More Old Poetry

It is strange how vulnerable I feel posting even old poetry... I guess it still strikes too close to heart.

Truth

Behind my hands
my face lurks
tentative, scared, scarred.
Laughter is its shield
quivering in the silence,
every nerve jangling, shaking.
True expression is dangerous;
it is too real, too exposing,
too naked me:
one should never be without clothes. (it's unnatural)
Childhood freedom?
Gone with every don't and shouldn't.

I have my faces
each used on different occasions,
some serving more than one purpose
Not all truth.

Anxiety

I can feel my writhing spirit
wringing its hands
in desperation.
Trying to trust,
but failing miserably,
no matter how it tries.
My stomach clutches
and twists in sympathy.
Promises, promises--
Unanswered? Or just delayed?

Patience seems to be
sickening for something--
Panic perhaps?

Old Poetry

Something I wrote a long time ago--but I was browsing through old files and found it. I had forgotten...

This gluttony
tiny pinpricks
to fill a
gaping whole--
the empty place
where I go
when loneliness
overwhelms
and top it up with
more excess nothing.

it drags
hanging down
weighing on my back
the hole is not satiated
with mere filling
there is more
to this than
comfort
and
substitution.

life, me, and
everything
is just not enough.
Take me, ravish and seduce me
and don't tell me until
it is much, much too late
I need more
than food and clothing
I need-want love and
only your love
satisfies my
craving.

Musings

I was sitting in front of my computer just now, hoping to write something, something, hopefully, poetic. The thought has been hovering around the edges of my brain that all I have been doing lately is posting other people's words and none, really, of my own. Even my devotional journal exhibits this same tendency at the moment. As a person who sets a lot of stock in self-expression and creativity--even if it is just in my interior monologue--I've been feeling cut off from my usual means of self-expression; I haven't felt the fire to write for some time (and by write I mean seriously write, not "just" journalistic-style entries). I haven't been writing prose, I haven't been writing poetry. I'm in the middle of a nasty flu/head cold thing that leaves me hardly able to talk, let alone sing--which I really wanted to do this morning and couldn't. I feel stopped up--literally and figuratively--as though I am hardly able to move through the mud I like to call my brain. I'm hoping that this mud will turn out to be fertile silt, but until it does, I feel unexpressed.

It struck me, however, that maybe sometimes we aren't meant to express ourselves. Perhaps sometimes we are meant to be silent, not speak for ourselves. Perhaps we serve a different function at these times, acting as echoes for other people's self-expression. We take in the efforts of others' creativity and reflect it out into the world again. We act as sound boards, resonators, amplifying the expressions of others. Perhaps, we, by taking in other people's art, make it bigger.

It made me wonder if maybe there are implications in this for our spiritual lives. Perhaps there are times, even seasons, where we act primarily as God's echoes, not His messengers. Perhaps the times when we feel stifled, confined, "hedged in," are the times when the expressions of the great Creator--His Word, His Love, His Everything--are reflected off our lives into the lives of others. And, maybe, the reason we do not see the ripples in the pond is because we are the stones thrown into the water.

Go to Dark Gethsemane

Go to dark Gethsemane,
Ye that fell the tempter's power;
Your Redeemer's conflict see;
Watch with him one bitter hour;
Turn not from his griefs away:
Learn from him to watch and pray.

See him at the judgement hall,
Beaten, bound, reviled, arraigned;
See him meekly bearing all;
Love to man his soul sustained.
Shun not suffering, shame, or loss:
Learn of Christ to bear the cross.

Calvary's mournful mountain view;
There the Lord of glory see,
Made a sacrifice for you,
Dying on the accursed tree.
"It is finished," hear his cry:
Trust in Christ and learn to die.

~James Montgomery (1771-1854)

To be a pilgrim

Who would true valour see,
Let him come hither:
Here's one will constant be,
Come wind, come weather.
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent
To be a pilgrim.

Whoso beset him round
With dismal stories
Do but themselves confound:
His strength the more is.
No lion can him fright,
He'll with a giant fight,
But he will have the right
To be a pilgrim.

Since, Lord, thou dost defend
Him with thy Spirit,
He knows he at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away!
I'll fear not what men say,
But labour night and day
To be a pilgrim.

~John Bunyan (1628-1688) and others

Dear Lord and Father...

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind;
In purer lives thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.

In simple trust like theirs who heard,
Beside the Syrian sea,
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word
Rise up, and follow thee.

O sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with thee
The silence of eternity,
Interpreted by love!

Drop thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of thy peace.

Breath though the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire:
Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire,
O still small voice of calm!

~John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

Fire of God

Fire of God, thou sacred flame,
Spirit who in splendour came,
Let thy heat my soul refine,
Till it glows with love divine.

Breath of God, that swept in power
In the pentecostal hour,
Holy breath, be thou in me
Source of vital energy.

Strength of God, thy might within
Conquers sorrow, pain, and sin:
Fortify from evil's art
All the gateways of my heart.

Truth of God, thy piercing rays
Penetrate my secret ways.
May the light that shames my sin
Guide me holier paths to win.

Love of God, thy grace profound
Knoweth neither age not bound:
Come, my heart's own guest to be,
Dwell for evermore in me.

~Albert Frederick Bayly