Dear friends,

Today I offer you something a little different for our journey together through Lent. Over the past few months, I have been wrestling with a deeper call to be God’s alone. There have been questions I’ve had to ask all over again (Can I really trust God with my life?).  There have been things I’ve had to grieve including not having my own family.  And there has been joy and the richness of discovering God meeting me in my emptiness and longing.

Back in January, I decided to take that place of struggle as the starting place for a creative project. It’s easy for me to get stuck in my head, so I decided to carry my cell phone with its little camera in my pocket when I went on my morning runs and see whether there were images that spoke into the struggle. Then I sat with the images and my emotions and Scripture and allowed poetry to become, as Kathleen Norris says, a form of Lectio Divina, or Sacred Listening, an attempt to listen deeply and respond to God.

I offer you the result. Your journey—through Lent and through life—will be different than mine. But perhaps as you move slowly through the story below there will be a picture or a line that will speak into your own journey of asking the hard questions and finding yourself loved and letting go and becoming more deeply God’s. Or perhaps seeing this will encourage you to tuck your own camera in your pocket and watch for the ways that God wants to meet you in the world around you.

With my love and prayers as we continue this journey with Jesus toward the cross and resurrection.

Carolyn

God’s Alone

Swings sit

unstirred

stirring silent fog into

hidden winds

and unpoured rain.

Chains crossed,

hugs hang

hollow. Sun’s steps shimmer wet

where willows weep

on holy soil.

        

Naked,

gnarled twigs

finger clouded heaven

in longing—

or in reckless thanksgiving?

 

Shameless,

she cups

naked limbs, bends bareness

into welcome.

He enters.

 

Spoken light

pierces

fearful void, gentling chaos.

Profound mystery:

“The two shall be. . .”

Sun bursts

fog’s wisps,

strength knowing weakness;

earth’s dust

takes flame.

Winds wind

blinding hair

golden around stability;

bind flesh to bone,

glory to fragility.

Weeping light

circles,

mingling trickles into a joy-seeking

cascade

of witness.

Tangled

bentness

is drawn upward, lit,

her longing

touching His.

Sun sings

where rain lingers

“Arise, come, my beautiful one,

come, my beloved,

with me.”

________________

Notes: (Numbers indicate picture/stanza number)

2. This stanza held a beautiful aha moment for me. In observing the sun shimmering on the wet sidewalk under the weeping willows and in writing those last lines, I all of a sudden came to see that my grief was holy ground, not something I needed to push past or rush through, but a place where God was present and wanting to meet me.

4. This is often the only choice we have — to open the emptiness to Jesus and let Him fill it.

5. Gen 1:1-3; John 1:1-14; Eph 5:31-32

6. This is the one photo that was taken prior to the start of this project, and with a different camera.

2 Cor 4:6-12; 2 Cor 12:7-10; Ex 3:2-4; Acts 2:3-4

“Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.” – From the Desert Fathers

7. 2 Cor 4:16-18; Eze 37:1-14

8. Heb 12:1-3 (in context of Heb 11)

9. Heb 12:1-2

10. Song of Songs 2:10-13