Brushing the Blue

By Diane Prebula

...You broke the shell of my burden.
I shook inside...You have opened my core...
scores of monarchs in the white sun.

We are challenged to live in pilgrimage in this excerpt from the poem The Call—

When the wind blows by, get on
Breathe azure air until it dominates your veins.
Rest in the adventure of this connection;
you have answered the call—hold on.

Moments where we find ourselves temporarily lost are reflected in these verses from the poem Echoes—

Small fires igniting in the forest
are heating my blood, sounding the alarm...

my head is burning. Smoke jumpers left my voice
to drown in the puddles of my mind.
Fog lumbers in like Leviathan...

...I’ve been circling, and now the circles echo off.
I feel like a shrinking rag. Something’s happening...

When we heed the call, He lays our path on the ground of this mystery, undergirded by the rock of Christ, our certainty, beneath a sky that bursts with promise. We open to a glimpse in the verse from the title poem, Brushing the Blue—

You simmer through our trepidation, and nudge us to wait for You.
You expand us to move forward again where promises burst...
like autumn leaves, sun struck, brush the blue air of relief.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Borderline Publishing
• Release date: Jan 23, 2014

Book preview

Brushing the Blue

Poems by

Diane Prebula

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 © Diane Prebula

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Introduction

While we are searching for a richer, fuller life, most of us blind ourselves to the wonder of the immediate, the now. The world is wound pretty tight and so are most of us, reasoning our way into tomorrow or struggling to untie the knots of our yesterdays. We face a variety of situations that elicit the spectrum from joy to pain. In our humanity, we attempt to avoid suffering. Rather than facing our fears, our pain, we move into a fight, flight, or freeze mode. In this place, we also miss the sound of the birds, the color and texture of the ever-changing sky, and the touch of breeze on our cheek. The rampant addictions and attachments weaken our culture and shout our attempt to avoid reality.

In his book, The Sacrament of the Present Moment, Jean- Pierre de Caussade wrote that as humans, we share a flaw that creates so much misery—we don’t live too much in the present. The moments and hours of the day pass as we neglect to realize the significance of this truth: God is allowing our present circumstances and conditions—through them, He is always speaking, teaching, revealing. This small book, written centuries ago by a French monk/clergyman, speaks clearly to us today.

God wants an intimate, powerful, rich relationship with us. He desires to show us how to be the people that He created us to be as we walk through each day of our lives. He wants us to deal with the reality that He has allowed and to submit to His will. We make our own choices, wise and foolish, and God responds, with his omnipotent wisdom. He is gracious and compassionate, but loves us too much to leave us in our self-created misery. Thus, He presents us with countless opportunities to grow.

The obsession with control robs us of joy and weakens our ability to live creatively. We serve a creative God and are made in His image. We are not wired to choreograph our own destiny; His plan is for us to seek Him first, above everything and everyone, and to creatively work with Him as we discover and implement our gifts and callings.

We have all experienced great loss resulting from