On Barking Up The Wrong Tree

You’ve been barking up the wrong tree

You think you want out of this

But what you most long for is to be right in it

You think you want it all to stop

Yet what you’re yearning for is the start

You think you’re afraid to die

In fact, you’re afraid to live

Scared witless by your untamed aliveness

You think you want love to make you whole

When really what your heart most wants

Is for love to take you apart

So that you can taste the sweet fruits of annihilation

You think you should keep it all together

Your true longing is for it all to fall apart

So catastrophically that you’ll be left with nothing

And the game will be over

I know, I know

It all got so horribly complicated

And you thought that’s what life was

Trust me

When you see the sheer simplicity of this

It will take your breath away

On Sunday Afternoon

I contain the world.

Surely

I can’t be this

I’m not allowed to be this

I should be cut down to size, restricted, belittled.

Then comes the relief: I thought it would never end.

It’s over.

I made it.

I was barren, yet now I bear fruit.

Was lost, yet now am found.

Such heartbreaking beauty. The struggle is over.

I shut down.

I tried to keep it in.

I tried to keep it out.

I never wanted to leave, but there was no choice.

Heartbroken, we stumble.

Such desperate longing, yearning.

I thought I didn’t have it.

I thought I wasn’t God.

I failed to see my own perfection.

Constantly feeling there was something to be done.

It couldn’t be here or this.

It couldn’t be now.

Missing beyond missing.

Grief beyond grief.

Utterly, utterly undone. Laid waste. Razed to the ground.

The gatekeeper, the vigilant one

Parcelling, limiting, confining, controlling, holding, scared

Terrified witless, actually.

Such safety in limitation

Such safety in borders

Freedom and limitlessness so far beyond comprehension.

Lost and found were never, ever separate from each other.

Each other: such love in those words

The deep embrace we think we’ve lost

The deep embrace that never left.

In our brokenness lies our completeness

In our fragility lies our strength

We are forged by our undoing.

Falling into each other’s arms

All the richer for discovering there is no other.

Never abandoned, left or forsaken

Never betrayed, rejected or neglected

Such tales we tell.

Then what? We wonder.

What now?

No end and no beginning.

Aliveness.

Intimacy.

Blessed rest.