Rich Young Ruler
Journal: June 5, 2011
Mark 10:21-22
“Jesus looked at him and loved him. ‘One thing you lack,’ he said. ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.’
I love that you loved when you looked at him. I love that you saw to the core of this man and cherished him even while knowing he’d turn away sad. It seems that money was not merely his Master but his identity and thus the focus and deep affection of his life. He gave his heart and soul to his money, to his power, because in it he found his identity. To give away his riches was to give his very self away—at least the self that was respected and accepted because of the social status his wealth gained.
If he wanted life, he would have to die—to give his very self away. His reputation, his security, his accomplishment, his worth—all this he would give when he gave his treasure. But he could not because he would not. He would not trade treasures. From all appearances his desire in the question is earnest. He is willing to do almost anything and has already done all he knows how to do, keeping your commands all of his life.
Oh but in your love you would not leave him alone in religion. Instead, you would penetrate to the point of his holding out—perhaps the only place of his resistance. In asking for him to give his wealth you revealed his greatest treasure. In a moment he was undone, for suddenly all he had ever done to be righteous was shown as inadequate. All at once his willingness to obey was revealed as finite. You asked too much. The cost to follow was too great. Oh how you loved him! But the man went away. Not angry, not confused, not argumentative. No, the rich man went away sad, for one thing he lacked.
For the first time in his life his riches of wealth and robes of righteousness were unable to save. And perhaps for the first time in his life he saw his own heart and the limit to his sacrifice. Here he went from righteous to disobedient in a moment—not even because of an action. Truly more important was the revelation of heart. The command unveiled his sin—it shone his insufficiency. It declared the end of his righteousness—his merit in his own eyes. For the first time in his life, he did not deserve salvation. When push came to shove, he could not give the one thing that was required. He would not give his treasure. He would not give himself.
If godly sorrow brings repentance, I am curious concerning the outcome for this man? For few would immediately walk away and give our entire lives as this man had just been told to do. He went away. Sad, because somehow gaining eternal life had just confronted him with the deepest death, the deepest cost he could imagine. All his life, “gaining eternal life” had brought acceptance and honor by the elite. Now it would require rejection. Now it would mean a stripping of all the admiration and accomplishment he had worked so tirelessly to gain.
The “Yes” or “No” of the disciple always comes in layers, gradually, subtly. All the “yes’s” this young man had spoken with his life led to this command where we might expect the pattern to be continued, but we are left with no answer. For the command was first to “go” and then to “come.” So did our sorrowful ruler return? Did he go away, count the cost and give his very self and return (“come”) to follow our Christ? Or did he turn away forever in this climatic moment? We can guess, but we are not told.
Perhaps we are not told so that the command may cut us also, leveling our own assertions of willingness and assumptions of what You will require. Oh how you love us! For just as with him you are not content to leave us alone. You are unwilling to leave us to ourselves because it is to You we belong. From conception to death we are Your dream, Your imagination, Your creation. You refuse to let our righteous acts be as brilliant robes. You must show them as filthy rags, not in spite of your love for us, but because of it. Love leaves you no option. You are Love. Love is Light. Light is Life.
You looked at this man, loved him, and then brought him to his knees in utter failure, showing him the one thing he lacked and asking for the absolute affection of his heart. You wanted him to love you more than his wealth, his morality, his riches, his treasure. You wanted him to cherish you more than he cherished himself, his rights, his entitlements. You wanted to be the pearl of great price. Only if you were this most deep treasure would he follow to find the treasure of eternal life for which he asked and so deeply desired. He asked what he needed to do to gain eternal life. You gave him a very simple map, but it seemed to lead him off the precipice into the canyon below. Could he follow such a path? Could he trust such a leader? We do not know.
And so, the question is put to us. You ask the individual, “Will you give what you value most in order to follow Me? Will you offer the place of your identity, trusting that I have a better and truer name to give you? Will you receive the Gospel or will you live content in religion?”
Oh how I love you!!! Go give your treasure, follow me and I will replace it infinitely and eternally!”
woman of blood
From journal May 31, 2011
For twelve years you chose not to cure this woman through all myriad of remedies at the hands of many doctors, perhaps so that on this one day she would come searching for you as her last recourse and her only hope. Twelve years of heartbreak and futility—the exhaustion from hopes’ rise and consistent fall—pushed her through the crowd as a perpetually unclean woman with extraordinary faith.
Twelve years as an outcast and still she has the audacity to press herself through their midst and touch a holy teacher. Her shocking courage and her long-suffering humbles me. I cannot imagine how, after twelve years of disappointed hope and body-soul turmoil, she could believe with such confidence that you would heal her. How did she still have faith? How could she have the courage and strength to try one more method and actually believe that this was the moment healing would visit her at last? Twelve years of suffering and waiting yield to this one moment: “Immediately…she was freed from her suffering.”
Perhaps she had cried out to you a million times before only to hear nothing or to hear ‘no.’ But perhaps if she had found a cure even two weeks before, one day before, one hour before, perhaps she never would have come that day, falling at the feet and speaking to the face of God in the flesh. Maybe she never would have seen you–never met you. Now her story of humiliation and shame is broadcast for the crowd—relived in detail so that all would see your power. Isn’t it interesting…those words you spoke to her… ‘your faith has healed you’ –past tense. And ‘be freed from your suffering’—ongoing imperative. What suffering remained if already she has been healed? What prison still confined her?
I have thought that this season of my life has brought so much pain, cut so deeply, that the initial release may not bring a torrent of ecstasy—that the remnants of sorrow may cling to me for some time even after the prison cell is opened—after silence yields to an answer. I have thought that the immediacy with which release may come will not be the immediacy of freedom. There are, in a sense, deep scars, and unarticulatable wounds of the soul that circumstance will not quickly cure.
Here is a woman imprisoned in a cage of lonely desperation for twelve years. The grief and sorrows that plunged to depths she didn’t know she had would not suddenly disappear. It is as if the healing inaugurated a new season of remembrance of the grief concerning the last twelve years and all that was lost in them. The restoration of her body preceded that of her heart. For she who was alone and isolated in excruciating depths of suffering physically, socially, relationally, spiritually—she had just been called ‘Daughter.’
Oh what a tender and merciful word you spoke! For with this naming you removed her shame. You claimed her and placed her back in community, back in relationship—with one word. With it perhaps you cut the chains off her confinement by penetrating the core of her wound. For she was a rejected woman, and even upon her healing would not those twelve years haunt her—the history follow her? But you united yourself to her as though she was your seed. God of Heaven—the Word made flesh—you just allied yourself to an outcast, unclean woman.
Oh Sweet Savior how you come at long last to ravage our prison cells of mistaken identity and intolerable lies, freeing us from our suffering—the deep and mysterious fear of isolation and rejection. As at Creation, you breathe life into our spirits again when you adopt us, ‘Daughter’ and set us free. What an exchange you made in that moment—your power for hers, your life for hers, your suffering for her freedom.
I wonder if in that moment you took up her illness and carried her sorrow—if, trembling in fear at your feet, eternal eyes transported her to the foot of the cross where you hung, whispering words of such sweet acceptance that transfigured her long road of exasperating pain and put to death the fear that she was worthy of that rejection—that she was unworthy of love. But with a word you make her yours—no longer the bastard child of polite society. No! In one moment you brought her from the trash heap to the feasting table of the King of all Kings. You pulled back the curtain. Rather you tore it from top to bottom in that moment—the veil keeping her from you. And the earth shook and the sky grew dark and the judgment had come. For here she curled at your cross-bound feet as the only woman in the world. Her suffering—the suffering of the shame that lasted so long that she had begun to believe its lie—was revealed as the lie that it was. And it was judged, condemned and sentenced to death. Here she cried out, telling you the whole truth, the long ordeal of her humiliation. Here I imagine, the first word of response is the removal of that “truth” that was only truth to her. It was the false self she sustained with the story she told you, believing those twelve years to be the definition of her—her very self. So those twelve years and that shameful story of exhausted infirmity truly declared her nothingness—the very proof of her ugliness. She was most certainly unworthy, unlovely, unlovable. This was the whole truth and there wasn’t any more to add.
Accept this that is: Daughter. Somehow that name infiltrates like a cleansing cancer to truly transfigure her story, making it no longer an indictment against her, but the very occasion by which she encounters her Daddy and becomes His Daughter. Her affliction becomes the context for her adoption. So daughter…be free! Your story doesn’t give you your name. I do! Be free from the soul slashing turmoil. I claim you! I choose you! I love you! You are mine, so go in peace and be freed from the fear ravaging your soul. Be free from those ‘truths’ because they are only lies constructed as a prison around your heart! And behold, I am making all things new! I am doing a new thing do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people formed for Myself that they might proclaim my praise. Fear not, for I have redeemed you I have summoned you by name, you are mine! Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Say My Name
From journal, Resurrection Day 4/24/11
John 20:16 “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary’…”Do not hold onto me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, “I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: ‘I have seen the Lord!’”
I come as me, after a gorgeous, warm, sunburn-sunny-yesterday on this soggy Resurrection day, still with birds chirping and a strange recollection that all along this journey you have whispered (not shouted, or thundered, or quaked, but whispered), “Brianna.” There is something holy-intimate when you say my name, somehow so tender but sharp, slicing with precision through all the burdens borne and crosses carried—penetrating to the birth-point like a pin to prick all pretension of independence or presumption of strength. You level me with one word—my name—spoken sweetly from the lips of a lover before whom I am seen entirely. No words are necessary, spent with frustration to explain myself in the futile attempt to be understood. For the more words used up in this effort leave me only with a greater experience of futility—of the great mystery of souls even in the most intimate communion. For at the word of my name, I stand alone before you, stripped of all I think I am or try to be, naked to the bone from all striving, and barren from the seed of death planted in me, harvesting the expectation of others and speaking of what I must produce. At my name upon your lips I become just me, more free than a slave just liberated, for I am bound to you and the taste is sweeter than honey.
All along you’ve been whispering my name, “Brianna” –strong and courageous. But also, “Rachelle Anett” –lamb full of grace. And if ever there be any other who sees and cherishes the fusion of these two in every fiber of my being, he will win me heart and soul. If ever one who loves the whole me and sees the whole without assumption, with him will be a rest—a deep long breath to exhale—as never I’ve known with anyone, only tasted. You see me, whispering this name that I am the fragile lamb in need of a shepherd. Yet also, only by your seed in my womb, I somehow become strong and courageous. What an intimate spilling over of your soul into mine. It feels that here I am alone with you—a secret shared between the two of us that words can’t make to explain, but only you can open eyes to be seen. For when you called me, you called the least and the last—perhaps the most fearful, timid and insecure person you could find, so that by resurrecting your seed in me, fruit would be raised for your glory and not my praise. To be seen by you is my freedom. That you speak my name and somehow with it comprehend and envelop the whole me, is an unfathomable joy. You name me, my deepest identity articulated with a word; my whole life story from womb to tomb played out in a millisecond flicker of light in your eyes. You know the narrative because you wrote it—the paths my feet would walk because you paved them. You have been my Author and my Perfecter, dreaming me up, naming me with absolute accuracy and setting me free in your story with each curve and jot of your pens’ mark.
So in the garden when you spoke Mary’s name, I can feel that uncontainable exuberance that makes my stomach drop like a roller coaster. Mary—seven demons inhabited you. To everyone else in your life before Him this was you—the demon woman, the crazy lady. Being a woman was enough of a shame, but a woman of ill-repute, a woman of the streets, a woman from the asylum? You could not have been lower than you were when you met him. And somehow, maybe because he knit you in your momma’s womb, he saw YOU, not the you people saw, but the real you. And not just the Mary emptied of demons, but the Mary that cried out from the core of you—the whole Mary, full and unfallen, redeemed. So your name, Mary, spoken from his lips was a dignity beyond description. With it you too were resurrected.
With such despair was your heart and mind racing, trying to find his body, trying to hold onto the last part of him you had. But then you heard your name and somehow it was revelation and resuscitation. By its song ringing in your ears your eyes were opened to recognize him—his body breathed through with life once again. You had expected to find death that day—to honor a corpse and a memory. Instead you found unrivaled surprise—a ludicrous hope fulfilled.
It’s the desire of every grieving soul staring into loss, looking death full in the face. It is the desire to receive the beloved back from the dead. And why to you Mary? Why to you did he first appear? You were the last person to choose if the point was to make this testimony credible. But in this too, he honored you, giving you the responsibility of being the first witness of the resurrection, the first one to bear testimony, the mouthpiece to the brothers who would take this message throughout the empire. Oh Mary, our first missionary with the message, “I have seen the Lord!” It is as if Hagar cries out loud from the desert once again “I have seen the one who sees me!” Mary, his tongue spoke your name and burned away all the lies of your ugliness and shame, sparking the fire of unbelievable life in your soul. What an extraordinary gift you were given, for your word would spark a forest fire blaze that would turn the world upside down and consume even me 1,000 years later. All of this because he spoke your name. Maybe no other word would have opened your eyes to his presence in your very midst, when all hope seemed lost and despair the only logical response. But there, in the graveyard of broken dreams and lost love, He met you, speaking life to the cavern of your soul.
Lord, I imagine not your trumpet voice, but your whisper in this moment, calming Mary’s frenzy of grief, confusion and tormenting questions. Just your whisper, maybe missed had it not been the mention of her name. Then, what a strange request follows—what a difficult demand! Don’t hold onto me Mary, go…! Go? Leave you? I’ve only just received you back and I never want to let go again!
For had you not said that it would be better for them if you go because you would send the Counselor? Better!? The Counselor is coming—the same one that raised Christ from the dead would be IN them. And will you not soon say to stay in the city until they are clothed with power from on high? Mary had just seen you alive after watching you breathe your last in a tormented and anguished death. But now, she could not, she must not, hold on. For you were leaving to go to your Dad and hers, and she could not stay in this garden of death forever. She must follow you as she had often done during those past three years. But this time, following you meant to leave you. How strange.
Oh Mary, little lamb, how courageous you were to let go and speak to the brothers who did not believe you. Oh foolish Mary, your past had caught up with you! Why would they believe a once crazed woman? How vulnerable you made yourself in your obedience—how exposed you were to misunderstanding and judgment. But he, the only one who really knew—the only who one really mattered—had said your name. Your name from his lips was enough to compel you to boldly stand as witness in the face of rejection.
How stunning that he calls out by name his children like he does the stars! What a marvel it is that one day we will be given a new name that he chose from the foundation of the world! The power in a name to proclaim and to prophecy—this is the dignity, power and freedom he breathes into being… ‘Mary.”
copyright Brianna K. 2011
The Weeping Christ and the Glory of God
I write not to explain, but to express: I’m still startled that He wept. We so long used this as a punch-line when we were forced to memorize a verse in Sunday School. Really though, it’s one of the most shocking and mind-blowing verses in the Scriptures. A million pages could be written in an attempt to capture the brilliance and beauty of all that occurs in this story!
This mystery of His gut-wrenching grief shivers down my spine. Christ let Lazarus die knowing that minutes later, death would yield to life and Lazarus would walk out of a tomb at His word. Just as He had said, the sickness would not end in death, but in God’s glory. Still He wept.
Journal 3/12/11
John 11:4ff
“When he heard this Jesus said, ‘This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.’ Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.”
That Lazarus’ sickness would not end in death inspires hope. His sickness would go through death and dive into its depths, but it would not end there. For all watching would see that You are the resurrection they were waiting for.
Oh how John emphasizes your love! You loved those siblings, yet you delayed and let Lazarus die. The pain they experienced as a result of your decision to delay was thus not a result of any other motive, but love. It was not a mistake or indicative of inattention. Your delay was strikingly intentional and this intention would bring both them and you deep pain.
But for the same reason that you delayed, John tells this story and writes this witness of the Gospel. You delayed that Mary and Martha and all watching would believe. But your decision would be questioned. (Verses 33-37) Here we see two responses–two evaluations or judgments of your motive. First, (v.36) the people saw your grief and in it saw of you love. You were not unaffected or detached emotionally, but weeping with them. Second, (v.37) others questioned why you did not prevent it (why you delayed), for if you loved and if you had the power to give sight to a man born blind, why didn’t you keep them and yourself from the pain? And here, as in much of the story, there are whispering echoes of the cross–”He saved others, let him save himself!” (Luke 23:35) If he is who he says he is, why did this happen? Why did he LET this happen? For some, his action that followed was enough; for some, it was enough that Lazarus’ sickness did not end in death. For some it was enough to know that your delay, your grief and the sorrow you carried with them did end in joyful resurrection. But others, even after all of this, were tattle-tales, using this miracle as testimony against you. Some were searching for a reason to question you, to doubt you, to destroy you. Others believed. Others put their faith in you as God of resurrection–the God who is resurrection. And this changed their vision.
Both saw the same thing–a dead man raised to life. But still there were two striking contrasts of response. So I wonder if the unbelieving group really saw Your glory? They certainly saw “4 days dead” Lazarus walk out from a tomb in grave clothes, but this was not enough for them. Still they did not (would not?) recognize God in Christ–did not recognize God as the Sender of this Son.
So perhaps this means that they did not see your glory at all–that their unbelieving eyes were blinded though they saw clearly. They walked by night. For as we see two chapters earlier, you are the light of the world, doing the work of the one who sent You. So here upon Lazarus’ resurrection they stumbled as if in the dead of night, just as Judas left the Passover table of body broken and blood shed–the table of resurrection life–having eaten WITH You and OF You…and… “it was night.”
And then there is Martha’s profession that humbled me as it never has before, piercing me with the vibrancy of such an unflinching faith. For in the midst of her questioning cry comes the declaration–”I believe you are the Christ, the Son of God.” Which is to say she believed that you were who you claimed to be even though you let her brother die. In the fresh wound of this reality, with the stench of death still in her nostrils and churning in the pit of her stomach, she believed you were true. For though you delayed, though you allowed her brother to die and did not come at the sisters request, she trusted you.
Yet I wonder if she answered the question? Did she believe that her brother would never die? He HAD just died, his breath emptied from his lungs and his lifeless body was entombed. Did she believe that you are resurrection and life, not only in the last day, but now? As the chapter unfolds our question seems to be answered. She trusted your heart when you allowed her deep pain, but it seems that her belief did not dream wildly enough as to believe that Lazarus would be given back to her in only a few moments…that soon you would have the stone removed and at a word, resurrect her brother. At a word!! YOU, the Word made flesh dwelling among them ARE the resurrection and the life and in you they have seen the glory of the One and Only. No abracadabra, no incantations or odd requests, only a word. As at the beginning, you spoke and it came to pass. Not even a touch was necessary and no tool of mediation was used, only a word from the High Priest, the Mediator of the New Covenant. Her faith had endured the deep crisis even while proving to be too small for comprehending the power and authority that were Yours. Your delay was your phenomenal gift of love, for in it she saw you and knew you as she never would have. For now you were not merely the one who could make a sick man well. Now you were to one who could make a dead man live.
What can I do in response, but bow and continue to believe the smallness of my imagination and my inability to even dream up what is possible for you?! What can I do but trust that your long delay bringing such grief and confusion is an intentional, patient and great act of love, for in it I will see your glory–not merely a sickness avoiding death, but one walking through its depths and finding it not as the end, but the beginning of new life. Death HAS BEEN swallowed up in victory! Where oh death is your victory? Where oh death is your sting?
“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” (I Peter 4:12-13)
if ignorance is bliss
I was just reading from “The Hole In Our Gospel” by Richard Stearns, the President of World Vision. He’s telling of a trip to Uganda where he met 15 year old Richard who was now the parent of his two younger siblings after the AIDS epidemic had left them as orphans. The experience rocked his world soon after he left his position of CEO of Lenox to take the position.
“I much preferred living in my bubble, the one that, until that moment, had safely contained my life, family, and career. It kept difficult things like this out, insulating me from anything too raw or upsetting. When such things intruded, as they rarely did, a channel could be changed, a newspaper page turned, or a check written to keep the poor at a safe distance. But not in Rakai. There, “such things” had faces and names–even my name, Richard.”
I’ve been realizing recently how the Lord has been confronting me again with His call upon my life…with this gut-wrenching conviction of how I must spend it and the cost that it is taking and will take…but the joy in the cost. I’ve been learning to let go of all that I’ve accumulated these past 10 years when it was easier to leave everything and go live among the poor. I’ve been learning to let go again; to let go off all the things in which I can find my security, my safety, my comfort - the things in which I can trust. Some things were chosen losses. Others were not. It feels like I’ve been reclaiming a vision of the Gospel and the Kingdom that is so compelling as to call me out of my comfort and entitlements of cultures values. If it hadn’t been for the losses of these past two years, I might have settled. Maybe I had become too comfortable. Maybe I would have stayed that way. Maybe I would have let go of the dreams and ideals of “romantic adolescence.” But because He’s so gracious, He’s been reminding me that I’ve long wanted a risky faith and an adventurous life–not adventure for adventure’s take, but adventure for faith’s sake/for following’s sake–from willingness to say yes no matter what, no matter when because there is a purpose and story so much bigger than me.
Stearns’ words reminded me of a poem I wrote one year after Hurricane Katrina. Little did I know that two years later I would get to walk the streets of the city and have “such things” be faces and names. I guess I’m just thankful that God is good at reminding me who I am and what I’m made for, and making me restless with anything less. I’m sure I’ll need reminding again soon.
Oh Katrina–Tagline Channel 8
Oppressed eyes
Drowned in desperate tears
Scream for help, but
Fall to the ground
Unnoticed
Without concern
No response.We are your only recourse, and
We sit silently,
Inactive,
Shifting only
To flip the switch,
Escape your reality
We cannot bear to observe.Copyright Brianna K 2006
In case you are interested, here’s a link to my old blog where I shared a journal entry attempting to process the experience in NOLA.
http://bknuckey.blogspot.com/2008/04/in-urban-ghost-townhope-rises.html
at the world’s finale
Fyodor Dostoyevsky:
“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage…that in the world’s finale at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify what has happened.”
SK
I just found this beginning of a blog from August that i never posted…thought i would post “as is” and incomplete…
I consider Abraham and have no doubt that had he spoken of your command (to sacrifice Isaac) to anyone before he climbed Mt. Moriah, surely he would have been considered insane, not merely for his willingness to obey a seemingly unethical command so like the requirements of pagan gods; but also that he believed he would return with his son alive. He was willing to give his son, bearer of the promise he’d awaited all his life, but also he was confident that he would take him up again and his boy would live! On both counts, what lunacy!! For surely there would have been many attempting to persuade him that he’d misunderstood Your command–that You would certainly not require Isaac! But let us for a moment assume that You did in fact require Isaac and that Abe’s friends fully supported him in this belief. How many of those same friends would have then shamed Abe for believing he would return with Isaac–with his son raised from the dead?
By all appearances Abe’s belief made him a fool, even a madman. But somehow he set aside the need to understand (for he certainly could not) and he obeyed–he believed…”
Afterbirth to Rebirth
Though I didn’t write with this intention, I realized that this poem is a good accompaniment to the last poem I posted: Day Born. Standing alone it might scare people. But resurrection comes only after death, and capturing the intensity of death is crucial for articulating the glory of resurrection. I don’t know if I’ve done either in any special way, but both poems are again gut reaction reflections of the moment they were written, and for that reason, sweet to me.
Sorrowed Waiting For Rebirth
I’m trying to stay awake, but
All I can do is bow
My head to the tears
Tuck my knees to my chest
Finding the shape of the fetus
Attempting to reenter the womb,
Escape this tomb
Emerging to the place where
Life was firstborn,
Unconscious of the dark
Mystery around me, and the
Chaos of embryonic drink
Giving space to shape
A heart beating to
Return to its Maker,
Pumping blood
Born in His veins
Slicing my side
As shrapnel, sending me
Toward a foreign light, breaking
Screams loose from
My chest.Unrest is all I find,
Exhausted insomnia of the futile
Attempt for rebirth.So I wait
Trying to stay awake, but
I fear I’m falling asleep.Copyright Brianna K. 2010
daily you raise the death in me
I was sitting in church on Sunday when all of the sudden the first few lines of this poem came. So, I grabbed a pen. It’s still rough, but they usually stay that way with me!
Day Born
Daily
You raise the death in me,
Breathing life to these bones
Dried up,
Rattling,
Scattering
To the four corners of this soul.
Now they sing new rhymes
In original rythms
Clattering to union,
Sewn by sinews,
Flesh blanketed, and
Spirit bound.
Heart pumps
Like fists of fury
Pounding a drumbeat baseline,
My lungs are resurrected from
Tear-saturated drowning
To this eternal chorus
Burning with bright cold of
Fresh oxygen.
I gasp like a baby
Learning again the light.Each morning you resurrect me like the sun
so that today,
I sing.copyright Brianna K. 2011
Faith
I love reading great writers–reading in and between the lines of imagination and articulation. I don’t read a lot of poetry, but even so, Luci Shaw is my favorite. I just read one of her poems that seems such an artful explanation of this season in my life.
Faith is only present where a wait is demanded. For in its nature faith is believing what is not seen, present or discernible by the mind or the senses. The perseverance of belief in the the absence of evidence and the presence of pronounced pain is the deepest and most taxing battle I have ever fought. Yet something tells me, I’m only beginning to learn faith. Waiting for Spring is painstaking because Winter ravages the fruit of life in what feels to be irrevocable death. But it is Winter that prepares the soil for new life, for greater abundance, for purer beauty. While Spring is promised, no one knows how long Winter will last and so the fear that the dark season brings can seem to betray the present and coming light. The promise of Spring heard in the depths of Winter is the power to my faith, the well of my joy and the birthplace of my hope. It is the promise itself that allows me to know that this Winter is good.
Even more than I love reading great writers, I love sharing their work, so…
Faith
by Luci Shaw“Spring is a promise
in the closed fist
of a long winter. All
we have got is a raw
slant of light at a low
angle, a rising river
of wind, and an icy rain
that drowns out green
in a tide of mud. It is
the daily postponement
that disillusions. (Once
again the performance
has been cancelled by
the management.) We live
on legends of old
springs. Each evening
brings only remote
possibilities of
renewal: “Maybe
tomorrow.” But the
evening and the morning
are the umpteenth day
and the God of sunlit
Eden still looks
on the weather
and calls it good.”And one of my own:
Open
When you come like the wind or the rain
Crashing into my soul
Whisper turns quickly to shout
Raising me to my feet
To watch
And wait
And wonder
Of the chorus of the flood
The song of the branches
Soon to be bare as I
When the storm is passed.(Copyright 2005)
From the blog
Rich Young Ruler
Oct. 3, 2011 No Comments
Journal: June 5, 2011
More »
Mark 10:21-22
“Jesus looked at him and loved him. ‘One thing you lack,’ he said. ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.’
I love that [...]woman of blood
Aug. 15, 2011 No Comments
From journal May 31, 2011
More »
For twelve years you chose not to cure this woman through all myriad of remedies at the hands of many doctors, perhaps so that on this one day she would come searching for you as her last recourse and her only hope. Twelve years of heartbreak and futility—the exhaustion from hopes’ [...]Say My Name
May. 6, 2011 No Comments
From journal, Resurrection Day 4/24/11
More »
John 20:16 “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary’…”Do not hold onto me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, “I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the [...]The Weeping Christ and the Glory of God
Mar. 29, 2011 No Comments
I write not to explain, but to express: I’m still startled that He wept. We so long used this as a punch-line when we were forced to memorize a verse in Sunday School. Really though, it’s one of the most shocking and mind-blowing verses in the Scriptures. A million pages could be written in an [...]
More »
