Testimony...

Brennan Manning suggests ‘The question for all of us is what we will really aim at next. If all we are going for is placid decency, routine prayer, well-behaved worship, and comfortable compassion, then we have effectively parted company with the shipwrecked and have no fellowship with the pearl-finder.’'

'I didn't go to the flea market the week of my abortion. I stayed home, and smoked dope and got drunk, and tried to write a little, and went for slow walks along the salt marsh with Pammy. On the seventh night, though, very drunk and just about to taking a sleeping pill, I discovered that I was bleeding heavily. It did not stop over the next hour. i was going through a pad every fifteen minutes, and I thought i should call a doctor or Pammy, but I was so disgusted that I had gotten so drunk one week after an abortion that I just couldn't wake someone up and ask for help. I kept changing Kotex, and got very sober very quickly.

Several hours later, the blood stopped flowing, and I got in bed, shaky and sad and too wild to have another drink or take a sleeping pill. I had a cigarette and turned off the light. After a while, as I lay there, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I just assumed it was my father, whose presence I had felt over the years when I was frightened and alone. The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there - of course, there wasn't. But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond a doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this.

And I was appalled. I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends, I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, "I would rather die."

I felt him sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinched my eyes shut, but that didn't help because that's not what I was seeing him with.

Finally I fell asleep, and in the morning, he was gone.

This experience spooked me badly, but I thought it was just an apparition, born of fear and self-loathing and booze and loss of blood. But everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in. But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever. So I tried to keep one step ahead of it, slamming my houseboat door when I entered or left.

And one week later, when I went back to church, I was so hungover that I couldn't stand up for the songs, and this time I stayed for the sermon, which i just thought was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the existence of extraterrestrials, but the last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape. It was as if people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or 'something' was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling - and it washed over me.

I began to cry amd left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers inder a sky as blue as one of God's own dreams, and I opened the door to my boathouse, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, "OK: I quit."

I took a long deep breath and said out loud, "All right. You can come in."
So this was my beautiful moment of conversion.'

(Anne Lamott: Travelling Mercies - Some Thoughts On Faith)

I don't believe in covering up cracks. Rather I believe in redeeming those landscapes of brokenness and terrifying loneliness and difficulty that we often find ourselves traversing. To fight hard to give back to the little people of this world that which this world had taken so remorselessly from them.

Mike Yaconelli said of himself, ‘I want to be a good person. I don’t want to fail. I want to learn from my mistakes, rid myself of distractions, and run into the arms of Jesus. Most of the time, however, I feel like I am running away from Jesus into my own clutteredness. I want desperately to know God better. I want to be consistent. Right now though the only consistency in my life is my inconsistency. Who I want to be and who I am are not very close together. I am not doing well at the living-a-consistent-life thing.’

Stolen...

"A young teenager stands like a stone in a world she can’t rise above. Beside her another minor wonders how he is going to be a father to the Son of God.

Dickens once said that , ‘it is a far better thing that i do, than i have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that i go to, than i have ever known.’

it reminds me of the mystery that the great tom waits sings…….come on up to the house….. A friend of mine said the other day that; “I need Tom Waits. I need someone who can sing ‘you’re falling down’ in a voice that raises up. Such a ferocious and beautiful voice. How sweet the sound” … how sweet indeed

Well the moon is broken
And the sky is cracked
Come on up to the house
The only things that you can see
Is all that you lack
Come on up to the house

All your cryin don’t do no good
Come on up to the house
Come down off the cross
We can use the wood
Come on up to the house

Come on up to the house
Come on up to the house
The world is not my home
I’m just a passin thru
Come on up to the house

There’s no light in the tunnel
No irons in the fire
Come on up to the house
And your singin lead soprano
In a junkman’s choir
You gotta come on up to the house

Does life seem nasty, brutish and short
Come on up to the house
The seas are stormy
And you can’t find no port
Come on up to the house
There’s nothin in the world

there’s nothin in the world
that you can do
you gotta come on up to the house
and you been whipped by the forces
that are inside you
come on up to the house
well you’re high on top
of your mountain of woe
come on up to the house
well you know you should surrender
but you can’t let go
you gotta come on up to the house

if i exorcise my demons my angels just might leave too……

Maybe we should wear our broken hearts and battered idealism not like hard-won honours but open, weeping sores…maybe that unlocks the door that leads to freedom…"

Teardrop

Love, love is a verb
Love is a doing word
Fearless on my breath
Gentle impulsion
Shakes me, makes me lighter
Fearless on my breath
Teardrop on a fire
Fearless on my breath
Water is my eye
Most faithful mirror
Fearless on my breath
Teardrop on the fire
Of a confession
Fearless on my breath
Most faithful mirror
Fearless on my breath
Teardrop on the fire
Fearless on my breath
You're stumbling in the dark
Stumbling in the dark

nf