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For You Are My Beloved, Prayers of the Heart
by Caryn Brady
$22.00
Caryn's Spiritual Poetry
Please forgive me
That Your thoughts are so beyond mine
That I can hardly comprehend You.
Please forgive me
That Your will is so perfect,
That Your plan is so far-reaching,
Yet my eyes can only see so far
And in my short-sightedness,
I can only see part of You.
Please forgive me
That in Your Perfection
You can see all of me:
You can see all my thoughts,
You can see all my fears;
My heart is no mystery to You,
Nor my cracks
That You have glued together
So often with Your Love.
Lord, You know me
Deeper than I know myself.
Please forgive me
If I frustrate You
With my flounderings,
With my flutterings
Like a bird of the wilderness
Trapped in a human cage.
You have found me
So many times
Searching for You
While You stand within.
Though You know
You are so majestic,
So far beyond me
That my reach falls short,
Still You know my heart, dear Lord,
And You know it is You I love
With all my heart,
Little as that is.
Though my smallness breaks my heart,
For I desire to give You more,
Yet my smallness seems to please You
And my weakness draws Your strength.
As tears fall of disappointment,
Your gentle hands catch every one,
Holding them as jewels;
Your tenderness soothes
The torment of my soul
And Your eyes of kindness
Catch my soul
In Your embrace
Your greatness catches my smallness
And my smallness adores
All that You are,
Though I am too small
To know.
All writings copyrighted 2004 Caryn Brady
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In the expanse of infinity,
we are at best a fleck so small as to be barely noticeable.
Put in human and historical context,
we are nothing, not worthy of a glance or mention.
Each of our lives, our stories, our dramas
is but a grain of sand in a world, a universe,
full of beaches and many grains of sand, alone crystals and gems,
but lost to mediocrity in the magnitude of Creation.
Yet in that depth of ambiguity,
in the overwhelming solitude of true humility,
in a universe beyond our ability to even comprehend,
there is One who picks us up, apart from the rest,
Who cradles our tiny hearts in His,
piercing our hearts to the infinite depths of intimacy,
and makes us whole, unique, precious in His sight.
He floods us with a love so tender, so powerful
that we cannot see past this love.
In our minds we reason it is not true,
alone with Him in the universe,
in most precious unity, with our Beloved,
one completely and passionately dependant on another.
We are intimately and overwhelmingly bound to a Heart
beyond our ability to imagine,
yet within our ability to experience
to the depths of our being.
Thus is our God, who counts every hair on our head,
and knows our hearts so intimately,
infintely more precious to Him than we are to ourselves.
How can we return such a love to such an immense Heart?
By giving ourselves as a gift of such deep passion
and such complete surrender
that He cannot feel that we believe
there is anyone else but Him to us,
alone in His universe.
By loving as He loves with Him alone
in the depths of our hearts,
but also in intimate union with all He loves,
loving Him in others to such a degree
that His Heart is stirred in each one we meet.
Lovingly feeding Him in the hungry,
tenderly caring for Him in the sick,
holding Him so sweetly to us in the abandoned,
the homeless, the rejected, the brokenhearted.
Let us pour the love we have found
into all those vessels waiting to be filled.
For He has loved us first
with a love too precious for words,
lifting us up from the ambiguity of the sands
that we may be loved, and love like Him,
stirring a Heart so immense as to be unfathomable,
yet as real and human and tender as our own.
At the Crossroads
The dust is dry on my feet,
The sweat hot on my brow.
Sitting by the path,
I seek a clearer Way.
Having given navigation over to You,
I wait at the crossroads
Seeking Your Plan.
Your Presence runs deep here
And every thought I turn to You,
You pour Your Presence anew into my heart.
Only my heart can I offer You
In this dusty place;
Only my soul, my will, my devotion.
I wait patiently
Adoring You in the dust and confusion.
My heart opens to absorb Your Love,
Catching Your gentle smile.
We sit lost in conversation
Of the Heart
And as the dust clears I see
That You are still here with me,
Still speaking, still listening,
Still loving, still guiding.
The crossroads remain
But are lost to us
For we walk a different path,
A path of the Heart.
You are here in the dust with me
And it is enough.
For our path is not out there,
But here, in the Heart.
And in the Heart,You open Your path to me
Leading me to You.
I Am, Speaks Love
You are dragged before us like a criminal.
You, Lord of Life, Savior God;
You, “trouble maker,” radical for Love.
Your Words push us past the comfort zone.
Your actions convict us causing discomfort and shame.
Shame is not a feeling we live with well
And forgiveness we seldom understand.
You stand in Truth, You stand in Love.
You show us the Way, but Your Way
Is not on our maps.
With their power given from above
Your judges look You in the eyes and ask:
“Are You the Son of the Living God?”
Before them stands the Truth Incarnate
And they wait for You to lie
To save Your human life
When before them stands Life itself!
Yet more blind than the blind men you healed
Are they who say they can see.
More guilty for they lead the innocent
To their blindness.
“Are You the Son of God?” they repeat,
Your Silence deafening.
“I AM,” Truth speaks, softly,
Echoing through the Words of Prophets
And resonating with the Words of Yahweh
From the Holy Mountain:
“I AM THAT I AM.”
He speaks, our God, our Truth,
And all who seek the Truth hear His voice.
("I Am, Speaks Love, cont.)
“I AM,” echoes in our chambers,
Shattering all doubt,
Absorbed by hearts of Truth,
Repelled by hearts of darkness,
Coming to rest, like a Dove,
In the minds and hearts of people of faith.
The sound of the High Priest’s robes tearing
Jars any peace remaining,
Ripping apart the heart and soul
Of Your Presence in our temples.
Your eyes of Love follow Your people
As they wrestle with darkness.
“Choose me,” they seem to say;
“Choose Life.”
Human tears well up in Your Divine Eyes
As Your gaze falls on the undecided ones.
“Come to me,” Your Heart cries.
“Choose My Love and live with Me forever.
It is I, You loving God!”
But the undecided fear and turn away
Choosing the gray that turns to darkness
Over the Light of Truth.
Your Heart, the center of Your Church,
Is ripped out and cast aside,
The stone rejected.
Dragged through the streets
Into the arena of the secular world,
We place You before them
Then abandon You in fear.
Your Sacred Heart, so overflowing,
Stands alone, crying out for Love,
Already pierced in Your Heart,
A million times and more,
By our turning away from
Your Heart of Love.
You stand alone, O Heart of Love,
Breaking for us,
Pouring out Your Blood of Redemption
To a world untouched.
Let our hearts run to Yours, O Lord,
And fill us with Your Love You ache to share.
Let Your Blood of Redemption
Surge through our hearts into our souls
Becoming rivers of love
Touching all who thirst for You.