No Compromise

 No matter how badly we would like to hit 'rewind' on moments and change our response we cannot. Still, mistakes are not in vain unless we refuse to learn from them.

Sometimes we score...

 ...but more often it's slip-trip-get-up and try again.

This firm apprenticeship of Life,

This ever-learning, yearning strife

From its commencement wields a knife

Bent on shaping and making us

And with the brush of Night and Day

The Artist paints time’s gold and gray

Around us while we learn to pray

And say and do what becomes us

These appointments of rise and shine

Drawing us to Life’s Finish Line

Are ordered by a Hand Divine

Though we may argue, fret and fuss

The ebb and flow of dark to light

Holds more than time within its rite

Where hold-let-go arrangements cite

Lessons of life becoming us

…and thus, by our mistakes we learn

Through touch and tasting’s No Return

And our response to it; we earn

The right to try again, because

Though experience makes us wise

Still, its apprenticeship applies

To one and all; no compromise

In the art of becoming us

© Janet Martin

Moonlight Lullaby

Golden moon o’er yonder hill

Soft your tune of slumber spill

Like a cello aria

Play a mellow Kumbaya

Blue on blue back-drop exhales

Soulful lullaby regales

Where the throw of night is spread

With soft starlight overhead

Hard-edged noise and workday rush

Melds into the solemn hush

Of a lamp-lit lullaby

From a cello in the sky

© Janet Martin

Thursday Thoughts on Money, Money, Money

Money, for all it may posses

Can never buy us happiness

***

Money, for all that it may boast

Can’t buy the things that matter most

Love,

Joy.

Hope.

Peace.

Forgiveness.

***

I’ve yet to see a shopping spree

That satisfies our Want

Money, the root of evil wields

And endless, endless taunt

***

We cannot serve God and mammon too

We are either servant or slave

Our life, the mirror we look into

That reflects what we crave

***

A diller, a dollar, on hill er in holler

A teacher or scholar are we

A pocket of penny-like moments to spend

Before eternity

***

Stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff

Tell me, when is it enough?!

***

It is not the amount we give

To coffers of earth

But the heart we give it with

That decides its worth

***

Come, let us reason together

If money is the idol of greed

We should not be so bent to keep

More of it than we need

***

Money and Time, We never have enough, or so it seems

Yet it is the giving of both of these that our Lord esteems

***

The only things of worth

That surpass these few days we live

Are not the treasures we stockpile on earth

But only what we give

***

We all should learn to take

We all should learn to give

For both have much to teach about

The way we ought to live

***

Pray, that our goals are not controlled

By the dollars we crave

The rich man and the beggar

Are equal within the grave

***

If we would be wealthy in what matters most

Then we would be wise to seek God’s Kingdom first

What good is vanity’s asset and boast

Where Time’s Soul-goal cannot be reimbursed

***

Lord, you perceive the heart of us

Where skin does not reveal

Full truth, yet those who love you first

Cannot Your love conceal

***

So let us consider

To what end we amount

…a most important matter

Of giving account

© Janet Martin

Humble-Pie, Anyone?

When I slip-stumble and my not-so-humble side is vexed

When plans I made are rearranged and My Loud Word is spurned

Then I concede when all is said and done, that it was best

Not because it was pleasant but because of what I learned

Life’s teacher is a creature of wise and surprising ways

How is it, my embarrassment will often teach me more

Than perches upon pedestals while kind applauders praise

And we forget what manner of person we really are

…for in the slip and stumble when our not-so-humble side

Confronts us for The Thing It Is we blush as we admit

That in spite of denying it, we are creatures of pride

Then sometimes Life’s Teacher steps in and sets us down a bit

© Janet Martin

Last night at our Study on Grace a few of us shared incidences when our 'righteous indignation' after it was spent, proved that we were the one who needed to apologize and ask to be forgiven.

Ouch with a blush-red piece of humble-pie;-)

It tastes so bad but works so well!

Still, I've never heard anyone ask for seconds...

Before the Induction

This morsel of being wide-eyed for a while

With wonder of beauty and purpose of life

Labors through our bearings in fear and delight

While carving a path for those who come behind

Like Modern-day pioneers we find our place

Settling midst the mayhem of human race

To find here a neighbor and win there a friend

While we with life’s laughter and sorrow contend

As leader and follower onward we climb

Both student and teacher in the School of Time

Blessed by a grace we cannot take credit for

This morsel of being woos us to a Door

From which there is no turning back; only this

A long compensation for that which now is

...a morsel of being wide-eyed for a bit

Before the induction to the sum of it

© Janet Martin

What are we leaving behind for those who follow?

My memories of a man whose funeral visitation I am attending today, are of a kind, patient husband in the garden with his wife. who, crippled at a young age by a disease, leaned on her cane as they weeded their vegetables...