At the Door of Your Heart

I spoke my truth not to bind you,

But because the heart, when full, must speak.

What I offered was not a demand,

Only a confession

Pure, deliberate, and sincere.

If my words arrived before their season,

I pray they do not bruise our friendship,

For I treasure it

Not as a consolation,

But as something already complete and beautiful.

Your presence in my life matters,

Whether love blooms or not.

Yet hear this, gently:

I have not turned away.

I stand at the quiet door of your heart,

Not with force,

Not with impatience,

But with reverence.

I knock not with noise,

But with constancy.

With kindness.

With time.

Knowing that doors are not broken into

They are opened when the soul is ready.

And if that door never opens,

Still, I will honor the house it protects.

Still, I will value the friendship it shelters.

Still, I will respect you, wholly.

This is my promise:

No pressure.

No resentment.

Only truth,

And a heart willing to wait or to remain a friend. 

From What Was to What Will Be

We stand at the lip of midnight 

breath held like a benediction,

the old year folding itself into a pocket of memory.

Goodness and grief have come in equal measure:

gifts wrapped in light, lessons wrapped in ache.

Thank you, I murmur to every bitter hour and sweet hour alike,

for each taught me how to steady my hands, how to pray when the night was long.

Tonight I release the worn-out maps of doubt,

the debts of worry, the small betrayals of fear.

I lay them gently on the altar of last year,

and watch the embers of what was burn bright and teach.

I am grateful for the doors that opened,

for the voices that stayed, for the hands that let go 

all sacred teachers on a strange and tender road.

Even sorrow, sober and stern, disciplined my heart to hope.

Now, a new road unfurls like scripture yet unread,

blank as first snow, humming with possibility.

I step forward with cautious courage, with a laugh tucked into my pocket,

and a prayer on my lips: that mercy will walk beside me, steady as dawn.

May faith be the lamp I carry, not a shield against questions,

but a light that shows the way when choices are fogged.

May compassion be my compass, generosity my currency,

and humility the shoes with which I travel.

We will build nothing perfect, only brave;

we will stumble, then gather up our courage and rise.

Let each failure be fertilizer for the next bloom,

each grace an answered whisper from a sky that remembers our names.

Come, New Year, we welcome you with open hands,

with songs half-formed and promises to keep.

Be gentle with our fragile plans; be fierce with our faith.

Lead us into laughter, into work that matters, into love that endures.

And when the road narrows, and shadows lengthen,

let us recall this night of gratitude and vow again:

to be kinder, truer, more alive 

to trust that every ending is the seam of a new beginning.

Amen and onward, with hope.

He Came in the Quiet

Before the world took breath in morning song,

the promise kindled patient as a seed in winter,

a whispered covenant folded into the dark.

Prophets held the word like a lamp,

waiting on the hinge of time.

An angel bent the sky and spoke a name,

and a humble home became the ear of heaven.

She heard the world rearrange itself 

a promise pressed into her womb,

a grave expectation turned to blossom.

There was no heraldry in the place of birth,

only the hush of ox-hum and the close, warm breath

of ordinary lives. A manger cradled holy poverty;

swaddling cloths wrapped the infinite in smallness.

The King came not with drums, but with a mother’s lullaby.

Outside, the hills kept watch as shepherds trembled,

and heaven spilled its plain light across their fear.

Angels poured a chorus into the night:

not a song of judgement but of mercy’s arrival,

a proclamation: peace to the searching, goodwill to the small.

A star, relentless and true, cut a path through history,

leading strangers with foreign feet and bowed gifts

to kneel where a child lay gold for sovereignty,

frankincense for prayer, myrrh for what sorrow will demand.

Even the wise were undone by the holiness of simplicity.

This is the mystery: heaven stooped and took a breath we could touch;

the Word folded into flesh, speech made kin with skin.

Not to astonish the mighty, but to redeem the ordinary 

to stitch grace into the seams of daily bread,

to make a home of the human heart.

Listen: the cries of that night still cleave to the world,

a clarion for the lost, a lantern for the weary.

In the soft circumference of that newborn cry

we find the map back to ourselves. to mercy, to courage,

to a love that keeps its vows across centuries.

Come, then, with open hands and unguarded hearts;

receive the gift placed in lowly sight.

Let the manger teach you the economy of grace:

what is greatest arrives as smallness, and strength as gentleness.

Walk from that stable into the cold world warmed anew.

For the miracle of Christmas is not only birth,

but the daring of God who chooses to dwell among us 

Emmanuel, God with us, that we might not be alone.

And so we lift our imperfect songs into the sky:

not merely to remember, but to be remade.

The Gifts of Christmas

The gifts of Christmas come wrapped in light,

In swaddling love on a silent night.

A child so tender, born in a stall,

Bringing salvation, the greatest gift of all.

The gift of hope, in the star that shone,

Guiding the wise to a manger throne.

In the darkest night, it glimmers bright,

A beacon of peace, a promise of right.

The gift of joy, as angels sing,

"Heaven has sent its newborn King!"

Their songs proclaim through the skies above,

A Savior is born, a gift of love.

The gift of grace, unearned, yet free,

Redeeming souls for eternity.

Through nail-pierced hands and a thorn-crowned brow,

The child redeems, even here and now.

The gifts of Christmas, eternal, divine,

Transcend all treasures that sparkle and shine.

Wrapped not in ribbons but in mercy and care,

A love everlasting, beyond all compare.

This season, remember these gifts so true,

They shine in the hearts of me and you.

For Christmas is more than the presents we see

It’s God’s endless gift of love to thee.

The Twilight Between Worlds (An Ode to the Body’s Last Secret)

O quiet vessel, once thunderous with breath,

Now stilled beneath the velvet hush of eternity.

The pulse that sang of triumphs and tears has faded,

Yet something, unseen, unsurrendered, stirs

In the cathedral of your stillness.

Death, it seems, is only the body’s bow,

Not the soul’s final curtain.

Life does not end, it unravels,

Gently, reverently, like a scroll in God’s hands.

Each cell releases its hymn, each nerve its memory,

As the spirit, shy as dawn 

Rises from the ruins of the flesh.

The brain, that palace of thought, falls quiet;

Its stars dim one by one,

But beyond the darkened dome,

A greater light begins to burn.

The heart yields its throne of rhythm,

The faithful organ of mortal love 

Yet love itself, untethered, ascends.

The organs rest, the muscles slacken,

The breath departs…

And still, within the soft rebellion of the cells,

Life whispers to itself: “Not yet.”

Scientists call this the twilight of death,

But the soul calls it crossing.

Between pulse and peace, there is a bridge of wonder,

A tender trembling where the eternal wakes.

Even as the cornea glimmers its last reflection,

The spirit beholds its first horizon.

White blood cells hold their post a while longer,

As if protecting the departing traveler

Until heaven takes the shift.

Oh mystery of divine design 

That even decay can be holy.

That the body, in all its frailty,

Should cradle eternity’s secret in its marrow.

Each dying gene sings its last psalm,

And the spirit, luminous, unshaken.

Hears the echo and answers: “I am.”

O beloved dust,

You were never meant to vanish,

But to change your shape in the hands of God.

What the grave calls ending,

He calls awakening, transitioning.

For the Creator wastes nothing 

Not the breath, not the heartbeat,

Not even the silence that follows.

Alas, as the flesh dissolves into the hush of time,

The soul steps forward, barefoot in light,

Leaving behind its brief and broken shell 

A letter of love addressed to the earth.

The wind reads it. The stars remember.

In that twilight between worlds,

Where death pauses to listen,

Heaven opens its arms

And whispers back the body’s final plea:

“Not yet? Then come.”

And in that sacred moment 

When surrender becomes ascension,

And silence becomes song 

The soul, at last,

Goes home.

Lord, Teach Us to Pray

O Lord, teach us to bow before Thy throne,

With hearts laid bare, before Thee alone.

Guide our whispers, our joys, and our pleas,

To rise as incense, borne upon the breeze.

Teach us to pray with faith that believeth,

Through every storm, Thy hand still weaveth.

When words fail us, and silence remaineth,

Let our sighs be the music that sustaineth.

O Lord, teach us to pray with gratitude pure,

For mercies each morning, steadfast and sure.

In sorrow or triumph, through darkness or day,

Let trust in Thy wisdom light our way.

Teach us the tongue of love and grace,

To seek Thy presence, to see Thy face.

Make prayer the rhythm of our daily song,

A lifeline of hope when the days grow long.

Lord, teach us to kneel with hearts made anew,

To pour out our praise and rest in Thee true.

In every prayer, may Thy will hold sway,

Forever and always Lord, teach us to pray.

Charity: A Flame of the Soul

Not in the clink of coins alone,

Nor in the hands that give a stone

Charity breathes where hearts ignite,

A flame that turns the dark to light.

It speaks no boast, it seeks no praise,

It walks in quiet, hidden ways.

It lifts the fallen, feeds the weak,

And finds the words the silent speak.

It is the thread in beggar’s cloak,

The balm on wounds that pride once broke.

It is the tear a stranger dries,

The food that multiplies and flies.

No law can bind it, none restrain

The grace that flows from others’ pain.

For Charity is love in deed,

A soul that answers every need.

It asks not why, nor who, nor when,

It heals the hearts of broken men.

The gold it gives is not of earth

But kindness, courage, hope, and worth.

Give and let your giving glow

In secret streams the world may never know.

For what you give in love, lives on

A light long after you are gone.