Anxiety (parentheses)

What you see and don’t see, how you divide your unfurled gaze, unguarded and vicarious. Coasters for tea and liminal spaces between snowfalls, neglected gardens dormant beneath. I will ask questions and enjoy our anxiety together, in our aging breast’s lumps and nightly wakefulness and torrents of doubt. Striving at being curious instead of recklessly judgmental, until the overhead speaker intones “Your tenure is almost up, young lady.” If you don’t cauterize the wound you’ll find (die of) infection. 

 

The Night (December 2022)

The city  beckons for Emmanuel's song
to color its walls.

Creation groans for children's seeds
sown in tears to sprout a harvest.

Heartsick waiting, bone deep hungry
for light to banish darkness away.

To be still and with burning hope
raise voices to join the chorus bright
and color the night.

Prosidy

Every word is a translated thought, a transliterated feeling

loosing color and physical sensation 

becoming vibration 

from my body to breath, 

vocal chords tensing together, the friction of life.

Prosidy, this attempt to melodically 

describe the flight

from synapse into words 

from me

to you 

it's more than a syntax’s span

it's eons and lands

centuries and alphabets 

darkness and light imbeuded on these hinges of sound

strained into symbols strung together, the creation of life.

Corporate aches from the Holy land

What writes a rinse of honesty

shed blatantly 

amongst amateur pilgrims and operations specialists 

this is a corporate rumination 

a detached elongation 

of awareness forgotten until revelation r
                                                                  e 
                                                                      a c h e s again

pulled from the well's depths

the hydrogenated salve heralding

bottled, branded, sold, 

a certified holy rinse to un-save a soul

What do you want

Do you want

Do you want a god

Do you want a god devoid of mystery?

Safer to inhabit a structure containing systematic thoughts of the divine 

Conveniently retrieved from the shelf to justify or condemn 

this teflon cased religion, impenetrable. 

Or do you want a

Do you want a god

Mysterious, yielding and unyielding, incarnate, dead and resurrected, better than you can hope or imagine.

“I don’t need a god who is the mirror image of my own misguided understanding” -Andy Squyres

December

Morning light, diffused through clouds upon the ground's white garments, 

A cloud break and the snow is shining, radiating like the moon, as if snow's light light comes from within

Above bare branches, stark against the gray

Fragmented lines creasing 

Frost breath, bone chill

December.

ארץ / الأرض the land "ard"

Peace and land

Land and peace

This aborted peace process

Attempts in cities and camps, Presidents bullying and chagrined, washing hands with Jacob's water, proclaiming "I am innocent of this blood," 

Decades later the process of peace is a byword

War within and without 

Factions, prisons, weapons, checkpoints

This agony of absence 

over UNWRA generations, Holocast generations 

Can I have peace if I don't have my land?

To have the land but no peace;

To have no peace and no land.

All we have is might

All we have is resistance

Whose land is it? 

Is it the title? Is it the one who is present, or was present? 

Whose dominion will last? 

Kingdoms rise, nations fall. 

Epochs end. 

The land remains.

The land; it's not yours, it's not mine, 

it belongs to Allah-Adonai. 

Whose land is it, justice asks?

Mercy replies, it's for all the children. 

Oh, Land, Land, Land, hear the Word of the Lord. -Jeremiah 22:29

Ahead or behind

Fragments and finales

Every moon an irrevocable turn 

I've been on a dreamcloud walking out a destiny 

Unsure I still have faith for

That longing, when stirred

All consuming 

Disordering, course-shifting

Do I trust the plotted destination or the guiding hand?

Do I trust the resolution or the voice in the wind?

Looking ahead or behind 

Staying present, right on time.

Alignment

 “If I throw out a boathook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God.” ― E. Stanley Jones

Break our jars

When we lift our hands in praise and worship, we break spiritual jars of perfume over Jesus. The fragrance of our praise fills the whole earth and touches the heart of God.

Dennis Ignatius

Easy yoke

Let me take an easy yoke, not looking but seeing the beauty of green herbs on the window seal,

Leaning where the morning light paints the counter gold, scooping flour and water with starter, powdering hands to knead, a perfect round globe of dough,

Waiting for rising by dispersing the red jewels from their casing, the gleaming pomegranate seeds resting in the small bowl, white porcelain with blue birds,

The ease of not rushing through the morning, through the moments of preparing, feeding, cleaning, shopping. Life is more than food and the body more than clothing, and this ordinary every day life more full when engaging the Spirit with each moment of beauty in the ordinary, mundane bits, 

It’s always extraordinary when love is encountered in the midst. 

How you live

Prayer is not something you do, 

But how you live 

In communion with the Father.

 -R. Thomas Ashbrook in Mansions of the Heart 

Psalm of Disorientation

Oh, Lord, my desires are disordered.
I've made an idol and fallen into worshiping my plans over your good ways.
Send out Your light and Your truth, and lead me.
Wake me with remembrance of your goodness.
You have not failed, Your power has not waned, but I feel cast off and forsaken by You.
Years of waiting have left me feeling bitter as Naomi; call me Mara.
Oh, Lord, how do I remember Your promises when I am in captivity and the walls are still destroyed?
Your city is in ruins, but You say it will be fruitful and filled with abundance. This is so far from happening it seems impossible. You say to me "I have taken care of Your needs and I know Your desires."
(It's in the bag).
Yet now all I hear is silence when I cry, "How long O Lord."
Why the echo chamber?
What is precious about these decades and these tears?
Have I forsaken the vows of my youth? Have I not followed you above my own desires (as best as I can)? Have I not left houses and family and friends and familiar lands?
I lay all my longing before you.
I believe you are still capable.
Your arm is not shortened, it can save, in Your way and Your time.
I surrender again.
I repent and renounce my vows and plans.
Your will and Your way, O God of the breakthrough. God of angel armies. God of deliverance.
May I see your deliverance and answers. And may my sisters rejoice with me too as You bring their fulfillment.
Oh, Lord, where I have felt judgment and labels, I receive that You give me a good name. You give me Your good name.
Oh, Lord, where I have given up hope, I receive Your beautiful inheritance of hope that does not disappoint and Your love that does not fail.
Your love does not falter, wilt, diminish, or fade.
In the deep ache of long carried desire, I reground myself in Your long-suffering, that You are still waiting for Your bride. I join You in the treasure of waiting. Thank you for knowing my ache.
From a heart that has grown sick and bitter from a desire unfulfilled, bring Your tree of life.
Meet me in the waiting.
Shower me with rains in the desert. May I bloom with joy and gladness at your appearing.
Weeping may last for the night but joy comes in the morning.
My mourning will end. My sackcloth will be replaced with robes of gladness. My mourning will turn to dancing.
I have sown in tears and I will reap in joy, carrying my sons with me.
The loneliness that leads me to You and none besides.
None but You will satisfy.

Changes

"Prayer not only changes people,

 situations, 

and even the course of history,

 but also 

those who pray." 

-Patrick Johnstone

Holiness

A glass sea stretching 

A throne,

Beckoning

This is the gaze you were made for 

To see and be seen by 

Rippling light
Like water
An interplay 

Of movement 

Across existence; space and time 

Atoms undulating in unceasing thrums

Lightening 
Motion, energy connecting 
Yet separate, 

Part yet apart 

Who can understand the Holy

An overwhelming otherness

A gut punching awesomeness

Awe-struck 

Glory

The most captivating sunset, 

The sprawl of the Milky Way

Aurora Borealis- dancing northern lights 

Or an Eclipse, 

Full moon rise 

Each scene radiating
Reaching 

Beyond beauty to a deep knowing 

Inflecting wonder 

Reflecting Creator

I’m blind 
Until your Light 

Gives sight,

Revealing to me 

Your majesty 

Your promise: the pure in heart

Shall see God 

“Let there be light” spoken to our hearts

Revelation of the knowledge of glory

In the face of God 

The fruit of light: A prayer

God of every growing thing, as I peel the Lychee, would you show me layers of your goodness. 

God of seeing, who sees and saw, and brought forth a husk of pale mustard and dusty rose, a shell of protruding diamond matrixes, a pineapple honeycomb exterior hiding a milky globe bursting with sweetness, a seed of new life. 

God of sunset colors, of patterns and protection, sweetness and new life, come into the the places where I see only a shell and not the hidden fruit. Where I may not appreciate the colors because there are spikey defenses, and I am easily offended. 

God of spiritual fruits, seasons, and ripeness, work in me to bear a harvest pleasing to you. 

Solomon Says

For the Action-minded

Non-philosophizing

who just want to do,

Who are told to wait, to think,

to make up a theory

initiate a sequence, prefabricate a protocol, a construct of a deconstruction with a critical explanation of how things integrate -- explicate

an expression?

What about those who just want to make a difference, 

who are practical

about extension; applying knowledge in the general direction of the need 

To feed

the ones who need to eat, to be freed,

to restore, part by part, heart by heart, 

not to hedge in endless ruminations spectacular speculations of this and that, حادي بادي [heads or tails] to infinity, it's just a Degree, a degree off in centigrade drinking the Kool-aid of meaning, deconstructing feeling. 

It's beyond frustrating how we play with lives, 

living for the Nobel Prize, 

talking to each other in our ivory towers above the peons, 

insulated and progressive, 

self-satisfied and attentive for the next big Fellowship, Conference, 

Publishing papers, recognition, favors, and endless loop of plagiarizers. 

Nothing is new under the sun. 

Acceptance

I don't get mad at her; she's just doing what she always does, surviving. Doing her best; and if it's a wisp, or a bouquet of roses, or a injunction before a proposition, it's enough. I'll always accept her.

Denial

A tearing a part, a slow kiss 

of goodbye 

from the middle of the uncooked pie

spoiled by the British Mandate, raped by the Sultanate

the wounds so deep of undoing.

Unlatch the attach-

ment, the desperate needing,
care and feeding,

The Anxiety anxiously railing and grieving the severed hand.

These cast off limbs with phantom pains,

patterns of denial engrained. "If I maintain the dillusion, I'll be safe." I won't be rejected and alone. 

Instead, sit with it. Question those perceptions.

Maybe even acceptance, enjoying the present.

Still my gut quakes with clots of shame. 

Everything's changed.

I notice it, with compassion.

A Beatitude

Blessed are you, when your fingers are numb and unfeeling, and you can't wield a pen or grasp a knife or wash your hair.

Blessed are you, when you're alone and corpsed on the floor, wracked by pain, crying out a prayer of mercy.

Blessed are you, when you lay down in the middle of your language class, so you can rest your spasming body. 

Oh keep her as the apple of your eye, hide her under the shelter of your wings!

Blessed are you, when your deepest fears assault you, of being sick while apart from family in a foreign country, living alone. 

Blessed are you, when you're making appointments at unknown offices for scans and diagnosis's, bombarded with past medical traumas, shadowed by looming uncertainties.

Blessed are you, when you bravely share your prayer requests in the midst of waiting for your full healing, reaching in faith for the Body's loving arms to uphold you.

Oh send out your word and heal her, your beloved and your friend. 

Blessed are you, when you wait for His appearing.  

I am blessed

I don't get mad at them; they are me. I'm three kilometers from a checkpoint where one and the other, one armed and one with arms, navigate a dance of coexistence, a tension of fear and mutual resentment as common as the dust of which we all sprung from. 

I don't get mad at them; they are me. I'm three kilometers from a checkpoint where sons and daughters have sought heaven through dismemberment, taking life upon life in a moment, unleashing chaos and fear. 

I am slow to anger, so I don't get mad easily. Even when the headlines shade the truth on the sunniest day, misinform in a continual defense of power and subjugation. Even when families are separated by walls and hatred hurls children into hopeless futures.

I am slow to anger, so I don't get mad easily. Living under constant threat from within and without, nuclear arms missiles aimed continually at my heart, murderous minds indoctrinated and equipped for my destruction, declarations of annihilation, and a history to prove it. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile.

I am slow to speak, quick to listen. Brother James taught me, he learned from his brother, the true Iman-Rabbi-Teacher to us all. He blessed me with a blessing in my present-tense being and my in my doing:

I am poor; I am blessed.
 I am mourning; I am blessed.
  I am meek; I am blessed.
   I am hungry; I am blessed.
    I am thirsty; I am blessed.
     I am merciful; I am blessed. 
      I am pure in heart; I am blessed.
       I am forgiving; I am blessed.
        I am peacemaking; I am blessed.
         I am persecuted; I am blessed.
          I am reviled; I am blessed.
            I am slandered; I am blessed.

I am interiting, I am comforted, I am satisfied, I am receving mercy, I am seeing God, I am called a child of God, I am receiving the Kingdom, I am receiving great reward.

For though I am dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on me a light has dawned. 

Journal of decline

Father, I come to you with a Father's declining.

Fragility... his emaciated, atrophied body
Frailty... how long can he live independently?
Futility... is this decline inevitable?  

I have waded into the depths of fear of loss before;

Successively through prediabetes, diabetes, cancer, now loss of mobility, maybe dementia?

Will he rally? 

Will this be the end/if (when) he falls without his phone, how long will he lay unseen on the ground?  

Fears are so beguiling, so convincing, and following the thread to the end of panic, helplessness and guilt and blame for being a million miles away 

I am fragile, too, even as he wavers and shakes 

My faith feels so frail and brittle, are you calling me home? What am I even doing here.

Is this futile to hope for redemption? 

Is this journal healthy detachment, letting go of a man who has done what he's wanted all his life and is now reaping the consequences for decades of additions; tobacco and alcohol and sugar 

Never a non-canned vegetable, never a workout 

I still feel sad, his prognosis is grim, 

This man who did what he wanted all his life, his arms are being stretched out and strength diffusing, he's going to be taken to a VA where he doesn't want to go...

7/15; 7/25;

Roads, Boundaries, and Walls

I took Hebron road, south to north, vein of the land

Some travelers passed this way before; crusaders, armies, empires, traders, supplicants

It was a way, effective transportation of self beyond the

Lines on maps, boundaries of languages and culture and 'us and them'

And though I've transgressed beyond the boundary I haven't overtaken the 

Wall of noise, the separation of 'otherness'

The road is more than mobility, the past is more than archeology

Bound up in the boundaries

The wall is penetrable, intentionally

Some can take a road to a checkpoint and cross, some cannot 

The wall was built over the line, proactively,  provocatively

Some built, some broke

The wall is protection, exclusionary

Some find protection, some find hopeless isolation

The boundary is stronger than the wall, as resentment is stronger in the second generation

Some find deliverance in immigration, some in martyrdom, but a few in forgiveness

The boundary is fear, the wall is the manifestation

The butterfly is the resistance.

---

Inspired by Course Catalogs & Mahmoud Darwish. 

A dismantling

In these rambling words I hear my own lostness, 

a wondering, wandering confusion

What once was solid is disintegrating, plains are leveling

Mountains to valleys, fierce and unwavering

Right and wrong and black and white, dissolving. 

What is the narrow line of justice?

What road am I called to walk that will lift the burdens from my fellows

Carrying, lightening, lessing the hopeless void of despair

With the very light of God, that weighty substance which soothes like dew 

draping freshly as a garland upon a troubled mind

Without naming the territories under dispute 

The assumptions and promises held aloof 

Labeling the other, 

Building barriers against a brother, 

Language, culture, history, policy to politics, supremacy 

This is a prayer to gain wisdom. 

This is a plea to leave my comfortable privileged ignorance

And be clothed with a new perspective, a fresh empathy toward understanding. 

A remaking of sorts, so that the long-Promised One, the Rescuer, might be seen and known through me. 

(And knowing my own weakness, I take no credit for this desire, but give glory to His goodness that surpasses knowledge). 

Opening of a window

Prayer is an invitation to God to intervene in our lives, to let His will prevail in our affairs; it is the opening of a window to Him in our will, an effort to make Him the LORD of our soul. 

-Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel 

June

Names are arbitrary; conquering power's influence of calendars; Lunar, Gregorian, (from the 1582 when the Pope Gregory XIII instated 365 days a year plus an extra day every four years (except in years divisible by 100 but not by 400)). But the name of June, meaning 'young' after the Roman goddess Juno, is still carried by months and women, still infatuating students with graduation and warmth of school-less days, still calling bridegrooms and their betrothed into covenantal unions, farmers into planting, celebrations of liberation and flags.

When I think of you, June, I think of warming days, when it's not too hot yet and nights are still cool, I think of biking to the pool and stopping by Kmart for junk food, I think of all the fantastic plans and promises the summer holds, of re-reading messages in year books and recycling finished notebooks. 

Oh June, when I think of you I think of the land, and now in a far-off climate I don't know who you are anymore, you're just a name, just a memory, a flickering idea of hopeful youth holding great expectations that were never burdensome. Holding hope now is a tricker exercise, it's weight becomes heavier unexpectedly, the unrealized and not yet grow taunt with stinging doubt. 

Oh, June. Here you are watermelons and peaches, lemons and grapes ripening on the vine, fields turning brown, the beginning of waiting for the winter rains. I wanted to write a simple haiku, an ode to the beauty of June, and I found the ageless grief instead. Can you, will you, lift my head? 

You always remind me

Never far from my thoughts, a circuitous route with a dead end of false comfort; 

    Such strong hands, supple form, deep eyes and I am awash again with such longing. 

God, my end, Omega, this temple is temporary and انا نسى مرارا

Not always, but often, enough that I wonder whose mind I have, the one of promise or the one of flesh. To persist decades in a "not yet, yet to be" escalates precariously and only by divine intervention is there a relent from toppling. 

    Collapsing inwardly into a deeper surrender, the seed that died keeps dying. 

The hope born again to keep arising. 

The call to prayer

 What if the call to prayer is a call to bleed? 

-Pete Greig, Red Moon Rising 

Privilege

What does the watcher see?

Another betrayal, another hillside occupied

It's pain, keys and deeds nothing more than playthings, monopoly money 

Fear turns to hatred, dividing

Succumbing to a lure for backyards and "security" 

What does the nation-state say about purity? 

Ethnic, cultural, lingual 

Still, how am I to blame? This land has no people. This land is not built upon. It's empty, it's waiting, it's calling for its Sons. (Nevermind the village ruins under the forest, etched on the plain.) 

What does the watcher see?

Insistence and weariness 

Against the unremitting mountain of privilege

Privilege is never neutral, there's always a sacrifice 

Privilege is never given up, it's always strengthened

Privilege is inherited and blinding, always dehumanizing 

"Like those others, I had been trying to find the easy life of blindness to pain." Elias Chacour (p.223 "Blood Brothers") 

More than Solomon

Strewn petals always seem extravagant, 

An indulgence,

A red carpet invitation to a premier of being present, 

Alive and awake. 

The overflow tomb

I'm buried in an overflowing tomb, suffocating under the lies made by heroes on the edge of madness finalizing their conquest of cleansing (but just one more)- one more village left, one more enemy to vanquish, one more WMD, one more mother to bereft; 

The modern retelling of history casting long and politically correct shadows onto crusader temples, turn left and you'll find the Roman Colosseum, the ruins of the rampages and despicable (unspeakable) sacrifices, turn right and you'll find the wells and the tombs, the ancient names renamed after each conquest. 

Past the stones piled up covering dishonorable women, the graves marking the casualties of tribal feuds, revenge killings;

Turn around and remember at the memorials of sons killed by rockets, drones, militants, terrorists, settlers/occupiers/commanders/chiefs/generals/presidents. The carnage of knives and bombs and guns, the us and them, the endless blame;

The weariness of cycles, of shellings, shelters beyond capacity, the funerals disrupted, the death on all sides erupted, fear corrosive, claiming, naming;

Who can break a narrative, create a new story that captures truth with beauty and never boasts or idealizes or blacklists as savages, but names, like the speaker for the dead, a deep knowing and telling, of what is and was and what will be, a new vision, a future, a city, a King. 

Damascus

Scandal of cohesion 
Promises and proclamations sung to 
Temper the rubble 
Ravaged and revenged 
Wholly recompensed; the word fulfilled 

Glorious grace
Unbounded mercy
Unfounded and unleashed 
Upon a city Named
“My joy is in her” 
(Isaiah 17, 19; Jeremiah 49)

Enlivening

The silky rags washed down
so the brown blood circles the edges of the sink.
Like self abandonment swirling, dank as bile in the back of the throat, familiar disconnection, shadows.
Waiting under the cover of Oleander petals, the orphaned shackles, the disembodied pain.
Unforgiveness settling like dust from a sandstorm, in every nook and cranny. Covering. 

Every idiom judged and exposed, every sacrifice mocked and belittled.
Who is this scorn-slayer,
this false judge, deceiver?
Birther of lies and nurturer of darkness, systems maker
Enthroned for a time until the Divine
reckoning, the dragon slatted to be slain and cast out, down down down.

She doesn't know he's hunting her down, targeted and entrapped.
Whittling her down to nothing, hopelessness.

She doesn't know there is one who has come, and will come, is coming, with cold clear water for cleaning, who puts on plastic gloves and washes sinks, who removes the gloves and washes feet, offers glasses of water for drinking, thirst-quenching. Who holds out a hand in friendship, a ring of adoption, a home for healing, who pours out forgiveness like water, filling every nook and cranny. Enlivening.

Petals

And echos and ions

Of pink scaffolding billowing

Whispering 

If this beauty is so fading it almost feels frivolous, so exorbitant, luxurious
But here we stand 

At the end of everything 

Covered in pink magnolias 

Petals 

Petals 

Petals, gone. 

That which opens space for the Holy

Work is not always required … there is such a thing as sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected. 

– George MacDonald

Quick life-changing habits

Habit number one: daily writing.

What if it was attainable, 

What if 7 minutes a day,

or 500 words a day,

a sentence on my phone,

what if this habit could catalyze something?

This intention

this prayer, plea, 

to think, to do, to be.

To be alive. 

And being fully alive is a driving force of my life...

Present to the moment,

inhabiting,

holding space,

being.

What if writing was the way of finding 

my way?

I thought

I thought I was sad. 

Unraveling, uncovering, a deeper hidden thing; insecure, anxious and scared-- of failure, shame, disappointing others. 

So when I thought I was sad, I was actually afraid. 

Afraid of disconnection: Loosing love. Loosing belonging. As I named the fears I invited Love to come in. 

Fear, an invitation?

 

What if every thought is an energy toward fear 

or 

love?

 

What if, as I become aware, as I take the time to sit with it, I can bring those thoughts to Love and release them? If my feelings follow my thoughts, give me your thoughts, O God! Thoughts more abundant than the grains of sand in the seashore. Thoughts full of goodness and mercy. In my solitude I invite you into each thought, resting with ease in your expanse. As your beloved I can think what you think and feel what you feel and reconnect at any moment, to You, to Love, to your perfect love…. What a place to sit. What a banqueting table to eat from.

 

I thought I was sad

I was afraid;

so I remembered, 

I am loved. 

Like rain

Still I know 

Your love never changes

Even when

Life rearranges 

As death clutches, 

Grief crushes 

On wings and prayers,  

Silence hushes.

Can absence be an invitation 

For depth and expansion? 

Remaking space 

with a new rhythm 

Abiding 

Comforted 

Kindly named, like rain 

Awakened and shining.

Undoing (part 2)

This is my undoing                                           
Lofty labels, dreams, and goals
All bequeathed to His keeping 

To a timing yet to unfold 

I can breathe another moment

I can exhale another lie 

Cause all the flaws that filled my mind
Are criticisms he unwinds

Fresh wind 

Hope lifts 

Renewed mind 

Interpreting my gaze; seeing my own reflection through his eyes instead

 

“You are very good”

“Fearfully and wonderfully made” 

“Unique, perfection of beauty, a radiant one, a joyful emblem of my love” 

As always,“Mine”

Undoing (part 1)

Prayer

for a steady mind

Not one flitting about unwilling to alight

Prayer 

for a brave heart

To face the face of loneliness 

(The cave I do not wish to enter) 

And to know I do not need a shining prince to save me; 

One rightful King has already named me and called me out.

Seen and known by him;

Every hair counted 

Every tear traced 

Every wind stilled 

Under his wings of faith

In my hiding He is seeking

In my screaming He is soothing.

All these doubts assaulted my well of being

I want to escape the pain and the not knowing 

Hollow and silent 

A grip of panic seizes me 

Reject it with a deep breath,

Willing me 

To just be.

Just being with him 

A Being, loved

Until I experience 

Being The beloved. 

Apple of my fathers eye

No goal but to become 

In his presence 

Who he says I already am

To rest in his naming 

As the child that I am

To be still 

And complete 

Centered in his heart 

Knowing intimately his gaze 

Compassionate understanding, patient pursuing

This is my undoing.

Wordle

Fearsome, fraught,
I gave in to the going tough
and got an even better five-letter answer sought

It's a wrestle, tussle,
play with a few until you get through
the bragging bustle 

The exchanged name
couldn't be relayed
'twas quite a shame fear caught

And still this association
distraction into fixing something beyond tweaking
I think I need a healing if I am hearing correctly I'm seeking

But if I'm not, I need a revealing
a sealing of what He's wrought
an abiding reminding of Love's undoing; the quenching draught.

Worrying in God’s direction

 “Our prayers will be little more than worrying in God’s direction….”

 Augustine goes onto say  “…. It wouldn’t be strengthening. It won’t heal our hearts by reorienting our vision and help us put things in perspective and bringing us to rest in God as our true security.”

Quoted in Tim Keller’s “Prayer” 

Audible Faith

Through the Spirit, 

prayer is faith 

become audible. 

-Jonathan Edwards

Quoted in Timothy Keller “Prayer.”