Regrets

As a young woman you seemed
a red flame in a kind white field.
Your eyes orbed, magnetic,
Gathered me in your wind -
blowing
blowing
blowing
through the cracks of me.

I, a reed, a chime, a swinging bell.
Saved from among tiny begging mouths,
I licked the spoon of you
believing in the more
the more
the more.

Of course, we swallowed us.
Your kind arms, so light in youth,
Sank in the dark of me -
your fleece of teeming questions.

After the children,
I took to the desert,
hooked on veils,
my face crushed flint
sparked your traveling flame.

I've had an ongoing internal conversation
about Lent prompted by a World Vision Video about LENT...wondering what it means to sacrifice and it seems like the word sacrifice implies a painful relinquishment of some kind. In Biblical times it was the death & burning of a spotless animal, which seems barbaric at best. If the "thing" had lived it would havebeen a source of income and/or pride. "look at my beautiful ram, don't the curve of its horns catch the light in a pleasing way, and look how it follows me around and looks to me for its food & protection and just think I own it, aren't I clever or priviledged to have the good fortune to have come across such an amazing beast?" But now is now and animal sacrifice smacks of pagan ritual and rams aren't all that impressive compared to iphones & income & Weitsmans & Wazumas. So what would sacrificing entail if it were something I give up and in the process gain? I figured out it is DOUBT. I'm going to take any idea that gets me off the track of hope and refuse to give it credence... 40 days of believing that not knowing anything about anything is God's plan for keeping me out of the loop of anxiety and protecting me from all the pencil pushing political pissing contests and allowing me a stint in the Land of Milk and Honey... It will be hard in that worry at a time like this might give me at least a slight semblence of wisdom afterall isn't almost everybody spinning around the withering whinning wrat-trap (WWW) for the ideology that best lines up to their own wounded world-view in order to think of themselves sane and up to credible snot? Seems like it. So anyway, that's my new idea for Lent & what I intend to sacrifice. What about you?
Have you thought about it?

“She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Prayer of an Old Chimney

Oh ignored Carpenter, Over-looked Yahweh,

Thank you
for giving
me what my smoke-filled eyes
mistook for loss.





For sustaining my conflagrating arrogance
until every defining board,
every weight-bearing rafter,
every imperiled shingle
I false-claimed as trophy for gain,
smoldered to foddering ash.

By the power of your soft-petaled
will you forbore
my ill-conceived fire
and suffered the flames
of all my self-victimizing stories.

At last I found myself redeemably alone.

Thank you for reclaiming what only belonged
for a season to me,
However grieved by the loss of your hard-won
but now gone structure,
You conceive newness in my widening cracks.

What once was a conduit for smoke and a cradle for flame
Is for now a cistern for light and a trough
of surrender for whatever is meant to become.

Surrounded now by what only You can build
And only You can nail, I wait for transformation.