i will

i'm still cheating (ie this isn't new writing, as i keep promising)...i wrote this about a year ago...but i still like it, and hey, it's valentine's day.
know that we all deserve the opportunity to make these promises as well as the opportunity to receive these promises from another's lips.
and, as i re-read this, it strikes me again how much loving other people is bound up in how i love You.

happy valentine's day
i wish you love, love, love, any and all kinds
b


I will cherish
that sleep-sluggish time when the sun shines pale on the wall, when your eyes reluctantly blink open.
meal-after-meal-after-meal with you, food for our bellies and hearts and minds.
shared laughter, in all its forms, chuckles and giggles and belly-laughs and happy tears rolling down.
standing next to you, solid and firm, singing praises, together, whispering prayers, together.
dancing, laughing, running, skipping, playing, a childlike joy in our hearts.
loving you, body and soul--dancing--with you and against you and for you—day and night and morning-time, too.

I will delight
in your eyes, the planes of your face, your eyebrows, your lips
in your ears, the slope of your shoulders, the strength of your arms
in you, warm solid weight of you, a place for my shoulderblades to rest against
in your mind, a canyon that I will spend my life exploring
in your heart, a small fragile thing that I will spend my life cradling in my hands
in your soul, a song that I will spend my life singing.
i choose you, just like you have chosen me.
just like the way You did, You who chose me, first.

i believe in the night

i keep promising writing and i haven't delivered...
but i keep reading awesome poets and falling in love with them all over again.

From Rilke's Book of Hours
I, 11

You, darkness, of whom I am born--

I love you more than the flame
that limits the world
to the circle it illumines
and excludes all the rest.

But the dark embraces everything:
shapes and shadows, creatures and me,
people, nations--just as they are.

It lets me imagine
a great presence stirring beside me.

I believe in the night.

bring all of you

(prayers of the community, bsm, 2.1.09; theme of sermon/scriptures was 'anger' and appropriate expressions of angry feelings)

oh dear lord
we are angry
sometimes we don’t like to admit it and
sometimes it bubbles up on our lips
& we can’t hold it in anymore.

we are angry w/the state of this world
we are angry with those who abuse the earth,
abuse the powerless,
those who enact violence. we are angry
that social and governmental systems continue
to oppress countless men, women, and children.

we are angry w/those who are in relationship w/us
angry that they’ve hurt us, manipulated us
we are angry that they’ve been careless
with our hearts and bodies that they hold
in their hands.

we are angry w/ourselves, for swallowing whole
the lies that tell us it’ll never get better
lies that tell us we’re unworthy of self-love
others’ love
Your love.
we are angry that we make the same mistakes
over and over again.

lastly, and we say this with trembling lips, sometimes
we are angry with You.
when we feel like we need You
we can’t see You
we can’t hear You
when we feel most alone, You seem absent.
we get angry with who You are not
because You do not wave a magic wand.
no, Your healing comes through blood and tears and sweat and hard choices.

and yet You still bid us come.
You tell us, Come, Yes, bring your whole selves, broken and aching, consumed with holy or hurtful anger, it doesn’t matter, just bring all of you, I want to share my healing with your whole self.
You tell us, I will help you channel your holy anger into wise and transformative action.
You say, I know it seems I’m not there.
You say, I’m sorry the world has hurt you, I’m sorry for all the hurt you’ve inflicted on yourself. I want you to be at peace, not angry with yourself or me.
You say, I’m trying to show you my love for you.
You tell us, keep looking to the one I sent, keep listening to the stories about him, keep surrounding yourself with people who live like him, for surely as he walked the earth two thousand years ago, he walks beside you now. he taught you to pray these words, and he prays them with you now when we say together

our father, who art in heaven
hallowed be thy name
thy kingdom come
thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
give us this day our daily bread and
forgive us our debts
as we forgive our debtors
and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil
for thine
is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory
forever and ever.
amen (let it be so).