Healthy soul

The solitude of mere humanity (another lesson thanksgiving from Job)

/ jill autrey dorman / 3 Comments

 

person sky silhouette night

Photo by Snapwire

The solitude of mere humanity…without tasting the solitary aloneness of  yourself before the God who created you one cannot experience the path to the Cross of Jesus Christ. Our parents faith, our family, our worldly status, our friends cannot enter into this solitude with us. The paradox of the supernatural and eternal Unity of the Cross with the certainty that we each must meet and know God alone is the reality each human must face.  This is the story of Job and every other human.

There is no way around it but it need not be a terrifying solitude. We cannot hide from this meeting with the Holy.  It is an offensive, not defensive stance.  To come home like the Prodigal son, to repent, to rejoice in the Wholeness provided in Jesus. To remove the facade of religious and worldly answers and simply stand unashamed and naked like Adam did when he was molded from the dirt and dust of the earth in the wonderful marvelous light of God’s presence. There is an innocent soberness to this kind of solitude.  Just us before God without another single human being.

It is in the solitude of mere humanity where there is intimacy without playing games. We all experience a time of total loneliness in this life yet in that place something within us cries out to us that we are NOT alone.  Job experienced this. Jesus certainly experienced this in the most utmost sense of the word. God does not play games with us. We came into this world naked and alone and we will leave this world with the solitary escort of the Holy Spirit of God into the very presence of our Creator, Savior, and King Jesus. That is so astounding and kind and simple.

I believe that God is in love with our human-ness. We are his ultimate design an image bearer of our God. We are the Crown of his creation. Not only does God love us he delights in and trust us with the lives he has given us and in our solitary aloneness  with him we can know these truths intimately.

 

Morning Flight

/ jill autrey dorman

 

 

backlit bird clouds dark

Photo by George Becker

I take to the wings of morning tattered though they be

for I know the colors of the sunrise will lead me Lord to Thee

 

A flight, a poem, my sonnet  to your greatness

as if I am again in my youth soaring to your kindness

 

Nothing but spheres and beams of your radiant light I see

all darkness and death must finally flee

 

I take the wings of the morning  there you will be

as though there was ever Continue reading →

Image Bearer

/ jill autrey dorman / 2 Comments
white and black moon with black skies and body of water photography during night time

Photo by GEORGE DESIPRIS 

The ocean’s wind catches each regret, each sin, and sorrow throwing it into the eternity of a perfect God to be forever forgotten.  In the light of the moon a young woman, who thought the stars would stop shining above her found the Maker of the stars and the freedom and love and the lullaby He sang washing over her in waves. So now I am drifting, sailing and it was you who came for me.

On that day when the sun tipped over the edge of the earth and spilled colors like buckets of orange, pink, and violet as a reminder of the power of Holy light. The young woman once ravaged and scarred by guilt and shame found joy in the warmth of The Son. Lifted from the darkness you came for me.  You lifted me in your arms and by your own wounds, scars, and stripes you healed me.

This is the heartbeat of God’s love. The fractures, wounds, and scars are remarkably purified like gold after the pain of repentance has done its work making every person precious in His sight transforming us into the Holy wholeness of the Holy One whose image we bear.

In the end are not the scars part of the beauty? 

I think Jesus, when we meet him will show us his perfectly mended scars in his human-ness  even though He is now glorified. He is always perfect. I think he will say “yes, these scars represent each of you and they are beautiful.”

Beach Lullaby

/ jill autrey dorman / 1 Comment
beach blur clouds dawn

Photo by Pixabay

Let me take you to my beach

where the sand is sugar white

 

The water blue as a daydream

laps the shore in three-quarter time

 

At night I’ll take you to the stars

where the sailing ships all go

 

Where salt water heals your skin

like a lullaby heals your soul.

White Fire Love (the lesson of relationship)

/ jill autrey dorman / 2 Comments
art black and white burn color

Photo by George Becker 

 

It is not “the one that got a way” who breaks you. Oh sure it burns deeply for a long while but you aren’t broken. It is the “white fire love” that purges you of every single last thing you are holding on to that makes up your life. Your tapestry. Your little “g”-god, if you will.

These white fire loves are those closest to you. Those who have the power if you let them to hold your hand to the purest, hottest white fire and expose what relationships you truly have. This white fire is unpolluted light. It has no shadows. This kind of white fire is the lesson of relationship. It is the ingredient of being a whole, developing human being. This white fire love will either drive you into prideful manipulation or the empty abyss of isolation if you don’t let it do its work.

That is why God put us in marriages and gives us siblings and parents and children. These great loves in our lives are the vehicles that propel us into risking it all.

That is why God sent Jesus and why he gladly came and that is why in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed and asked if there was another way to atone for all sin. It wasn’t that Jesus didn’t want to die for us because he said, “it is done. I commit my self to death.” It is simply because Jesus IS the white fire love, in the flesh, the God/man with no shadows who could see all the evil that his white fire love would have to burn in order to reach us.

So, when your spouse or your Dad or your child “burn” you and you are broken and  hurting by something they did or didn’t do how will you respond? Will you let it purge you of perhaps your own selfishness, your self-protection, your wounds, your entitlement issue, or will  you get in your old little worn out row-boat and row out to the abyss of isolation and just “lick your wounds” or perhaps be a martyr?

None of those actions will purge your soul with  white fire love. White Fire Love will let you be patient, let you be resilient, let you love when they are unlovely, and it will leave you with a heart of gratitude for the relationship you have with that person.

White Fire Love will let you grow and develop into wholeness. White Fire love is love like Jesus does. Now that is the Love that I don’t want to let “get away.”

The White Fire Love of God will free you.

 

 

Midnight Hour

/ jill autrey dorman / 3 Comments
close up photograph of person praying in front lined candles

Photo by Rodolfo Clix

 

Time is not a matter here

            in the midnight hour

I sing to you my love song

          though it be torn and tattered

 

I see the deep wells of wonder

         of both your Love and Light

To such will be the Way of things

        beneath the looming night

 

 

Come endure the Midnight hour

where language has no name

Where Hope and Hardship mingle

With your Faithfulness and Grace

 

 

My Autumn Doxology (revised edition one)

/ jill autrey dorman / 2 Comments
nature red forest leaves

Photo by Pixabay

In the autumn of my life I am walking purposefully and briskly until winter comes. I gladly release the past more often now.  Sources of shame that I have carried too far are easily shed. I exhale slowly, mindful of silence in its fullness. I cherish Hope in all of its color that now paints my days and nights. I smile when I hear the church bells chime on each hour as if to remind me of all the people who have come before. That great cloud of witnesses from Adam’s first breath to mine…

In moments of stillness I do not despair rather I find peace in the untended vine and the helter skelter of a long-standing fence whose boundaries it marked long forgotten…there are no more sad funerals only more seasons…

I am invigorated to finish my life well. I take in each moment with my family and find unspeakable Joy in them. The unconditional pure love for my children and grandchildren is inexhaustible. I watch my grandchildren playing. They dash by me and run and shriek with innocent laughter. How free they are. They have never betrayed anyone or themselves. I am humbled to know them…

Dusk comes early in autumn. Wood smoke scents the air. The light of the fire nurtures my ragged bones and sooth them with new energy.  I know that the Heavenly Host will soon sing along with me the Doxology that is the Autumn of my life and I will be called from this world  and I will gladly go…Eden has not gone. It still is there in the ancient fertile crescent where the four rivers dance down from the Holy mount pouring out the water of life. The tree of life still stands in the center its leaves twirl and twinkle in the milky pure golden light that has no beginning and no end…and again the Doxology of the Holy will  endlessly rise in awe and sweetness to the King of Glory…

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

This post is dedicated to the writer of The Ragged Edge of Night by the talented artist Olivia Hawker. She knows why and what she did for me. She helped me not compromise the writer that I want to be…like her. Read her book. You will be inspired in wherever your path takes you.

 

October Blue

/ jill autrey dorman
scenic view of beach

Photo by Pixabay

 

All of the tourists have gone away

there is no more t-shirts for sale today

The rest of the locals are raising a toast

back to the quiet and the pull of the moon

No footprints in the sand, no hurrying to do

 

 

There is no other sky like October blue

the deep green waves call out to you

My heart is captured by the lure of the Sea

that autumn wind still carries me

I want to walk on  the beach in my old sweatshirt

Just looking for shells and listening to the surf