A little background: I started writing 40+ years ago. According to my records, I wrote this for Bible camp not long after I started becoming a writer. Thus it is even more vintage than the piece which preceded it.

THE HOLY'S LOVE

It is complex, yet simple.
The wisest of all men cannot accurately define it, but one needs only the completely trusting faith of a child to accept it.
There are no strings attached, yet when accepted wholeheartedly all one's life is bound over to Him.
When communication is established between the finite and Infinite, the Infinite accepts the voluntary servitude of the finite, yet it cannot be called servitude for when love is included it becomes a desired thing.
What is the Holy's love?
It is complex, yet simple.
The wisest of all men cannot accurately define it, but one needs only the completely trusting faith of a child to accept.
"Whoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein" (Luke 18:17, KJV).

This is another vintage piece. I wrote it nearly 30 years ago while attending a conference in Dordt IA as a member of a small Christian theater group. I served as the stage manager, or, person who managed to get the rest on to the stage.

I was in one of the intro introspective frames of mind. But then, if you read all the way to the end, that will be clear.

"In Search Of Elizabeth"

My body is a house of brick
And wood and I am
Brick and wood,
Flammable and hardly penetrable.
I know better what I am not
Than what I am, for that is what
I have been told more often and
With greater success and recall.

I have come (that was yesterday) and
Tomorrow I shall go. Have I learned
Or did I know already?

Free body/senses? No! Impossible! UnChristian!
As is jealousy. Imagination? Ambition?
No! Not Jesus. Compassion, yes.
Sensitivity, yes. Free? No! Yet,
If not free, then insensitive and insensible.

Back through torturous circuitous routes
To the silent solemn craft, solitary
Votary of pen, thought, word,
Devotee of that which is,
Of he who is all's source and sustenance.

Back to solitude,
The woman's mind behind the child's face,
Graceless, voiceless,
A mime not a truth,
An empty vulgar common mirror
Having glass and frame and no separate self
From those who look at/into it.

A shell in which the sea is heard
Yet neither is nor holds the sea,
Just its sound, just its memory.

The prisoner is the prison now,
And both at last at least are one.

Free is wrong, free is crass,
Singular or en mass.

The writer has written.
The actor has spoken the lines.
If I am not me, then who am I and who
Has taken hand to pen again?

THE END

Introduction to HARD TIMES ARE EASY TO COME BY A Pilgrim's Process

Ever since childbood I have borne the stigma of being "different." Physically I have never been very graceful, a fact you aren't allowed to forget as a girl (or as a girl becoming a woman) and not because I could (always) help being clumsy, uncoordinated, shaky.
Epileptic.
Perhaps I was overprotected. I know that there were taunts from school-mates and that I became a loner.
In grade school I fought. Literally. In high school I withdrew. I became a scholar, it being a socially acceptable alternative. In college I broke (another story).
Finally I came to see that God didn't lay this on me to cramp me, but to temper me, to give me an object to overcome and to enable me to accept and have some understanding of others who are in some way "different."
I could not understand until I had accepted. I had to repent of my anger and accept my "thorn," my lack of wholeness-in-myself before I was free to be (becoming) whole in God.

Psalm 139 and 2 Corinthians 1 are both passages which have been among my supports on the subsequent journey.

Seasons

Seasons consist of more than snow and ice or leaves and birds
These are words
Which hold the meanings, condense them
Rather than immense them

Seasons take place inside of us, not just externally,
These changes sometimes seem infernally
Long, or not long enough, emotional or indifferent,
Hard to sum up, frustrate, intelligent
As one might be,
Initially
Seasons brighten, enlighten, but with time
Only seem to mime
Making words worse
Concepts reverse
Thoughts en-hearse
Letters run together, run on, sentence themselves to spell check and grammar
Drops the hammer
Yet I yammer
From the slammer
Of this thought:
Nothing we experience can ever be for naught
Every season
Has its reason