These Hands

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/these-hands/

As I lied, I lied

tears shook your shoulders while you cried:

please stop, and hide the truth no more -

A ghost, poltergeist, an echo at most

left behind when you’ve carved out hope

replacing dreams with ash and lime;

traipsing down the somber street side

blithe and blank with an empty face

no matter the distance down aching lane

turn around and you’re home again

beside a hearth-whole fire

safe inside these walls

It’s amazing how little distance you must travel to find people hurting. We assume missions are necessary to Africa and Eastern Europe, or dangerous places for Christians like China or the Middle East, but plenty of hurt sits next to us on the bus, at the dinner table, or even on the church pews - perhaps especially on the church pews.

And how do you address such pains, the problems not of meals and poverty, but of internal poverty and spiritual starvation? How do you address depression, anxiety, loneliness, anger, despair, a lack of self-confidence, doubt, pain, or stress? These things our individualistic society has told us to bury deep within our psyche until they are embedded in our personality, entrenched in our existence, when a person cannot separate their identity from stress, pain, and the horrors of ill-relationship.

And I’m an introvert, tentative with hands of healing, shy with words of comfort, timid with grace and mercy, wordless with exhortation, bashful with blessing, hesitant with hope and helpfulness. How do I extend hands that are stuck in my pockets, and how do I open eyes that are self-consciously staring at my toes, and how do I love when my heart hides in my sleeves?

Holy Spirit move in me; a susurrus of wind and wave that washes me from head to feet, and dresses me in neat white linens, and sets me free to serve and be, and be wholly loving.

These hands that have taken, let them give; these feet that have wandered, set them true; these eyes that have judged, let them cry with mercy and grace.

Hands

hourglass, crystal ball, scythe, neat-tucked bed, dusty corners, spiderwebs, time-greyed armoire, rusty crib, ancient toys the stuff of nightmares, ceiling collapsing beneath a weighty loneliness.

have you found what beauty is for?

Beauty is beyond me, its outer gardens waft to me. You've seen the whole of it: the love, the new words and senses, the pinched and kneaded time, bleeding colors spinning rainbows into auroral webs. It's in your eyes, face, rhythm and tempo. What do the lines in my hands say? Do they frown or smile pleasantly? Do they beggar me with wisdom, or silent, plaintive, whisper I've made mistakes - too many. A ledger of scarlet, written in palm cuneiform, a pictograph of questions, unclasped, etched into flesh.  Thumb isolated, a border of sharp fissures, fault lines - my fault?  Large 'A' on each hand, an 'l' following? Sacred symbol lines?

It is not for all, every experience.  My hands tell stories I cannot hear.

listen: the swan song sings for me - this is beauty, truth, beauty

I slept, and woke on a snowflake, just me and a giant snake, shivering with cold. Gazing into each others eyes, must we put our selves aside and cuddle close? I wrapped my arms about him, he around me, and we shivered together atop our snowflake eternity, the worldscape beneath of clouds, aurora, fields and forests. But the snake loved too much, or nature prevailed, and constricted - I could not breathe. But warm, warm, it's better this way, coiled not cold.

black glass ponds are not mirrors, but windows. What do you see? Is it love, or sorrow?

Sorrow, the crow, and memory - or thought? Dusty roads barefoot glow beneath yellowed-paper moon, glitter-black dress of twilight - is it dark in a phoenix egg? Is it this that drives the fight for freedom? Or because inside, without room, the song of life is strangled, muffled?

before you blink, as you smile,what gift to you who loves no gifts? It beats sola para ti, and it's glass running through my veins, and sand, will you have my hand if I give it? no. take this empty box, it's mine, it holds my everything. is it mercy or grace I need more? 

have you found everything without me

to guide you

i'd give my blessing but i misplaced it with my heart-

felt hopes and dreams of warmer things, what everyone

else just forgets - it's the best, the only, night of my life

let me have it with all my dreams intact

these lines on my hands untouched

such stories 

~in memory of..~

where prayers were not enough to save us the sorrow of your passing.