Monday, October 21, 2013

I Spy Beauty...

A (sometimes) weekly post about beauty seen, heard or discovered 
This is not the end
This is not the end of this
We will open our eyes wide, wider

This is not our last
This is not our last breath
We will open our mouths wide, wider

And you know you’ll be alright
Oh and you know you’ll be alright

This is not the end
This is not the end of us
We will shine like the stars bright, brighter
This is Not the End by Gungor (Copyright 2011)
I've been watching from afar as the community I grew up in has been battered by devastation. Fire came quickly with no warning, tearing apart peoples homes and memories. Hundreds are living with a real and present danger of even further destruction. The sun is glowing orangey-red in a haze of smoke. The long weeks of bushfire season still lay ahead.

I watch as friends, families, communities bear together. I hear stories of immense generosity, of care, of the hospitality of all the saints. 

This is not the end.

I sit with a friend in the deepest of pain. Life does not go to plan. No amount of empathy can alleviate the agony.

We sit. Tears. Silence. Quiet words of encouragement. Overwhelming anxiety. Hugs. More silence. More tears.

Pain and injustice and betrayal comes in threes and fours and fives it seems.

This is not the end, this is not the end of us.

It seems I can never stop questioning the whys and whens and how will we survive.

But because this is not the end....

We will shine like the stars bright, brighter.

Thank you God.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Words for Wednesday


"The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there....

....I walk out; I see something, some event that would otherwise have been utterly missed and lost; or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me with its clean wing, and I resound like a beaten bell....

....Something pummels us, something barely sheathed. Power broods and lights. We're played on like a pipe; our breath is not our own."

- Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974; pages 10,14,15)