write me a letter with your words upon it

words unwilling to bite my hand

or suck the feelings from my hampered smile

write, simply write and i'll know you're there

there where i fled when you chased me from your room

you were the dream of my haunted past

the stigma laying on my breath as i attempted to speak

what was i to do but run, run both to and from the...

you know what i mean as i hesitate to speak

somewhere down the road of our constant fleeing

we'll turn to look, to observe, to hold whom you're chasing

is it you, yourself, caught up in the the bog

trapped in the quagmire of our constant disappointments?

i want to know, to know because we're both at our end

and no one can heal us but us as we collapse on the floor

stretching for forgiveness with blood on our hands

*Reflections of Frederick Buechner:

  -Prayer is the sound made by our deepest aloneness.

  -People pray because they cannot help it.  In one way or another, I think, all people pray.

  -Christ never promises peace in the  sense of no more struggle and suffering.

  -His own life speaks loud of how, in a world where there is little love, love is always lonely.

  -...if there really is a God who has this power to heal, to make whole, then it is wise to be very cautious indeed because if you go to him for  healing, healing may be exactly what you will receive, and are you entirely sure that you want to be be healed?

  -It is a wise man who bewares of God bearing gifts.

my tears stood cowardly this eve

afraid to fall even in the night

while the children's ghost rose from the developing pan

peering at me 'neath the darkroom light

their shadows lay in the moment of my mind

as it dragged memories before my eyes

their voices distanced by the grasses of the field

as if kidnapped from my ears

*We raise children to let them go.

*Nothing is as simple as we'd like to make it.

*Reflections of Frederick Buechner:

  -What is the ultimate motive that underlies the unending movement of our lives?

  -To be a saint is to  work and weep for the broken and suffering of the world, but it is also to be strangely light of heart in the knowledge that there is something greater than the world that mends and renews.

  -To be  saint is to be a little out  of one's mind, which is a  very good thing to the be a little out of from time to time.  It is to live a life that is always giving itself away and yet is always full. 

  -...however inanely and blindly we are seeking the kingdom of Heaven, and in the damndest places, literally, it is also seeking us.  Because it is our secret purpose to become saints, it is God's unsecret purpose to make us saints.

  -To live is to leave, that is all.

my heart sits

heavy  

tons of life

pulling

into earth

waiting

the crush

of my body

wanting freedom

to grow

*Wherever you are, I'll be there, sometime, after you.

*Reflections of Frederick Buechner:

-...as  in every human enterprise, there is a good deal of self in it too - the lure of adventure, of becoming known as the kind of person who does interesting things, and so on - but of course most of them know this perfectly well themselves, and yet they follow along anyway because the voice that we hear over our shoulders never says, "First be sure that your motives are pure and selfless and then follow me."

-So when later on the voice says, "Take up your cross and follow me," at least part of what is meant by "cross" is our realization that we are seldom any less than nine parts fake.

-He (Jesus) is the one we are free to follow or not to follow, the one we begin to know fully only by following.  As we follow, we become, such as we are, his church, which is to say his body - a weak thing in most ways, half-hearted and of little faith, but full of hope for all that - and the only body that he has in this world, the only hands and feet to do his work.  And such is this power that even through us others may be led to follow too.

My days speed quicker than light

set'ling the queries of doubt

closing in for the snatch

hurling me through life

So pull me, black-hole

upward beyond the sky

beyond its flickering gas

into the stars of the milky way

Falling up toward the stars

and down some spout from earth

I fly beyond sister death

in a motion towards abundant Life

I float with a propelled spirit

toward the stratospheric lands

that trust me toward God

toward the Presence awaiting all

*Reflections of Frederick Buechner:

  -You do not come first to understand a person fully and then to love him(her), but love comes first , and then it is out of the love that understanding is born.

  -Faith is the word that describes the direction out feet start moving when we find that we are loved.  Faith is stepping out into the unknown with nothing to guide us but a hand just beyond our grasp.