Their story, my story...

Time to ask this question: How can I read the Bible to enter into its story so that its story becomes my story and the story of this community I have come to love?

So that the Bible is not only a word from God but my word back to God.

Im challeneged tonight as I sit here and allow each lady's face to pass through my heart...do I, do Emma and I, thoroughly know the story we are carrying forward?

Lord God as we set our hearts on pilgrimage, grant us Your gift of understanding...somehow in this mystery may we gain knowledge of our God...Lord I long to live the story I have commited to carry forward...

Will You grant me this new Redemption Song?

I will fall asleep tonight praying this prayer...

Lord we need a new redemption song
Lord we’ve tried
It just seems to come out wrong
Won’t you help us please
Help us just to sing along
A new redemption song
Lord we need
A new redemption day
All our worries
Keep getting in the way
Won’t you help us please
Help us find the words to pray
To bring redemption day

Over The Rhine

Love means...

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills -
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn't always understand.
Czeslaw Milosz

Thank you Ruth...

Bruised but not yet broken
Delicate but not weak
A heart wearing thin
Unfulfilled dreams at her feet.
Fragile but not empty
Cracked but without scars
Hope beaten down...yet still glimmering
In the ashes...Yet not marred.
Seeds of faith watered
By a constant stream of saline tears
Tomorrow there may be flowers
But for now doubt mixed with fear.
The fear of not knowing
The fear of the loss
Of all that's familiar
Contorting, transforming...yet ahead...a cross.
Confused...yet still focused
On finding, in this world, what is real
Truth waiting to be discovered
And love, again, her heart to steal

thoughts of today...

what is it but fragments of our own selfs that we would discard that we may become free...

If it is an unjust law we would abolish, surely that law was written with our own hands upon our own foreheads...

If it a care we would cast off, surely that care has been chosen by us rather than imposed upon us...

And if it fear we would dispel, the seat of that fear is surely in our heart and not in the hand of the feared?

I have come to realise...all things move within my being in constant half embrace....the desired and the dreaded...the repungnant and the cherished...the pursued and that which I would escape...these things move within me as lights and shadows in pairs that cling...and when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light and thus my freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom...

sweet surrender today...no more striving...

Is There An Ancient Anointing

Is there an ancient anointing?

Running underground

Rushing like a river

Carrying deliverance

For the barren land

Is there an ancient anointing?

That we have yet to know

A fire down so deep

Although we've felt the heat

We've only seen the smoke

Could we cry like the prophets cried?

Give us children or else we die

Could we pray for a hundred years?

Turn the nations with our tears

Is there an ancient anointing?

That we have never heard

Lost for generations

Covered-up foundations

Calling from the earth

Is there an ancient anointing?

About to be released

Can you hear the sound

Of digging in the ground

The wells are going to spring

Godfrey & Gill Birtill & Martin Scott

Speak to us of Freedom

And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound...

A dawn unto his own day...

And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun...

Selah...

Psalm 77
1 I cried out to God for help;

I cried out to God to hear me.
2 When I was in distress, I sought the Lord;

at night I stretched out untiring hands

and my soul refused to be comforted.
3 I remembered you, O God, and I groaned;

I mused, and my spirit grew faint.

Selah

4 You kept my eyes from closing;

I was too troubled to speak.
5 I thought about the former days,

the years of long ago;
6 I remembered my songs in the night.

My heart mused and my spirit inquired:
7 "Will the Lord reject forever?

Will he never show his favor again?
8 Has his unfailing love vanished forever?

Has his promise failed for all time?
9 Has God forgotten to be merciful?

Has he in anger withheld his compassion?"

Selah

10 Then I thought, "To this I will appeal:

the years of the right hand of the Most High."

11 I will remember the deeds of the LORD;

yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.
12 I will meditate on all your works

and consider all your mighty deeds.
13 Your ways, O God, are holy.

What god is so great as our God?
14 You are the God who performs miracles;

you display your power among the peoples.
15 With your mighty arm you redeemed your people,

the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.

Selah
16 The waters saw you, O God,

the waters saw you and writhed;

the very depths were convulsed.
17 The clouds poured down water,

the skies resounded with thunder;

your arrows flashed back and forth.
18 Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind,

your lightning lit up the world;

the earth trembled and quaked.
19 Your path led through the sea,

your way through the mighty waters,

though your footprints were not seen.
20 You led your people like a flock

by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

And so it is today...

speechless...

tears...

naked...

truth...

fear...

yearning for more...

searching for something unique, powerful...

something that resonates...

will ask again and again...

purpose?...life has no purpose except what individuals give it through their actions. If individuals are capable of making choices about how they live, are those choices what create meaning?

and can someone please talk to me about freedom...what is it? because it is pretty obvious we are not free from conditions...is freedom purely an ability? is freedom an ability to take a stand toward these conditions? and if that is what freedom is, it isn't necessarily very profound or mysterious...merely just practical...and that makes me sad...

i feel lost...i feel like my Christianity has become enough to live but nothing to live for...do you know what I mean? surely it should be the other way around...forgive me Lord for my mumbling Spirit...

such babbles and i need to be gone...

And so the journey continues...

not so much a prayer letter, rather an expression of my fears, insecurities, sense of failure...an accountability to you, who so faithfully support Emma and I (whether you want to or not...ha!) and the ladies and men involved in prostitution in Belfast...

Have been numb to the reality of prostitution these past months...have struggled to pray and have struggled to ask others to pray, yet yesterday morning, when I should have been at church, allowing my heart to filled with adoration of my Salvation God, this image made me sad (found it on a wonderful blog of a wonderful lady whose words also express my heart )...have I just realised that the human condition still has not changed???...this picture continues to be the reality that suffocates our ladies...

"...feeling as naked and vulnerable as this desperate woman bent on her knees, sobbing and crying in the middle of the street at night as her mascara is running down her face and a malevolent cold breeze is blowing her dress (which feels like dirty rags) away.

There is no pity in that wind, yet do we believe that the cool breeze is a wispy awakening call of an inner sense of Hope that speaks Life even in the lowest pits?

Most of my life I have been an idealistic day dreamer who believed that if you work hard and honestly and honour God in all you do, life will be good.

And, I suppose you could say that I haven't changed an inch over the past year and a half. Despite an increased sense of cynicism and sarcasm, a natural defence mechanism perhaps, I so desperately want to believe that 'there must be more than this'"...

so in this sticky community of prostitution...
"for all the failures, can our ladies want to learn to stand up again more and more quickly?
For all the disillusionment, can they want to become even more loving?
For all the tears, can they seek to smile their hearts out?"


...will Emma and I be able to continue "to love even what is lost, because it is only things which break beyond repair?"
...can we be women who strike a different emotional tone for His glory?
...and even when we can't see Him moving, can we be women who continue to love?

"hearts and emotions can be mended, can't they?...lets continue to pursue beauty and pant for grace"...please pray that when these girls are no longer able to change a situation, that they would embrace their unique human potential to change themselves...recognising more and more that freedom is not necessarily freedom from conditions, but actually freedom is to take a stand toward these conditions.

God provide your girls with the appropriate conditions for growth...

"those who have ears...let them hear"

Thanks guys, we love and appreciate you, your prayfulness and your support...
s and em

The Nowhere Birds

I cannot feel found.I filled your absence in mewith all the wrong things, father,fardels, odd bits, gewgaws,waves in tendrils and trees like lobster clawsand howling. Being chased. There's a mesh of dark inside my headbehind my facepurely my mother's - like air shelled in light, a purple bubble,the thin skin over a scream.
caitriona o'reilly's first collection, the nowhere birds
Perdita.

Why I am here...

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word 'is'
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.