Rainbows In The Dark
God is light. God is good. God is righteous. Can we really assign any adjective we want to to God? How can God be good if God created goodness in the first place? How can God be righteous if God is the very concept of righteousness? Isn’t this like writing, This tree is treeness? Well, yes it is, as a matter of fact. But trees are treeness. But do we really need to say so? Ever? What is our need to heap adjectives on God, the meanings for all of which were created by God, all about? When I was a little girl, I used to sit in...
read moreBroken / Shattered
Smashing through our soul’s walls The process of spiritual growth is a process of growing out of the size and shape our souls are currently in. Invariably there is in a soul fears that are fed by ancient streams, the water in which comes from memories long forgotten. There are also beliefs that we know are wrong, but still hold fast to our bank of truths. While outwardly we may conform to the “right” of things, inwardly we keep the secret of the wrong that we hold as one of our beliefs. We grow out of our souls. A...
read morePrimordial Love Poem
(by Diane Wolverton) I want to adore your body just as it is. I want to adore every scar, every fold and crevice. I want to know every hair, where all your moles are, every corn on your foot, and especially the places that make you insecure so I can adore them most of all. I want to notice every part of you, like the undulating ocean of your eyes and love especially the right one when it gets tired and a little bit red. I want to know every place it feels good to touch, how much or how little, how soft, how hard, how fast, how slow. And once...
read moreLayered
The trinity of me As I get older I see, more and more, that who I am today—who I have been every day of my life—was set absolutely as a child. Perhaps this is true of everyone. Or perhaps some people slip through their childhood and develop their character as an adult. Or keep recreating their character throughout their life. But this isn’t true for me. And in spite of the truth that I had always viewed myself as having two distinct personalities—two distinct Julias in the world—I have come to admit that there aren’t just two. ...
read moreStained
When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning. (Isaiah 4:4) Vanity and cruelty. Filth and blood. The power to wash. The strength to burn. It is God’s responsibility to cleanse and purify our world after we have defiled it. Like children who have been left at home alone, and get into everything. And leave a mess. Oblivious. Triumphant. We’ve done all this! But someone has to clean...
read moreIsaiah 55:8–9
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the Earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Yours and Mine It is an interesting world when you live, as I do, as a mystic. It goes along, with a semblance of normalcy, and then there is the inevitable wall. Which brings with it a drenching shower of confusion. I put into action, whenever I can, what I have been taught by God. Not that I don’t forget some of what I have...
read moreEphesians 5:20
Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Returning to childhood Giving thanks for everyone in the name of Jesus. It sounds like the lesson God, the Father, gave me as a young child, and one that lasted until I graduated from high school. If not longer. You see this, Julia, it is all God. It is all me. It was like being given a chance to work on the largest jigsaw puzzle in the universe. So my childhood was spent not getting the pieces to fit. The pairing that seemed right made no...
read moreHoly
The Bridge Between God and Man We forget to look up. Not that God is physically above us. Or below us. God is. Every molecule is God. And we forget this. Or don’t understand how to know this. We just keep walking on. Eyes straight ahead. Not seeing. Not letting the miraculous healing of a loved one touch our heart. Not letting the rain soothe our shredded nerves. Not letting a friend’s word sink into our heart. No reaching out. We’re fine the way we are. So there. We want to feel God in our lives. We ache for it. But we...
read moreLiving Earth
Mothering Nature I was shown something the other day. In one way I had the feeling that I knew this already. But in another way, it shocked me. I mulled it over for an entire day. And still land on it at times. The Earth as a rational, sentient wholeness that can not only live in harmony with Man, but can understand his needs and respond to them. I spent my childhood sitting in fields of long grass and walking miles through the soft woods, stopping by small ponds with egrets standing in them. Watching foxes and chipmunks, deer and even...
read moreA Heart’s Intention
I feel as though I have been being built all my life. At first, clearly, it was God doing the building. But as his absolute nature of being the Builder diminished and I was left, more and more to participate in the process, I became, understandably, increasingly doubtful of who I am. Sometimes what I was working on mystically would come crashing down so hard that I thought I was at the very beginning of my flight into the world, standing on that edge of the universe for the first time, and wondering what I was doing there. Wondering what was...
read moreOn Being Gray
The Faithfulness of God I will be the same until your old age, and I will bear you up when you turn gray. I have made you, and I will carry you; I will bear and reassure you. (Isaiah 46:4) Life is long and hard. Especially when you are aligned with God. For Jesus, his “life” was only about three years long. The life of his ministry. The life of his walking God into the world. There were no gray hairs on his head the day he died. But there are gray hairs on my head. Mostly white. Gray and white. I find it a jarring idea that...
read moreTwo Kinds Of Deliverance by Mary Oliver
1 Last night the geese came back, slanting fast from the blossom of the rising moon down to the black pond. A muskrat swimming in the twilight saw them and hurried to the secret lodges to tell everyone spring had come. And so it had. By morning when I went out the last of the ice had disappeared, blackbirds sang on the shores. Every year the geese, returning, do this, I don’t know how. 2 The curtains opened and there was an old man in a headdress of feathers, leather leggings and a vest made from the skin of some animal. He danced in a kind...
read moreCreated
And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9a) I always thought that were I ever to encounter romantic love—in myself for another, in another for me—even if it meant turning my back on God and all his being, I would choose love. Love over God. I am spiritually gifted. Magnificently so. And I live on Earth. Where other’s rejection of me because of this giftedness is as natural as rain. But my isolation wasn’t only a result of my mysticism. There were...
read moreMy Life With Bugs
The Smallest Creatures And Their Mess I feel like my whole life has been defined by bugs. I suppose I should feel like it has been defined by God. But I don’t. It’s the bugs. They are always there. Even when you don’t want them to be. But, then, why would I ever want them to be there? I grew up on the coast of Maine, a state where its greatest boast is that in the long, long winters THERE ARE NO BUGS. No bugs when I was out cross-country skiing. No bugs when I was out snow-shoeing. No bugs when I was out hiking around. Or...
read moreOn Hope
The Big Future Hope is that smoothness that helps to ease your thoughts into the future. It might come to us unbidden. A chance thought that catches our attention. If only…. Or, Perhaps…. It will be there when I get there. Or, maybe he will be there. Or, even, I might get to do it. All possibilities. That open the door in our mind that allows us enter the world that hasn’t been yet. A world of dreams that come to life in our imagination. Dreams of conceivables. Hopes are positive dreams. That promise. Perhaps hope is God’s way of...
read moreA Place At His Table
Undeserved Love So the servant came back and reported these things to his master. Then, in anger, the master of the house told his servant, “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the city, and bring in here the poor, maimed, blind, and lame.” (Luke 14:21) The uninvited. Perhaps that is what grace is. Or what it feels like. A random gifting. I haven’t eaten anything solid in over three weeks and here you are rounding me up to go feast at a banquet. I have done nothing to deserve it. That is the heart of the story....
read moreFire Dance
(by Linda Barton) Bhutan, November 2000 The young boy Maybe seven grabbed my hand In the dark Held it tight Tighter than I have ever been held He led me through a small gate We were crushed and I worried for him His size I wondered why me He wanted something from me Not what I had expected But to tell me to Go slow Be careful and watch for my life His body shook and I knew He feared for his I moved slowly He pulled me past the others Another way He ran dragging my feet Over craters and voices After a lifetime He left me dangling like Wilted...
read moreSacred Space
Defilement When I first thought about this subject matter I couldn’t really get a hold of it. Isn’t every space that exists a sacred space? Hasn’t God created everything, making it so? And then when I sat down to think about it some more, an image came to me. And it led me to see what I really believe about sacred spaces. Now right off the bat, there really is a difference between personal sacred spaces and collective ones. I can remember times standing at the top of mountains and looking out and feeling like I was standing...
read moreWhen I Am Silent
(by Ziggy Rendler-Bregman) When I am silent it is possible to see particles of dust collide without making a sound, each speck of carbon from the bone of some fallen bird. When I am silent it is possible to hear how song lines flatten the edge of time, my own heartbeat below the bridge, where a stream with its memory of cloud flows into a deeper river. When I am silent it is possible to take the smallest hand and walk the garden wall where memory of fuchsia and blackberry is untangled from the tears of a blue-eyed girl who steps through the...
read moreMeditation
(by Johanna Courtleigh) I close my eyes to see myself there in the darkness where my heart begins her breathing. I am breath. The give and take of planets and trees. The rise and fall of tides. The painted skies of dawn and sunset. The chrysalis opening. The cocoon giving forth to wing. I sit in the darkness and speak my name. I call myself back. Name myself as though I am the mother. Hold my breath in the quiet of my arms. Cradle and comfort. Body of sorrow. Body of joy. Body of earth and bone, like the clay between fingers, molding itself...
read more