In Sleep Held Fast

The sleep floating through my mind, wafting over thoughts
Is the intoxicating odor of my Beloved, a last
Attempt to call His Beloved into His arms to be still and
Take rest from the load of care she wears about her
Neck, the yoke she cannot bear to part with.
The insufficient self knows it wrecks deprivation, but
Cursed to feed a mandrake-living earth with blood,
It toils endlessly, till falling back in a pile of dust,
It reaches its end and completion in a soul sleep.
Stumbling to the close of antoehr day, the endless
Crucifixion, drawing down to another grave as
Pitch black as the night-consuming starlight;
The dark veil of shame or rest descends, always
Entertaining within it, the Beloved’s hands to draw
Away His Bride to Himself, when she cannot resist—
She is no longer herself when Lost in His arms;
More fully so in the deep rest of dreams, only
Treated to know the first taste of the gift of blessed awarelessness
A quick glance of the numbing soul sleep which
Seems a solace to the life without cease, the peace
To the waking who toil in bitter outcast of heaven… light
Shod in futile works of her hands, being pricked and prodded
And giving over each treasure she had, becoming desolate as
A beggar, spiritless tramp, numb and broken as street-corner whore just to
Live a breath longer, eat a bite of bread, bask in the sun…
But what living death, to continually hate what must be done
And yet continue it instead, ignoring weeping, crumbling soul…
Cries of body inside the self-wrought case of
Coffin-like pride which masks all pain
And allows more exploitation of the Bride—yet from the
Bridegroom’s touch, these shameful things cannot be hidden..
He weeps to embrace faithless Bride in His arms, the joy
Of lost lover, tears mingling as the pain
Is felt strong, flowing from the heart she has broken
Again, her own heart—begging now to please
Be relieved of this sin, hiding, not breathing, He uncovers
Her shame, with His kiss and His touch…
She shrinks back from the love without lust, burning in grief
Even to hear His voice call her name, it resurrects trembling
Knowing of love, conflicting with guilt from actions before.
This night all is forgiven, the love breaks old chains,
She is set free into His embrace again, and in sleep,
He holds her fast to His breast.

 

A reflection while weary

Sweet Savior, I am always wandering inside;
One idea is refused from following its natural
Course to the next—I cannot trace out
My fears because I no longer feel them.
Stepping out into the black of night seems
To me a welcome veil to hide this carcess of me.
Yet You have made me bright, given me joy—
A blazing lamp, consumed, not destroyed…
Burning beyond what I can feel in myself,
The heat smoldering in my chest from ceaseless flickers
Becomes stilling embers—glowing low enough
To lull the the outward wanderer, falling into weary haze—
To the side of its gentle warmth.
Sleep, sleep, your angels of grace, monitoring
The overuse of this little heart and body
Sensing that to straing and push itself much farther
Much longer would be less than favorable to the
Condition of strength and stability I find
In Your rest. In sleep You come upon me—
Unexpected, and there I lie, clutched fast
In Your cradling arms—my Sleepless Watcher,
To be guarded, lest in fit of dream I struggle
From Your grasp and tread a weary road
Yet again; wakefulness is my journey, so
I think, each morning unwilling eyelids open.
Eagerness floods me—to do all at once, here and now.
Like a trusting infant I lie in perfect stillness
When Your hand of Exhaustion falls on my
Strength, crushing it to bits with a wave of
Your smallest finger. Each night, a breaking,
A slow unraveling at times—but each night
I cannot but give in to be undone, that I
Might  be held powerles and given strength.
You have been gentle but firm for all the
Resisting I protest with: stimuli that fuels
The body without heart to will it;
Fueling the mind without body to sustain it….
It’s a disembodiment of the natural state
Of soul when my sunkissed cheeks whish
To court the full dance of the night also.

 

Death passed by, my heart fell out

Restless when still empty, though filling, the pits eaten by all our disorders
Into our lives rotting, infecting the soles our journey treds itself out on,
The tireless time, churning one more moment after the ever next…
Always the same continuing to be different, we
Have no means of distinguishing except for the flickle
Plunk of each feeling we abstract from our thick, complex, composite web of feeling…
From the whole we drop into the crystal glass of introspection to analyse
How the shallow waters are churning out of the bottomless depths we
Believe to be inside us, hidden from most touch
By the fact of living in-world, not feeling all the surrounding spirits, the witnessing
Cloud enlivening these fleshy bits of dust; we dig in nails
And scrape forth blood, the ruddy, pain-seeping material essence of being alive..
Texture of our breath, blood which inflates all.
We hope or imagine to experience, tanicle of invisible…
We fall into faith, then it is all we blissfully know until
Skimmed by our skepticism, we are reduced in our substance
And catch a breath of airy, gnostic lightness-in-being, souls fly like angels
Bourne up in wings towards the being-in-death, state we run from or
Thill in horror to embrace, waltzes like our sister, dancing in grace
Spinning to the pace of black hole dance, drawing all in; are we hopeless?

But I, I encounter my death all day long, in and out
Of the very body in which I’m formed in and given to—
My work of the perpetually living, to continue the struggling
To find the love for the disfigured and the disabled…
The home of six daughters I care for each evening,
Opening my heart to bleed in their behavior ust a
Bit beyond my comfort or pity of embracing
Empathy standing-with in the  pain, providing
Barriers and guards I could not erect for myself to
Insulate their peace—a peace which I too covet
And can’t find in my own contrivance and self…
My longings are slakeless, and wrap together
In horrific desire of adventure unto death.
Death greets me on the streets when I step beyond
My cloister of streets into open city, where buildings masking,
Compounded on buildings are interwoven by a constant human traffic;
Heartless or heartbroken, each face a mask, a veil to hide
The heart worn under each gaze, guile in each eye, longing deeper…
Giving away or holding closer when pressed up to death
On this fact of existence called city: street-living or housed.
The dozen beggars, for each walker like me, overwhelms
The heart’s supply of pity , empty sentiment of cash-giving, and threatens
To unleash all that which can do no more than emptily ache, wide-eyed glances
And speechless, hides the natural smile, the torch of love’s brightness,
In grief; a truer lover would move to death and act in joy.

It seems to easy to train in systematic desensitization
This soul to face death all day long, and to reject
Each hint of self-slaughter, of weakness or need
Which could stir a memory or regurgitate old guilt
And threaten the gaudy, falce placidity I’ve created
With the howling prophecy of truth; you’ve already begun the
Massacre, finish the killing or repent beyond, to resurrection.
My stiff stride reveals the dead man in me,
Still with an unnatural death, allowing my hasty
Existence to haunt the mind and torture the heart
Wracking beyond past old guilt to accept normality as loss;
To settle for less, to keep my heart from opening
And blossoming into a flower of grace…
Some dark ring I invited to fall around a glitterig aura,
Not my own, but the love You shone in me.

My lips are blackening with the wretching taste,
The revolting feel of my dreams handed over to You;
To stop and compare at the end of each day… too late
To catch up and seize the vagrant desires I hoped
To capture and surrender beyond chance of regrasp.
You know I fear most…myself, for in each weary rest
I fall back into forgetfulness… just to wallow
In the muck of broken trusts.
The grieving families I come to, clothed in Your cross,
Offering to try and bear up their griefs and their losses…
Leaving me with holes in my hands, unable to held,
Depressing anxieties like thorns, in my brow…
My heart thoroughly  pierced, the heart fell out with water and blood.
My feet ware holes through bones too… the walking and travel,
Far less, my pocketbook burns to a crisp,
Looking for an opportunity to give, but without
Any graces of my own to pour from my heart… only Yours.

Shallow, so shallow, six feet under unto death…
Yet more a loss, to lose love… cutting away a part of the heart.
I give my heart away so feely… Jesus Lord,  that I
Lose my loves every day. I ache and I pray:
Another cry to You, emptying through and through…
For if not You, I fill me with mangy horror
Of worry and regret; make me anew each
Morning as the psalmic prayers promise.
Here’s all the howling horror of death I carry, now,
I’m giving it to You, kiss me in peace.

 

Jesus, in the world-dark

I rejoice, a Bride, unwedded, but wearing the ring I consecrated to You, I am Yours already;
Jesus, lover of my soul, listen to the musings of a girl, given over in her soul to irrationally loving You; I knew it was ridiculous, the more I confess it, the more true… and the more incomprehensible seems my love for You; You no more tangible than the ghosts I keep dreaming
Up into the realms of heaven, the unseen, the imagined, but becoming more and more real.
What would You look like, stepping out on our earth… stepping into these fragile vessels,
Of dust and of earth, as we give You ourselves… or as we try to hand off clay jars..
Over to Potter; Father, do you see me, Your daughter, as I’m drifting away,
And sailing all through life in a rocking bed of dreams, Your lullaby of mystery—
Fasting through a day to capture like morning dew Your sweetness… entranced and enamoured
By the overwhelming presence—Your kiss on the mouth, the first I have tasted,
You touch in my hands, My heart only races and runs in the song of my inscreasingly hungry
Mind… to just stand and behold You, to worship, to find in You beauty the fullness of longing;
The words flood my mind, and my spirit begins falling, sinking away crushed and dashed
Onto You; I’ve broken, I’ve lost all, but it’s a hopeful romance, so different You are, my Lover,
While fading I grasp You, You cradle me while all others would attempt to receive and yet
Since I could not relinquish my hold on the gift I needed so badly to give, away from myself,
Too toxic to live with. You inebriate my soul with one wift of Your love… offering yourself
To drink, Your Holy blood offered in a chalice, from the wound in Your side…
Water of life ever-flowing to drench me with life, to fill me with brimming care.
The weight veil I keep covering with, the lacey flowers encircling my brow, like a crown
Woven to give You the glory of my head, the covering for which I bow my heart and relinquish
My might, the wavering strength I had overcome by the light in Your face that my heart sees
When to You all is given, light catches in my gaze and fills up the eyes of my soul.
As I am stilled before You, a day in Your company alone with others…
My soul becomes emptied with longing and desire, as I drink in Your wonder.
The pslams gladden my heart and overcome with miraculous hunger I place all of my time
In the moments of today, back into Your heart, and invested I long to stay hidden in the cleft
Of Your arms… I’m still seeking the face in the dark, the knowing of Your in a world
Where we cant feel You… but in each other, in imagination… teach us what it means
To create Your love in this world, here… this heaven on earth, love without strife.
Be with us, Jesus, come into our hearts, find a new home here, the kind we’ll never
Be content with and allow us to give all our hearts away, and into each others’ hands,
Entrusting to You the inmost of our being. Make me after You.

 

Rambling Prayer in Words of my Own

Mary, if you’re listening… and Jesus, please tune in as well..
I’m getting into fights over you, for what
Racing up the cusp on the hill, with every last breath… I swear…
Ill never flee from You again, but in the rush at its peak, into the
Valley faster I plunge, into the darkness of hell, into a bitter fight
Where I hide my face from the sun, where I run into the night..
Hoping to purge away my sins from the light of Your face, Your love
And bring an end to this body of death, this prayer of the dead
Who remain living, like festering cavities inward turning.
Running so hard, I can’t stop running so hard… can never have the
Conversations that need to occur never really happen, yet the conversation is constant;
I have no control, I sleep and I wake at the will of a body that is connected to me,
Giving expression to my soul… this body of death, the one I am always using;
To imitate the saints will bring about a racing grave of hell for suicide—
I’ve lost all, no control when I sleep and when I wake, my body like a worn down machine
Ceases without a continuous flow; into me ceased, out of me… all dried up.
All my insides spent in hollowing themselves out, burnt fully to a crisp…
I become a hollow shell, a voiceless whisper, a dying drone—
Running again through nigh streets alone; Here I find my language, prayers carried away
And drowned under the winds- a cover of deep darkness into which I bathe all my sins
As I create purgatory and renounce your bright joy again.
I’ve turned to Your Mother in a last attempt to impore some change or redemption
When I can’t seek the Sun- but radiant with Your glory, her Holy Son—
I am struck breathless by her, blowing wafting clouds, over the moon, dropping my pace…
Calling down tired rain to wash away a baptismal grace I walked for, so long.
The teetering, dizzy and unsteady steps of my route beytray the long hours of concentration
I gave to training myself to do all but fall—no cupid, no seduction, now…
No movement at all—I can’t give into You.
I just don’t know how, to release this tightened grip on the ever-nearing now…
The momentary precision, the flood of conversation which, overwhelming, drives me out
Day by day—no surprises or mystery that I can’t control for—all is calculated and planned.
No falling for me, though the best thing might be to surrender to You… as I think it through..
I realize I am wondering the opposite way of my own heart’s longing, the desire to
Abandon, to be caught in the sweet surrender and relinquish in helpless bliss the life
I cannot maintain anyways. It is the desperation of broken body tearing up heart
Which leads my cry as plunging into the depths of whirling spiritual adrenaline, I forget
The truth of my over-exhaustion, because spiritual bodies I have imagined after,
Have no kidneys to indicate over use and abuse of God’s holy temple, the death by desire.
Submission, surrender, ridiculous… I’m struggling, fidgeting, fighting beneath the weight
Of You whom I ache for, whom I invited into me… You tear my heart out, with the endless
Embrace in which I am held, You bit into my heart, You devoured me, and emptied all
The blood coursing in my veins so it could be You who filled me. Now that I left You,
What’s to hold back, I am empty now, its all gone, I was vulnerble once, and then lost
When I abandoned the first Lover I knew to lend my heart, my soul to another…
I was a channel for grace, a cup to be poured out and run over, never empty, but
You never completed the surgery; I guess I was scared after all, that first time I dared desire
And want to give myself only to You; I felt creeping in the human ache of undesirable otherness
Doing what I hate and perpetuating the misery that pulls us apart, how I love You.
All the others whom I’ve given, who have taken without invitation… that intimacy we once had, nothing matters again—lithium tears fall like raining bullets, ringing into hell’s ears
Like cascading marbles, drained out of me, into the depths of love’s endless sea for Leviathan to eat, though I have tempted him to eat me, the son of the devil, God’s mightiest beast…
Deep calling to deep over the roaring waterfalls of my draining heart.
And girl talking, self tormenting like a cognitively sick, invalid in self-restraining garb…
Detrimental, the talk that rots and eats and tears us to bits… the open jaws, the hollow voice,
The demon heart, the feeling-less choice… the vapor wafting out, nothing inside but rasping
Gasping and coughing words, caught to be lost, hid to be heard… and in the beyond-empty
Void in the case of this body, this shell… the dead soul rattling its skeletal keys…
Am I that Bride, unwedded, You want me?

 

A prayer of my own with words my heart is singing, borrowed…

A prayer of my own with borrowed words….

Careless, I am reckless
I’m a wrong-way-travelin’-slowly-unraveling shell of a man
Burnt out, I’m so numb now
That the fire’s just an ember way down in the corner of my cold, cold heart

Lord, this time I’ll make it right, here at the altar I lay my life
Your kingdom come but my will was done, my heart is broken as I…

Cry, like so many times before
But my eyes are dry before I leave the floor, oh Lord
I try but this time, Jesus, how can I be sure I will not lose my follow through
Between the altar and the door

Here at the altar, oh my world so black and white
How could I ever falter
What You’ve shown me to be right

I’m trying so hard to stop trying so hard
Just let You be who You are
Lord, who You are in me
Jesus, I’m trying so hard to stop trying so hard
Just let You be who You are
Lord, who You are in me

Oh Lord, I Cry…. (Altar and the Door by Casting Crowns).

But Jesus, just letting you be? What does that mean? Here’s the heart worn ragged…

Somewhere between the hot and the cold
Somewhere between the new and the old
Somewhere between who I am and who I used to be
Somewhere in the middle, You’ll find me

Somewhere between the wrong and the right
Somewhere between the darkness and the light
Somewhere between who I was and who You’re making me
Somewhere in the middle, You’ll find me

Just how close can I get, Lord, to my surrender without losing all control

Fearless warriors in a picket fence, reckless abandon wrapped in common sense
Deep water faith in the shallow end and we are caught in the middle
With eyes wide open to the differences, the God we want and the God who is
But will we trade our dreams for His or are we caught in the middle
Are we caught in the middle

Somewhere between my heart and my hands
Somewhere between my faith and my plans
Somewhere between the safety of the boat and the crashing waves

Somewhere between a whisper and a roar
Somewhere between the altar and the door
Somewhere between contented peace and always wanting more
Somewhere in the middle You’ll find me

Just how close can I get, Lord, to my surrender without losing all control

Lord, I feel You in this place and I know You’re by my side
Loving me even on these nights when I’m caught in the middle (Casting Crown’s “Somewhere in the Middle”)

But Jesus, all of this from loving You

 

what we are willing to do for love, a contemplation on heaven

the thoughts about heaven I have been graced with this week have lifted my soul to a memory it forgot… like a waking dream… as if I have been asleep and it has had to be a dream that re-aroused my joy and wonder. Break. All very abstract, I’m sure. But one thing I solidly agreed with in medieval class was that abstraction is part of our way of understanding things. But if course, those things must be reunited and found again in the world they come from. Break. So begin stream of consciousness. Break. Mmm. Microwave pizza, its rare to sit and be still and eat something and actually savor it. This rushing about in life never really leaves time for digestion, that of thoughts or that of food, regardless of their light-and-fluffiness, or the gravity of the weight they place in the mind-stomach. Beak. So one for the digestive system which I just ate and am now savoring as a fine wine before figuring out where in the mind to store it and how to metabolize it into action: the fact that the place where I work operates the way it does because all of us love a person… and in that, that person, that love and the surrounding devotion, I see Jesus.

So before we talk about the abstraction of Jesus, we must talk about this love first. It struck me conversing with my coworker on the evening shifts… we are all working here, the assistant director, the full time staff, the part time staff, not because this is a good thing to do… not because we have a moral obligation to care for our fellow human beings regardless of disability; not because we love our client-children, though a lot of us do… because we met someone who is walking the hard purgatory of life, and Jesus is seeping through him. It was the job that first attracted me when I applied, I had no idea of who I would be working with, what kind of coworkers and bosses, but the clientele. Yet when I got here and began to be trained, discovering the magic of love our director had worked into the lives of the six women who live at the home I work in, the care with which he erected a stronghold of peace for them in an increasingly insane world… the way he gave up his health and life and even family to care for something he believed in… giving peace to six women. Maybe he saw it as a penance for something in life, maybe at conversion his heart was so swept up in the pursuit of God that he ran headlong, endlessly until part of his very soul had unravelled and been lost in the cause. He poured himself like a drink offering and now, we who are carrying on his cause for peace, because we too have come under the spell of some sort of heavenly love. My ‘little’ sisters I work with, who teach me so much with their struggles with a disease just to be at peace in the day, with themselves, with the world around them… so alike to my own. But here came a person who had walked the Ecclesiastes road, meaningless, meaningless he might have said and maybe I would have believed him, I havent seen enough life yet. We hold his soul, in our hands, one that committed itself to the lives of nine others, and there, it has spent its time, giving without knowing how to cease.

Jesus, I think You enchant with that same kind of love… a kind of love that draws around itself a centrifugal force from whose charm none of us really wish to escape. We flock around You, when we get a glimpse of You on that cross… we see what You’re dying for and we know we love that very same thing.. the beautiful, corrupted, that you again made beautiful because You never stopped loving it… but then again, neither did we. We couldn’t stop believing in the invisible beauty, so we ignored it and shut ourselves up to it until we fell in love with You; and looking at You, we see it all happening again: You put the very flesh off Your back and blood from Your veins into us, the people of Yours world. You have up more to try and love us all than simply that pile of clothing we stripped off of You with greedy hands; You exhausted Yourself to the point of nakedness, staked down and helpless before us in sacrifice, we took up what You were bringing to earth. A grace we were forced to accept. It made sense to us, we clustered round and saw the life dripping out of Your heart with each beat… and the world lapping it up at Your feet. It was then we understood the grace, in the core of our being… we were there drinking in the life too, and watched the Spirit leave You and enter us more fully than we’d had it before. It takes a giver to receive… the giving up of a life to bear much fruit.

SO I watch the river of life flowing around my feet and cant help but wonder how we missed Your sacrifice. We live with the reality of love everyday, and yet we are so befuddled by it… giving up our lives for each other always seems just ‘the least I can do…’ but what more is there to give? I guess there is my weakness. My fear. My trembling and hiding heart. I watch You Jesus, already emptied, take these inside to, consume them…. And let them bleed out with the rest of Your blood, transformed into life, caught up in a chalice and celebrated with the reoccurring discovery of more of Your flesh and substance in the grace of the everyday. I think, Jesus, we are starting to step into heaven. If in this home where I work, the giving up of one man’s life can give peace to a few, and the love of him can inspire many, what about the gift of all of our selves to You? I think we have already begun to bring heaven down to earth, purging ourselves of the selfish attatchment to the very life within our bloods. To hold is to kill, to have is to give. Your kingdom come, Your will be done… on earth as it is in Heaven.

 

For the Hope of Heaven

Sometimes, forgetting becomes the way of life, too ordinary and common, the purpose falls away, until we are willing to remember, rehope, relearn, and regain;
You placed in me a soul that knows You, an ache that requires You as a satiation..
The yearning for heaven… to know what it is and why it seems so far away…
Why Your face and the presence above us, present with us… somewhere beyond and untouchable? There is a disconnect in the gaze of my soul, the upturned eyes and the hollow stare, of eyes in front, catching glimpse of the shifting shadows of the world around me.
Sleeping in a dream, hypnotized by the rush of life surrounding every activity,
I lost my trust, and therefore my hope… my faith faded into the past and You were only a memory of a dream; a distracting dream at the very least, and enchanting,
Beguiling my soul away from the world surrounding, removing the focus from life itself.
My eyes growing misty, I lost sight of the world, I diluted my thoughts, my interaction slowed
And finally ceased, the spinning, the faces all blended into one, and individuality was lost.
For the love of God, I abandoned the world and then lost sight of You;
Abstracting You into an idea of love, I fell into You deeply or the idea of You.
But here I woke up again this morning and the joy of You flooded me again…
The tension increased and dissolved at once between You and the people of the world…
You teach me to love, only when others draw near..
The closeness is still separation, as my love unlaces, You undo me to make me full,
Break me to make me whole, because mended I could disperse Your love.
Paint into me the hope of heaven again, seeking to walk as You have led, to give
And to love after the fashion you laid, and giving up heavy heart to ceaseless praise.

 

Give me O Lord, A Handmaiden’s Heart Like Mary

May my lips speak Your praise all the days of my life, for You continually create a new song in my heart, sigh after mourning, a gasp after a laugh;
May You be the first word on my lips, the constant meditation of my heart, eliciting from withing the core of my being all that wells up to worship You;
May You be the source of my delight, drawing me into a dance where all creation worships You, every child-like, upturned heart praising Your name.
Let me receiving within my being a new heart, restored and recreated to encompass all Your light—as the moon reflects back to the sun with a brilliance that illumines the darkness, I year to show out Your love;
Let me hold open a heart to You, Your handmaiden for Your service, losing myself in wonder and releasing the inhibitions that I erect to withhold my surrender,
Let me loose the feebly anchoring ropes which I have bound about my heart to prevent rupture and loss wrecked by love and joy.
Only let me be like Mary, awed at the multitudes of angels You subtly slip into my life… let me revel like Hannah, magnifying Your name from the depths of soul, rejoicing in You my savior.
Only let me finally let go, and be the earthen vessel You made me as, not patching with unfit material the cracks in my sides, stopping up that life blood of Your heart;
Only teach me to surrender my fears and be content to be as You made me, running some still path of transformation as You teach me my own limits.
Hear my simple prayer, from a heart too weighty to let go in You light—You made us to bear Your burdens which are only heavy in our strength;
Hear the voiceless ache of my heart to learn the secret joy of submission and gingerly lay myself before You without constantly reclaiming the very gift I sought so hard to give;
Hear my confusion, a void noise, deeper than black-hole mystery, sucking out my life like a spectre feeding on my own soul… stealing away the joy in my life.
Return to me memory of this world of the living, for in You I have chosen  to trust beyond reason, even as I seek to substantiate my own weakness;
Return the hope and joy I once had in You, in the midst of darkness, which enlivened my entire world… turning away from a more morbid fixation.
Return the words of deliverance You once taught me, for you set me free and I returned to captivity, though I seek again the gaze of Heaven.
You have placed me in this world, to learn and to love, to feel and to think , to give and to receive—may I always hold open my hands to receiving and not fear the giving.
You were the first love of my heart, and now reigning as my idol, I understand why You decreed no images, for Your face is more varied than on one to fix the heart;
You again are the one I’ve returned to, in dissipating whirlwind, to just stillness again… and in there I know to be rest and contentment.
Send me, Lord Jesus, Your handmaiden is waiting.

 

Liturgy, why limit?

How big is your God? I love that question… its one whose answer changes continually… yet always remains the same, encompasses the very activities we do and call religion, our “conversation” (i.e., prayer) with God, and our engagements of faith with one another. God’s place of relationship in our lives is as big as we allow it to be. A lot of people throw around the phrase “God is a gentleman,” referring to God not forcing relationship upon any of us, but once we feel a true need in ourselves, tap into the slakeless thirst for Him, we are totally enslaved. And we desire to be so. Yet, we live in a fact of life that is full of extremes, of many varying positions, many good choices, many options that affect our ordering and composition of life. God may be the captor of our hearts, but the amount He does in us, with us through us does entirely depend on how much we submit to His life, that life of heaven on earth… and because we are mortal (as I am slowly learning… and coming to terms with my own nature), we are limited in what we can do.

I am not Jesus. But the Spirit of Jesus lives in me…why should it be any other than Him who sets the standards? Yet look at Jesus, he took rest, He didn’t heal everyone, He opened His heart to everyone.The Jesus I know is this person who listens to every story of any heart that unfolds itself to Him… there is a sort of invitation in His presence to come close and rest your head against His knees if you happen to be too weak to rise, or to run energetically with Him into the dawn of a new situation. This invitation Jesus is constantly extending unnerves me to the very core of my soul, inspite of a relentless desire to fly up from my place, wherever I am, catch His hand, and follow Him into the adventures of a different sort of day. Yet the vulnerability it takes to let go of where I am to grasp hold of the hands He extends to me shakes me… terrifies me: What wonderous love is this, my soul, that caused the Lord of bliss to bear the dreadful curse for my soul? I know how undeserving I see myself to be… and He sees whatever the truth of my being is, and its constant change, draws me by the slender connection we have formed over my heart.

This wild and restless heart, this seat of my soul, wrapped up in will and full of stubborn desires… what will tame it into the stillness required to run away with my Jesus? Submission being chosen obedience, what would cause that which resists, dodging and weaving through the labyrinths of live, dancing walls… the people and commitments I have made to each individual, avoiding  the facing of Jesus, in spite of how much I desire it. He catches my chin and siezes me gaze, and my heart can avoid him no more. What will bring me to You, Jesus, when all my life is running, but running away, because there is an end of the running in You?

I have been stilled by You in the mystery of litrugy… the song of heaven woven and spun by the chorus of earth. I remember the first time I was going to mass… it was at a Civil Air Patrol event, I had recently turned 13… cadet conference, I believe. I had heard words like litrugy then, but in the unruly, untamed passion of my little heart, I resisted any sort of structure. Who would want to be part of something that was rote, redundant, repetitive… boring. My first mass, I still remember the content of the homily: spiritual leprosy, from one of the gospel passages, Matthew, I think, of the leper who returned to thank Jesus for healing Him. We are all infected with spiritual leprosy, the priest told us… how many are willing to return for the thanks. Litrugy, to me then, took on the character of that return to thanksgiving. So our music wasn’t stellar, a couple off key boys and me, cracking out a hymn…but the prayers which I first encountered and learned were prayed all over the world struck me. I witnesses a mystery in that continuation… the same prayers, same pattern, but that pattern seemed to expand, like a song with chords that continue throughout the entire piece, but are complicated by additional notes.

Attending mass again (the only real litrugy I have been too on any consistent basis, having once been to a Byzantine liturgy and a Lutheran liturgy)… I was struck by the same familiar mystery, but since my first exposure, my curiousity was a little thirstier. I watched a bread and cup ceremony, invocation, that had the same matter (with the addition of alcohol) to a service that happened anywhere from once a month regularity to scattered occurance at other churches I’d attended. Why everyday? Why so central? Why did the doctrine of substance changing at some point matter so much? Why pit this at the middle of everything, and rest upon it as a mark of something requiring an innitiation? My soul brimmed with questions then, and now too. I began to continue my re-visiting to the mass. There was something same about it each time… that same thing, whatever it was, I didn’t know at first… but it was something… someone I knew my soul was absolutely craving… and always present in a sense I couldn’t find elsewhere, in a way every other place I went to seemed empty. I think I met Jesus in a different way. I think in that litrugy, He let me kiss Him; He let me be still, and consoled and encouraged my soul to a further holiness. Not every time, but the potential was always there… but my heart did not always offer a great expectation of His advent.

I learned that litrugy was more than the mass. And I hungered further with a greater wonder as I learned more. I was asked, why, if I can see Jesus anywhere, feel Him anywhere, would I limit myself to that re-presentation, that set order of encountering my God? Limit? The prayers I have learned to say as I was increasing in the volume of my liturgical life came from one of the most dynamic sources of prayer: the Psalms. Learning that they fulfilled the needs of my life, the cries of my heart to God, that they traced the human events and decisions and provided words where I was speachless, I found myself falling in love with the Divine Office: there again, a set aside sacred time and place, where I begged Jesus to open my lips and receive my praise; where I long for a burning coal from the altar to be placed on my tongue and where I found created for me in the presence of my God and community a place to be still, and wait for my God to come. I love going to morning prayer and kneeling in the silent chapel before we begin… savoring the time with Him. He quiets my heart and restores my soul… giving me the space I need to wrestle out with Him His place in preeminance over the rest of the business in my life. In this liturgy, this ordering where I remove from what is familiar to be quiet, directed and focus, my Jesus walks with me into the stillest dance I could hope for, and begins to teach me rest, something I am absolutely incapable of on my own. Finding my resst restores my joy, and I am free to run and live with/in Him.