This is how my thoughts go sometimes…
It is fall now, the brisk breeze flings all her colors around me.
The smell of wood burning is like a heady perfume
The fire catching sparks at the hem of my coat I fly now
The time is slower, people are farther, love prevails
Silence is an endangered sensory gift. The “still point” of a turning world is the origin of this dance called living.
I do not preach in market place or a building. I preach by my way of life, imperfect though I am.
There is the ” Inevitable hard”, there is the ” failure”, the “burden of difficulties” yet in these points there is great “Joy” knowing I am not alone.
Will you come and sit with me in the “Silence”?
We can understand the journey of Joy together!
Scared, Scarred, and Sacred
He is a beautiful scared boy.
He has a deeply scarred heart.
The difference in between is Sacred.
His kindness makes angels weep.
His wounds so painful to behold.
The difference in between is Sacred.
Who can be the balm for his scars?
Who can hold him when he is scared?
This mysterious union is Sacred.
A winter musing…
While Winter hangs on a bleak horizon Hope is banking in the wind. Hope always and ever present. Dawn seems still far to the east…but it is coming with the Morning Star…a fine day is clung to and stretched to its utmost limit…
the present, the moment is where I choose to stay…for to gaze too far ahead is to surely bring this moment, this present to an end…
The water is turning gun metal gray as the front porch door is shoved by the wind and is screeching on its hinges The water sprays my face. I lick my lips, and taste the salt. I can smell the rain and see a squall forming off shore. I batten the door and settle into my old two seat glider, (also from the sixties). I love sitting here listening with my eyes closed to the symphony of waves, wind, and thunder rolling like a timpani drum.
I know when the electrical dance begins by the sudden brightness invading my closed eye lids. When I open my eyes lightening in all of it’s patterns and torque reflects off the sea presenting pulsing colors that spark turning the water and sky into a myriads of blues, purples, yellows. There is something so stunning about a vast body of water as it collides together with the night sky.
When my journey brought me here to live on this island on this Gulf of water I was very young. I wanted to live in Florida a while and enjoy a Jimmy Buffet and Ernest Hemingway kind of life and love of the sea.. I wanted to study nursing and perhaps write my poetry (not that it qualified as literature) or a short story. When fall and winter came it was the best. I was accepted by the locals and learned the history of this little (unknown at the time) town and the people who grew up here.
I carry grace and forgiveness from there to here forty nine years later. The storms are the strength …glassy clear water is the peace…
I often have concern all my words may scare you away or maybe they already have.
I respond to words intentionally. Words compell me. Words challenge me. Words soothe me…
I guess it depends on what kind of word person you are. Maybe all my words won’t scare you away, but If they should I understand.
I see words in “color” sometimes. Words are never, ever black and white.
There are “you’re a liar” words.
There are “absolute Truth” words.
There are “profound” words.
There are “stupid and ignorant” words.
There are “death and life” words, and so many more.
The list is exhausting but you get my drift.
I “feel” in color. These color harbour themselves in my heart like a traveling carnival. Today as I lay down to rest I am aware of a sadness wrapped around me like a blanket. The color I feel is called “Evening in Paris” blue. It is a Catalina blue tinged with muted dark lavender. What a beautiful color sadness can be. I see cafes quiet with an evening crowd. I see and feel a comfortable sense of lighting coming from the old gas street lamps that flickers burnt orange in the blue of this night. This sadness is comforting in a strange way. It is pondering missed people, remembering a special day that can never be again. It is a story to tell of both the good and the.bad of life.
The “Evening in Paris Blue” lay like a blanket upon the earth. Everywhere you look it is blue and it is okay to be sad sometimes. it is a primary emotion. In its soberest of actions sadness cannot be explained very well but here in Evening Paris blue there is no explanation needed. it is just a feeling. It will pass but I will see Evening in Paris blue again.
The Sun slips into that other hemisphere gently pulling all Color with her like a bride’ s elegant train. In the night sky there is only absence of Color. There is an other worldly tug on my heart this Sabbath evening. I am weary here. I am tired here. I am weak here. I strain against the call of sleep as if it isn’t the answer, which it isn’t. As I turn my eye toward the dark night where there seems only absence of color I whisper a breath of thanks. Not thanks for being weary, tired, and weak but thanks for this truth. The Holy mercies God has given me for “this day” will be totally new and mighty and more than enough tomorrow. Great is his faithfulness.
Evening has fallen and I find myself sitting in a place of yearning, like being home sick. I am completely at peace. All is safe and warm yet I have a longing. I want to savor this life I have been given.
Every once in a while a moment will cling to me longer than others and it catches my breath because I want to stay there for a while before it becomes a memory. In those moments I might smell fresh cut grass or feel thunder shake the earth or laugh until my stomach muscles ache or taste the sweetness from the honeysuckle vine. Like an old reel to reel movie I see all of them. All of the memories. All of the generations of my family and I want to go home. What joy to know the God who loves us in a place where there’s no death or time. It is wonderful.
Goodnight friends.
Love will grow over barriers and around obstacles still blooming and still fragrant. Love is having the strength to stay. Love is a wild and furious risk, a pouring out of all that one can from that cup and drink it. Love is rich and poor. Love is sickness and health. Love is a verb, an action word. Nothing about love is passive. Love cannot be manipulated. Love. Risks. Everything. The Holy God is Love’s name…ponder this, ponder Him on this busy Tuesday of your life. Love changes everything!
Jill Autrey Dorman 