A Soul Revealed

4 Poems for Holy Week

My faith evolves daily. As a convert to Catholicism, the good Lord called me to the Church on His schedule, or ‘timing and tempo,’ as a mentor of mine used to say. Faith, as I have experienced it, is tricky. As my center tacks closer and closer to His, I find my grip on things I’ve held dear loosen. The Church I have come to love, has taught me a lot. She appeals to my intellect and lures me to a bigger and bigger opening of my heart. And then, ‘hits me with the flange.’

‘The flange,” is ubiquitous with the Damage Control wet-trainer. A mock up of an engine-room compartment, with pump, pipes, valves, and deck-plates. As a team, you enter the space as it’s flooding…chlorinated water filling up a swimming pool. As the event progresses, more and more things let loose. For the first few iterations of the drill, you keep up. Patching pipes, aligning drainage systems, you stem the flow of water coming in.

Minutes (that seem like hours) pass. You are wet, tired, cold, and soon…you are loosing. The instructors behind the control room glass mash buttons and create more damage than you can handle. And the culminating moment, and the lead instructor gives the order… ‘hit em with the flange.’ Two big pipes, a foot in diameter, brought together by big bolts and a rubber gasket let loose at 250 gallons per/minute. It’s an impressive sight and the only way to fix it is to find an isolation valve and get it closed. As the minutes pass, the valve can’t be found and your only recourse at that point is step into the gushing stream and try to get a wrench on a bolt and start tightening. You quickly realize the futility.

The Lord’s graces are vast. And months after the photo above, during COVID, in a small Mass back home, I stepped into THE stream of graces in the sacraments of reconciliation, baptism, confirmation, and received the Eucharist. This journey is just beginning and the good Lord continues to reform me daily.

As we progress toward Easter Sunday, regardless of your faith, I wish you nothing but peace. I hope that wherever you are, you are healthy, happy, and surrounded by people that love you! And that finally, you can find it in your heart to love more than you ever thought possible!

I offer these poems to my Father as praise on this Good Friday and hope that they bring you rest.

A Soul Revealed

Pieces assembled over and over again…deliberately.

Dark

Clear but a black mirror in retro.

Reflections of something,

Chosen for me?

Why can’t I see?

No choice.  Sprint head long into the dark.

Panting, Moving but no progress. Dark and cold my feet stick.

Empty, always desiring more.

Feel around in a panic, no map, no way

And seek more, a path, a way, a narrow sliver

Not enough time? Never the right way. Lost but how could you be otherwise?

Just a small sliver of light, rest for tired (young) old bones

Dusk

Dark Purple yields (graciously), a small glimpse.

Grows brighter, changes, turned lavender

Like the lilac bush and a faint smell of morning, sweet but merely recognizable.

A fainter breeze, what makes that sound? Leaves? Evergreen pine needles, so subtle.

A lingering feeling of clarity. A respite or a rescue?

Chosen for me?

Fainter but still not seen.

Feel around in curiosity.

And see more, and see more clearly…in the brighter growing burning orange red.

A path, a pond sings, bright thinning fog clears.

Reconciled

Young bones skip. Old bones feel spry, and a bullfrog keeps the rhythm.

Light

A path clear and wide enough for two.  Through a sweet wheat field

Hands glide over heads where only the wind blew but a moment before.

Be opened.

The sun warm.

A scene so clear it’s disorienting.  Push and pull, this can’t be real.

Wobble like fawns first step

Take this all of you.

One more step, one light foot-fall after another.

Redeemed, Reimagined.

Or Reformed(ing)?

Golden Bright sun rays melt it all away.

Reveal more layers.  Only this time not in the dark.

Journey – Where to?

Time Unbroken Whole

My Soul Revealed(ing)

A-Jar

I misunderstood the fear of you. Pausing in silence, I catch a glimpse.

Created all this? And this jar too?  Just for me?

How do you respond to that? Immense and disorienting. Vast yet tactile.

I can feel it between my fingers.

Step into that. All encompassing and infinitely powerful.  Hands, water,

And a gentle touch. The wheel spins.

Heat applied, it transforms.

You want to pour all that in this jar? Fathoms worth? Attempting that is folly.

Yet you do anyway.

Stunned, still, as it all rushes in. Frozen in that moment.  Not fear of what you will do to me,

But fear of what You will Do to me.

Awe or Fear, I don’t know. But ran to its conclusion, in all its grandeur and splendor

Words escape it. Extraordinary

Grant me Artist trust to rest. Your hands

Me pliable, malleable, Your moveable Feast

Still to fill me gently.

I don’t have the capacity for all You have. Solid on my base I’ll rest.

And take as much as You can give me.

The Fence and the Pot

Where are you?

Your there is clear, I’ve shown you well.

You hear words,

You eyes see.

By My small grace of

Now.

What’s next for you?  I know.

Choose as I have chosen.

I wait eagerly for your Yes.

Not as clear to you as My Mother?

Ask her.

What are you holding on to?  A bucket and mop?

Choose already.

Laugh at your baby steps and stumbles

Shake my head and open my arms

And embrace you again and again.

Like I have in every fall of yours and other’s

Since I exhaled wisdom and rested

Patience.  I pine for you.  I pursue you.

I don’t understand your choice,

But I know the rhyme and meter of this litany.

Simon becomes Peter.  James and John too.

Drop the load, I’ve carried it all before.

There is no lightning flash or thunderclap (yet).

Dangle your feet just a little more.

And let me take you.

Legion and the Taproot

‘My name is Legion and there are many of us,

What have You to do with us?’

i am well aware of what you are trying to do.

i am quite happy making her believe that You are not

What You say You are.  That she is not what You say she IS.

This world around her, i am more than thrilled to help her struggle

(succeed, desire, passion, and accolades)

And when she doesn’t get them, she’ll blame You.

i don’t even have to move an inch or flinch and she’s bought in to my lie.

Be still and know that I AM God.

Be still and know I AM.

Be still and know.

Be still.

Be.*

Revealed to you in silence heard.

Underneath the tumult

In the deepest of the deep

I live.

In a storm and a howling wind I rest.

Don’t believe you can walk on it and come to Me?

Dive deep.  Come to the still.

Breathe with Me

Where you don’t think you can.

Be buoyed. Be safe.

And start again from here.  This center.

It is unassailable. Your heart tethered to Mine.

Your root, our life. Together.