The choices for today were:
- Write a free verse poem using several metaphors to describe your feelings. Let metaphors describe what you want or what is happening. Let metaphors tell you how its been for you in the past. End your poem by getting what you want. Here’s an example
Her voice is a plain, the flat
land of our country’s flax. I can count
on her. Her trust in me is satin
reaches long and soft and lovely.
I weave between the treacherous
paths, they call be back
to the tunnel, nights in the cave.
I twist in the tumbled sheets I sleep in.
Who are we and why have we stumbled here? - Find a picture that seems reassuring. What does it remind you of? How is that reassuring? What does it seem to teach you?
- Sometimes changing a passage of prose to poetry can make you feel your feelings more. Try it.
The minute I saw this picture, I found myself at peace. I have always felt drawn to pictures of mothers and children. It is not so much that it reminds me of anything in my own life, at least not that I can remember. Maybe that is it. Maybe it is that it reminds me of what I have read about my foster parents and how they used to play with me. It reminds me of being connected to something bigger then me. It reminds me of my relationship with the creator. We are connected. I am part of something bigger then myself, and in some respects, I have my own unique identity, but there is something that connects us. I have never known my birth or foster parents, but there is a connection between us that nothing can separate.
I am reminded of my parents and how we too are part of a bigger picture. I am reminded of the games my father would play with us in the swimming pool or how my mom would play with me as a little girl and the pictures I have of her holding me on her lap. On days when I find myself missing her, I find myself drawn to pictures of her and remembering that her love for me unconditional. That the umbilical cord that ran between us did not come from her navel, but from her heart.
I am reassured that no matter what is going on in my life, the one who loves me and created me has me and is protecting me. I am reminded of my relationship with the Creator whose love has always been unconditional. Who has never forsaken or abandoned me. This image for me is reassuring in that it reminds me that it does not matter what I am going through in my life, the love of and from the Creator will keep me in balance and safe.
I am reassured that love is just that love. It is greater then any one part or even the whole of the parts. It just is. And I find myself remembering 1st Corinthians 13 “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Maybe it is that I need to come back to love tonight, as I once again found myself frustrated because my expectations, which I did not realize I had about a situation were not met. So I keep moving through and remember that even in these times of temporary setbacks in my own evolution, the Creators love for me is there, protecting me, trusting in me, being patient and kind with me. Love never ends.