It’s time once again to respond to the SECRET KEEPER’S LATEST WRITING PROMPT.
Click on the underlined link to see what others have added to the prompt.
Our prompt words this week are:
5) Words: | REASON | BREAK | STAY | GIVE | RAIN |
Shadorma (3 – 5 – 3 – 3 – 7 – 5)
six lines – no rhymes – multiple stanzas [your choice] – just follow meter
Give Reason
by JE Lillie
Give Reason
To the rain. Season
Of breaking
Stay silent
No more. Speak now your purpose
And return my joy.
This week THE SECRET KEEPER has given us these five words to help us in our creative process:
| WAIT | MEET | TEAR | ACCEPT | CEASE |
Based on these themes, I have chosen to write a a short story this week entitled:
“Braided”
by JE Lillie
I gazed into the mirror hardly recognizing the man staring back. My beard had gotten long and gray.The hair that lay over my shoulder in that long braid was threaded with the same silver that speckled my chin. I looked so tired and old. When had that happened?
The answer flew to mind immediately…no delays there. Life had changed a year-and-a-half before when she left to “find herself”. I wept. I shouted. I begged. I threatened. Nothing worked. She packed and was gone.
That’s when I began the fast. I made a Nazirite vow that day. Maybe it was a little extreme. Maybe it was a little Old Testament. Maybe I couldn’t do the sacrifice part with the lamb, but the rest I was determined to accomplish. I was going to show God I was serious about wanting her back.
In those first months I sent flowers and cards. I called her cell and texted when she wouldn’t answer. I spent my mornings and evenings begging God for her return.
About month five, I began to hear that Inner Voice repeat again and again “They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.” I studied the verse from Isaiah; Ruminated on it. I learned that the word “wait” meant to be braided together with God, intertwined completely with His will.The day I learned that, was the first day I braided my hair symbolically to embrace God’s will whatever it was.
Somewhere in the journey the fast stopped being about my marriage and started being about me. In the braiding and unbraiding of my hair a hundred times I learned I was not the man I should have been. I stopped crying for her return and started crying for my own return to the true Lover of My Soul.
She was getting remarried to a good friend of ours even as I looked into that mirror and saw the old man before me. That hurt, but I knew one thing. I no longer needed the braid. God’s will had been done and in spite of my pain I was at peace with it. And that was worth waiting for.
I took the scissors and cut through the braid. It was time to move on.
It is time to write my last poem of 2015. Using the Secret Keeper’s list of words I am choosing to use the Shadorma form to sing my way into the 2016.
My necessary words this week are: | PART | STONE | FLAW | STRICT | NOTE |
Prophetic Song For the New Year
by JE Lillie
Still as stone
The old year sounds dead.
Flawed strict notes
Cannot be
Played again. Their parts undone,
I sing a New Year.
Flaws begin
With new notes unheard.
Unrehearsed
Parts falter.
Strict rhythms fall apart like
Water crumbling stones .
A cycle
Then more than a song
Symphony.
Flawed strict notes
My new theme a stone in place
Part of larger work.
THE SECRET KEEPER has released our 16th writing prompt. This week our poetic forms are:
Haiku (5 – 7 – 5)
Tanka (5 – 7 – 5 – 7 – 7)
Shadorma (3 – 5 – 3 – 3 – 7 – 5)
six lines – no rhymes – multiple stanzas [your choice] – just follow meter
Nonet (9 – 8 – 7 – 6 – 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1) progression downward of syllables
Cinquain (2 – 4 – 6 – 8 – 2) five line poem on any theme with the earlier mentioned syllable pattern
Our buzz words are: | COMFORT | HEAD | SPACE | MELT | WICKED |
After you have read and made your comments on my Nonet please check out the other submissions at the underlined link above.
While They Slept
by JE Lillie
“Comfort! Comfort my people!” He said.
Space melted time and memory.
Spirits slumbered. Sleepy saints
Mistook the Living Head
For just another
Among wicked
Masses bent
To a
Cross.
This post is written in response to:
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_writing_challenge/digging-for-roots/
Roots in Rocky Soil
by JE Lillie
I stood by the western wall of Blarney Castle staring at the twisted roots, remnants of the growth that had once encased the castle in its strength. The image took me back to my own family whose roots were not in Ireland but in a place just as rocky, some would say barren.
I grew up just South of the New Hampshire border smack dab in the middle of Massachusetts. I was third generation conservative Republican in one of the most liberal states in the union. My father was a small business man and civically minded citizen in the seventies, fully ensconced in the small business world, strongly favoring the free market economy while standing firmly against every philosophy of the “liberal pinko commies”, as he called them. Both Dad and Gramps served in town leadership throughout their lives choosing to ply their minority political stance wherever they could.
Dad was a hard man and I was his soft son. We were as different in manner as two men could be. He spent his days practicing his shot on ants in the back yard. I collected the little critters in jars trying to save them from my dad’s quick draw.
I began my spiritual journey early in life. At first I was fascinated by witchcraft. As a young teen I studied with the Jehovah’s Witnesses and then followed the bread crumbs God left me into the Pentecostal church my Uncle attended. My father an avowed agnostic (which really just means he refused to make any decision at all) instantly declared me crazy.
Maybe it was just teenage rebellion but I ran rather than walked deep into the church. Dad and I had many arguments over that and over my subsequent decision to become a minister. But when Dad became sick in the early nineties I left Bible College and came home to help in the business. After he died suddenly I launched into an eight year stint in the business world working newspapers and other management positions before finding my way back into the church.
I have served as an assistant pastor in the town I grew up in since 1996 and recently I was appointed to a town board in that same town. Somewhere along the way I seem to have captured my father’s sense of humor (something I didn’t even know he possessed when I was growing up) at least that’s what people tell me. I also captured his politics though I am sure he would probably think I have some “pinko commie” leanings were he still around. Somewhere in my journey I got a little tougher which tells me that maybe somewhere in his journey my father was a little bit softer and maybe he and I weren’t so different after all. Maybe we were just at different points of growth in this rocky New England soil.
Lillie-Put 