Eureka

“The eye altering, alters all.”
― William Blake

A day of pleasure - reading, writing and spending time with the physically blind.

Sometimes, I ask myself 'Am I the blind one?'
Blinded by unsaid prejudices-
quick to differentiate,
and quicker still to judge.
Seeing the outward, but ever failing to see people, as they truly are.

Grant me a heart,
that sees as You see.

Antipode

The nostalgia to travel.
Does it spring from an insatiable desire to explore
or from a dry, discontented present?
Do we seek to escape from the mundane that
entraps, that bores, that is uninspiring.

Many would never experience the privilege of traveling the world,
yet, they live rich, full-orbed lives nonetheless.

I love the wonder (& wander) that comes with exploring,
Yet, I have found myself, strangely, changing within,
with nothing changing without.

His Word reveals & nourishes,
To live is Christ, nothing else suffice.

Hyacinth

“We have all cherished our life purposes. We have forecast our futures as likely to lie in a certain direction and have dearly desired that it should be so. When hindrances have been put in our way and when we have met with strong opposition and rebuff, we have still clung to our hope. Only very slowly have we yielded and accepted the inevitable. To renounce it has been like tearing out our heart. Not till long years have passed have we realized that the Lord's plan was much wiser and grander that our own. Then suddenly we have awakened to discover that while we were desiring to do one thing, God was leading us to do another and that what we have counted secondary was primary, for His glory, and for the lasting satisfaction of our own heart.”
― F.B. Meyer

Truly, there is no lasting satisfaction outside His perfect Will;
A life poured out, is a life lived.

Dei Gratia

“How does the meadow-flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold.” - Wordsworth

It's almost been a year of teaching.
The people He brought across my path,
the lives intertwined at the most unexpected places...
each day I'm surprised,
surprised by Joy.

I am missing him (How can I not be?)
yet thankful for this time that he's miles away, in this season.
Can there be a better plan than God's best for us?
his love is a strengthening kind of love -
it nourishes in truth & is lavishly given in the most undeserving of times.
Humbled & blessed.

Our souls delight in Thine alone.

Mauve

O Lord, when Thou didst call me, didst Thou know
my heart disheartened through and through
still hankering after Egypt full in view
where cucumbers and melons grow?
- "Yea, I knew."

But Lord, when Thou didst choose me, didst Thou know
How marred I was and withered too,
Nor rose for sweetness nor virtue rue,
Timid and rash, hasty and slow?
- "Yea, I knew."

 
My Lord, when Thou didst love me, didst Thou know
How weak my efforts were, how few,
Tepid to love and impotent to do,
Envious to reap while slack to sow?
- "Yea, I knew."

 
Good Lord, Who knowest what I cannot know
And dare not know, my false, my true,
My new, my old; Good Lord, arise and do
If loving Thou has known me so.
- "Yea, I knew."

by Christina Rosetti

Chagrin

“For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”
― William Shakespeare, The Sonnets

The truth about ourselves is painful.
Yet without it, we continue existing in the quagmire of festering lies we tell ourselves.
Oh, we tell ourselves.

The truth about ourselves can be life-saving.
The joy of knowing a new heart,
where who you once were is a distant prologue, paving way for a wonderful beginning thereafter.

Let it die,
that it may live.
Truly live.

Synechdoche

To willingly choose the other, instead of ourselves, day-in and day-out.

'You know, the lovey-doveyness is not the most important thing in our relationship..'
It's wonderful, but it really isn't all that.

While gazing out of the monorail,
my eyes rested on a construction site.
Workers pouring cement into a deeply dug hole, which would soon become the foundation of a spectacular building.

It's the same in relationships,
unless the foundations are deep, strong & true,
what's built on it can never stand the storms & the gales,
it will never last.

Reach our depths,
and be our Solid Rock.

Portico

I've the ability to travel to a world of my own when speeches and formalities exceed their given time. Today, my thoughts went to this (not little) thing called love.

The preoccupation of it in music, movies, books...yet, what is it really?

Love can be found in changing smelly diapers and doing the laundry after a stretching day at work. It doesn't need the most luxurious to be happy, it could be cuddled up simply on that second-hand couch, with a book, at that place you both call home.

Maybe we find love so hard to define, because though we were created to love, its true Source does not lie in us.

'For where our treasure is, so there our hearts will be.'
Be the Treasure of our soul.

Rapier

Till two days ago, I've never seen a sun setting into the sea.
With sands caught between the toes & friends snapping away on fancy gadgets,
I couldn't help but absorb the entire scene.

Silent & Still,
I looked on, remembering how we've never really noticed the sun, yet it always remains.
It rises, it sets...it paints a picture with a thousand hues, changing each minute...each beautiful minute.

You are in the sweetest green & softest blue,
are our hearts attuned to Your grace?

Gradient

“Love and a cough cannot be hid.”
― George Herbert

Today we went for a hike,
I enjoy hikes.
The breeze, the accidental puddles, the unsuspecting scratches...
the rhythm of taking one step at a time,
looking for the next grip & snug foothold...
Nature & all of its undiscovered beauties.
Oh yes, wonderful companions are a great plus too & that goes without saying.

You're the anchor of our souls,
the Heart of our deepest desire.

Lourve

“You speak an infinite deal of nothing.”
― William Shakespeare

Chitter, chatter over things that do not matter.

There are days I yearn for a meaningful conversation, instead of so much that doesn't say anything.
A wonderful narrative but a facade to hide the true intents of the heart.
Something amiss that misses its crescendo.

To live from the heart each day...
we are deeply loved to deeply love.

Infernal

'...life is not as idle ore/but iron dug from central gloom/And heated hot with burning fears/ And dip in baths of hissing tears/ And batter'd with the shocks of doom/To shape and use.' - Tennyson

"What will happen in the future? What if...."

The unnecessary fears we plague ourselves with, robbing us of our present joys, blinding us from what really matters -
The nows, the present, the moment by moment, the day by day...of learning, trusting, falling and rising up again, the breakings and the healings, the hurts and the balms.
Do we throw it all away simply cos it hurts? It's inconvenient? It's trying?

"No darling, it won't be easy, not one bit, but it is and will be worth fighting for."

Grant us the wisdom to choose,
and the tenacity to walk this life -
the Life that You desire.

Scarlet

“What other dungeon is so dark as one's heart! What jailor so inexorable as one's self.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

Sometimes, we wade in our cesspool of emotions for far too long a time,
depriving ourselves from the joy and freedom thereof.
Distraction, explanations, justifications...
we have been set free, but do we still choose our chains?

There is no true delight outside of Thee.

Grounded.

'In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil ' - Edward Mote

Just when you think you 'can't go on/can't take this anymore',
you realize you can, you will & you have gone on, all these time.
The challenges, the heartbreak, the disappointments...things as they are.

We live too long in the shadow of our own fears & insecurities.
Step out into the irresistible future with Him.

Cavalcade

'Teach us to care and not to care.' - T.S Eliot

A significant trip.
Places we went, people we met, things we saw...
around us & in ourselves.
Fallen, broken to irreparable pieces,
the shattered glass cuts,
hurting ourselves, hurting those around us.

You didn't come to fix us.
You came to make us wholly & completely new,
to the praise of Your name.

Woven

'We must admit that we, too, cause much of our own pain.' - Marva Dawn

It's true that more often than not,
we are thrust into a circumstance, not of our choosing,
that hurts us, pain us & may even scar us.
The cruelty inflicted, unjustifiable.

Years we wallow in the hell hole of self-pity,
scrapping pass as a wounded victim,
barely surviving from hand to mouth.

Yet, we missed the Love that keeps us (kept us & will continue to keep us),
the Love that heals, that makes us anew.
To be who we never dreamt we could be (even our dreams fall short),
to be the person that we were created to be.

To live, to move & have our being in Him.
Is there any greater delight than that?

Lackeys

A couple got down from the taxi.
Snapped a happy picture in front of the temple, next to where I live.
Strange I never gave the temple a worthy second glance,
the intricate handiwork, the colours spattered with intent...

We all long to travel.
Miles, oceans away...
longing just to see something that takes our breath away.
Something that the ordinary seems to suffocate, to stifle, to degrade...

Or did we do that to ourselves?

***

The sweet delight of living in the centre of Your will.
Surrounded by weeds, or surrounded by flowers,
it matters not. 

Lacunae

Literature Class Field Trip

City lights, come in harried.
Flickered with glitz, a fancy mousse - tasty but airy,
Where did it all go? 

She sieves, and sieves again;
He weighs, and weighs again.
All that is worth is here to stay.

Enmeshed and beaten down under its crushing weight,
the dawning strength comes not from within, but without.
We can never fix ourselves.

Make us anew,
afresh in Thee.

Lissome

“There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.”

―G.K Chesterton

Teaching - where you can shower your love to all the same, 

finding a few reciprocating, whilst the rest remain in passive ignorance...

and you continue loving em' all just the same.

Unconsciously, one becomes jaded by the routine of life,

losing that wide-eyed, childlike wonder in everything.

Something that once tasted so good, is soiled by the dullness of familiarity.

The fault lies not in the thing, the person, the circumstance,

but our own beguiled hearts, that lost its sense. 

Grant me a childlike heart,

robust in love for You, for all around. 

Pious

Fear dehumanizes us.

The silence born out of cowardice,
the noise from a gaping abyss,
the words that fall to the ground,
the incomprehensible mingled deep.

Cries of desires, muffled.

Where is the truth that we lost in love?
What is our love, without the truth?
The Truth.

Whose ways hurts, tears, breaks...
till we become human again.

Pulchritude

“Unbeing dead isn't being alive.”
― E.E. Cummings

For the many that exist day to day,
awaiting an awakening too late.

For the many dead that I am,
making a waste of fates.

For the darkness way laid,
dissolving and is no more.

*
How's teaching?

A joy, a pain. (the joy outweighs)
Much more to unlearn,
much more to learn
To be and to become.

Be unto me according to Thy will.

Harlequin

The sunshine, the din of conversations, the butterfly duet fluttering around....
the beauty in the commonplace,
the significants in the mundane,
the joy in the toil,
are unfolding in my days.

I took my Literature class for poetry writing by the field.
Yays and boos, excitements blended with dreads as they penned their feelings, seeings and knowings on their paper scraps.

It's wonderful to see them come alive in poetry.

To love with Your love, and not my own.