A prayer for me, a prayer for you Gomar

Allow the grace to touch even the tenderest part of you...and allow yourself to be counted as a child of the Father...loved entirely...so that you can surrender everything that you are to that love...those secret hidden places are already known. It is only we who fear them. if we live in fear of them, we will never know the fullness of the life we were given. that is the journey we are on...few choose it...a journey toward wholeness/holiness...a terrifying journey...often solitary...but the only one is stepping into the promises...everything else is wandering in the desert.

step into the promises that are given to the child of the kingdom.

you are a child of the kingdom. those promises are there for you.

you are held.

we are known fully.

more fully than we know ouselves...when we are loved we are loved to the hinterlands of our souls...to the furthest reaches of our anger...our fear...our hurting...there is grace for every hidden thing. only we can stand in the way of that grace, which decimates all defences.

here there is milk and honey

here there is milk and honey

"and I will catch you on the pinions of My wings...jump...I will catch you on the pinions of My wings...jump My child...I will catch you on the pinions of My heart...I will catch you."


much love from Ricky

It feels less like a lake, more like a moat

Ben gave me the wonderful gift of these lyrics last night at work...

The Atlantic was born today and I'll tell you how...
The clouds above opened up and let it out.
I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere
When the water filled every hole.
And thousands upon thousands made an ocean,
Making islands where no island should go.
Oh no.
Those people were overjoyed; they took to their boats.
I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat.
The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flood lands to your door have been silenced forever more.
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
It seems farther than ever before
Oh no.
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer...

Death Cab For Cutie: Transatlanticism


I want you so much closer Gomars...

and as I sought Him last night, wrestling this hopelessness that was tugging at my heart, He spoke:
"Everything lost can be found"

Yes Lord, walking in the way of Your Truth, we wait EAGERLY for you, for Your Name and Your Renown are the desire of our soul

i say these things as if they are true...knowing my words can slip through the fingers like water

I pray tonight...

let the revolution move from a coded message and hidden scribbles...move to whispers in darkened alleys in secret rendezvous...move toward an unstoppable surrender...a freedom momentum that cannot be contained...a messy revolution...a silent yet profound exchange of power... who will replace the dictator...the controller...the rational tyranny? Lord Jesus come and take Your throne...

Ghosts

Mice

Vagabonds

Brave?

Weak

it is the same thoughts running through my head...

…hooked on reliving the past, finding safety in their repetition…a paradoxical safety…safety in the most dangerous and violent of worlds…reliving and re-enacting the shortest of tragedies. Tragic stories; painful histories scraped into the walls of their hearts. The prisoner within engraves a story on the walls, desperately hoping the words bleed through into the world of the appearances and apparitions. Bleeding like prayers.

…will the truth set me free…will the truth set you free Gomar…will the truth set us free

we are STILL waiting for the miracle. The miracle of The One whose very touch resonates at the core, an intimacy that melts our Gomar's defences, reminding them that they are loveable for no other reason, than because they are.

watching

longing

waiting

But then I remember the moon comes out with the Sun

My Gomar,
I feel too tired to face it,
And you are too weak to care
It just doesn't seem fair...

Every week it feels over, over, over...
But then I remember that the moon comes out with the Sun...

He can only shine like diamonds for you, if I AM the Only One

I have promised, I am not going anywhere
but you are too weak to care...

Someone cannot leave it
Some one's heart cannot mend
The night is over,
Will you ever choose to start again?

The moon comes out with the Sun
And He can only shine like diamonds for you if I AM the Only One

I have promised, I am not going anywhere
Will you always be too weak to care?

Please Jesus...

I don't mind your tears...

Thursday night past,
a night of tears.
Tears that only ever seem to erode more of a life away.
A night of rust, silence and sky.

And yet as I held a Gomar in my arms, her song of freedom and sovereignty began to sing...she maybe didn't claim it for herself, but her ears began to hear...

You can have my heart

But it isn't new

It's been used and broken

And only comes in blue

It's been down a long road

And it got dirty on the way

If I give it to you will you make it clean

And wash the pain away



You can have my heart

If you don't mind broken things

You can have my heart if you don't mind these tears

Well I heard that you make old things new

So I give these pieces all to you

If you want it you can have my heart



So beyond repair

Nothing I could do I tried to fix it myself

But it was only worse when I got through

Then you walked right into my darkness

And you speak words so sweet

And you hold me like a child

Till my frozen tears fall at your feet



You can have my heart

If you don't mind broken things

You can have my heart if you don't mind these tears

Well I heard that you make old things new

So I give these pieces all to you

If you want it you can have my heart

(Juliet Turner)



I asked a lady Gomar for her heart on Thursday night...this was her reply...

"You can't have my heart Sarah, it was taken a long time ago. And now

it is broken, used, and dirty, so dirty."



My reply, the only words I could muster, "Such a jewel is worth a life time of searching."

How is love supposed to read?

What is Courage?
How is love supposed to read?

Watching women sell their bodies for cash, is this what it means to be alone?

Tear out my Heart
Feed it to Lions
For this one wish I beg you this tonight

Thinking of a Gomar tonight...She was young, just 17. Didn't have to go, but it was the girl she knew she could be, just like every other daughter in this family.

Freedom is nothing to look over, until each Gomar can stand upon its shoulder.

May Silent Angels light the road up ahead...Lord Jesus come and guard the way on these streets of borrowed time.

Walking down into our space behind the City Hall, I am almost home.
Here is our corner up ahead...I'm alive and I am dead...As I lift my eyes, they burn. Sometimes i feel like I can't watch anymore...
Tear out my Heart, someone please, feed it to the Lions...

Freedom is nothing to look over, until each Gomar can stand upon its shoulder.

The pieces dont fit anymore...

Here I am waiting

For how long

I don't know

It's a long way back from where I've been

But there's no where else to go

So I'll stand

With my face to the wind

I'll follow You

And I'll go where You tell me to go

No I won't be afraid

No I won't be afraid

I feel Your wind is moving

I'm not sure where it's going

But I'll let it carry me away

And I won't turn around...

Its a big girl world now?!

Found my heart weeping to these words...I wonder is this a little glimpse into the heart of our Gomar's...they maybe didn't find themselves in India...but Clarence Street may just be as foreign...

On this Thursday night to come...may we offer these women a map to guide them home...it is a big girl world now, full of big girl things...and everyday I wish our Gomar's were small...

Matthew 18
v2 Jesus called a little child to him and put the child among them. 3 Then he said, “I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven. 4 So anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Its a big girl world now
Full of big girl things
And every day I wish I was small
I've been counting on nothing
But he keeps giving me his word
And I am tired of hearing myself speak
Do you get weary?
Do you ever get weak?
How do you dream when you can't fall asleep?
I've been wondering what you're thinking
And if you liked my dress tonight
Would you still say you loved me
Under this ordinary moonlight
I'm so afraid of what you'll say
I'd like to know if you'd be open to starting over from scratch
I'd like to know if you'd be open to giving me a second chance
I used to think I was special
And only I have proved me wrong
I thought I could change the world with a song
But I have ended up in India
With no map to guide me home
The strangest place I think I've ever been
And all this time I thought that we were friends
But my stubborn will is learning to bend

Kendall Payne

…here is the answer to the riddle…you must lose life in order to find it.

…for most of us, to ask for anything more than a puncturing of the numbness, for all too short a moment, is to ask far too much. For us, to ask for life in all its fullness is a luxury beyond the knit of our lives. We make do with pick pocketing pennies from the pockets of life…crumbs off the table. We steal, for life does not lie down willingly for us to sate ourselves.
…these stolen morsels; they are not what we need. We need water, but we drink wine. We need love, but instead we do sex. We need to follow our desires, but instead we lose ourselves in wanting. These are the diuretics of the soul. We appease ourselves with pitifully poor substitutes. Little titillations that make us feel, something like ‘alive’, for a brief fragile tragic moment. Hooked and empty…hooked and empty.
…all we like children have uttered vows…“I will never let this to happen to me again”…and we long to re-enact a drama where we have power, where we have an ounce of control over our own destinies. We would do anything, pay for any delusion, and exchange anything for the fantasy of control…just a little morsel of control over my own feelings…the feelings of another. We let go of any desire to have real power over our worlds…but we appease ourselves with these little unrealities…these bitter, twisted little delusions.
…suffer the little children, for they have suffered enough…
…what is exchanged in these interactions is rarely what is literally exchanged. The currency changing hands is a sleight of hand that hides the more esoteric exchange. Monies become metaphors. With this currency we buy our delusions, secreted within the masquerade…we step on stage…we sell ourselves to have a taste of this control. This is the poison…this is the addiction.
…hooked on reliving the past, finding safety in the repetition…a paradoxical safety…safety in the most dangerous and violent of worlds…reliving and re-enacting the shortest of tragedies. Tragic stories; painful histories scraped into the walls of our heart. The prisoner within engraves a story on the walls, desperately hoping the words bleed through into the world of the appearances and apparitions. Bleeding like prayers.
…will the truth set you free…will the truth set us free…will the truth set me free
we are waiting for the miracle. The miracle of The One whose very touch resonates at the core, an intimacy that melts our defences, reminds us that we are loveable for no other reason, than because we are.
…we are longing…we are hungry…longing for His Jesus to come…Jesus who sees through the walls of our identity, beyond what we allow the world to see…the one who sees the truth of the hidden self, behind who I say that I am. The hidden self with the secret name…a secret name hidden in a secret place that no one will utter. These are the names on the white stones…the names that do not bind us, or reduce us. These names speak of everything that we are, all the things we were but were afraid to live…a name like thunder that decimates the defences we try to hold up with feigned strength.




"I long to be loved. I long to be loved. I long to be loved. I long to be loved.
I long to allow myself to be loved. I long to allow myself to be loved.
I long to love without fear. I long to love without fear. I long to love without fear.
I long to be loved beyond my defences, right into the hinterlands of my shadowy soul
Hear my prayer hear my prayer hear my prayer hear my prayer hear my prayer hear my pr..."

From The Cure at Troy

Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
can fully right a wrong
inflicted or endured.

The innocent in gaols
beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
faints at the funeral home.

History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.

Call the miracle self-healing:
The utter self-revealing
double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
the outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.


~ Seamus Heaney ~

What if they cannot get away?

"A story like mine should never be told.

For my world is as forbidden as it is fragile.

Without its mysteries it cannot survive.

I certainly wasn't born to the life of a Geisha.

Like so much in my strange life I was carried there by the current."

Memoirs of a Geisha

Marbled White: Nothing is more powerful than Beauty in a wicked world.

The Butterfly

I love that you can chase but never touch their wings

Like if you cling to life you will lose it. If you cling to the things you love too tighlty, the touch of love becomes a strangle.

One has to have the space to dance.

Gomars...I commit my life to chasing you, may I never clip your wings.

Ricky you never fail to help me see...thank you...

Star Star teach me how to shine...

Placed myself within a community today...funny feeling, felt like I was stealing something precious...I hadn't been invited...didn't ask could I join their something sacred for the morning...Windsor Baptist...its a good place...they graciously allowed me to sit, to be, to think, and to offer a little of my self back to God in worship...and didn't ask for anything in return...


my head filled with thoughts of identity again...


Who or what is this self I am supposed to be?
The sermon based around ideas of what it means to be human...what it means to be yourself.

And now I am left wandering like a lost soul through the vastness of this meaning of life, wondering whether or not our Gomar's will ever exchange the twenty pound notes they hold in their hands for the greater value of life...

Something that the pastor spoke today...
LIFE IS LOST OR GAINED IN THE LIVING

How then do our Gomars truly live? Could they infact be stealing life from themselves?

Listening to The Frames today:

"Star Star teach me how to shine shine

Teach me so I know what's going on in Your mind

'Cause I don't understand these people

Who say the hill's too steep

Well they talk and talk forever

But they just never climb...

Star star teach me how to shine shine

Teach me so I know whats going on in Your mind

'Cause I don't understand these people

Who say we're all asleep

They'll toss and turn forever

But no rest will they find..."

Can these women be loosing thier lives right now simply by living?

I hear in my mind...

I hear in my mind, all of these voices
I hear in my mind, all of these words
I hear in my mind, all this music
And it breaks my heart

...suppose they never meet You, suppose they never fall in love...suppose they never let You kiss them so sweet and so soft...suppose they never saw You...suppose You never ever called their names...

Suppose I keep on singing love songs just to break my own fall??

Thursday night past...

It is hell down there in the velvet layers of Clarence Street....the jokes are cold...people don't laugh at jokes...they laugh at tragedies...corner street societies...


"But they believe her
They never leave her while she sings
She makes them feel things"

Could I be a lady that sings so true?
Could Emma and I be women who sing?

I feel like I have walked these streets for so long.
There ain't nothing right...
there ain't nothing wrong??

Our Gomar's, they stand, then disappear...and when they return...they light a cigarette, puff away with no regrets...they say they are free...

Sitting on the pavement on thursday night I remembered...it was on these streets I learned to fly, it was on these streets I learned to cry...

And it is on these streets I won't solely sing love songs...I will learn how to sing true.

Echoes of Les Miserables...

A song is sung by Fantine. She is poor, loses her job through no fault of her own, and she has a daughter to care for. She sells her hair then turns to prostitution to earn some money. This poetry is a song expressing the weeping of her soul...unfulfilled dreams and the huge gap between expectation and the reality of what life actually turns out to be...'I dreamed a dream'...Ruth gave me this...reminded her of our Gomar's...thank you Ruth...

The story of Les Miserables unravels hope - a story of redemption, of something more, of forgiveness.

I Dreamed A Dream...
There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time
Then it all went wrong
I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted
But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame
He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came
And still I dream he'll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

whilst this narrative doesn't end with hope, Ruth suggests this isn't her only song...And so the journey continues...may it be so...

On this page
I write my last confession
Read it well
When I, at last, am sleeping
It's a story
Of those who always loved you
Your mother gave her life for you
Then gave you to my keeping.

Come with me
Where chains will never bind you
All your grief
At last, at last behind you
Lord in Heaven
Look down on him in mercy.

Forgive me all my trespasses
And take me to your glory.

Take my hand
And lead me to salvation
Take my love
For love is everlasting
And remember
The truth that once was spoken
To love another person
Is to see the face of God.

Do you hear the people sing
Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people
Who are climbing to the light.

For the wretched of the earth
There is a flame that never dies.
Even the darkest night will end
And the sun will rise.

They will live again in freedom
In the garden of the Lord.
They will walk behind the plough-share,
They will put away the sword.
The chain will be broken
And all men will have their reward.

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with us?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?

Do you hear the people sing?
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring
When tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with us?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?

Do you hear the people sing?
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring
When tomorrow comes, tomorrow comes!

Gomar's of Belfast...you can live in freedom in the garden of the Lord...

Death and Hope vying with each other...

Thursday past...didn't do anything with our Gomar's other than sit! Sitting mostly in silence, overwhelmed by such a state of existence. Men came and went, our ladies offering dead parts of themselves over and over again...will I ever understand?

couldn't offer words, prayers, couldn't even truely offer love...
felt numb inside to the reality of it all...felt numb inside to the hope of the gospel that I long to give my life too...

Has my presence down town become emotionless?
Has the normality of our presence in town, has it diluted the very presence of Jesus?

to you Lady Gomar I am sorry...
O that you may hear His voice, speaking tenderly to you...
Lady Gomar, that you would stop suffocating the fire of His love...all you leave yourself is coal...why still do you chose to feed on ashes?

"What's going on, it's cold out here
You have a life but it's torn and tattered
Gomar, you're losing pieces of your heart
You have a world but it has stopped turning
You have lost another day and have chosen the dark
Love is a fire but you quench its desire to burn
Stop dragging My love across the coals
It is time to recover your soul
Lazy old sunset sinking like a tear
Alone at night in a losing battle
That perfect world is never clear
You have to fight for the things that matter
Spare your heart, save your soul
Stop dragging My love across the coals
I want to recover your soul"

The Woman and the dragon

Revelation 12

1 Then I witnessed in heaven an event of great significance. I saw a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head.
2 She was pregnant, and she cried out because of her labor pains and the agony of giving birth.
3 Then I witnessed in heaven another significant event. I saw a large red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, with seven crowns on his heads.
4 His tail swept away one-third of the stars in the sky, and he threw them to the earth. He stood in front of the woman as she was about to give birth, ready to devour her baby as soon as it was born.
5 She gave birth to a son who was to rule all nations with an iron rod. And her child was snatched away from the dragon and was caught up to God and to his throne.
6 And the woman fled into the wilderness, where God had prepared a place to care for her for 1,260 days.
7 Then there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and his angels.
8 And the dragon lost the battle, and he and his angels were forced out of heaven.
9 This great dragon—the ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, the one deceiving the whole world—was thrown down to the earth with all his angels.
10 Then I heard a loud voice shouting across the heavens,
“It has come at last— salvation and power and the Kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters has been thrown down to earth— the one who accuses them before our God day and night.
11 And they have defeated him by the blood of the Lamb and by their testimony. And they did not love their lives so much that they were afraid to die.
12 Therefore, rejoice, O heavens! And you who live in the heavens, rejoice! But terror will come on the earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to you in great anger, knowing that he has little time.”
13 When the dragon realized that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child.
14 But she was given two wings like those of a great eagle so she could fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness. There she would be cared for and protected from the dragon for a time, times, and half a time.
15 Then the dragon tried to drown the woman with a flood of water that flowed from his mouth.
16 But the earth helped her by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that gushed out from the mouth of the dragon.
17 And the dragon was angry at the woman and declared war against the rest of her children—all who keep God’s commandments and maintain their testimony for Jesus.
18 Then the dragon took his stand on the shore beside the sea.

The promise of blossom...

To come into one's own...

A condition or time of vigor and freshness...

To come to a promising stage...

“She looked calm and serene, but her face betrayed her inner state, for she was suffering silent pains she feared would never leave her."

Who do you say that I am?

This is the story of “I” in the world...

There are stories told…ancient stories of primordial creations, primordial births…and the plots unfold to reveal the entry of some kind of sin into these worlds, and the reluctant departure of its inhabitants from the pristine place, the tranquil gardens where God could walk with man and with woman with no disguise…these were the Edens. The stories continue, playing out the struggle between the Eden-state and the Exile state. The back turned on all good things, to a land of shame and banishment, of covering up…thus was born the façade. But…the narrative continues and there is a gospel to be heard, there is good news - on the horizon there is a messiah, who brings a new hope…the Kingdom Come. The exiled can never return to Eden, but there is another place that promises something that has the scent of Edens gardens, the taste of its pure waters…maybe this could be a return to innocence, a second naiveté?


How do we learn to live in the hinterlands, in the in-betweens…for isn’t that where we are…somewhere between banishment and the promise…the Eden-state and the Exile-state? Am I alone, when I say that sometimes I feel like a stranger in this land…an immigrant…and there is a feeling and a longing deep inside that feels like homesickness…but I have no memories of that home for which I long. I have no stories to recall. No firm identity that I can claim to reinforce that citizenship. It feels like carrying the wrong passport.


In desperation we forge identity in the flames of fear and hostility. Uncertain about what this fledgling state is, we define ourselves by what we fear, or what we hope we are not. We make statements and policies to reinforce our existence, feeling threatened by everyone…from without and within.

I am not like them, I am not one of those…and that is who I am.

I am not gay…I am not a prostitute…I am not an immigrant…I am not a Muslim…I am not mentally disabled…I am not weak…I am not depressed…I am not afraid…and the sum of all these things which I am not, is who I am. I don’t even know who I would be if I were not able to say what I am not. I can’t tell you what I love, but I can surely tell you about what I hate.

When I think of identity, I normally think of fear and clinging. I think, that for most of the time, we use identity in a negative way…and the problem with this is, that names have power. Even when the name is simply “I” or “you”…”us” or “them”…these nominations have incredible power. The nominations we give others or ourselves tend to have a sense of solidity, rather than fluidity. They tend to bind rather than to free. And, in as much as this, they are not adequate for expressing the human condition, the human experience. When things fail to do this they can quickly become, not only inadequate, but also simply dehumanising. We reduce others and ourselves to our lowest common denominators, just to make life easier to contain, to comprehend.

Where there is mystery we pin down, where there is lack of understanding we grasp at certainty with contrived facts. We would rather name inadequately than continue on unknowing. We do this to ourselves. And because we treat ourselves this way, we treat our neighbours this way. We reduce ourselves and name ourselves…in naming we solidify, in solidifying we reduce our ability to morph and change. We curse ourselves to our chosen fate. We curse those around us to the same fate as ourselves, because we fear uncertainty…we fear what we do not know…who we do not know.

I can no longer can say the word prostitute...why? becuase I called myself a warrior and forgot I was a lover...and the women that I love have become slaves to this identity...


...ricky thank you...