The 60-Second Sabbath

Love and Truth

I believe
    that love and truth will always win.

We may experience great loss,
    witness unimaginable suffering,
feel dismay and anger over injustice,
    yet still affirm the truth:

    love and truth will always win.

Love and truth will always win,
    because God is love
and God is truth.

And, because we are inseparably a part of God,
    it's also our love,
our truth,
    creating this world God dreams.

No matter what happens,
    keep loving,
keep telling your truth,
    keep co-creating (with God)
the world God dreams.

Because love and truth will win.

Text and image © 2018 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
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The Spiritual Journey

Perhaps,
    after all,
the spiritual journey
    is less a journey of

    discovery

and more a journey of

    recovery.

This path increasingly leads inward
    to the essential self,
the self forgotten, neglected,
    the self that has always been
--has remained--
    holy and divine,
whole and authentic.

I am recovering the wisdom
    that God lives within,
has always lived within,
    will always live within.

I journey, then,
    back to the real me,
back to the Reality
    at my core,
at the heart of all things.

The journey of recovery
    is a journey of wholeness and joy.

Text and image © 2018 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
Visit PhotosByDirk.com for fine-art photography.
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And Then I Realized

And then I realized
it's less about what I've
    said
and more about how I'm
    read.

It's less what I
    know
and more what I 
    show.

It's less about how I
    talk
and more about how I
    walk.

It's less the stuff I
    believe
and more the hurt I
    relieve.

Text and image © 2018 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
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Quiet Enough

I quote David Ferrando Giraut:

    Maybe God stopped appearing
        because He got tired of all the noise.
    Maybe He only appears
        when the world is quiet enough
            to pay attention.

Giraut references the world,
    but perhaps we could also say:

    God will appear
        when our nation is quiet enough
            to pay attention.

Or:

    Perhaps God will appear to any given politician
        when she or he is quiet enough
            to pay attention.

Or again:

    Perhaps God will appear to me
        when I am quiet enough
            to pay attention.

I fear our noise
    drives God away.

May our nation and our leaders 
    be quiet enough
        to pay attention.

May you and I
    be quiet enough
        to pay attention.

Text and image © 2018 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
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Finding God

I found God in the wind,
    as God touched my face,
    brushed back my hair,
    dried the sweat from the back of my neck.

I found God in the water,
    as God lifted me while I swam,
    cooled me,
    washed away the day's dust.

I found God in the sunshine,
    as God thawed my frozen cheeks and fingers,
    relaxed my arthritic joints,
    colored my pale skin.

I found God in the earth,
    as God steadied my wandering feet,
    gave me tomatoes, zucchini and raspberries,
    cradled me in death.

I found God in the wind and the water,
    the sunshine and the earth,
and I shall continue to find God
    everywhere and always...

Text and image © 2018 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
Visit PhotosByDirk.com for fine-art photography.
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Superpowers

Meekness is not weakness;
meekness is strength;
meekness is a superpower.

Vulnerability is not weakness;
vulnerability is strength;
vulnerability is a superpower.

Interdependence is not weakness;
interdependence is strength;
interdependence is a superpower.

Humility is not weakness;
humility is strength;
humility is a superpower.

Openness, tolerance, acceptance are not weaknesses;
they are strengths;
they are superpowers.

(Pride, self-sufficiency, arrogance are weaknesses;
they are not strengths;
they lead to emptiness, loneliness and alienation.)

Faith is not weakness;
faith is strength;
faith is a superpower.

Claim your superpowers.

Text and image © 2018 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
Visit PhotosByDirk.com for fine-art photography.
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The Furnace

I awaken this morning,
    but not to this house,
    not to this time.

It's 1958.
The setting? my childhood home
    in Grand Haven, MI,
the old brick house on Lafayette Street,
    Gothic Revival, they call it,
built in 1872 on the site of an apple orchard
    on the outskirts of town.

I awaken this morning
    in the tiny, upstairs, northeast corner bedroom,
to the sound of snow pellets ticking at the window.

I hear the monster in the basement
    rumble to life,
an immense beast
    confined under the cob-webbed rafters
        that support the front parlor.

They call it "the furnace,"
    but I have seen it,
a massive, gray hulk
    with tentacles thick as tree trunks,
        stretching outward and upward from its squat body,
        between the floors and walls,
        invading, infiltrating, grasping,
        up around the kitchen and dining room,
        around the stairway,
        around the bathroom and the four bedrooms.

I dread the basement,
hate every descent into it,
    the open stairway through which hands can grab my ankles,
    the damp, musty smell,
    the dusty jars of forgotten canned goods,
    the dirt floors, the waiting spiders, the creaking doors that no longer close...
    but most of all, the beast,
        the wheezing, groaning, belching, menacing beast
        oil-eater (child-eater?),
        hunkered down in a concrete depression in the center of it's own room
        (four times the size of my bedroom)...
        just waiting...
        just waiting.

Do not ask me to enter that fearsome, basement room.

Do not lift the grate in the front hall,
    large enough for a five-year-old
    to fall in and down,
    into the guts of the beast.

Do not place my bed
    anywhere near the vent in my bedroom;
it whispers through that vent--
    and watches.

I may never again be seen.

For over a hundred years,
    the beast fed on the fears of children
raised in that house.

How many, like me, survived?
    And where are those who did not?

Text and image © 2018 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
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Broken...and Yet...

I'm faulty and flawed,
    broken and bruised,
damaged and deficient,
    imperfect and incomplete,

yet eminently lovable
    and worthy of love. 

I believe the same is true
    of you.

Text and image © 2018 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
Visit PhotosByDirk.com for fine-art photography.
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Happy

"I have forgotten how to be happy,"
    she says.
"Now it comes only in brief flashes,
    unexpected and in odd places.
I recognize it , feel it,
    want to grasp it, hold it,
but then it goes...
    fleeting...momentary."

"Right now?"

"No."

We both sip our tea,
    then I ask,
"Last time it happened?"

"Just this morning--
    which is why I'm thinking about it--
at the grocery store,
    middle of the produce section.
I suddenly felt light and clear, content,
    everything right, everything fitting.
I saw the colors of the bell peppers,
    the shape and texture of eggplant and cantaloupe...
all beautiful in that moment."

"In that moment."

"And people, too,
    people I'd normally ignore:
they were beautiful, too,
    ordinary people, complete...lovely."

"Sounds like a nice feeling, actually,
    even if short-lived."

"It rises from inside,
    from my gut, into my chest, into my face,
like bubbles in a soft drink
    or maybe like a curtain being raised
and real life is beyond it,
    how things really are."

"Wow."

"And then it's gone--
    it what's real, but then it's gone."

"And you feel sad afterwards?"

She thinks about that:
    "No, I feel...normal, I guess.
It's not like I'm then unhappy,
    I'm just not...that...whatever it is."

She pauses for a minute, then says,
    "I think I used to be that most of the time,
and not that (which is now this)
    was the occasional thing."

I stare into my cooling cup,
    watch the slowly swirling dregs.
Am I happy? I wonder.
    Would I know it?

Text and image © 2018 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
Visit PhotosByDirk.com for fine-art photography.
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Missing God

"I seem to have lost God,"
    he said.

"Ah, yes, that happens,"
    she responded, then asked:
"But are you missing God?"

"Missing God?"

"Yes.
    It's one thing to lose God,
another to grieve the loss."

"Yes, I am grieving the loss,
    very much so."

"Then I wouldn't worry about it."

"Really?"

"Yes. If you had lost God
    and weren't feeling the loss,
I'd be concerned,
    but God lives in your longing."

"God lives in my longing,"
    he said to himself.

God lives in our longing.

Text and image © 2018 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
Visit PhotosByDirk.com for fine-art photography.
Visit The60SecondSabbath.com, where spirit and image merge.