Hearing implies…

nearness.
A God who hears is a God
close by, not far, within
reach. Whenever I think
(or read in the Word)
of God hearing me, let it be
a reminder of His nearness
and presence. Whenever
I pray (with the confidence
that He hears my prayers)
I am praying in
His presence and
close intimacy.

The LORD is far from the wicked,
but he hears the prayers of the righteous.
(Proverbs 15:29)

Sometimes Only God

There are, sometimes,
certain bitternesses
and joys
that no one
else
can understand.

In certain
states of the heart,
no communion can be
found except
in God
who understands
all.

The heart knows its own bitterness
And a stranger does not share its joy.
(Proverbs 14:10, NASB)

Each heart knows its own bitterness,
and no one else can fully share its joy.
(Proverbs 14:10, NLT)

***

Linking with two dear ones:

Articulate Thunder and Waves

Can you imagine putting words
to the tune of thunder’s crashes

or the ocean waves’ roars?
Can thunder and waves have

sufficient diction to articulate
songs of consonants and dipthongs,

inflections that make understandable
language? Yes, I can imagine thunder

speaking clearly, “Praise the Lord!”
I think I can hear the ocean’s mighty

crashing on the shore, and it says
in salt-seasoned, dependable repetition,

“The Almighty reigns!” And the sound
of a crowd, no longer indistinct, speaks—

no, shouts—as with one roaring voice,
“Let us be glad and rejoice!
Let us give honor to the Lord!”

The I heard again what sounded like the shout of a vast crowd or the roar of mighty ocean waves or the crash of loud thunder.

“Praise the Lord!
For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.
Let us be glad and rejoice,
and let us give honor to him…”

(Revelation 19:6)

A Crippling Goal

One: to love, and
two: to be loved.

I cannot have both goals

for pursuing the second
makes attaining the first

impossible.

As long as the self is consumed in the struggle to make itself lovely, it cannot love.

- Mike Mason, as quoted in Cynthia Heald’s Becoming a Woman Who Loves

Every Day Poems: Like a “Poem-ography”

My friend Jean has a “library gift” (as her husband calls it). She swipes titles from the shelves (some for herself, some to recommend to her husband), and more often than not, they’re good books. This is Jean’s “library gift.”

So whenever she tells me about books she’s reading, I always jot down the titles. In this way I discovered (or more accurately, benefitted from Jean discovering) Anne Fadiman, Kay Redfield Jamison, Jon Hassler’s Simon’s Night, Lisa Terán’s The Hacienda.

My favorite books are often friends’ recommendations. Similarly, one of my favorite parts of any good book is the bibliography. It’s essentially the author’s book recommendations, as if I knew him and he said, “Here’s one you should read.”

Is there a poetry counterpart to a bibliography? Poem-ography, perhaps? This is what I need, and this is what Every Day Poems provides in a daily email. In this way I discovered (or benefitted from Every Day Poems discovering) Paul Willis, Sara Teasdale, Tania Runyan’s “Blessed Are the Peacemakers,” Langston Hughes’s “Harlem Sweeties,” Bradley J. Moore’s “Maddening.”

Every Day Poems is, to me, both a friend with a “poetry gift” and a poem-ography. And they’re good poems.

***

(Posted for “Winner Takes the Chocolate.” See details here.)

Tomorrow Won’t Fit into Today

Writing a story is like living one; you can’t
force future moments onto the current
page. You can grasp a dry towel with
moistureless hands, but no water will come
of your wringing, and your skin will chafe.

Soak the cloth
first,
and wait.

I believe a writer can make writing happen, sit down and stir from grass or leaves or snow. But I also believe it takes time to write. Each book I’ve written, in some sense, could not have been written before its time. The white moths were not ready to rise…

There is no hurry. The things we cannot write about today, we will surely find we can write about tomorrow. We should not worry about the process, but simply trust it and move on. After all, we contain fields upon fields of stories we’ve rehearsed over time. We must recognize that these are the ready ones, the now-stories.

- L.L. Barkat, Rumors of Water, pp.152-153

(For the T.S. Poetry Book Club (hosted by Lyla Lindquist) on Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing, by L.L. Barkat. Read Lyla’s thoughts and find links to other book club participants here.)