As the redeemed of Jesus Christ, if we are ever to find true refreshment in our desert wanderings, it will be as we choose to dwell in God’s presence and in the newness of His daily mercies through faith. Our trials tend to force us, like pushy but invaluable friends, to learn hands-on what it is to live in the grace of the moment.

We live in the grace of the moment by continually recognizing both the immense need and the immense blessing of each moment (by developing a conscious and habitual attitude that says, “I am so desperately needy AND I am so abundantly blessed.”) and by relying on the Holy Spirit to teach us exactly how to reconcile the two. This happens as we first learn to live in the reality of the eternal, for it's an ever-present awareness of eternity that liberates us to receive every present moment with thankfulness and live it to the fullest, without setting up false expectations for it or worrying about the next.

When we are convinced that our life is hidden with Christ and He alone is the Prize, that this world is not our home and we are simply on assignment here, and that our pain and failures are only temporary but, with His redemption, the beauty and wisdom to be gained from them are eternal, we are set free from living in the regret of yesterday or in the fear of tomorrow. We can instead live in the blessing of the right now which fully meets the need of the right now because both need and blessing are gifts from the Father to get us ready for eternity and to meet our Bridegroom face to face. We have need of nothing but Him and His grace, and His fullness dwells in us.

The life lived in the grace of the moment is the life absolutely surrendered to the reality of God’s wisdom, God’s character and God’s sovereignty over it, for in entrusting ourselves to those, we acknowledge that He has a set and planned purpose for our lives, that it is good, and that He is powerful enough to carry it to completion. His wisdom assures us that He has always had in mind, down to the smallest details, exactly what He is doing with us; His character, that His heart is ever faithful toward us; and His sovereignty, that His directing arm cannot be shaken or thwarted. They reveal to us explicitly that He loves us with all of His mind and heart and strength, and in that knowledge we find perfect rest. As beloved children we know that we will be taken care of without having to know how it will happen or what it will look like.

In our helplessness we can simply look up to Him, reach out for Him and cry to Him in humility and thanksgiving, for our God cannot resist eyes and arms and hearts doing that. He always picks up and holds close to Himself those who long for Him. We may think that what we most desire are answers and perfectly successful plans and reasonable control over our lives, but what our souls crave is comfort and intimacy and love, and we can have those the instant we fully surrender to His embrace. He may sometimes hide His face from our “Why?”s but never from our “Hold me!” cries.

If we mistakenly suppose this life to be about this life, we will miss the present grace for fretting over and fighting for all the blessings we don’t have or fearing that those we do will be lost, until we find that they have become an unbearable millstone around our necks. If we pin our hope on anything in this temporary world it will be no stronger than that—a mere pin, easily pulled out and easily broken when life weighs too heavily upon it.

Enduring hope can only be based on God’s absolute promises given to us in His Word, not on our own expectations or wishes or impressions of how things ought to be. Enduring hope lets go of everything that can be lost to take hold of everything that cannot, and in doing so is actually able to squeeze the sweetest nectar out of those released and perishable blessings so that even their losses, though painful, do not leave a bitter aftertaste. For it’s often in the loss of a thing that its worth to us becomes most precious, and by letting it go with grace we can best savor its purest delights.

Realizing that the pain runs so deep only because the beauty ran so deep and that without it having once touched us we wouldn’t now know the emptiness of its loss, our grief will eventually turn to thankfulness that it ever touched us at all, and we will be left awed by the mystery of its haunting. There's a peculiar kind of beauty that can only be experienced with the innate knowledge that the moment is fleeting, and the most intense beauty can only be seen in the presence of both light and shadows.

The ability to enjoy our tangible blessings is surely heightened by the conviction that they are not ours to possess, by the acceptance that their loss is inevitable, and by the understanding that they were never meant to satisfy. For the enjoyment, then, will be absent the tainting dread, the taking for granted, and the twisted expectations which so easily and often mar our earthly pleasures. We will relish what we’ve been given today but recognize it may very well be gone tomorrow, and even in that uncertainty we will find a contented peace, for in every loss there lurks a hidden blessing, and all that really matters can never be lost to us. It is just as important to be a good steward of our losses as it is of our more obvious blessings, for the beauty that comes from nobly and graciously accepting loss far exceeds any tangible beauty that can be taken.

Knowing that we belong to another time and place and that this one is only meant to lead us there, like the charming towns one passes through on the way to a better destination, we will take in the sights with wonder and delight but keep traveling on toward our true home. For these sights, though tantalizing, are like mere slivers of light from a crack under the door compared to the glory to be found in God’s Presence. But when received as personal gifts of His grace, they become to us a stage precisely and delicately set by a Lover to attract the attention of His beloved, to show off His greatness and show forth His beauty to win her heart, and our hearts indeed are won.

To live in the grace of the moment is to keep looking to Jesus—to Jesus’ feet to lay our burdens down, to Jesus’ arms to be held securely, to Jesus’ hands to receive all we need, and to Jesus’ face to know our only sure hope and hearts’ true desire.


#Lord Jesus, merciful and all-sufficient One, in every need, small or great, tangible or intangible, give me the discernment to discover Your extravagant gifts of grace, the wisdom to receive them, the eagerness to open them and the passion to cherish them well. Give me eyes to see and a heart to fully enjoy with gratitude each blessing You have prepared for me today, for this very moment, and may I thrill to Your every advance of love.#

I sit in the sun room, I am shaded for the sun
is only newly risen, low slung, just above the horizon,
behind me, over my shoulder, early morn warm

Slivers of sun rays yellow highlight the wild green lawn,
freshly nourished by torrential rains of the prior eve

The wind gusts are residuals, memoirs of the hurricane
that came for a peripheral visit, your unwanted cousin Earl,
in town for the day, too bad your schedule
is fully booked, but he keeps raining on you,
staying on the phone for so long, that the goodbye,
go away, hang up relief is palpable

The oak trees are top heavy with leaves frothy like a new cappuccino,
the leaves resist the sun slivers, guarding the grass
from browning out, by knocking the rookie rays to and fro,
just for now, just for a few minutes more,
it is advantage trees, for they stand taller in the sky
than the youthful teenage yellow ball

I sit in the sun room buffered from nature's battles external,
by white lace curtains which are the hallmark
of all that is fine in Western Civilization,

and my thoughts drift to suicide.

I have sat in the sun room of my mind, unprotected.
with front row seats, first hand witness to a battle unceasing

Such that my investigations, my travails along the boundary line
between internal madness and infernal relief from mental pain
so crippling, is such that you recall begging for cancer or Aids

Such that my investigations, my travails along the sanity boundary
are substantive, modestly put, not inconsiderable

Point your finger at me, demanding like every
needy neurotic moderne, reassurance total,
proof negative in this instance, of relevant expertise!

Tell us you bona fides, what is your knowing in these matters?

Show us the wrist scars, evidential,
prove to us your "hands on" experiential!

True, true, I am without demonstrable proofs
of the first hand, my resume is absent of
razors and pills, poisons and daredevil spills,
guns, knives, utensils purposed for taking lives

Here are my truths, here are my sums

If the numerator is the minutes spent resisting the promised relief
of the East River currents from the crushing loneliness that
consumed my every waking second of every night of my years of despair
                           divided by
a denominator that is my unitary, solitary name,
then my fraction, my remainder, is greater than one,
the one step away from supposed salvation...

Yet, here I am sitting in the sun room buffered from
nature's battles by white lace curtains which are the hallmark
of all that is fine in Western Civilization

I am a survivor of mine own World War III,
carnaged battlefields, where white lace curtains,
were not buffers but dividers tween mis en scenes,
variegated veins of colored nightmares, reenactments of
death heroics worthy of Shakespeare

Did I lack for courage?
Was my fear/despair ratio insufficient?

These are questions for which the answers matter only to me,
tho the questions are fair ones, my unsolicited ******,
they are not the ones for which I herein write,
for they no longer have relevance, meaning or validity,
for yours truly

I write poetry by command, by request, good or bad,
this one is a bequest to myself, and also a sidecar for an old friend,
who asked in passing to write what I know of suicide,
unaware that the damage of hurricanes is not always
visible to the naked heart

These hands, that type these words are the resume of a life
resumed,
life line remains scarred, but after an inter-mission, after an inter-diction, an inter-re-invention
in a play where I was an actor who could not speak
but knew every line, I am now the approving audience too...

But I speak now and I say this:

There are natural toxins in us all,
if you wish to understand the whys, the reasons,
of the nearness of taking/giving away what belongs to you,
do your own sums, admit your own truths
query not the lives of others, approach the mirror...

If you want to understand suicide,
no need to phone a friend, ask the expert,
ask yourself, parse the curtains of the
sun room and admit, that you do understand,
that you once swung one leg over the roof,
gauged the currents speed and direction,
went deep sea fishing without rod or reel
and you recall it all too well, for you did the math
and here I am, tho the tug ne'er fully disappears,
here I am, here I am writing to you,
as I sit in the sun room.

Memorial Day, 2011

driving down a windy road 35 miles per hour at seven thirty in the evening with flowers and balloons in the back seat shouldn't have ended with me being suspended sideways for thirty minutes while they tried to make it safe to get me out of what was left of my first car and no matter how many times i draw a bath i can't get rid of the feeling of my left hand covered in my own blood and the small slivers of glass that are still in my hands or the swollen over-sized bruises that adorn my legs and my face  

and regardless of the scent of lavender and apples i cant look at my damaged body anymore

did you ever really love me at all?

We know you, and your little dark colors too. A picture book in your purse penned in mustaches on the full faces of your fare. We call you from bed, 8 o' clock in the morning, dog-light you slow wander the Peruvian darkness making jellyfish tentacles with your hands while you feel your way through Salem. We're colder than night and we wake thrice the bits of your day gig. You collapse in a green field of dandelion where thrushes drown you in Brown. We gorge ourselves on mango slivers, pineapple yolks, a half of grapefruit. We know you are close to your end.

On the tops of the cities you call to your lycan friends, the half-sick and muted bray allures them to you, from Bratislava and Mimon, the thoroughfare through the suq. We wait. The foregone untold, the beep beep jug jug swoop sound of the nightingale, in all her dun glory, we wait. Then, as if descending through the moor-lounging silver smoke, the cool stickiness to your fingertips; the fog.

We are there when the blue-less and smoky screen surrounds you, when you shank the auburn Scot hair of the sly fox that stalks, say, a cigarette from your lips. When you take the corners swiftly, gadding the streets. The prize king of vulpicide. You rub its matte fur against your bristly gray beard. And while you lay in your lumps of twelve carat flesh you bleat and you nag. One day you will never come home.

I've got slivers in my thumbs
and an infection in my gums.
I'm throwing out my stops
and setting fire to my crops.

I want to start this venture with a newly cleaned slate.
I've built bridges in my mind to new places I don't hate.
I've done things I've been ashamed of and I've done things I can't believe,
but the past is not my future and my faults will take their leave.

You can trust me now.
My dishonesty, I cede.
I've loosened up these chains
and made it possible to see.
So who else will to step out
to take a new life on with me?

fine grained grit embedded in pale grey cement
wind over my skin, the grass is moving a bit
voices are just out of reach- whispering things
i just wish i could hear
suddenly the wind dies and slivers of words meet my ears
but only slivers
slivers of whispers
imbed themselves in my skin
thin pieces of word that i wish werent there
"i hate everything, don't talk to me"
It ******* kills me to hear

You strayed independent across my unlaid path
impressing me with a hideaway around the thistles
where inlay thigh flints spark like butterfly wings
fused to outstretched but still flimsy present glinting
loose eyes a smoky incense close to gleam igniting
potent tinder sax on a beneficent Burns' night portent
whispering wick lit slivers of be live next to me glen scent
fluttering and roaming through saliva kissed gloaming
a light shaved window opening a misty eyed gap
opportune as a mysterious space between maps

crossed with aye formations and melted highlands
I slide into a bonnie loch when you return my glance
smooth as a swan stroking shallow into deep meeters
the swirl of bagpipes barely rippling the surface meters

a proud union betwixt us found expression
unflagging love notes ** streamed passion
red into sky blue twitchy nerves lend fingers
fondling unfurled clouds into catchy dance rings
retracing steps into tempestuous hearts I rose
so dryads can black watch temptation intertwine
painted inside as I woad your Pictish tartan

only now the pedestal wobbles a little
but you don't fall to my arms
brave destiny's turn is fickle
and straight on without being toppled
you hesitate but give no nod to lead
no quick look behind you as I hoped
shying awry to continue walking
the hot moment runs past cold
safe as before inhibitions land
like icicles on my fanciful back

upstanding Meissen men often talk
of perfection showing no cracks
and chuckled as they left their mark
in crossed swords kilned with clay ores
giving a porcelain lion soft pause
for thought about a heart out clause
and about lifting any kilt or unstuck thought
to keep established ruling embarrassment
but is that parley risking nought?
the mane's trimmed short
too correct to tip the hat
to a potential welcome
down falls harassment
south of the borderline
sad that no one can put
that man lass
yes
moment together again
but ever slow drifting apart
the dream mist
goes on

I asked you
If you thought
You were capable of hurting me
You said you weighed 115lb
But a sliver of glass
Cannot weigh more than a few grams
Look what that can do
You are a shattered pane
That is all I feel
Your little slivers under my skin
You are not my mother
But I hear her in your voice
You have a mother's touch
It stings all to familiar
You broke the skin on my face
Open like a ripe peach
I suppose we are all capable of terrible things
But you burdened yours as love
Pressed it into my skin
And let me rot in silence

Time slips backward over little slivers
Of love and broken lives,
Gathering them up, using the soft mess
Of once-blessed feeling mixed with
Grand passion,
Until it knits together the pieces of
Hate and love like a potion:
Unseemly, neither black nor white...
And we refuse to see it.

Time rolls forward as we ignore it,
Over hurt as well as joy,
For we have taught ourselves to lie,
To say that nothing matters in
The “grand scheme of things”...
And so our life passes us by.

Until, one day, we discover
We are alone even as we stand
Beside those we love.
And we know them not.
Where love resides,
There loathing and resentment
Peek from amidst the ruinous
Muddle, which we created,
Simply unaware.

We two may stare into each others’ eyes,
As if two strangers,
Wary of false hopes and lies.
Stale passion bonded to forgotten vows
Leave us helpless, caught in a patterned
Web of half-truths and hidden threat.

Soon we are reduced to stiff civility,
“Sly apologies and polite regrets”.
Love dies more slowly than the ability
To end the dance or forget.
We settle in, like corpses in a crypt,
To the slow departure of ourselves.

As the mind rises up above the scene,
We take it in, gawkers on a highway,
Aghast yet unable to refrain
From still more self-flagellation.
Another empty day drags by
And in our lonely, separate prisons…we stay.


Rediscovered on January 20, 2019

In the evening sky
he hung in celestial glory
I thought he came early

As the blue paled
he became brighter

Luminous, white and bold
I loved him dearly
I held him in my hands and heart
cupped his fullness
in my eyes

He moved with me
I watched captivated

I stood in his golden light
and beauty
soaking in silver slivers
into my soul from my skin

Now he lives in me
and I in him