Respite

A respite from the heat,
A shelter from the storm,
Or warming hut where,
Bursting flames from embers warmed.
A soft embrace.
A gentle touch.
A whispered wisp of hope reborn.
A head held high,
that once knew shame.
That which was lost,
A friend reclaimed.
GW Yeatman

Prelibris

Two covers hope to bind a codex-once a scroll.
Its leaves are inked with dreams and hope
   -the weave and warp of fabric yet untold.
A shadow-shape (a friend? A foe?) doth leer
   agaze upon the protag now amire on muddy trail,
What scribe did feather, hold in hand?
Whose mind conceived such sullen plot-a horrid tale?
Yet script be torn and shred and burned-to what avail?
   -alas, anew: composer wakes, begins again.
                                                           G.W. Yeatman

The Metaphors of God

The scriptures are replete with the language of rich metaphor.  From the celestial to the terrestrial, examples are almost beyond enumeration.  Christ is the Light of the World, the Bright and Morning Star, the great pillar of fire that led the Israelites by night, a cloud that preceded them by day.  Then, touching earth, the Savior becomes the Cornerstone, a stumbling block to some, the stone rejected by the builders, the solid rock upon which a house withstands the storm.  

The Cedars of Lebanon bear reference to massive size and strength, the mustard seed to the tiny becoming the mighty.  The Rose of Sharon shares its beauty and delightful aroma while the Balm of Gilead provides healing.  Our senses are challenged as we are asked to “taste and see” the Bread of Life, to partake of his body and blood, to touch the hem of his garment, feel the scars of his crucifixion, and drink living water from his overflowing well.

He is light where there is darkness, ever-quenching water in parched places, the only gate by which we approach the Father, the caring Shepherd rescuing a solitary, lost and trapped lamb. His kingdom is as precious as a pearl redeemed from a common field, seed having fallen and thrived on nutrient-rich soil, a net having gathered a multitude of fish, yeast as the expanding leaven of eternal life.

And we--his followers--are limbs grafted onto the True Vine, wheat surrounded by noxious weeds, sheep who know his voice and follow.  We are asked to join him, the great husbandman, to bear and gather fruit.  We are to cast our nets as fellow fishers of men.

I wish to entice the believer to remain at the plow, the lost to find the narrow path, the weary to bear His lightened yoke.  The harvest remains scarcely gathered.  The crop is abundant, but the harvesters are few. GW Yeatman

Some Thoughts on Time and being dropped into it.

GW Yeatman

Once I was proud to say I was born in the first half of the 20th Century, although I silently treasured it more than audibly proclaiming it.  Today, however, that sounds like a “long-long-ago-in-a-far-away place” fairy tale. Born in 1946, I was in the leading edge of the baby boomer bulge.  Unlike my older brother who was a child during WWII, I had no concept of war having been a recent event.  It was very ancient history to me.  Hitler may as well have been Napoleon.  In Boy Scouts we made fun of the Führer in a toilet paper skit--that fecal tyrant of yesteryear now wiped out and flushed.

Now the Civil War, as it is frequently, called was even more ancient at one hundred years--an eternity.  Today, as my childhood friend from Ecuador points out, he and I are half the "distance" into the future as the war had been into the past, a shear impossibility.  The War Between the States is now 150 years past!  How could that be?

At fifteen years of age, it seemed that a decade and a half was quite a long time.  My classmates and I felt as though we were adults.  Indeed, 15 years had been our entire lives, how else were we supposed to view it?  I even wrote a biography for school titled "my life".  

Dates into the future seemed astronomically distant. The book 1984 was futuristic science fiction, but now the date and book are but fleeting memories.  My adolescent buddies and I plotted--no matter where we were--to get together when the great, celestial spectacle Halley's Comet returned in 1987.  Again, it seemed like we would be meeting almost a lifetime into the future.  It came, the comet fizzled, and we didn't even bother to get together.  We did discuss it, but both the spectacle and its eternity had diminished.

Less than a decade after adolescence I was in medical school, but the eight years of prior schooling had seemed like forever. Shortly after graduation I began collecting "old" medical books. This included a set of the Transactions of the New York Medical Society from 1884 to 1889. It seemed that I would have to keep them many, many years before they were a hundred years old. The first one was only about dozen years out, but that was almost half of my existing life. Another was a third of my life beyond the first.  Presently it seems that I’ve had those books for ages and now I am half as old as they are!

When we are very young even five years can seem like an eternity.  My grandson Jordan at about that age showed me pictures of himself taken "a long time ago."  Time is, in fact, very relative. And by that I don't mean I have relatives who have been around a long time!  Although it’s true.  In the past few years I have had two great uncles die at the "ripe old age" of about ninety-five, a third of the age of our country!  

What does it mean to be ripe when we are old anyway? Well, that is another discussion entirely.  Maybe I will address it at a later date, "time" permitting.