Believing the water Clear with no seafloor Unchanging substance Obliged to erode Refracting reflecting Drought seeping dry Streaming in veins That pulse with the season Hidden and riddled I don’t know the season Under your eyebrow Under your rib Dripping and crashing But not like a seashore That moves for the moon Preparing the tides Feel the wet Stand the cold Drew me under Shades uninvited Exploring un-rhythm By chanting the ancients For stars that can’t sing Indefinite color Flowing down mountains Or crushed on the jetty Or caught in my hand What picture books color We stain it a memory While sources concur I had to believe Your hue of the ocean And river and tide pool Afraid they tinge value That I may not have seen How does it look When you look At the water Observing un-tinted I don’t know if it’s real Transparently absent A dream-colored blue
What color is faith? Our Lord is both seen and unseen, confusing and comforting those who want to believe. But simply gazing at your own faith, or the faith of someone else, is as slippery as a handful of water. What do you think?
REFLECT
on the Words that God first gave to us. Meditate on the Truth that has made any of our words mean anything…
READ Isaiah 6:9-13
READ John 12:35-43
READ John 20:28-31
My experience of living in faith includes plenty of dissent and conflict, though mostly internal. Not just tolerating conflict, but pressing into them and not insisting on making sense and also not accepting them. And what a gift that conflict was if I cannot resolve it and end up at the cross. But I never really end up anywhere on my own, so thank God for skilled, faithful dissenters.
. . .
Do you believe that in the first nano-second of creation
before energy, before matter, before any law
that unimaginable, inhospitable power
was love?
And love remains steadfast and faithful, sustaining every moment?
Mother holding her infant, and brother murdering his brother?
Fragrant wind caressing the pine needles and deadly space waiting to obliterate it all?
Stretched taut between yes and no, belief and doubt, right and wrong, God and man,
through the warring fragments of my heart and dead-ending thoughts spinning off felonies
You are always holding fast.
Your body is vibrating.
I can feel it in the hairs on my neck, hear it humming, see the light suffusing opaque flesh.
Faith comes from hearing, yet hearing comes from faith. Still give me faith to see, to feel, to hear.
And dwell in the space between, stretched taut as a violin string.