Jesus Wept

When Jesus drew near and saw the city,
He wept over it.

Not because the marble had cracked,
though it had.

Not because the columns trembled,
though they did.

Not because thunder gathered over the Potomac
and lightning stitched judgment
across the bruised sky.

He wept because the people had forgotten
the things that make for justice and peace.

He saw a cage raised like an altar.
He saw bodies offered up for entertainment.
He saw empire smiling gleefully from the front row,
wrapped in flags and gold and cameras.
He saw the powerful cheering
while the wounded became spectacle.

He saw Rome wearing a new suit.

The coliseum had crossed the ocean of the past
and found a home
under domes and monuments, white washed tombs,
beneath the watchful stone faces
of men who spoke of liberty
while the crowd screamed for blood.

And Jesus wept.

He wept for the fighter,
for the broken hand,
the swelling eye,
the mother watching,
the child learning
that violence can be sold
if the lights are bright enough.

He wept for the rulers
who called cruelty strength,
who mistook domination for glory,
who bowed before the oldest idol:
power without mercy.

He wept for Washington,
city of promises and wounds,
city of prayers and prisons,
city of pale stone
and scarlet history.

“If only you had known,” He whispered,
“even now, on this day,
the things that make for peace.”

But the roar was too loud.

The screens flashed.
The fists rose.
The empire cheered.
And somewhere above the cage,
a storm began to gather.

The lightning did not strike first.
The rain did.

A cleansing rain.
A sorrowing rain.
A baptism for a nation
that had confused freedom
with the right to devour.

And Jesus stood outside the gates,
tears on His face,
hands open,
heart broken,

still calling:

Come out of the cage.
Come down from the throne.
Come away from Rome.

Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are those
who refuse to be entertained
by another human being’s ruin.

And Washington did not yet understand.

So Jesus wept, tears falling in the rain.

#ancientRome #apocalypticArt #brokenEmpire #Capitol #ChristianArt #ChristianNationalism #cleansingRain #Empire #faithAndPolitics #JesusOverWashington #JesusWept #Lament #Mercy #modernColiseum #Nonviolence #peace #peacemakers #politicalLament #prayerForAmerica #propheticArt #propheticWitness #Repentance #sacredGrief #spectacleOfViolence #SpiritualReflection #stormImagery #symbolicIllustration #thingsThatMakeForPeace #UFC250 #Violence #WashingtonDC #WashingtonMonument #WhiteHouse

What Did I Accomplish Today?

What is the
measure
of a
good day?

Accomplishment
can be a strange
idol.
It promises
peace
after one more
task,
one more sermon,
one more song,
one more post,
one more
finished
thing.

But then
the day
ends,
and my soul
still has to
live
with itself.

Here in the
twilight,
rather than
asking
what I have
done,
a better
measure
might be:

Did I become
more free today?

Did I become
less bitter?

Did I tell
the truth?

Did I release
what was
not mine
to carry?

Did I move
even slightly
toward
love?

A clear mind
and
a better heart
may be
holier than
a completed
checklist.

So maybe
my evening prayer
is simply this:

Lord,
I release the day.
I release what I finished
and what I failed to finish.
Clear my mind.
Soften my heart.
Let me sleep as one who is loved,
not as one who must prove his worth.
Amen #accomplishment #clearMind #Contemplation #ContemplativeArt #emotionalHealing #eveningPrayer #Faith #Grace #healingHeart #heartAndMind #Hope #innerLight #innerPeace #LettingGo #mentalClarity #Mindfulness #peace #Prayer #release #renewal #sacredRest #SelfWorth #Serenity #SoulCare #spiritualArt #SpiritualJourney #SpiritualReflection #symbolicIllustration #Transformation #twilight #WordPressTags

Angeler

I love to fish.

It is one of the things that has followed me from my childhood into my adulthood.

I’ve often wondered why a fisherman is called an angler. I discovered the etymology of the word means “one who fishes with an angle.” The word “angul” is from the old German meaning a hook.

So, an angler is not someone who is enthralled by geometric patterns though I’ll admit there is some calculation and mathematics involved in successful fishing.

One must cast at the correct angle (pun intended) in order for the lure to land in the correct spot in whatever body of water the angler is angling in. The line is of limited length. If there is not enough line on the reel, the place where the angler believes the fish are waiting will not be reached.

The cast. The return. The repetition. The circles emanating out from where the lure has landed. The waiting. The strike. The fish captured by the angle. The contentment. The release. Rinse. Repeat. Calculate the angle of the next cast.

Or is “angle” simply a garbled rendition of “angel” where the l and the e have simply been switched? If I, like Icarus, have fallen into the sea, will there be a golden line cast from heaven to capture me, send me soaring again?

We’ve been made a little lower than the angels. Have we no wings? Is the itching in my shoulder blades the faint memory of flight? Perhaps as noted before, I am simply Exocoetidea, a fish out of water, seeking flight, yet still tied to the depths.

I think I will call myself an “angeler,” in the hope that on a quiet morning on some sacred shore, the mist rising like incense off the water, I will rediscover my wings.

#Angeler #Angels #Angler #ChildhoodMemory #Contemplation #creativeNonfiction #Exocoetus #Faith #FallenAndRising #Fishing #FishingMetaphor #flight #FlyingFish #GoldenLine #Grace #Icarus #MythicArt #Mythology #NatureWriting #Ocean #personalEssay #PoetryProse #sea #soul #SpiritualReflection #symbolicArt #Theology #Water #wings #Wonder #WordPressTags

Tankas “Dark Rooms of Slow”

Morning bids me go.
In darkened rooms, I walk slow -
where night shadows grow.
I don't want to stub my toe.
Hence, my need for walking slow.

As I traverse the night,
you may say, Turn on a light!
(You know I just might).
I'm sure that would help my sight.
I'll still go slow when it's bright. #carefulSteps #ContemplativePoetry #dawnLight #humorPoetry #innerJourney #JapaneseIllustration #JapanesePoetry #lightAndDarkness #Mindfulness #morningPoem #nightShadows #poeticArt #shadowAndLight #silkscreenArt #slowLiving #SpiritualReflection #tanka #walkingSlow #wisdomPoetry #woodblockStyle

Tanka “Mark 112224”

Embrace this God-thing.
Do not hesitate to pray -
for everything.
Practice honest forgiveness.
You'll be saying, What nountain? #ChristianPoetry #ContemplativeArt #devotionalPoetry #Faith #FaithAndArt #Forgiveness #God #Grace #honestForgiveness #JapaneseIllustration #JapanesePoetry #mountainMetaphor #Prayer #PrayerPoem #sacredArt #silkscreenArt #spiritualGrowth #SpiritualReflection #surrender #tanka

Visual Art Interpretation – My Hopes and Dreams for the Next Year

I began with an idea of drawing my age and it gradually morphed into a radiant, hand-made number filled not so much with tasks to accomplish as with the people, callings, loves, and practices that give me joy.

The bright red border and repeated golden lights give it the appearance of a theater sign or a carnival ride. They are a remnant of posters I used to make when I was a boy. Inside that celebratory outline, the words curve, turn, reverse, overlap, and require the eye to travel.

The words I placed inside my age—Sing, Play, Memories, God, Laugh, Journey, Pastor, Author, Husband, PeaceGrooves, Friends, Art, Church, Love, Woodcraft—are striking to me because so many of them are relational or creative. Author is near Husband. Pastor winds along the same road as Journey. PeaceGrooves circles alongside Friends, Church, and Love.

The Word I Did Not Write

After finishing the piece, I realized that I did not write health or healing anywhere inside it. Those things matter deeply to me, especially in light of some of the recent physical concerns and uncertainties I have been carrying. And yet, perhaps their absence does not mean they were forgotten. Perhaps I instinctively wrote the life I hope healing will allow me to continue inhabiting.

I did not write healing, but I wrote Sing-Play: the hope that my body and spirit can still release themselves into music.

I wrote Laugh: the hope for lightness, delight, and joy.

I wrote Journey: the hope that I can continue moving forward.

I wrote Husband and Friends: the hope of remaining present in love and relationship rather than retreating into worry or isolation.

I wrote Pastor and Church: the hope that I can continue serving meaningfully among people.

I wrote Art, Author, Woodcraft, and PeaceGrooves: the hope that creativity will continue flowing through me rather than being swallowed up by discouragement, exhaustion, or fear.

Perhaps healing is everywhere in this drawing without being visible. It is hidden beneath almost every word: Let me be wekHzll enough, free enough, encouraged enough, and alive enough to keep inhabiting these loves.

But perhaps the omission also tells me something tender and difficult about myself. When I think about the future, I often think first about what I can give, create, serve, love, and build. I may not always think first about what I need. This picture invites me to remember that somewhere in the glowing year ahead, there must also be room for my own care. I am not only the husband, pastor, artist, author, musician, friend, and creator. I am also a person who needs healing, rest, gentleness, and grace.

The Smear Between Author and Husband

One of the small accidents in the piece occurred in the space between Author and Husband. Water smeared the color there, and I had to cover it as best I could. I was mostly able to hide the mistake, though I know it happened.

That accidental smear now feels strangely meaningful. Author and Husband are two of my most intimate identities: the part of me that creates worlds and gives language to inner experience, and the part of me that shares an actual life in love and covenant with another person. Perhaps those two identities were never meant to be sharply separated. My writing rises from my lived relationships, from tenderness, memory, fear, faith, longing, disappointment, and love. And my creative life inevitably spills into the life I share with my wife.

The water touched the border between those words, and I tried to repair it. That is not a failure of the picture. It may be one of the most honest parts of it. Life does not remain perfectly inside the lines. The roles I care most about do not remain untouched by mess, vulnerability, or accident. Sometimes the colors run together. Sometimes I try to cover what went wrong. Sometimes a trace remains, visible mostly to me.

Yet I did not throw the picture away. I continued working on it. I allowed the imperfection to dry and become part of the finished whole.

Perhaps that is an image of grace. A life of grace is not a life where nothing ever gets smeared. It is a life in which even the smeared places can be incorporated into the beauty.

Church: Almost Illegible

I also noticed that Church almost looks like “Churgh.” It is there, but it is not the clearest or most immediately readable word. That, too, feels symbolic.

Church is deeply present in my hopes for the coming year. It is part of who I am, part of my calling, part of my relationship with God and with community. But church is not always simple or perfectly clear. It can be difficult to read. It can be beautiful and messy, life-giving and exhausting, sacred and profoundly human all at once.

In this picture, church does not appear by itself in a clean, isolated space. It is crowded into a circling path alongside other words: Love, Friends, Art, the movements of creativity and ministry surrounding it. That seems truthful. For me, church is not separate from love, friendship, art, imagination, service, or reconciliation. It is beautifully entangled with them.

The fact that the word may be hard to dicipher signifies that church is something I continue to believe in and belong to, though at times, it may be difficult to see clearly its formation.

The Shape of the Year

The large number itself is not simply filled in. It becomes a winding course. The words curve around turns and corners; some appear upright from one angle and upside down from another. To read the whole image, I almost have to rotate it, follow it, and let my eyes travel through it.

I do not know exactly how it will unfold. My hopes do not form a straight road or a neatly numbered plan. They form a brightly lit labyrinth. Something that appears upside down from one position may look different once I travel farther along the curve. Something that seems peripheral now may become central. Something disappointing may redirect me toward an unexpected opening.

This drawing does not say, Here is my plan to master the next year.

It says, Here is the glowing path I hope to traverse.

Music feeds ministry. Woodcraft feeds contemplation. Writing feeds faith. PeaceGrooves gathers together my imagination, my longing for peace, my love of play, and my desire to offer something meaningful to others. Marriage and friendship keep my creative life from becoming merely solitary. Church places my personal dreams within a larger body. God is not outside all these things, looking down upon them from a distance, but present among them.

My life is not a ladder climbing toward a single success. It is a winding, illuminated journey through many loves.

The Lights Around the Border

The repeated yellow bulbs around the border give the piece a vintage, celebratory feeling. They make the year look like something grounded in the past yet being announced: a show beginning, a stage opening, a bright invitation to enter.

There is something almost exuberant about it. I did not draw a quiet little calendar page or a restrained list of intentions. I drew my age as a symbol of hope. Music, laughter, love, friendship, art, faith, craft, writing, church, PeaceGrooves—these are not hobbies or decorative extras around the edge of life. They are among the things that make life worth living.

And yet the lights are not machine-perfect. They are hand-drawn. Each one is slightly different. Some are rounder, some rougher, some more irregular. The brightness of this coming year is not a slick commercial promise that everything will be perfect. It is the brightness I have carefully drawn around my hopes with my own imperfect hand.

The lights continue around the bends. They do not shine only along the smooth or impressive stretches. They follow the narrow turns, the dips, the places where the shape curls inward. The light does not abandon the complicated places.

What This Picture Says to Me

This is a picture of my hope not merely to survive another year but to remain fully myself within it.

I want to sing and play.

I want to laugh.

I want to remember.

I want to journey.

I want to love and be loved.

I want to remain a husband, a pastor, an author, an artist, a craftsman, a musician, a friend, and a dreamer.

I want PeaceGrooves not merely to exist as a project, but to become an expression of something deep within me: my longing to imagine, create, and make peace.

I want God not as an abstract religious idea floating somewhere outside my life but as a living presence woven among music, love, creativity, friendship, church, memory, laughter, and journey.

And perhaps beneath the entire picture is the word I did not write: wholeness.

Wholeness includes health. It includes healing. But it is larger than both. It is the hope that all these different names for myself will not compete with one another, break apart, or fade away, but somehow curve together into a single radiant life.

The smear between Author and Husband, the almost-illegible Church, the reversed words, the crowded pathways, the uneven bulbs, and the wandering design do not lessen the picture. They make it more honest.

My hopes for the next year are not cleanly arranged or perfectly protected from mistakes. They are handmade. They are entangled. They are vulnerable. They are colorful. They are imperfect.

And, Oh Yes!, they are still shining.

#anabaptist #Art #authorLife #Church #creativeCalling #creativeLife #discernment #Faith #Friendship #God #Grace #handmadeArt #Healing #hopesAndDreams #husband #illuminatedPath #imperfection #Journey #Laughter #Love #memory #mennonite #mixedMedia #Music #pastorLife #PeaceGrooves #personalGrowth #personalReflection #ReflectiveEssay #SpiritualReflection #visualJournal #vocation #wholeness #woodcraft #WordPressTags2027Hopes #Writing

The Resilient Philosopher, D. Leon Dantes asks: If Jesus returned today, would we crucify him again? This provocative episode exposes how modern faith has been twisted by institutions, calling for a courageous return to the truths we claim to honor. https://visionleon.com/if-jesus-returned-today-would-we-kill-him-again/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost #servantleadership #spiritualreflection #DLeonDantes #faithandleadership #TheResilientPhilosopher #VisionLEON

The First Green Thorn

I returned
expecting only stone.

The same arch.
The same hollow.
The same bouquet
browned at the edges
like a prayer
left too long
in the weather.

I had learned
the discipline of kneeling.

I had learned
how to make peace
with the wrong place.

There is a strange holiness
in returning
to what cannot answer.

There is a strange faith
in speaking
to silence
until silence becomes
less empty.

But this morning,
at the foot of the cenotaph,
where the rain had gathered
in the crack
between two stones,

something had risen.

Not a flower.

Not yet.

Only a thorned green stem,
small enough
to be missed
by anyone
who came looking
for a miracle.

It leaned toward the light
with the awkward courage
of a thing
that had not been told
it was impossible.

I almost wept
from fear.

Grief I knew.
Absence I knew.
The old wound
had become a room
I could enter
without striking a match.

But life—
life arriving
without permission,
life answering
when I had stopped
asking,
life wearing thorns
before blossoms—

this was a more terrible mercy.

For if something grows here,
then I must change.

If the stone has cracked,
then I cannot spend forever
calling it final.

If roots have found me,
if green has entered
the vocabulary of my mourning,
then perhaps I have been wrong
about the dead.

Perhaps not all that is buried
is finished.

Perhaps not all that is empty
is abandoned.

Perhaps the former self
does not return
as the boy who believed,
but as the wound
that has learned
to shelter a seed.

I touched the stem
and blood rose
from my finger.

So this, too,
is resurrection:

not the absence of pain,
but pain made porous
to light.

Not the grave undone
all at once,
but a thorn
breaking through stone,

a small green alphabet
beginning again

where the epitaph
ran out of words.

The Cenotaph Triad

The Cenotaph

The Roots Beneath the Stone

The First Green Thorn

#Cenotaph #DarkArt #DarkPoetry #EmptyMonument #faithAndDoubt #FormerSelves #gothicIllustration #gothicPoetry #GreenStem #grief #Healing #hiddenLife #HopeInDarkness #innerLandscape #LifeAfterLoss #Melancholy #memory #Mercy #Mourning #poeticReflection #renewal #resurrectionImagery #roots #SpiritualReflection #StoneAndSeed #symbolicArt #TheFirstGreenThorn #Thorn

The Root Beneath the Stone

I thought the stone was final.

I thought the name carved there
was the last word
the earth would allow.

I thought absence
had a kind of authority,
as if an empty place
could speak with the voice of God
and say,
No farther.

But last night,
beneath the monument,
something moved.

Not the dead.
Not the lost.
Not the boy exactly,
nor the song,
nor the face before sorrow
taught it its new expression.

Something thinner than memory,
but stronger than grief.

A root.

Pale as a finger
beneath the dark soil,
blindly seeking
what the heart had forgotten
how to want.

It did not knock.
It did not rise
with trumpets or thunder.
It did not roll the stone away.

It only pressed
against the underside
of what I had mistaken
for an ending.

All these years
I had been kneeling
before emptiness,
bringing flowers
to a place
that could not receive them.

But perhaps the flowers knew
what I did not.

Perhaps their stems,
cut and dying,
were still fluent
in the old language of return.

Perhaps every grief
I laid down there
became compost.

Perhaps every tear
sank farther
than my prayers.

Perhaps the thing I mourned
was not buried elsewhere
after all,
but traveling underground,
passing through houses
that no longer stand,
fields grown over
with strange weeds,
the silence after a voice
has vanished.

I wanted resurrection
to arrive upright,
whole,
recognizable.

I wanted the former self
to come walking back
wearing the same face,
carrying the same bright belief,
singing the song
exactly as it was
before the world interrupted.

But roots do not return
as branches.

Seeds do not rise
as seeds.

What comes back
comes changed,
darkened by earth,
fed by what has fallen,
tender where it once was proud.

So I will come again
to the cenotaph.

I will bring flowers.

I will kneel.

But I will listen now
not for the dead
inside the stone,
not for the old name
to answer me,

but for the small green pressure
beneath everything,

the mercy
working in secret,

the hidden life
that does not ask
whether the grave was marked correctly,

only whether there is still
somewhere in me

a little soil

left open.

The Cenotaph Triad

The Cenotaph

The Roots Beneath the Stone

The First Green Thorn

#absence #Cenotaph #CreativeWriting #DarkArt #DarkPoetry #EmptyTomb #ExistentialPoetry #faithAndDoubt #FormerSelves #gothicIllustration #gothicPoetry #grief #HauntingBeauty #Healing #innerLandscape #LostJoy #Melancholy #memory #Mercy #Mourning #poeticReflection #resurrectionImagery #roots #SpiritualReflection #symbolicArt #TheRootBeneathTheStone

Pressed Petals

On Art, Obscurity, and Faithful Release

I am trying to understand the pressure within me.

I do not think the problem is that I want to complete things. Completion is not wrong. It is good to finish. It is good to give form to what has been stirring within me. It is good to bring a story, a song, a piece of art, a sermon, a reflection, or a book to the point into the world outside of me.

I also do not think the problem is that everything I see or do becomes inspiration. That is not really true. I am not endlessly turning every bird, every headline, every conversation, every historical fact, every passing image into a mandate. But I am a creative person. I do receive the world creatively. I do carry within me stories upon stories, art upon art, songs upon songs. I am full to the brim.

I could burn all my writings. I could get rid of all my wood and tools, my instruments, artist pens, notebooks, and unfinished manuscripts. I could live in an empty house. But I would still be me.

I would still be full.

So the question is not simply, “How do I get rid of the pressure?” The pressure is not only in the objects around me. The pressure is in the love, the longing, the calling, the imagination, and the grief within me. It is in the fact that I have created so much, imagined so much, begun so much, and hoped so much.

Maybe the deeper issue is timing.

Maybe it is not forcing things to be seen. Maybe it is not demanding that every creation immediately justify itself in the world. Maybe it is about creating because creating is part of who I am, and then learning when and how to release what I have made.

But even that is difficult, because my creations are not merely products to me. They are not just content. They are not just files, posts, pages, songs, or images. They feel like children.

And if they are children, then do I not owe them a life?

Do they not deserve to be born, released into the world, seen, growing, making children of their own? Is that not what seeds are supposed to do? A seed is not meant to remain forever in its packet. A song is not meant to remain forever unheard. A story is not meant to remain forever unread. A painting is not meant to remain forever unseen.

A child is not meant to remain forever in the nursery.

This is where the theology of less becomes hard for me.

I can understand becoming less before God. I can understand humility. I can understand that fame is not salvation, that platform is not faithfulness, that applause is not the measure of a life. I can understand that hiddenness can be holy and smallness can be faithful.

But I do not know how to make peace with the utter unfairness of being unknown.

It feels unfair that shallow things are seen while deep things disappear. It feels unfair that loud things are rewarded while quiet, careful, soulful things are ignored. It feels unfair that some people seem born with platforms, networks, confidence, and an audience, while others carry whole worlds inside them and can barely find a door. It feels unfair that my creations might never have the chance to become what they could become in the world.

Not to compare, but it seems others will always have more. Their gardens will be bigger. Their opinions will be loud. Their books will be published. Their children will be giants. Their lives will be important. Their plans will be successful. Their family will enlarge. Their church will be mega. Their ministry will be blessed. Their corporation will grow. Their house will be comfortable.

And I fear that I will become less.

A pressed faded flower in a dusty book.

My words without weight. My writings unknown. My children tufts of grass in city sidewalks. My life hidden. My hopes dashed. My name ended. My chapel tiny. My faith questioned. My business failed. My home feeling like old dead skin. And I, a creature curled in some coffin hole.

That is the fear underneath the pressure.

It is not only that I want success. It is that obscurity feels like abandonment. It feels like my creations have been born into a world that has no room for them. It feels like I have been faithful to them by bringing them forth, but the world has not been faithful in receiving them.

And yet, perhaps I am being asked to distinguish between faithful release and guaranteed reception.

I can birth the work.
I can name the work.
I can feed it, clothe it, revise it, shape it, bless it.
I can give it a door.
I can show it a road.
I can release it into the world.

But I cannot make the world welcome it.

That is where the pain is. That is where the unfairness lives. I want not only to create the work, but to protect it from neglect. I want to be artist and audience, parent and world, sower and weather, seed and soil. I want to make sure that what I have loved does not disappear.

But maybe that is too much for me to carry.

Maybe my creations are my children, but they are not my saviors.

Maybe I owe them faithful release, but I do not owe them guaranteed success.

Maybe I can grieve obscurity without hearing it as a verdict.

That sentence matters to me: I can grieve obscurity without hearing it as a verdict

Because obscurity speaks like a judge. It says, “No one knows this, therefore it does not matter. No one read this, therefore it has no weight. No one heard this, therefore it was not a real song. No one saw this, therefore it was not real art. No one published this, therefore it was not a real book. No one noticed this life, therefore this life was wasted.”

But obscurity is not God.

Obscurity does not get to name the value of my work.

Still, I cannot pretend that visibility does not matter at all. That would be dishonest. My creations do need windows. They do need doors. They do need pathways. They do need some way to move beyond me. If I keep everything hidden forever out of fear, confusion, perfectionism, or despair, then I am not being faithful to them.

So perhaps the theology of less is not to “make peace with never being seen.”

Perhaps it is: make doors without worshiping doors.

Make the book.
Make the post.
Make the song page.
Make the archive.
Make the submission.
Make the collection.
Make the small press.
Make the reading.
Make the gathering place.
Make the simple, faithful path by which the work can walk into the world.

But do not demand that the door become a throne.

Do not demand that every release become vindication.

Do not demand that every creation prove my life was worth living.

That is where I become Atlas beneath a planet of creation. I carry not only the work itself, but its future, its reception, its audience, its influence, its children, its grandchildren, its whole imagined destiny. I am not only trying to make things. I am trying to guarantee what they will become.

No wonder I feel incapacitated.

Perhaps the faithful question is smaller.

Not, “What will become of all my creations?”

But, “What does this one need next?”

This one story.
This one song.
This one image.
This one reflection.
This one book.
This one child of my imagination.

Does it need finishing?
Does it need editing?
Does it need a cover?
Does it need to be posted?
Does it need to be submitted?
Does it need to be gathered with others?
Does it need to rest until its season comes?
Does it need to remain a seed a little longer?

That is not abandonment. That is attention.

I cannot parent the whole household of my imagination all at once. I cannot carry every child at the same time. I cannot give every creation its full future today. But I can turn toward one and ask what faithfulness looks like now.

This is not less love.

It may actually be a better stronger love.

Panic says, “I must get everything out before it is too late.”

Faithfulness says, “I will give this one the care it needs today.”

Panic says, “If this is not seen widely, I have failed.”

Faithfulness says, “I will give it a real path into the world, and then I will release what I cannot control.”

Panic says, “My birthings are dying in obscurity.”

Faithfulness says, “Some seeds sleep before they rise.”

I do not want to use seed language too cheaply. Seeds are supposed to grow. I know that. That is exactly why it hurts. Seeds want soil, light, water, air, room. My creations want communion. They want to meet other lives. They want to make children of their own.

But perhaps the timing of growth is not always mine to command.

Some seeds grow quickly. Some grow slowly. Some are carried by birds. Some lie hidden until fire, flood, winter, or strange mercy opens them. Some become roots long before they become leaves. Some feed the soil that feeds another tree.

This does not remove the ache.

But maybe it removes some of the accusation and guilt.

I am not betraying my creations simply because they are not yet widely known. I betray them only if I refuse to love them truthfully, shape them faithfully, and give the ones that are ready a way outside myself.

So I will try to live by a gentler discipline.

I will create because creating is part of who I am.

I will complete what I can, not because completion saves me, but because form and formation is a kind of love.

I will release what is ready, not because release guarantees success, but because communion is part of the nature of art.

I will build openings, but I will not worship doors.

I will grieve obscurity, but I will not hear it as a verdict.

I will remember that my creations may be my children, but they are not my saviors.

I will remember that I owe them faithful release, not guaranteed success.

I will remember that I am not artist and audience, parent and world, sower and weather, seed and soil. I am not Atlas. I am a finite creature with a full heart, a crowded imagination, and one life.

So perhaps my prayer is this:

God of seeds and seasons,
teach me how to love what I have made without being crushed by it.
Teach me how to complete what is mine to complete.
Teach me how to release what is ready to be released.
Teach me how to wait without calling waiting failure.
Teach me how to build openings without worshiping doors.
Teach me how to grieve the unfairness of being unknown without letting obscurity become my judge.

Bless my stories, my songs, my art, my sermons, my reflections, my unfinished fragments, my hidden children.

Give them life where life is possible.
Give them readers, listeners, viewers, companions, and future children if that is their path.
And where they must wait, let them wait as seeds, not broken corpses.

Let me be faithful to them.
Let me be free from needing them to save me.
Let me create because I am alive.
Let me release because love seeks communion.
Let me rest because I am not God.

I give you this one thing I make today.

I bless it.

I open the door.

I let it walk.

I return to the waiting room within.

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