Guest Post: Jenny @ Just A Minute

*currently on the road; thank you to all imperfect prose participants! will read entries upon return. all my love to you....*

i have long loved jenny of 'just a minute' and her way of bringing God into my world... let her do the same for you, friends.

The bedroom floor looked inviting, so I laid down...right there in the middle of the floor, with my door closed and the smell of bathroom tile cleaner still fresh on my hands. I had just finished pondering how I bet the person who decided putting tile and grout in an environment that causes mold and mildew to multiply like a bagillion times per second, must be in purgatory...scrubbing tile.

I came here to lose myself, because I was too focused on myself. And nothing like violently scrubbing thin sections of mold into oblivion to ease the burden of a self occupied mind. But when I finished, I wandered back into self, and in a wearied state I lay down on the floor.





I could hear various children in the other room doing various things, except what they were supposed to be doing. And I thanked God for them. And the roller coaster ride of thanksgiving high dipped quickly in to the dark tunnel of why.

"Why do I suffer Lord," I cried? "Why does this mind burden me so?"

I want you...to want Me!

Uh, why did a song from the 80's just interrupt my deep longing for the relief of a God whisper? And I knew it was Him...

He.
wants me...
to want...
Him.

A bad song lyric? Is that the way God really responds? To me He did. I am of short attention span, it may have something to do with always being interrupted for the last 12 years, (thank God for the blessing of interruptions). But put it to a catchy tune and it's stuck, left rolling...and rolling...and rolling...Apparently though it is not just me. My children learn to skip count to song, and learn their states and capitals, and presidents (sort of, we're still working).

4,8,12,16...20,24...28,32,36...that's fun yahoo! Yippy aye cayeheeee! we skip count everyday!





So He met me where He could find me, on the bedroom floor, smelling like cleaning chemicals, preoccupied with the all too familiar struggle of self. And He told me what He wants.

He wants me...to want Him...all the time.

And when I forget Him, which I do, He reminds me of Himself. And sometimes the reminder comes in the sweet, cool breeze on the front porch, the dancing wind chimes, the freshly scrubbed baby cuddled close, the physical touch of husband. But sometimes the reminder comes in the need to cling to Him for my very next breath lest I think I may perish. And a little cross is sent my way so that I may share in the Cross of Christ.

We all do this in the everyday, physical world. Pain sometimes is the surest reminder. Think of the last horrific story you heard that made you hold your kids a little longer. Or the thought of all those men and women calling their loved ones one last time on 9/11 that made you remember to say I love you...Now. The tragedy of those stories, those memories, brought you closer to the love you hold dear...Now.

And Love called me to love again. Not in some deep theological dissertation or cloudy fog of ambiguity. No, he called me in the lyrics of a simple, catchy, somewhat annoying song from the 80's. And I responded from the floor of my bedroom, in a moment of afternoon quiet.





And now, every time that catchy, somewhat annoying tune begins to weave its way through the recess of my preoccupied mind, I immediately run to Love instead of wondering, pondering, asking..."Why Lord?" I know it is His call to remember Him, to want Him.

imperfect prose on thursdays--living sacrifice

he begs me

(maker of man, moon and moth)
to love him

only him... to offer up words and images as incense

to become living (blood-emotion-chromosome) sacrifice

so here, we gather, artists and writers penitent, in the lonely place, the space where Jesus drifted mornings before crowd-healing, the place where he wept blood and became dying...

and we place post upon altar.

i am closing the comments box today; asking instead that you submit imperfect prose (as offering to him who saves), and/or, if you have nothing to write, a verbal uttering for someone broken, someone needing prayer...

((thank you))






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*Worship is a commissioned painting; prints available here*

made to pray

looks pretty good, doesn't it?

(not to horn-toot...) but we look the picture: collected-calm, happy, love-beaming...

here's why:













i have a mountain mover.



you see, i make mountains. and he moves them.

there are no photographs of the night i lay on the floor, midnight sobbing into carpet when he sludged in, math-teacher-helping-father-harvest, and picked me up and took me to bed and made me pray.

no, there are no photos of that. of the way i cried into his shirt like linus into his blanket and begged him to make my dreams come true. and he couldn't, but he took me to the one who could, and made me pray.

"i have no words" i told him. he said, "pray anyway."

there are no photos of me telling him how discouraged i feel, and him asking, "about what? about our beautiful son? about our warm home? about the food on our table?" and his words bowed me low, made me pray.

so, picture this. and then see the way God is making whole, a broken woman, by a man who picks her up and puts her where she belongs.

looks pretty good, doesn't it?






join me tomorrow for imperfect prose on thursdays; want a sneak preview? here you go :)



(linking with one shot poetry, and ann)

talking with leaves

sometimes










it's so much easier










to believe










on a












sunday







(baby chats with leaf as autumn sheds its coat, and family rallies to catch the most leaves... )


sharing this with tuesdays unwrapped

sweating harvest

indian summer is making hay, air hot with kernels ripe, like God baking bread in a vast oven and the loaves are golden as the leaves falling and the blueness of sky seems a ribbon to tie it all together and we're wrapped around this moment, husband driving truck, father driving combine and me on the peripheral, taking photos of it all even as the grain grovels into metal igloos for winter-long







i lose myself in the beauty of harvest as they sweat.







beads trail lined skin, shirts soak salt and water jugs empty throats. fingers harden fast around steering, dust and dirt making monks out of the quiet farmers, the earth a cathedral in which the combines sing.





i'm living on the outside looking in. i'm a little girl in a white dress, cheeks plastered to the stained glass and i can't find the door.






nor do i seem to want to.







but their faces light like angels

and the choir of the quiet bellows hymns, and the eagles dip and rise like wind playing with the yellow hair of autumn







and i need to want to sweat. to know the making of the moment.

to know the meaning behind the beauty. to feel the chaff give way, to smell and itch from toil






then sink into the sabbath like it's a mattress made for a king







and i wonder: do i peer into my faith, taking photos of the peripheral,
or do i feel the heat, the dust, the soil of walking in Christ's way?







joining ann, thanking heaven's harvester for:

101. a day at the river
102. roasting sausage over fire
103. long walk in woods
104. regina spektor's songs
105. autumn in barefeet
106. son's squeals
107. late-night friend-talks
108. husband holding hand
109. being forced to wait
110. bracelet in mail from her

Guest Post by Kelly Langner Sauer

pull up a chair, friends; blogger kelly langner sauer is visiting: her prose and pictures make marvelous.



Her head hurt. She knew she walked circles, sensed the movement right and left; she couldn’t feel anything, she felt everything. Did she breathe? No, she drowned, there was no air here.

She did dishes, overdid them physical. She had heard of this fight, to do what she didn’t think she could do, and now here she was attempting the ludicrous, tempting the inevitable – in spite of what she’d been told.

Why did “yes” do this? “No” was hard, but practical.

“Live the dream,” was the pill she’d picked, the words on the candied-heart fortune. “Acknowledge Me,” was all He’d said, and she meant to do that, until all her ways became more than she’d planned.

She had no training for this; she learned by doing. Her whole life was discovery. It was a good way to live, very dramatic.

Everything had always come easy to her, the things she wanted to do. If she could see it she could do it, but now there were hearts begging “yes” (not just hers) and the year promised more and less than she’d expected.
♥

The weight of the keys used to comfort. She resisted the song, remembered how the music pushed thought along, how it found her.

Anger strengthened finger against ivory; she did not make music, but let the seven letters make unintelligible conversation, telling tales in a familiar language. “You could fail here,” she thought. “You could fail and still hold it for you.” Leave the song unsung, the piece imperfect, the fingers awkward.

The ivory gave; the hammers broke rage that wasn’t rage into what it was, into frustration, and realization. Tears surprised her.

“The things you choose…” The thought trailed off as she did the thing unchosen. It had required much, too much.

The things you choose will break you, because you must do them well, because you can and you know you can.There it finished. She started the piece over.

Why was she sweating? She fumbled accuracy at the keys now, pretending ability. Her fingers weren’t true, but there she was; real emotion met air and release.
♥

Her breathing was slowed; she ached for touch, to be of earth again. Time frustrated, chained, tormented. It always won, always overran, ran out. Time was the breaking, the “you are not” and the “you may never be.” The moments where we live are eternal, but not tomorrow. Not yesterday.

The thought staggered. How strange. A thousand years as a day, eternity in an hour. How life flashes before us with its mystery, how did God make our spirits to understand Him, how did our sin enslave us to time so that we dare not say “yes” to Him and live abundant?

She’d put a passion away so it was not lost and she’d lost it; she’d said “yes” to a new one and could put nothing away now, could only press on. She’d tried the other – the discovery must be in the living, not the regretting.

She would have to be reckless now. Reckless like He was, putting two trees in a garden.

Neither had reached the end of the story.

imperfect prose on thursdays--fugitive

i was born on the road, my parents missionaries and nomads, and we were always moving, always rooting then tearing up and on, waving fast goodbyes, and now, i'm learning home in this quiet town and sometimes i wonder if i'll go mad. but mostly, i enjoy sitting in the calm of the trees befriending them, knowing they are here with me to the bitter end, and together we reach deep in soil and let it grow us, but sometimes, even in the shade of the pine and the hemlock i find myself a fugitive... fleeing from my battered soul... and i feel the urge to run... and i remember, the spices of lebanon, the camels of jordan, the old women selling vegetables in korea, the octopus legs in japan, and China's great wall which friend and i got lost on... and i long to lose myself in those places, again, to forge and engorge on experience, but all because i'm not comfortable in my own skin. so i force myself to slow in the shadows of my yard, to wiggle toes in grass and to become familiar. silence is nature's baptism. i study the lines on my fingers and watch my son take first steps and know, his soles are memorizing the land. his land. and he will find faith in the steadfast, and breath in the knowing, here in the backyard of our lives. ((his will be done))



broken friends, spill imperfect prose below. we'll read and weep and reply in the grace that makes us whole. a communion of bread crumbs and shattered wine bottles.


1. link your post to mine below, using mister linky

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*'Fugitive' has been given away; prints available here*

be still and know

cinnamon apple slices, baby clanging spoon and they're talking of days old and pancakes make the sound of snakes on griddle

outside the sun is syrup on black and white backs sleeping in the grass of autumn and shaft hits rail, like angels sneaking in, trying to dine with us at breakfast

while they remember: the old german flashlight, night-hours spent reading comics, stashing secrets in cubby-hole, and we're watching the lines erase

age dissolves between them and there's nothing left but spirit

and we're sitting in it, this moment, and it's eternal living, for it's all-talk-being... and we're nowhere else but here, so.very.here.

watching them flip pages past.

and isn't it all just a big puddle? we're splashing and moving and thinking we're getting somewhere but the clocks are fixed and the trees know the truth, shedding leaves that will one day grow again, and we all end up in the place we were.

kingdom comes to such as these.

and so, i am still. floating in this pancake-puddle

letting life happen. and there is reason in this quieting and meeting God in the every-day

in the scrape of knife and the moo of cow and the shaft of light and the wrinkled eye.

a kind of holy hum...

((come, Lord, come))




linking with tuedays unwrapped and

one shot wednesday

a week of candles

the trees are premature balding, hair flung color-fast on asphalt and the clouds are frozen to blue and the birds flock thousands past our house in perfect v, their honking enough to wake winter, and we shiver.

inside, soup, potato-creamy, orange with carrot and dill-green, soft on baby's tongue and i'm scooping in a hurry but not fast enough to feed the hunger and we're home from church,

and i don't know how to stop.

this speaking in haste, this halting prayer-thoughts and turning on anger-voice, this dividing of self after a sermon on unity.

and there's a falling in my spirit, a shedding of color, and the streets are bare and the winter is chill within.




one minute i live peace, kissing husband-cheek and loving on child, and the next, i'm a two-year-old begging attention crying stupid.

he hands me a candle.

it's the third one.

it's been a week of candles. first, the night after coming home late, hospital visit, heart weeping eyes, and the dishes aren't done and i'm silent but stone and he slips out the front door and reappears with a white one. it smells like sugar cookies.

two evenings later, he slips out again after snow-cold blow-over and i don't know where he's gone but moments later, another candle: this time, apple cinnamon. "i thought it might smell nice," he says, farm-boy shy.

and today, the third. cinnamon.

and i don't know where they're from and i don't know why my ice-tongue but it melts when i light the fire.

and this is key: to light the marriage-match

and keep it burning.

because otherwise, the candle grows cold.

and we find each other over the flame, the boy and girl who used to kiss in the rain, and the scents collide from this trinity of gifts and i'm

thawing. heaven is making a home in me and i'm beginning to get what it means to be a living sacrifice....

to keep burning sin-past and

halting hurried tongue

for this man who brings me candles.




now sit with me as over tea and i'll tell you what i'm singing about:

91. a husband who knows me
92. potato-creamy-soup
93. cleaning YFC women's shelter building
94. reading, reading, with coffee and anne lamott
95. fast runs in cold-breath-wind
96. harvest-air, smell of chaffed wheat
97. carrot muffins warm with butter
98. playing footsies beneath a blanket
99. baby babble and drool-kisses
100. watching him sleep

Guest Post by Deb @ Talk at the Table

(i asked poet-friend deb to write on death, and what it means to grieve in faith... and to live in full. and she unraveled literary love...)


Prelude to My Death


Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful
blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous
inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows,
plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star,
and they will learn that death is stingless indeed,
and as beautiful as life.
- John Muir




I hope I die in November , or February.

The day of the funeral the sky should be grey and not clearly promising at all.

I’ve stood in the rain , the flurries, hunched in the dress coat that lets the wind go right through us all, one to the other , so we’re huddled , bound even, in the cold and gaping mouth of unknown.

I have yet to decide any details. Know that I do prefer a traditional burial and would like a place where they’ll still let you lower me into the ground. Into the soil . This isn’t very glamorous. I hope it makes you think about cycles . Resurrection .

As the weight of a body descends it needs help. Work. There is certain noise . . heavy breathing concentrated alive noise. There’s sacred in that . The tasks of labour and living. It suits me.

I guess you’ll have a slideshow and maybe bagpipes. You’ll want what you think I’d want. Songs and poems and wine and laughter. A tree planted here, some bulbs there. A bench maybe , for feeding bird of course .

Notice that I’ve actually became a corpse though.

That while my scrunched up nose smile and red hair and whatever else you ‘ll miss about me is a good thing, that I am lifeless.
Wonder perhaps if you should have put me in a turtleneck instead of a dress. See how grey my hair has gotten lately. Gently touch my folded hands, stiff, cool, no longer able to hold yours, stir endless pots of soup, pull weeds , write I love you. Honour me with your presence in what I've become .

Sit with me , maybe in the front room or on the back porch . Like they used to . When death made you feel it in the very air you breathed. Smelled even. Strangely sweet like a flower you can’t name. Musty. Like leaves, wool.

Go into the dark place. Be in community with me . Help me get to the mysterious part. Back to God.

Be with the me that no longer is.

Stand against the wall too long, uncomfortable, shifting silently, awkwardly , your stomach growling. Forget to water the plants. Wait a bit before you order the platters of sandwiches, the urn of coffee.

I stood with a few shocked others once, in one of those mausoleums , wondering where the crowd went, knowing it was right to be inside there.
Feeling the creaking and grinding and metal on metal in my bones. In my soul. So I’d never forget. Hear the muffled sobs and coughs that floated and bounced off the marble and glass niches into the after.

I learned about beauty there.
The beauty of rivers eternal.

Tremble with your anguish and your missing but stay with me in faith. Bring me as far as you can go to the promise.

If you decide to place me on a pyre , don’t wait in the other room , or by the phone.
Kneel near .

Take my gritty uneven bits without sifting maybe. Toss them into the wind. Unbind me. My silence will tell you that there are no words for what will be .

Yours will let you hear.

imperfect prose on thursdays--being reborn

last night i visited her. the baby you've been kneeling for, and she's off her oxygen now and her limbs are moving and now it's her mother i worry-long, and so, please pray as they wait the unknown because this balance between life and death is precarious and we mamas are the shield between, and sometimes just a thin shield at best.

and beside this mama and her baby there was another life, a six-month-old strung up, his throat gurgle-breath, rattle in one hand and tv before him and he had no one, no parents, and he hung there in the balance raspy, and i played with him then touched palm to hair and he hungry-looked for more of this: more touch, and i cried the whole way home.

on the one side of the curtain: my friend and her husband and their much-wanted-child rocking, and on the other, an abandoned... both babies fighting to stay alive. and all i wanted to do was to take that little boy home. to show him, he had love to live for.

and God's heart wept in the car last night as i drove, a deep gasping ache that moaned as the moon's face fell...

and i heard the curtain tear for the longing of it all: to call his children home.

is this not life? this perpetual slow-die, this laboring of ten or less decades and then the final birth into heaven...? into the father-lap that will never string us up with rattle and television, into the arms big enough to hold every child, young and old, for that is the miracle of the divine.

so here, i paint a picture of white doves, transcendent over earth's chaos; love prevailing against the madness of the world. and one day, we'll know this peace, the peace of being reborn.




broken friends, spill imperfect prose below. we'll read and weep and reply in the grace that makes us whole. a communion of bread crumbs and shattered wine bottles.


1. link your post to mine below, using mister linky

2. connect your prose with this community by attaching the imperfect prose button (see the button code to the right), or including a link at the bottom of your post

3. read others' posts, and comment!

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*"White Doves" is a commissioned painting; prints available here*

(linking this with ann's broken post today)

what it means to live

anne lamott says we're not just one age, we're all the ages we've ever been

and i see this in her face, the flashing colors of lives before, the six-year-old with lollipop lips, the 10-year-old riding horse, the 60-year-old with grandchild and the 25-year-old proposal blush, all in the leap of the rope






and she's a lady i don't know but i stand and watch her skip as if the world is nothing but a playground and shoulders sag and i wonder how to find the legs





and he tells us to come as little children, and i breathe past the hurts and

soul strips, pretenses falling autumn, and inside i feel myself running and jumping in with her and we're doing this tandem, this faith-being-children, and he IS, in this rope, in this park, in these trees, and his pleasure is clapping and he's laughing the sky wide-mouthed-apart and i know

i am all ages, and he desires the youngest one








and so in prayer i prostrate, infant lowly, let him clothe me, and i stand and he feeds me, because i'm taking to solids now, and he's helping me to walk and i'm a slow learner, because i trip a lot, but this is faith--

an ageless place of learners--

and i'm starting to know what it means

to live.




linking up with tuesdays unwrapped...




also linking with one shot wednesday.

when you grow into legs...

he was all limbs as he rolled sand-hill, baby squealed and clapped, banged stick to ground and daddy gathered son and spun him fast, all on a day of autumn when the gold of leaves seemed rapunzel and nothing was anything but magic

((and when you grow into legs and you run sky-high, i'll be here, kissing air, waving love you, goodbye))

and he told me breathless, they'd spent summers here, adults folded up top in chairs, scattered picnic blankets and smoked meat sandwiches and the cousins tumbling down ... and the winds of fallen acorn whispered yes, this is so, we were here, and the cries of children-past sounded in my son

((and when you grow into legs and you run sky-high, i'll be here, kissing air, waving love you, goodbye))

i dig toes in sand, wish to somehow save the magic in a bottle but boy is getting big, too big, to fit into small so all i can do is hold him at night until he wiggles free but that night, he didn't wiggle and so i just kept holding and he sighed as if with wisdom of growing old and i understood why my grandma always shook her head and told us not to rush things, because life does enough of that for us....

and i spoke into his hair, the color of trees-golden on autumn's sand-hill:

when you grow into legs and you run sky-high i'll be here, kissing air, waving love you, goodbye...





(this, a post for Brian Miller, who asked to spotlight me over at One Stop Poetry--visit this site for community in word)

(i will be doing a series on life and death this week... this, to start it, to celebrate the tiny limbs that dance into the world and bring us joy...)

beauty in the bleeding

there are no words, and sometimes, this, the holy, when God is everything in the silence and the weep of a baby the purest sound of angel the world could ever hear... and there is beauty in the bleeding, in the extracting and laying of life against heart-beat-chest and the mother forgetting for a moment to breathe for the sound, and then there, the guttural gasp that declares, life is right.

a baby can change the world, and does, for its mama. and suddenly the mama knows she would die just so this little one might live, and yet, life is not always right and sometimes the baby-cry stops and the mama offers milk-manna but ...

no milk is needed in the valley of the shadow of death, and what to do, in this valley? and what good are tables and annointing of oil and friends in this valley, when, no child? and what good are prayers? ((though they are, they are, they are...))

and the phone call woke us, broke us this morning, of a couple who's long awaited baby, now back in the hospital with four-day-old listless, and we're begging God for life in the grey of dawn, begging the sky to blush grace.

won't you beg with me?



clutch life close to you this weekend, friends, and breathe in the beauty.

imperfect prose on thursdays -- beauty in the broken

i fell in love when he sang.

we'd dated a year and a half; broke up for the same--he was no musician, and i'd wanted one. i dated two, and they played the wrong chords and i missed my mathematician who knew a single break-dance move and whose head bent slight when he felt something deep.

and there, in church, he was, and i in the same row and he didn't see me, saw only the hymn, and he sat beside one of the world's least--a boy no one else knew--and i watched my man stand, kind farm-boy he, and belt the words in a voice without tune.

and there is beauty in a voice that breaks. in a voice that worships, wobbly.

my knees wobbled, and i fell hard that day.

eight years gone... we stand side by side in pew, boy between, our voices forming a kind of chorus. the song of the saved. the song of the broken.




broken friends, spill imperfect prose below. we'll read and weep and reply in the grace that makes us whole. a communion of bread crumbs and shattered wine bottles.


1. link your post to mine below, using mister linky

2. connect your prose with this community by attaching the imperfect prose button (see the button code to the right), or including a link at the bottom of your post

3. read others' posts, and comment!

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Auto-Linky widget will appear right here!
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
For best results, use HTML mode to edit this section of the post.

*original of this painting has been sold; prints available here*

beauty in the least of these

i'm staining fence, blue shirt sweat, sun heat hard, and the brown swipes down with prayer: to know you more...

and i'm so afraid of wasting today.

and his answer is clean-swipe-bristle, and the newness of it strikes hard: "in the least of these, i am..."





in the babes that snort laugh, in the curly-nosed man with the broken leg, in the burl-shoulder wide-chested down and out, in the lady with the bags and the cats and the women with all the flowers and no home... in the least of these, he is. he lives. and to spend time with them, i spend time with him. this, beauty in the least.

a bristle gets tangled in paint-wet and my fingers smear and i swear christian-like and i think, if that, then this is a waste: this being here, staining fence that will only fade, but no... because he is here too. in the least of me.

i beg with john, more of you... and i'm the locust and honey backwards girl with stained fingers and tangled dreads and shirt flimsy blue, and he is baptizing me now in the backyard of my home and i'm letting him, because i have no where else to go...





he makes all things beautiful. in his time.




also linking up to One Shot Wednesday