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Lord, is that you talking to me?

Looking up

Lord,

It has been a long time since I entered your house and I turn away when someone starts talking to me about the bible. But you haven’t abandoned me yet, have you? Because just like that poem about footsteps in the sand, you are always there to carry me when I am too weak to stand.

I thought about you after I finished writing this post yesterday about listening to or paying attention to signs. I said it was LIFE sending the signs. Yes, I even said life was sending signs through the internet.  But it was really YOU wasn’t it? Oh i know I am just a hairline away from coming straight out and declaring myself an atheist, but I wouldn’t really mean that. I still believe in you, God, I really do. I just have a really bad aversion to salesmen and some of yours are the worst! Nothing personal, I know how hard it is to find good help these days.

But really, what I’m trying to say is THANK YOU. Thank you for not giving up on me even when I am ready to give up on you. Thank you for always showing me the signs and sometimes you’re not very subtle about it either. You know how I could be a little slow.

I’m learning to pay attention though and I’m learning to expect a sign from you whenever something is troubling me. I am learning to recognize the signs, even the ones that are not too clear or the ones that I don’t quite agree with. I am learning that the signals you give to tell me which way I should go are not always what I wish for, but I’m also learning to trust them. Sorry I’m a little slow like that. It’s that stubborn know-it-all in me, but you know that already; that’s why sometimes you send multiple signals and sometimes you stop just short of putting your message on neon signs with a big red X on it. But I’m learning, you won’t have to shout so loud or use bold and capital letters soon to get my attention.

This is holy week and Easter is on Sunday. Your devout followers have been going through the ritual of worshiping you, some of them for the last month! All I’ve done so far is contemplate what to have for Easter dinner and maybe boil some eggs. Well ok, I thought about coloring them too. Sorry about that, like I said, I’m not into the religious rituals thing. But you know I love you, right? You know that eventually all the decisions I make in life, I will make to honor you. Right?

Well this week, you’ll be proud of me because I turned the other cheek. I did it because of the signs you kept dropping on me just when I was letting ugliness and hate overcome me. And even when I decided to follow your signs, you just didn’t know when to stop! You still kept sending them! But that’s ok, because it made me feel better about forgiving. At least I didn’t feel too much like a doormat to be trampled on. I felt more like the welcome mat that people stepped on and saved dirt from tracking in the house.

So Lord, whatever it is that is being celebrated this Easter, your death or your resurrection, Happy that! And thanks again for not giving up on me. There is hope for me yet, I think.

j

Love Hurts

The summer sun went down on our love long ago
But in my heart I feel the same old afterglow
A love so beautiful in every way
A love so beautiful we let it slip away

We were all too young to understand to ever know
That lovers drift apart and that’s the way love goes
A love so beautiful, a love so free
A love so beautiful, a love for you and me

And when I think of you I fall in love again
A love so beautiful in every way
A love so beautiful we let it slip away

And when I think of you I fall in love again
A love so beautiful we let it slip away
A love so beautiful in every way
A love so beautiful we let it slip away

A LOVE SO BEAUTIFUL by Michael Bolton

Home is Wherever we Are

“Bloom wherever you are planted”

I once saw that quote on a wall hanging and I have taken it on as my own. Wherever I have gone, whoever I have been with, I’ve always tried to make the best of what I had right then and there. It’s a good mantra to live by, I think. It keeps me grounded.

But what to do, when the yearning for something you can’t have hits? Is there another wall hanging somewhere with something profound written on it to cure the green monster blues? Or is this one of those things that we just submit to and hope it abates? But what if you don’t want it to abate and your wanderlust is triggered and all you want to do is go? Go anywhere but where you are? What do you then?

HOME by Jack Johnson

I’ve got to get home there’s a garden to tend.
There’s fruit on the ground and the birds have all moved back
Into my attic with whistling static
When the young learn to fly I will patch all the holes up again.

Well I can’t believe that my lime tree is dead.
I thought it was sleeping, I guess it got fed up with not being fed
And I would be too.
I need food in my belly and hope that my time isn’t soon.

And so I’ll try to understand what I can’t hold in my hands
And wherever we are home is there too.
And if you could try to find it too ’cause this place is overgrowing
to whacks and gloom
Home is wherever we are if there’s nothing too.

In the back of house is trail that won’t end.
We’ve been walking so far that it grew back in
There’s no trail at all only grass growing tall
And I’ll get out my machete and battle with time once again,
But I’m bound to lose ’cause I’ll be damned if time don’t win.

I got to get home there’s a garden to tend
All the seeds from the fruit bear Eden
Begin their own family trees, teach them thank you and please
As they spread their own roots then watch the young fruit grow again
And this old trail will lead me right back to where it begins.

And so I’ll try to understand what I can’t hold in my hand
And whatever I find, I’ll find my way back to you.
And if you could try to find it too ’cause this place is overgrowing
to whacks and gloom.
Home is wherever we are if there’s nothing too

Always the WILDFLOWER

If being empty is what it takes to be balanced, then I don’t want to standstill. Give me all the sorrow and the joy and I will submit to love’s threshing floor…

“Wildflower”

Quiet hour
You have always been my wildflower
Showing up wherever beauty’s lost its way
Your heart must break

I was free
Until I heard the song you sang me to me
Pulling me away from everything I knew
To be with you

And everything I know just fades away
And every time you go it hurts me so
I don’t know why when I know we’re free
Free to fly

Here we are
Burning faster than the closest star
Falling back down to the Earth
I love you so it sometimes hurts

Closer still
You will find me standing on the hill
Waiting for you with my arms stretched open wide
Now, come inside

And everything I know just fades away
And every time you go it hurts me so
I don’t know why when I know we’re free
Free to fly

And everything I know just fades away
And when a wildflower grows it picks its space
And that’s the way it is when nature plays its lovely hand
We’ll understand everything

Everything, everything