Give me the rain and the rose petals strewn pink as showers in season upon the path. Give me the rampart jasmine and the overhanging branches, baptising us with their wet crowns. Too much perfect is hard on the eyes. A sky with clouds making ever changing patterns, and natures twists and turns to surprise, … More A Poem: Give me the rain

We are the bread of life. Dropped crumbs for the hungry. A warm yeast rising to fill our place. A swelling grace that yields itself for other’s nourishing. We are bread that does not run out but refills our plates. And multiples that none lack sustenance. We are bread. We are the water of life. … More A Poem: Bread

Will you take my heart back to where the land meets the sky, to where the kiss of heaven touches earth’s upturned brow. Will you take me in my imagination to places we haven’t been, where life is not a forgetting but a remembering. A recalling through the mist of the true shapes of things. … More A Poem: Will You

God has a distance ripe for growth not too far, nor too close. Just as the earth hangs in space at a circling orbit to sustain life, so God keeps us sometimes at arm’s length as he teaches us to walk on our own. Not devoid of His support, but as a parent who beckons … More A Poem: The Space Between

This morning I woke with praise on my lips in the half conscious state that breaks upon us before the light. I lay there aware how praise made up the lining of my soul’s walls in this world in which I reside. And truer than the life lived in the light of day, I know … More A Poem: Praise in the Morning

God I would tell you how good you are but I can’t Good things come in small packages. Gifts of generosity and sacrifice, or through great acts made by surrender to the self. This goodness is what you stand for, and you are all that. God I would tell you how good you are but … More A Poem: How Good

Watch what you cry for. What brings tears like a surprise? The relating of a story, the asking of a question. What brings the sudden lump, the shock of tears on the cheeks? Watch what you cry over. What brings your eyes to pool? The sharing of a challenge, the bearing of each other’s pain. … More A Poem: What we Cry for

My heart is like the onion’s skin shedding layers with the breaking. My heart is pressed as the garlic bulb until it releases its scent. Yes, my heart is a growing thing that pushes beyond its restraints. The shell must give yet a thousand times for this heart to expand. Ana Lisa de Jong Living … More A Poem: This Heart

You show us how to recommit each morning the sun rises. We see how its rays chase the shadows of the night until they’ve backed down. Retreated into the depths of the foliage. You show us how to recommit each morning the dawn crests. How the blue reminds us that dark is not the default. … More A Poem: Commitment

What matters is that we find the heart in the matter. The seed in the branch, the grain in the wood, the flower in the weed. What matters is the kernel of truth, beautiful acorn in which a tree is contained. Inestimable thing which we carry around, without which we see nothing else. Yes, this … More A Poem: What Matters