The Most Tender Feelings, Love

The most tender feelings, love

Are cupped where words elude

How does one spell the heart’s full swell

Of humble gratitude?

I love when love replies

In soft, satisfied gaze

And happiness is the caress

Of ordinary days

Be kind, oh sweeping years

And do not brush to naught

Those pictures of every-day love

To gratify my thought

The comfort of farewell

I cannot spell in speech

Or how it spills in half-breath thrills

When you are out of reach

The most tender feelings, love

Evade word’s fraught well-springs

And are best told as we unfold

Life’s ordinary things

© Janet Martin

Sometimes its good to remember that Busy Saturday is a precious gift wrapped in Ordinary! Off to fulfill its 'orders':)

 

Soft-subtle, Like the Touch of Time

Soft-subtle, like the touch of Time

Spring-green transforms the barren scope

And where the landscape dull and brown

Waited, it wears a robe of Hope

We cannot see a moment move

But in the looking back 'tis when

We realize the potence of

Life’s little moments gathered then

Somehow the looking back allows

Us to weigh moments in our hold

Ephemeral powerhouse

Inhale, exhale, gray and gold

Need and greed rival and prove

Not in some monumental WOW

But in moments, our truest love

As touch of Time its truth bestows

How mightily a moment moves

From here to there in soundless sweep

How constantly its passage proves

We have an awesome charge to keep

© Janet Martin

Hubby calls and sort of apologizes for not trying to get a cheaper deal on an article someone has for-sale.

'that's okay. I tell him. I've come to the conclusion it is better to be 'a little more needy' than 'a little more greedy'. Who are we to decide who needs the extra jingle more? ' God looks after our true needs and the rest is BONUS! Thank-you God, for caring about the 'little stuff' in our lives. 

My mixer has been broken for over a month and I saw exactly what I was looking for( a discontinued model) on an on-line buy-and-sell site but the mixer was in Toronto.(1&1/2 hrs away) 'that's okay', said the lady when I told her I would love to buy it but have no idea when I will be there! She told me she would wait and last week-end when we were in Toronto to look at my daughter's apartment we also got the mixer! I can bake again:) The lady told me she was so happy to sell it to the person who said 'I would like the mixer' and not 'I would like a better bargain' and she thanked me for that because she told me she tried to advertise it at a fair 'bargain. I really appreciated her thoughtful words...and I thanked God for caring about little details and allowing us 'breaks' not to fill our own pockets but so we have more to GIVE, not keep. Easier said than done but never too late to try.

Time has such a soft-subtle touch and sometimes it seems in the looking back we see more failure than triumph, but no, each moment is a grace gift, not to wallow or worry, but to worship and withstand! It is through failure and stumble we become wiser and humble...

Happy Friday!

On Being Human

 

Image source here with story...a must-read!

How often have we pointed with pious, self-righteous dirt

at another struggling in living’s quagmire of hurt?

How often have we stolen, for the pleasure of a lie

the very thing we criticized in someone else's eye?

How often have we decorated our sorry state,

knowing full well we will repeat the very thing we hate?

How often have we withheld the forgiveness we all need

to nurse our injured feelings or to justify hates’ greed?

How often have we stumbled, hoping no one saw us fall?

How often have we, by the grace of God, survived at all?

© Janet Martin

Here is a light-hearted, yet profound take on the story shared in the link above.

Mum by Daniel Romo

Man gets life for stealing tube socks. -FOX News I want to believe it was a quality striped pair sporting character and flair, rather than an all-black accessory that conveys uniform necessity. I’m hoping he swiped the socks and sped through the mall, tucked the bag under his arm like a football he was determined not to fumble, while he jutted and juked though the food court until he tired and a team of police tackled him to the ground, rather than him simply stashing them in his waistband and being caught on camera by an overzealous store manager looking to score a promotion. I’m unsure what crimes he committed those other two times, or why he risked freedom for a common, cotton product. But who hasn’t done foolish things for the chance to feel something soft, new, and smooth so close to their skin? There are times when we live our lives according to our own laws, when we give in to sin to see if what we didn’t have is worth being imprisoned in a personal jail and only our conscience can make bail. I picture the man sitting on the edge of his cell’s mattress. Leg crossed over the other, foot dangling, swaying from side-to-side like a   life-sentence pendulum,      white socks glowing under prison garb like shining informants that will never tell.  © by Daniel Romo. Used with the author’s permission.

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".

The Loneliness of Love

The loneliness of love I cannot bear

Yet we are called to suffer long its weight

And carry to the grave its cross of care

For in the want of Love our God is there

To guard the heart from legions primed with hate

The heaviness of love is like a stone

Not hung about the neck but on our tears

Where quiet sorrows rage, and all alone

We fill the dark of night with prayer-wrought groan

When there is no escape where hunger sears

The agony of love must wear its thorns

And pray the Lord perhaps for mercy’s rose

To fill the place where loneliness oft scorns

Our best intent; the air in wretched ribbons torn

Where Love its longer, harder moil bestows

Humility of love bears with kind grace

The dissatisfaction of humanness

Though we covet true love’s tender embrace

And yearn to feel its kiss upon our face

Love bears all things, believes God’s promises

© Janet Martin

Precious Privilege

He carves creek-beds and fills them

With spring’s first madrigals

Then threads its silver ribbon

Through rolling meadow-halls

He wreaths the earth with flowers  

And from Time’s spinning wheel

He weaves from naught the hours

Which fill each season-reel

He forms in hidden places

The lace of coppice-crown

The darkness He erases

With morning mantle thrown

Soft where the mountain towers

Before it warms the dell

He strums the waking bowers

In whispers, ‘it is well’

He rakes the deep with thunder

He sees the sparrow fall

From window-seats of hunger

We wonder at it all

And yet, while the mind questions

He stills the seeking heart

And all that we can murmur then

Is Lord, how great Thou art

Atonement’s Rock of refuge

Salvation’s thorny crown

Alpha and Omega God

Hope’s faultless corner-stone

He fills the night with morning

And thrills the stricken limb

Then grants to us the privilege

Each day, of serving Him

© Janet Martin

 He who forms the mountains, who creates the wind, and who reveals his thoughts to mankind, who turns dawn to darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth-- the LORD God Almighty is his name. Amos 4:13

As We Slow Down our Thought...

The noise has died away as daylight seeks its rest

The child forsakes his play, the bird returns to nest

As we slow down our thought where light is almost gone

Drawing the shade on one more day closer to That Last One

Silence becomes a hum save for the distant bark

Of dog baying at the full moon; or stragglers in the park

Reluctant to return behind closed doors to sleep

Knowing how soon the morning urges darkness to the deep

Duty is set aside; its toil must wait til dawn

The intimacy of ‘good-night’ beckons in every yawn

And yet, within the tug of slumber we resist

To fully taste the fading fringe of farewell’s purple mist

…where we laid bare our dreams and scattered laughter, tears

Now twilight folds into its ream the filament of years

The child is fast asleep, the little birdie too

We turn to see the slow release of deeper, deeper blue

Thought is a microscope where sound does not distract

The hush of night like Holy Ground vulnerable in black

But Hope is not deterred by colors of the air

How mightily the soul is stirred as we fill thought with prayer

© Janet Martin

This Day of Days

This Day of Days spills sparkle to our step

And laughter to our lips, song to the soul

At longest last the winds of winter sleep

And kiss of kinder port succors earth’s bowl

Where glaze of ice-white induced suffering

The maiden with ten-thousand shades of green

Extends her baton and touches earth's heart-strings

Transforming barren tree to regal queen

My, my, this Day of days is like a hymn

Of Christmas falling down in middle-May

As we gather around the blooming limb

To sing the carols of this gladsome day

…and we forgive Time for its harsher climes

Knowing full-well it keens a purer thrill

As brooding blast relents to zephyr rhymes

And firesides their fantasies fulfill

This Day of days is heaven’s gift to earth

Like laughter after sorrow’s vale of tears

Nature extols its mercy of rebirth

Banishing winter to Past’s belvederes

© Janet Martin

Visiting Brenda who reminds us constantly that It's a Beautiful Life, sparked a song through a quote she posted by E.B. White

"There is another sort of day that needs celebrating in song — the day of days when spring at last holds up her face to be kissed, deliberate and unabashed." ~ E.B. White