Playing Time Against God: While Still Naked in the Garden

By Theresa L. Avalos

Playing Time Against God is the compilation of experiences in the call to unite the excitement and the hardships of being human in a world of beauty and a world of strife, alongside her brethren in understanding the world. In realizing that it is a choice to live in Love over fear, gratitude over regret and discovery over apathy, her journey reveals a host of scattered emotions and complicated feelings. The ecstasy of joy and the anguish of pain, the distorted thinking, dissatisfaction and revelations she encounters in the fourteen years of her writing that lead to the conscious decision to live for the sake of love, and search for truth. These poems became necessary for her, for she found her voice lies in the melody of ideals, beliefs and theories portrayed in her poetry. Her light and darkness are depicted in her quest to know her true heart and soul that has been let loose inside of the pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514400487

Theresa L. Avalos

At the age of eighteen with an inquisitive open mind and a fire within I found myself in the midst of a journey that placed me unknowingly on a path to living a life towards authenticity, reading all that I could to uncover a way to fulfill the desires of my heart, and the questions on my mind. Why am I here, what am I to do here and how do I face and meet life to live out a purpose?

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Copyright © 2015 by Theresa L. Avalos.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 08/26/2015

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Table of Contents

Rumi Inspires

Pre-Existence

It Wants to Be Forgiven

Dazzling Dream

A Bitter Vision

Vivid Lucidity

Astounding

Honorable Decision

Her Very Own Song

Passion’s Cry

The Sky

Mornings in Her Head

Between you and me

Love’s Endeavor

Changing Colors

Naked in a Dream

Withstanding Social Graces

Simply Love

If Only

Do You Dance

Distractions

A Winner’s Circle

I Look for You

A Child Is Smiling

Revival of His Flame

Too Small Shoes

Silent Spaces

The Colors of Belief

Momma

The Saga of Love

When I See Daisies

Where Is Home

Wonder’s Love

Where is the Point of Entrance?

Family’s Total Love

Celebrating a Life

Enveloped by Your Love

Forbidden Thoughts

Mercy’s Naked Gaze

Heaven’s Eyes

The Rise of an American Family

Tangled Weeds

Teardrops

Returned to Peace

Happy God

Quiet Persuasion

Compassion’s Gift

In a Dream

Master of Madness

Children are the Reason

The Last Blue Moon

I Am That, I Am

Ecstasy in Your Name

The Plan

My Father

Life Lives in the Infinite

Living Inside

Remarkable

Making the Mark

Cousins

Simply Love

Timeless God

Yesterday’s Eyes

The Color of Loneliness

Preface For Freeing Maria

Freeing Maria

Indigenous Woman

Healing

Generations Unite

In Splendid Ways

Insanity

Gathered Them by Heart

My Eyes Are Full

At Last?

My Best Friend

The Fallen

Wishing to Fly

The Other Side of the Moon

Excellence…

Forgetting All the Wonderful Things I Want to Remember

Mercy’s Naked Gaze

Eyes as Big as Sunshine

This Life

Life Lives in the Infinite

Restoring What Has Been Missing

My Everlasting Brothers

The Struggle For Nothing

From me to We

Laying Down My Dream

A Tale of Nothingness

Ask Of Me

We Weren’t Set Up For This

Hasn’t All Been Said

Fly Through, Fly By

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Epilogue

Unfettered

Abuelo

Rumi Inspires

Out beyond rightdoing and wrongdoing

There is a field

I will meet you there

When the soul lies down in that grass

The world is too full to talk about

Jalal al-Din Rumi

Playing Time Against God stems from an internal, living abstract map that was set in motion after being triggered by this poetic cadence of words, where I identified a fidelity to the truth in Love/God echoing and verifying the openness, the vastness inside of life that widened the understanding, that God is life Itself. This single poem by Jalal al-Din Rumi planted a mystical seed that penetrated the womb of my consciousness, giving birth to a boom, a thunder that unlocked what was brutal concerning my mind, harsh on my body, and abrasive to my life. A passionate romantic world of tender language, and the severe sharp voice with a faceless face laid uneasy underneath my facade, all in which were lodged deep inside of the muscles and ancestral cells of my body and the split of my mind, fragments of me picked up the brokenness to look into them, slowly delving deeper into my interior. Poetry that had been nurtured and cradled inside an inner revolution had finally found its dawn the morning I was exposed to my first Rumi poem, that piloted the crucial and inevitable journey of questioning, exploring, and discovering to experience life governed by a pull that never stops pulling, the relentless quest for truth, here in an orchestration of words joined by a melody within, a melody to be placed in this book for the healing of a thousand lifetimes.

Poetry is the echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Carl Sandburg

Pre-Existence

Haven’t we met?

You seem so familiar

Beckoning me loudly

Locked in a memory somewhere

I recognize you in a distant soundless theme

Curious to what gift you’re to bring me

Wondering what gift I have within to offer

What exchanges we are to make

Let’s open up to see the delicious splendor

Is it hidden?

There is no doubt it exists

And we play our parts on top of this stage

Exchanging tales of who we might be

While the unknown longs to be revealed

Reading each other

Building each scene bit by bit

In your presence

With a gaze you offer me a mirror

As I bellow out a laugh

Maybe shed a tear

Find myself blushing in a shade of red

Stomach in a knot from a sort of knowing

What a gracious gift

Your company

Fascinated by our time

Tickled by your light

I am delighted

My companion

My teacher

It Wants to Be Forgiven

It wants to be forgiven

For all the damage it has be an accessory to

But it won’t take all of our blame

Since it only leads to the fire

It is our thoughts that allows the inferno to burn us up

Our deeds demonstrates our thoughts

It demands that treason not be pursued as its wrap

It doesn’t see it as that kind of an error

It won’t take on such a betrayal

Since weakness is too easy to prey on

The flavorless keeps us wanting for something that is in line with our desires

It devours our intentions

And the exposed area is battered

Then the exposed area gets temperamental

Despite the armor we have settled on

It leads with its seduction

And laments on its tasks

It wants to be forgiven, this entity called temptation

Forever is too long to live without being understood

It wants to be forgiven, for living off our greed

Fantastic And Nothing Less

Fantastic and nothing less

Morning enters mixing wonder with a placid dream

Playful caresses the horizon dressed in silver

There she is, tasting colors blazing from a heroic sun

Love and reason at her grasp

Energy rising, enthusiasm at a new high

Dedication taking place on a new front

Love the purpose on her side

Her blood flesh and bones

Restore at a rapid rhythm

Forgiveness she set in motion

Forming an alliance to a whole new way

Kindness and compassion in every direction

The vision of Creation

The obligation of her voice, the rise of the crescendo, trumpets the sound

FANTASTIC AND NOTHING LESS…

Dazzling Dream

I open my eyes and turn to you in gladness

When I dreamt that dazzling dream

Touching the untouched

Tasting sweet nectar

Melting upon my tongue…

In the brightest white

Near the deep blue sea

Laughter all about

Over head a choir of musical angels

In a swift motion I take up to fly

Like a bird I soar

Taking in new dimensions

I settled down

Come to rest

Peaceful from liberation

Perched on a ridge

In the company of the moon

A Phoenix lands

We are side by side

We talk until dawn

This Phoenix tells me…

Her secrets to rising from her ashes

My mother was a phoenix who always expected to rise from the ashes of her latest disaster. She loved being Judy Garland.

Lorna Luft

A Bitter Vision

I once saw a wicked face

Perceiving it all in a backward tale

Keeping me upside down

And twisted…

Forced to face my complications

I was in for a challenge

Refining a lifetime in forgiveness

I labored to put it graciously behind me

Ahead, I took off step by unsteady step

Repeating forgiveness prayers that I chanted

Day after long day

Working to replace this malicious picture

In its place, to remember beauty

As my eyes absorb loveliness

The chaotic emotions finally subside

I was proud and gallant with the notion of a conquest

Not staying on course with forgiveness

Instead complacent

In a moment’s silence a reminder of forgiveness failed to occur

I reentered into a familiar ground

And I entertained a bitter vision

The awkward thought of running into an old reality

Back to the hell I taught myself

The hell of stagnation

Convinced me to give up my sad tale

The opportunity to see a light that sheds defeat

The light of forgiveness

I was forgiving the wrong heart

Too weak I saw me

My shadows too ugly to be seen

Selfish, and I wear too many faces

At once

It was revealed

The problem was me

As mercy comes unwraps and unravels my time here

It all begins to make sense

At last, my blindness decreases

My malfunction is open to see

The chasm between my soul and my heart begins to shrink

Truth that holds me liable to my deeds

Promising favors above my head

Allowing them to reach into me

Once too attached to my dark night

The dispute instead, I rendered it a mystical alteration

The love I almost defied

The hard fall that held me in a fetus position

Ministered to me

In harmony with an intimate beat

In touch with the stars

To compare the light

Love once again conquers what is foul

Changes my mind with a change of heart

Transcending from moment to moment

Releasing the heartache of an internal battle, that love now tends after

To be liberated from a twisted mind that has me split into pieces

Silly irritations have been passing me by

No longer holding me as a peculiar kind of hostage

Holding another to any kind of expectation, is a recipe for my rage

Judging my neighbor only demonstrates my nature

Loving my proclaimed enemy transforms my ailments

Exchanging poison for nectar

Now it is evident to me

That we were all uttered and designed by the Creative Force

Blue print done in brilliance

Under the law of Love

Can it be that differences turn the earth around?

Where diversity eats away at mediocrity

Vivid Lucidity

The universe explodes through