Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Again

I learned it all before

I know it all again

How great is life and love

And yet so much of it is pain.


God that I run to!


And are we always hurled

Into the fire of life,

In every life,

In every world?


To me Gram always seemed joyful and happy. She loved to laugh. It was (and still is) difficult to remember that she went through some very tough times in her life. That she endured and kept her faith and her laugh gives me hope.

Friday, April 18, 2008

One Side of Me

November 1997


It’s not from “The Bards Sublime”

It’s a reedy little thing, really,

But it’s mine, my song.

I sing it to the woods and trees.

And to my garden. People

Don’t enjoy it particularly,

That’s O.K. Why do I sing? (Badly at that!)

I don’t know. But I have a feeling

That God knows. Knows why

I kiss the flowers and love the trees

And sing.

You do know, God, don’t you?

You do. You do.

God says “Yes!”

(But you can’t hear him.)

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Listening

Here is a piece I recently incorporated into a sermon. I was preaching on Becoming the Body of Christ: The Ears of Christ ~ Hearing as Jesus Hears. I thought this fit right in:

Listening

November 1992

A friend told me that she was conversing with a group when it dawned on her that each one was only waiting a chance to talk. No-one at all was listening.

Most of us has a real longing to be heard, hoping that by being heard we’ll be better understood. Of course if we’re to be better understood some one has to be listening.

Sometimes I get tired of listening to other people talk! Once I interrupted a “talker” with an opinion of my own but there was no satisfaction in it. The “listener” has to be willing to listen, and most of the time I am, and I’ll tell you why. I have been listened to.

Some-one once asked me a question. I had to dredge the answer up from past unhappy years and tears began to flow. I was made to feel that it was all right and they were patient and listened and I felt heard and comforted. Sometime it’s not easy to express feelings and thoughts and if you listen carefully and with understanding you might hear something that no-one else has ever had the privilege to hear.


Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Writing in the Garden

My grandmother was an avid writer, especially in her later years. Often, when the weather permitted, she wrote while sitting in her garden. But even when she couldn't do that, she wrote about gardening. Here is a poem written in May of 1992:

Who shall inquire of the season,

Or question the wind where it blows?

We blossom and ask no reason

The Lord of the Garden knows.

We are the roadside flowers,

Straying from garden grounds,

Love of idle hours,

Breakers of ordered bounds.