Tag: stillness

Night Rain

The sound of rain falling in the deep night is a reminder that every now and then the world needs washing. The dirty streets littered with our selfish striving and strewn with the harshest words, dropped casually during the day, need to be cleaned. Hopes forcibly squeezed out and dreams stolen wait to be washed into drains, longing to be recycled and fed back in sleep’s stories. Prayers of the ones no longer here descend to rattle against our walls and fences, some seep through gaps and splits to water shoots of memory. Fall night rain fall.

Prayer for personal peace

In the turmoil of life, in the chaos of the storm, when you lose your sense of direction and place… in the dreams you have that seem too distant and out of reach… in your self doubt and feelings of failure and being an imposter… in your addictions and the needs that dominate your thinking… in your deepest pain and brokenness, illness and heart ache… in the emptiness of being alone and the incessant noise of the crowd… May you find still and rich peace, peace that is beyond measure and understanding, peace that cuts through the collected crap and soothes your soul.

The sound of sheer silence

The sound of sheer silence,

Fights to be heard amongst the clatter and clamour,

Still the battering fears,

The questions that scream,

The anguish that points and pokes,

And tries to suffocate my space,

Doubts that roar in the tumultuous wind,

Accusations that pierce my awareness fired by the storm,

Insecurities crashing in my head in the fall of a great river,

In the noise I hear no voice but my own,

My weak voice, my raw voice, my tired voice.

My voice bringing me down, destroying my confidence, prodding my wounds.

Stand, still.

Stand, still.

Stand, still.

Do not hear the storm, the wind, the rain.

Hear instead the sound of sheer silence.

Hear the voice in peace,

Hear the voice of peace,

Hear the voice… peace.

1 Kings 19:11-13

Advent 27

I don’t understand this energy that grows and flows, I should feel tired, I do feel tired, sleep is the momentary dark between the dreaming begins again. Before the colours begin to bounce around the walls and the stories re-emerge and paint themselves into my spirit.

But the energy is shifting and changing, I feel it sparking between you and I, between us and others. It is vibrant and so alive. It deprives me of sleep but sustains me when the tiredness drags. Then it stills me when I can take no more.

The energy of spirits connected, viscerally, physically connected. Not some ethereal, shadow of me-less connection but a real melding of us, reshaping, discovering, releasing me in ways I could not imagine, even in the night watches.

Here in the midst of this unsettling, this strange place life will burst. Here in this place where we are not at home we will find a new us, an us that encompasses so much more than we could be alone.

In you I find a new me, in me you become more you, in all of us together there is a spark of the greater divine, the God that is more than one. How can we see one as enough, when God is an ‘us’?

In the God that is ‘us’ all things are possible, nothing cannot be created, nothing cannot be loved. No desert cannot be flooded, no land must remain dry. The God that is ‘us’ makes us so much more as you are knitted in my being, as you grow within me and, yes, I grow within you. As we become ‘us’ there is nothing that God cannot do and nowhere God cannot go.

Oh how I dream between the sleep of where we will go, of what we will do! The possibilities sparkle with the energy that flows through the unknown, that lights a rainbow through futures unwritten! Oh how I feel the love! We don’t yet have our words for it, but that it is there there is no doubt, there is no fear!

So I dream and I wake, when all else sleeps. This energy, this love, this spirit we share and we give in our very being will not let me be still. The time to lie like death will come, but not yet, not now, now is a time to dream of birth.

Sleeping

I hear her sleep, breath telling stories I cannot know. The stillness only broken by a rare twitch or turn. The day has drifted into the night. Taken up by the warmth as it rises from beneath the blanket. Filling the space above her head with its concerns. Be free yesterday, she must rest and make space for tomorrow, your only home now is the movies that play in the deep. Do not wake her with your game of ‘what-ifs’ or disturb her rest with the things that can’t be changed. Play if you must, but fade with the sun when your time has gone… for she has other tales to write. I hear her sleep, breath whispering desires and hopes. Be still and rest well. Be still