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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781490753133 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Trafford Publishing |
| Publication date: | 01/23/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 136 |
| File size: | 246 KB |
Read an Excerpt
Whispers in the Wind
By Allyene Palmer
Trafford Publishing
Copyright © 2015 Allyene PalmerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4907-5312-6
CHAPTER 1
Oh, God, you are the frame
You surround
You contain
Me.
What you surround,
You contain, and
It is.
Only because You are am I
And contained,
Surrounded.
It's the frames which make some things important and some things forgotten. It's all only frames from which the content rises.
––EVE BABITZ, b. 1942 American writer
It is hard to change;
It was hard to become what I am,
To get to this place in my life. Yet to be,
And to be becoming day by day,
Hour by quickly passing hour,
Watching breathlessly to see
What the Lord has done, what He will do in me;
Perhaps this is the poetry.
It began, it proceeds, and when I think of it
I pray: Lord, when it is done, let it have become
Something beautiful, something of meaning —- my life, that is. God,
you invented me.
Am I your poem?
The moment of change is the only poem.
—ADRIENNE RICH, b. 1929 American poet
Jesus, I don't know my story - yet.
It is written in the wind and I hear it
Word by word as the Spirit tells it.
Jesus, my story is written in your mind.
Engraved in your love. Tell it to me,
Jesus. Hour by hour speak it
So that I will live;
Wind, Spirit wind, tell my story:
Tell it to me so that each day of my life
Will be true.
Jesus, I don't know my story - yet.
It comes to me from hour to hour
In the wind.
The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
––MURIEL RUKEYSER (1913-1980) American poet
Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knowledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college.
––LILLIAN SMITH (1897-1966) American writer
Take my mind, Lord.
Teach me your ways.
Let me think your thoughts, Lord.
When I get knowledge, Lord,
Give me wisdom.
When I learn to know your ways,
Lord, give me love:
Give me a heart to do what I know.
Apart from you
There is no learning; what do I know
That is not of you?
Give me your mind, Lord.
Let me not presume to think I know
Anything, apart from you.
As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag.
––PATTI SMITH, b. 1943 American singer
Thank you, God, for creating me woman;
Thank you for dying, Jesus, for Eve
and for
raising her up again — woman.
God, bless my womanhood
make it real
make it true
Unbend me, Lord, and set my spirit free
to be not Eve —- but Woman.
Show me the dimensions of
created womanhood, God my Father;
Put in my mind's eye the vision
of what You created
me to be,
Help me to see — and to become fully
Woman.
O, Lord
Help me forget about equality
and status and things like that.
Help me remember You.
Let me come to You with
wounded pride
questions willingness to
listen
hear
Your answers.
You are the one
What else or who else
Matters
Except what matters to You?
O, Lord
If in pleasing You, I please
him and her
and them,
Praise be to You.
The basic discovery about any people is the discovery of the relationship between its men and women.
––PEARL S. BUCK (1892-1973) American writer
Jesus,
you didn't seek
equality
but
servanthood
and so I
pray for willingness
to live for,
to serve,
You.
Give me the heart
Of a willing servant, Lord.
I really want to be
free of pride
arrogance
presumptuousness
Jesus, give me Your heart
so that I may be
a servant,
too, ready to die,
for You.
I thought that the chief thing to be done in order to equal boys was to be learned and courageous. So I decided to study Greek and learn to manage a horse.
––ELIZABETH CADY STANTON (1815-1902) American suffragist
In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind.
—NORA EPHRON, b. 1941 American journalist
Dear Father, God who made me,
God who knew me before the beginning of my days,
Forgave my sin and loves me as I am,
Thank you for my life.
First you created me,
Then you saved me, and now
Day by day you are recreating
And making me new.
O, God, make me what you will;
Help me not resist
Or evade
Changes you want to make.
Help me die, and die and die,
Dear Father —- so Jesus will
Live and live in me.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
—MARGARET WOLFE HUNGERFORD (1850-1897) Irish novelist
Father,
for the sake of my Savior
your beloved Son,
Jesus
who is altogether beautiful
and whose precious
blood
was shed for the sake of cleansing
me from all stain of
sin
for His blessed sake
your eye beholds me as
beautiful.
In passing, also, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance he laid the blame on woman.
––NANCY ASTOR (1879-1964) British politician
So he did; Adam, he blamed the woman,
And she, in turn, the serpent,
But in their silly hearts
They knew they were guilty and they both
Blamed God.
Help me see my sin, dear Lord.
Hold it up before me until
I know,
And until I say it: Forgive me, Lord,
For I have sinned.
Not her fault, his fault, their fault —
But mine!
I, Adam, sinned, God; please forgive me.
She, Eve, sinned, God; please forgive, for my sake,
Her. O, Lord, don't let me lie
To myself, or you. Don't let me try to hide
My sin from you.
Woman's virtue is man's greatest invention.
––CORNELIA OTIS SKINNER (1901-1979) American writer
All have sinned and fallen short,
So says God's word, and I believe
That young or old or black or white or
Woman or man we all fall woefully far
Away from what is good or virtuous.
Good men by the standards of man there are
And women, too,
But what are the standards of man
To the eyes of God?
Even Jesus had no wish
To be called good, reserving that word
Only to the father.
Woman's virtue — or man's —- is to Virtue
As what a span of life is
To Eternity.
No one really wants to be alone, do they, Father?
I think I understand
What she said.
"Let me alone" just means "don't take over my life."
And she was right.
If she let them in they would scrutinize
Her hours, minute by minute,
And, magnifying some minutes,
Miniaturizing others,
Probing and pawing through her habits,
Customs, idiosyncrasies (don't we all have them?)
They would explain her
To their own satisfaction and the world's
Titillation and
Construct of her an image and say
It was who she is, and what would she believe?
She was right.
"Let me alone", she meant:
"Let God tell me who I am."
I only said, "I want to be let alone!"
––GRETA GARBO, b. 1905 Swedish actress
There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.
––WILLA CATHER (1873-1947) American writer
But every story is new to the one who lives it
And new to the world:
Each hero and heroine, every reprehensible act of every villain
New: old the plot, but never repeated
Its characters.
Fiercely repeated as though newly written
Because the Author of the Universe
Has brought forth an unending, ever original
Cast; in every story ever told there is
That unexpectedness
And who can know the ending of it
Until it ends?
To this extent all stories are the same:
We are born
We spend out the sum of our days
Then we die. It is the how of it
Makes the story
A work of marvelous variety
Because the who of it
Is never the same.
O Father, of your grace
Give me gracefulness and
Graciousness
And Father, help me be
Uninhibited and spontaneous,
Let my movements be
Free because You move
In me.
My stiffnecked self, in unrepentant
Prideful locked-in
Self-consciousness, moves jerkily.
Abrupt and ungracious
Is unrepentance.
O Father, let my movements through life
Reveal the grace that You
Have put in me.
Nothing is more revealing than movement.
––MARTHA GRAHAM, b. 1894 American choreographer
Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.
––AMELIA EARHART (1898-1937) American aviator
Courage is ...
Putting your hand in God's hand
And walking where He walks
In light or dark of night
Fair days
Or raging storms
Mountain tops in rarified atmosphere
Deep valleys and dark chasms
Where the maybes and the what-ifs
Take your breath away
Make your heart
Hammer and stop. Hammer and stop.
But you still go on
Holding fast to Him, a step behind; you
Hurry when He hurries
Stop when He stops, almost alongside
But a little bit behind
Like dog at "heel."
That's courage.
My creed is low, be sincere and don't fuss.
––JANE ADDAMS (1860-1935) American social worker
Let love be without dissimulation,
Rejoice with them that do rejoice
And weep with them that weep
And if you have the choice
Live peacably ... Paul told his brothers
In Rome. I want to be like that,
Lord, let me love, rejoice, weep
As Your Spirit moves me
In truth.
Let your peace surround
All that I do and say:
Father, let me love
Without dissimulation
Rejoice with them that do, and weep
With the sad
And when the choice is mine
Live peacably, with a simple creed.
Wind of the Holy Spirit
Blow where God wills
And let endure whatever does
And let die
Whatever cannot live
In the Holy Spirit wind:
Blow away
All that God hates
And let the world be
Reborn-clean!
The world is born; wind, let it endure!
––SIMONE WEIL (1910-1943) French writer
A scheme of which every part promises delight can never be successful; and general disappointment is only warded off by the defence of some little peculiar vexation.
—JANE AUSTEN (1775-1817) English novelist
How we strain and struggle sometimes
To carry out our plans and to do
What we will to do:
It is a fleshly propensity
To plan and scheme and look ahead:
Tomorrow
Next year
When I am 30, 60 ... then
I plan to be able to ... this or that.
And then it is the day
The hour
The moment, and
A slight delay, an ache in the head
Even a mosquito's buzz:
The occasion passes sand it hardly got a sideward glance.
Fortunately, it looks best when we
Look back on it,
Anyway.
O, Father,
Why am I cut off?
Why does darkness hover over everything like this?
I cannot see over it or around it.
The sky is blue, the air is crystalline, there is a nip of frost
And my heart should be
Dancing with the sunlight, yet
Around me is a heaviness,
Foreboding; I am hedged about,
Shut in. How shall I escape
This down-ness, this smoked-glass wall
That holds my spirit down?
O, Father,
When I cannot see your light,
Yet let me be your light
To overcome somebody else's darkness,
And my own.
Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.
––DODIE SMITH, b. 1896 English playwright
When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before.
––MAE WEST, b. 1892 American actress
My Life
Father, choose for me,
I cannot see;
There seems to be
Good in the evil and evil in the good;
White threads intertwined among
the black and black among the
white and the knots and the snarls.
Father, it's a mess
I must confess
My helplessness
To tell good from evil or evil from good
Untangle white threads from
the black or black from the white
or undo all the knots and the ???
I'm sorry I did it,
And tried to hide it,
Father, I give it
All back to You!
There is more difference within the sexes than between them.
––IVY COMPTON-BURNETT (1892-1969) English satirist
Father
You created us male and female
and sometimes I would argue
with that
But, Father God, because
Your Creation all would seem to be
an affirmation of your plan
to show,
Father, Sovereign King,
Your overarching love for all
created things
and us.
Father,
Your love for me and all
my kind, though I cannot
understand
Yet, I do believe, and will
not argue with your plan.
Father, I keep chopping away
At the ugly weeds of sin
That choke my prayers,
And yet they grow day by day;
Why is that?
My child, it is because
You don't understand a garden.
Your weeds grow
From a root that lies deep
And hidden.
The garden of your life is my Son's
And mine, and we also have
A gardener we will send
To sever the roots, just,
Let him.
Here's a rule I recommend. Never practice two vices at once.
––TALLULAH BANKHEAD (1903-1968) American actress
The human Body is wondrously design'd, But not as Habitation for the human Mind!
SAMANTHA FRANKLIN (1852-1879) American pioneer
Only You
Can call me to You, but only I
Can decide, can will to come.
Thus it is grace and only grace
That saves me
And only sin, my own willful sin
That fails to be saved.
There is only one sex.... A man and a woman are so entirely the same thing that one can scarcely understand the subtle reasons for sex distinction with which our minds are filled.
––GEORGE SAND (1804-1876) French writer
Lord God I give you thanks and praise
For planting that seed within my heart
Which helps me love, which bids me love,
Which draws me into the circle, O perfect form of love.
Lord God, my heart lifts up to you as the bud to the sun and rain
It grows; lies open and receptive,
Filling and spilling over with love;
Thanks and praise to You, Lord God, emanates, radiates, in joy as
unselfconscious
As fragrance from the heart of the rose.
Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.
––CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860-1935) American writer
What kind of progress is it that has to be measured in terms of man's ever-growing self indulgence? The more we learn and believe we are advancing, the more self-seeking, self-serving, self-centered we are becoming. This may be progress in the way some look at it, but it brings up a question –– if this is progress, what is the destination? One would like to believe that progress in civilization would be accompanied by progress in tending, feeding, healing, loving one another more than by progress in thinking up more ways to delight the palate and ruin the stomach. Man's progress needs to be toward another destination —- God.
Progress in civilization has been accompanied by progress in cookery.
––FANNIE FARMER (1857-1915) American cooking teacher
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Whispers in the Wind by Allyene Palmer. Copyright © 2015 Allyene Palmer. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing.
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