Growing up!

(starts with bowing down)

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Dear Father, I am sixty six years old.

So now, in one more year I can retire.

Thus by most counts, I wouldn’t be too bold

to think that I’m a grown up. I’m a sire.

I’ve sired 6 living offspring on this Earth.

And have begun to learn to love from you.

But in that sense, I've hardly grown since birth.

And “Quite Mature” ’s a title I'd eschew.

Because  I'm learning how to tell the truth.

And hearing my own self-talk now I know

what you have always known - you don’t need proof!

Compared to your age, I'm still foetal. So

this makes sense of what Jesus said about

the reign of God belonging only to 

those who are little children. None are louts

or adolescents, adults with the view 

of centuries, millenia or such.

I have to start my growth by learning truth

in inmost parts, in spirit*, heart’s own hutch

for living treasure, inside my tent “roof”.

So as a little child I call you now: 

My Abba, Daddy, truest one who knows:

what ever’s worth the knowing or somehow,

whoever will be loving, where love grows

within them as a plant grows in the soil.

The seed of God’s been planted in this soul*

and as it grows the ground is like to boil,

& give birth then, a crop that makes more whole.

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Footnotes

t* “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. [11] Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. [12] Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me… .

[17] My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise. (Psalms 51:10-12, 17 NIVUK)

l* “No-one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.” (1 John 3:9 NIVUK);  “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For, ‘All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures for ever.’ And this is the word that was preached to you. (1 Peter 1:23-25 NIVUK); “Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” (2 Peter 1:4 NIVUK)

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with your spirit

(fill me - as your balloon)

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Oh God you are both wise and good, and know

me well (with even hairs upon my head).

Your essence, attitude, motives that show

in all your acting and withholding, said

to be the spirit of the only God,

well of the one defining what “God” means;

the first, and primal, pioneer who’s got

defining rights, for love’s mind often teems

with possibilities that multiply

(and exponentially), till out of sight.

You can not hold it down. Well they did try!

We're talking here of light on a dark night…

It’s out before you put the lid back on, 

its oscillations are too numerous

to count in one life time, and then it's gone

and as it goes, it makes more universe

and fills it up with possibilities,

keeps on allowing us to more become

in line with all your spirit’s hopes and dreams

and wishes, which when spoken don’t make numb;

or do but in such do’s communicate 

the love that’s underneath on which we thrive.

The love that swallows impotence and hate,

and knows the purpose that we are alive.

And IS it too, because we are offspring

(the tiny foetal “children”) of Yahweh.

He is the reason that we truly sing,

or celebrate, or speed up, or delay*.

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Footnotes

y* - e.g. creative love leads people to be (& to choose along with it, to become more) quick (to listen), to be slow (to speak), and to be slow (to anger)... (See James 1: 19-27)

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His word is MORE..

(both more personal, & more enduring.. 

..than the Universe)

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Oh Lord you’ve given us such lovely gifts

and promises*, all backed up by your word.

The presence of yourself’s at top, and lifts

us up to heights, but handles "down"  absurd-

ly well. When “Lifted up*” as Nathan said

the son of David would in future be,

to reign as king un-ending. Jesus shed

another meaning, more macabre that he

then understood [in light of history’s

developments in keeping human slaves,

instilling fear as chief of strategies

to keep the status quo, so none behaves

in disobedience to master’s will*

(that’s culture’s dictates as it does its job,

and those who found they’d rule the culture ‘til

they thought that with no pain they'd get “on top”)].

While he, as little child, lived underneath

his father’s will, completely doing all

his father willed, though clearly he’d bequeath

his own desires, quite openly, to fall

in line, behind, in ways his father led.

His naked motive pow’r would not coerce

but only love, ‘first God, then like -” he said, 

- "his neighbour", act to help them choose, disperse-

-sing more the scent of heaven on the earth.

to live a higher life in partnership

with such creative love that gave us birth

and gives all* “goods” that ever have been sipped.

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Footnotes

s* - “He has by his own action given us everything that is necessary for living the truly good life, in allowing us to know the one who has called us to him, through his own glorious goodness. It is through him that God’s greatest and most precious promises have become available to us men, making it possible for you to escape the inevitable disintegration that lust produces in the world and to share in God’s essential nature.” (from 2 Peter 1:1-11)

d* - The prophet Nathan’s words to King David, from God: “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” (from 2 Samuel 7:1-17); and then Jesus’s prophecy/ commentary on his own future, being raised or lifted-up “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. [32] And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” [33] He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. [34] The crowd answered him, “We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” ” (from John 12:23-50 plus Mark  ch8, ch9, & ch10)

will* - for an indication of how crucifixion was developed by  the Empires, societies, and cultures of the (Mede’s & Persians, Phoenicians,  and) Romans to keep order in their realm(s) see the first chapter of Tom Holland’s book “Dominion”, from which book this quote is given: “A myth, though, is not a lie. At its most profound—as Tolkien, that devout Catholic, always argued—a myth can be true. To be a Christian is to believe that God became man and suffered a death as terrible as any mortal has ever suffered. This is why the cross, that ancient implement of torture, remains what it has always been: the fitting symbol of the Christian revolution. It is the audacity of it—the audacity of finding in a twisted and defeated corpse the glory of the creator of the universe—that serves to explain, more surely than anything else, the sheer strangeness of Christianity, and of the civilization to which it gave birth. Today, the power of this strangeness remains as alive as it has ever been. It is manifest in the great surge of conversions that has swept Africa and Asia over the past century; in the conviction of millions upon millions that the breath of the Spirit, like a living fire, still blows upon the world; and, in Europe and North America, in the assumptions of many more millions who would never think to describe themselves as Christian. All are heirs to the same revolution: a revolution that has, at its molten heart, the image of a god dead on a cross.” (Tom Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, quoted in Good reads quotes by Tom Holland) & “In a city famed for its wealth, Paul proclaimed that it was the ‘low and despised in the world, mere nothings’,34 who ranked first.  Among a people who had always celebrated the agon, the contest to be the best, he announced that God had chosen the foolish to shame the wise, and the weak to shame the strong. In a world that took for granted the hierarchy of human chattels and their owners, he insisted that the distinctions between slave and free, now that Christ himself had suffered the death of a slave, were of no more account than those between Greek and Jew.” (Tom Holland, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind)

all* - all good gifts [e.g. “But every good endowment that we possess and every complete gift that we have received must come from above, from the Father of all lights, with whom there is never the slightest variation or shadow of inconsistency. By his own wish he made us his own sons through the Word of truth that we might be, so to speak, the first specimens of his new creation.”(James 1:12-27 esp vv 17-18)]; but, our experience of the good things in this world starts with our birth, followed by a “re-birth”, since a birth “from above” is also another birth, a second birth, or a new birth (coming, as it does, in time, after our ‘first birth’ our ‘old birth’, as Nicodemus rightly indicated, - from our mother’s womb). [e.g. “But when the kindness of God our saviour and his love towards man appeared, he saved us—not by virtue of any moral achievements of ours, but by the cleansing power of a new birth and the moral renewal of the Holy Spirit, which he gave us so generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour. The result is that we are acquitted by his grace, and can look forward to inheriting life for evermore. This is solid truth.” (Titus 3:5-7)]

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love's faces

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You are the source of all the love I’ve known.

And all the food in this world, I believe,

is your creative love displayed and shown 

in avenues of edibility.

Veluptuous and varied: sweet and sour,

strong and crisp, and crunchy, bubbly too.. ,

can all be lovely gifts at different hours

or contexts. For you know us through & through.

Responsive to initiatives from me,

You are: my senior, wiser, & more a-

-ble, seeking partnership as way to be.

The only thing unmoving, clearly sta-

-ble, is your HESED, strong and pure, deter-

mined, minded to grow me to be like you,

that your creative love be so inter-

preted,  on Earth in ev’rything I do.

And all the gifts you've poured this way I see

are gifts of fam’ly love to grow kids strong.

And given for the best to grow in me

and you, and help us too, to both “belong”..

be long in suffering - that good may come 

(not only when it brings pleasure to me)

but even when it breaks my heart, ..& some

things don’t feel good; I'll stay and over-see 

that all is good (again) for thriving of 

the whole she-bang, and which we will be long-

ing for its good to multiply: “tov tov”

as partnership is harmonized in song.

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Today’s lesson

(for me..)

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One lesson that appears to come is strange.

I need deep wisdom to decipher well

its meaning as pertains to me, arranged

by God himself to help me clearly tell..

So help me God to draw clear insights from

this evidence, as seen in Mark and Mike,

and Adam our progenitor Golem,

and what my wife has said to me tonight

about my making gen’ralizations

or proverbs from each story that I hear.

She said they sound like “morals” for nations

& makes me sound The Judge, so it appears.

It turns her off, she wants me quiet then.

I wondered if I said “I’m trying to 

here understand a principle for when

we’re put in charge, so we’ll know what to do.”

But now I see that doesn’t fit his word:

“Man, who made me a ruler or a judge

who’s over you?*”, was what one fellow heard; 

but John heard that the Father would not budge,

“he’s given judgement to his very Son*”.

It may be that he changed as people heard

it diff’rently, from diff’rent hopes begun

inside a person's head, expressed in word.

So I might need the Father’s wisdom fresh*

for ev’ryone I interact with here;

And that makes sense, for love will always mesh

in loving ways, with each one to appear.

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Footnotes

?* Luke 12: 

n* John 5:22-27

h* James 1:2-9

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Help!

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Oh God I like the way you help, and that

you aren’t so very pushy; though you made

us up, and maybe just because we're flat

& hardly 3 dimensional, you bade

us to grow up to love with all our selves,

and pass that love along to others too,

you knew we’d need integrity and health

so we could multiply love, not just do

what comes into our heads, to tax it (as

we pass it on to others) for ourself;

for that’s against the nature that love has

- to trust the Universe, not fear with stealth.

You don’t try then, to make us do a thing;

you want us to discover and then choose,

and even ask for help to trust and sing

in presence of my enemies, all who’s

not for me and for honouring my life.

For Love’s an overcomer, it makes worlds,

and overcomes all nothingness and strife.

To trust it is to trust where you are hurled

so as Yeshua trusted in desert-

-ed places, when he needed food & drink,

that God, his Father would see (though he’s hurt)

that he would not be harmed (- as God would think).

So I will trust, and not give way to fears. 

And let my pains and troubles in this womb

not count for more than what seems, or appears,

and let you be the judge o’er death & tomb.

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flow (take 2)

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My heart, I see today, is like a cup,

and it can carry water from a well

to my lips, and to any who look up

for help, & then whom God rigs against hell.

A sip might be the whole of what’s their need.

But cells like ours need water to survive,

so often they need more, each word and deed

can cup the water to their hands alive.

But they need water (& I too, no less)

to well up in their beings - all un-clocked!

The cup must lose its bottom, and be stretched,

become a hose, or portal that’s unblocked.

Reflection is requir’d to lively learn. 

Here water helps (when steady, in its flow)

reflect a face, and see disgrace, & yearn

for better looks, and helps wash clean, I know

b’coz it's helped me many times: to drink,

to wash, to cool, to see back or reflect,

& then to help those others on the brink 

of lack, or failure, to change course, deflect.

And ev’ry win (in stages) helps resolve

to grow. The wind resistance helps to train

obedience, that’s out of loyal love.

That helps us to move forward, once again.

And then to top it off, God’s eyes (in pairs)

see worth of whom they worked hard to obey.

He hardened Pharaoh’s heart, but softened theirs,

through doing will of God (in Christ), I'd say.

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think of Jesus’ disciples feeding with (a flow of) food (‘bread’ could just mean food) [Mark 6]

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flow...

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as in heaven, so on Earth... a "cup" of living (=flowing)  water?

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My heart, I see today, is like a cup,

and it can carry water from a well

to my lips, and to any who look up

for help, & then whom God rigs against hell.

A sip might be the whole of what’s their need.

But cells like ours need water to survive,

so often they need more, each word and deed

can cup the water to their hands alive.

But they need water (& I too, no less)

to well up in their beings - all un-clocked!

The cup must lose its bottom, and be stretched,

become a hose, or portal that’s unblocked.

To live well as a human is to learn

and that needs time and focus to reflect.

And steady water flowing helps me yearn

and gives to drink, to cool, to see, deflect-

-ing/ softening the skin and nails (and heart?),

and washing clean as well (that is a lot!).

The opposite of still, can be an art-

form that will call out ev’ry thing we've got!

And washing out a hardness of the heart,

and stubbornness, and dullness, was a storm;

with wind that made it harder to impart

obedience from spirit clear though worn.

But then creative love itself stepped in-

to situation, onto water top,

and walked along as though he’d often been

for strolls like this, and would he ever stop?

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Mark 6: (think the feeding with the flow of loaves…)

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ever heard Ed shearin'?

You ever heard Ed Shearin'? It's a pretty big do, they say.

All the light show and machinery (& sheep?)

Step up! Owe nothing

 - except love!

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Before I met a mate for a coffee, I had time at home to have a cup of tea, and observe, hear, think, act out and understand good ways forward. We meet to share our thoughts and choices over the past week. How good has this simple habit been! (Alerting us to other, more basic, helpful habits too!)

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Today I seemed to see how love can grow.

I know the case of how it can die back:

with kinds of hardness that a heart can know

when all of life is comfort, with no lack.

And somehow in the art’ries (where life flows)

the lack of lack, brings hard’ning, not much flex;

ta heart must pump the blood both fast and slow

sometimes, and yet be ready for what’s next.

And love’s the only thing that has these both:

the power & the will to cover up

(with band-aid-like capacity to know th-

- at healing’s from inside & then erupts.

And I, as just an animal, can not

learn love, except to copy what it does;

for love takes two to tango. One be God.

His partner is the flow’r, (where bee does buzz).

And living in a partnership is the

ground-breaking way of life, like jump from sing-

-gle celled amoeba… right up to multi-

to multi-cellular big living thing. 

And with this partnership as ground beneath

our feet, to walk upon - provide support,

to teach us how to love, & to bequeath,

contribute, not just take - us back to naught

we'll bring creative options into view.

Creative love invites, so I will too,

so learn to sit, and cover for all who

fall short. I’ll simply let them also choose.

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Helping our children (& their parents), to grow to “Men” & “Women” (as is fit)!

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The stories that we share each day, each hour

are programing the hardware of our hearts

to treasure things perceived, for story’s pow’r

can point, and help direct the stops and starts

of our attention. This is  currency

we pay with time of life, and focus too,

not just the focus of the eyes of me

and you, at front of head (where we have two -

to give us each experience of points

of view that differ, and can benefit

the whole, in ways that help us, this anoints

us crowningly, with depth perception’s bit

that helps us fit the lace in shoe eyelet,

(as well as similarities and diff’-

-rences they bring to views, that often get

forgotten, though they are to us a gift.

-  As are the stories we live in each day.

A store of stories let out hour by hour,

“..at least when we are conscious" you might say,

but stories still affect us by their pow'r 

with dreams that come at night when we go “out..

“out to it” - with the halo story leaves, 

and beckons us to further any doubt,

or take those fears for real, for story weaves

a web, to catch us in, for ill, or good

(directions we are heading in ourselves,

will then) affect our kids, as well they should

the pow’r of invitation grows deep health!

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less-ons

(& more offs)

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So listen up and ask good questions now;

you’ve spent enough time spruiking in your life.

And you’re a bit like Peter who somehow

thought that he had to talk to process strife, 

but also good amazing things as well*.

It's good that he at least thought more of acts

than just of speaking out. More “show” than “tell”.

But both can stop the list’ning which impacts

our mode of being in this world. Our hope.

So this is what I hope can be a way

for me to keep on growing less a dope,

& more in line with wisdom, as that say-

-ing goes that James reminds his little bro’s

of, that his big bro. modelled in their house*.

“Be quick to listen!” which is I suppose

statistical in nature, more a douse

in waters cold, to my desired response

(to say what comes to mind, just as it does).

And learn to be more patient, less a “ponce”

(entitled, unrestrained, while still quite fuzz-

-y in my thinking. Not sure what will build

them up, but saying something anyway.

I think I need some “Selah*” times, that will

develop spaces. Even just to pray.

And be here as your mouthpiece, just as Pete-

-er said to those who speak out loud to folk:

to speak as though we speak God’s Word*, replete

with Moses's words on prophets*, not as joke.

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l* Mark 9:1-15; Matt 17:1-13; Luke 9:28-36

e* seems to be a musical interlude mark within the Psalms; maybe a break in the lyrics for an instrumental? Or as the Amplified bible puts it “pause, and think calmly on that!”

d* “Whoever speaks, let it be with[b] God’s words.[c] [1Peter4:10; NET](see 1Peter 4:10-11; & especially the footnotes above in the NET, if you don’t read Greek)

s* “I wish that all God's people were prophets”. (Numbers 11:29)

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….given for you* - (4…

...sustaining….)

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“You feed them” he had said before, to those

disciples when the “many” came, in need.

But he knew “other food*” as he’d disclosed

while talking with them after well-side lead.

That food was to obey, live in the will 

of whom God put above ourselves, recall 

that person.. which means  to remember, fill

my mind with what they said, but that’s not all..

it’s also to take on, live out, extend,

in choices that we make, on Earth, the spir-

it, attitude of faithful love, as friend

takes on some aspects of their friend. Hear here!

You are the source of all the love I’ve known.

And all the food in this world, I believe,

is your creative love displayed and shown 

in avenues of edibility.

Veluptuous and varied: sweet and sour,

strong and crisp, and crunchy, bubbly too.. ,

can all be lovely gifts at different hours

or contexts. For you know us through & through.

Responsive to initiatives from me,

you are: my senior, wiser, & more a-

-ble, seeking partnership as way to be*.

The only thing unmoving, clearly sta-

-ble, is your HESED*, strong and pure, deter-

mined, minded to grow me to be like you,

that your creative love be so inter-

preted,  on Earth in ev’rything I do.

And all the gifts you've poured this way I see

are gifts of fam’ly love to grow kids strong.

And given for the best to grow in me

and you, and help us too, to both “belong”.

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u*  Mark 6; Mark 8; Mark 14; Luke 9; Luke 22; Matt 14; Matt 15; Matt 26; John 6; 1Cor 11.

d* Jesus the vituous Jewish Rabbi meets a Samaritan woman at the bottom of her  pecking order, and will not be sidetracked from his job of revealing YHWH God to her (John 3; especially noteworthy when compared to the main story in the previous chapter (John 2) where Jesus meets with a chief teacher of Israel, one of the Sanhedrin where Jesus clarifies the need to be born freshly - from above), and Jesus’s words to his disciples when they bring food for him, back from town: “I have food that you don’t know of”.  …&... “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, … to finish the work he gave me to do.”

e* John 5:19; 8:29,38,47

D* HESED is the Hebrew term, used throughout the Hebrew Bible to mean family love, covenant love, loyal love, loving-kindness, steadfast love

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….given for you* - (ThREE)…

...trees in garden paradise….)

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“You feed them” he had said before, to his

disciples when the “many” came to find

out if he smelled of Yahweh’s ways, & biz-

nus, though his message spoke what’s on God’s mind.

And then he’d turned those words into a truth,

by breaking down the process into bits

bite-sized, and then by feeding them in cooth, though fam’ly ways (when they just “got the shits”).

Cash seems the bottom line, but it is not.

When things come to a point, don't look for it.

In this case, look for food. And count the lot.

And bring it back to me. I’ll do this bit.

Since you have not, just yet, grown up enough 

to mean it, when you’re tired, feel unfulfilled,

full of yourself (you don’t sustain, taste tough).

I’ll show it to the God, we’ll trust he willed

for us to not just die here, now, and thank

him for his own provisioning, as he

sees fit to make it work. He is our bank.

And river bank, to walk along as we

in cool of eve’ning, take time to rethink

on days we've seen, and what they’ll mean ahead,

Beside the waters stilled enough to drink.

He gives the bits to them to give. All fed!

And so they really do feed them themselves.

And still he takes the metaphore some more.

As God’s the Father who  wants strength & health…

so we as nursing mother have our chore!

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u*  Mark 6; Mark 8; Mark 14; Luke 9; Luke 22; Matt 14; Matt 15; Matt 26; John 6; 1Cor 11.

o* John 5:19; 8:29,38,47

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