portrait of a warrioress :: the life artist

this is my beautiful friend, the life artist. i'm nestling her into my pages because i want her here (and she said i could). i'm thinking of you, my dear. i wish you were across from me, next to me. today, especially, for the healing aura of your sunshine would slip into my bones and warm me up from the inside out.

you are a warrioress among all warrioresses, tapping out your rhythms along the beams of the earth. you've made all the world your womb and you dance in the holy sanctuary, flinging love to the one who names you and the ones who gather at your feet.  

you are a warrioress among all warrioresses, pounding out your hallelujahs to the heartbeat of creation; you capture and recapture me with your siren song, like when you wrote this here? you, the reluctant spiller of prophecy-prose, you press your words into life itself. you are living poetry and i read this:

God-painted leaves dance their colors under the wet in a lover's waltz with the subliminal brush of a wandering by, hands-in-his-trouser-pockets-with-a-whistle kind of breeze. They know it is their highest praise just to be and I am noticing, my eyes eating elements and landscape like soul-food. It is my own high worship, the watchfulness and mindfulness. The listening. ~ erika morrison

... and i weep that i want my highest praise just to be, and you say:  

so, be.

and in this be-ing and be-coming you have come alongside, and would you look at us? we be together and you speak healing and life, always life, pouring over and into and nourishing the secret sparklings of the soul with your life-artist breath of God.

you are a warrioress among all warrioresses, and you are wild-abandon-beautiful and i love you to all the moons and stars and galaxies and black holes and nebulae and yes, i had to look up how to spell that, and also?

happy birthday, love.

erika's birthday is on friday. 

will you take a moment to whisper something sweet?

________
 the life artist comes by her name an unusual way. she says: The WAY that is defined by the voices of holy, devoted friendship attached to The Voice that spoke my knitting together. Twenty friends (plus a few more) with the rough and tender fingertips of the Spirit, told me it was okay to say, “I am”; to believe in the un-earthing of truest self; a self named not by parents of flesh, but Parents Triune. And I believe, I believe that God would give a name to His children.  What earthly parent, even, wouldn’t do that? These double-dozen friends and Father held me and heart-deep-traveled with me while we jointly explored what the mixture of my dust looks, feels, moves, breathes, contributes, speaks like. I wept myself dry; discovered myself unbelievable; broke my pride-back six-ways-to-resurrected-Sunday. And the name heaven gave me awoke from slumber in my belly, yawned deep and opened eyes new to the world. Not a thing has looked the same since Father blew His breath on the dormant seed of myself . . . Life the voice whispers strong . . . I need you to be Life . . . The weary world needs to see My Life.

life and rain

For this reason I am passionately audacious about LIFE; living. You know, the kind when and where you’re awake – in all respects.  I gather stories and symbols and Spirit interaction from my microscopic, mundane and mystery filled moments.  I live with the great hope that each molecule, every word, every choice, each individual thread of circumstance, gesture, dance, phrase, laughter, soul-crack, brow-pain, sea, mountain, rain, shine . . .  is woven together intricately and deeply with a deeper story of love, as expressed by The LIFE of Jesus.

I thirst, I hunger, I hurt in my chest to relish, to swim in the secrets beneath the foundations of terra firma, the true secrets, the ones that reveal the abysmal wildness, the hold-your-heartbeat paradox, the delicate and affectionate connectedness of the great human family to one another and most importantly, to The Great I AM and Giver-of-LIFE Himself.

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this is volume 2 in the portraits of a warrioress series. to hear more, visit prelude to a portrait. would you like to join my warrioress tribe? sign up here!