The 60-Second Sabbath

Photography 3

Today,
let a good photo
be your text
for prayer.

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

Invitation 3

Today
I invite you
to meet Wisdom
in silence
and discover
how extraordinary she is.

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

Digital Silence

And lo,
at noon,
digital silence
fell across the land--

    no phones,
    no pods,
    no pads,

    no tweets,
    no posts,
    no notifications,
    no e-mails,
    not a single text--

only silence.

And in the silence,
suspended there between heaven and earth,
as the veil between the eyes and the soul
    (between distraction and awareness)
tore asunder,
they knew themselves.

And they were sore afraid.

It was as if
graves opened
and the hastily interred returned.

For three hours it was thus...
the earth pressed into
the potential blessing of silence.

Three hours.

And then,
most welcomed the return of static,
    tossed the dead back into their graves,
    Photoshopped the rent curtain.

A few remained behind,
wondering at the world for the first time.

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

On Hope

Anchor hope in remembering.

If God's faithfulness held then,
why not today?
why not right now?

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

So Like God

So like God
    to consume my pending harvest
        like locusts,
    to burn through my meticulous blueprints
        like wildfire,
    to cleanse me of soot
    and soothe my seared soul
        like rainfall,
    and to cradle my emptied, ready heart
        in an inverted rainbow.
So like God.

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

Thursday Prayer

Good morning, Creator:

Take pity on me, I pray,
that today the disorienting winds of rearrangement
    won't leave me again upside-down in the bushes,
but instead may speed me further toward
    tomorrows cupping contentment.

Amen.

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

Dreaming

At night they come to me--
my sister or my father,
my mother or her mother--
mutually recognizing
that they have died
and that we have,
for whatever reason,
been given a few more minutes together.

Sometimes,
I ask questions,
because I need to know,
to understand
myself.

Sometimes
it is enough to be silent together,
exchanging looks drained of everything
but acceptance.

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

Obscuring God with Certainty

The less I knew,
the more I thought I knew.

As a pastor
at age 30,
I had a head full of answers,
a library full of answers,
so many unnecessary answers.

Insider tip:
Never trust a pastor
with answers;
the truly wise
have very few.

The wise ones
no longer need answers
to bolster their egos,
calm their fears,
be okay with themselves.
They simply rest in God.

So now,
looking back,
I realize how little I knew,
how little I needed to know,
and how much time I lost
trying to anchor myself in answers.

I obscured God with certainty.
I obscured God with certainty.
Don't obscure God with certainty.

What I now know--
and do not know--
no longer matters...

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

Sophia, Once Again

"Sweetie," she said,
"these things aren't happening to you,
they're happening for you.
There's a big difference."

My blank look
must have communicated my confusion.

She patted me on the knee.
"You just sit with that
while I get us some tea."

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.

 

Releasing

So many questions,
so few answers,
so little need
to stress about either.

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.