On Thanksgiving Day

 

This has been a busy week for our family. The Thanksgiving service at the Mission followed by the dinner served to our homeless neighbors, plans for our son's soon graduation, the homeless ladie's Christmas Tea coming up next week and yesterday- my mother's passing. Busy and hard. Bitter and sweet. The cares of this life and the freedom of the next. Jesus every moment. The Friend Who Sticks.

I am sitting in my brocade chair with a tummy full of Chinese take out. (Shades of A Christmas Story). I am remembering who Christ has become to me over all these years since my soul was invited in off the street and found a home in Him. Heaven may have a word to describe that heart-melding but just now words fail me for the wonder of it.

As I read over an older post from Thanksgiving a few years ago, just for the comfort of it, I was filled with such a sense of His endless, boundless, simple goodness in loving me. He loves you that same way.

Here is dessert on this Thanksgiving Day. May your heart overflow. Follow the link below.

-kl 

http://iamcallingshotgun.blogspot.com/2011/11/his-sea-bed-is-love-without-end.html

Singing To The Morning

Singing To The Morning

I leave behind

the familiar colors

the heart-stirring scents

of life lived under the blue sky

under clouds bleeding rain

under snow and shadow

I have become every color

light layered upon light

transparent, immediate-

a perfumed sunrise

singing to the Morning

-Kat Cavanaugh LaMantia

In memory of the Homegoing

of Aaron Lorentzen's grandmother

Just Glorious, Oil by Diane Morgan

(Since I had written this my own mother has made the journey to Eternity. May His Perpetual Light shine upon her. -kl)

Ascent

Ascent

I wind my way   

to the top of the stairs

to a secret place

where prayers await

discovery

They do not come

out of me,

these supplications,

but cling to me there

like field seeds

to feral fur;

left behind by other

penitents or angels;

mice in corners

chanting to the One

The earth is full of

unspoken adoration

waiting to be ours

for the climb

-Kat Cavanaugh LaMantia 

http://photoreflect.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/rushton-triangular-lodge.html

Willow

 

Willow

Fall's breath frosting leaves
she folds her hands to pray

Pale sunlight catches her
transforming aspect

The world in light or gray
belongs to the Creator

The One who dreamed
of willows dreams of me

So I fold my hands
as perfect as her branches

and chant in frost or sun
a litany of praise

-kl

 

            From you comes the theme of my praise...Psalm 22:25 NIV

                    http://www.flickr.com/photos/10126457@N07/8201412296/

Winter Wheat

The pumpkins are carved
The apples are picked
Fields gleaned of their goodness
are quiet as an empty womb yet
they whisper even at rest, "Fill us"

Those obedient first fruits are content,
the ones who fell as seed from hands
newly come from April's sunrise prayer,
fully ingathered now and bursting with
summer's stored vitality

The empty fields do not call
to such delicate seed to be filled
They beckon to the hard-shelled,
Johnny-come-latelies who slept through
spring rains and abstained from the
glorious summer sun
"Fill us" they call as the days
shorten and the ground chills

There is bounty saved for these
late hours where frost sings
your beauty to life-
where December celebrates
Christ's nativity and your own

You are the second spring whose
holy bread all the long winters of this world
have waited for

Winter Wheat by Kat Cavanaugh LaMantia
for Melanya

A friend asked me to write something for a teaching she is doing on getting a late start. I am hoping she will post it to her own wonderful blog and I can list the link. It would be a blessing to all of us who were slow out of the gate. I do recall how the greatest race horse who ever lived made leaving last his signature move- but with most of us we fear we will never "catch up".

Sarah and Abraham probably had those "lost" thoughts but look at the turn around their lives took. The truth is if you have breath you have possibilities. 

After all, God was petty old when He took up gardening.

-kl

Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us. Ephesians 3:20

Honey Cake

Honey Cake

She beats the batter full of amber sweetness
folding words of the HaMelech into the eggy goodness.

God is King over his Creation as she is sovereign over the honey cake.

The spoon goes around and over, sweet batter clinging to wood.

There is flour on her hands and a sheen of butter.

Did you have the dust of our life upon you in Eden?

When you stirred the earth's natal waters did you pray into the dark waves as I pray into this bowl?

Holy King! King of Justice!

Stir my heart. Make my life a cake of honey.

-kl

 
http://www.strawberryplum.com/cardamom-orange-honey-coffee-cake/

Erleben

Erleben*

A world away the most devout 
rock and pray
slipping desire or remembrance
into a crack in a stone wall
Pleadings on bits of vellum
hope fading long before
the tear smudged ink
The last of the ruined temple
treasuring so many names

My thoughts lift to You
that ruined temple rebuilt
The wall grace made between
me and my sin-
and I take my deepest hopes
my most ardent thoughts
and into your pierced side
they join fast to your power and
purpose never to fade-
wailing hushed by thanksgiving

There is room enough

-kl

Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Hebrews 4:14-16

*Experience, go through, relive