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How long
In peril and pleasure
How long
Pride and treasure
Returning before leaving
Knowing before receiving
I trust in the pageant of redemption
The cold water from deep chasms
Birds circling a new dark beginning
And I remember the wind
and burning timber
The seriousness of November
And the curious dawn of understanding
Of fire and resentment
A baptism of desire and fulfillment

gathering clouds
spare little sky
gracing the heat of a southern summer
with the life of water
rumbling along the cumberland
at sunset
and all is made new
the promise of
autumn's repose
and winds of dew

“It is as impossible for man to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.” F. Buechner

the slow walk through shadows began on a bright day.
a day marked by the cool of morning
and the smell of freshly cut grass
and warm healing heat
but soon the shadows came.
(the advent of chaos
sent from wind)
They would never be the same (these two)
the howling wind
a premonition of fearful charcoal gray
monstrous arrival

This was the beginning for him
and to her, a protracted end.

Something else happened that day.
When tornados echoed like a train with random, careless indescretion.
The long walk
of days and months
through the ruble of lost dreams and long, brutal nights.
For today, so many years later, he learned the horrible diagnosis
in a place where no one goes home.
With emptiness and oblivion, his lover of fifty years spoke stirile and cold to him
as she pulled her hand away from his.

"Who are you?" 

Here is a man who’s life was in danger on the very first day of his life

Here is a man who was a fugitive-

Here is a man who was afraid to speak in public

Here is a man who was rejected by his own family because he married a woman of a different race

Here is a man who shouted at God and lived to tell about it.

Here is a man who battled with the thought of taking his own life.

Here is a man who was surrounded by wish-washy people who questioned him at every turn.

Here is a man who spend 80 years of his life in the desert  40 tending sheep and forty trying to keep a family of over a million people happy

Here is a man who was ridiculed, feed up, burned out, who doubted, who questioned, and ultimately learned that His God was so much bigger than he had ever imagined.

1 Corinthians 2:3-5 (NIV)I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.

Lord of Life,

My Father, I come to you asking for a demonstration of You're power in my daily experiences. Break the strangle hold of flesh in my life so that my words are transformed by your grace and peace.

Thank You for sickness which reminds me of your strength and my ultimate need for the invincibility of Your grace.

in the best of times

(even in dickens world)

chocolate still melts in the sun

and relationships are marred by pride and disrepair

in the best of times

everything that rises converges (with gravity)

and the long night's journey is met by clouds of morning

scattered sheets and the burgeoning doom of depravity

for in the best of times

life is a transcendent amalgam of struggle and symphony