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.

The Cat's Way

 

The sight of a soft cat on the floor, utterly relaxed, batting the ornament she took from my small tree caught my eye.  She is rolling about with it, immersed in the amusement. It has struck me that these are moments of the profound. 

Nearby an uptight human sitting at her computer, praying robust and hard prayers for sons, for country, for city, for leaders, for churches, for justice, her shoulders are tightly held, her mind is fixed and her heart is sober and hopeful until this glancing to the right and this funny beholding sets the mind suddenly free as the full-bodied, well-fed cat bats the small, red ornament under the couch.  She may do this for the entire day, I mused. She’s evidently done this all night as I found the small tree laying flat on its face and ornaments scattered across the room.  She’d jumped into my lap three times this morning hoping to sway me to her will: “Pat me. Pay attention to only me! Can’t you hear me purring?!”

What is the profound in this to me?  It is this, "Don't forget to be free, to be at ease, to linger in the peace that is yours to enjoy." Should only the cat enjoy the peace and ease afforded us? Let your prayers for justice, for freedom, for truth, for mercy rise high. Pray your prayers and then rest in a measure of the cat’s peace and you will have it all.  😉

And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:7

Little Worm

Who is this little worm, but a mite on my windshield?  Wiggling about, such a phenomenon. So small, not more than half a centimeter, but charged with the vigor of an athlete.  I thought his tummy must be full of food to have such energy-- and how did he light upon my windshield?  Had he been spinning a long strand of web too?

I had a trunk full of groceries.  I bought a little extra this time in case I can’t go back soon.  The little worm shrugged at me with a blushing of pink all about.  He has no care over powerful monopolies of food and such things. He needs no warehouse of goods to sustain him. He feeds in the open air as I plopped my bulk groceries down into a large cart. Alone in the warehouse full of people, no one bothered to look much at the other, all awkward behind masks.  He feeds outside of the system I’m in, I mused.   He does not envy me nor beg to come in.  What more could he need? Little worm, how I'd like to enter yours.

I, inside my car, trying to enjoy a moment beside a lovely lake, but concerned about the cottage cheese and meat in my cooler and concerned that I find a bathroom in due time. I’m caught up in a system chosen for me before I was.  Need it always be? 

Little worm, may I come into your way?  Leave the extra canned goods behind and wander in the ease of your dwellings?  The lake was mine for only a few moments, but it is yours your whole life through, though beautifully short and sweet.  We try much harder than you to extend ours.

"Get out of the car, get out of the race for the normal and safe", I say to myself. Let the world go on fading and the King take His place.  What am I saying?  Do I even yet know?   I’m only “considering the lilies” and a promise I hold.

Mathew 6: 25 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes…….

 

 

Adams Rd.

I saw a parcel of land for sale for a solid sum. In the photo advertising, a large oak tree stood next to a shabby white house with ivy growing up the trunk.  I think I would give the whole sum for one oak tree if my bank account obliged.  Massive limb-arms made of strength and integrity and wood; great limbs stretch horizontal far.  And when any oak hangs its massive limbs low, like the giant arms of my father, for a daughter or a son of Adam to climb up, a transaction is made that can never be revoked. 

No one has ever forgotten climbing about on an oak limb, nor the feeling of bark against the skin; legs dangling over the earth, one would go even higher--knees pressed into the ridges struggling for ascent, blood rushing under the skin, and a breeze igniting a sense of losing the bonds of the earth. 

Adams Road, Ozark. 

 

The Cardinal

I heard a cardinal chirping in the morning and spotted him perched on the chain-linked fence separating the yard from the menacing-looking trailers next door. They, clearly ravaged by time and uncaring, stand in sick declaration of how lives gone off the rails might live.  I think they should be pulled away and burned, their land liberated from their oppression, but some are occupied and one in view through the privet sits empty.  The red-singing-glory sat on the fence, breaking my view of them and rousing a sense of awe in me.

Red-feathered-he had no prejudice of perch.  He lit on the fence much closer to the trailers than the cozy, sage house I was watching from.  

My God, your beauty is for us all.  It is found perching on the old and the new, the stigmatized and the glorified.  Beholding this scarlet-feathered-flame elevates us all. Your beauty and presence is for the reeking drug addicts, the demoralized among us who disgust with their behavior and waste, and it is for the sanitized, the rich, and the privileged.  It lights upon this green gable, the room in which I live, and offers the beauty of relationship, renewal,of communion and connection again and again in complete gentleness and humility.  You, God, have no prejudice while offering yourself to all.

Little Stars

He who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns midnight into dawn

and darkens day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea

and pours them out over the face of the land—the Lord is his name. 

Amos 5:8

When You speak, Lord, You light a runner’s torch within us.

We’re compelled to move carrying Your dancing flame. 

And after the light burns low, 

when the last ember’s glow has just disappeared

one turns to investigate all that You said, this speech that sprang from the breath of a star; our Morning Star.  

 I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star. Revelations 22:16

Now we hold Your words under a light, still warm from the fire to study under a lamp Your guiding Words. 

Rendered speech too great for me, yet anchoring inside of me

and now the articulations of Orion drip from the tip of my own common pen. How can this be?

I’ve become bearer of light, too; His little star.  The Morning Star took His rightful place within us, now He shines.

                               

Oh God, You are the surge that chases through the cord and brings us into light. We are Your prophesied walking stars, tipping to spill into the night.

Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky. Philippians 2:15

And I am all human and, as this, I can only try.

We shine within an honor that no one can fully describe, this privilege of living as God’s image bearers; His Tribe.

We, luminous lanterns hung up through Christ against the dark, one by one by one through the ages hung by the Father of lights. 

Arise, you who sleep,

Arise from the dead,

And Christ will give you light.

Ephesians 5:14

The morning He set the cornerstone of the earth’s foundation-- when foundations were laid, angels and stars sang songs of awe and wonder.
 In our day, we pick up their chorus.  Job 38:7

Beloved, give your praise a song,  you walking stars, beloved lights on earth.  Orion’s belt--- truth pulled tight around your waists. 

He looks to earth and sees the darkness lit up, His racing heart proclaims, “My beloved! 

 Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. Daniel 12:3