day 29. “free for all”/Our Lost Jungle

Khara: What’s an idea that’s been nagging at you, sticking in your brain for a while, and that you’ve just never had the time or courage to bring to life? Today … go for it.

“He prayed as he breathed, forming no words and making no specific request, only holding in his heart, like broken birds in cupped hands, all those people who were in stress or grief.” – Madelyn L’Engle in Two-Part Invention quoting Ellis Peters’ A Morbid Taste for Bones.

Lord, I come as a bird with broken wings,
not able to soar in joy and freedom,
not sure of what I once held sure.

Where came these doubts assailing me

on all sides and underneath
the once sure foundation of Christianity?

I lay awake into the night and beg a crumb,

like a dog scavenging under the table.
Mongrel,  starving for a morsel of truth.

The church promises certainty. How can that be,

when material and spiritual reside in
different dimensions of space and time?

It seems the best I can muster is

a holy hope of faith you require  

of flesh and blood and bone.

Again I ask “Do you understand

how hard it is, how much you ask
of me to simply believe?

In the midst of trees and stones,

toil and bills and pull of gravity
you introduce rapture, heaven, life after death

all things I have never seen

yet, every cell, the very DNA of me
l o n g s to believe it, you…  in you.

Jesus, cup me in your hands, your heart,

I make no special request of you
only hold me tight and never let me go.