"...the sleeping child you're holding..."

"Mary, did you know...
That your baby boy has come to make you new?
...This child that you've delivered
Will soon deliver you..."
-Greene/Lowry

Last year, about this time, I wrote a post with this Kathy Matthea version of "Mary, Did You Know?" as the keynote... and if you do nothing more today on this blog than listen to this song, I will know your heart has been touched.  Please don't miss its blessing.  I love it so much that I am now convinced it will show up every Christmas...along with a few others that continue to bring their spiritual gifts each year. This season, I share it as the prelude to a poem. 

I am continuing to learn that when we open our hearts, manger-like...humble, simple, still, and expectant...to our Father's plan, the Christ is new-born within us.  "The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will live again.  The lame will leap, the dumb will speak the praises of the Lamb..." Do you know that this sleeping child you are holding within you, is "the Great I AM"

"A Manger Within"

your quaking heart
can know a deep, unfathomable peace
even when all looks lost
and hope seems like a taunting
a haunting
a place where disappointment and doubt
lay in wait
around any
and every corner
ready to pounce and pierce
the soft places
the inner regions
the tender dreams
of the soul

but Love walks in
with all Its quiet Self-certainty
and announces
"I am that I am"
you cannot run from what "I am"
"the spiritual sense of truth that must be gained,
before Truth can be understood"

your heart is Mine
your life is Mine
your love is Mine
you cannot take it back
you cannot take control
you cannot put the shattered pieces
back into a shape that is safe
shelve it all away
in tissue paper
with the old star
the fragile Christmas ornaments
and sigh with relief
that
for another year...it is still intact

I have taken you apart for My purpose
torn away the shredded tatters
you hugged so close
I have dressed you in a bridal garment
pure as driven snow
on an empty, endless beach
along the coast of Maine
I have scattered your false convenient peace
down the abandoned church steps
like rice
raining on your hearts
rending the veil of tolerance
revealing the face of Love

within the stillness of a sanctuary heart
I have wed you to Me...to My presence in your life
I am asking you to trust Me
with your eternity
with your intuition
with your heart and soul and mind
let Me be your God
let Me prepare you a place
as I have prepared your heart
breaking it wide open
ready to receive
a babe

this will not look easy
it may not make sense
it may leave you feeling naked

but what have you learned from a girl
visited by angels
espoused to a man
great with child
giving birth in a manger

sometimes what I have planned
does not make sense
to hearts that need to know
to minds
that need to have it all in columns
and rows
and pews

but if you will let Me have your heart
like she did
I will show you a miracle
a star will lead
angels will sing
kings will bring gifts
shepherds will quake

and you
may learn
to trust
Me
...with all your heart

give it to Me
and I will fill it
with
something
Wonderful,
Mighty,
full of promise...
the Prince of Peace
...or a girl in a manger.

with an expectant heart, always...
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

I just found this version of "Mary, Did You Know?" as sung by lyricist, Mark Lowrey. And as much as I absolutely love Kathy Matthea's version, I am always interested in seeing how a songwriter interprets his/her own lyrics.


[photo credit:  Lisa Redfern and Lydia Day (daughter of Doug & Diana) by Randall Williams 2009]

"So let the wonder take you into space..."

"...So let the wonder
take you into space
And lay you under
its loving embrace
Just feel the thunder
as it warms your face
You can't hold back...

Just let your love flow
like a mountain stream
And let your love grow
With the smallest of dreams
and let your love show
And you'll know what I mean,
it's the season
Let your love fly
like a bird on the wing
And let your love bind
you to all living things
And let your love shine
And you'll know what I mean,
that's the reason..."
- Bellamy Brothers
"Let Your Love Flow"

Have you ever thought about "wonder" taking you into a space where love embraces you?  I hadn't, but when I heard the Bellamy Brothers' song, "Let Your Love Flow" recently, it was that verse that really resonated with me.  I have been living in a space of wonder lately. 

The definition of "wonder" I love is: "a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable." And this is where I am trying to live, to exist, to abide.  In a space of divine wonder.  To be surprised by God and His love for creation.  Tonight's surprise came when four year old Travis, joined us in saying the Lord's Prayer during church and his sweet, passionate, "forever" at the end took my breath away.  "For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory...forever." 

I wish you could have heard the pure trust and innocent confidence in his voice.  If I could have just sat silently letting its sound echo through the room and through to the core of my being for the rest of the hour it would have been heavenly.  Something about it reached like a tuning fork into my heart and set it right again.

Wonder is a space of openness, hunger, and expectancy.  It trusts that around every corner it a divine surprise.

Years ago I had a friend who was, for me, a genuine spiritual mentor.  Whenever I would call him because I was in crisis or facing a personal challenge, he would start by saying, "Wonderful!!"  Because I knew that his heart was filled with an unflappable certainty that I was the loved and blessed child of God, I reveled in this response.  In fact, it made me happy and peaceful. I knew it reflected his own wonder.  A wonder that filled him with childlike joy and expectation, and he wished that same wonder for me.

Each time I heard his, "Wonderful!!" my entire being relaxed into a space of hope and faith, trust and certainty in God's hand in my life and the universe.

Tonight, wherever you are, whatever you are facing, I send a prayer that your life is filled with wonder.  I pray that childlike wonder carves its space in your heart and that you are surprised by how God fills it with extraordinary goodness.
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"...just remember in the winter..."

"It's the heart afraid of breaking
that never learns to dance
It's the dream afraid of waking
that never takes the chance
It's the one who won't be taken
who cannot seem to give
and the soul afraid of dying
that never learns to live…"
- Bette Midler

All winter long I looked out my kitchen window through the empty branches of the pear trees in our back yard to the park just beyond.  The sky above its 1,371 acres of dry and brittle winter grass, was laced with the spindly black trunks and branches of the thousands of sycamore, maple, oak and linden whose leaves had fallen by late November.

Day after day, in bright sunshine or lowering clouds they stood naked, uncomplaining as January buffeted them with ice and March winds howled.  Day after day I watched them with joy…without concern.  Why?

Because I knew that spring would come.  I was absolutely certain that warmer days would call forth bud and blossom.  I was confident that by May we would be taking our walks under a canopy of green again.

I have been thinking about this all morning.  There have been days when certain parts of my life have felt like those trees in winter.  Things that once seemed green and lush often appear, on the surface, lost, naked and vulnerable.  A project put on hold, a dream cherished for so long that it seems silly to continue hoping it will come true, a schism in a once vital friendship, a body of work lost in a fire, a hurricane, a hard drive failure.

How often have I been guilty of looking at the starkly naked evidence of loss and forgotten the law of spring.   How often have I, in  looking back at the lushness of a summer season, forgotten to welcome autumn…and winter.

In Ecclesiastes it says, "To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven…a time to plant and a time to reap…a time to break down and a time to build up…a time to weep and a time to laugh…". This gives me great peace.  I am no longer inclined to think that when I am in a weeping season that I have done something wrong, or, more likely, not done something I should have done, or thought…or prayed.

When I am most certain that my life is not defined by, or limited to, this chapter…this chronological timeline between birth and death…and I am least afraid of "dying," I am most willing to live my life fearlessly, and with courage.  When I am absolutely sure that no matter how much I lose I can never be deprived of my right to give, I am most generous.  Only by opening my hand and letting go, am I best positioned for accepting something new.

All winter long I lingered over the winter view from my kitchen window.  It was as if we had an apartment in Paris overlooking Versailles.  With the leaves off the trees between our house and Art Hill, I could see the museum perched on her pedestal in the park.  At night she was luminous in the golden glow of twilight.  Through the night her palatial lights cast an old world elegance on our neighborhood.  In the lush months of spring and summer it is difficult to see her through the tall canopy of leaves between my kitchen window and where she stands. 

It has often been in the bleakness of winter-like seasons in my life that I have learned the most about myself…I discover a resiliency, courage, patience I didn't remember I had.  And I learn so much about those around me.  It is when the winds of distain howl most loudly that I am most aware of the stillness of a friend's kindness.  

I have learned to love winter, not just as a prelude to an anticipated spring, but because it is often in the midst of winter that I am able to see things that are not as visible when all the world is lush and green and bursting with color, fragrance, and harmony.

"...When the night has been too lonely
and the road has been too long
and you think that love is only
for the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter
far beneath the bitter snows
lies the seed
that with the sun's love
in the spring
becomes the rose."

On to Spring…
Kate