The dawn seeping light into the day
Slowly, slowly, beginning it all again
Fresh hints of
New life
New hope
New start
Everyday
It’s never too late
To begin again
The old way is blocked
Go around
Light shines on a new path
A new idea
Change
Comes with the dawn.
© 2020 Julie Clark
A soft constant dripping
Soaks roots
Fills streams
Covers the land in green
Higher elevations
Blanketed in white
It could go on and on
For days
For weeks
Seemingly months
Until Spring
Through Spring
And early summer
Slowly warmth seeps
Back into the days
The light changes
Trees blossom
Flowers bloom
The clouds part
Sky is blue
Sun is out
© 2020 Julie Clark
When you need a new rhythm
Old one not working
Wearing you out
Step off, step out and away
Find a quiet place
A lonely place
To think
To listen
Make the changes
To save yourself
© 2020 Julie Clark
A Blessing for those Waiting for Justice and Deliverance
(for those imprisoned in NW China)
In this waiting
Which feels so long, too long
When despair nags at our heels
Bless us with hope,
Bless us with prayers to pray
With names of precious people we know
And do not know
Names and faces of captives and prisoners
We can hold before you
And honor them and honor you, their creator
Bless the space, the time
Between now and their deliverance
May they know your presence,
Your love, your goodness
May they know you hear
The cry of the afflicted
Even if the cry comes
Silently from their hearts
Bless them with
Lifting the heavy burden
With healing their
Broken bodies
Their broken hearts
Lift their heads
Lift their hearts
To hope, to wait, to know
You are coming
and have not
forgotten them
Do the hard work
Take the time to listen
To another
With a different voice
A different belief
A different color of skin
A different culture
A different story
Take the time to learn
Find your new teachers
You won’t be disappointed
You will be enlarged
You will expand
You will grow
You will receive
A true gift
© 2019 Julie Clark
Lectio Divina Poem on
Mark 7:24….
Jesus on the move
One place to another
Sent to the lost children
Of Israel, yet…
Why is he here
Where the Gentiles live?
Like a magnet pulls
He draws the hungry,
The thirsty, the sick
The poor, the desperate
The greater the need
The louder they call
His meal disrupted
A noisy, needy
Foreign woman
With a child
He heard her cry
And turned his attention
Questions and answers
“Even the dogs eat
The children’s scraps”
For this answer
She is rewarded
Her child is healed
Her faith commended
Do we see these
Women? mothers?
These men, fathers?
They will do anything
To save their child
Do we hear them?
Or do we turn away
From the disruption
And finish our hearty meals?
© 2019 Julie Clark
Sorrow follows close
To shroud me
When my gaze
On love wavers
The impossibilities
Of hope
Too much to hold onto
At times
When justice and peace
Slip away
In a mudslide
What I cannot see
Calls me
To look closer
Do you see the courageous ones
who faced
Down their fear
The generous ones who share
What once they hoarded
Do you see
The peacemakers plowing fields
with what once
were weapons
The trusting ones letting go
Of all they thought
They needed to control
Change is happening
In incremental steps
Think of what happens
With seeds
Or yeast
Explosion of life
About to happen
All around us
Keep doing good
And growing
Into the person
You are and truly want to be
© Julie Clark 2019
What is this division you bring?
What about peace on earth, goodwill towards all?
Is it about our choice?
To love and serve
Or horde and kill?
Do you come to us at our borders in T-shirts and flip flops
Or camped out in our city parks?
One more opportunity to choose
As you ask, “Who will you serve?
Me or mammon?”
Ok, I choose you.
Now I have enemies.
What did you say about enemies?
I have to love them too?
Now that is hard to do.
Oh, you did that.
I see. Is that how this works?
Love changes everything.
Love is the force that brings peace
Far and near and finally
Everywhere.
How long?
“Until all is changed and all submit
To love
Singing praises!”
Your ways are better
Your ways are higher
Than ours.
What is impossible for humans
Is possible for you.
Now we must
Get up on the highway
Of your ways
Watch and see
What you can do with love-
The strongest force there is
Moving mountains and
Raising valleys.
May we make the choice
To love
Rather than continue
This madness.
© 2019 Julie Clark
I have been hearing this phrase more and more lately. It’s a handy little phrase. I’ve used it myself many times when I am struggling to understood an issue or a situation. It is true that life is complicated, human beings are complicated, but I feel like this phrase can be used now as an excuse, a way of not getting involved. It is a way of distancing oneself from a messy perhaps dangerous situation. There are numerous situations going on around the world that are both messy and dangerous.
I wonder in a revised version of the Good Samaritan story if one of the religious leaders who crossed the street away from the poor guy beaten and left for dead may have mumbled to himself as he hurried away – “It’s complicated…maybe he deserved what he got or maybe he has a contagious disease, or worse if I stop and help maybe someone will get me next!”
Last night I attended a vigil, calling for an end of the inhumane detention of immigrants in our country. I was heartened to see the church where the vigil was hosted packed out. More and more people are outraged at the news that is coming out and wanting to get involved or at least learn about what is happening. It was helpful to hear from women who themselves endured the indignity of being locked up and treated as a criminal. (No it is not illegal to seek asylum.) Both women mentioned how terrible it was to witness the way children were treated. One saw the the agents tearing children away from their parents.
There are numerous things we can do to help. We can raise our voices for the voiceless. We can contact our representatives both federally and locally. We can volunteer, we can donate, we can educate ourselves and help others understand. We each can do something.
Let faith have wings that lift us to pray
Let hope have eyes that look for solutions
Let love have feet that move us to action
May we take a risk to love our neighbors who are in great need rather than turn our backs on them because “it’s complicated”.
I do not know what the answers are to good immigration reform. I need to learn. I do know inhumane treatment of immigrants is not one them. Another phrase I am hearing that I like much better is “This is not a political issue it is a moral issue.”
(I am very happy to host a guest blogger today, Bill Clark, my husband and companion on a journey for nearly 40 years.)
In the Spring of 1989 my wife Julie and I and our 2 small children were living in Northwest China. We lived in a small city, Guldja or Ili, 64 kilometers from the USSR border. I taught English at a regional teacher’s college. That semester I taught an evening class open to the community which met two nights a week. In May the students were consistently showing up 15-20 minute late for class. When I pressed them on it, they said they were watching the live evening news broadcast from Beijing which, because of the time difference, started at 5:00 pm local time. They explained that at that time every evening the latest news was available from the students camping out in Tien An Men square. Sometimes as a teacher you have to know when to go with the flow. I am glad I went with the flow on that issue.
The entire nation, including our small provincial town, was transfixed by the events happening among the students and young people in Beijing. Beijing’s elite educational institutes collect the best and brightest students from all over the country including from among the several hundred families who lived on our Teacher’s College campus. The demonstrations were personal for our neighbors. There was a profound hope in the atmosphere of our school that the reforms the students were expressing would be for the good of the nation.
When the violence began on June 4th everyone was at first shocked and then devastated. A death pall fell on our campus. Families wanted news of their loved ones and whether they were safe. Little known to most Westerners, there were similar student demonstrations at regional centers around the country. One family we were close to had a graduate student in Chengdu. The PLA opened fire on those students as well and our friend narrowly escaped with his life. He reported multiple casualties all around him. One grandmother told us she could not eat for days because of the grief she felt for those young people. Many people became deeply depressed.
The official explanation began soon after. Our college’s top communist party member called the foreign teachers into a meeting to give us the official explanation. Rather than being recognized as the patriots, : “the students were out of line and acted up (xuesheng nau shr) and were justly punished.” One colleague said he literally felt sick as the lies we were told did not square with even the limited information we had access to.
Some foreign teachers broke their contract and left early. We did not want to do that but neither did we want to stay during the summer break. We worked out an arrangement with the school to teach accelerated classes and leave for the USA two weeks early and return in the fall with another year to teach. It was with conflicted emotions that we left as many of our local friends would have liked to have left China then, but that was not an option for them at that time. We returned in the fall of 1989 to a very different China.
Bill Clark
