Come Let Us Reason Together

“Come let us reason together”, says the Lord. ”Though your sins be as scarlet, they will be white as snow.” Isaiah 1:18

Snow covered the yard and wind was relentless for days.  Nevertheless, snow is exciting, and tucks one into a cozy frame of mind, removing a myriad of options from a day off.  In the quiet house clocks tic toc the time, the faucet is dripping away to protect the pipes from freezing, and cars ease by on a snow covered 3^rd. 

I sliced a box of plump little multicolored tomatoes and slid trays full into the dehydrator, but not before saving some of the seeds. I covered the seeds lightly in a little box of soil and put them near a window.  Seeds have come up with no care at all in past compost piles and random spots in the yard and garden, so maybe these seeds will find their way to germination too. They will help with the wait for spring either way.  😊

I often dream of what I could accomplish if I had a string of days like this.  I imagine all the reading I would do, the notes I would take, the food I would fix and the plans I would make and accomplish.  Then a day comes when downy snowflakes fall from the sky and into my lap is a snow day.

And it has happened again, weather that says, “Just cozy up inside. There’s nothing for you out here. The view out the window is best.” Rain fell in the night and giant trucks slid over yonder, off the interstate pavement into the trees and up banks of icy ground. Ice is nearly non-negotiable and it’s not wise to try, but oh, how we try anyway.

Black birds visited the yard in a throng, pecking the ground looking like digital creations. Maybe they are searching for pieces of pecans discarded by gluttonous squirrels. They all rose and filled the hickory tree, filling in the gaps left by fallen leaves, but only for a moment before moving like a black cloud across the lawn to the pecan tree, then to the ground again before flying away to who knows where. I watched them from my second story window snapping pictures.

“Come let us reason together.“ 

I slice the tomatoes and dry them for a day. How different they taste when not carried in a splash of water, how chewy and sweet. In my excitement I held one finished piece in the light of my window before eating it. The winter storm had changed my dead yard to a glamorous, all white stage where the tomato became a marvel before it. As if before a spotlight now, I saw the seeds exposed in their deep and secret place suspended in time, an intimate peek into a scarlet explosion in the heart of the fruit, like little, fat exclamation points, like rambunctious, young sperm in pursuit of the egg. I’m shy at the sight of it. If they had a voice I’d hear shouts of joy and the whisper of…  

“Come let us reason”.

It’s been days still simmered on this theme, these thoughts pulled apart. I started an ancient practice in a jar on my kitchen counter, fermenting milk. It is silky and white and tart from growing bacteria that is good for me. Then I dried pounds and pounds of strawberries into sweet, red chips. Yesterday, I put them all in a plastic bag and felt so pleased with this work. The whites and the reds glaring again. A simple, messy life, tucked in a measly river valley town has things yet to say. Important lines to repeat out loud in my own simple way.

“Come let us reason“

There is nothing more or less going on in this life long mess of discarded strawberry tops and the feelings and experiences. It is all a boiled down in a line from Isaiah, older than the kefir grains preserving the milk on the counter. It’s older than time. It is of the foundation and that’s as solid as it gets.

“Come let us reason.”

It’s not “Just do what I say!” It isn’t, “Blindly follow me.” It isn’t, “Let me take you, use you, control you.” It is higher and bigger and breathtaking.

“Come let us reason.”

Engage the matter of your life and your outcomes with the outcomes of truth. Reason, dissect, use your intellect. God has nothing to hide. 

Trust Fall

 

The cuckoo clock click, click, clicks as I pull the pine cone weights up again. I hung the clock some four years ago, but the ticking is a wee fast, or a wee slow. It requires a perfect setting for perfect time and since I’ve never performed perfection in my life, I wait for a day of visitation by the divine, a day when the clock will keep the perfect time and I will then never again touch the wooden weight, and will eject anyone else who tries. Until then, I admire the artistry, the movement and the sound, and move on to opening the shades and tying the curtain back so I can see a peek of 3rd from the blue room.

This place is all art, the cuckoo clock, the sunlight making shadows on the wooden floor, the quirky, twisty willow in the big patio pot outside and the morning glory that’s been creeping up the branches all summer. And again, inside, the desert rose has been pushing out shining new leaves since the day it moved from a friend’s bedroom to its spot near the window here. I went to a gallery to see paintings and pictures of things I see every day; mountains, rivers, lakes, butterflies, people posing, people doing peoply things. Right now the shaky, quivering, high leaves of the water oak out the second story window in my home is more than I can thoughtfully endure. I can’t render adequate words, can’t take it properly inside me, the emerald greenery cutting the view of a sun-drenched, wispy cloud formation sailing slowly by whether I ever see it or not. I can’t figure out what to do with this kind of wisdom and beauty. I can’t own it, can’t take an adequate photo with my old phone. I can’t devour it and make it a part of me, but still, I try to capture it in this way, in the ways of words, making friends with failure again.

My jolly, funny Wheatens beg for an essay of adjectives to pull together the scenes of their frolic and folly, their carnival of comedy, their shackle-less hearts of joy bounding around a back yard. I would leave pristine paragraphs, heart-melting songs, lovely letters for my grandchildren, the great, great, greats and beyond. The yearning to leave something after I’m gone keeps trying me. And I see only art today, and that gives me a good chance.

Some days all the scenes transform, as if seen through gray, cracking glass, or viewed to the sounds of school bells telling your racing heart that you are late for class, unstudied for the quiz, ill-equipped for another day of the 7th grade. On those days, the roses whine about needing dead-heading because the old blooms are ugly and many, the Bermuda laughs while invading the garden again and very likely plans to take it over for good, the hum of the air conditioner that cooled and comforted only days ago, begins to whisper that I didn’t have the unit serviced this season, so who knows what issues are building in the box outside.

But today, I see art, and today I say I will only see art forever, and face failure again when it comes. A man said that when grief or terrible upheavals come, this is the best opportunity to send your loves notes up to God, to imagine your hugs, your surrender and devotion, to remember your bliss about the cords of love He’s wrapped you into Himself with. He called this worship, and this makes sense to me. In the pain, what’s real remains, and a worthy story has its proving ground, its rendering of art and worship.

You have a worthy story, an artistic rendering of life in its time, its scenes. And the rules of your life are golden and your scenes are soft, no matter how hard, in the light of this blazing context:

All things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

Romans 8:28

Some days you wake falling, bored, unsure, slow-wafting into the abyss, flung away from a familiar plan. You’ve woke with the gray, cracked glasses before your eyes, you’ve accepted their strange fit with their poor visibility and you must strain the familiar strains to piece together the fragments of what you see. What appears is ugly, fearful, mediocre, and not what you’d planned.

I picked up a paper and a pot full of Prisma pencils. This morning it felt random and new, though I’ve done this before. I needed to make art today, so I stared at the paper and doodled the body of my favorite bird. I couldn’t remember how to add the head, but I tried. She looked like she was falling, so I drew her a blue sky in which to descend, I gave her some clouds for her free-falling. I wanted to encourage her, so I penciled the words, “Trust the Fall”, to comfort her. As I watched her fall, to my surprise, all at once, I saw the rays of a golden sun below, the sun she was falling towards, not away from, so I penciled in the sun. She was falling into the light, not into the abyss. “Trust the Fall!”, I whispered to her. I cheered for her quietly because it was morning, and I had only had a few sips of coffee. Instead of the free-fall, I saw, instead, a trust-fall, and soon she would see the sun, she only need believe. Her face now looked of surrender, I gave her innocent eyes that looked like ones who trust until they see.

Today, this place is all art.

Trust Fall

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Flourish

June 12, 2024 

 

Psalms 92:12 The righteous will flourish like the palms tree: he will grow like a cedar in Lebanon.  

The best thing about us is the YOU in this little person-realmy-realm. You are the flavor of spring in me, the buzzy-bee, happy-We. You smell like hyacinth, you feel feather-light, your magic swells my senses. I am high. I am high.

The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.  W.B. Yeats

 

You are the way to hopeful days, the glimpse of light, the glint of gold, the hallelujah here. 

                                   

You are the way to say, to say the words that like to play. You lend a phrase to display the holy way that unloads the heart of its heavy joy, to spread it around this little patch of world I move in.

Earth's crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes. -Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Morning Prayer Journal; April 8, 2019

Lord, how shall I celebrate a new morning?  Birds are already singing it up a storm out there, rooster is saluting the morn, frogs in the pond are piping and I, the tallest, weightiest of all sit in a silent stupor.  Why is this?  They are so fully invested with YOUR purpose, so without hesitation of their call.  It is You in their throats, in their chests, in their movement and song.  It is Your eternal purpose in them, without choice they go along happily it seems.  It is beautiful, sure, purposeful, comforting to know that they will always do what they were intended to do; not robots, but creatures full of divine, unaltered purpose.

It's the creatures with choice that falter.  It's us with our own navigation systems that go the wrong direction.  It is us with doubts about our purpose that sit in a stupor unhinged.  We, often as if sitting behind a curtain, live veiled from the movements of God-- adrift without a compass.

 Jesus said he did only what He saw his Father doing.  He showed what synchrony between the two can do. When he sparked debate at the temple or stood speaking to the crowds, when he struck out in a boat to meet a demoniac on the other side, he saw it first in the place that we also can see. He did what his Father was doing and put His hands and feet to this on earth. Isaiah 60:l

Perfection

What is perfection to me?-- The bark on an old oak tree, the colors of a lake just waking up, the cool waves of the sea? What is perfection?--the chubby hands of a child, the evening call of a whipporwill, frisky puppies going wild. The cardinal in his flaming red suit, showy and brilliant always catching my eye, the embrace of a mother calming the fray, the calloused hands of a man gently leading the way. Perfection is living and loving and seizing the day. What is perfection to me? The heart emptied of pride now filling with life, the turning of the eyes towards the light. Perfection is the beginning of redemption, the first steps towards "home". Who can condemn the heart who's relented, repented and real? Not perfect in all of our ways, but perfectly in process of being healed. What is perfection to me?--It is love covering another's faults, it's holding of hands and carrying on. Perfection is people clean through the cross, all covered in grace, accepting themselves, who we are, who we were, and who we will be.

The Long Conversation

Every blog has a song inside it. Today a love song because our Father so deeply loves us. Click and loop to hear it while you read. 🙂 <

I have pulled up a chair, poured a hot cup, I've had a cleaning cry when I needed to, I've poured it all out and I've kept it all in and found that it's ok either way. I've stayed as long as I've liked, and I've come back when I may because there is time--my lifetime going on forever. The conversation that will never end has been a midnight discourse, a pondering parley, it's been a desperate question with a year's long answer, an immovable opinion remedied with His single word. You're invited into the dialogue, but I've found it is prudent to listen awhile too--listen a lifetime.

I've peered into the Great Story to see some of the first starters like, "Let there be light!" and "Be fruitful and multiply". I've heard the first words of young Jesus saying, "Didn't you know I would be about my Father's business?" Year after year, page after page, His Word permeates the reader, overflowing one's life, bringing eyes and ears alive to Him. It leaps off the page to meet me here in room, in my car, in my world. The conversation has begun, and it will never end, but one must take one's place and join in.

All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved...Romans 10:13

I've tossed silly, stormy questions that He hung straight up to dry. I've volleyed words only to run from His replies, blocking them out, pretending I didn't hear. I've marched into His office, and I've cowered behind the curtain unsure if I had His audience, if I had been heard. I've written Him books and books full of feelings, told Him my dreams and listened to His for me. I've heard that He traces the lines of every word, following along and I've known Him to break right in. He's rang bells to seize a moment with me, He's sent a song to share in my thoughts as I pray. And it's a conversation with no end. You can join in too. Most of you already have.

Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.....Isaiah 1:18

It started for me with a kneeling-prayer on my dad and mom's dining room floor, an admission, a repentance, a glancing back at a self-driven life to say goodbye and start anew, start the conversation that has gone on until now and will go on forever.

Sometimes I step back from the dialogue in ugly unbelief while He moves near. I may falter in my speech while He's finessed a forest for me to find a word in, to feed my ears and eyes His feelings for me and the way forward. I may stutter. I will stammer only to feel the wind and find the sky has coalesced into meaning and direction. I find He has carved a cloud into holy speech, a picture of His written Word. And this conversation will go on and on. If you don't yet know, He wants to talk to you too...but I bet you know.

There have been love notes galore that remind me, "For God so loved the world", and books sent to shake me out of my stupors and into discipline and correction. His words have come by way of men and women speaking His heart's utterance for me.

Do not neglect the spiritual gift that is in you, which was given to you when the prophets spoke and the elders laid their hands on you. 1Timothy 4:14)

I've heard it through signs on the highway, signs in the sky, from stones on the ground, from the mouths of children, the eyes of animals and in any way He chooses to reveal His mind and echo His timeless nature and Word. I posture myself to hear with belief. I exhort myself to listen and join the conversation with all of my heart as His whole world opens to form His-voice-to-see as it did in the beginning.

For what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse. Romans 1:19-20

The long conversation starts here:

What I Didn't Do

Looking in the mirror at the curling locks that reach around and down the front of my shirt.  It was what I didn't do that created this moment for me.  It's been awhile and I don't even know why.  The bun or the braid or the pony tail lengthens and I have done nothing about it. And those strands of silver wisping lighter than the black, here they come and I let them show. It's what I didn't do that allows them their time and maybe I look all of my 55 these days because of what I didn't do.

If I didn't worry...  if I didn't ...what then?  It would take time, but something would grow from that looking away...that ignoring. Like the long curls cascading down the back a slow change would occur from what I didn't do... if I didn't worry, if I didn't.

And it has begun; the slow, the easy, the steady change, the turning of the back to the prodding problem, to the frightful future. To the bad news I turn my back and do nothing...Instead of acting, I just "trust fall" again and again. To the heavy thoughts of days ahead alone, of getting older and when things go wrong, of sickness and such silly things I do not sink into concern. I do not feed the frenzy that comes to me poking, asking, threatening to invade my head and my heart.

Once the frenzy came shouting at me and I pulled up a chair to listen awhile. What if "this"? What if "that"? It shouted. I went for a walk with my friend. 'Round and 'round on the road winding between tombstones and big old trees we walked shuffling a gathering of Canadians into the graves.

I told her what I'd heard and she said, "Rhonda....the Lord! The Lord is already there at the end of each concern and He will take care of you." Sometimes I need a friend to help me in what I shouldn't do. I shouldn't worry. And if I don't something new will grow. It will. And I will look different. I will talk different. A change will come because of what I didn't do.

May

May I sit with you for but a few more hours and bless you for being you? May I smell your blooming flowers and watch your mulberries ripen soon? May I brag about the roses that choose your welcome to open wide? And may I bring you this offering, this feeling? I will try.

Your days grow sweetly longer, your showers come to find the soil that needs more water, the flowers and the vines. I breath you in to savor. I drink you in my thirst. I bless you in your breezes, I marvel at your worth!

The purest smell of privet, the dandelion blooms, daylily and magnolia all draw me from my room. I'll plant a little garden when I find a piece of ground, an orchard and a vineyard 'cause you'll be back real soon.

You are my shining favorite. I don't wish for you to go. Can't we just start all over? -- May 1st, I love you so. Your days passed by too quickly, your benefits astound and I am left to linger till you circle back around.