SMILING EYES

Lying in the sunshine of Your love,
Recounting humming bird days,
Flitting as flashes flung to the heavens,
I look to the horizon,
For the rising of yet another sun.

I feel I know You.
It is me I doubt,
But I don’t know why.
I have spent my life
Becoming what I think
You want me to be.
Others, though, have always
Seemed to do it better.

Here I am at eve tide,
Recounting the many waters,
That wash these shores.
Your Beauty plays for me,
Painting the setting sun;
I guess, to reassure my clay
Of The Love You are,
As I still look for me,
Reflected in Your smiling eyes.

copyright 2014 Joann Nelander

Hand in Hand on Pilgrimage

Hand in hand on pilgrimage,
Joy and tears are caught up
And carried aloft,
On the wings of angels,
And placed in the brazier
Before the throne of God,
With our hearts prostrate,
And spirits pleading,
For that final awakening
Of which the Saints speak,
And the Church,
In union with Her Bridegroom,
Proclaims through the long Ages,
Leading all to Final Rest.

Come, Christ, Savior,
Come, Happiness of All Souls and Saints,
Come, my Jesus, O Journeys’ End.

copyright 2014 Joann Nelander

Food For the Poor

Lord, make my ears
Hungry for Your Word.
Give me a living relationship
With Your Father,
Who Fed You
In solitude.

May every Word He Speaks
Resound in my spirit.
May it nourish me,
Sustaining me,
As all, worshiping the world,
Suffer famine,
For want of Faith.

With Bread comes
Health and vigor,
Power to feed others
With the Food You give me
Daily at Your Table.

I listen for Your call
I listen for Your footsteps.
I hear You,
In the breaking
Of Your Word.
Bread for the hungry world.

HOLY SEE

I was looking at Your Heart,
Alight with rays,
Gushing from Your parted Breast.

I realized that heart was just like mine,
Human,
Yours aflame,
Shooting forth on wings of Holy Dove,
And mine,
Still learning how, what
And Who to love.

Love You are, and Love You give,
Bursting upon Time and Space, and Me,
And myriads akin to me,
Merely mortal, and yet more.

Heart rays, sacred emanations
Of Who You Are,
Enflame, to fire fleshly hearts
In Your Eternal Streams
Giving Your Life to all
Who dare in hope
To welcome and adore.

Who but God could conceive
So great a good;
Your Heart is mine,
And mine is Thine
And I , at long-last, see.

©2014 Joann Nelander

WRATH OF GOD, A LIVING HELL

The Wrath of God blazes forth
As left to myself,
I behold myself.
Where is His image in me?
What have I done ?

Where God is not,
Only Hell resides.
Life has become my agony,
With self-inflicted wounds.

Unchanging Purity of Being,
Fire of Love,
I, now, the antithesis,
Banishing God to the periphery
Holding Him at bay.
My kingdom, my way!

Sin rages in His absence,
A counterfeit of life,
For where the Creator is not,
There is only dissipation.
Creating nothing;
Loving no one,

I built a world apart,
Overruled His Plan,
Overturned His "Shalt Nots"
With tolerance and choice.
There is no compromise for Truth.
Sin is always a choice,
Or it is not sin.

The Wrath of God blazes forth.
Consumes the idol, self.
Now, to turn, to choose anew,
To turn again before the final hour,
While it is still Day,
No more to turn away!

So splendid a freedom is love
That it can not come to be
Without an altar,
And in the Fire of Love,
To sacrifice my "Me".
©2014 Joann Nelander

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The Strength of a Man

The strength of a man
Is not in weapons and might,
But in his heart,
Powered by faith in God.

©2014 Joann Nelander