wordle-ness

 

didn't know about this til today...made this by plugging in one of my old poems
kinda cool lookin', i think

untitled

communion

so many drastically different members of Christ's body, coming to the same table, participating in the same resurrection-restoration-repairing-re-membering act

every once in a while my heart still stops just looking at it

the beauty God intends for us

thank you for seeing me through

thank you

for overlooking the broken commitments
for standing still and steady as stress burst through seams
for listening to litanies of troubles

thank you

for loving, patiently, adamantly, gently, impatiently, with frustration and compassion
for living and breathing hope

for picking up the phone

thank you

for lunches and dinners & food-gifts from your pantry
for finding side-gigs and unexpected sources of income

thank you

for picking up the slack, for stepping in and stepping up
for “it’s alright”s and “don’t worry about it”s and “it’ll be fine”s

thank you

for lighting candles, praying, carrying me in your heart
for your words of faith and conviction, belief and challenge

thank you

for reminding me of all the things i forgot
for repeating the words i couldn’t hear, wouldn’t hear
for being present, next to me or deep in my heart

thank you thank you thank you
for the gift of you, and you, and You

during this hard, hard season

i am straightening out my bent back
moving and breathing to the rhythms of gratitude
and your love is what carried me here

thank you for seeing me through

meditations on grief

how do you form those words
what do they feel like when they fall of out of your mouth
heavy whispers pushed past the lump in your throat

what is it like to watch a person crumple
eyes growing large,
reality shattering, replaced with a forever-wound

it doesn't matter who you lose
or how you lose them
but at the very heart of any kind of grief, massive or slight,
there is always

always

the same pang
the same punch in the gut
the same breathlessness

untitled

healing shows up in the strangest of places
chopping garlic in a warm kitchen
scrubbing a tub til it glows
smoothing out the wrinkles from a soft bedsheet

all these little movements
made over and over again
such weary, graceful hands

snippets

"rough drafts"--new title for the blog. (hopefully) new approach to writing for it. i've been neglecting writing for writing's sake (and a lot of other things) for a long time, for reasons that felt justified, but weren't. not really. i need to get in the habit of doing it and having it all in one place, not so much because i feel a need for an audience...but because i want it to be somewhere, and i have never been good at keeping journals in real life...i just buy pretty ones and never write in them.
so from here on out there will mostly be snippets. ideas. a few words strung together. practicing writing.
some of it will be stupid and not really worth reading. but some of it might be beautiful.
like learning a song on the piano...and being patient as the fingers slip onto that wrong key again and again. and anyway, it is the act of writing that matters.

so here's to chasing inspiration around in circles and not waiting for it to hit you over the head
to making a mark & not caring if it's "right", but enjoying the fact that you made it


-b.

it has been a long time...

...since i have written anything creative just for the sake of writing something creative.
but some words are rustling under my skin, unknown and unformed, but moving, restless, & insisting on their presence all the same.
i don't know why i felt the urge to write that here, why i have this little blog-thing at all. but i felt it, and i followed it, because i don't listen to my gut often enough.
b.