here and n o w

These are the years

The growing, not-knowing, shape-shifting years

The crying, tear-smiling, shelling, hard-wiring years

Golden years

Grey-day, hot-fire years

Years when souls twist, locking wrists,

When thought wanders

Heart ponders

love-what-is-it, don’t-know-this, can’t-do-it

hard-pillows, blue-carpet, bowls-crusted, entrusted

with living

giving

up, too-much, and hand-holds

hugs and piano-days, sun-wet days, praise

when you-go, and I-know

and everything-makes-sense, but-doesn’t,

praying, not-saying, just-speaking

laughs

stars

fears

these are the years.

I am puffy skin and red blotches and creased forehead,

baggy eyes and aching temples,


but I am also

liquid iris, shifting limbs, strong fingers,

God-breathed soul.



It is a beautiful balance and I am a tangled mix of flaw and fault and being



but somehow loved.

eyes to see

he sits under the bridge, on the pavement, where the sun slants in and kisses his cheeks
and the ruffle of pigeon feathers beat in the air above, and the oxygen flows slowly in, out, in, out, with each light breath

and he sees the cracks in the pavement, where the green grass spikes from the solid earth and the dust swirls under concrete skin

there, shoes tap past in syncopated rhythm, clanging and rigid, a flurry of jet leather and patent brown, stalks of heel and the patter of skin tight moccasins

in their rush they crush the stems of green but they spring back up

and he sees this from his ground-set sphere, he sees the green blades slowly bend and reach once more up to the light where it falls in mottled, flickering shadow; caught in the breeze of trotting calves and corduroy trousers

no one else sees this small thing

just him

lots of star thoughts

O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder

Consider all the things Thy hands hath made

I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder

Thy power throughout the universe displayed

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee

How great Thou art

How great Thou art

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God to Thee

How great Thou art, How great Thou art

it is so deliciously dark tonight
I had to just stop and stare up, up, at the sky and the tiny pinpricks of glowing that are cold suns, white-gold stars 

I've found I've been doing this a lot lately     staring at the sky

but I can't help it.

You cannot be under a canopy like that without stopping, at least for a second, and soaking, breathing it in.

And when you're standing there, the crispness of the air just spilling into your lungs, the whole of the periphery of your vision 
filled with a studded expanse of velvet black deep     there's somehow this
overwhelming sense of safeness 
of being held
encompassed
kept.

Creator God reminding you that you are His, 

you're in His care, under His eyes, surrounded by His love.

I'm over-awed by the beauty He's crafted, the way He's scattered those stars. They twinkle     and yet if you hold your breath, they are utterly still.

thought-words ripple out of me: Be still, my soul. That still, small voice. The power, the might of God. His silent long-suffering and patience to this darkened world. His inexpressible Love.

I feel what a speck I am, how unworthy, how irrefutably undeserving. But the One who swathed that sky in powdered light has placed His love on me... so much so that He was willing to walk the claying earth His own hands created for my sake.

 And when I think of God, His Son not sparing

Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in

That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing

He bled and died, to take away my sin

No sacrifice I could ever make should be too great for my matchless Saviour!
Lord, help me count it nothing to give up everything for You.

looking up, I always like to imagine     utterly fancifully     that it's almost as if the sky was a draped black cloth and the stars were little holes that Heaven was shining through... which is silly but my heart always leaps a little and I'm glad Dad made me memorize 1 Corinthians 13 so I can whisper: 'now I see through a glass darkly - but then face to face... now I know in part - but then shall I know, even as also I am known'.

may your Sunday night be just as Star-struck as mine has been.

the empty house

on my way to the train station every morning, I pass the triangle slice of ground where the porter's cottage used to stand. I remember, peering through the chicken wire fence, when the builders first swarmed all over the cottage roof     and how I looked, and saw through the hollowed window frame, a photo still hanging on the wall-papered wall: a photo that held memories and comfort and being, that eyes had brushed over every night before going to bed, and hands had pinned carefully up... and it kind of made me tear a little, to think those eyes and hands were gone now, and soon     the last remnants of that little home would be too... ...and then the fragments of plaster trickled down, and I had to run for my train.

Tiles splinter onto the grass-spiked ground

A crash that echoes into a puff of swirling dust:

the sound of echoing laughter

smiles that were

And now, no longer.

You know not what you do

Dust to dust, echo to ground

With callous hands they raze and plunder

Thinking of moving in? they shout

Sometimes I think and pause to wonder

what Life

is all about.

The Jack-built house stands cold, alone

Forgotten when she passed away

You stand and watch it

Hard eye glazing, purposing the figures

and facts

As if they were

And that was all that mattered.

actually trying to get somewhere

Ugh so I thought, let's do this thing! - a post a day. Even if its just a line. Any bit of writing will do. Anything. Just to get the creative juices flowing (or in my case, the wads of fluff that exist in my brain actually forming into articulate thought).

But has that happened?

no.

How am I going to survive doing English and Creative Writing at uni when I can't even form the sentences for a simple daily blog post? 

Well I've been blaming it on the fact that because I lack a camera I can't embellish my posts with a picture because lets face it, words as badly written as mine just get boring without something visual to look at -

but then I was like, who am I kidding, who really looks at this thing anyway? 

so I might as well give it a whack even though there's literally nothing in my head to write about right now.

...although does a true writer ever say that?

I suppose I am writing as we speak.

What an oxymoron.

As an English student I've discovered two things: one, that I now recognize all the discrepancies in my writing. two, that I can now do them deliberately.

If I don't use capitals and I misuse the definition of an oxymoron and I say I'm speaking even though I haven't uttered a word out loud since I sat down at this screen, rest assured it is all deliberate.

(I should have said irony instead of oxymoron but it didn't sound as good)... I'm the type of writer that focuses more on what syllables sound like than whether they're grammatically correct; I drive the OCD's mad.

I don't know there's just something so satisfying about playing with the rules. That's not a great principle for life, please don't get any ideas.

Or...

Or maybe all this is just an excuse for this load of word vomit I'm spouting forth.

I give up this will have to do. I'm going to grab a hot chocolate and a plate of toast and go and read Isaiah.

today is just beautiful.

the sky is such the right shade of blue it makes my heart quiver just looking up at it. blue as warm ice, as James McAvoy's eyes, smudged with wisps of cloud and the scratches of aeroplanes.

there's no wind and the spiky tips of the trees seem to be reaching up to touch it, always reaching, but never quite managing, like putting your hand into the rippling surface of the ocean and knowing that the water goes on for ever.
and yet at the same time they are enveloped by its deepness, wrapped and painted and growing within it.

the muted grey of a pigeon wings past in a dipping arc of flight....

through the crack of open window, the gravelly hum of a low-flier, maybe on its way to Spain, familiar and comfortingly human...

the clashing of breakfast things in the sink, the crescendo bubble of the kettle boiling, shampoo and sunshine on the carpet and the green of fir tree branches against the glow of red brick.


breathing.

just stop, stop for a moment and breathe in the blue.

I love Saturdays.