About Elea Lee

Foster parent, adopting parent, family advocate, educator, homeschool parent

A.D.

Posted on August 4, 2016 by Elea Lee

you must believe in

The invisible world–

Atoms, neutrons, quarks

And other molecular angels

These bits of light and matter

Swirl around us

Halos of an inevitable world

You bend to kiss his brow

No longer visible with naked eye.

But what of the others?

There to receive him

Just beyond the scrim

Clouds of witnesses

The insubstantial irreplaceable

Eternal us

Funny how often Lincoln shows up in our

Iterations of heaven

And how young grandma always looks

As though you and I could

Stand the light

Ten million stars are just

This single flickering candle in

A fleck of night

He dusts off his shoulder,

Strong right arm

Gathers our once-mortal hearts

Into immortal, imperishable we

We who will stand

Candidates for this eternal

Song sung loud

By our six year old selves

Forever

Kicked off the ranch–part one

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Elea Lee

I find the sentences which include when I did the bikini contest or the bikini contest I was in require explanation.

Explanation because I do not believe in body image competitions.

Explanation because I am a round, soft, almost-50 year old mama.

So the fact that I participated in the Texas Ski Ranch Cablestock Bikini Contest of 2016 is as worth noting as are the varied consequences of doing so.

So first–why?

I had been going to TSR for several years and was acquainted with their bikini contest because they ran promos for it on an infinite loop. An avert your eyes kind of loop.

Efforts at dialogue seemed to be unproductive. Prayer, Bible study, and a remarkably specific fleece led to my reluctant decision to sign up for the bikini contest.

Much to my own consternation.

Funeral

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Elea Lee

Weddings are such artificial confections, but all funerals have a unifying element of truth–we are all prone to die.

The manner and time vary, the seeming finality does not.

Unless…

Unless Jesus is right. Unless He is the resurrection and the life. In that case the things we take for granted about the finality of the grave may not be all there is.

I went to a funeral recently. An untimely one. The priest gave the family a final story from Acts 3–the silver and gold I have none story.

Only he did not tell it right. Instead of the healing of the beggar and his resultant joy–physical, exuberant, unmissable dancing and jumping! The priest says that Peter says he will be there and pray.

Don’t get me wrong–Christians being there and praying is getting to be miraculous and rare, it just isn’t what Peter said or did. At least not all he did.

The thing that Peter did for the beggar was public, miraculous, transforming, and unmistakable.

And powerfully reminiscent of his Master. When Peter heals the beggar he signals that we are in AD now. He lets us know that any narrative that portrays Jesus just another victim of Roman torture is incomplete.

He lets us know that the flood of the miraculous has gushed into the ordinary.

A flood that should wash through every wedding and every funeral with the insistent song of redemption and resurrection and eternity.

Nothing quiet here.

Stillness

Posted on July 31, 2016 by Elea Lee

stay in the box

All cardboard and glue

The bars you have hewn with your fingernails

Purely arbitrary

But wait still

Look for the way the open spaces

Casts shadows

Train your ears for approaching

Footsteps that

Do not come

You will be alone with the voice in your head

Telling you be still

And know that I am God.

U.S.S. Indianapolis

Posted on July 31, 2016 by Elea Lee

used to be an ordinary name

A ship, an honor, champagne broken across the bow?

The rules change in war

Sharks in the water

Pick men off one by one

Hope mixed with hunger thirst despair

A hell of a lot of

Time, minutes, seconds, days

Become this feeding frenzy

No one is coming.

*What is so compelling and unthinkable about the sinking of the Indianapolis is that there were men who knew it was missing and men who received the distress signals.

For a variety of typically human reasons not a single one acted.

Resulting in the deaths of hundreds.

Vorkuta

Posted on July 30, 2016 by Elea Lee

halo

One hundred miles above the

Arctic circle

So cold the sun

Will fail to even graze

Skin of men bound in iron and chains

Click of light and dark, tracks and ties

Train.

To a string of gulags

Resembling nothing less than

Rough pearls

Which are surely

The opposite of coal

Torn from the frozen chest

By men whose bone-deep desperation

mix with their fear

As air bleeds out

We all dream of

of fire

Archangel

So far beneath the buried heart

Of this vertiginous stone

Planet

Don’t worry, I know we are all cowards

Posted on July 27, 2016 by Elea Lee

this is a parable

We are all parables

Stories of light and darkness

It takes only one

Candle lit in the dark

To make light

Someone always must be

Burning, held high

For all the dying

shadows to see

Splitting the difference

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Elea Lee

According to His most ardent biographers, when Jesus was born he got a star, an angel choir, multiple prophetic and celestial intros, a visit from some prominent foreign astronomers, and an animal feed tray for a bed.

It seems like the divine side of the birth announcement for this kid was legit–angel choirs and all. But the human side was sub-par. The innkeeper could have let the pregnant girl use his digs. But he did not.

Easy, I suppose, to judge the inhospitable of Bethlehem for their general indifference to an infant King. Harder to face our own.

The question for each so-called believer in this tiny bundle of Infinite Light is–do you see Him? At the breakfast table or the DMV? In the bad driver or the white-collar criminal?

It is hard to see Jesus in us. We are often a selfish, short-sighted, venal bunch of sheep.

Sheep on a hill somewhere in the night.

Beneath a star.

In the presence of angels, so close to our King.

The other alternative

Posted on July 24, 2016 by Elea Lee

The sermon was lovely–feeding of the five (to 20 plus) thousand.

Five loaves and two fish expanding out to a feast for thousands.

Is it difficult to miss the metaphors? The abundance of God? Jesus providing through his own personality to satisfy all those souls by the sea.

But what if the boy had said no?

What if he had not shared?

Jesus never needed us to contribute. He tells us that if we don’t praise Him, the rocks will cry out.

He doesn’t need our help.

But if we keep our lunch to ourselves? We miss our portion in the miracle.

We need Him to make us characters in His story, not the other way around.

Good reminder when I am hungry and not sure it is a good idea to share my lunch.

When Jesus gives, He pours it all out for us.

Down to the last drop.

Good Will Tenting

Posted on July 24, 2016 by Elea Lee

when I was wee-small I corrected the store name Goodwill to Oldwill. Also I once inadvertently hurt the feelings of a much-beloved pre-school teacher when I applied an age-equals-wisdom rubric to her chronological age.

She seemed exceedingly wise and kind and calm. So I told her she was 85. At the time this was the Nobel Peace prize of ages to me. I did not see wrinkles or old as a factor with humans.

Resale stores, absolutely, but people–not so much. My teacher was probably in her late twenties to mid-thirties?

I am going somewhere with this: assessment.

When I scan my junk mail for the misplaced real mail, I find message after message from hardworking Davises and Millers trying to give me some relief from student loans and a variety of entities using female given names and announcing their desire to date me or worse.

Oh, the anomalous anonymity of the Internet! These hardworking phishers and scammers just don’t get me.

We all want to be truly known and loved for who we really are, yet this is mostly a mirage. At least in my culture.

We are often not capable of deep commitment or unswerving faithfulness, and we are quite damaged by the sturm and drang of this flawed and broken world. We like empty images and cliches, not the challenges of maturity, restoration, and love.

Which leads me to Big Agnes tents…

After one disastrous night in a tent at the beach during a storm, I do not consider myself a camping girl, but when I saw the (again, junk email!) ad for Big Agnes tents it was love at first sight. Big? When seeking shelter, big is good. And Agnes? Agnes rocks. The name means pure but sounds a lot like the Latin word for lamb–agnus. Big Pure? Big Lamb? Lamb of God?

Lamb of God

Who takes away the sins of the world

Have mercy on us...

…damaged goods

Damaged goods in a storm

In need of shelter

I will run to the Lamb, find shelter in Him.