Good morning, Jesus.
Here we are again,
At the beginning of a new day.
Can you feel me?
Here I am in Your Great Heart,
Reaching for You with my heart.
I feel Your eyes upon me.
You are perfume to my senses.
You are the touch of sweetness
I taste wafting on the breeze of Spirit.
You sound in my heart
With the beating of Yours.
Ever near, ever dear, everlasting,
Song of my soul.
Good morning, my Jesus.
Hold me here,
On the brink of eternity.
©2014 Joann Nelander
Here I am,
Your poor one,
Your lowly one,
Your empty one,
Kneeling in adoration..
You spread out Space and Time,
Knowing You would call me forth.
And then You did.
You called to me,
Forming me from the Earth,
You Who played among the Pleides,
Stooped to play with me.
You kissed me,
With the Breath of Your Mouth,
You filled me,
Shaping me,
Empowering me,
Placing in me a formless hope.
Hope grew with the babe,
And sought with fingers of my senses.
Peeling back the covering of Mystery,
Revealing treasures hidden in the earth,
And dancing in the heavens,
Witnessed with wonder in the Night,
The Universe invited me to You,
To join You in the dance,
For which all Time and Space,
All days and all nights,
All mystery had poured forth,
With Your Cry for Light.
Your Heartbeat created the rhythms of the constellations,
The ebb and flow of cosmic seas.
Your Heart beat for Your dream of Man,
Your dream of me.
You, given as gift,
Hidden from blind eyes,
Hidden among the stars,
Spreading across Your Time,
Filling all Your Majestic Space,
Slowly whispering Your secrets,
And revealing truths,
Revealed Ultimate Truth.
You in Your Way spoke to me.
There was more than matter wrapped in my being.
Secreted without shape,
Without form,
Without stuff,
With only the power to will,
And, thereby, to Love,
To know,
And, thereby, to seek and search,
That, in living, I might come to discover You,
With me, beside me and all around me,
Waiting for me to love You.
You, Who always knew me,
And loved me,
In my ignorance,
In my blindness
And in my very being,
Even while Sin entered in to obscure Your work,
And the wonder of me,
Graced me with a soul.
I didn’t know You.
I couldn’t see You.
I didn’t know to seek after You.
Until I saw You hanging there,
Crossing the abyss,
Above the world,
Suspended and told throughout Time,
Now, at long last, I pray,
And gasp for You, my Breath.
You are the shape of me,
Saved for an eternity
Beyond gaseous matter,
And starry night,
A Day created by the One Uncreated,
And lived in the Wedding
Of Love, of soul and Spirit-being.
For this I will,
With my indomitable will,
Keep praying.
Copyright 2015 Joann Nelander
Your love is sweeter than the honey dripping upon the lover’s tongue,
Sweeter than wine that wakens the palate to new delight.
Your love is aroma and taste penetrating the heart.
It is the roof growing higher,
And foundation of my world,
Glimpsing heaven and begging it near.
Your love is sweeter than my life.
It is invitation and enticement,
Known and unknowing,
Higher than happiness,
Straining to the Holy.
Your Love is the beginning and end of Life.
Falling on the world,
Drop by drop,
Yet, like a river in flood,
Endless and eternal,
The crossing of Now and Forever
Meeting in my bosom,
Drawing me free from myself,
Into You.
In Your thirst
You are all poverty,
Hungry,
And yet all supplying,
Giving and spent,
Still full in Your Emptiness.
Your Love is sweeter than this life,
Holy with promise,
You ring my heart with longing
And satisfy my depths and queries.
With Truth, You show me the heaven of Your Heart,
And bid me “Come.”
© 2016 Joann Nelander
“I Saw You Under the Fig Tree.”
All our yesterdays are forgotten
With the rush of Tomorrow.
All the words fade away.
Images are fleeting.
All praise passes into oblivion.
The compliments lost,
As unrecorded history.
All things are sand
Falling through the fingers of the Future.
None endure the winds of Time.
So, what of me?
What is the why of me?
Why do You long for me?
I feel your desire pleading
In all about me.
“I saw you under the fig tree.”
What did you see of me, O Lord?
Did you see my yearning?
Were You witness to my sin?
Did you hear the prayer I whispered,
The call of my heart.
Did you see resolve written on my face?
Did you see the love
Swelling my heart?
What did you see of me, Oh Lord,
Under the fig tree?
Because You saw me
Under the fig tree,
My heart opens to see You.
You reveal a world and love
Beyond all that is matter,
Beyond all that once mattered,
Surpassing all that is,
A world of God ,
A world of God in all,
And for all,
Dying to live in all.
I didn’t see You,
Until now,
This precious Now,
Surviving my mortality,
With the reason of my being,
With the holy vision of Thou.
© 2016 Joann Nelander
Virgin of Vladimir by the hand of JOANN NELANDER
n silence I wait, silent.
Thanksgiving and praise have created the dome about me,
As angels carry their worshipful sound
And sing my song before the Throne of God.
I am implicitly carried with their melody,
Hidden in the words playing before my God.
The Gates open to admit my presence.
I enter, bowing low,
And I am lifted on high.
Kissing the cheek of my Savior,
I wrap my arms about His Neck,
As He on earth,
Loving embraced His virginal Mother
With an all holy and forever Love.
I rest in Your Sabbath Rest,
Gathering strength for the storm,
That Your Triumph may rain down blessing,
To make all days Your Day.
Here in silence, You whisper.
And, yet, is it not, the glorious and triumphal Shout?
Reign, my Savior and King, in your little ones
Longing for You and the Eternal Rest.
Copyright 2015 Joann Nelander
What have I, My Lord,
But my beating heart,
My pulsing blood,
My seemingly useless toil,
The tears and sweat,
That mark my life?
Yet, I persevere,
I fight,
I cry,
I shout through the Night.
Though in the tumult,
And the rancor of holocaust,
My screams scarcely rise above a whisper.
I make of my heart a sanctuary,
A resting place for my God.
I long to comfort You,
For my wounds pierce Your Heart,
And tear Your Most Innocent Flesh.
It is You Who are rejected
In the womb of the world,
Women crying,
“Get out you untimely thing.”
Men forsaking love once declared.
Come here to me.
I will cry with You.
I will tend Your wounds,
Hold Your Hallowed Hand.
Each morn anew
I will embrace my lot.
My thoughts will meet ridicule,
But the stripes,
Fall anew on You.
Soldiers of the heart
Swell Your growing ranks,
As mere men take arms
Against Legion.
Each a knight born of a Revelation,
Your Love,
Your Faithfulness,
Your Victory.
© 2016 Joann Nelander
Be Holy! 