miss understanding

there is such an intense desire to be understood
for someone to get me.
for forever it seems i've sought relief
from a near constant sense of misunderstanding
or worse, rejection
the spirit of rejection, the thorn in my side
my relatively victorious enemy
then it hits me
Yah gets me.
He understands me clearly
and this reality is comforting
its knowledge helps many
a lonely moment pass
again
but still the desire lingers
to be understood by other people
or even just one
completely

serenity

credit: anaRasha

love asked one night
what do you want
i didn't need to think about it
"serenity"
the word just formed and came out
and instantly always was the truth
something hit its target
the moment froze there in silence
serenity
the opposite of everything i was
haunted, filled with angst
insecurities like spider's legs
countless hands
that reached around breaking everything
but even then i glimpsed the peace
i didn't know
but knew
was possible

the blind can't see

it would be ridiculous to get angry
at someone who was physically blind
for tripping over something they couldn't see
and falling on their face.

that's fairly easy to recognize.

it's not that difficult to not judge harshly,
to even feel a heart-wrenching empathy
for this blind person
for their blunder.

but it's also just as ridiculous to get angry
at someone who is spiritually blind
for tripping over something they couldn't see
and falling on their face.  

this one is harder to SEE though.
it's easier to judge in this scenario,
because the blindness is not as obvious
though just as real
and in reality more serious.

We don't have to be humble to be cognizant of one's ineptitude to change a physically blind man's eyes into eyes that can see.  It is simply out of the scope of our power; a conclusion logical in even the prideful. 

It does take humility to recognize this is true on the spiritual plane too.  We can't give a blind man sight, we can't make them see, we can't show them what they're missing.. but Yah can open the eyes of the blind.  

hard words, life, death, birthdays and blessings

in the flesh
i am one year older
and yet unconvinced i should be here at all.
i am not suicidal, that isn't even the point.
i will never kill myself. 
i don't want to die in that sense,
despite wondering occasionally how it might be nice to.
we all are given a chance to fulfill a purpose
and maybe we do so anyway
unintentionally,
in even the ugliest pathetic kinds of ways,
like a dud firework first lit for it's potential.

then discarded.
somehow more than nothing we may wonder.
but i think about what solomon said
about the unborn
and how they might be the most blessed,
blessed more than the existing souls,
blessed more than the dead.
but people twist words,
and i may be twisting his.
through misunderstanding limited by language,
translations, wrong interpretations.
hard words.

#dontbeoffended

the "pro-life" catch-22

the background:

source

i was watching a documentary on birth when i heard a British midwife comment on a particular issue she was experiencing with a patient who wanted to have her child at home despite the midwife's opinion that she should go to the hospital.  From the midwife's perspective the woman needs medical intervention, but the mother was refusing, or more like delaying that option, preferring to try all the old "tricks" at home to help her labor progress naturally.

The midwife's comment has almost nothing to do with the subject here;
however, it was indirectly revealing the same.

She said the the unborn child didn't have rights until it was born; therefore, she could not force the mother to go to the hospital, even though she thought it was in the best interest of the child, her hands were, in essence, tied.

Hearing her casual banter to the camera, the catch-22 of the popular pro-life argument hit me like a slap in the face. 

i have understood for some time that mankind cannot legislate morality, nor are the legal systems of man the answer to sin, but this example made that truth undeniably obvious.

If you see as i, "pro-lifers" mean well in their desire for the unborn to have "legal" rights to live, they, of course, mean to protect life.. but the reality is that man's ways only bring about death (Proverbs 14:12).   Because, if the unborn have civil rights in the legal system, then decisions can be made on their behalf under any circumstances by the State regardless of the parents wishes!  This has bitter consequences.  


If pro-lifers accomplished their goal of getting the government/gods/courts to establish the unborn as legal persons whose circumstances could be "protected" (read: regulated) by the State, THEN it would naturally open the door for the State to regulate any number of decisions regarding these persons.

source

Including how the woman gave birth, should a situation arise like the one above, with a medical professional who determined the "right" thing to do.

It doesn't take a lot of imagination to think about other scenarios where the State, the now legal "father"/god/ruler of the unborn, could technically force mothers to acquiesce to medical demands/prescriptions.

It is a fact already that today when prenatal testing indicates possible issues with the unborn child, like down's syndrome for example, that the mother is even encouraged to abort her baby.  It doesn't take any prophetic ability to foresee the State (especially in the socialized-medicine arena) prescribing/demanding abortion for all pregnancies wherein testing has detected a potential problem.

What if mother no longer had the choice to carry the child full-term because the medical-gods deemed her pregnancy unviable (read: undesirable)?  It could happen.

Today, once again, it became abundantly clear why i am neither "pro-life" nor "pro-choice" in the controversial modern sense of the labels.  In this context i once heard a brother say he was "pro-God", and i have to agree with that stance. i am pro-YAH, which means i am obviously all for life AND all for choice, because both life and the freedom of choice comes from the Creator.  i don't take sides on the fight in the "legal" world, that is not my world.

i am pro-Yah, therefore i cannot agree with abortion.  i believe abortion is murder. Period.  But i also don't think man was designed to create his own legal systems, because there already IS a law against murder, it's Yah's law. 

So to all the "pro-lifers" seeking legislation:
man doesn't need man-made laws to "protect" life.
It won't work.
It will backfire horribly.

Man need only return to ways the of Yah, and walk there.

source

Shalom Shalom.

the great little things

strawberry

i was thinking this evening about the little things.  The little, potentially mistaken for unimportant, things.  it was the second blue of the day and i was doing dishes.. a lot more dishes than i would have had to do, had i not the tendency to put every single food item in the cutest little vessel i can find for the task.  We had baked potatoes tonight and as i came up with topping after topping as options, they each had to have their own cute little serving bowl, even the stuff that just came out of plastic-ware from the fridge.. some people may have just pulled back the plastic lid and popped a spoon in the ready-made "dish", but not me. Despite the fact i know it will create more dishes in the end, i don't care about that; i care more about the dining experience, and i think it's fun to make stuff pretty.  Don't get me wrong, there are nights when the spoon goes straight into the store bought container of whatever.. but not tonight.

So as i was tending to the "extra" dishes i was thinking again about how Abba-Yah understands this desire to make things pretty, even unnecessarily so.  i'm convinced by my experiences on earth that He goes out of His way to beautify, inspire awe, decorate, and dazzle.

Abba-Yah is the Mighty One - God of the grandest and greatest creation that includes the incomprehensible vastness of this universe; larger than anything we can even wrap our minds around.  And He is also the Mighty One - God of the tiniest, littlest and smallest parts too.. the microscopic world we've barely tapped into and hardly discovered.  He so clearly cares about the details, the nuances; nothing is insignificant, no thing too small.  i'm amazed by that which i cannot even see.. i mean scientists liken the nucleus of a cell to the activity and hub of a metropolitan city! Wowzers man.

And in all this pondering of the macro and micro of life, i decide it's important.  i want to care about the little things too.  It's easy to see and focus on big things, to be (if only fleetingly) concerned over injustice, poverty, pollution, society's trauma, and cancer; and to think that something like a pedicure means nothing at all, "in the scheme of things".  But to an elderly or disabled man or woman, bed-ridden and enduring the challenge and frustration of an ill-functioning body -- a body that may contain a mind as sharp as it ever was; to them a pedicure or other simple grooming might just be a little taste of heaven, a little dignity in an otherwise humiliating journey of decay and decline. 

Since we've gone there now, Let's continue down the rabbit trail and be honest and we'll admit that the elderly in our American culture are some of the most neglected of all our society. Sitting (rotting?) away in convalescent homes that are crowded and understaffed, caught in the fouled up and doomed welfare-by-force beast of a man-made system, where care and attention in the little things is so needed, yet unmet.  My own grandmother, who died in a convalescent home after becoming paralyzed, was at times found with feces under her nails by my mother who went to visit her just about everyday.  A little attention to detail means a lot from that helpless perspective. 

Forgive me, this wasn't intended to invoke anything but praise and a HALLELUYAH (!) that He, our Abba, notices and cares for the little things.  Not even the little sparrow dies unnoticed by Him.  What an amazing Father. 

So while a pedicure or a pretty dish may seem less important than countless other things, it's not, it's just not.  There's a time for every good thing. 

Yah help us.

Because the littlest things do matter. 

snowflake

the forgotten Son

something funny happened yesterday. funny strange, not funny haha.

we were eating In&Out while taking a break from getting ready for the upcoming bridal shower my mom is hosting for my brother's soon-to-be wife.. i noticed the bottom of my chocolate milkshake cup's verse was Proverbs 3:5, my mom's favorite, so i point it out to her, and we recite aloud the text from memory.  Dad, the only other one with a cup, looks on the bottom of his and says John 3:16; mom and i start reciting it too aloud when the funny thing happened.. 

instead of saying "only BEGOTTEN Son" the phrase "only FORGOTTEN Son" pops out my mouth, to my dismay. 

wow.  what and why was that? 

a message.

trees planted in two worlds

~we are trees planted in two worlds

the upper world of wind and spirit

the lower world of earth and flesh

we do not walk between them

 they both exist in us~

If we could view the underworld of many trees on earth, where their root systems branch down and out in similar fashion to it's above ground nature of spreading up and out, we would often see a near mirror image reflected below as it is above. Like two trees united on a single trunk, one with arms reaching higher, dressed in leaves to soak in air and cosmic particles from sun and stars; and the arms of the other reaching deeper and deeper with hair-like roots to drink in water and mineral.

Wind/Spirit are the same words in Hebrew. Man/Earth (adamah) are the same words too.

 

A serious problem is that many are nearly only conscious of the lower realm of flesh, it's the stream all their thoughts, motives and desires run in. Conversely, there are others who try to shun and deny as much as possible the lower realm of their existence; living in ultra asceticism like some monkish gnostic types, who see their physical nature not as a good thing but as a hindrance to be transcended beyond. Both of these extremes are out of harmony with what we were created to be, spirits having a physical experience. 

Losing a balanced perspective of either our vitality suffers, and tragically our purpose lays unfulfilled. It is possible to either do too much or too little in this life, to live busy lives lacking intention, unconsciously. Live for the flesh and we will be governed by what they call the reptilian brain focused on survival, missing completely the intangible beauty contained in the treasure of an awareness of our higher nature. i think we as people hunger for a healthy spiritual life, and that hunger is often misinterpreted by our carnality that seeks constantly -yet ever unsuccessfully- to fill the void with the material world. But if we spend decades up a mountain trying to be “one with the universe” or whatever, on some solo quest to hit the jackpot on ultimate inner tranquility, we'd still miss it.. there's a lot of real good work we'd leave undone, a lot of suffering we could have helped alleviate, a lot of need we could have addressed, a lot of love we could have spread to a hurting planet of people.. or maybe not “a lot” but even a little would have meant a lot to the one on the receiving end of our effort.

Recognizing this dual nature has enlightened my understanding on the significance of prayer and meditation. i've discovered that this is why meditation and prayer are so important; because it pulls us from the lower to the higher realm. Prayer is communicating with our life's Source, our Abba, our Creator, the Existing One. Meditation is taking time to check out from all the materialism and stuff of life and just being, not doing for a time. i've see such a huge difference when i take time for both, i have more peace, more focus, more contentment, less fear, less anxiety, less stress.. it's so worth it.

To clarify, when i say meditation i'm not speaking of the common trendy type of meditation of attempting to blank out the mind by chanting, omming or other self-hypnotic methods, but rather of spending quiet times of simply being still in body, mind and spirit. Practicing staying in the now, feeling self resting in the body, breathing; being still, not carried off elsewhere in thought or imagination. Becoming an objective observer of what comes to mind and bringing it into the light of awareness and then letting it go.

This idea of us being trees in two worlds came about on a recent Shabbat day during time spent pondering things big and small. i present it here because i found the concept interesting and decided to share. Obviously i'm not an authority on matters of spirit and mind, and clearly this is not an exhaustive piece on the subject.. basically i'm just an ordinary girl who wonders about stuff.  i mean no disrespect or insult to anyone whose opinions on prayer and meditation may be different.

Peace to you all.

Glory to Yah.

♥