Showing posts with label mortality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mortality. Show all posts

Saturday, June 24, 2023

Of Mortal and Divine

When every blade-leaf-petal is
dazzled with silver drops
we who behold would be amiss
not to pause, and praise God



The Hand of Time is, in essence the Hand of God!
So in troubled times like these,
we take heart for we are in Good Hands...

The Hand of Time unfolds flowers...







The lifespan of a flower is brief!
(see the transformation of a week in the photos below)




The Hand of God holds eternity!!
It bids us consider well whose Hand
we choose to trust!

***

Eccles.12:6-7
Remember your Creator
 before the silver cord is [b]loosed,
Or the golden bowl is broken,
Or the pitcher shattered at the fountain,
Or the wheel broken at the well.
7Then the dust will return to the earth as it was,
And the spirit will return to God who gave it.

***

Outstretched, across the land and sea
Without form to define
This indelible unity
Where mortal and divine

...cradles the earth and tips yon purse
With dawn’s momentous lure
Once more life's for better or worse
Runs rife, to rich and poor

To test the sacred symmetry
That binds body and soul
And balances humanity
Against the holy Whole

Of love’s sovereign authority
Above sky, sea, and sod
Mist mingles with eternity
The Hand of Time and God

A flower cannot keep its prime
As dust's due decks the sod
The Soul slips through the hand of Time
Into the hand of God

© Janet Martin

Job 14:1-2

Man, who is born of woman,
is short of days and full of trouble.
2Like a flower, he comes forth, then withers away;
like a fleeting shadow,
 he does not endure.



Wednesday, December 11, 2019

This Mortality


My, my, but mortal is master of disaster,
when lured by lust of the flesh, lust of the eye and pride of life!
 (For everything in the world--the lust of the flesh, 
the lust of the eyes, 
and the pride of life--
comes not from the Father 
but from the world.)
1 John 2:16 



It heaves upon the crest of earth in birth and death-wrought spree
It laughs and grieves abreast the breadth of immortality
As Time set in four-season spans twirls like a carousel
And man embarks and exits ‘neath the tolling of its bell
Where we prove, as we learn to love, the nature of the beast
Where deathless soul instills the glove upon which moments feast
And none of us can circumvent the Hour that must be
When we are called to shed the tent of This Mortality

It boasts; oh God forgive us when we forget Mercy’s girt
As we dare to puff out our chests and strut our stuff of dirt
As we forget to smote our breasts and cry out, ‘what is man’
As we ignore the Author and Finisher of our ‘can
As we make wealth an idol rather than worship’s employ
As we take without uttering one phrase of praise or joy
Where grace is always greater than This Mortality’s mess
And God is always faithful to forgive if we confess

Each travels through this world but once toward a binding goal
When This Mortality becomes the chariot of the soul
Where for now we must all partake of trust’s manifold tiers
As waves of hope and heartache surge and merge with days and years
While dreams are dashed and born anew and lashed by winds of change
And all of us are headed to what Last Gasp will estrange
As we enter that which remains life’s Greatest Mystery
When Mortal sheds its rags and puts on Immortality

© Janet Martin

 For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable
 and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come to pass: 
 “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”…
1 Cor.15:52-54

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

When We Begin To See

PAD Challenge day 23: For today’s prompt, take the phrase “When (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then write the poem. 





When new day forges from dark deep
A gorgeous steppingstone
To lay beneath both sky and feet
The measure to move on

When new ways come to dis the old
And test the tried and true
With theories, daring and bold
And foreign to our view

When we begin to feel the sting
Of time’s insistent thrum
As we struggle to wear the Thing
We once felt so safe from

When we begin to see how thin
The veil that separates
Immortal soul from mortal skin
And Time from timeless gates

Then we begin to realize
The frailty of sod
And we, if we are meek and wise
Will seek the hand of God

© Janet Martin

 You have made my days a mere handbreadth; 
the span of my years is as nothing before you. 
Everyone is but a breath, 
even those who seem secure.

Psalm 39:5


Tuesday, June 9, 2015

June




Let the wind waft in soft kisses
Let the sea-song wash our toes
Though green pastureland embraces
North-south-east-west ebb-and-flows

Let the aftermath of flowers
Tease the air with pungent blush
While the artist tints yon-bowers
With a silver-turquoise brush

Let the meadow brim with clover
Let the morning sing for joy
Let the loom of bloom spill over
Filling fists of girl and boy

Let the blue and golden glimmer
Of a slow-churned afternoon
Be the first sweet sip of summer
Let me call its free-fall June

© Janet Martin


...and sharing a poem I found in one of my books today that I love, love, LOVE! mortality and immortality juxtaposed


That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection

 
 
Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; | in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark
                            Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection.
                            Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash:
                            In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
                            Is immortal diamond.

Friday, May 16, 2014

Sacred Awareness






If we, without Awareness of this Great and Awesome thing
Behold, and touch and taste the measure of daily living
And laugh the hollow laughter of the blind leading the blind
Seeking in desperation happiness and peace of mind

…if we shut out the Truth because the Truth is dark with fear
Still then, that Great and Awesome thing will never disappear
For Death, life’s single certainty is every man’s demise
That Great and Awesome Gateway to Hades or Paradise

And if we sadly stumble without Hope, our greatest boast
Then we are, above all men to be pitied the most
For life, this gasp of flesh and blood is not all there will be
Immutable the exchange; Time to Immortality

If we, without Awareness of the One who loves us so
He gave His only Son to die and save us from Hell’s woe
So that we may have Life and have it more abundantly
If we choose to reject The Gift of salvation full-free

…and if we choose to grovel in a most pathetic state
Quelling sacred Awareness of a Great and Awesome Gate
Then, though we gain the world and the cap-sheaf of human boast
We are above all humankind to be pitied the most

© Janet Martin

"You and I are souls", Peter reiterated frequently, "living in bodies".

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Of Immortal Longing



 

He who has clasped in aching want
The emptiness of mortal best
Has felt the Hand of God upon
The door that leads to Heaven’s rest

He who has come to understand
The fullness of futility
In the successes of a man
Has glimpsed his own mortality

He who has come to recognize
Immortal longing deep inside
Waits faithfully; beyond the skies
He knows he will be satisfied

© Janet Martin

I believe in the immortality of the soul
because I have within me
immortal longings.

Helen Keller~

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Imagery





When morning spills a startling chill
From scarlet-satin skies
And we observe a keener verve
Within her restless eyes
When tree-tops blush beneath her brush
Teasing the verdant limb
We recognize the sure demise
Of summer growing dim
But we cannot dissuade or stop
An hour’s velocity
The hand that tugs the bashful bud
Will strip the leafy tree
And those who once dashed unabashed
By life’s rollicking rhyme
Begin to see Mortality
Within each tick of Time
As morning spills a startling chill
On summer’s memory
We recognize within her eyes
More than we plainly see

© Janet Martin

It is downright COLD these past few mornings!