the last day

It ends.
And I feel nothing.
My thoughts are muffled by this white noise.
My feelings are shrouded in a formless fog.
No contour.
No context.
I am a mystery
even to myself.
I know nothing,
but this one desire
that I did not earn,
that I cannot have.
It blankets everything like a stifling ash,
turning the world to frozen gray.
I am clutched in its timeless vice.
Still I feel nothing.

It is a hard thing for me to learn patience because I am afraid, afraid that I will not accomplish all I wish to see done in my lifetime, afraid I will squander the one precious chance to live well.  It is my heart's deep desire to live well, fully, deeply, expansively, wholly, abundantly.
Your poems call me back from fear.  Your Scriptures gently remind me that you are life, the fullness of all my heart seeks, the depth of unexplored wonders, the expansiveness of all the stars, the wholeness of true oneness, the abundance of all that is and was and ever will be.
Teach me to live in the patient surrender of long knowing.  Teach me to be eternal.

Death is dry

drier than I expected

(Though I did not expect to die)

It leaches every last drop of joy and hope from my bones

and bleaches them white

white as death

I am decomposed

unmade from what I once was

I try to breathe

but even the air is laced with sand and dust

and death

I think that I cannot resist this death

the dying

this drying up of life

I relinquish my hope

to let it buried here with my bones

covered over in dust

blown by the wind in timeless death across this dry valley

…

But you,

you will not let me go

not even in death

The urgent pounding of your footsteps shakes the ground beneath my dead, dry bones

as you rush to kneel by my side

You brush the dust from off my face with gentle fingertips

Your strong arms lift me from the desert floor

in a warm embrace against your beating heart

You press me to your beating heart

the steady rhythm breaks the silence

You smell of life

of rain and things that grow

of thick, dark soil

You smell of clouds

of sunshine

of laughter

Drawing me closer, you place your lips against my own

and breathe into my body

you breathe your breath into my lungs

My dead heart stirs

It cannot be

the dead, they do not live again

Yet over my dead bones, sinews creep

across the sinew, muscle spreads

and over muscle, new flesh wraps like healing bandages

Through it all pumps blood and breath

in the steady rhythm of your heart

Our two hearts beat as one

I am restored

I am restored. 

“In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen.  You walk up the steps to the front door.  The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing.  For a second you catch a whiff of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for.  You are aware of the beating of your heart…The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens.  Advent is the name of that moment.”

-Frederick Buechner 

ashes and dust

ashes and dust

ashes and dust

ashes and dust

my hope does not die

it disintegrates

beneath words and wounds

ancient in their weight

life is slipping

eluding my grasp –

living slips away

leave me.

speak to me no more of hope

leave me to my dust and ashes

for all I taste now is bitterness

how many times must I trade my joy for pain?

how much sorrow can a soul withstand?

ashes and dust

ashes and dust

ashes and dust

ashes and dust

how long?

where is my salvation?

The moon watches peacefully,
clutched in the sleepy grasp
of a stirring morning
as I, too, am waking
to the coming dawn.

"Wherever you are, you are in the right place to begin."
~ Gretchen Rubin

It is the letting go of what does not matter,
what cannot change,
and the laying hold of what always matters,
what has never changed
but rather transforms.
It begins with surrender.