Moments

It's a night in concrete walls, 

The sun's rays warmth has long left

And it seems to harbor the cold and darkness

There's garbage in the corner, a soiled table cloth, old cans and cracked dishes, a broken basket, an empty motor oil container, a rusted shovel, leaves blown in by the wind.

There's pain deep and gnawing,

Fresh and piercing, like the babe's cries as she entered the world,

The pillows were drenched in tears across the tide.

To be unseen, unnoticed in the most subtle shades.

A decade of dying in a thousand ways.

Even the closest ones eyes are dim to the fathomless grief.

The investment in a new hope, 

The heart displayed in fragrant beauty, only to be billowed against the seas- placid one moment and tempestuous the next. The blossom battered, hanging on.

Your moments...

Your moments are important to me.

The silent tears and ache, I see. 

I enter the room and light invades, 

broom in hand and garbage bag, bending low, a steady shoulder and arm to hold,

Loving kindness standing and seeing. 

This moment,

Redemption seeping into every crack and sore,

A rich, covering grace,

Sustaining. 

The shadow of turning has cut the room in half, which side I stand in changes everything.

We are shaped by words

These words I read or hear, every day of my life. These words I write and paint and meditate on.

These are my life, really, these words. The Word.

Words that sand away the rough edges, erode the weak banks, and pierce between the sinews.

Some words burn with love and fire, how beautiful is your love! I am your husband!

Some words convict with tears and weeping; who will open the scrolls! There is leaven of the Pharisees in my heart!

Some words scare me, and I feel guilt. You will give account for every word you say, if you ignored the hungry, the naked, the imprisoned, so you ignored me.

How refreshing, how enthralling, how fearfully and wonderfully made!

My heart is stirred and I respond with a noble theme to His words, with words.

'Gram Words

Words grow where there is room, filling cracks like dust. Dust becomes soil, and seeds can take root.

Some words from Instagram:

Soul's rest in beauty found,
whether ink or drink or ground.
Give me eyes so I might right see,
and resound in praise for Thee.

9.21.17
Summer's ebb is filled with sweetness.
Equinox drums, quenching brightness.
The dying orb, it catches sorrow,
with jibe and tack,
until stars are wrestled awake
and the wake is stilled,
tucks us into rest.

4.14.17
That Passover evening long ago,
the day of trial, torture, angry blows.
Forsaken pride and giving up;
that final breath.
Profound, mysterious, in flesh,
God met death.

3.23.17
Faintly frozen, sunrise beckons.

2.26.17
Parts of my life in sun, parts in shadow.
Overcome me with grace.

2.13.17
beauty in the breakdown/winter's ebb

1.22.17
Hear the sound of rushing water.
Spring fed creek on Gideon Pond's site next to the Refuge.
Reminder that things move underneath the surface, that God answers eagle visit prayers,
and their song is echoes and cascades of water and laughter.

11.12.16
Sometimes I have no words. I go and put my hand on the trunk of a tree that is older than my 32 years and will live beyond my 80-odd years. I take a breath, and then another.
I pray.
I cry.
I try to trust in someone I can't see, whom I believe and have staked my life on,
who is not confused by the swirling, mad times.
And still the tree is there, respiring, and I'm here, breathing,
and I'm saying and singing that I will be thankful.

8.4.16
Fear collapses, friendship bearing the weight of a human heart.

7.27.16
A time for war, battles and weariness;
a time for peace, healing, restoration.
At the river we waited,
beside the life-giving wonder we rested,
spontaneous and right. 

7.10.16
The blossoms hung,
strung with twine.
Above a stream of passing time.

6.25.16 [haiku]
Ripe, full drupes
Delight tongue and
eyes orbs of beauty

5.31.16
#forgetmenot
never forgotten by the One who sees,
my name grave in his hand

5.22.16
Waking life/light at dusk
remembers whispers swaying,
kneeling blue embers.

5.4.16
the magenta globes dance above the river before opening,
the flourish before death to spread life.

4.15.16
The great light seen (simply reflecting).
The lesser lights stream, arching a pathway.
Will you look up or will you just follow?

4.3.16
Buds creep in the midst of death, push through decay to the light.
#crocus

5.5.16
 "Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die." Habakkuk 1:12
The body gone from earthly sight,
the laughter heard no more.
With new eyes and heavenward gaze we have hope forevermore.
Noelle Buller is alive!
Today we celebrate her earthly life.

4.18.15
Prepared you have my heart,
set ablaze to gaze
at yours.

Gratitude for a new wind: the Miracle

The  W i n d   that   b  l  e  w   in
gentle and kind
the favor of love;
destroying fear, chasing life.
A new hope,
a change
o u t   of the pit and into the flame.

---
What heart was hardened, darkened,
a room unopened, musty, hidden.
How did it happen, when was it opened?
Who cleaned it out, what word was spoken?
We don't know but we see it;
we see the fruit of change and believe it
and we thank You cause we needed it.
We thank You cause you knew it.

---
You give life
You are Love
You bring Light to the Darkness
You give hope
You restore 
Every Heart that is broken
Great are You, Lord
-All Sons and Daughters

Childlike praise

When we are as weak as infants, He makes our childlike praise a stronghold against the enemy. By resting peacefully in our Lord, He powerfully silences the lies and accusations of the foe and the avenger. ~ Paraphrase of Psalm 8:2

Our effort is laying hold

Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness. -Martin Luther.

Just as a caretaker so joyfully bends to every cry, eager to respond, so the LORD bends near to his people and hears their cries. (Psalm 77:1, Matthew 23:37)

Stripped me of all my conditions

Stripped me of all my conditions

My love for you depends on my health: Being strong, able-bodied, with energy, without pain, able to sleep, migraine-free, cancer-free, able to have children...

My love for you hangs on my relationships: That my family would spend eternity with you, that you would open blind eyes, that you keep their mental abilities, physical abilities, their health, that you would save...

My love for you is conditional upon you answering my prayers: Answering my desire for a spouse, for a happy life, good vacations, good food and beer, a good job, good times, peaceful living...

Oh America, America, lukewarm and radiant
Look at your conditions for this Jesus, you make Him
make you great… Guaranteed life, liberty and pursuit of happiness
 

[That is not in the Bible]. 

What is in the Bible? 

Guaranteed prison cells, starvation, being hated, being sawn in two, wandering about in the skin of sheep and goats, destitution. 

Guaranteed that you will never be left or forsaken, inheritance where moth and rust do not destroy nor thieves can't break in and steal, a room/mansion in the Father's house. 

Oh Christine, Christine, wake up to the reality of this god you say you love
Oh I repent, I repent of these conditions I hold out for you,
They are there, and until they are challenged, until I am broken to surrendering, again. 

In your love, you break me.

Still, I pray. 
Please answer the pleas according to what is best. I will drink the cup.

I’ve made up my mind
and give it to you to keep,
because in my weakness it will breach.

You are a good keeper.

The Hand of the Name

Here are my reflections from Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. In Hebrew, Yad means hand, and Shem means "The Name"- God's Name is too holy to speak.

I went through the museum covered in prayers, with a folded square of notebook paper and a pen. I went through mostly alone, seeking to hear what God wanted for me.

It is a heavy place, architecturally designed to be a looping confined maze with light only descending from the central aisle. It holds possessions and stories of victims of one of the most gruesome and horrific systematic genocides in human history. And it is filled with Jews and Gentiles remembering, together, the children and the elderly reading plaques and watching screens and crying. I would recommend anyone to go there, and would pray for God to protect your emotions, too-- not to carry false burdens there, but repent and move forward because Messiah's work on Calvary truly atoned-- in particular, for this.
---
You are the Light of the World.
We remember their pain.
Fragments of Life stolen
and buried in the grave.
What was buried, ashes only remain.
--
"Death was a permanent guest" - The Emperor of Atlantis Opera (written by residents of a ghetto)
--
Purity and shame- images, propaganda, poisoning and defaming.
Shoved out, incriminated
Branded, forsaken.
Disease.
Starvation.
Shame.
Humiliation.
Destitution.
Poverty.
Racism.
Web of lies.
Secrecy.
Broken.
 --
"One nation, one Reich [Government], one leader!"
Hitler's claim resonates with our destiny-  that is the corruption, the heinousness. He held a particle of truth, that history would end with Messiah's bride under His perfect government and leadership. It is woven into the tapestry of the eternity in our hearts, and Hitler's vision [or Satan's behind] stabbed and mutilated it.
--
"Icy indifference" -Abraham Levite, 1945

The churches' folly; deception, rejection.
Not only murder, but abandonment. 
Lies from the pit, indoctrinated.
Blood, spit Gaul
oh, I wept to see the mighty fall.
The painful righteous branch uprooted,
undone,
polluted,
it was the devil himself,
deifying himself,
in claiming the lives of God's holy people.

"Thou didst love us and favor us." -Nathan Alerman
==
Justice
His sound
Rises
The stench of death
The confiscation of Life
Rights, and beauty.
Extinguishing hope.
Each train deporting the breath of God.
Each order shaping a tomb- shoveling the biggest grave pit in the world.
==
Jesus came, to set the captives free.
Yeshua died for the sin of you and me.
Jesus came to take away my tears.
Yeshua is the one who will bottle all my tears.
--
Equality of nakedness
Arbeit, arbeit, Frei to die, Tot
Free to deceive, destroy,
Shame, flee, you have no hold on me
The Words of Life
Have set me free
This I will remember!!
Justice spoke forever
on the tree and Mercy died for me.
---
Isaiah 56:5
I shall give them in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name

The Hall of Names
The Ascension and the Pit,
This is the wailing wall where we supplicate-
the cries go up, the tears captured in the pool below
You who see and know,
O Lord my God of Israel!
You hear and see and know!

I hear "holy, holy, holy"
I hear "You have not turned your back on the Jews" (even as they will walk backwards from the wailing wall, as to not turn their back on you)
I hear "worthy is the lamb who was slain"
---
Shalom, forever.
Under the shadow of your wings.

We end with music
"string" composed of the words of lament
and sorrow
and grief, unending-
ocean swelling, sinking, sounds.
Sounds.
Sounds, notes, resonate,
harmonize,
cry.
--
Copyright 2017 by Christine Yaeger

Is the mind a globe or a map?

The image of the sphere / concrete as much as limestone and sand are solid when mixed with water,
                                           holding together, molecularly

Cultivated in our minds / Polaroids from beyond, above, caricatures of continental outlines we see
                                            on walls and book covers, brands, perpetuating identity 

As a fixed, intractable reality / In our enlightenment, we have maps, parchments of assumptions and
                                                    provocations, boundaries to the eyes but what of the Spirits? 

Ignoring the distortion of an absent third dimension, we assent to the deformed, flat projection 

What of the tectonic shifts to come? When we will see lands crumble into the sea by god or man

What power does this mind map hold over us? What of the B.C. man, his calendar, his animal skins of empires and oceans, his mind's map 

What power does this mind globe hold? Can you find myself on a descending hierarchy,
nation-
            region-
                        state-
                                 county-
                                               city-
                                                       neighborhood?
Can I find yourself using the global positioning satellites ever eclipsing?
Is it comforting to find, locate, "X"? Does precision matter?
Is it false and ignorant or close-enough and necessary?

From this ground, a two mile radius until the drizzle of horizon overcomes, a fade into infinity, eternity, all the realm we do not see 

Enduring as seeing him who is invisible.

Staying inside of love

“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation… and do not expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside of it.” Rainer Maria Rilke 

HT to Allison Fallon (http://allisonfallon.com/) who shared the quote in her blog post on finding love with a broken heart.

In community, we give and are given

"You think that you will be alone? Is that it? Ha! You will not rid yourself of us that easily. We will be ever at your side. Do not think the Most High makes his servants tread only lonely paths. His ways are more clearly seen with the help of others of like spirit. He has given us to you, as you have been given to us, that we might help each other."
-Stephen R. Lawhead, The Warlords of Nin from the Dragon King Triology