Now Pt.2

I am a long string of moments

That I try in vain to capture on a phone

To review later, escaping the present

To only half enjoy the past

 

I was created by God

A frame in a moving picture

A dusty, spirit infused meat

Made to look something like love

Though born with a disease

 

I mutate and regress

I stagnate and swell

Until I fell back into the arms of grace

That stood me up on feet again

And taught me to walk towards the coming son

Taught me to become less, to go down

To learn from the smallest of things

How to be great

 

To learn from death how to live

And from life how to die

To everything I think I need

And grasp the only thing worth grasping

With a grip made doubly strong

By the fact that it grasps me back

 

A moment

Caught in time

Of a hand reaching out

To catch a falling man

 

My whole life is filled with these snapshots

Leaving me walking through a gallery

Experiencing an emotion humans only touch

When they begin to think outside of the present

When they join the great I Am in simply existing

 

Present, past, and future in the meshwork of it all

Recalling past fithfulness and failures

Perceiving future rewards or pitfalls

 

To climb the branches of a tree

And look out over the underbrush of moments

Above the canopy layers

To see all the way to the horison of life

And to know more than just today

Is the only way we can understand this moment

 

Without perspective I am a weird series of stills

A sad collection of washing dishes

Forgeting where my car keys are

And watching my toe bleed after tearing off a hangnail

 

No wonder this world confuses most people

How do we make sense of genocide?

Animals that eat each other

And women who put plastic in their breasts?

 

Is the world so nonsensical

That the option that makes most sense

Is to give up trying and just drug ourselves?

 

Escape, escape

All I see is my friends trying to escape

The moment

 

If a moment was good, they try to nail it to the wall

They want to freese it in time so they never have to leave it

If the moment is bad, and they cannot escape it

They will damage their senses so they need not take it in

 

They would gouge out their own eyes

Impair their ability to enjoy future moments

Just to escape the hell of the present one

 

And all this thinking or lack thereof leaves me climbing trees

Burying my nose in some history book

Or reading about the future of artificial intelligence

To try to tie my life to something greater

To try to find my place in this world

My sense of time has left me

Not wanting to waste it

I yearn to be this well oiled machine

This expensive factory, getting stuff done

I want to be working round the clock

And creating the product with the highest demand

I want to be going to the right school

And learning computer code

I want to be teaching myself french

And how to cook raviolis

I want to be going and doing

Because I was born in the country

That teaches that stillness is waste

And that rest is idleness

I need to reprogram my brain

To mirror the cycles of days and seasons

The way nature goes further by not burning out

The preperation of the pupa

The hibernation of the grizzly

 

Oh God of all moments

Who gives me each day a steady stream

Of now

 

I look for you in each second

Turning my present into praise

Recounting my past in song and tribal dance

 

Offering my future as a sweet offering

All my hours and minutes I give to you

As firsts and not seconds

This moment is a holy place

Just to be with you

 

Just to be

Gasped and Clutched

One short life

Gasped and clutched

Like wrinkled fabric

Like the sides of a woman

Biting her lip

As she sweats in pain

At the prospect of life

There is no cry

Not ten seconds in this world

He is gone with God

 

 

One short life

Whisping as smoke

Flitting in and out

From existence to forgottenness

He will not receive a name

Until he turns five

Until we know

He is not just smoke

 

 

One short life

And all I have are days

All I have is breath

And it is poured out to me like grace

It is sprinkled on me like water

Or blood

Undeserved

But each day I wake

With memories of adrenaline

And death staring me in the face

I fell without a scrape

The angels caught my feet

One short life

And every breath is his

The songs that birth

From neurons that keep firing

Flow downhill

All tumbles down by the pull of gravity

Back to his heart

Back to the ocean of his glory

Everything I am

Is pulled gladly to this end

To spend and be spent

Just to know and love him more

Who daily extends this short life

Dog

Jesus
You stamped your memory in my heart
And helped my soul fly above
The boring grey line
That people call life

But I call it death
In comparison to the life you bring
Your pockets are full of spring

My heart was a sad starving dog on your doorstep
Till you opened up and brought me inside
Fed my ribs and scrubbed my hide
Now all that I call life
Is what you did to me

I don’t even live
Without you

All I do is lay my head on your thigh
And turn my brows from side to side
To hope to catch a crumb from your grace

And all you do is throw me prime rib
And give me a bed on pillows
And shelter from the rain

When the neighbors come around
They tell you it’s crazy to have a dog in the house
And I should be thrown out

I know they are right
But I’m busting at the seems
Because you tell them to go home
And come back when they made the Universe

You are good
When there’s nothing good in me
Your love stoops low
Though I’m filled with fleas
If time ever dies
And fire melts the earth
I will shake off the mud
And curl up by your hearth

However Small the Source

By Brooke Gale Louvier

However small the source

Of the sound of running water

It is enormous in my soul

I can’t tell you how

The scent of damp leaves

Make tears leak

Only that

I need to be in nature

Like breathing

And You

This is where I most clearly see

Your name written

Etched in the bark of ancient trunks

Woven within green vines

Growth all around

Life pushing its way outward

Upward towards

Grey clouds that emphasize

The light to come

Where birds tell a story

About amazing grace

And life growing inside

A small seed becoming

A greatness within me

And I know

However small the patch of dirt

However insignificant the blades of grass

There I spot bits of peace

And find echoes of goodness

http://brookegale.com/2013/12/20/however-small-the-source/

Neverlost and Evernear

11-15-12
Its lost on me
All those things I was meant to be
Yesterday’s future is catastrophe
Unfinished rhythms like a drunk drum beat
And all He did
Gets swept under a rug
Woven of all the problems I think I have
Glory only dimmed because my eyes are crammed shut
With a million lies
A hundred times
I pinched myself
To pull back blinds
Like guards on my eyes
Keeping my gaze away from visions in the sky

There’s a whisper clear
Alleviation of fear
Sudden stillness of Near
The one I need
The Savior’s feet
The only place I’ve ever known my own heart beat

It’s like a sad song floating slow
Through the radio
Like a picture from your childhood
Or a place you used to know
It brings up feelings of longing
And a sadness in the soul
But the pit of my heart doesn’t want to let it go

Of the feeling
The reeling
The attempt and understanding
The sense of the gravity of what you’re ignoring

It’s a sudden shock
A strike at the heart
Electricity to restart and break through the locks
And barred doors of insensitivity
The soul’s reclusivity
And determination to remain stone cold
Against the advances of a King

Who wages war not with armies
But the power of His Word
The Gospel that heals the sexually abused
As well as the self proclaimed saints

Jesus,
It’s lost on me
When my cold feet are thrown out of bed
And my desires are the only things that flow through my head
There’s a strange sort of echo from the things that you said
But facebook is more riveting than a savior who bled
And bruised and suffered
And poured out His soul
In agony and loneliness
To bring me close
And here I sit
With my back towards love
An empty bag of chips in one hand
A beatless heart inside my cage of ribs
And a mind tuned to short messages, blurps, and catch phrases

How can I appreciate the wonder of the Epic?
How can my mind
So rusted over with the menial, mundane, even filthy
Be revived to be enthralled by what is grand?
Only the Lord God knows

Only You know
How to fill my brain with wonder again
At the fact that stars exist
That you were a man who walked this earth
That Peter walked on water and George Mueller got his money just in time

That a woman received her son back from the dead and that I haven’t been completely lost even after all these years.
Something is holding me still
A grip that is stronger than mine
While it may be lost on me
I am not lost
Because You hold me
So I will rest in the grace that covers me
Every time I draw near Sinai with a loud mouth and a sudden stride
When I should be solemn or even weeping
Not from fear, but reverence
Not at wrath but at love
Love that would slit its own throat
Before letting me fall off the cliff I jumped from
Jesus, You are a wonder
Saving me every day

As long as I’m on You, I’ll never be lost.

7-17-10
Ditch
The crime inside your mind
Of thinking God is blind
Requiring supervision
and approval
Before obedience

Serve
In headaches, sweat, and dirt
Give up your only shirt
Even when it isn’t cool
or hip
To sacrifice your life.

And do not fondle (idle/idol) dreams
That blot out what’s in front of you
You think the future’s years away
He’s laid out works for you to do

Love
In weariness, dryness, and confusion
Don’t lose sight of your life’s infusion
Fall for Grace
every day
He’s given blood for you.