Doxologies of Praise

 

Doxology: God . . . tell me how

by Psalmuel Benjamin

January 26, 2022 issue of The Christian Century

Beyond the beyond, you lurk behind the start
Of the times. Mystery is the skin that wraps
Your body (if you have one). In the pillar of
Cloud and the blazing bush, we heard you speak.
Like imprints, your footpaths are engraved on
The faces of rocks. Horeb said he accommodated you
And Nebo testifies to your visit. Red Sea said
your finger tickled a parting across like a barber’s
Clipper and like the wall of Jericho, permit you.
If I get you looking at me, God!
I’ll chat you with a billion lips of “how?” How?
After Okopi, did you pass life as a gas into the
Cave of Adam’s nose? A statue for multiplication.
And how did you carve him? Like an artist, you are?
A sculptor? Perhaps, a form-er. Perhaps, a build-er
Yet, your name isn’t Bob but a beautiful bard
You are. As a create-or. Tell me something, God!
Dear God, tell me how. How did you wire the
Bulbs you affixed on the chest of this vast
Canopy that marks the parting between you
And Cosmos? How did you put the bright smile
On the face of the sun and the dim fluorescence
As the countenance of the moon? How did you
Levitate land from the belly of the deep? When
After the fish, we fry for food and maggots munch
On man, will you hold me by hand and survey
Your cubicle to tell me how?

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Doxology:

Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow

(with lyrics)

Video Comment - My mom sang this to me when I was a little kid in my room. I must of been around 5? I don’t remember how old I was exactly, but I do remember how she sung it. I have a plaque with the words of this song hung on my wall in my room. I remember asking her what it was, as I never knew. She told me that it was a song. I asked her to sing it, so she did. I was little, but I still remember to this day in exact detail of that moment in my room. I remembered each note in my mother’s voice. The way the gentle sunlight flowed through my room and shined upon her. 12 years later, I still remember looking up at her singing this beautiful song. Knowing what that plaque in my room finally meant. I even remember the exact pitch, and could sing it in the exact key my mother sang it in all those years ago. I only just searched the song 12 years after to see if my memory held true. It did. The thing is, I only heard this song sung that one time. And I remembered it. At 5... 5 year olds don’t do that people. I like to think of that moment as the most special moment given to me by God in my life. And how I can vividly recall how my mother looked that day with the sunlight on her hair, and how she sung the song, in her beautiful voice. I’ve never experienced anything like that since. It’s a memory that I hold so dear to my heart. And I felt that God was in the room at the moment. Like he was the sunlight shining on my mom. I think he was.

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amazon link

Doxology: Poems in Praise of the Living God

by David Siefert

In Doxology, Dave Siefert pours out praise to God for his many blessings and points the reader to the need for faith in Jesus Christ alone for eternal salvation.

DOXOLOGY brings encouragement to those facing difficult circumstances, and gives hope to those who are spiritually searching.

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Cloudnine Fairmane c9fm Jun 2022

CLOUDNINE'S TWENTY SEVEN PSALM OF DOXOLOGY

TO ADORE THY LORD GOD!

Psalm 27 KJV

1 Make holy his glorious name and adore His powerful word.

2 Sing praises unto thee. And let every breathing creatures tremble at His footstool.

3 The Earth and everythang found therein. Lift on high His glorification and sing adoration unto the supreme Spirit of thy Lord.

4 Hallelujah! Thy Lord reingth till eternal.

5 From all entities through entities.

6 For He has magnified Himself and manifested Himself through every wondrous works of His hands.

7 Ruler of the universe, His glorious crafts exists even beyond the miutiverse.

8 Underneath Earth and above the skies may thy Almighty God be adored.

9 His right hand through seas His breathe roared the waters.

10 His voice quake the Earth and the foundation of the universe wary.

11 He looked and lightening from His eyes revealed the secret place of the wicked.

12 Let thy Lord be praised. He has smitten the jaws of His enemies.

13 Even Lucifer and his angels.

14 Thy Lord reignth till eternal.

15 Blessed be thy Lord our God; with psalms and doxologies thy Lord be worshipped. Selah!

When I think of all His awesome doings

all  around, my heart does praise.

And may it be count worthy before the Almighty.

#gad #praise #adoration #doxology #psalm

Cloudnine Fairmane c9fm

Written by Cloudnine Fairmane c9fm  28/M/Nigeria

     

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Cloudnine Fairmane c9fm Nov 2021

CLOUDNINE'S TWENTY SIXTH SONG OF 

DOXOLOGY: "TO BLESS THY LORD"

Let God be

praised and let

Himself praise Himself.

Let His people

joyfully praise Him,

and let the whole

world and its hosts

and the firmament

and its bodies

laud Him praises,

He who was

and who is to come

He who reinth for

evermore, word

without end. And from

the east pole

of the earth, to the

north of the

south reaching the

west, laud His praises.

In the deepest

part of the sea

sing Joyfully

doxologies of

glorification and

adoration to

worship Him

beneath the earth

and underneath His

throne were twenty

and four holy spirits proclaiming His

praises for He his

worthy to be magnified.

Praised be thy

Lord our

God till eternal.

Amen !

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The Best-Known Hymn in History

Why We Keep Singing ‘The Doxology’

article link

Article by 

David Mathis

Executive Editor, desiringGod.org

Praise God from whom all blessings flow;

Praise him all creatures here below;

Praise him above, ye heav’nly host;

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

These 25 words, known to many around the world today as “The Doxology,” comprise what is likely the single best-known verse of all Christian hymnology and poetry.

On the surface, these lyrics are surprisingly modest and memorable. Few of us remember first hearing them, and few recall straining to learn them. Yet, as simple and accessible as these four lines are, Christians have been singing them now for more than three centuries. Because simple doesn’t mean shallow. Plain does not exclude profound. Which is one of the striking truths at the heart of our faith — and one of the great evidences for its truth — from the Gospel of John, to the early creeds, to the most widely known and enduring lyrics we share with the global church today.

“The greatest realities about God and his world can be captured in the humblest of terms.”

The greatest realities about God and his world, when understood aright, can be captured in the humblest of terms, even as they are bottomless in their depth. And yet we find an enduring quality in “The Doxology” absent from many of our passing modern choruses. Substance hides in the brevity and singability. Though short, the hymn is a coherent progression, rather than a loosely connected attempt at memorable phrases, and turns on the profound theological truths of God’s aseity and generosity, and God as Trinity.

Morning, Evening, Midnight

Thomas Ken (1637–1711), who crafted these plain and profound words in the late 1600s, wrote them as the final and “doxological” stanza of three hymns he published, first for students at Winchester College at Oxford University.

Ken, who was an Anglican minister, royal chaplain, and eventually bishop, first penned verses for his students at Winchester to sing upon arising in the morning, and at bedtime each evening. Later he added a third hymn, to rehearse at midnight, were students to have trouble sleeping. Each hymn was a confession of faith, and an invocation of divine blessing, tailored to its particular moment of the day. And each hymn ended with the same 25-word doxological verse in praise of God, three in one.

Ken’s hymns have by no means been lost today. However, it is his final verse — our beloved “Doxology” — that has endured, so well-known is it that it needs no placeholder in our hymnbooks. Christians the world over simply know it, almost without fail — both Ken’s timeless words and the tune, which Ken did not write, but which much later began to accompany the song. The tune, called Old One-Hundredth, originally designed to accompany the singing of Psalm 134, and later Psalm 100, first appeared in the Geneva Psalter in 1551 and was written by Louis Bourgeois (1510–1561), who served as head of choirs and music, alongside famous pastor and theologian John Calvin.

Source of All Good

What, then, has been the power of these 25 words? Why have they endured, and for many become one of the most basic and repeated expressions of the Christian faith?

For one, our God is indeed the one from whom all genuine blessings flow. He himself is the Blessed One (1 Timothy 1:11; 6:15), the only one in whom is fullness of joy and pleasures forever (Psalm 16:11). Yet, unshakably happy as he is, he is not a God inclined to keep to himself but gives generously. He is happy enough to be outgoing.

God delights to give, to overflow with joy, to bless his creatures and share his own happiness in them and then with them. He is the giver of “every good gift and every perfect gift” (James 1:17). “From him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Romans 11:36).

Three in One

This blessed God is also sovereign over all. He is both the singular source of all true good, and he is the Almighty. He is the Creator and Sustainer of all nature, and all the heavenly hosts above, and “all creatures here below.” Here and there, above and below, he is God and “does all that he pleases” (Psalm 115:3). As the great humbled king of Babylon learned to declare in his own doxology, our God “does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand” (Daniel 4:35).

“God is glorified in our heartfelt expression of praise. God made us for praise. He made us for doxology.”

Still, this God, utterly complete in goodness and power, has revealed himself to his people. He is one and three — one God, three persons, working in history to redeem and restore his people from their sin and rebellion. He is a God three times for us in a great salvation, which is arranged by the Father, accomplished by the Son, and applied by the Spirit.

And so, we praise him as three in one, and one in three, just as we baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19), and pray with the apostle, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14).

Our Joy, His Glory

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. “The Doxology” has served as a ready-made form, and occasion, for Christians to connect the very purposes of God in all he does with our heart’s deepest desire. God made our hearts to ache for happiness. And he made the world, and us, to glorify him. And in this act of praise (which “The Doxology” directs and assists), our souls both rejoice and go public in expressing their delight in him.

God is glorified in our heartfelt expression of praise. God made us for praise. He made us for doxology. He made the world that he might be praised. And these simple yet profound words serve that simple yet most profound human act of devotion — and all the more when we join our voices and sing together.

Odes to the State of Michigan

Petosky Stones

Lake Michigan Shorelines

That Wild Great Lake:

Lines Written on Lake Michigan

The lake was smooth that dawn and like a pool
Of liquid glass or diamond: so profound

Was its tranquility, its quiet sound

Was soft as silk and sacred, sweet and cool.

I miss the echoes of those rolling waves

All rushing to the ancient sandy shore.

I find I cannot sleep well anymore

And peace of mind is what its whisper saves.

Not like those storms that roared in thunder forth

Some months before, when, hurling to the shore

Some sailboats, wrecked, can never venture more

Upon the lake from West to East to North.

In winter blizzards some Northeasters blow

From the Atlantic way into the west,

Till frigid surf has finally found its rest

In glittering icicles and ice-sheathed snow.

That length of long sea ice unto the sand

Which melts so slowly when the winds of spring

Return to waken all the blossoming,

Returning songbirds to their summer land.

Alas, I miss the lake and all its moods !

I miss the sound that moves my aching heart !

I miss the sight inspiring all my art !

That wild Great Lake and all that it includes !

Michigan's Common Loon

On the Pulse of Morning

Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling words

Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out to us today, you may stand upon me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song. It says,
Come, rest here by my side.

Each of you, a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the rock were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sang and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

They hear the first and last of every Tree
Speak to humankind today. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you,
Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of
Other seekers—desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede, the German, the Eskimo, the Scot,
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought,
Sold, stolen, arriving on the nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am that Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours—your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, and into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope—
Good morning.

"On the Pulse of Morning" from ON THE PULSE OF MORNING by Maya Angelou, copyright © 1993 by Maya Angelou. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

A Great Blue Heron Fishing

Boundary Waters

by Douglas Brown

The man rested his paddle carefully next to the bundle. My favorite time of day. Dusk. The light was soft, The water still as lakeside glass, insects skimming over touching, laying down a perfect parabola and then touching again. He still felt her kiss and touch on cheek and hand. He smiled at the bundle. Everything I need and more. Sometime back a ways, paddling easy in a light chop, he had forgotten to worry about it. What did doctors know. Resting, he had taken a cookie from the bundle and ate it, looking at each bite before. Dusk left him and the canoe went on, paddle easy, paddle strong, paddle easy, paddle strong. Surely, he had crossed it by now. And surely who gives a- His sudden laughter startled a Great Blue Heron. It flew up, its wings a miracle. The man let the canoe drift and looked to the beautiful darkening sky. He took another cookie from the bundle. I am ready. I am ready.

Northern Coastline of Isle Royale

“My History at Isle Royale” adds a complication:

          I use walking sticks now, step slowly

          from rock to rock, find my footing

          among the roots.

Our guide is older now, his route a bit more precarious. There is “no need for nostalgia here” and both urgency and peace in his memories and observations. In “When the Eagle Came to Her Nest,” he remembers “the hesitation in the air // as she spread her wings…// as added pressure / in my chest.” I feel it, too.

There is joy in bushwhacking, a counting of jays, awe at the stars, knowledge of public spots and secret trails, respect for creatures at rest or carrying on with their lives, and through it all a sense of what would be lost if we don’t “let them be left” here, mostly undisturbed by human beings, and compassion as well for those humans, their “cities beginning to die as their water tables fall.”

There’s a big picture in this small book. As Taylor sums it up in “Twenty-First Century Wild,” “I’m not sure if my focus has narrowed or if I’m finally thinking about the whole world!”

On this little island, with gulls calling, dragonflies swooping, eagles diving, wild iris blooming, life thriving in sun or in fog, the speaker of these poems can live hushed and amazed, apart from the screens, the stresses, the woes of civilization, glad and briefly apart from the sad truth:

          Here alone in all this space

          I cannot believe our world is dying.

Maybe, if we pay attention the way these poems do, our world can live again.

PROSE LINK

Dramatic Lighthouses

"The Lighthouse Keeper Wonders"

 

by Edgar Guest

 

The light I've tended for forty years

is now to be run by a set of gears,

the keeper said, and it isn't nice

to be put ashore by a mere device.

Now, fair or foul the winds that blow

or smooth or rough the sea below,

It is all the same. The ships at night

will run to an automatic light.

 

The clock and gear which truly turn

Are timed and set so the light shall burn.

But, did ever an automatic thing

set plants about in early spring?

And did ever a bit of wire and gear

A cry for help in the darkness hear?

Or welcome callers, and show them through

The lighthouse rooms, as I used to do?

 

"Tis not malice these things I say,

All men must bow to the newer way.

But it's strange for a lighthouse man like me

After forty years on shore to be.

And I wonder now--will the grass stay green?

Will the brass stay bright and the windows clean?

And will ever that automatic thing

Plant marigolds in early spring?

Upper Michigan's Black Night Skies

How the Milky Way was Made

by Natalie Diaz

My river was once unseparated. Was Colorado. Red-

fast flood. Able to take

       anything it could wet—in a wild rush—

                                 all the way to Mexico.

Now it is shattered by fifteen dams
over one-thousand four-hundred and fifty miles,

pipes and pumps filling
swimming pools and sprinklers

      in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

To save our fish, we lifted them from our skeletoned river beds,
loosed them in our heavens, set them aster —

      ‘Achii ‘ahan, Mojave salmon,

                                Colorado pikeminnow—

Up there they glide, gilled with stars.
You see them now—

      god-large, gold-green sides,

                                moon-white belly and breast—

making their great speeded way across the darkest hours,
rippling the sapphired sky-water into a galaxy road.

The blurred wake they drag as they make their path
through the night sky is called

      ‘Achii ‘ahan nyuunye—

                                our words for Milky Way.

Coyote too is up there, crouched in the moon,
after his failed attempt to leap it, fishing net wet

      and empty, slung over his back—

                                a prisoner blue and dreaming

of unzipping the salmon’s silked skins with his teeth.
O, the weakness of any mouth

      as it gives itself away to the universe

                                of a sweet-milk body.

Just as my own mouth is dreamed to thirst
the long desire-ways, the hundred-thousand light year roads

      of your throat and thighs.

Personal Update - A Life Reconstructed

In 1903 Edvard Munch held an exhibition at the newly refurbished Kunsthandlung P. H. Beyer & Sohn in Leipzig, where Munch had been allocated the gallery’s skylit room. Eighteen paintings, inlaid in a light textile frame, were presented as a frieze in the room. Running as a horizontal band high up on three walls, the frieze essentially became a part of the room as a whole. The article therefore proposes to consider the exhibition as spatial art and examine it in light of the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk. The documentation of the exhibition is a unique source for understanding Munch’s “Frieze of Life” and its spatial representation, even as the paintings highlight the role of the exhibition room at the turn of the twentieth century. The exhibition room played an instrumental role in how Munch developed his art.

Alan Sorrell: A Life Reconstructed

Personal Update:

A Life Reconstructed

With apologies, I have been sick most of the summer dealing with a surgical infection from eight years ago. At the end of last summer of 2022, I was dealing with a newly opened abscess on my foot which I managed until May of this year when a surgeon opened up the foot to clean it out and sent me home to let the newly opened gash heal.

However, the surgery failed and necessitated a second surgery weeks later resulting in the addition of a wound pump for the rest of the summer... this time with thrice weekly nursing visits to the home. But again, the open would wouldn't heal despite the care. In fact it got worse.

At which point, after eight years of sloughing it out, it was time to remove the infected foot-and-ankle titanium prosthetic which held my foot together. One I broken in my early teens attempting to stop my fall over the edge of a cliff I had intentionally and poorly navigated. And upon the same limb which I had played physical sports until my early fifties when needing a total knee replacement.

This hopeful prosthetic was removed a week ago, cleaned of gunk, and cemented in place with a time-released antibiotic. Since there was now extra skin all was bound up without the miserable wound pump I had come to detest. Nine days have past in morbid pain from loss of device, crutching around on tired arms, and awaiting removal of cast some nine days out. Thankfully, we found a couple knee scooters which helped immeasurably giving relief to my aching body and spirit.

Once this surgery heals there will be a minimum of two more surgeries until there is no longer any infection and the foot can be fused to the ankle without addition of any more mechanical devices. If unsuccessful then there might be a future holding an amputation with the addition of a fully mechanical half-limb and incumbrances to come. Hopefully not. But it is why I waited so long before finally allowing the doctors to remove the original prosthesis.

Tomorrow I speak once again to infectious services to determine if a picc line through the arteries to the heart will be necessary or not. I expect it will require a month or more of antibiotic infusions which I will manage along with a nursing visit once a week to change out the port placed into my arm. But I am no stranger to this practice either as my first wounds eight years ago were far, far worse... being quite long and wide, travelling up-and-down several parts of my leg. It is the main reason I will not "suffer" a second internal prosthetic; the other being that 35% of these second surgeries fail in infections again.

At that time I found myself slipping into despair, if not depression, as I looked into a black pit badding me step forward one more step. The pain was overwhelming. The worse being the first three months - though the next five months thereafter were no picnic either. And then there was the constant severed nerve pain which lasted 4.5 years. It required a steely will beginning with refusing to step forward into an oblivion I might not come out... though I remember blackness to seem a fathomless comfort to the septic fevers rolling through my body.

Anyway, I've been taking these past summer months to catch up with life. Find a little time for introspection. And to rest from writing, which task I've done regularly since the fall of 2009 upon retirement. A retirement I've not only filled with poetry and writing on the cutting edge of a new theology - which I've placed on my other website - but to leave my job and volunteer church ministries to work within my community.

During these past retirement years I held committee and board positions on City, County, and College panels; became a certified Master Naturalist through MSU's extension program (including a 100 hours of community service); and joined over two dozen environmental organizations working, planting, burning, strategizing, creating, and building a living ecology in West Michigan with others who bore the same passion and veracity as myself.

In so doing, we have created the foundations necessary for empowering regional green infrastructures and green business practices to our part of West Michigan across local and state levels and all parts in-between. I could never have done this while working or raising a family. After 30+ years in technology and lay ministries I finally laid all aside and took the time to participate in creating healthy sustainability practices for habitat and clean water projects.

Over the last fifteen years I worked, volunteered, learned, and gave input across a number of ecological areas. Many of them politically unwanted but expediently necessary knowing the climate change coming upon us in the decades ahead. In these tasks I have greatly enjoyed being a part of community seeking to aide strangers via innumerable opportunities and probabilities. It was fun. And it gave to me the experience, perspective, and depth I needed to write of social contracts and personal enlightenments.

Now lately, one I get pass these remaining hard monts, I hope to continue working on both websites to leave with my family, friends, and interested readers helpful ways in which we might think about our personal value to one another and the greater good we might attempt for humanity. I see no reason not to thrive during these times of pandemic, socio-political upheaval, failure of religious institutions. At no time should we give in to adversity, perversity, calamity, bleakness, or short-sightedness. But at all times we are to give ourselves to diversity, modality, veracity, and tonality in the trying years ahead. It's what get's me up in the morning to create, destroy, rebuild, and envision communities of life.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

September 5, 2023

* * * * * * *

We will always rebuild

(a poem for the grieving)

by Jeanette LeBlanc

You are here.
You are here.

Even though everything smells like love and loss and burning.
Start with this.

You are here and it hurts.
It hurts because of all you’ve lost.
Your heart is a 3am siren, driving through that sucker punch bruise of a night sky.
Never a sign of anything good.

Here, nothing feels good.
Now you’ve begun.

You are here and it hurts and the world feels impossibly heavy.
There is not enough air in the room.
The quilt on your bed is eight hundred pounds of weight keeping you from movement.
There is no going back

There is never any going back.
Now you’re getting somewhere.

You are here and it hurts and the world feels impossibly heavy and you are shouting bargains at the moon.
He is listening but does nothing.
There is nothing he can do.

You are on your knees in the grass,
clutching handfuls of earth.
This is progress.

You are here and it hurts and the world feels impossibly heavy and you are shouting bargains at the moon and there is nobody else to hear you
It is the darkest night you’ve ever lived through
You’ve lived through.
You’ve lived.

Do you hear me?
You live.
You make it.
You survive.

There is a faint tinge of light on the horizon and you made it.
Now we’re finally moving forward

You are here and it hurts and the world feels impossibly heavy and you are shouting bargains at the moon and there is nobody else to hear you and there is a grief wail building inside of you.
Through the earth, through your toes,
Your legs, your belly, your chest and lungs,
The reach of your arms, your curled fists.
Your neck
Your jaw
Your face
The top of your head.

Have you ever seen a building implode?
Yes. This is you.
Now you know you have begun the work of healing.

You are here and it hurts and the world feels impossibly heavy and you are shouting bargains at the moon and there is nobody else to hear you and there is a grief wail building inside of you and you crumbling.
The ground shakes as her own broken pieces slide rough against each other.
There is a red earth landslide and everything is tumbling into the sea.
On the ocean, a wall of water rushes toward land.
Disaster cannot be prevented, only survived or not.
The earth knows well the pain of things that cannot be fixed.

Your pain cannot be fixed.
There is no shortcut through this.
This knowledge is the key to everything that will come next.
There is more to come.

Sometimes healing looks like falling apart.
Sometimes falling apart is the path to what can be built.
Sometimes, we go through the darkest nights and there is nobody but the moon to hear.
He always listens.
Now you listen.

There is not enough air in the room but you are breathing.
There is nobody here but you are held.
You have broken and the world is breaking and we will always rebuild.

Do you hear me, love?
We will always rebuild.

- Jeanette LeBlanc