Emptied and Held

Friday After Ash Wednesday

                          Praise the Lord from heavens,
                          Praise him in the heights;
                          Praise him, all you his angels,
                          Praise him, all you his hosts.
                          Praise him, sun and moon;
                          Praise him, all you shining stars.
                          Praise him, you highest heavens,
                          And you waters above the heavens.             

                                                                           Psalm 148:1-4

Wrote a poem about taking the girls to school this morning then went into work for a long day of treating each person in pain.  I still do not cease to be amazed at the honor it is to take them into my hands and offer relief from their varying degrees of suffering and their allowing me to do this sacred work. I must hold them gently and work on them acutely aware of the divinity I handle. I pray to Jesus for healing as I work, failing too often to make my work a prayer; stepping out of the confines of labor into His healing, the only healing there is.

Traveling home, late evening, with my children, the glinting cloak of cosmos draping our drive in the blue-black, our headlights going out into the darkness a weak and small carving, a temporary refuge: an opening out into a vast unknown; the immensity of God scattered over us just for our looking up. 

Arriving back at our small farm steeping in deep cerulean shadows, locking the chickens in their coop, gathering in the moment with our arms full; gazing up through all the mythology at the inexplicable mysteries we are pitched and must grow comfortable.  How we are standing here in the midst of so much beauty and old starlight catches my heart and breathing.  Just being in Christ is enough, is everything, is the calling out in the moment like a solitary night bird.  Pointing out the Dippers, Scorpio’s tail, the Winter Triangle, a Swan, a Queen, as my arms emptied and held the greater mystery, a child and love.

                           Letting Go As The Sky

                           Taking my girls to school
                           after the hurrying and gathering
                           what was forgotten and needed.

                           Questions asked in half light
                           and coming awareness
                           cloisters in our solitude and silences,
                           that is the speech of God
                           speaking between us in the dawn,
                           in the narrow gates of light.

                           The snow is thickly veiling the world,
                           our passing and significance,
                           the time at hand and the time of our parting;
                           my heart gathering them like lilies in the field
                           of a necessary heaven,
                           holding them closer still.

                           Letting go they disappear into the curtains of the world,
                           parting crystal whorls of the pearling air,
                           falling over us like grace

                           Letting go as the sky.