A Wander by Water

Visual Prayer Journal image: assorted papers, 

acrylic, ink, original art prints, and photos.

It could be a steadily streaming creek bed, pulsing white frothed waves, or the glassy mirrored surface of a shore bound lake. 

Water draws me to its banks in all its lulling variations: coursing under bridges, spilling down rocky falls, undulating in rolls against the sand.

Trees forest its banks. Wildlife populate its shores and depths. Humanity casts fishlines, feeds ducks, spreads picnics, and stroll along its banks. A rippled pattern of reflected light in liquid hues of blues, greens, grays, changing with the hour, the season, and the temperament of the sky. An ever morphing panoramic pallet. 

Christine Valters Paintner writes about contemplative walking as “listening to what God has to say to me”. Soulfully “trying to be present to life as it is and respond to the call of the world to your heart”, such that the journey essentially becomes a “mini-pilgrimage”.

A lifetime of walking roads that circle lakes, paths that follow rivers, beaches that edge the ocean’s shores, trails that meander ravines of rocky creeks. Walks charted across every region, strewn across memory, laced together in the continuous sense of sacred presence in the midst of a divinely created world.

Quotations taken from Eyes of the Heart by C. V. Painter

~

Linking with Give Me Grace, Coffee for the Heart, Let Us Grow, Simple Tuesday.

Authentically Marked

Once pristine architectural elements bear witness to decades long past. 

A worn sheen etched by the passing of generations.

Peeling layers curl back, breaking free of walls long attached.

Flakes, chips, lost pieces of life lived in the past. 

Color aged, turned across years, 

burnished and shredding 

until sanded surfaces are revealed. 

The story is not lost with the surface. 

It is deepened by the layered revelations of wear.

Character is transformed, 

authentically marked by existence; 

serving a purpose 

across days strung by time.

At our best,

we are called to live a similar story.

~

Linking with Tell His Story, Coffee for the Heart, and Give Me Grace.

Story Reflects the Weave of a Striving Heart

I have not written. It escapes me. 

The notion rises near daily, then evaporates as a wisp. 

Sentences promise to line up. Topics ticker tape across the marquee of thoughts, but fade and spill into the mist of distractions. 

Immediacy calls out, speaks internally about life’s shortening thread and the reduced opportunities to tell stories. Relentless, Immediacy rises up to inspire the will to write. 

Decision Making counter argues. Decision Making tangles the story yarns; knots the family of origin lore with travel logs, splits threads between loss or redemption memoire, and balls up faith stories with frayed epistles of doubtful searching. 

Decision Making teams with the uninvited Nay Sayer to haggle internally over the value of recording any of it. Where would the stories find readers or purpose? One woman’s collection of tales, the Nay Sayer posits, among billions of her peers; why would that have value?

~

"The Only unique contribution that we will ever make in this world 

will be born of our own creativity." 

Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

~

Spirit rises. 

Spirit, the sacred and divine within all, rises. 

Spirit persistently urges – write.

Spirit devotedly whispers, every story matters.

Every story reflects the weave of a striving heart,

co-created by divine intent and human interpretation. 

Record personal history, recount disasters and discoveries

to herald the dearly attained saga of human transformation.

~

“The voice that spoke light into existence is the one we need to expel the darkness within and bring us to light, to life, and to love. Working on us like an instrument that is out of tune, God masterfully tightens and loosens the strings until notes resonate properly and reflect the most beautiful of sounds. We find our voice when we find His voice.” p. 60

The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life Into a Work of Art, 

Erwin Raphael McManus

Linking this post with the following communities of writers: Coffee for the Heart, Simple Tuesday, and Let Us Grow. Click on the badge below to visit these link ups.