hard things/love/the world

Remembrance Day

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Today, the prayers are punctured with cannon shot.

Today, the river runs red with mud, swollen with the memories of lives swept away.

Today, children stand in the rain and ask what all the pretty poppies are for.

And I pause and look at the guns and wonder how to explain all this to the innocent.

I pull back the curtain on human hurt, just a bit, just enough, I hope, to reveal something of sadness and thankfulness. What it all comes down to – not enough love in our hearts. We humans, we can die for lack of love.

Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee.

This is the only way to peace. This is the only thing stronger than death. This is the only thing that can overcome “all this.”

Today, let every heart bloom red with love, lest all these pretty poppies be in vain.

~lg
Intercessions/prayer/rest

Intercessions – November 6, 2013

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God of the sleepless nights,

Of the weary restless, the heavy-lidded, heavy-laden ones. Give your beloved rest. You who neither sleep nor slumber, soothe insomniac hearts with the steady beating of your own. Sing over the tousled beds, the troubled heads, till all the tangled soul wanderings run smooth and still. Rock away the little fears, the hidden tears, till every child can sleep in heavenly peace. Keep our nights in the hollow of your hand, that when we awake we will be satisfied, still with you.

Amen.
beauty/parenting/poetry

little boy beauty

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Beauty is a brown-eyed babe,

Flannel soft and smiling.
Beauty is the steady gaze,
Tender and beguiling.
Beauty is a dimpled cheek,
Smooth and round and warm.
Beauty is the hushing body,
Tucked into my arm.
Beauty is a holding hand,
Whispers of the skin.
Beauty is beholder’s eye,
Wide to take it in.

~lg
parenting/prayer

descent

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How does one embrace the descent? Imitate the weightless beauty of the falling leaf, the leaping stream?
How does one dive wholeheartedly, headfirst into the baptismal font every single day? To abandon all hope of living for self, to drown this choking rebellion till at last lungs are filled in the depths of death’s cold spring?
And where is my end, if all I have I throw into the cracks of the earth, into these rivulets of sacrifice,
          down, down, down,
                              to what end?
My only prayer – 
Swallow me up and spit me out clean.

~lg
grace/hard things/parenting

Clothed

Posted on by Lindsey Gallant / 1 Comment

Do you remember it? The first outfit you chose for your baby girl? Perhaps a decidedly pink sleeper and matching hat. Or an impossibly tiny and frilly dress. Do you remember it? The care, the delight, the amazement of choosing those darling clothes? Do you remember dressing your daughter for the first time, how those little limbs would not stay put, just how she wiggled and made that face and wondered what was going on?

Today, friends of ours will be choosing their daughter’s last outfit. I cannot imagine how they will choose. What love will finger those threads, will tremble in carrying such grown up clothes to the counter. What grief to lay them out and know the stillness with which they will finally rest.
At the beginning and the end, we are all helpless to dress ourselves.
And sometimes in the middle of it all, we can be left feeling stripped, naked, wondering what is going on.
But there is One who comes when everything is inside out and wraps His cloak around us. He wraps His arms around us, and we can crawl into our Father’s lap and into His comfort. 
And somewhere in the middle of it all, this living, heaving, laugh and cry world, we remember the joy. We remember we are all His children.

~lg