The Passing of the Shadow

In the gloaming
across the sere grass
I see a shadow roaming
up the hill, across the loam
I see the dark shape pass.

Golden evening light
has given way
to misty twilight,
the shadow's flight—
or was it descent?—lost in grey.

Who was it
walked that hill?
Who was it
passed by without seeing—
the porch, the cat sleeping still?

And who, indeed,
let their shade-self walk
across the bare grass's screed,
sanding their shadow-feet
upon stem and stalk, root and rock?

The rambler merged
into the falling night,
not changing form, purged
of his soul, but submerged
into a deeper dark, without light...

Light, making stark
edges upon stiff grass,
cutting a shadow-leaf upon bark,
Light, making known the dark
and bidding it to pass.

There Must be More. . .

PC: Brian Masbaugh (slacklinemedia.com)

I want the world to be different. . .

I want to respond in kindness every time. To have enough of God's love in me to always be ready to give to others. I want fear to evaporate. For old-fashioned values to be held by everyone. And I want to not get hung on one side of a dichotomy or the other. I want to see this life and this world bigger. To see possibilities. To know how to walk the balance of hope in the face of despair, or that of love in the proper tension of the truth.

My sister told me recently that I wanted to have my cake and eat it, too—like keeping a beautifully arranged dinner and yet cleaning the plate in enjoying all of its flavours. I do. I want it to be true that Good wins in my lifetime. I want the shadow to be small and passing, and for it to pass away right now. For the high Beauty to swoop in and save the day—and the nighttime, too. I long to live in the not yet, because the now is so broken. I long for perfect relationships without underlying currents of tension, annoyance, hurt, or frustration. I long for the fully redeemed Heaven and Earth, and confess that I kick against the breakage in which we still live.

I have been given hope and permission to dream more richly, to see God as bigger than the false dichotomies we are so often handed. . . And then comes the thud—the fact that not everyone else has been handed that gift, or that they have not received it yet, anyway. When I ask for answers and have the problem reiterated, it doesn't help. When I say, "There has to be more than just this—God is bigger than these two bad choices," I get blank silence.

When I've been told that God is bigger than my small vision, but I'm not expected—or even allowed—to see more, I get frustrated. I feel like I'm constantly on the outside and the majority is convinced that there is only one key to get in. But I am not convinced. I don't believe that my life is on hold until I get married or move or have a different job. Yet so many others believe those very things that I begin to live like I believe it, too. But I don't. I don't believe that a circumstance change is what will let me in. 

When it comes to relationships with fellow humans, surely I don't have to be relegated to being friends with only women—and mainly single ones at that. God made us whole humans. He made us to need others—male and female, single and married—in whatever state we are. What I don't know is how to practise the truth that God's vision, His world, His Kingdom is here and now. 

How do I maintain healthy relationships with my long-distance married friends? How do I have rich and healthy friendships with the men in my life? How do I love my single friends well? What is the best way to connect with my local married friends? Confessedly, I'm tired of getting shut out of various friendships because I'm not married. What changed with that ring? Don't we still have some of the same loves in common? Can't we still encourage one another in our most holy faith? Does my friend having a husband suddenly make all of that disappear? If so, it's no wonder that I've looked on marriage with a dubious eye in years past.

If what I've been told is true—that I belong to the Body of Christ, throughout time and space—then why don't I feel like I belong once my friends get married? Why do I feel like I'm a second class human as a single person? My admission ticket to the Body of Christ is not a gold band. It is being sacramentally connected to Jesus, the Head. It is receiving the very same Body and Blood that every other Christ-follower receives. 

I don't have to only have friends like me—that would keep my vision and theirs too narrow. I need people of various ages in different stages of life: single, married, with children, with grandchildren, in various vocations and with a variety of interests and talents. I need people who have different perspectives to help me enlarge my view of God and His world—of His universe. And I need to help enlarge the vision of others. . . Like those who see that there is a problem and think there are only two ways to deal with it. But God doesn't call us to impale ourselves on one stake or the other of these dichotomies. He calls us to the much harder task of another way, of balance and counterbalance—of a slackline walk. And that over a canyon. The stakes are high if we fall, but the stakes are sharp and deathly wounding if we jump to one side or the other, too. We must constantly keep our eyes fixed on Jesus to keep our balance on the slackline. To look to the right or to the left is to lose the view of our Anchoring Point—the Fixed Point in a world of turning. To look to one side or the other is to fall.

I don't want to pendulum swing, I want to walk the straight and narrow. I don't need people to paint the problem, I need help to find the answers. I don't want to see the world as small—it is not. I want eyes, heart, and mind to see how long and how wide and how high is the love and the glory of God. I want the now to step into the not yet. For time and eternity to meet. For chronos to cross into kairos. For all manner of things to be made well. For the shadow to pass and for the stars to shine through to us, to draw us near to them and yet to leave us alive. . . so much more alive than we've ever been before. The glory of God is writ large, but we need His perspective to be able to see it whole, not in pieces. We need to set our eyes on Jesus—the Author and Finisher of our faith—to keep us balanced on the slackline, rather than teetering over the brink, swaying left or right. 

The world is bigger than we've been led to believe. There are more than two options for how life can work. We know about what is past. We live in the now. . . and we long for the not yet to arrive and make all things new. We long for redemption to be fulfilled. We've been told the world is different than we've believed for so long. . . Now we get to learn to live that difference, to dream bigger, to see more than we could before—to not get stuck on the outside, but to finally get in.

A Shadow of Beauty

I woke in darkness to the jingle of my alarm and the chatter of birds. Perhaps the birds knew it was the first day of Spring and were thus employed with extra jubilation, but my suspicion is that they greet every morning with such exuberance. I listened to their Lauds—their morning prayer-chant—with a slow smile on my sleepy face. Finally pulling myself out of bed as the sky became a deep rose-gold. I never can decide if I like sunrise or sunset better, I'm glad I don't have to—I can simply like them both for their own sakes. 

Being the first day of Spring meant it was my friend-and-co-worker's birthday, and I had offered to make breakfast for the office. As I toasted English muffins and poached eggs in my cast iron skillet, I turned around to rinse my hands and saw a lovely moment: a reflected shadow. The sun coming through my antique windowpanes lit up the tawny dried grasses in the bottle on the sill, but the shadow it cast made them look like fresh wildflowers. I paused my poaching liturgy to snap a photo of the spiritual reality bowing before my eyes. 

There are times in life when all we can see are the dried grasses of our dreams or best laid plans. No matter which way we look at them, they are brittle, dried up, monotone kindling tucked in the corner of the sill. But maybe the problem is that we keep looking at the broken dream or the mislaid plan, whilst God is nudging us to turn around and look at the reflected shadow. When we turn, we see flowers outlined on the wall. We see the contour of each stem and leaf; each pod becomes a glory of its own. The dried grass looks different from this perspective, looks fresh and lovely and renewed. 

Sometimes the shadow is full of beauty, not mere darkness. Sometimes the shadows that fall on our lives are not snuffing out the sun, they are the evidence that there is sunlight. Without light there couldn't be shadows cast, after all. All would be utter darkness, impenetrable, blinding. For darkness, as well as overpowering light, blinds the eyes after time. But shadows are a mix of light and solid things; they are the delicate darkness dappling the wall.

One of the darkest things I have witnessed is my faithful sister being turned out of her home and her marriage. We could only stare at the pieces all around, the shattered lives of those affected, with shock and disbelief and horror. How did this happen? Those pieces looked sharp and irreparable and bleak. In many ways, they are. But when we stop looking at the shards and begin to see the light shine on them, through them, around them, we see the shadow reflected on the wall. We see Beauty and hope springing out of dead things. It isn't the restoration or reconciliation we hoped for, but other good things are germinating. There is Beauty in the shadow, as well as beyond it. There is light high beyond the reach of darkness, as Samwise discovered in Return of the King:

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”

The Fall and all its evil is but a small and passing thing from God's perspective. There is Light and there is Beauty that evil cannot touch. There is unseen Reality that cannot be destroyed, even when all the seen is turned into so much ash and concrete dust. The truth is that God is Real—He is high and beyond the reach of evil. God is the Light of the world, and it is His light spilling on and through and around us that casts a shadow of Beauty on the wall of life. Many times we get too busy looking at ourselves to see the whole Beauty-filled outline; to see the Light by which we see—but He is there, prodding us to turn around and see what the Light has made new.

Through the Cracks

Violence cracks our world,
leaves lives black and blue
emptier than when day broke,
leaves lives numb and days grey

Shadows crawl stealthily,
silently blotting the beauty
our eyes can only see
by the sun's bright rays

Darkness is like a shroud,
clothing our dying senses
too poisoned to see value
in life or how gaping death is

Hope seems like a dream
in the inky night, intangible,
unreal, a delusive phantom we're
weary of being told is substance

Faster and swifter, now,
the shadows come, thrusting
our world into the chaos of darkness,
we are unable to feel, unable to heal

Lives are bleeding out,
much faster and swifter, now,
running across thirsty ground,
fracturing families and dividing men

Swifter and faster than
eye can see, light shoots across
the night, like a bullet's flash—
light dispels darkness in an instant

It comes unexpectedly,
like hope revived, alive and
real to hold to, no longer a ghost,
but now an Anchor for battered souls

Light shines in the night,
and the darkness cannot cover it,
cannot understand, cannot hold out,
so the shadows flee, like paper-thin dreams

Slowly, slowly, now,
men begin to understand, to see,
to apprehend truth—they are set free,
and they begin to heal, begin again to feel

Cracks allow the light
to shine through—lives black
and blue are healed, made new,
as Light and Hope overflow thirsty souls

Shadow Reflections

I walked home from the stars

last night, and found upon my way

a branch, as an elderly hand in sway,

its shadow on the wall made scars.

Painted limb appeared more real

than the mesh of winter twigs

twining about in grey-green sprigs;

the shade-tree’s lines dark enough to feel.

I pondered how I would like to be

a clear shadow on history’s wall,

though I could only grapple with the Fall,

redemption shown in depths of two, not three.

All we are is but flickering shade—

yet in this season of Bright Sadness,

even shadows reflect in crisp blackness,

the glory of the King, fresh made.

Undone...

'Thread by thread I come apart, 

If brokenness is a work of art

Then surely this must be my masterpiece. 

I'm only honest when it rains,

an open book with a torn out page 

and my ink's run out. 

I wanna love you, but I don't know how...' 

—"Neptune" by Sleeping at Last

I get hung up on these lines, because they make sense of me, of life in this season. I often feel like an open book, but one missing pages—or the ink for the empty pages. I need that ink to explain myself chronologically—or just logically—to folks sometimes, and it has run out, run dry.

Yet it was the last line that stabbed my heart, because I've been feeling like that with God in this season of life. I want to love Him, but I don't seem to know how. I just know I keep failing. And if I don't love God well, how will I love people well? Doesn't loving—for the creature—begin with being loved? And doesn't that mean being humbled by Love enough to receive that precious gift from the Giver of all good things? 

Really, when all is known, isn't He the only One Who can prepare us to receive the love He gives? Do we ever do anything? He makes us vessels to be filled. He fills us. He runs out through our cracks—over the lip of us earthen jars—onto others. It isn't us. It never is us. It's all Him. Always. 

But He chooses us to be those ready vessels. He chooses us to be conduits of His love and creativity. Even though the echo of love, creativity, and Beauty is dim—poorly reflected through us—somehow He seems to delight in that reflection, no matter how grubby it is. 

Does that ever amaze you? It amazes me. It humbles me. Because I know myself... How could He be pleased with the flicker of an echo of Himself that shivers through me? But He is. 

Woe is me!

I am undone...I am flying shrapnel shards. O God, hold me together! I come back to Him. Because He is the Love that creates us to hold love—and to be held together by Love. 

Such a mystery and a joy, this. He is our Great Lover, meeting us in mystical union—the weaving of our body, soul, and spirit into Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I want to throw my hands over my head, over my face, over my sacred places to shield myself from this invited invasion of the realest One splintering my shadow-self. Finity cannot contain Infinity. Time has no hold on the Timeless. Flesh as frail as mine cannot contain a particle of the Spirit of God. 

How can His Spirit dwell in me? I must cramp, confine, and frustrate Him. I must necessarily shatter as He enters, my ink spilling out, dripping all over. And then He re-forms me; makes me new. He doesn't rebuild me as I was, all fragile and wispy—He begins to make me a solid home. He makes His dwelling, finity expanded to hold the Infinite. Not contain, but hold. 

I cannot contain another person, but I can hold their soul. A soul can be knit between two distinct persons. I cannot contain another person, but I can hold their hand. O God, make me strong enough to be empty hands, cupped to receive the outpouring of Your Spirit! It is the Spirit of God who empties me; shatters and re-makes me; heals and makes me whole. It is the Spirit of God Who is the fluidity of Love pouring Himself into me, over me, through me, onto others. 

'Thread by thread I come apart...' And He makes my brokenness a work of art—makes me His masterpiece, though I don't know how to love Him. Though I try and fail. Love takes me apart, stops my striving, hushes me... He unwinds my threads and weaves me into His tapestry, His story, His art—into Himself. 

I am undone.  

                            I am remade. 

I am still me, but woven so tightly into Him as to be both found and lost; a piece, yet so intertwined that I am inextricably linked to the whole. 

                                                                    I am made whole.


O Love Who will not let me go—though I let You go so often—I want to love You. I just don't know how. O help... I don't know how. But I want to.

Lent Week 4: Waiting to Rejoice

Laetare: O Rejoice!

(Lent week four)

Here I am—

Waiting for God,

Not quite ready

For rejoicing yet;

The shadows flicker,

Darkening my soul,

Still waiting for

The rising sun

This dark night

—Not wholly black—

Sprinkled with stars

Streaming on me

Slight grey light,

Promises coming Hope,

As I wait

Here for God

I am awaiting

With great expectation

The rising Son

—Myth made real—

The glimmering sky

Bursting fully alive

With glory's Hope...

...But not yet

As I wait

Sin's darkness lingers;

Its clammy fingers

Poking my soul

Make me squirm,

Reminding me that

Redemption is now...

...And not yet

I hold back,

Waiting for God

To take centre-stage

In the drama

Unfolding, riveting me

To wait here

In shadow, before

The Son rises...