feelings

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“Hurricane” – An Alphabyte

Alphabytes are object meditations
that move through the alphabet two times
in the course of the fifty-two weeks in the year.
“Hurricane” introduces the Eighth Week in Pentecost.

Nick reads the Alphabyte.

Islands where hurricanes abound are so often those of the poor.
Theirs are not storm-proof homes.
When the great winds come, the door in the front
    and the door in the back must be open
    to welcome the unfriendly guest,
    and show him the way out.
The alternative? A sure explosion from within.

So too with the humble house of the soul.
When the winds of arrogance, judgment, hatred, guilt and shame
    threaten to blow the self away, be sure that the door in the front
    and the door in the back are open wide, letting all the angry winds
    pass straight through, till the gentle winds of the Spirit return
    and breathe softly across your soul.

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“Beach Ball” – An Alphabyte

Alphabytes are object meditations
That move in alphabetical order two times through the fifty-two weeks of the year.
The final one is “Zoom Lens” at the close of the church year on November 23.

Nick reads the Alphabyte

Airless, flat, dusty, hidden, the plastic wrinkled mass made it through
    the cold of winter and the hope of spring.
Now breath makes it rise to global fullness,
     barely touching the earth and water,
    dancing freely in the kindred air that puffs about it.
Down it plunges as children play and push it beneath the surf,
    pressing upward as though gasping for the very air of which it’s made,
    joyous in its upward surge as at last the children yield the hold
    and let it go.

Energies from within the soul seek to make their way above,
    pushed relentlessly to drowning depths.
Call these energies by basic, beach ball names:
    ANGER, FEAR, SADNESS, JOY, LOVE.
Get out of their way till they rise and dance about
    on the sacred waters of your soul.

Alphabytes are object meditations that move through the alphabet
two times in the course of the fifty-two weeks in the year.

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The Seventh Week in Epiphany – Alphabyte “Laser”

Nick reads the Alphabyte.

Light means more than floods of waves of the right length for the eye to see. Rays can now be gathered into a single length and sent in one selected direction, making three additional results of light possible: sounding, printing, and fusing. So too does the Scripture share in these qualities.

First, there is a FLOODING of your being with the passage, bathing all of you in the love-light of the Word. The next day’s passage could be introduced the night before, so that you can sleep with it, allowing mulling and dreaming to happen, as God’s Word blends with the restoration that so beautifully happens in sleep.

“I think of you on my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night.”
(Psalm 63:6)

The Word SOUNDS within the soul. Listen inwardly to the movement of the passage.

“Faith comes from what is heard,
and what is heard
comes through the word of Christ.”(Rom 10:17).

Then there is the PRINTING of the Word, as the laser-like quality of the Word is etched, inscribed and written upon the heart. Here a close, meditative reading takes place. What are you going to remember and also memorize about the passage for the day?

“Do not let loyalty and faithfulness forsake you;
bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart.” (Prov. 3:3).

Finally the Word FUSES broken, disconnected parts of the mind, as faulty thinking continues to hurt the heart from sins of the past—yours or others. Allow a laser ray to touch attitudes and ways of thinking that need to be soldered and fused by the Spirit. Where in the body does the ray need to penetrate, bringing healing to your body as well?

“The Spirit of the Lord has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted.”
(Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18)

Everyday, let the Word of God do all that it can
to have you transformed into Jesus.

Alphabytes are object meditations that move through the alphabet
two times in the course of the fifty-two weeks in the year.

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The Second Week in Epiphany – Alphabyte “Gold”

Nick reads the Alphabyte.

Kings and gold go together.
And so the Three Kings bring their gifts of gold to the little King who has none.
Yet the three do not know that this is the One in whom all the earth and gold is found.
Gold: the ultimate possession. Earth holds it … Heaven gives it away.
What do you claim and cling to as ultimate in life?
Let go. Nothing can be possessed as yours.
Even your body is not yours, but rather a gift given by the One
in whom we live and move and have our being.
Two things are truly ours: thoughts and feelings.
So go to that place deep within where lie these buried treasures and
give them to the Infant King.
They become gold in the offering.