bring your lantern buckler
to the dawn gate
Where the night sky
holds on to the dark
Lift it high
Pray fire
for the dragon you have summoned
Knows all your gods
By name.
To the dawn gate
Reply
Author Archives: Elea Lee
Look for you in every crowd
Words betray only the barest threads of love
“A mother for a child”
You must know I always
Wanted to keep the possessive
Pronoun “mine”
In our relationship
They took that from us
Let me see how
These tiny seeds of faith
Could move mountains
Losing sight of light to find it
Time makes
Trees from seeds/
Holes in the arms of love
I look for your face in every crowd
And the pictures you post to the world
Of a baby I once held
So dear, beautiful girl
So always, always dear
A million times
I tell
The young man that I have
Fallen a million times
(Felt like it anyway)
A million falls
A million failures
A million times
An arbitrary number
Not as funny as bazillions or gazillions
Arms spread wide to denote the bigness of the thing
God sent His one and only Son
…to fall like this?
Fail like this?
Criminal nailed to a tree?
His falling and my falling, so different
His fall just
To rise to life,
Me in His arms
What if
What if
Words in a bottle were
Worlds in a bottle
What if
You and I
Were strangers in a room
Filled with people
Just as broken as me
What if
There really was
A connection between
Calvary and cavalry
And one could be used
To summon the other
What if you had a child
You loved very much
Who would be raised by
One kind of
Monster or another?
What would you do
To save her?
What would you
Do to bring her Home
?
The Other Guys
i love the story of Peter falling into the water.
Oh, wait, that is right–the story of Peter walking on water?
Of all the accounts of Jesus’ miracles, this one most resembles a Mark Wahlberg action movie.
And then Jesus walks out in the middle of a night storm on the sea and they think he is a ghost?
Are you kidding me?!
And then Peter decides that the best way to test the identity of the physics-defying apparition is to get out of the boat and walk to him?
It all feels pretty sci-fi. Until Peter looks down and sees “reality,” panics, and plunges into the pitch-dark stormy water.
There were moments in this story that were both freakishly exhilarating and unnecessarily terrifying.
Jesus does not engineer this event in the lives of Peter and the others simply to give everyone a good fish tale.
He does what he does because he can.
He does what he does because they need to see him the way he really is.
He does what he does because life is scary and dangerous and we all need to know that there is just this one Person who can fish us out of the storm and break the rules of physics to save us.
Think about the time Peter spent in the drink–cold, surrounded by heavy waves, dark, gasping for both life and breath.
Where were the other guys?
Shocked and useless in the boat.
People are wonderful, sometimes gracious creatures, but when it comes to drowning in the darkest storms of life, it is best to keep your eyes pinned on Jesus.
He can do the impossible. And the impossible is what we all need–hope in the storm, life after death…
Walking on water.
strong drink
when the King arises
He runs to us
These words, weapons, shields
Tokens of splendor
Silver refined in the crucible
(For what is crucible but a fancy word for Cross?)
Gold fired seven
Times this burning
Brighter than the sun
Distill this ghost of a man
Standing close to a lone Word
Strong enough
To call him from the grave
Back to life
Letting Go
never was
All that pretty
Never was
All that good
Never did
Believe in romance
Never will
Leave alone
Pictures in the wind
I have a tennis ball, Gatorade bottle top, and an ailing succulent in front of my house.
For three very different reasons I will need to move them soon. I haven’t yet because I am lazy.
Lazy, and prone to markers in the wind.
Leaves fall and God says I love you.
Rubber bands, hair bands, flossers, and pennies are flotsam God sends to us in the unlikeliest of places–I love you.
Considering that we are puny and mean and He is the God of the infinite universe, His extravagant love notes are bewildering and lovely.
People can be love notes as well. The baby singing in the car, children building sand castles, anyone doing anything brave and true–I love you.
Do you know He loves you? Do you look for signs of Him in the world?
To paraphrase the famous conversation from The Count of Monte Cristo–even if you don’t believe in Him, He believes in you.
Rape Case in Brooklyn
The case shocked when it was first reported–a man sought help for his daughter who was being sexually assaulted in a Brooklyn park.
The story began to break into pieces within a week of its appearance. The victim was consenting? The victim had been having sex with her father!?
Ugh.
Most of us are done by this point in the story. Too much creepy.
The young woman refused to “do court” and the charges against all of her sexual partners fell apart.
Which leaves several salient questions–
How safe and child-friendly are parks in Brooklyn?
Why were no lesser charges pursued against any of the principals? Public lewdness? Indecency? Incest?
And last–(the one which concerns me the most) what will become of these people?
Especially the young woman.
The explanation of her behavior includes a life of foster care and group homes, a fundamental disconnection from her biological family–a father who could be called predatory at best.
With no more pieces of a biography than that I would hazard that she has attachment disorder, a syndrome caused by neglect and a lack of attachment bonding in babies and young children.
The question of what happens to the adult victims of attachment disorder plagues me because my adopted children have it.
None of us may want to face what happened in that park that night, but we should all question what will happen to her?
How do you teach a woman her own worth or the value of a father who protects his daughter instead of exploiting her?
And what of the men in this story? Each put a biological function of his anatomy over the last shred of his humanity.
My adopted daughter complains that I am not to be trusted because I judge people for things like this.
I would argue that one can only trust those who are willing to judge these things.
It ain’t love if you don’t keep all the little girls (lost or otherwise)…
Safe
At night
In the parks of Brooklyn.
Ordinary Sadness
I am grateful for the rain
On this dry patch of earth
I know the difference between
Accidents and miracles
And wish to thank
The God of ordinary sadness
Who sits next to me
on the sinking-in-the-middle
Patched-with-a-heart
-on-the-back
$35 couch
Willing to abide in the center
Of my vertiginous grief
He says
Take courage
It is I
Do not be afraid
Carrying Light 