Since He hath looked upon me...

Since He hath looked upon me my heart is not my own. He hath run away to heaven with it.

-- Samuel Rutherford

The throbbing heart of the New Testament

God desires and is pleased to communicate with us through the avenues of our minds, our wills, and our emotions. The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the souls of the redeemed men and women is the throbbing heart of the New Testament.

-- A. W. Tozer

On the Coronation of Christ

The passage below is a reflection on the coronation of Christ, written at the request of my BP back in November.

I hope to be writing more soon. Life remains...

***

I see a body of people, walking behind Christ through a throng of Holy ones which surrounds us. We pass through a gate made of a huge, single pearl. The path is of sparkling gold, but I can see through it to the earth below. We are led by Jesus toward the altar, upon which is the bloodied body of a lamb. The crowd rejoices as we walk, singing hosannas. The air is so thick with incense that I can feel it traveling like warm water over my lips and down my throat.

He reaches the altar and those of us who follow part to each side in front of the crowds of saints. He lifts the lamb, cradling it in his arms, then rests His head on His head, and breathes.

The bloody spots on the white wool disappear, and the lamb begins to move, shifting his legs, and eventually lifting His head. He gazes into the eyes of Jesus, peacefully. Then Jesus sets Him down, and He runs to His mother, capering and leaping on the way.

As He watches, Jesus slowly lifts His arms, raising them to the even higher heavens, and glory fills the place, surrounding and centering on Him. He is once again transfigured, and a bright circle of glowing light appears where the crow of thorns had lain. As I watch, it begins to move slowly upward, shifting into position above His head; no longer a crown of pain, but one of glory and honor and power.

And then He casts His eyes upon us.

His people.

He finds my eyes out of all the crowd. He comes toward me, arms stretching to take my hands. And then He is before me, gazing at me, face to face, His eyes so full of love that I think my heart will break from the joy of it.

He leans toward me and presses His lips against mine, filling me with His breath.

He lifts His hands to my head, which has begun to burn with a circle of fierce and terrible heat. As His hands move higher, the circle lifts and the pain is suddenly gone. I am so filled with love and awe and life and wonder that I can do nothing but stand quivering before Him.

He moves on to the next person who had walked behind Him, and I watched quivering, steeped in joy.

On and on He went, crowning each one to join the band of the Holy ones, the crowd of which we had passed through.

And I realized that in His crowing, His coronation, He crowns us. Moment by moment everlasting throughout and without time.

I still stand in that place of glory now...

(I wonder if there is a merging of time and timelessness at the moment of death, the coronation moment, when eternity somehow halts to let you in?)

For the record

One piece of ugliness in recent days was connected to this blog, and the fact that I write under a nom de coeur.

Eva David is a name I chose to use here because of other mission work that God had me doing at the time I began the blog.

So for the record, my real name is not Eva.

But all you read here is me. The real me. Regardless of name.

Those who know me by another name but never recognized the soul of Eva in my eyes and voice and heart, were not really interested in seeing.

And those of you who do see won't care much about the name.

Be still?

God has been showing me how He provides realizations of Himself through other people.

This sounds so tame, when what I mean is so untame.

So wild. So excruciatingly joyful. So wonderfully heartbreaking.

He says to be still and know that I am God. Know that I am God.

Know me. Just as Adam knew Eve.

He sends us people so that we may know them and so come to know Him. Through mess and sweat and tears and blood. Through heart-pounding, pulse-racing, soul-wrenching love.

Through joy and grief, sometimes combined.

Through highs and lows and hurts and restorations.

Through passion, we know Him.

Lord, you are a mystery... It hurts to know you.

Exploding heart

This weekend my daughter said, while looking at the dog:

"My heart feels like it will explode with joy when I look at him."

I know just what she means.

St. Augustine on the desire of the heart

Yet there is another, interior kind of prayer without ceasing, namely the desire of the heart. Whatever else you may be doing, if you but fix your desire on God's sabbath rest, your prayer will be ceaseless. Therefore, if you wish to pray without ceasing, do not cease to desire. The constancy of your desire will itself be the ceaseless voice of your prayer. And that voice of your prayer will be silent only when your love ceases. For who are silent if not those of whom it is said: Because evil has abounded, the love of many will grow cold?

The chilling of love means that the heart is silent. If your love is without ceasing, you are always crying out; if you are always crying out, you are always desiring; and if you desire, you are calling to mind your eternal rest in the Lord.

Day and Night

My heart yowls like a cat in maddened heat.

--Chantelle Franc

Love you Janis

On Saturday night I went to see a local production of "Love, Janis". It was unbelievable (in a good way).

First off, I confess that I've always been a Joplinaphobe, lumping her in with Hendrix and a few of their contemporaries who's psychedelically strident style always made me feel too high with no way to come down.

(And not in a good way.)

I was born a few years to late to get the whole hippy thing. Not to mention that when buzzed I preferred either the humorous (ala Zappa) or the trippy mellow (ala Pink Floyd). I just never understood the screaming, jangling, psychodelic vibe. My nerves couldn't take it.

But I digress.

Given my predilections and prejudices, I never knew that Janis was rich, and soulful, and bluesy. Not sure how I could have not known it, but I didn't. I also didn't know she had a southern dialect. Or that 27 is so desperately young an age at which to die.

Her story in this show, told through real letters to her family, song, and snippets from interviews with the media, portrays a hungry heart. A heart which yearned the way this blog yearns. It presented one talented girl's search to fill that hunger in all the wrong ways. The beauty of her soul shone through and all you wanted to do was save her.

All I wanted to do was save her.

To show her He who loves her. He who is all in all.

I wonder if she is in heaven? If she is, I imagine that she may be one of the specially beloved ones; she was so very, very hungry.

I'm going to buy some of her music. And perhaps add her to my list of souls I request to pray for me.

O Let it Freely Burn

From the Forward Day by Day devotional, for May 31, 2009:

Here am I, O Love divine.
I rise, I dress, I eat, I work, play sleep, and rise again.
It’s not a bad life, and yet it leaves a cold and empty place within me.
So come down, O Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven, to earth come down!
Seek thou this soul of mine, for I cannot seek thee.
I know neither where nor how to look.
Seek thou this soul of mine, and visit it with thine own ardor glowing.
Warm the cold and fill the empty place with thyself, for thou thyself art warmth and thou thyself art fullness.
Thou art all compassion; pure unbounded love thou art.
O Comforter, draw near.
Nearer and nearer draw to me till thou art nearer than the breath in my lungs and the beat of my heart.
Within my heart appear—be seen be felt, rule.
And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing, until my heart burns with holy fire.
Then let it freely burn, till earthly passions turn to dust and ashes in its heat consuming, with a flame no ocean can quench.
Unhindered, unchecked, O let it freely burn!

Effervescing into twilight

I lay on the border of dreams
desire
like wind keening
through empty spaces
heart beating
to the rhythm of your name
while
you-shaped emptiness
expands to consume me
effervescing
into sparkling twilight.
Now
I am awake
and hungry for you still.

--Chantelle Franc

Crazy with Desire

I need to look at more Sufi poetry:

Tonight I am crazy,
crazy with desire for You.
This impassioned heart of mine
overflows with longing for You

http://ryanbeggar.blogspot.com/2009/02/sufi-poems-four.html

Sole Deep

In a moment of magic I was with you.
You were in me, and I surrounded you.
Music played and we danced
as if time were a fiction.
Now I am empty, and waiting
carried from place to place
in hope that the right door will be opened
and you will be there
to step into me; sole-deep
companion of my heart.

--Chantelle Franc

The Broken Heart

He is stark mad, whoever says,
That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
But that it can ten in less space devour;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
Who would not laugh at me, if I should say
I saw a flash of powder burn a day?

Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
If once into love's hands it come!
All other griefs allow a part
To other griefs, and ask themselves but some;
They come to us, but us love draws;
He swallows us and never chaws;
By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die;
He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.

If 'twere not so, what did become
Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
But from the room I carried none with me.
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thine heart to show
More pity unto me; but Love, alas!
At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite;
Therefore I think my breast hath all
Those pieces still, though they be not unite;
And now, as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love, can love no more.

--John Donne