Tefillah : Hebrew. Outpour of heart, in Presence of the Almighty.
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!
Kaup, where Dad first met Mom- here my sisters were born. Such memoirs of yesterday, running like the tide.
How could we have known our blind son would so love that horse; he disliked the waves rushing at him, “How dare you!” Joh shouted at the Arabian sea
‘Puli Munchi’ Tulu fish curry you got to taste to know.
Malpe, off the Indian Konkan coast.
At Maidadi.
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.
Noe at Kudremukh. Today the place is a ghost town from a mining company that was laid off.
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.
I brought home some coastal flora! Bayhop and Pigface. And oh forest babies from 3 mountain ~ Fern/ Horsetail/ bamboo pigmies/ ….am now making up names, there’s more…. yes, feeling good.
I just saw this piece by Malala. If you haven’t heard about her, read on.
The chaos being experienced right now is not a distant event: it is the scream of humans that will follow us in ways we can’t know yet. What can we do? I’m praying. There’s people praying that those who can make a difference will do so.
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
“Vineyard of Prayer“, my new painting / fav place.
Remnants of another day
Will be writing 365 verses for each day of the coming 365 (wish me consistency); a book of conversations with God. Vineyards are places of productivity, of pruning and eventually the wine of soul comfort. Where am I going with this? Unsure, but it is a call and am taking it.
After another season of lockdown, and losing more people then we bargained for, am losing all shy and doing the thing my soul loves: putting down what I really feel in the presence of God. So, blogging might take a back seat till there’s a way to breathe between new paint knives and words. I’ve been thinking on the colors of prayer:
viridian green: for me those are deadly greens. Ocean blues, and lighter tones: /like dawn after a midnight, and the Light of God reaching into me. Empty pots, far left as at the Wedding of Cana, where Christ spoke new wine into those emptied pots: ay. He saves the best for last!
Vineyards are a Pact between Soil & Gardener &Vine. It is a crushing process, rich with learning, with leaning heavy on the Vine, drawing from the source of Life.
John15: “I am the Vine, you are the branches. Vitally connected to Me,… Ask and it shall be given…”
Yes I’m asking Peace, Love and Joy for all, but not without Him- the Vine that Lifts my soul.
Negatives stem from disbelief at the State of Peace. And their reason comes from a space so deeply ingrained in us, it takes a super normal event for some of us to believe in the Impossible.
🌿🍂☘️🍁
I’ve always been fascinated by leaves : fat leaves, thin shrunk ones lopping off branches or in the ground, going in the wind. The older these things get, the more they call, they remind me of some thing….
With the pandemic and ensuing ‘plantdemic’ as a local journalist called it today, I too fell headlong into the flora of life. NJ my husband pampered our inner child: we got us succulents and palm. My sis brought home baby vine. Easter gave us Fern and Ivy, creepers, climbers, fabulous darlings with leaves and none of them dried. I hadn’t noticed but when we visited a local farm, I collected these jewels👇🏼pressing them in an old diary:
For me it was a fast from Negativity👈🏽 the thing is in my matrix like a mother.
Though, if you met me and we talked over lemon tea you’d leave with the sun coming out your ears, for all my miracles:
the time my heart got physically healed. And my spine. And how that one onion finds me when I need it, oh our beautiful blind son, and our daughters’ songs with the Psalmist in it, and yet before the sun can set I have a new worry surfacing harmlessly like an ant out of nowhere.Ask NJ.(We went for our second vaccine and it hurt nothing, it hurt nothing so much I really and totally wondered whether she gave me that Vaccine at all. Was it a trick. They were short on it too, weren’t they? NJ had to not only convince me he personally saw it, but that he had a pic to prove it).
It happened again these past 21 days as I aimed at kicking Negatives out. Not easy.
Being one who thinks in images, I used the dried leaves from farm: each to symbolize a need that needed a healing.
Biblically, ‘leaves’🍃 go for healing: Revelation 22:2, NIV: “down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”
During our 21day fast, as I kept away from Negativity, I took out my farm pressed leaves, stuck one on each page, with a request for a specific need. Twas officially Repair Time.
As we went from one day to the next it was the toughest exercise, to steer away from sagging thoughts/ nail them at the Cross/ ask Christ to heal; to each query He gave me two choices: to succumb, or host His healing.
I realized how deep the Human psyche can doubt the power of invisible healing, all because we tend to gravitate towards memos from our monsters: 👥🗣
Tobiah who follows me via childhood, calling me this & that publicly. Sanballat snorting with self righteousness. Christ was asking me to pray healing on Tobiah & Sanballat. Yeah that was two nice dried leaves. I half heartedly prayed ; twas like praying for Covid to heal of itself! There was no external change except that a new emotion arrived, a wish that they’d really meet Jesus.
While the day’s prayer went up, so did my foreboding dark cloud that followed me from room to room. That cloud had hung in my hair, had drooped my lip and haggard’d my heart. Now it lifted.
I ran out of leaves but began finding one new leaf every morning in our balcony. Was God saying I had one more area to sort? Yes! Every morning a new dried leaf was there, and the same kind of leaf I’d collected at the farm!
Now we near 21 days this Sunday, I have more Drying Darlings than I’ll need, and He’s reminding me that there are needs out there, not just my own personal ‘negatives’ but a nation full.
As I write this my daughter gives me three she found in the floor.
These are rose leaves from our wedding anniversary flowers. 35 years, yes quite something. (Allow me to indulge: That’s a Trinity Reminder that we need to totally allow Them to work via our tiny existence…)
Teach me Lord.My heart trips with new emotions for my country & 550 tribes, for an Earth in a Time like never before.
This Post was Titled the way it was, because without Belief it is no use praying at all and expecting any answer;
I’m looking at every Persona of Faith in the Bible- Moses and Abraham and Paul and Peter ….none asked for cars and houses or jewelry … they stalked Red seas, slung Goliaths, slammed Pharaoh, brought down Manna, prayed rain …for others‘ welfare. They didn’t care whether they were healed or not, they didn’t bother to stop at personal imprisonment or stoning. They blest their jailer, and yelled joy till prison chains and floors hiccuped with an earthquake. Some of them died with a smile in their lips, no dying man or woman can fake that. That’s an inner fire that can warm the coldest day. The fire of belief.
We have these two choices, we believe in nothing, or something. Either way we believe. Whichever we choose, will exert its power over us. There’s Death, and there’s Life.
It has been a 365 of the Unusual. When Lockdown and Covid began its agenda on us all, I prepared for a season of quiet, introspection.
But that changed. It was a year of meeting new people in all kinds of places. There were women with burns’ accounts that broke me before I could put that in stories for them, there was the young man who called at 12 midnight about his dad with the virus, and we watched that dad get better! Yeah Faith walked in with wide arms and I had to be held, had to be taken where I’ve never been before. The Govt said ‘Stay home’, we shivered, sanitized, then followed the call outdoors, whenever. A funeral, a wedding, a prayer meet, a birthday. Veggie stalls and Mall, nothing looked the same again. Not even WhatsApp. Not Gmail. Instagram. Our words were changing like our worlds. Overnight we feared the same thing, the same way.
Blindness didn’t seem as daunting. Education and fashion trends took a Lil walk someplace else. Protocols changed. We wore pajamas to zoom meets, lipstick ‘neath mask? Ugh. We stared at leaf and sunrise. Sunsets and rain. Everything seemed changed, re- arranged. We met loneliness on new terms. We became beggars for blessings, for Grace. Praying happened with acceptance from people who shirked its very stance. We thought about existence, pain,humanity. We wouldn’t forget George Floyd, we couldn’t look past emotional and other poverties. And Isolation. We became old and young at the same time: we were sifted like wheat in sieves that did not stop.
“What is,life?” The Poet asked. A Sparrow replied,”Transient, like I.” “Us!We!” Said the Atheist. “Aha.” Cried the Preacher. “Ouch.” Wept the sinner. “Amen.” Said the Prayerer, before we all sat down to sanitize our psyche, nodding heads and elbows for the high 5s we could not high 5.
Somewhere in that, I found Josh Garrels whom I absolutely fan!
Have not been much of a ‘fan’ ever, must confess. Except for ice cream, and the plant kingdom. Heard his ‘Freedom,’ & Born again if you haven’t please do. This one that screamed for Cover👇🏼in a day, happened so fast, hadn’t time to even know i could be videoed (pardon spatial mess, uncombed-ness, and son Joh sit/rocking like a lotus in yellow Tee:) he continues to inspire with his brand of innocent fire. I thank You Lord for every reminder that Your arms work via my feeble ones, if am willing.
These Lyrics have me forever. Origin: Teresa of Avila who survived epilepsy till she succumbed at 67- notorious for her wit and joie de vivre….
She wants to be loved like every other New Year, and I hesitate to call her good: I hesitate to say a nice word just in case it contrasts with something in the Headlines tomorrow: but then, the Still Small Voice inside me that urged the dusk to light up my holiday yard, It says, “Year of Harvest’, so
So here we are, another brand new Baby wailing to be fed, unwrapped, walked…. Um, stuck between a sigh and a smile; Jan 2nd feels like dew in fallen leaves: feels like health sneaking back in my bones, like summer in winter, like new ways to sit, walk, run, stand, be still, hush, God is in His heavens,all’s well. You don’t fake a good feeling. Its too late to fake much anymore. Not this time around, where we step into another 365….., what will it be?
I want to wish you the best year you’ve ever ever had, (said that to a friend and she sniffed loudly. Like it couldn’t be. She needed a new house and funds to run it. She needed everything humans need to run secure… but in a minute she grinned on the phone, as if she’d given herself permission to have the kind of year she needed, and I’m giving myself that permit too) –
“Choose life!” God always said, in His great Book we tend to blame for all our errors – the Bible. Some of us read old comics,for comfort, or Sudoku or Horoscope and the stars. We just want to heal, when no one’s watching we do just about anything to heal from things we are not healing in.
I’m looking forward to cold days turning warm in the light of days healing. Nice, you say. Um hm. Yes. There never was a better time as this one to be grateful for every miniscule and large detail here on earth. Never been a year where we looked beyond into the non material. Here we missed each other, we fell in love all over again with market places we shuddered at: we missed the way our morning papers fell at our door and the steps of the newsboy spiraling down away out past our gates where the jasmine seller woke up street after street of flower buyers; oh and dogs, they were silent too, like Christmas so quiet you could hear the sheep in old Christmas cards breathe! We gazed at stars and memorized each others faces,even politicians’ (and priests’ we remembered from churches now with locked down altars). We did not worry about lip gloss, we still aren’t, we mask new fears with new words; “..be practical, we must go out. We aren’t hermits,” but now we got used to sanitizing our tomatoes and phones. We are a Changed Race, we cannot go back to most things we did last year today, and I’m betting we are wiser, kinder,slower, sweeter,more giving, less fussy about toenails. We got used to pajamas at 12 noon, we understand Time better. Maybe.
What’s to be afraid of? Aunt Jena wears Psalm 91 like an armor; Minki eats spinach like Popeye and she a carnivorous being, now singing anthems to lemon and ginger brew first thing every morning, ah, inhalation too. And skull rinsing gargling, sounds like burglar alarms. No one’s laughing. We are waiting, for what exactly – is hard to say: for vaccines? For Life as it was? For what it can be, should be? Waiting for Immunities; for ourselves to wake from a nightmare that is still not inactive….
never the less, its a whole new year- the old has gone, the sky never felt this blue, the stars this wide eyed. Go to the country side, meet new people, a farm, a river, trees, choose Life, eat well, rest, pray, read His Word, drink His dew falling like gentle rain at dawn where an old woman named Thayi cooks you a hot pot of Forgotten foods. Ok I’m no promotional Blogger, but this Farm deserves mention for inspiring this Post!
Resolutions ? Yes, a huge one – to appreciate nice people in particular and to be grateful to God for making them! (Wish I’d taken more photographs, but that’s the way it is with a good day- you are not thinking of surface tension. You plunge in a river, you climb a tree, you scrape a knee, you kiss a scowl away! Life arrives differently, you bask in a new flurry of beginnings like a child happy about new socks to school never mind worries about homework).
I’m saying out loud Choose Life, I’m stealing my Maker’s line. He said it first. He knew we’d be making choices, not necessarily nice ones. So He makes years go round and round like a Relay race. This time around I’m not letting one day go by without paying attention to detail. This time around, is there really a choice ….to not choose?
**
Am attaching a👇🏼 must read by 17 yr old Gabriela and she’s good!
..the need to feel unafraid again. We’ve cast our vote against the thing that causes insecurity….
after all of that, if we have not got our own person in sync with peace, we will still be afraid, we will need hope and the energy that rises from freedom from temporary sunshine.
PiCredit Joe Ciciarelli
Some of us do pilgrimages, we do rituals, we dance our prophecies of pain away,
and some of us do the humble thing of kneeling to pray: not that we can be perfect for doing it, but oh the relief of seeing how tiny we are in a universe of divine intelligence. Here nothing shakes our Unshakeable Kingdom within; for what can separate us from infinite existence that does not depend on economy, on professional stamina, on legal majority, or socially acquired sweetness. Here, in the gaze of a Christ who defies all else, here I rest, arrested by a certain non – need of material anchors that can spiral me down!
These are my thoughts this nice November morning; what happens when you pray, you ask? For me it centers my core, it shakes away all that hinders freedom. So I did not get this and that, we lost some feet, but when you wait in prayer you and I , we rise on eagles wings, renewed strength to run and not be weary, walk and not faint.
There will always be human need for strength & security. And there will always be this human leaning towards God, much as we might deny its leaning.
Looking ahead to days of nestling in that Unshakeable Kingdom within!
Gojay dreamed of a well by the acre of hardened land his father had inherited from his father; a well with water in it. That monsoon after the last rain cloud was blown away, he dug little shallows in his fathers ungiving field, but there was no water. That summer and the next.
One weekend there was water in the local borewell, water enough to drink a palmful and then he was chased away by the queue of local women with pots. The following weekend it rained. It rained like it were asking him to come out. Ir rained in the coir cot outside his hut, it rained through the roof, it rained in Mai’s hair and in Maimai’s, his grandma’s….
It fell in the streets and mud steps. It washed away Boka’s wall, it swamped Keju’s hay, it felled two old banyan trees. They loved it then hated it, but that time Gojay had prayed for the first real time for rain, and now he shivered.
Yes God was real; He had fallen rain in Gojay’s eyes like tears. As he walked around the village in the torrent, the boy stopped and stared at a local cross he had always ignored, not because its iron was bent out of shape, but because in the rain, the Cross shone. Anush his friend said it was the way light reflected on wet iron surfaces, but all that and the lightning! It made Gojay want to say thankyou. For the rain, and for the way he was stopped in his tracks, in the rain, in the marketplace, opp. Teraki Saheeba palace ruins, in the street in the rain where the metal cross seemed to seep at him. It tore his quiet out of him. It wreaked a smile on him. For the first time in all his life, young Gojay felt everything was alright. Oneday he’d find appropriate words to tell all this to someone but for now, he felt he was in the presence of the King of Everything: where there was no external famine
That was enough for him right now, that was more than enough for him for right now. And no it wasnt. The more he thought about it, the more he reached out his palms.
Has there ever been a time like this one? Has there ever been a silence like now: each of us one voice asking the same questions/ the same quest for peace/ the same need? We are as a race quietened; we have never before been startled as we are today. I’ve not experienced a certain shameless scream inside, for each other. Never before has my heart been this unafraid to say it out loud: we need you Lord Jesus. No one else met me in my darkest hour; no one else showed me the Light. Yea I can say it without a flicker of a doubt: you and I have been loved by the Christ.
Here it is! Woooo! 😄😄😄🥳 We received 112 expressions of worship, from 20 countries, 53 states, 5 continents, in 28 different languages! Let’s get on our knees, praise God, and pray for our land! 😄 https://youtu.be/GpnxLbxlx1U
The day my mother walked out of her skin, she breathed once twice then her hand in mine grew cold, that day Eternity walked close in my narrow space. Was it co-incidence that rays streamed from a room ventilator to where she lay, her last breath so unlike death?
I wanted to grieve, but light stared down thru that ventilator and all I could do hear was the peace of our father, in heaven. My ma was not finished, she had just begun, this amazing woman I saw pray-
when I was little and prayed long prayers. people were afraid to ask me to pray. I trusted God with every detail. We had no secrets. No privacies. I remember them all choking with laughter as I asked the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob to walk thru our little house by the sea and bless bless everything… from packets of chicklet chewies sent by aunt Rosie from Bahrain &, asking Him to bless all of us even our panties, I said in fervent prayer on my 3 year old knees ..
Unsplash
***
It is funny how a child can walk thru that wall between God and humanity, without shadows of doubts, but as I grew I was afraid- of those shadows, they – became a kind of god. Those shadows in the valley of defeat. They are neat I’m telling you- they are sweet- they are cool chill and teach us to be afraid. I was a child and now am grown. And I have seen us die everyday in all kinds of rooms. We have seen us pray all kinds of prayers.
‘Tenderly guide us‘ my mother would sing after she prayed -her voice quivering. I wondered why her voice did that quiver- every single time she prayed? Was she scared of Yahweh- was it something He said? Sometimes she’d go quiet as if listening in the silence to her God, as if He were saying secrets in her ears and she’d weep these tears…..they shone her face. she was crying not sad- these were tears you tear when theres things you cannot recover from.
These days when I pray I have no sensible words to ask . The wall between Him and me is a lesser mask, there’s no stiff jaw rule no regulation but as the moment begins, I’m searching heaven ……in the quiet/ that begins when I open my soul there’s a silence. The silence of heaven- and something begins I have no words for but I will try… something asking me if I truly love him.
I say yes and He God of heaven, says if I have love, then I will pray not for bags of rice and health of my children but for my 1.20 billion…..
yes! I tremble in reply but He isn’t stopping. In the silence He weeps and the sound of that is an ocean on its knees, in Gethesemane, for humanity. Come closer, He says. I look and see, calvary. I cannot move but He reaches within me/
His feet flowing crimson past nailed sins… ” …it’s all for free & hard to believe … I’ve paid your price; not just an Indian 1.20 billion but a planet full . Death has no victory nor the grave. Why are you all so afraid?” He asks, His eyes full of the tears- of heaven: Tears you tear when there’s things you cannot recover from.
And I see what I never understood before –what happens when you pray. Like that time with my Ma…when
when heaven walked close in my narrow space. And Light stared down in the face, of our valley of the shadow of doubt shhhhh
in the silence screaming in our ear; not life nor disease nor hunger nor fear can stand
the most sacred request of all: the God of heaven asking us to pray for All His children…for each other. What can separate us from that kind of love? We can..
we who will not stop to pray for each other/ But Eternity walks close in these walls between us …..a space growing closer than e’er before. And I hear its deafening silence in my ear, won’t you stay awhile with me and pray?
It is a question I cannot recover from/ it is, a voice from heaven. My human selfish dark could ne’er produce that Light streaming in from windows of heaven/ like that day my mother walked with Him who now looks in, at our lives – He’s asking in a silence we may be in….
won’t you step out of your own skin & pray for another? Not in the distant future but Today….
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.
When Haishu sang it went in you like a shaft of Light. He didnt have a big voice, he didnt do big prayers, just little pauses as if God and He negotiated things as they did chords.
The whole experience was stilling. Not anything to do with any gift of Haish’s. It was his ordinariness, the pauses between, those stunned silences that still draws me to the Act of Letting Be & being Still and knowing the Presence of things other than my own take on life.
Pic credit Unsplash.
Resting of a ballerina ***
In Your Presence Lord, that’s where I belong…
****
Have a nice day.
And if you’re seeing Ads. here, they are not endorsed nor remiberated by this site.
we watched this insanely provocative movie last night. Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge had new words for me like ‘Conscientous Objector’, and anti-gun war like I’ve not thought possible. It is also the highest (factual) account of Bravery awarded.
“… is as electrifying as one would come to expect. Telling the story of Desmond Doss, an Army medic that refused to carry a weapon through the hell fire of battle in Okinawa at the height of World War II.” More Reviews
I said ‘provocative’ because it kicks one into Red Zones you do not think should be anyone’s to walk unarmed! Is raw stark cold blooded-in-your-face-War– no allowances for the delicately disposed.
“Hacksaw Ridge” quotes : He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.” “I don’t know how I’m going to live with myself if I don’t stay true to what I believe.” “With the world so set on tearing itself apart, it don’t seem like such a bad thing to me to want to put a little bit of it back together.”
Young newly engaged Private Doss will not carry a gun no matter the World War II, and the blood soaked bullying he gets. He wins over court- martialling, he walks in with mates into the thick of fire…armed only with a slim Book in his pocket; is an odd one out with all his praying in corners. Doss is called Cornstalk for his size: all that and he single handedly saves 75 of his dying men after all the rest flee that lethal Hacksaw Ridge.
All night, he listens for cries of the wounded, “Save me Medic!” All night and into dawn he searches them out, lands in Jap bunker, helps wounded Jap soldier with morphine, shovels through the dead to find the still living tattered bodies of his mates. He drags, then heaves them via rope down the deadly Hacksaw Ridge. Back again, as gunshots arrive… he’s praying, “God, one more…” 75 men are saved. The next day they go back again….
you’ve got to see this one. Makes you wonder what he kept reading in that Book.
Unsplash.
…………………………………………………………………
If you’re seeing Ads. here, they are not being endorsed/promoted by this Site except that it is FreeWordpress and does not eliminate Ads. Thankyou for being here, and thankyou WordPress for the Essential Commodity of Blogosphere.
Come on over, the sands are ripe for your heart. Yes it’s hard. But I Am with you. In every grain of sand, I AM for you. Watch this:
Thankful. Unsplash. ***
there is a season turn turn, a time for every purpose under heaven. Come on over, the times are ripe for your tears that smile- they rinse the earth and grow your fields, watch how it needs you:
how I need you turn turn come on, winter & summer rain – nothing goes away, ‘except in My Hand. Permit a healing, beloved. My darling, in every grain of sand, all that you are, I AM.
***
Any Ads seen here are not sponsored by this Site, apologies. Have a nice say.
The ones looking at the painting, they are the Work of Art.
The Window turns about looking at Us. 👇PiCredits Unsplash *** We are the Clay, our hands made by Hands that made the clay we do not originate. Who are we? The little girl asks her mother in The New York Times: existential questions that needed to be asked long ago. We are best when looking within, looking with some amount of discomfort. When Humans ever did something of value to the personal or global community, was when we bowed deep. ***
Here, I find me.. pieces of me, stitched together in the Hem of Your garment.
Old calendar on tiny easel at home. ***
Look Lord, here around Your edge, pieces of prayers, darts sewn with silent fingers.
Here I am Hannah, a woman ridiculed, hated by her sister, despised for unproductivity. A Hannah ruthlessly in a life not as good as expected. Here my God
How do I feel the contentment of reaching in this moment-
You stopping to hold my holding of You. You not laughing, not You:
here there is zero derision/ judgment. Here, we receive that Touch that alone can reach a wound. Only You, of the Cross where no pride rules, only You could Hem the Streets of my Hannah,
I begin to shed all need of social acceptance. As I breathe, I understand this isn’t as bad a place as we thought it was. Humiliation can wear a crown of thorns. It can disgrace vanity: its stronghold. Rejection bears wounds you cannot receive in courts of honour. Being hated too: ah this one can teach us one or two lessons in freedom. Freedom from that race for supremacy.
There is a State of man, woman, child: a State that is freed from the clutches of skin-deep power. You lose the craving to be loved; you can still love, perhaps more! There is no bitter. There is forgiveness, there is a certain letting-go of all other hems.
You walk valleys and climb mountains barefoot till the mountain becomes you. You cannot be a plateau anymore. Or you sink sink in waters so deep, the river takes you: here, you cannot be anything else anymore. You understand the power of that very tide that towed you off limiting shores.
Or you walked a desert so long now, its acres speak in a voice you couldn’t have heard any place else. You’re grateful for that, for the way it could run without showers or oasis for as long as it took. If you’ve run to the Hem of His garment you meet these wastelands in the Hem. You hear the voice of the Humiliated, the cast down. There is no other place that holds it all, like here. Here there is zero pride of performance, of amassed wisdom, here, you are freed from the whip of laughing scorn, it cannot tug its hook in you anymore, how I don’t know. Ask The Hem.
I woke up this morning with all that. Like I’d met Ruth and Hannah here in the Tattered edge of This. I asked a few things, He will answer in ways we will understand later. He always gives us what we ask for, or something better. (Anonymous quote)
Cover me with Your garment Lord; spread Your shield o’er an earth keeling. There are things we do not know to see. There are Secrets in these Edges , as invisible as a virus, as potent, virulent. Here I kneel my inner being, grateful for the privilege of feeling a certain ‘lowliness’. How beautiful it is, to come apart and rest in the secret place of This Freedom.
________________________________________
Do check below Poster: is a Live Concert, Vihan D. featuring Originals. You’ll need to be there, 6 pm to 8 pm tonight, April 23rd- Indian time, to know what else goes on. Please do.
ALL PROCEEDS BEING DONATED TO RELIEF WORK AMONG THOSE DISPLACED BY CURRENT SITUATION, INDIA. ***
(Any ads. seen here are not endorsed by Innerdialects)
Yesterday we put together a video of the Fellowship that has currently just the five of us, at home. It was past lunch time when we finally began: our son on his little keyboard: we had a new song= new lyrics😳;
Kitsy our angel finally sings though! Me I hate cameras, never liked them, but there’s a daughter with lens in this house. Sigh … I love God, will do whatever it takes. Besides it’s been 2 years of intense Love that kept us going. We’ve had family and friends pray over us and that’s no small thing. Gratitude!
Title of this Post is from the Word in Video: …death too is also a state of mind. We rise above the Things that hold us back, dead places of the heart and mind that cause us to die inside.
we are surrounded by physical death and associated shadows, but Life is what we are within and beyond all of that. Which is what makes this celebration more meaningful this time than any. Yes Uncertain Times! The only certainty is that nothing can take away our Peace, no matter what, nothing shatters the bonds broken at the Cross, for Free….
we’re packing in warm greetings from our home and homes associated with Haven friends here in India, to yours:
may you have the Peace of God which surpasses all human understanding, and the Joy that comes from staying with Him.
I do not know that all like such words, but it’s the thing within me and it’s why I write. I wish you ChristJesus, like you did not think possible, in these times, this life, these days. These are those Absolute Essentials we cannot live without. We all may never see each other in this life, but it is my prayer that after all these words here and there, we will oneday truly be family together, eternally.
Images from yesterday’s news refused to leave but this morning a tree full of thumb- sized black birds, white chested (what are they?) they greet with rowdy song… what are they saying?
Last week we saw a family of Peacock. I thought it was a whacky dream….
Net pic
….glistening blue preening in the few meters between our home and Gulmohar trees….. all lounging around like that? Was too much to take a close pic but brief video below.
Can say with some confidence- we’re all a little more than numb; even beautiful things take time to process. My heads jumbling …..
startled by visuals in a world gasping with disbelief at its single cruel global event. Along with unavoidable casualties, will geographic justice prevail?
Yet these Beauties arrive: random signs of a Normal still here, after centuries of war & peace- while one is still gagging over lakhs of us hurting in ways we shouldn’t.
Lilies, Lent, April, Home …
Last night our son wasn’t too calm: aggression surfaces its head with random punctuality…
this morning he comes to where I am with my empty diary. Joh, 19, used to be the gentlest creature…. but the past 2 years were a dark valley. Now he reaches for my hair, and starts playing… his fingers gentle gentle….I remember an old song Ma and Dad used to sing ….He touched me… it feels selfish to be this Touched, not just in my skin by suddenly gentle-d son, which is a miracle in itself, but deep within raggedy heart, mine;
haunting images of migrant workers scrambling for a way back home to their villages follow me as I turn away from those tiny black birds I’ve not noticed before in trees we never planted… all yelling a song I wish I understood. My thoughts scramble ….
as our Govt. does it’s best, please let everyone stay in, help each other stay in, not go helter -skelter, not arrange a public meet like a very irresponsible group just did in lue capital city endangering an entire nation/earth.
A day ago, India Net pic. ***
Joh’s fingers now so gentle in my skin, what can I say. Words halt…
He Touched me….
when I was just starting out in life, 25…. newly married, a spinal defect that had been developing suddenly worsened. Spinal cortisone injections (a 2 year nightmare) only helped short term.
From our balcony. ….
One day a stranger prayed for me, and in 24 hours I was totally healed. This isn’t easy to talk about because few would believe but I’ll never forget that fire in my bones and the touch of healing. Who Touched me….?
I never forget that day, and today after our 19 year old touched my heart like that, like an angel…in a time when hands must stay 2 meters away, and distancing is a new kind of love…. yes we are getting Touch- hungry and will look for Soul – Touches more than we guess now.
It is April already, the sky is a startling blue, yes I am startled by life;
am persuaded to believe against all odds that today will be nothing like yesterday, no matter the news. Woke up today feeling numb, but there were these chirpy tiny white chest- black birds outside; how must I stay negative? (As I wrapped this post, we saw Peacock again, this time a lone one…distancing? Kitsy our daughter yelled ‘Penguin!!!!’ How isnt that funny? She was mad at me for laughing that hard).
It’s a strange time, an unusual life: the whole world on the same page. It is harsh and unreal, and yet any little/ large blessing looks/is larger than life.
My sky. ….
Outside white cottony clouds go busily away. April feels beautiful in my Indian window: it is getting warm, gold light filling green leaves. I want to cry but the colours are too many. Want to pray but there are no words. Joh’s fingers still gentle in my temples: I treasure, store them away along with little black- musical- yelling birds & other kinder action.
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,
I can’t thank life enough for Fellow Angel Bloggers who’s incredible posts keep me believing that this is still the world we knew before ‘Rona virals!! Purple Ray’s ‘Isolation Angel’, + verse here simply had to be shared for its sweet sheer brilliant reminder that we are never alone. Thank you!
In the midst of your life: the daily of it, the ordinary of it, the noontime and night of it, let there be moments that open to you the hallowed and the holy of it…. and may there be an angel!
Dave’s photography travels around the UK in places I may never physically see, nor do they reflect my Indian life. Though right now, they mirror our times. We are in transit, we tiptoe past each others’ posts and find our shadows in each others’ stunning walls.
Some time this morning between fixing breakfast and wondering whether we must think of one meal/ day soon, if we can still find veggies, and if we still aren’t carriers/ consumers of this ugh viral, after which thought I took to blog surfing and came across Harris’ Quote (pl see below), all this after searching for ‘Corridor‘ quotes. Well, I’m all startled now, thinking on how humans ‘make up their minds‘;
the Globe stares with new eyes at empty toilet paper shelves in one nation; emptied street Fruit Vendor’s cart in another nation:
Writer of Hannibal, Silence of the Lambs. …
as we all try to sit down and not think too much on Corona whatever. Morbid! And yet it’s not far away. It’s easily next door. It mayn’t happen to us, it might die away tomorrow, and yet death is not new news on the block. It’s been there since we all began and it’s no Respecter of physical status.
Harris says, ‘...we are not a culture that’s reflective. We do not raise our eyes to the hills…’
ah’m. Any help in a crisis, is welcome. Any comfort, anything that can take our minds off Covid spike charts, is welcome. If it is Singing hills, and Archangels declaring Peace on earth, I’m telling you Hannibal himself would tear his nails out in a hurry to get to nearest angel, now.
We’ve possibly never longed for our old normal like we do now. We’ d look to hills, any which way….lift our eyes, our reflective/ non reflective brows, we might stare at linoleum, at blatting television, but we are Reflective like never before.
And we aren’t willing to live in Transit lounge forever.
We’ve grown impatience from fore fathers who grew wings in their ears from just trying not be impatient. We as the human race can philosophize over Sanitisers without any of the rest of us objecting.
We call Death the Reaper, and Life…no bed of rose. Everything has a name: we are the Giver of Name and Emotion, & We are that IceAge -prehistoric (Squirrel?) just within reach of Its nice nut.
Yes, we stare at blatting Televisions, and want to lift our minds, ears, eyes, nose, heart, hands to that one thing that can be Touched…. Love, eternal, deathless.
As I wrap this, my Jeff makes us a warm drink. Our younger two are in bed. Subtle birthday lights from 3 days ago are still on. Out there it’s a Life glowering at statistics, facts & facilities, but here’s the thing. Death existed before Corona. And death is too quick an exit for our spiritual existence as a race that can think holes through the linoleum of the basement of hell. We are too blest, too endowed; too much trouble has been taken in just growing us all up to where we are today. We climbed Jack’s bean sprout, we killed our Goliaths, we cannot return to kindergarten shoes and cages…
‘Isolation‘ makes me gaze at all our reflections like never before. We do not like everything we all see, but we are learning to learn that there’s more to Us than all this, there’s more than survival and social distance.
When my Ma left this earth I was by her side and felt her pulse slip away, felt her presence next to me. I couldn’t even grieve in proper outrage for her, it was like she were standing right there but in another sphere. What oh death is your sting? Where your victory, if you cannot take my soul? We are soul, else we are in fantastic corridors between places we just happened to be at? We are each other’s angels at a time like this, and need the Gift of Life to never ever stop, no matter the way our heart shelves at the enormity of loss the coming months may harvest, I’m pledging my faith in a God who reaches for us in His own way, when we lift our eyes to the hills. …
At a very young age I was introduced to patterns of prayer, but it was later that God startled me in the weirdest places: places of disbelief and difficulty, sickness and doubt. Maybe if I’d never had that opportunity to meet my Creator, this Post would never have happened.
I’ve attached here a link to our 25 year old’s 21 day Reflection on the Person of God, not as a Genie giver of gifts, but as one who can be talked to unconditionally, if we would take a moment to listen to the Divine, quoting Purple Rays:
This Post is for anyone celebrating their birthday today, (and everyone else) I have this urge to celebrate you, and offer a tiny prayer too from my son who’s incredible gift is prayer. If you’ve been following posts you’ll know he’s not just blind but recovering from a series of disturbing issues, but this isn’t about him;
whichever part of the world you’re in: what a ride this is, and yet we are still the same people we were born as…
Was my birthday couple of days ago: “..no fuss,” I warned them, but there they were @ midnight, cake and candles, hushed whispers: in the morning among mysteriously bought gifts, was a Heart full of blue crystal stars from Kitsy, and Perfume from our eldest, my first name ‘Diella‘ hand- crafted in with scores of words like “Light”. (I got that name in a dream, after a long crazy illness. While I healed, there was a dream: it had my name written on a white stone. Diella means Worshipper);
mid- birthday joy, now there was announcement of national 21 day curfew; our entire street & surrounding areas went quiet, no bustle of traffic or twitter from Myna in trees running between our home and army acres across.
Within our walls, my family had strung out little lights, there was music and the smells of great cooking,
(I have officially surrendered cooking baton to second daughter Kitsy, who is master chef! (On left is how she used to be), now 👇….sigh, they grow so fast.
Kitsy in our last visit out in a park…. why’d that seem so long ago? …
D’you sometimes feel guilty to feel happy? You know it’s a mess out here with virus and anxiety attacks, but now and then there’s a celebration,
so here’s the thing: we were going thru’ all our pics, and my Jeff he rounded off everyone’s words with, “Ray, you are … you are… unique….” ….words that make me stare at everyone else now…..
that, there is no one like you either!
No matter the news, nothing changes who you are, your essence is unique, novel! Yes they say ‘novel‘ for all kinds of things, but here we are, citizens and strangers and basic people born to mothers and families and lives that can change in the twinkling of an eye. We been warned of all that, but when it arrives it’s a thief in the night, it’s a touch between life and death…
We got two bone chilling letters from people we love, one from our precious nephew in a hospital in Germany, he’s a doctor; and the other from a very dear friend in the U.S. They wrote loving notes, asking family to pay attention to how deadly this Covid thing is, the pace at which it mutates, its silent stealth. These precious ones lives are at risk because of their professions: I can’t tell you enough what it felt like, to be gazing at/ celebrating life in all its hues: to hug across the miles, and cry tears of love and pain;
to know that we 7 billion are strong and yet we are this vulnerable. We are beloved and fragile, our life is like grass, and yet we are one-of-a- kind- each, Designer made, no matter that our breath can be whisked away; we are phenomenal, a Force to reckon with. The day we were born, people paused or clapped, kissed? …. wept.
We can die, and even that occasion is phenomenal. It causes chaos / maddening grief, because humans as a race cannot be ignored. If one of us is attacked in any unusual ordeal it is News. The entire planet of us under siege is another thing altogether, nothing competes with the vastness of that: the fact that we are under this kind of common indefinable, insurmountable distress is totally New.
If we survive this, and many will, there will be the aftermath of it and it may be unlike anything recorded in the history of mankind: I don’t want to go much there: this one is about birthdays and how it feels to celebrate humans, mid- international crisis; it feels strange and provocative -beautiful and Quiet.
This morning I woke up feeling different, younger and older, like I had more in my 206 bones. It’s an awareness… of what? The immortality of life, or its brevity? I’m staring at books we used to read, it’s like from another life: movies, talks. Some Quotes feel more right than before. Oh, bouquets and birds, they don’t change, they are like paintings and classical music; they have Eternity in them. But our conversation…. it is halved in a new way.
Birthday hugs: they are tighter.
Gazes and strummed guitar, candle lights and the clink of glasses… they say new things. I can’t say what, just new. And old. And somethings we never knew before. We thought we knew it all. Our parents and grandparents taught us how to say Grace and say please, thankyou and sorry. As we grew we thought we understood things a little more than yesterday. It felt sweet, sometimes sour.
Now, I don’t know… and that is a New Thing. It reminds me of how little we all truly know about each other as humans. You are a person with feelings and heart and we must care deeply for each others’ well being, must pray for one another’s lives/ souls…
this is more than birthdays: you can see this Post hovers around that word and how I want to wish you a beautiful life without sounding patronizing, even if it’s not birthday zone. Even if life’s not short and we’ll survive this and other wars.
Our daughter Vi does these Videos and I’d love for you to listen to this one. She’s a lot like me and feels deeply about things;
then our son walks in on her recording (he cannot bear closed doors), but the moment turns around, he prays and brings you right into our room facing palm trees on it’s right, with my large painting in the back drop. It is called DaySpring, and I wish you that Inner Spring of Light and Life.
Vi does her own take on Michael W. Smith’s Agnus Dei; we looked up those words and it means “Emblem: a Lamb bearing the Cross of Christ.”
All sounds so serious. D’you get the feeling life is way more than mortal detail? That there’s more besides thinking on Cures and everyday bread/ rice/ health… that oneday we might all be someplace else besides this planet?
And that we matter incredibly more than we suspect…
This is another one I’ve no clue how to wrap. Do have a blessed day.
by what held us all these years: I’m touched, by the power within us that is greater than fear,
touched by how new leaf and bud appear, relentless of germs & sickness, they pout at my quick disbelief of personal endurance,
Touched, where I am rinsed by storms of cleansing…. I believe you and I and us are more than these days,
dumb founded by my own capacity to be afraid, I’m touched by the power of prayer, gratitude & praise:
This morning it went on and on in my head: the astounding fact, the act of prayer…. its healing ways, no matter how we used to think it didnt work, this morning It touched me, like a Glove, a Mask…. It held us in the secret place of Its hiding, not just me and mine, but you and yours: locked doors, sealed yards, borders, nations, hearts and minds….
May we wash our spirits, with the cleansing power of leaning on the most High. Man is wired to lean, on meds and safety measures: and that’s a sign a good one too…that by ourselves we are not enough. Together with the Leanable-On, we are stronger.
Choose Stronger, dear one, we aren’t alone. There is a Power beyond this,
I was touched by It this morning. Grace, Strength...call it a big word, let’s be touched by the One thing that can save us: The Hands of God that made us and flowers new every morning, I send you these, as Reminders,
So, no random wheeling around my city. No touching other Humans, Malls, or Theater, stay in!
I’m basically a hermit, but when asked NOT to go out, ah the urge – the urge to watch sunset from anyplace else but here. And where are we these days: an entire globe @home?
My own window fills ~ with papers, books, younger elbows, easel, plants;
I wonder what life is like for you. We learn new words like Social Distancing, we stall some die hard 9-5 habits, dawn walk, handshake, warm hug, oh do not even whisper words mask & sanitizer to me🤧😷🤒.
Going through every bit of news I could get on Ugh Covid from here in Peninsula S.India to anyplace in the world that had even one nice thing to say, this fascinating page in the Irish Times yesterday kind of stunned me, though today’s toll at Italy takes Corono- casualties to a new 2500?,
All across Italy people are turning to music in an effort to beat boredom, socialise and keep their spirits high as the country battles Europe’s worst outbreak of coronavirus. Video: David Dunne.
In the minutes before six o’clock, Jessica Phelan climbed the stairs to the roof of her building to look out over her Rome neighbourhood. All day on social media, a hashtag had been trending: “sonic flashmob”, spreading the word that something would happen when the clock struck six.
Phelan saw neighbours emerge at balconies and windows, from apartments where they have been living in isolation under government orders to curb Europe’s worst outbreak of coronavirus, which has been killing more than 200 citizens a day in Italy’s overwhelmed hospitals.
“People started waving to each other, calling ‘ciao, ciao’,” Phelan recalled. “A bunch of people started whacking tamborines, people had maracas. It was just noise at first. But then somebody started singing Bella Ciao.”
The “sonic flashmob” or “flashmob sonoro” began in Rome with the 18-member street music band Fanfaroma …
“We were saying on our chat group, what will we do? How can we play?” said the band’s saxophonist Luciano Belvilacqua. “Then someone said, ‘let’s go out and play on our balconies’.”
“It was madness, it was like New Year’s Eve,” he said.
Similar initiatives flowered spontaneously in other cities. Clips of apartment buildings producing impromptu choirs lit up social media over the weekend.
Songs of resilience that recall difficult times of the past are finding a special resonance. At noon on Saturday, one Bologna neighbourhood filled the with sound of applause after a resident broadcast from their window the Evening of Miracles, a song that recalls the town squares filling with people again after the second World War.
Comedian and musician Francesco Cicchella changed the lyrics of the traditional Neapolitian song Luna Rossa, or Red Moon, to tell the tale of the masks, disinfectant, and solitude of life under quarantine.
“Let’s make this go more viral than the virus!”he wrote on Facebook…
“We are trying to make this period of quarantine less sad, a bit more fun,” said Cicchella.
Children can call a telephone number to be told a story. Theatres stream drama. Opera house the Teatro Regio di Torino, founded in 1740, began broadcasting performances of Verdiover YouTube. The Museum of Modern Art in Bologna is publishing videos from artists showing their work….botanic gardens launched virtual tours…..
A woman plays music from her balcony in Milan. Photograph: New York Times
“The theme is ‘what you see from your window’. Perhaps we have more time to take notice of things, now that we are all shut in our homes,” Sanzo said.
***
“You need to respond in some way because otherwise people will feel too alone. Going onto the balcony to sing with other people gives you courage,”Belvilacqua, the saxophonist says.
Windows locking in on our lives, and perhaps more than windows..
I’ve read this somewhere: that we each have a Stairwell running from the roots of us to a zone above our present time, our present tense…… routing us to Things we cannot know exist even just moments ahead.
My Ma had a song about that. “There’s a stairway that winds up to heaven, and it takes but a moment to climb. It’s a stairway of prayer and you’ll find it, anywhere you may be, any time.Whenever I pray I climb a Stairway….“
Don’t you wonder what the past few weeks may be preparing us for: how a Season like this one could re-route you, me, all of us through to healthier or otherwise, co-existence in our respective communities?
Who knows how this will all pan out, but let’s please not let one Window stay shut, not miss one Step if we can. Tough call, but we are a Tougher Generation than we dare suspect. Did I just say that?
Innerdialects 
You must be logged in to post a comment.