There was so much I wanted to say today that couldn't fit in one poem. I feel like you touched on a lot of the things that were floating around my brain that I didn't fit into mine. Thank you for sharing!
Steven, your perspective on religion and theological contemplation is always so refreshing, sophisticated, and eye opening. There was a lot of religion in my childhood, and I've since moved firmly away from particularly defined notions of spirituality, but I'm so glad to see your voice each day offering new threads to those of us who spend less time in it :)
Your mission of empowerment is loud and clear! <3 Thank you!
I understand your move away from the defined notions. In the Exodus story, when Moses asks who he should say sent him, the reply was, "I AM who I AM". It can also be defined as "I WILL BE who I WILL BE". That is a more open response, and though many people of faith would be uncomfortable with this understanding, has been more accurate in my experience.
I have a long spiritual journey that I continue to be on. I get to make choices whether to grow or stagnate, most days I choose growth. Everyone gets tired now and then.
Thanks so much for this thoughtful response <3 I'm saving it for myself, and there are a few folks I'd also like to show this to :)
That's absolutely resonant, and absolutely right. I love that: "I will be who I will be."
As I've said earlier these days, I'd be so glad to stay connected and have some conversations with you on these subjects. Ideas for more writing (perhaps even co-written if you wish) are already coming to me as well haha. I consider these topics important for more people to hear, and as pieces for continuing to reconfigure a more luminous world. So thanks for that.
"I get to make choices whether to grow or stagnate" <3
Thank you so much, Steven! I'm really grateful you've done so, free or paid. When it feels right and is right to upgrade, I will receive you wholeheartedly <3 Thanks for your support!
Hope, as well, to see you publish some of your own work in a newsletter ;)
This is SUCH an important aspect of miracles. Communing with miracles is a relationship, which absolutely requires attentive and active engagement on our parts.
"The hands and feet of Jesus were never idle" - YES! I love the way you give him place here :) Thank you so much.
Thank you! Almost every day of this experience, I've felt like I was just waiting for these words to help process things that I had already been thinking a lot about or working through internally and illuminating ideas I hadn't been able to solidify before. I had the same experience last year, and I desperately hope to continue to experience this each May for the rest of my life.
Your use of the word "birdsong" carries a very specific melody in your presence, such that simply coming across it was attention grabbing :) It framed the rest of the poem magically.
This whole piece was gorgeous and sweet :) Thank you for sharing!
Bob, your phrasing and formatting alone are impeccable. The way you write every day, I feel poetry is in your blood through lifetimes. It's really a privilege and honor to read your words, and learn from your wisdom :) This poem moves me so incredibly much; I feel it in my core. THANK YOU for sharing this truth.
Miracles! So many other poems came to me today, but this one kept coming back as we walked along the James River while we visit friends in Richmond, Virginia. Watching my mom watch Oral Roberts on tiny black and white TV in the early sixties, waiting for her miracle but always knowing it would not come through this brand of self-serving spiritual delusion. This is for you, Mom, Mary Carol Fitzsimmons Wood, (1921-1994).
Miracles
We live in age of miracles,
I have heard it said.
Perhaps it is time to redefine what a miracle is and means.
My mother in the sixties watching smooth tongued slick eyed charlatan preacher,
touch someone on the forehead and have them jump out of their wheel chair,
throw down their crutches, dance a jig for Jesus.
Send money and you too can have this miracle.
I watched my mother look on and wonder “what about me?”
body beaten and battered and crippled by car accident at 16,
pain every day inside and out, waiting for a miracle.
That miracle never arrived, just like God turning away
from the prosperity prophets and artificial healers,
caught in a selfish cycle of me and me,
only able to see the world with “I” at the center.
Our miracles came in waves and wisdom,
The song of the bluebird after my brother died,
A flower blooming in toxic, poisoning soil,
Adversaries laying down weapons saying, “no more.”
I’ve stopped looking for miracles,
and they seem easier to find.
These words on fire lighting up the page,
new friends sharing the center of their hearts,
wisdom poets creating lines of love in every stroke.
Wow, Larry, this is incredibly powerful. I see you truly serve a clear energy that is flowing through you today. You are SO in your element here. I love this one so SO much. Your words are indeed on fire!
"Prosperity prophets" - nice!
"I've stopped looking for miracles, and they seem easier to find" - YES. We don't need to look, they're just ready to run towards us :)
"I've heard it said" - immediately started hearing "For Good" from Wicked playing, show tune crazy that I am :)
Chuck and Steven, I am a Virginia native, raised in Virginia Beach and went to college in Harrisonburg and spent the first 6-7 years of my career in SW Virginia. It is nice to be home for awhile.
Wow, love all these Virginia boys! Knew I had a good feeling :)
I, too, am a VA native (and currently actually in a suburb of Lynchburg at the moment), but have been living abroad in Israel and, soon, Berlin for the last 7 years. Here spending time with family and regrouping :)
Wow, nice! Then our world's just got even smaller. It makes me feel confident I know folks around here who knew you.
I wonder just how small the Methodist world is. My grandfather (William (Bill) Combs) was a pretty charismatic Methodist minister all his life, in NC and VA. My maternal uncle, Steven Combs, still runs his community in Salisbury, NC. And even just a few weeks ago, my mother delivered the sermon as a guest at her little mountain church on exactly the subject of the Methodist charge, so I feel well-equipped for what you're talking about :)
Jillian, Virginia is a good place to come home to. My parents lived in Roanoke for 30 years, and I lived and worked in Fincastle, Blacksburg and Saltville, Virginia after graduating college from JMU in Harrisonbrug. These mountains always feel like home.
Oh yes, indeed. It’s a miracle to be back on the family land, all still and quiet and green around me. I don’t like a lot of aspects of culture here, but there’s a lot I do! And how could we ever get over those mountains?? :)
I’ve more or less stuck to Lynchburg until I went to school in Fairfax at GMU, other than spending time in Roanoke, where my maternal grandparents lived.
I know GMU and have many friends there and in Northern Virgnia. I hear you about not liking or loving all the aspects of culture here--amen. It is taking a lifetime to wrestle with the heritage of being a southerner, old enough to remember deep segregation, seperate schools, distorted history, and the pain of enduring isms that cling hard to life. I am grateful for the miracle of moving forward, building bridges, the spontaneous combusiton of Love, and finding common and sacred ground amidst the chaos and pain.
That's exactly right! Miracles are miracles in every way they come :) And miracles, however "big" or "small," are always the building blocks of more miracles :)
This is deeply moving, Jillkan. The notion of friending miracles--wow! the emphasis on plural not singular; the integration of miracles as the rhythm of life every day. The wonderful discovery that miracles are not simply "out there" but in here, coming as much from within as from some external force or being. Thank you for another remarkable gift!
Thank you so much, Larry. So so glad you get it, again! The way these reflections move through you truly makes you shine as a wise and illuminated being. That alone is powerful, not to mention the gifts of your words to me each time <3
Yeah, I'm a bit shocked myself how compelling the distinction between the plural and singular was for me, and how much I ran with it. But miracles don't wait for the expected ;)
Thank you so much, Steven! I can assure you, the energy of this prompt was moving me today as much as you've described it moved you. Grateful to be seen in and share this space with you <3
I was thinking of this word when reflecting on the word yesterday, Magic, and when I awoke this morning. I like your raising of the everyday miracles that are often sustaning for my total being.
I’ve been mentally blocked for weeks.
The air stagnant above the oven
as I wait for everything
bagels to prove a second time,
keeping hands busy keeps panic busy
creating scenarios of what I will do
when the writing returns.
Maybe I’ll eat with ink-dyed hands
instead of blank pages.
Maybe, by some miracle,
I won’t have any time
to bake at all.
not that there is anything wrong with freshly baked bagels...
write on.
This one is BRILLIANT. May this miracle and more come swiftly to you <3 Thank you so much, it was a treat to read.
Who Gets the Miracle?
It’s a miracle they say.
The treatment healed the scans revealed
All traces of cancer are gone.
It’s a miracle they say.
Despite the wreckage they walked away
From the accident without harm.
But what of those I say
Whose disease consumes their bodies
That fade before their loved ones eyes?
What of those I say
Who don’t survive the accident
And leave this world without goodbyes?
Were they unworthy, did they not pray?
Was God fresh out of miracles that day?
If I were in charge of miracles,
I’d hand them out more freely.
So that everyone got their miracle
Of love or life or healing.
Karri Temple Brackett
May 22, 2023
Yup.
My rescue? A miracle.
Your loss? Tough break. God was... what? Busy? Tired? Out off earshot?
This is a big question. Thanks for saying it out loud.
"Was god out of miracles that day"
I have asked that.
Yes! This!
So beautiful, Karri. This touches me deeply <3 The love you give us here is profound and inspiring. Thank you.
Miracle
as I await a miracle
equal to the
burning bush .
not consumed
by the fire
a voice calling out
from within it
I await this same voice
guiding me to
what is next
but still nothing
what can I do?
my choice
to pray
to study
to grow
it is in that growing
I am gaining sight
at not only
the suffering within me
from too much trauma
but more importantly
the suffering around me
seeing the trauma
and pain
the things that cause us
to look away
I now see
I can truly be
a theologian and scholar
a pastor and priest
a poet and prophet
which are meaningless
unless I am also
the miracle
that sees
those unseen by society
that gives voice
to the voiceless
that empowers
the powerless
that gives dignity
to the outcast
that loves
the "unlovable"
I am to be the miracle
in small ways
every chance I get.
Lots of Jesus in here today.
Haha! Definitely. Where it shines, he follows.
There was so much I wanted to say today that couldn't fit in one poem. I feel like you touched on a lot of the things that were floating around my brain that I didn't fit into mine. Thank you for sharing!
Oh god, yes! This! Haha.
Steven, your perspective on religion and theological contemplation is always so refreshing, sophisticated, and eye opening. There was a lot of religion in my childhood, and I've since moved firmly away from particularly defined notions of spirituality, but I'm so glad to see your voice each day offering new threads to those of us who spend less time in it :)
Your mission of empowerment is loud and clear! <3 Thank you!
I understand your move away from the defined notions. In the Exodus story, when Moses asks who he should say sent him, the reply was, "I AM who I AM". It can also be defined as "I WILL BE who I WILL BE". That is a more open response, and though many people of faith would be uncomfortable with this understanding, has been more accurate in my experience.
I have a long spiritual journey that I continue to be on. I get to make choices whether to grow or stagnate, most days I choose growth. Everyone gets tired now and then.
Thanks so much for this thoughtful response <3 I'm saving it for myself, and there are a few folks I'd also like to show this to :)
That's absolutely resonant, and absolutely right. I love that: "I will be who I will be."
As I've said earlier these days, I'd be so glad to stay connected and have some conversations with you on these subjects. Ideas for more writing (perhaps even co-written if you wish) are already coming to me as well haha. I consider these topics important for more people to hear, and as pieces for continuing to reconfigure a more luminous world. So thanks for that.
"I get to make choices whether to grow or stagnate" <3
I subscribed to your substack. Unfortunately, it is the free version for now. Hopefully, soon , I can upgrade
Thank you so much, Steven! I'm really grateful you've done so, free or paid. When it feels right and is right to upgrade, I will receive you wholeheartedly <3 Thanks for your support!
Hope, as well, to see you publish some of your own work in a newsletter ;)
How many people stand by
waiting for miracles
instead of being
the miracle?
.
I have heard
that Jesus
built from scratch
healed the sick
fed the hungry
restored life
changed the world -
miraculous
.
the hands and feet of Jesus
were never idle
or complacent
or complicit
.
our very existence
our every moment
is a miracle
and we already
have the power
to build
to heal
to feed
to restore
to create change.
.
I'm not sure I believe in God
but I believe in us.
I think that this month has showed us that there are more of us in solidarity than we realize
100% true! And it's no surprise to me, therefore, that we've all congregated during this time in this place :)
This is SUCH an important aspect of miracles. Communing with miracles is a relationship, which absolutely requires attentive and active engagement on our parts.
"The hands and feet of Jesus were never idle" - YES! I love the way you give him place here :) Thank you so much.
Thank you for an exceptional poem! Your take on Jesus is illuminating and so resonates with me. Blessings to you.
Thank you! Almost every day of this experience, I've felt like I was just waiting for these words to help process things that I had already been thinking a lot about or working through internally and illuminating ideas I hadn't been able to solidify before. I had the same experience last year, and I desperately hope to continue to experience this each May for the rest of my life.
If you dream it, you will do it, you as the miracle you have so wisely articulated each of us to be :)
I have a feeling you have so much more moving inside you than you may even believe will come in the near future - miracle ;) Many blessings to you <3
I pray you will, for you and for each of us who shine more brightly in the glow of your poems.
A staff meeting eavesdrop:
"Miracles???
Matt? John? Tom? Judas?
That's the hook I need?"
"Yeah, boss,
Water to wine,
Heal some sick, raise some dead folks.
Cast some demons into pigs.
That'll pack 'em in.
Then you teach.
It'll be great."
"OK. let's roll with that.
Good meeting, guys"
OH, this works so SO well. Absolutely pure gold and I'm cracking up for the ride. You've knocked this one out of the park :)
MIRACLE
The beauty of living
is that there are miracles everywhere
Simply...
In the birdsong I hear
every morning
Bees getting drunk on
various sweet nectars
Bursting deep purples
from the irises in the garden
Trees swaying along with the breeze
inviting me to dance along
Miracles also come in unexpected
ways…
In the resilience
I learn with every challenge
The growing capacity to
feel all my feelings without judgment
The willingness to be vulnerable
when I am trying something new
To not hide away under the bedsheets
when I am called to simply love
Then, when I can’t do any of the above
to know that with every tumble there is a rise
Life, creativity, love, breathing…
You and me, this planet…
Numinous miraculous expressions
Your use of the word "birdsong" carries a very specific melody in your presence, such that simply coming across it was attention grabbing :) It framed the rest of the poem magically.
This whole piece was gorgeous and sweet :) Thank you for sharing!
Hafiz saved my life
with a poem
no word of a lie it was
miraculous intervention
from 600 years past in a
language beyond comprehension
translated with a
nudge and a wink
waiting in a book on
a coffee table in
my sister's house
.
picking up "The Gift"
and opening to a
random page 'God's Bucket'
poured out and
doused this utterly
bereft grieving father with
graced hope beyond measure
I caught a glimpse of a
different story than I was
trapped in a world of possibility
when all I saw before me
was impending and expedient
death
.
I am here to tell
you this because Hafiz
wrote a poem and
poems create worlds
and I needed a new place
to call home
Thank you for sharing
Bob, your phrasing and formatting alone are impeccable. The way you write every day, I feel poetry is in your blood through lifetimes. It's really a privilege and honor to read your words, and learn from your wisdom :) This poem moves me so incredibly much; I feel it in my core. THANK YOU for sharing this truth.
Hafiz is a gift and a mystical, lyrical poet for the ages.
Miracles! So many other poems came to me today, but this one kept coming back as we walked along the James River while we visit friends in Richmond, Virginia. Watching my mom watch Oral Roberts on tiny black and white TV in the early sixties, waiting for her miracle but always knowing it would not come through this brand of self-serving spiritual delusion. This is for you, Mom, Mary Carol Fitzsimmons Wood, (1921-1994).
Miracles
We live in age of miracles,
I have heard it said.
Perhaps it is time to redefine what a miracle is and means.
My mother in the sixties watching smooth tongued slick eyed charlatan preacher,
touch someone on the forehead and have them jump out of their wheel chair,
throw down their crutches, dance a jig for Jesus.
Send money and you too can have this miracle.
I watched my mother look on and wonder “what about me?”
body beaten and battered and crippled by car accident at 16,
pain every day inside and out, waiting for a miracle.
That miracle never arrived, just like God turning away
from the prosperity prophets and artificial healers,
caught in a selfish cycle of me and me,
only able to see the world with “I” at the center.
Our miracles came in waves and wisdom,
The song of the bluebird after my brother died,
A flower blooming in toxic, poisoning soil,
Adversaries laying down weapons saying, “no more.”
I’ve stopped looking for miracles,
and they seem easier to find.
These words on fire lighting up the page,
new friends sharing the center of their hearts,
wisdom poets creating lines of love in every stroke.
What a miracle.
Wow, Larry, this is incredibly powerful. I see you truly serve a clear energy that is flowing through you today. You are SO in your element here. I love this one so SO much. Your words are indeed on fire!
"Prosperity prophets" - nice!
"I've stopped looking for miracles, and they seem easier to find" - YES. We don't need to look, they're just ready to run towards us :)
"I've heard it said" - immediately started hearing "For Good" from Wicked playing, show tune crazy that I am :)
Thank you Jillian! I love the Wicked connection! Perfect!
(Sometimes i aim too high & miss the low hanging miracles),
Cheers to mom.
(ps i'm an hour from richmond)
I am in Hampton, VA
Wow.
Mathews county.
(Still fiddling with subs at Newport News Shipbuilding)
I work at the V.A..in Hampton
Chuck and Steven, I am a Virginia native, raised in Virginia Beach and went to college in Harrisonburg and spent the first 6-7 years of my career in SW Virginia. It is nice to be home for awhile.
Welcome back
JMU?
Wow, love all these Virginia boys! Knew I had a good feeling :)
I, too, am a VA native (and currently actually in a suburb of Lynchburg at the moment), but have been living abroad in Israel and, soon, Berlin for the last 7 years. Here spending time with family and regrouping :)
I served a 3 church charge (a Methodist thing) in Lynchburg, Rustburg, and Concord for a few years.
Wow, nice! Then our world's just got even smaller. It makes me feel confident I know folks around here who knew you.
I wonder just how small the Methodist world is. My grandfather (William (Bill) Combs) was a pretty charismatic Methodist minister all his life, in NC and VA. My maternal uncle, Steven Combs, still runs his community in Salisbury, NC. And even just a few weeks ago, my mother delivered the sermon as a guest at her little mountain church on exactly the subject of the Methodist charge, so I feel well-equipped for what you're talking about :)
Wow. The Methodist world is small. The name does ring a bell.
Haha, apparently very! Especially in the Mid-Atlantic. I had a feeling. His name carried weight, also with me until this day <3
Missing him very much today.
Jillian, Virginia is a good place to come home to. My parents lived in Roanoke for 30 years, and I lived and worked in Fincastle, Blacksburg and Saltville, Virginia after graduating college from JMU in Harrisonbrug. These mountains always feel like home.
Oh yes, indeed. It’s a miracle to be back on the family land, all still and quiet and green around me. I don’t like a lot of aspects of culture here, but there’s a lot I do! And how could we ever get over those mountains?? :)
I’ve more or less stuck to Lynchburg until I went to school in Fairfax at GMU, other than spending time in Roanoke, where my maternal grandparents lived.
It’s really the smallest world.
I know GMU and have many friends there and in Northern Virgnia. I hear you about not liking or loving all the aspects of culture here--amen. It is taking a lifetime to wrestle with the heritage of being a southerner, old enough to remember deep segregation, seperate schools, distorted history, and the pain of enduring isms that cling hard to life. I am grateful for the miracle of moving forward, building bridges, the spontaneous combusiton of Love, and finding common and sacred ground amidst the chaos and pain.
Beautifully said <3
Thank you for sharing.
You are welcome!
Miracles
Our neighbors, the weeds
keep me company as I walk
round and round
the field below our house.
The weeds teach me so much.
Despite attempts at
eradication and
elimination,
their resilience keeps
them standing.
These wild things
will be walked on,
trampled,
kicked,
and ignored;
excavated,
dumped,
and even bulldozed over,
but they will come back
when it’s time.
These determined beauties
push their way up
even through cracked walks
and paved paths
and rugged rocks
and hardened soil
and still are able to
hold their heads up high
as if to say,
“We’ll go
and we’ll grow
even where it seems
impossible.”
They’ll turn their faces
to the sun
and do their thing
according to the season.
And whether anyone
truly values what
they have to give,
they’ll keep on giving anyway.
I think the weeds
are the true miracles.
Spectacular. I appreciate your appreciation :) This is an amazing perspective.
"determined beauties" - always!
"And whether anyone truly values what they have to give, they'll keep on giving anyway" YES YES YES!
Thank you, this is stunning :) This is a true liberation
What a beauitful poem. The weeds are the miracles--That is brilliant!
I could say I have never seen a real miracle -
Water into wine
Calming the storm
Raising from the dead
But I have lost count of the
myriad of minor miracles
of moments of joy
of surprising solutions
of answers to desperate prayers
which for me are the very fabric
of the miracle of life itself
That's exactly right! Miracles are miracles in every way they come :) And miracles, however "big" or "small," are always the building blocks of more miracles :)
Miracle
.
It’s not miracle,
But miracles
The fact that we can expect them
That we can expect them often
The fact that it’s more than just a phenomenon
Singular
But a way of living
The fact that miracles live among us
Doting, waiting, anticipating
The fact that if they come again and again,
They must be alive
Roaming the world far and wide
With minds and ideas of their own
The fact that their abundance makes them a population -
There are dogs, cats, fish, and sheep
And miracles
And maybe,
If they’re alive,
If they have minds of their own
If they are a distinct species,
We can befriend them,
Seriously, attentively, wholeheartedly.
If we can know not to hold anything back,
Maybe they would call us
Miracle whisperers.
It’s not just miracle,
But miracles,
Because you believe,
Because you see the morning dew on little flowers,
Because you see soft noses twitch in slumber,
Because you see round pegs fit into square holes and build castles,
Because you taste fruit so sweet it makes you cry
And you hear music so soulful your own heart bursts to join it.
Because you see how much we love each other.
Because we found each other in the first place.
Because you can be still
And listen.
Listen,
Even now, perhaps you can hear
The subtle winging of our miracles
As they fly gaily through the air.
Again, I've elaborated my commentary on this poem here, if anyone is interested: https://jillianjoy.substack.com/p/day-22-miracles
Another big subject I'm very passionate about :)
This is deeply moving, Jillkan. The notion of friending miracles--wow! the emphasis on plural not singular; the integration of miracles as the rhythm of life every day. The wonderful discovery that miracles are not simply "out there" but in here, coming as much from within as from some external force or being. Thank you for another remarkable gift!
Thank you so much, Larry. So so glad you get it, again! The way these reflections move through you truly makes you shine as a wise and illuminated being. That alone is powerful, not to mention the gifts of your words to me each time <3
Yeah, I'm a bit shocked myself how compelling the distinction between the plural and singular was for me, and how much I ran with it. But miracles don't wait for the expected ;)
Thank you for your everlasting and always gracious comments, notes and care. Many blessings to you.
Amazing. So much to love about this poem. Of course the way your phrases hit home. Way too many to list as favorites.
Thank you
Thank you so much, Steven! I can assure you, the energy of this prompt was moving me today as much as you've described it moved you. Grateful to be seen in and share this space with you <3
My cat peed inside the litterbox,
My niece rode her bike 3 miles.
I sat in the recliner with a cat,,
And allowed myself a Sabbath rest.
All are miracles.
Oh yes! All are miracles! Love this!!! (Especially the cat - big win, haha!)
I was thinking of this word when reflecting on the word yesterday, Magic, and when I awoke this morning. I like your raising of the everyday miracles that are often sustaning for my total being.
You're very in tune with the flow of this journey, Larry ;)
It is nice flowing with you all, Jillian, down this Miracle River.
“The growing capacity to feel all my feelings without judgment “ This is the one . Thank you for adding the “growing capacity “ part.
Miracles free us
beyond comprehension to
expand in mystery
Oh Kaitlin, this poem is also incredibly stunning. No words, just thank you, so much <3