that wailing rhythm

the rhythm is a funny thing. it's an entity of its own. can't you hear it, thudding and pulsing slow below your skin, that gentle thumping by which our bodies sway?

there's one in the air, too. i can feel it, the rhythm of thunder crashing and lightning answering back in brilliance of light. it's majestic and strange and powerful. i don't think i understand it fully...will i ever?

life is a rhythm, one of those things that isn't really composed with ink and pen on paper. i wish it was, because my words seem paltry to sum up the inhale-exhale that seems to make up every second of every day until the day it just doesn't anymore.

:: but apparently vulnerability is the rhythm i needed to find. 

the very night after i wrote about releasing, we were struck with a strange sort of loss. we had been chasing a dream, a purple house tucked into a grove of green countryside and garden mermaid groves. and we had it, right there in the curve of our fingertips, and then it was gone, because that's how real estate works.

and i wailed. // oh, that wail. 

see, i write about the Lion's song a lot. it's a melody that hums beneath my skin and courses through my body like blood and electricity wedded together in the strangest and holiest of matrimony. i can hear it, that low growling hum to which my feet have found a rhythm to stamp and my lungs have found notes to cry and keen.

and yes, sometimes, you have to wail.

sometimes it's all we have to keep us going when everything seems a muddled blur and off-center to the point that even the melody seems to have faded. but there's always that rhythm.

sometimes it's hard to find your original self when everything under the sun has been done. and you watch yourself drumming on the side of your cup with a bamboo stick as the teabag bobs like a ship in the calm, and you wonder, am i in the calm too? 

i had never understood that expression until the day my life stood still and i caught my breath when i raised my hands and begged the moon to stand still over me. Joshua needed the sun to fight, but somewhere, the moon stopped too over some corner of earth.

before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

you must wake up with sorrow.

you must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

:: naomi shihab nye

and perhaps in the calm is a place to catch your breath, when the crush and rush of the world is pulling you right and left and backwards and forwards and pinching off pieces of you until there is nothing left at all.

{via dramaticelegance}

and you need a minute to heal from the scrubbing, so you bury your nose in the tea and you breathe. the poking and the prodding leave fingermarks all over you in shades of invisible bruise, like starry-night constellations that tell a story, something glorious that might heal another when they touch the marks the world left behind.

so weave a crown of blooms from the basket by the door labeled "weeds" and peer up at the world through one-too-many loose tendrils of escaping hair. find the pool, still in the calm, and study the freckles like cinnamon sprinkled over something made with apples and dough and that whisper of love that you don't understand how you can taste, but you can.

and pick up your drum from beside the door and dive into that pool until the bottom becomes the top and out you emerge into glorious Light where the world hums in a fresh newness. and the rhythm of your heart merges with His.

and you and the Lion count the beats together.

sacred :: remembrance

i awoke with a pull. a voice in my head, whispering things undecipherable and beautiful.

He's trying to tell me something. 


because as i opened my laptop and began to read, soak myself in Lion's song and sister's words, i began to sense a pattern. again, a pull.

because rain wrote of truth in the thin places, of memorials of the sacred moments. and sarah wrote of love up to the dark, of life written out and remembered in Glory.

and i felt my soul crumble, not in the way of broken stones and shattered dreams. but in the way, the way you only understand if you've felt it before.

that crumbling of release and refreshment that comes when walls of fear and shame come tumbling down and all you can  see is the sun and Son, both shining down on your face, but One brighter than the other.

sacred spaces worth remembering etched in ancient lines across palm, 

and did you know that remembrance is synonymous with love? 

love-marked space says 

something special is here, 

something mysterious 

and worthy

 and holy.

:: rain: lullaby for light ::

and oh, how those words pounded tribal of brave to me. 

because memorials frighten me, sometimes. i'm apt to step into His shoes, into that place of writing in the dirt, scribbling hard with bleeding fingertips of every shame and every broken moment. somehow, i feel i must remember my shame, remember why i am unworthy. 

and then come sandal-clad feet, pierced and bleeding. and they are not the silent feet that some focus upon...

no, these are the pounding Feet that stood on the neck of Death and ground him to powder at the base of the Cross. they belong to the Gentlest Warrior who holds Hands high and cries in Lion's roar

Mine. 

and He destroys my memorial to shame. because He did not die so i would remain. oh, He died that i would rise with Him. and together we gather stones with carvings strange and markings still unfamiliar. 

grace. 

forgiven. light. 

eternity. brave. warrioress. 

Mine. 

and on this altar, i burn my rags and stand scarred and unashamed beside my memorial. i am barefoot, in the sacred place. 

He and i both.