Human Development

Human Development   
an haiku by richard elgersma

I entered the den
where lion and tiger meet
There I learned to fly.

Prayers and Doubt

Can't remember when I wasn't able to write, but that's been me since Christmas.  Every reason I had to write from motorcycle trips to family and friend turmoil to my obvious calling into Counseling were also the reasons I couldn't write.  I've resolved to write again.  I might move further into poetry.  I did a reading a few weeks ago and one of the sponsoring writers came up to me after reading and said, "Your stuff is upper tier, world class even."  I don't yet know what to do with that information, and I'm not sure what I'll write.  But I know what God's put in me to do, writing being one of them.

I'll write when I can really, but I hope to twice a week.  Every Tuesday and Thursday, I'll write; about what I've no idea.  Maybe I'll write what I've learned from family and friends.  We had a horrible storm here not long ago, you would've enjoyed hearing how fast friends dropped what they were doing to help us and others.

I guess we all write about faith in one sort or another.  God reveals faith to us in greater and maturing stages throughout life, but we all had all the faith we needed the day we were born.  The lot of us, our stories, enlightens others and ourselves to our faith enduring and growing.

Mine's confused me and strengthened me since Christmas.  I took my first motorcycle trip through the back roads of rolling Iowa.  "May the hills rise up to meet you...", they did.  But God parted clouds; it was a day before the trip and it looked like rain.  I prayed for no rain, but also told God, "If you make it rain, that'll be ok too," thereby letting God off the "hook."  More importantly, I realized that doubt laces most prayers--"but if you don't, it's ok."  God parted clouds, not because he felt guilty--but I believe he watched us ride, and while there were other reasons God didn't make it rain where we were, I think he intended to give us dry ground, and he intended to teach me about prayer laced with doubt--a loving "what not to do" lesson from God.

Maybe I'll write about the news or politics or the American people.  We'll see I suppose.

I'll figure it out on Thursday, but bet it'll be about some way God prodded me to see him; happens all the time.  There are reasons God took me away from here for awhile--those secrets will be told eventually.

Either way it's good to see you today God.

REST

Even now rest wearies me.

A peculiar thing it is to wake.
A new day springs.

I’ve no tools by which
I might perceive my own fate
As if sailing on deep waters,
I cannot see the plank
from which they will push me.

It is a peculiar thing to wake up;
The dawn neither waits nor attempts
To wake one or anyone,
fully ignorant to its own peculiarities.

There is sound in silence
The world turns and atoms
burst from the tension of gravity
And wind and sunlight.

Voices in violent stillness.
If my heart were rested
I'd reflect
On silent noise.

Soul, here or somewhere
On this side of eternal life
hearing,
feeling nothing
A cave siphoned from here
for a time.

Time exists not
where eternity is.
I know God
and I am called.

Heart rests,
weightless,
entered eternally,
where He says
"I Am."

Time confuses me,
as it passes by me,
and possibly with me.

Time passes, never rests,
And nor do I.
Rest wearies me, time exhausts me.

Each of her breaths is not the tick-tock clock,
but the promise of life;
and my heart knows that breath
because God gives good gifts
And that breath is now fueled
joyfully by her soul.

To wake up and love me,
mighty inhales, simple,
delights my soul
Not as a passing time
Nor the pause of it;

But because I am eternally grateful.
Soft, warm breath delights me
and I am rejuvenated
because God holds her too.

And so rest in time is not rest.
We’re mass.
Gravity and oxygen and atoms
and orbits demand movement,
demand time;
faithful movement,
and suited to it
expectations.

I must rest…we must rest.
I love eternity;
held.
Rest.

And I love that she is with me.