Desert

Exhausted.
I will die here.
My mind is numb, I have no air to breathe,
I am too weak.
There is nothing to quench my thirst and my hunger is ravenous.


The heat is intolerable by day and the cold by night
There is no end in sight.


I fall down and allow my grip on self, on the goal of my seeking,
to loosen out of exhaustion.
My clenched hands open in fatigue, and I give up my death grip on my security.
I give up.


In my mind I am allowing my search for Love himself to die, but I discover the hunger for him still lives.
What dies is is my fearful grip on the desires of self, control, my cherished, precious desire to feel God love me.
The need.
What dies is the need centered on myself. The consuming need to FEEL loved by Him, important, safe, not abandoned, never discarded.  The fear laying at the core that I would fight and hold on to at the same time.


And I die, but not me.
A shell of self falls off that I never knew I could be free from, a skin shed. I let go of the self that I have made and stand to discover myself as the person that God has made.
A parasite that was starving me, while I thought it was God who was killing me.


I can stand again. My thirst is different. I am lighter, I am freer.
One step in front of the other, in the heat, in the darkness
Moving now without the heavy burden of fear, and the self created as a shield I was carrying before, I have new strength to go on.


Seeking not to feed the thirst of self for love, feelings, worth, but to seek God himself who is my true thirst, my life, my everything.
The hidden God, the silent God, the present God.
The God deeper in me than those cravings and desires could sense.


Who sustains me as I seek him.
And I continue on my journey.
Deo Gratis

In the night, in the storm, walking on the water you took away my securities and held me tight.
On Tabor you took away my fears.
You are purifying me.
Taking away what keeps me from you
Emptying me to fill me with new wine.
I am happy. My soul is at peace. 
Purifying fire, you haven't forgotten or abandoned me.
The silent flame means I am never alone.
Deo Gratis

You don't just want me to serve you
 you don't just want my mind, my heart or my love.


You want all of me. All of me absorbed into all of you, all of you living in me.

I can thank you for what you take away
its clear that you are emptying me, so you must not have forgotten me... and I have comfort it knowing your hand, unfelt, unseen, is still on me.
I trust in your promise

Every moment is a sacrament. God gives himself to us under the shadow of the mundane.  See him in everything. Don't simply reject the superficial, see past it to what God sees.

Do not suffer over your suffering.

acceptance....patience...surrender

There a moments a child is inconsolable and must cry himself to exhaustion before he can be comforted, before he can feel the love of his parents. before he can rest. before he can see things with clear eyes and reason and a smile.

Seek him in faith and love, without seeking to satisfy yourself in anything, or to understand more than is expedient for you to know; for faith and love are the guides of the blind; they will lead you, by a way you know not, to the secret chamber of God.

Rest therefore neither wholly or in part on what your faculties can embrace; never seek to satisfy yourself with what you comprehend of God, but rather what you comprehend not; never rest on the love of, and delight in, that which you can understand and feel, but rather on that which is beyond your understanding and feeling: this is, as I have said, to seek him by faith.

Such a one loves no one else, so in the absence of the object beloved, nothing can console or relieve him.

the soul groans when the heart is enamoured, for where love wounds there is heard the groaning of the wounded one, complaining feelingly of the absence of the beloved, especially when, after tasting of the sweet conversation of the bridegroom, it fnds itself suddenly alone, and in aridity, because He has gone away.

Certain secret touches of love, which like a fiery arrow, pierce and penetrate the soul, and burn it with the fire of love. These are called the wounds of love.

The affections of the will lead most rapidly to the possession of the Beloved, whose touch it felt, and as rapidly also, His absence and its inability to have the fruition of HIm here as it desires.

Still the beloved withholds himself whicle the soul has lost all things, even itself, for Him; it obtains no compensation for its loss, seeing that it is deprived of HIm whom it loves.

The tabernacle lamp
The dolphin
The sparrow on the deck while I prayed

I am Herod. I am Gomer. I have sold myself and sold you. Not my body, but worse, my heart.  And what is my punishment but to taste divine love? To know the thirst of mercy for me, a love that chooses me for his bride and gives everything to be mine.

Therefore Though painfully,I  glory in my weakness, my shame that draws so powerfully the love of the God of mercy and learn to trust a love that is too good to be true, to give my whole self to one who sees all in me and loves me completely. When I give him my sin, he takes the joy of being my savior.  In my weakness he is strong. In my nothing he is all.


Hosea1:22
I will betroth you to me with fidelity,
and you shall know the LORD.

In the desert I learn how weak I am. I burn under the sun and am cold in the darkness. I thirst for you alone. I want nothing else but you, no gift, no shadow, no sign. They are mirages... I want you. Make my heart a desert too, empty, silent, peaceful where you can walk and find rest in me.

Longing for?

I had identified the longing for god that I have with the longing to sense his love. I can see now that is not what i long for, but for the love behind what i sense. I long for him, but in a way I havent experienced  and dont understand.  And at the same time, i see that very quietly, he is already giving that love to me. Already filling me with himself. While the storm came and blew away the experiences i had come to love and cling to, he was quietly working below the storm and giving me himself in a deeper way. A peace. A presence. That what I long for, who I long for, isn't gone. It is within me. And with a magnificence and substance strength that is deeper than I knew. I have had a small taste of the old wine and it changes how i see the new wine i thought i was thirsting for.