Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Saturday, August 1, 2009
I will turn the calendar on fifty years in November. I am amazed at times how I feel like I am just on the precipice of adulthood.
I am thankful for my memories. I am thankful that when I look back on my childhood and my young adult years I now can see a lot of joy instead of the hurt and pain that has reflected in so much of my historical thought life. I have somehow come around a bend and found myself thankful for every hard thing that ever happened. I didn’t think I’d ever get here. I have memories of my dad that make me smile and laugh. I have memories that are good of life with my mom. I see my history as an adventure unfolded. It wasn’t perfect. So many things could have and should have been different, but they are what they are, and I am finding joy in the retrospective journey.
Justice is when things line up exactly with the way God intended them to be. That sounds mostly like we will only see justice in His Kingdom in heaven. I can’t imagine anything ever being lined up exactly with God's will here on earth.
But there is another perspective. That everything here on earth is exactly according to God’s plan. Even the stuff that seems disjointed. Even the stuff that hurts like crazy. God planned it, allowed it, didn’t stop it from happening because there is a perfect work He is doing in me that matters more than the pain of the circumstance. That is a good way to see it. Justice for Him is seeing my life worked out according to His plan, regardless of what I feel about it (the emotion part). It is character and heart He is after. So, if I keep that perspective, there is utter peace. I can love and let go of the hurt. I can see the beauty of His craftsmanship in me and in what He will do with my relationships with people and my circumstances from day to day.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
This poem came out one day not long ago when I returned from a walk on the beach. I found this shiny black stone poking out of the sand. I looked down at it, walked away, and then returned to pull it from the sand. I was struggling that day. As I walked along, holding the stone, turning it over and over in my hand, it occurred to me that our lives are much like the journey that stone had made through the surf to the beach. I know it did not start out as a smooth, round object. Somewhere, along a cliff perhaps, the waves beat hard and long enough to cause a chunk of stone to drop into the water. Or maybe its journey began on a rain swept mountainside, down a rumbling river to the sea. Over time, the jagged, rough object was transformed into a smooth stone. Much like my own life is being transformed daily under the watchful eye of my God.
Black Stone
This black stone pushed up
Through the sand
Just beyond tide’s edge.
My feet step around it
Then draw back to reach a hand,
Feel sand grains beneath my nails
Pull the smooth round treasure from its bed.
I hold it without looking,
Sand and grit and wet
Impressing the skin of my palm,
Catching a corner of my mind’s eye,
In my field of vision
On the near horizon
Surfers ride thick dark swells,
Finding their freedom
On the California coast.
This day on the beach
I am searching,
Flinging questions and sorrows
Toward the wide open sky--
The face of God.
I did not come to look for stones.
I am walking
With the roll of thunder roaring through my bones.
The troubled years shiver,
Unsettled in their grave.
I am out of touch with hate.
But it is crawling around
Looking for a place of weakness
Underneath my skin.
The stone is cool against my palm.
I imagine its smoothing journey
From ragged cliff’s edge,
Through tumbling waves and surging tides
To find a place
On this beach
In my hand.
I shift my gaze
To shining hills of gold
To the changing line of ocean’s edge.
To cloud shrouded scenes
Of long ago memories almost disappeared.
My own story tumbles and turns
Through mountains to valleys
By rivers that run to the mouth of the sea.
The eyes of God are watching now.
Even the rocks cry out.
Elizabeth Mitchell
Thursday, July 2, 2009
I have a story to tell. It is a once upon a time tale. It is a here and now essay. I’ve wandered in and out of seasons--at times I’ve left my mark and at times I’ve vanished quietly away from the story without a trace. But every piece of the puzzle counts. Every piece of the puzzle unfolds into who I have become, who I will be. Writing is my outlet. Words on the page are the place where the working out of my days becomes concrete and traceable.
Sometimes my stories come out in poetry. Here is a piece of my story. A memory.
Dust LInes
Crossing Nebraska 1978
The full moon shined
Pouring light on the nighttime world.
Along the highway’s edge,
In the dark of night,
A field lay open to the wide looming sky.
From the corner of his eye he saw it--
Slowly at first
Coming into view--
This old pick up truck
Rumbling across the dirt
With a lonely trail of dust gathering
In the moonlight.
The image remained
Fixed forever
In the back of his mind’s eye.
“If I ever made a movie,” he declared,
“I would be sure to have a scene like that,
Just an old pick up cutting across a field,
Raising up dust in a long, straight line.”
Now the moon rises in the distance
Behind the hills.
Far away, I can hear the rev of an old engine.
My mind drifts back to a time
When dreams of dust lines
Ran deep across our vision,
When the world lay out flat and long--
Waiting to be sucked in and blown out
By a couple of friends
Shooting toward the horizon.
Elizabeth Mitchell