P.O.W.s

...Genesis 1:1 properly reads, "God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth." (p 3)

...No one knows the length of time between the events recorded in verses 1 and 2; but it is known that when the account given by verse 2 begins, something catastrophic had happened in the heavens and on earth. (p 4)

...When God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning, He did not create them in the chaos found in verse 2.

Genesis 1:2
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

First of all, in examining verse 2 a student of the Word must be aware that in the original Estrangelo Aramaic and Hebrew there was no verb "to be," although there was the verb "to become." This is the reason the first "was" in verse 2 is in regular print while the second "was" is italicized. It points out that there was no Hebrew word in the second usage; there was no word at that place at all, but there was a word for the first usage. The first word "was" should have been translated "became." "And the earth became without form and void..." The earth was not created in Genesis 1:1 formless and void, but it became that way. (p 6-7)

Ezekiel 28:15
Thou [Lucifer] wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.

Whatever happened between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 was of such a cataclysmic nature that a perfectly created earth became tohu va bohu. When Lucifer rebelled in heaven, the whole creation rocked and reeled. Romans 8 says that even until today the "whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain..." (p 8-9)

I went to bed angry,
And I woke up angry.
Angry at myself,
Angry at loved ones,
But a lot of my anger
Feels directed at You.

In my head,
And in my spirit,
I understand that we are all living
In a shattered, disintegrating Creation.

I understand that
Everyone and everything
That matters to me in this life
Will someday cease to exist.
I understand that death is inevitable...
That illness, destruction, despair,
And all the tragedies and sufferings
Wrought by Nature and human hands
Are inescapable.

In my head,
And in my spirit,
I understand all these things,
But in my heart,
I rail against them.

In my heart,
I cry out against
The brokenness of Creation,
And all that this brokenness means
For Creation's inhabitants.
In my heart,
I ask You "Why?
What is the point of all this?"

O Lord,
How long must we wait for
The healing of Creation,
The restoration of Your Design
To its original wholeness?
We are so weary
From the warfare.
We are so weary
From enduring, and suffering,
For ourselves
And our cherished ones.

There are multiple paths before me.
There is one particular branch of the journey
I am loath to tread.

I am learning,
And studying,
And planning,
And cultivating patience
And understanding,
And trying to prepare.
In the meantime,
In my heart of hearts,
I pray for Your Mercy
To shine on someone's future days.

"Semper fidelis."
Sister Pat's nickname for me.
Always faithful.

O Lord,
Will you test me thus?

Wierwille, Victor Paul.  The Word's Way: Studies in Abundant Living. American Christian Press: New
     Knoxville, 1977.

Auld Lang Syne

2012.
What a full, busy,
Life-altering year.

Father,
As I go into 2013,
Be with me,
And draw me closer to You.

Be with my family,
And my second family,
And my friends,
And my team,
And my company,
And my congregations,
And my old city,
And my new city,
And my birth country,
And my home country,
And, in fact,
The entire world.

Watch over, protect,
And show Your Lovingkindness to
My sister, aunt, cousin, and cousin's fiancé...
Adalheid, the king, the wandering momma, and the king's mom...
All the pets...
The Aussie,
The Sales Manager and her children...
The Russian, her folks, and fiancé...
The Manhattanite and her son,
Didymus and her boys,
The Songbird and her family,
And the beloved archer and her family...
All those whom I hold
Near and dear in heart.

Father,
What will this year hold?
Whatever it holds,
Love us,
And enable us
To faithfully love each other.

Psalm 113:9 - A Meditation

He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children. Praise the LORD!

My dear, dear Adalheid,
Aside from my mother,
You have done the most
To mold and shape
The course of my life.

You know me throughly.
You accentuate and encourage
My good points and strengths
You push me beyond
My limits and flaws.
There are moments you know me
Better than I know myself;
The right words,
And the right gestures
Guide me, steering me
In the proper way.

I did not anticipate how radically
You would change my life
When I first met you
Back in that dumpy newspaper office
On Sheepshead Bay Road.
I am so happy,
And I owe so much of that
To you.

The Good Lord works
In the most mysterious of ways.
Only He could take a twice-orphaned child,
And place that child in the care
Of somone who has never had children.
Only He could knit us together,
Compelling you to ask me to move with you,
Compelling me to choose to do so.
It's been a long few years.
I have no regrets about the path
Unfolding before me.

May the Lord continue to bless you,
To make your home a haven
To humans and animals alike...
To bless this house with love
And laughter and protection and
Health and divine intervention and
Mercy and Grace and His Presence...

But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”  (Ruth 1:16-17)

Wordsmith

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. (Genesis 1:1-3)

Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change.
-Ingrid Bengis-

The words have always been there,
Words and words and more words,
A teenager's vocabulary
Crammed into a toddler's brain.
I was my loquacious mother's first.
I guess she couldn't help herself...
I guess she couldn't resist once she saw
That I was retaining what she said.

Words and words and more words
She would share with me,
And explain to me.
She would always read to me,
Golden Books, Disney Stories,
Fairy tales, and older material
Probably not suited for someone my age.
My mother first introduced me
To the lilting cadences
Of the writer's way.
I would go through her desk,
Eyeballing essays and compositions
She had written,
And thinking, "This is wonderful!
I want to be able to do this
When I grow up!"
Even the few neighbors who were family friends
Had heard about my love
Of the written word.
Lorraine from next door bought me
"The Big Book of Amazing Facts,"
A six-hundred-plus page tome
That had all kinds of facts about
Animals, and history, and science,
And other cool stuff.
She gave it to me for a present.
I was only four years old.

I started writing
At the tender age of eight -
Not the dry, boring school assignments
That my mother would quaff off for me
In under ten minutes,
But an actual short story,
A piece of fiction.
I was thrilled.
A fire was kindled,
A spark that led to the creation
Of literally thousands of pages
Of fiction, poetry, memoir, essay,
And even a play or two.

I don't exactly know what contributed to
The gradual slowing to a trickle
Of what was formerly a flood.
Life encroached.
Jobs. Family drama. Relationships.
Writing became less vital somehow,
Less needed as my days filled with
Busy-ness, responsibilities,
Chores, demands, and sleep deprivation.
But the love for the words
Has never left me.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones,
But words will never hurt me."
What a load of crap that is.

Words have the power to hurt or heal,
To build up or tear down,
To hide or reveal,
To convey everything from love to apathy.
Words were present at the dawning of light
Over the face of creation.
In fact,
It was the utterance of words
That brought forth light,
And everything else that followed.

Father,
Speak Your Words to me.
Speak Your Words through me.
Let the words that leave me
Be gentle and tender and loving and sincere...
Edifying, emboldening, embracing...
Whatever builds up and does not destroy,
Whatever conveys love and compassion,
Whatever the words need to be
At the moment they issue forth. 
Arm me,
Not as a denizen of planet Earth,
But as a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven,
Wielding words as You would have me do,
Eternal Wordsmith Divine!

Surprised by Joy...Alive in Love

You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
     you have loosed my sackcloth
     and clothed me with gladness,
that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
     O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever! (Psalm 30: 11-12)

My Lord God,
I have been back in Arizona since Saturday,
And if there had ever been any lingering thoughts
About where I belong,
Those have been extinguished
By my time spent in New York. 

It's been a long week,
Time stretched alternately slow and quick
And laden with layers of meaning.
I have simultaneously aged and become younger
In the span of six days. 

My Lord God,
I am but a human,
A being of Your Design gifted with
A brief span of years upon this earth.
Portions of my earlier years
Have covered me in shadows,
But increasingly,
Your Light has illumined me,
And drawn me through to
The other side of grief and sorrow. 

And on the other side
Of those griefs and sorrows,
I am unabashedly encountering joy.

Cover me with Your Mercy;
Protect me with Your Lovingkindness.
Do not withdraw Your Face from me.
Without You,
I am nothing. 
Be ever with me,
My Creator and King,
As I embark into the
Glorious, terrifying, unknowable future. 

Anointed One,
Above all things,
Teach me daily
And remind me hourly
How to love
My cherished ones
Like You love us:
Patiently and kindly.
Without envy, boasting,
Arrogance, or rudeness.
Ready to compromise and accommodate.
Without irritability or resentfulness.
In truth, and honesty.
Bearing all things,
Believing all things,
Hoping in all things,
Enduring all things.
Love never ends. *

It is true.
My life continues to be shaped
By the love I have encountered
From You,
And through Your Creation...
From those who are here now,
And from those no longer
On this plane of existence...
From the parents who raised me,
To the birth mother I may never know. 

Let the seeds You plant in me
Flourish and bloom and propagate.
Grant that I,
However dimly,
May reflect Your Love
And sing Your praises
Out, and out, and ever out,
Indefinitely... ad infinitum...
Amen.

Father,
Thank you
For my life,
And everything and everyone in it.

And Father...
Have I mentioned to You lately
How much I love Arizona?...

* derived from 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8

Pine Tree

On the corner of the Upstate property
Is my mother's favorite pine tree.
Soaring to a height of over 40 feet,
Many summers we speculated about
The logistics of
Decorating it with Christmas lights.

We had many conversations
By this tree...
Conversations about
Life. Death. Everything in between.

"I want you to promise me
That if anything happens to me,
You will take care of Gabrielle."

That was an easy one.
One dognapping,
And a plane ride later...

"I had two daughters,"
She would say,
(Special emphasis on the word "two")
"So that you both
Could take care of each other
After we're gone."

A much harder arrangement, Ma.
Much harder to know
What are the right things to do...
Much harder to navigate
Her personality,
And the landmines present there...
Much harder to not negatively impact
My own life in the process.

But you asked,
And I promised,
And I'm trying.

Lord,
Help heal the aftermath
Of all that I've done,
And have yet to do...

Alternate Universe

Thanksgiving week, 2005.
Mommie and I were standing in this kitchen,
In the Upstate house,
And I was trying to convince her
To stay here to celebrate the holidays.

It had been a wistful desire of hers for many years -
Just once, one year,
For us to spend Thanksgiving through January here.

"Come on, Ma," I had said,
"Let's stay.
 You've always wanted to do this.
Sis and her boyfriend can come up if they want.
Let's gamble, and try it.
Who knows, we may love it!
What do you say?"

Of course,
I had ulterior motives in place.
I was slowly trying to talk my mom into relocating,
Into doing the thing she wanted to do most.
I had been offered a job at the
Times Herald-Record Newspaper,
And I was prepared to take it,
Knowing that she would stay if I did.
If only I could convince her
To pursue a course of action
That would fulfill her desires,
Instead of everyone else's all the time!

But no...
One of her daughters
Was back in Brooklyn,
And so back to Brooklyn
She and I went.

The plotting didn't exactly end there.
In January, I got a job working for
A chain of community newspapers in Brooklyn.
In September, I convinced them to let me
Work from home for an indeterminate amount of weeks,
So that I could get my mom back up here
And try convincing her again about relocating.

She passed away in October.
So much was buried along with her...

Thanksgiving week.  Seven years later.
I am back at the house,
This time without Mommie,
Preparing to celebrate my first holiday here
With my sister.
Ironically enough,
That work-at-home job I had wanted so badly
Back in 2001-2003
Has morphed into my newspaper job,
The one I had resigned from
Eight months ago. 

Timing is everything...

"It's okay if you want to move back to New York,"
Adalheid had said to me last weekend. 

No, no, my very best friend,
You have it all wrong.
That window has come and gone.
Maybe I would've been able to do that
Prior to encountering you, and your husband,
And your wandering momma,
And your parrots and dog...
Before I had been kissed by the Arizona sun,
Or walked South Mountain,
Or lain on a blanket looking
At the southwestern night sky,
Or heard the songbird's glorious trill...
Maybe back in 2005 or 2006,
My fate to stay in New York would've been sealed -
But it is not so now.
I have been too altered, too changed
To ever be at peace here.

Although my sister's future may lie here...
Mine does not.

However...
I do sometimes sit back and wonder
About that other Blanca,
Living that Upstate, NY life...

Some lives are linear,
Traveling in a straight path from point A to point B.
Mine is like a spiral,
Ever-circling back around
To reflect on the circuitous path
Propelling me forward...

Lord God,
I feel You present in this place,
Your Hand at work in this pattern of my life.
Lead on, Creator,
And continue to unveil
My path before me...