Category Archives: Poetry and Stuff

I’ve started walking again.  I guess there are several reasons for this.  I need to walk for exercise.  Just pulling a few teeth just doesn’t count as aerobic activity.  Not enough anyway.  Mind you, we do have stairs from the basement where the staff room and my office is up to the clinic.  But the muffins or cake that appears almost daily down in the staff room seems to negate any effect the stair climbing has on my figure.  And Leo has this cruise/ educational event coming up in November that he insists on me going to with him.  And believe me — I am just not bathing suit material at present.(maybe never will be, but I guess I should try)

The other reason I have begun walking again is that I feel in a bit of a slump.  I know exercise is a good way for me to improve how I feel.  The quiet of the evening is a good time for me to reconnect with God as I walk and sometimes sit and watch the sky and river.  I need this kind of solitary time.  And the time spent walking is also a good time to talk and listen to God.

Watching the sky this evening was also like watching God paint in moving changing colours as the sun set and the sky changed from evening to night.  It makes me think that God must really love beauty.

Evening Sky

How does God do that?
Shift colours
From brilliant orange
To yellow-blue
Then deepening midnight blue and stars,
Throw in
Wisps of inky cloud
Just for show
And on the north horizon
Brush shifting curls
And sheets of drifting light.

This splendor mirrored in the river
As if, in leaving his studio,
The trail of his garment
Lingered long in the evening sky.

Psalm 91:1 and 4

Those who live in the shelter of the Most High
        will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

He will shield you with his wings.
        He will shelter you with his feathers.
        His faithful promises are your armor and protection.

This morning I was reading this Psalm and was thinking about a conversation I had with a friend last night – sharing our similar fears. 

O God,
I find myself
Revisiting old places
Listening to old and frightening voices.
Again and again
I need to run and hide
Under the shelter of your wings.

The places I revisit
The voices that I hear
Bring back old fears, old faults,
Take me to those places where my spirit
Cringes.  Small
And insignificant.
Places where all the signs say
You can’t,
You are too useless,
You are too timid
To be of any use
To God.

So I run
I crawl under your wings again.
And you hide me
From the evils
That would snatch me by the ankles
Pull me out
Drag me through the mud again.

And you simply let me hide in you.
You keep me in this safety.
And when I venture out again
You call to me
You let me know
That your wings
Are always there for me.

Hover over me, O God.
I am never far from needing
To be sheltered in you.

I’ve been reading
and rereading Mark 8.

And thinking about free will
And the constraints that imposed.
Is being frustrated a sin?
But Jesus did not – sin.
“You have eyes
     can’t you see?
You have ears
     can’t you hear?
Don’t you understand
     even yet?”

And he could have
Made them see, hear, think.
Surely this couldn’t have been harder
Than making a blind man see
With his eyes.

What would that have done
To this world?
A God principle destroyed.
“Do not test the Lord your God.”
And the devil left him
Until the next opportunity came.
Was this one of them?