TMC Community Worship July 2024

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hands Not Held

Image
  In a room where greetings weave,  a gesture extends—a common thread.  Yet her hands, folded, quietly cleave  to the fabric of a past that bled.   For where some see an offer, a sign,  she sees the shadows of a darker play.  Those hands, once weapons, cross a line  that to others seems miles away.   Imagine the hands, not tools of peace,  but of war, that touched without grace,  that stripped the night of any lease  on safety, on a sanctified space.   So, when hands reach out to bridge a gap,  her heart retreats to a fortress old,  built on tremors of a former trap,  lined with stories, silent and cold.   Yet in her strength, a tale unfolds,  not of the hands that caused her fear,  but of the power that she now holds,  to define touch, to hold it dear.   In every greeting she might refuse,  there is a stand, a boundary set.  Her hands are hers to use—or not—  a choice...
Read more

Half-Light / Embers

I. Half-Light I am a ghost in my own skin, a flicker between breaths, hanging on to the edge of a pill as if it were a cliff’s root, white-knuckled and ashamed. The night tastes of iron and static; my thoughts scatter like birds spooked from an empty field. I don’t want to live. But I don’t want to leave the few who still reach for me in the dark. Their care is a small, steady lantern. I see it through the fog and hate myself for dimming it. This body, this mind, wired to ache and unravel— it whispers quit . But something, a pulse, a memory, a thread of light keeps whispering stay . I don’t call it hope. I don’t call it healing. It’s just a ragged, trembling breath that keeps me here, a half-light for the half-living, waiting for a dawn I cannot yet imagine but haven’t quite let go. II. Embers And yet— beneath the ash, a coal still glows. Small as a heartbeat, but warm enough to thaw one fingertip at a time. The night does not last forever, even when it feels endless. It is stitched wi...
Read more

The Cost of Becoming

I thought the leaving would happen all at once A single storm, a wave that crests and breaks And leaves behind a smooth, new shoreline Where only the brave remain.   But loss has patience. It lingers in empty chairs at family gatherings, In holiday cards that never come, In the sudden cold of a friend’s silence.   The price is more than paperwork Though there are days when my name is a line item On some bureaucrat’s form, My identity contingent on stamps and signatures, A scavenger hunt through offices and websites For the right letter, the right code, Proof that I belong to myself.   It is the ache of every sideways glance, The stinging echo of a once-loving voice Turned sharp or silent. It is waiting on hold, listening to bad music, Rehearsing explanations for the hundredth time, Trying to convince a stranger That my happiness is not a clerical error.   Yet, beneath the pile of rejections, Underneath the smud...
Read more