Welcome to our 44th Poetry Party!
I select an image and suggest a theme/title and invite you to respond with your poems or other reflections. Add your responses in the comments section. Feel free to take your poem in any direction and then post the image and invitation on your blog (if you have one) and encourage others to come join the party! (permission is granted to reprint the image if a link is provided back to this post)
Poetry Party Theme: Entering the Desert’s Fire
This week the Christian liturgical season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. For 40 days we are invited on an inner pilgrimage which parallels the desert journey Jesus made before he began his public ministry. In the Hebrew and Christian scriptures the desert is a place of preparing our hearts, of stripping away of false securities, of radical surrender, and of invitation to transformation. The Israelites wandered in the Sinai desert for 40 years and the early Christian monks went out into the desert to find a place of profound solitude and silence. The desert is an archetypal place where we confront our inner demons and are purified and transformed by the its heat.
I invite you this week to write a poem about your own invitation to enter the refiner’s fire – in alchemy lead is transformed into gold through heat and this becomes a metaphor for the human soul. What is the lead within you ready to be transformed into something treasured?
The poem could be a blessing for the journey ahead or an invocation of your deepest longings for this sacred time. Allow yourself to feel the desert heat as you write and invite in its power to spark, ignite, and illuminate the world.
50 Responses
“Rend Your Heart and Not Your Garments”
I open my heart
I lay the deepest part of me
open on this altar
that is within me
I give You my all
My entire being, My soul
Dear Father I pour out
my grief, fear, anxiety
as alibation, an offering
All that I am, all that has
brought me to this place
I give to You Dear Father
Take me as I am
Turn me, spin me
Break me, mold me
I am open, my heart
lays on this altar
I am Yours
Rumi said “break the legs of what I want to happen”
And so it is that I find my path to the Source
Made more fortunate,
Actually enlivened
By the losses,
And inspired
By the despair.
Because as a desert traveler, my first glance of the oasis and
My parched throat make me crawl in a much straighter line
Than she whose lips are wet.
Sorry, that should have been Dawn not Dusk. Duh!
Entering the Desert’s Fire
Dusk is cold and damp
as the darkness rises
slowly, reluctantly
from its earthly sleep.
Rolling forth its light
the pubescent orb
to friend, and foe,
lends heat and sight.
Silent breath is braced,
against the cruel rush
of the desert’s fire,
to defend the night’s faith.
Thinking tonight of our soldiers, their families, and their chaplains.
What a lovely way to spend Friday morning.
Chrysty–you are a poet. Hold onto that.
There seems to be a great many messages of “I AM.” Ubuntu theology says “I am because we are.” Connections.
I lay now
Muted moss covered
Veiled, if you will.
But once I was molten
Once I was part of the Heart.
I knew.
Cooled now,
waiting for the inevitable.
Not by any means dead.
Only resting.
Desert beckons
Fire calls
Warmth, textures, color, images abound
Silent dance of flames asks for music
Go past truth
Go beyond love
Go through trust
Purge, empty, let go
Reflect……….
And there….
“I AM”
The best part about coming late with my offering is that I get to read so many others on my journey to the comment box.
I was going to name the ones I liked best, but I couldn’t remember everyones name so a blanket “thank you” to everyone will have to do.
Deserts and Fires
in the night of the desert
it is cold and dark and lonely
except for the thousands of stars
hanging in the sky
you can lay back and watch gases that
burned
long, long ago and further away
than you will ever travel
or you can turn toward a blaze
you yourself had to kindle
in the night of the desert you cannot escape
fire
warm and close or remote and dim
in the deserted night of the soul,
when you can only turn into yourself
and gaze upon the constellations
of your past choices,
you can lay back and wonder who
could love you
or you can turn toward reassurance
that God, who kindled all light and love,
loves you
and feel warmth and light from within
Forty Days 2010
…and God said
fear not
I AM the desert
I AM the fire
plunge into Me
…then God said
shed the ash
be the flame
blaze
plunge into the world
Come. Step right in.
Leave everything behind –
Everything you can’t live without.
Say goodbye to them gently
Be thankful for their counsel
For their company.
Now see where you are.
After all the taking,
After all the collecting,
You are here.
At the gate of pain
If you don’t let go.
At the gate to freedom
If you let Me Be.
Come. Step right in
Breathe in my fire
And know what Love is.