Photo by Irina Iriser
I saw the first bloom of cotton
White and puffy like a cloud
it made me grin.
Mama Mae’s deep well water
Tasted like the honey of heaven
It rested my thirst.
My daddy had a smile
An umbrella to my world
it covered my heart.
Photo by Janko Ferlic
The moon was out
Venus and Mars shined brightly
Her pockets were full of hope
She stepped between this second in time
And the second before it
Then exploding like a lightbulb
memory’s pieces splintered away
With her hands in her pockets
She felt the weightlessness of God’s grace
Photo by Leigh Jeffreys
She said what she first noticed was that images were spinning around her frontal lobe like those old 1950 children’s lamp shade night lights. As the lamp would spin around different nursery rhyme stories would glow in the dark. This is what she noticed first.
These scenes of life from childhood to ancient-hood would spin in her mind but then she would immediately forget what she saw. She said it was tremendously frightening at first.
She said with in a few months the the children started coming more often. Telling her what she should do more often. She just smiled and ignored them and worked in her garden. She managed dozens and dozens of tulips and daffodils around her large home built with field stones. A beautiful home that once was in a country meadow but with human progress was now in the middle of a large city neighborhood. She said she loved to prune the bulbs and separate them each year. She used her little garden mat for her creaky knees and wore the hat which was her Mother’s. She said her Mother bought the hat in China where her family were missionaries until the Communist kicked them all out of the country. The hat was perfect for long days in the Texas summer and was constructed so well that it looked as good as new instead of forty years old.
I would drive by her house every day on my way to work or to the market and everyday she could be found in her garden. I often stopped to chat.
One day we were talking and she said, “you know children can never know their parents young. That is why it is so hard for them to understand them as adults. They have never seen me run a relay race like a gazelle or fight with my sister. They have never seen me with skinned knees and pigtails. They surely cannot picture me as a lovely teenage girl going on her first date much less enjoying a healthy sex life at least until they were born! I also think they have forgotten that their Father always brought me tulips and daffodils our wholes lives together.”
As fall approached I would see her out there tending the bulb garden with her head bent over and her knees on her mat. It gave me a sense of comfort I think. Then, of course, that inevitable day came when I did not see her for a week or so but had been too busy to stop by. The next week I saw a for sale sign in the front yard and stopped.
I was surprised when a nurse aid let me in and I knew this must be a bad sign but she was actually looking quite spry. I noticed when she stood up that her back was a tiny bit bent like trees whey they finally wear the shape of the wind. We sat together in some worn but comfortable chintz chairs by the front window. The gray-blue light of winter slanted through the stillness. She said, “Death’s cruel pluck is coming.” She was right.
By spring she was gone. By summer the children sold her house and the lot behind it. The new construction destroyed every single tulip and daffodil. All the lot taken up by a McMansion. They didn’t tear down the beautiful stone house but to me tearing up the garden was the cruelest act. I wonder if the children had no idea what it meant to her. I wondered why they did not see the hours she labored and loved in that garden. I wondered a lot of things.
The last time I saw her she talked about how the night Heron with it’s silver soft plumage was the most beautiful in all the marsh. She said she that the Heron had been visiting her each evening in the shadows of dusk. She said she was stuck in a memory of growing up on the Bayou of Houston and couldn’t remember a lot of things about being an adult. The last thing she said to me with a gentle smile on her face was, ” thanks for coming to visit me Mama. I will see you soon for good.” I just smiled and told her goodbye and thanked her for the beautiful tulip and daffodil garden. She waved and I was gone. She was gone too.
Every time I drive by the property I go through a run of emotion from anger at her children for what seems carelessness to realizing I am not their judge. I feel sad that the beautiful tulips and daffodils no longer dance there in the breeze. I remember her smile and think of the Night Heron. I picture her in heaven with her Chinese hat on bent down on her knees with her mat working in God’s garden.
You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of the aged, and you shall revere your God. Leviticus 19-32
Photo by nappy
Reckless Endangerment is a law that states “wrongly recklessness of wanton conduct that is likely to produce grievous harm or death to another person.”
I read an article recently that a young lady is being charged with Reckless Endangerment because she pushed another girl off of a sixty foot bridge and caused her to be severely injured. According to the article Reckless Endangerment is a misdemeanor which carries a monetary fine and possible time in prison. I do not believe the one who pushed the other intended injury, nevertheless she did cause injury.
What stayed with me the next few days was the sobering thought that as a follower of Jesus Christ I must be diligent in my words and deeds as His Ambassador. I fear any Christian’s speaking “out of context” or just plain “lie or twist the truth” may do so at our own peril. There are many false teachers that I am aware of today because of social media. I am also sobered at the words of Jesus himself when he says that it “would be better for a millstone to be around your neck and you drown than to lead any of these astray.”
Jesus warns those who are Shepherds of his people (and religious leaders) strongly about misleading others in any way away from the simple truth that “those that believe on His name and that he is the Son of God shall be saved.” We cannot add to Jesus or take away from Jesus. John the Baptist preached the simple act of repentance and humbling ourselves to the One whose sandals he was unworthy to tie…
However, there are those called by God to shepherd and lead and teach in the context of the Body of Christ. I believe there is accountability like no other if or when we speak for or of God wether we speak in large groups or just to a spouse or our children. I am reminded that Jesus said in a field of healthy wheat there is also growing weeds that look just like the wheat in the same field and when the harvest is brought into the threshing floor the fake wheat would be separated from the real wheat and destroyed by fire.
Over fifteen million women follow other women speakers, Bible teachers, and preachers on social media…this tells me two things. One is perhaps these women’s spiritual study needs are not being met in the local church and secondly, how do they know who to follow or does that matter? It is reckless endangerment, in my opinion, to teach that gay marriage is a holy ordinance of God. It is also reckless endangerment to let a man who has sexually molested children and/or women be leading anyone. Another reckless teaching is that if you are ill and God does not heal you then you must have sin in your life! (Hello Job’s best friends), and one of my old favorites, which a young woman actually told me this week, she was told that if she doesn’t have sex with her husband every single time he wants to she is sinning against God. Reckless endangerment!
I think about this in my own life and take a posture of being down on my face before Holy God and somehow relaying to anyone any Word of God incorrectly. I tremble at the thought.
That is what concerns me as a teacher, mentor, writer, Mom, Grandmother, and wife. If I am expounding to anyone on God’s Word I am not playing a game and teaching little cute sayings or formulas.
The wonderful Reverend Billy Graham and my amazing Grandfather, Dr. C. E. Autrey, always said this about their preaching. They never made a statement in a sermon that could not be prefaced by these three words, “The Bible says…”
But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2 Peter
Photo by Bibhukalyan Acharya
The sound of a tin roof rain in the spring makes me smile
I would sit under it and write in my diary as a child
The waves lapping the shore in the hot summer days
I would lazily lay beside them as the Texas sun would blaze
The symphony of the marching band in fall
The smell of bonfires as Autumn breezes call
Sleigh bells ringing and the laughter in our home
I would soak in all the love my heart can hold
I have grown older now yet those sounds are still sweet
Now my grandchildren’s laughter bring a new heart beat
All of these sounds are the symphony of rest
And of all of the sounds I love stillness best
For it is in stillness that I hear all the other sweet sounds
Where the music of my life ebbs and flows around
In the stillness is where I hear the voice of God say all is well
and I thank Him for the music of my life
June bugs buzzing round the front porch light
hot sweet humidity on a southern comfort night…
Smell of sweet drugstore perfume
just waiting for a boy to notice or amuse
So innocent was the Muse…
Texas summer nights not far from big city lights
all the stars in her eyes on sweet southern comfort nights
Photo by Tookapic
when Life is not always
a merry Tale
or Thunder makes war
from east to west…
when Day leads to
a comfortless Night
or Evil and danger bring
your Soul to unrest…
put an Axe to the Tree
of all things hidden
keep your Sword always drawn
and sharpened…
let the Fair and the Fresh
be your Dream
never forget the High King
of Heaven…
Photo by Pixabay
I lift my eyes
from all that is broken
from the ashes of idols
from lies that are spoken
I lift my eyes
from this earthen vessel
from unanswered questions
from the unfulfilling morsels
I lift my eyes
the window of my soul
to the heaven’s Creator
to The One who has control
I lift my eyes
where my Faith will be made sight
at His appearing I will see
The Defender and Lover of my soul
has His eyes on me
He said, “I get my meanness from the gutter and I get my kindness from God.” I sat down under the bridge with him and I said, “I think I could say the same.” He looked at me square in the eyes and I could see he was surprised by my response. He said, “You don’t look like you know much about the gutter.”
I smiled and said “looks can be deceiving don’t ya know?” Then he laughed. The sound of his laughter was one that made me smile. His laughter was like a nine month old baby’s belly laugh. The kind of laughter where nothing is held back and a sweetness of joy rings from it. I told him I had not laughed like that in ages and he said, “Oh you can only laugh like that when Fury and Thunder have cracked your soul and all the dark places have been opened up and cleaned out and all the pieces are strewn about and you cannot put them back together by yourself. I call it reconcilable purity. This laughter only occurs when you have lost your life to save it and when you were first but now you are last…”
I sat there in sober silence but something inside of me begin to tremble. “Who are you?” I whispered. He said, “I am just an old man who has been given a new heart and all day long I just like to go around and give my heart and life away to whoever might need it for a minute or two so that they can go about their day with some pure laughter…” The gorged veined, brown spotted hands palmed my face and the old man looked me in the eye and he said, “Go and be, not do. Go laugh and cry. Go and give your life away for someone else and you will see. You will laugh the laugh of “reconcilable purity.”
Photo by James Wheeler
I am a ruin, only pieces of me stand.
I was a fool and knew only nonsense
yet he levels the mountains before me
and cuts through my chains.
He make fools of false teachers
and keeps His promises.
His foundation is laid, it is His Son.
In my secret place He stores his riches
and gives me a name of honor.
Rejoice in the ruin that stand restored.
Inspired by the prophet Isaiah
Jill Autrey Dorman 