When your wound reveals your hidden life.

I'm trying to hide my wounds. Been trying.
Truth doesn't always look pretty. Beauty, real beauty comes at a cost.

The real kind of beautiful shatters all images.
It can't be seen on the outside of life, the pleasant, painted exteriors. This kind of beautiful can only be touched by the heart, the upper chamber, the secret place.

The path is narrow isn't it? That wasn't just a saying.

So narrow, at times, I think I might have to fold myself into nothing just to walk it. And steep.
The air is so thin, didn't really imagine that.

In my head were pictures of transfiguration's, lush greenness, hope budding wild flowers along the way.
...Scenes from the book of "Beautiful".

The real way is all darkness to the eyes, it's only beautiful to the soul.

Seems I was rescued from the cross, only to be given the choice to take it up again.

But this time for Love not the consequences of pain and fear.

And I want to, in His embrace I want to. But then the burden comes and I shrink away.

I forget that He will bring the breath, and the strength and the journey. All He asks is I bring myself, real, true, broken, wounded as I am.

He recognises my beauty through my wounds.

But when I feel so far away from refreshment, and the clarity of clean, clear, reviving air that I start to lose consciousness of what really matters, where my life really comes from. I become muddled and distracted.

I let too many thoughts crowd Him out. And a thousand voices mingle like debris around me like strangers at a party and I feel just as lonely. I wonder, am I alive still beneath it?
Has he held onto me even when I let my hand slip away?
Busy with my own "My chasing's after the wind".

I have motives I don't want others to see.
I want the honey and the sweetness, but without the sting of the bee.

I want God's breath to live inside of me but I don't want the brokenness that let's it in.
Making me touch the sharp shards, the edges of my nothingness, my emptiness, the truth of me, when I'm left to my own devices.

I gaze at the false pictures of me that flatter my walls. There are ones that look like a good imitation of everything I want to be. Holy, simple, true, pure in heart, peaceful, childlike, gentle...
Humble.
All the while knowing I'm gazing in the wrong direction. I should be looking for Him.
As the lover in Song of Songs, ran barefoot through the streets after her beloved...

I plaster, paint and build. Yet love causes me to tear down, peel back, expose the naked structure, the wound of my heart.

I know that those pieces, those images of goodness that decorate the walls of my house are like fragments of truth buried deep in my soul. And they are the shore I keep trying to sail toward in my small boat, on a tide that has been turned against it by the gravity of "me".
They are fragile images of my true life "hidden" with Him. And sometimes they haunt, ache, tremble, weep.
Like memories that reflect from the water's surface of what was once and could yet be.

But without His grace all I'm left with is the truth of me. Empty images of beauty that cover the cracks like cheap make up.
The harshness of my voice rasping from the parched land within.
The stone that is my heart, beating without love, just ambition and pride.
The dress I wear to give others an impression of who I am or (who I want to be).
Without really being.
The stuff I think I need to become closer, closer to completion? Like a never ending project that only demands deadlines (and a documented proof of existence).

So this becoming? What is that?

"The beginning of Me is the end of you. You can't make or build this image. Dig down deep, giving yourself away to love. piece
by piece. Till.
All that's left, is Me."

And I gaze at the face of Love, and the heart exposed. Wounded weeping. Salt tears, of baptism.

The desert hermits found God, carrying nothing in their hands but wounds.
Their longing was the loudest call. Louder even than their lives.
Their longing gave all away to purchase a field with a treasure. And the treasure.
Was it their own heart?
Alive, beating, real, deep, down,
down in the dark earth.
A heart resurrected by His Blood. His life. His breath.

Their wounds raised, not hidden and festering, but open wide to the healing Breath.

And they looked like fools didn't they?
Wearing their garlands of thorns.
Still how they must of gleamed like crowns in the sunlight.

Thankful for Grace

Slowly, quietly I come. Along this path again. my feet tread, my heart trembles. Like a bird inside my chest. The weeds can look like flowers too you know? Pretty, useful, important. Stuff. Entangles, distracts, turns the soil of my heart to parched clay. I stumble over briers I had not even noticed, I fall and feel, the barren ground of my soul. I need to stop. Turn. Gaze. And let the silence wash over me like a wave of clear, cool, water. These things, this stuff, worthless as dead idols. And I sacrifice to them time and time again, thinking that it's important to pay attention. Plan, organise, structure. Control. And the vine I planted is dying, the fruit is drying on the branch. And all the while I'm watering the weeds and leaving my garden to ruin. But the fragrance, the fragrance of the blossoms he left me all those years ago, Somehow still lingers on the breeze. Reminding me, waking me bleary eyed and sober. So I stand to walk again, along the waters beside the green, green pastures. A little gentler, a little smaller, a little softer, thankful. Always. Thankful for grace. "But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." "Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain." Photo by Emmy

Which is the One spiritual habit that has changed your journey ? (Holy Experience) Walk with Him Wednesday...

Ann asks this question today over at Holy Experience...
What is the One Spiritual Habit that Has Changed Your Journey?

And the one phrase that keeps coming back to my heart is this... eat regularly!

But this is food of the soul kind! And it is delivered by..
Regular Prayer stops throughout the day.

Even though I can't always find the words to pray the words find me. They have been written somewhere deep in my heart, by The One who made me. Like a seed, they simply need the watering to grow from the darkness.
And like this little sycamore, I need the courage to fall from what I know, what I hold to, my materiel success or failure. Be opened by Love's wounding.
And trust, despite outward signs... that God alone sees the heart.

So, even when I can't locate those words myself. I find them reflected somehow. They speak for me, when words fail me. Prayer... Yes, it is more a practise of love than an active work.

And when this becomes the one priority all other priorities fall into place.

All work is useless and vain without the infusion, prompt and grace of His love anyway. For a plant to grow strong, the roots need feeding regularly.
"I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." ...
And I have had to make the time. Make it!
Because I am so in need of it. I fail far too easily without it.
"Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain."
And I wonder, how is it that so many things can seem important, uncompromising to the day, demands over spill before me and yet these times, just for Him and Him alone become, so very easily, secondary.

Yes I call out to Him like a child when I need Him knowingly. And I whisper praises in His ear when I am met with undeserved grace, beauty, love. But that is in the middle of my doing.
Sometimes I need to put all that aside and simply be with Him alone.
The desire to eat bread for the body comes before the desire to eat bread for the soul, so many times. I wait for restfulness, peace, quiet, my own pursuits, pleasures and leisure's, then Him. Then only. Him and I alone.

I know that my soul wastes away without sustenance. While it is emptiness and privation that motivates longing in the stomach! The longing grows in the soul only with sustained nourishment, or so it seems.

You see, a soul doesn't live to eat, it eats to live! How wonderful is that!
It doesn't take so that it can take again which is so often human nature isn't it.
No, it shares the broken bread of grace, so that it can give, and give out again.

I read again from the hours today... "Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offence, and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins but delights in the truth; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes."

I stand upon this holy mountain of goodness and grace and look down upon my life.
How far below this beautiful ideal I am. How much I need these words to live in my own barren life. Give breath to my actions, my thoughts, my days. Turn my heart of stone to a heart of flesh.
And so someway, somehow. These hours are carved out of a day.

They bring my empty bowl to His alter each time. And each time He serves so that I may become a better servant. And learn to serve Him in those around me.

Pray the office today by clicking on the link below

For years the office of hours has sustained, nourished and
regularly fed souls throughout each day.
If read everyday for a month, 
The book of Psalms will have been completely
recited.
Complimentary readings from both OT and NT, feast days
along with spiritual writing and prayer have been the food
for many a hungry heart for centuries past.

Visit Ann today to read more reflections on the journey...

Prayer is a gathering (the pilgrimage of prayer "Walk with Him Wednesday")

Prayer is our daily gathering. It is where we meet Him. Like the woman at the well, we can only offer our empty cup and humbly ask " Give me some of this living water Lord".


I bring the children and we meet with Him in this ordinary place of "spirit and truth" somewhere between both the mountain and the temple. A small, simple wellspring from which to drink, in the middle of a busy day.

I bring the children to the source and we stop, we bring the water to our mouths, sometimes our own tears stream too. And the sweetness dilutes till the saline quenches and it feel like forgivness.

Suddenly we are the same, nothing more or less than a child of God. Both them and I.

And all those further out.
The borders to this place are not closed. They touch the ends of the earth. They embrace all they touch.


Prayer is a leveler. On the soil of prayer each of us can only fall to their knees before Him.
There may have been tussles only moments before, an argument, a sore word, discord in a heart. Yet this silence gathers hands, each as empty as the other, cupped and lifted for the water to pour, we are drawn beyond our own horizon lines, our own territories. In this unmarked ground we are His.


Yet takes a small step to make a giant leap.
At times the untidy noise of unwashed dishes rattles in my mind, or I catch myself on the irritation of restless bodies swarming like bees while my mind breezes past the time of an appointment this afternoon, mentally noting how I will fit lunch and naptimes around it's fixed point in the atmosphere of my mind.

And I ask myself, is this what I am orbiting around?

Only the silence of His gaze reorientates me. Changes my possibilities, opens new doors that I had not noticed before.
And on the tips of my outstretched fingers, a warm breath leaves it's vapour.
Like dew.
Manna.
Residues of falling flakes...

*

"Live in me, make your home in me."
John 15

Fall
one by one
*
*
*

"God it seems you've been our home forever; long before the mountains were born,
Long before you brought earth itself to birth,"
Psalm 90

*

"Yes, because God's your refuge, the High God your very own home, Evil can't get close to you."
Psalm 91

*

"Your beauty and Love chase after me every day of my life. I'm back home, in the house of God, for the rest of my life."
Psalm 23

"There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink."
John 4:7

When we come to draw, He asks, he waits for us and asks.
The cup is a shared one.
Prayer is a gathering at the well.
Neither on the mountain nor the temple but in Spirit and Truth we will meet Him here.
In the silence of prayer we draw from the well.
In the drinking we know we are home.

A Living Prayer... "Walk with Him Wednesday "

There have been times when no matter how much I prayed or read the bible the only thing I felt was a longing, an ache, an aridity to the words I spoke.

So often it is easy to forget that the bible is a living word it is not simply a set of syllables to be learnt by rote and kept within ones own heart under lock and key.

So many times just the words, themselves, mysterious, rhythmical, poetic, simple and true as they are breath soft as a summer breeze through my body, a shiver of light and a tremble of truth. Sometimes just a simple phrase or paragraph glints like sunlight through the branches of trees defining with clarity the world around me and all that is within me at the same time.

These moments are beautiful and wondrous but the word cannot remain within the stillness of a page. The ink of the living word seeps into lives, spills over the edges and runs a river of baptism across the dividing lines between body and spirit. It is a stream of freshwater that moves within our hearts.

The word is fluid and omnipotent. It is a moving current that flows towards the ocean, not a stagnant pool that evaporates to nothing under the sun.

The key to releasing the word is the faith to live the word in Love. ”If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.” John 15:10 Putting the word into practice, step by step, moment by moment.

Allowing it to work through our body, transforming us into an instrument of Gods love until our actions may become a living prayer.

A living prayer follows all that is beautiful and good. Allowing the word to envelope and contain a heart, flow within and around it, mould and fashion it, break it and fix it. A prayer that takes our feet and hands to be the feet and hands of Jesus in the world.

We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. 1 John 2:3-6 A prayer that is more than just a spoken word permeates all actions with the blood of Christ and the love of God.

"lIVING THE wORD" "wALK WITH hIM wEDNESDAY OVER @ hOLY eXPERIENCE Image courtesy of Jupiter im ages