Truth Echoes

Given this unexpected delay
Of emotional and intellectual response
I find in myself an urgency
An urgency both to speak and to hear
To communicate and be communicated to
To no longer remain silent
Lest I speak again in vain
Lest I hear no more from ears to jaded to hear
Or see with eyes too shallow to truly penetrate

Given the choice, would I choose
Absolution or a reprieve?
Could be that the reprieve would be more telling
Than an absolution that leaves me no recourse but
Truth more telling than any greater perception
I am happy with my delusions
Content in my ignorance
As they say it is of deepest bliss...

It is always as it ever has been
Within my soul a calling
A calling that only one heart can claim and know and reciprocate
But yet it gives me eyes to see
To see what I cannot escape in myself
To see their fear, their anger, their pain...
In a means much more real than oft' even my own
To know is not to bless, not to soothe with warming touch
But is to grieve, to weight down, to burden perhaps beyond endurance
...With little hope to save, or to heal.
Rather then would I keep my silence?
Blind my eyes as so many have done as a defensive recourse
Without further thought or consideration?
Deafen my ears to their discordant cries as a crow to it's own incessant laughter?

No.
No, I would hear them. I would see. I would know.
Rather than comfort a vain heart that knowingly turned a blind eye
To something much greater... and more mysterious than myself
Working in and through me like a whisper works through a breeze
Carries it farther and more effectively than bird-song on summer air...
Not that I claim it for myself
No credit, no lofty pedestal would I fit, or would I aspire to.
I know that my place belongs much lower, my feet fully fastened to the ground
But eyes ever looking upward for guidance, for direction
So that I too do not begin to wander aimlessly
Lost as I once was to what words You would speak that would, and COULD only
Bring healing.
The only elixir to my helpless malady, the only tonic for my brokenness...

To You alone, may I point others also
Help me direct their gaze upward
To a place, and a home
Where we all began, and where all our hearts long to return.

Written: February 26th, 2010

Fleeting Treasures

Ashes to ashes

Dust to dust

From dust we were created

To dust we return

We are perhaps

Merely a passing breath

In a primordial universe

Too big for us to comprehend

But a breath with a spark of divine

Gifted by His divine breath

Created to be

And to stand in the palm

Of His mighty hand

How inconsequential we must seem

Yet have somehow become so treasured...

A puzzle so wonderful I don't want

To figure it out

Leave the present unwrapped

Judge its merit

By faulty and inadequate estimation

By a wrapping elaborate and shiny

As the metallic shimmer of a lake in the winter

A hand-held mirror

A cool manacle to that ever-observant eye

Not that I could understand

Even should I want to

A miracle and mystery designed in its very nature

To be beyond my reasoning.

Let it never become commonplace

To my small, limited mind

Written: Sat, February 13th, 2010