What to write?
Here with nothing on my page,
Nothing on my mind,
But something weighs me down.

You have weight,
But you also bring peace.
I do not have peace in this.

I ask you questions,
And you answer with a laugh,
Giving the same answer
You always give.

Nothing has changed.
Yet sometimes it seems everything has.
As if someone took the world
And shook it.

I yearn to do great things,
But you say "just be."
Where are your miracles there?
But just to be
is a miracle.

And you remind me with a laugh.

And your peace
washes over me again.

Labels

Sometimes
I don't know how to pray,
but you hear me anyway

Whether I say God-in-heaven,
or God-right-here-with-me,
in this little space,
or filling the expanse of the universe.

It is still you,
maybe just with a different label,
a different focus from my end,
but still looking at you.

Does the object of our gaze change
just because we view
with the naked eye
and then through a telescope?

If we focus on
the grain of the bark,
the veins in the leaf,
is it any less a tree?

The very name "God"
that we give you
is just a label
for something we cannot comprehend.

But whichever label we choose
does not change You,
just our view,
and us.

I asked
for more of You
in my life.

And rather than
something from outside
coming upon me,
I felt a welling up
of You
from within.

Bubbling up
from the depths
within me
You come.

Mother God,
Why is it easier
to approach you
in the warm darkness
of deep night,
when streetlights
flicker out
and the moon has set?

Forgive me
for forgetting
to turn to You.

For wanting to escape
into the darkness
and hide.


I have been reminded
that you hold all things.

That the warm darkness
is of You.

Like a womb,
warm and dark.
A place I can simply be
until I am ready
to emerge into the light.


And so
I turn to you,
to your warm
all-encompassing arms,
large enough to block the light,
and fully contain me
while I hide.

I hide in Your arms.

Stirring

Feathery leaves
patterned against the sky.
A new day is dawning.

The babe in my lap
squirms, protesting,
But You are here.


Can she see you?
Are you a familiar face?

I seem to be full of questions
this morning.
Woken too early
and not yet fed.

The wind rises,
ruffling the leaves,
as my baby also
ruffles me


and I struggle to grasp
the peace and tranquility
of the early morn
as the busyness of a young family
stirs.

Grandmother God,
Crone Goddess?
(Let me try that one on.)

I miss my grandmother.
She was an amazing pray-er.

Do her prayers stop with her?
Or do they continue on?
Does the burden fall to us instead?

I named my daughter
in her spirit,
To honour her.
My granny died
while I was pregnant,
and never got to meet
this little one.

But I have great memories
Of her with my other daughter
and with me.

Her spirit lives on
in us,
her children
and grandchildren.

But her prayers?
I don't know.