Solitude

I've been pondering the soul this week. Ruth Haley Barton says that the soul is the part of you that is most real, the part of you that is who God made you to be. I have begun to try to ask myself regularly, "How is it with my soul?" I can really only answer that question when I pull away from the distractions of life and am silent before God.

Today I was looking over some poems I wrote way back when distractions in my life were much fewer. I hope that I can get back in touch with the part of me that writes poetry. I think if I actually do what I was talking about in this poem, that might happen.

My Bit of Heaven

Not in the powerful wind,

nor the earthquake, nor the fire,

He came in the gentle whisper.

                                                            I Kings 19:11-13

My soul longs for solitude,

like a desert thirsts for water

And somewhere out there,

the solitude is calling me.

In search of it I find

cutout trees against an orange sky.

Snow lays unbroken, pure, white

as the peace it pours over me.

A single leaf is hurried

Scattering across the white in

reckless ignorance to the stillness it is in,

            Too much like me.

I breathe in the silence

and realize I’m home.

His gift to me is a bit of heaven

filling my heart, loved poured in by the Spirit.

I only find it in the gentle whisper.