Letters to Arden

Letters to Arden – November 7, 2011

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Seasons change again, and you with them. You are running into life and all that it offers, exploring every corner, testing every boundary, wondering at everything new.

Even now I see your fiery spirit as you engage and enlarge your world. Are you growing into your name, or did your name find you when you were still hidden, sensing a fitting recipient?

So many forces are already at work to shape you into the Arden you will become. And I, your mother, fight for safety and virtue and grace to push ahead of all the rest, I fight to discern what we should embrace, I fight to be the shape of Christ against you, not my will but His.

I pray Love’s force will always win in the end, though Love can be fierce as well as gentle. Your fire will burn brightest when it is kindled from His.

And meanwhile, while you grow, so does my heart, so do my arms – and you can always run to them.

Love Mama

~lg

prayer

how to seek

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And now, how to seek You with a whole heart?
How to live so that every breath invokes Your name?
How to be so that Christ is over all and through all and in all?

How to gain the reward of faith
Found in You, You found in me?
How to gain the Rewarder?

~lg

nature/poetry

November

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Fields lie fallow
Weary old men with frosted whiskers
Settling in for the long nap

Forests robbed of gold and rubies
Stand forlorn, wringing their limbs
And the spruces sigh, there, there

The river’s eye is swollen
Knocked about by a north wind
Muddied and oozing over its banks

But hush,
The battle for the season is almost won
And winter will come with her blankets and gauze
Come with her command to lie still and rest

All will be healed

~lg

parenting/prayer/Single-handed Theology

Single-handed Theology – Nisi Dominus Frustra

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Nisi Dominus Frustra

(An abbreviation of the Latin words of Psalm 121.)

Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labour in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.
In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat – for he grants sleep to those he loves.

Quite simply, without the Lord, frustration!!

How many bricks have I laid of my own accord, how many times have I propped open a watchful eye, busy into the night, laboring under the false impression that it is I who must build, guard and provide for my own house?

How many of us have taken up God’s name and affixed it to our title, stomping around in boots to big for us to fill, glorying in the justification of our own exhaustion? How many sleepless nights before it all unravels in vanity and frustration?

We chase the wind, and meanwhile the house crumbles.

So I pray,

Teach me Your builder’s craft, so every stone I lay is part of Your plan.
Teach me to align my work with Yours, so my energy is not wasted.
Teach me to trust, resting in Your provision.
Teach me to rest, trusting Your eye never sleeps,
and that Your love is at work all through the night.

You are the Builder, Watchman and Provider of this house.

Nisi Dominus Frustra.

~lg

poetry/prayer

small seeds

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These seeds are small and out of season
Leaves are falling, yet I scatter, scatter
Sowing hopes too slight to name
Tossing them out to the mercy of the elements
With a tiny whisper to the four winds
Breathe, oh breathe on these fallen
That they may live

~lg