Let Your Heart Enter
Poetry Friday
Beloveds,
Sometimes I fall in this deep hole of wonder. Is that what it is? Life seems impossible and unreal and yet it is. I think my brain is so small and its workings so much a mystery. How can chemicals and ashes come to be me and you? Each of us carrying our own light and darkness, our own joys and sorrows. Each of us carrying something for others in our connection to one another.
May whatever you are carrying be light in weight as we go through this season of Holy Week. And for those that worship differently may your burdens be lightened also. Be kind and gentle with yourself. Give grace to yourself and others.
Peace,
Jace
You Don’t Know Me
I am clouds
that move in pure light
and in total darkness.
I am fire
that turns
to a blizzardly deep freeze.
I am liquid
that evaporates, vanishes,
and fills every tiny crevice.
I am silent
and I am ALL
that you can ever hear.
I am nothing.
I am all that is.
Jace Belz 3/21/24 Her Hands, Her Hair
Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard,
anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair.
—John 12.3
God does not promise to save you from suffering,
or to remove you from this life and its jagged edges.
God shares your space in it, offers blessing in it,
anointing your nights as well as days.
The cross is no scheme to get you off a hook somewhere;
it’s the Beloved, with you in your pain.
Let the Beloved pour herself out on your troubles,
let her pour out a jar of tears for you,
wipe your aching feet with her hair.
Let the whole house of you be filled
with the fragrance of God’s blessing.
Others don’t feel your pain but she does,
they will flee but she will be with you.
Lay before her your sorrows and your rage.
Feel her hands upon you, her hair, her heart.
You are in the holy of holies.
The world’s derision fades away outside the gate.
She looks at you with love
that will stay with you forever.
–Steve Garnass-Holmes
Onto a Vast Plane
You are not surprised at the force of the storm
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.
The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees’ blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit:
now it becomes a riddle again
and you again a stranger.
Summer was like your house: you know
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.
Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.
-Rainer Maria Rilke