Sunday, September 17, 2017

Five for Friday ala Today's Little Ditty

Michelle Barnes, over at Today's Little Ditty, challenged her readers to write a five word poem on Friday about "peace" as a warm up to creating poems for the International Day of Peace.

I know.  It's Sunday.  Let's just pretend it's Friday, m'kay?

I've written a piece or ten about peace (Heh. See what I did there!?) or the feeling of peace or the lack of peace or wanting peace.  And actually, now that I'm thinking about peace pieces, two of those poems have been prompted by Michelle's challenges.  And looking back at those poems, they both had to do with the woods. 


"Consolation"?  Woods. 

"At Maybury"?  Woods.

The woods.  I am a fan.

The thing with five word poems is that they don't leave much room for wordiness.  Any room.  At all. And I'm a wordy girl with a struggle to express myself in small doses.  I did try during poetry month this year.  It gave me fits but I constrained myself to 30 days of tiny Twitter poems.  Hard.  But kinda fun in a stressful, word nerd way.

So for Michelle's challenge, I created a concrete-ish poem.  Other poets managed to write five words poems without the need to add a graphic element, so you really should go and check out the ones posted on her site.

One of my favorite Bible passages is Psalm 46, particularly verse ten:  "...be still, and know that I am God.  I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."

The woods.

Being still.

Remembering God is big, Creation shouts His praise, and that sadness and mourning and the atrocities of this world, though inevitable, are not forever. 

Because Jesus.

The woods are my happy place and my peaceful place and the place I have the greatest chance of being still without much effort.  But when I consider the words from Psalm 46 and take a moment, pause, be still, it doesn't matter where I am.  Perfect peace doesn't have to wait for a perfect world.  Because the Word is powerful.

But the woods help.

Peace.




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4 comments:

  1. Did I know you had a blog? I don't think I did, Rebekah... but I'm glad you do. :) Unfortunately the link to your concrete version appears to be broken, or missing, or walkabout. Perhaps it's taking a walk in the woods.... Thanks for joining in the Five for Friday fun, though. I love how you continually challenge yourself. And always better late than never in my book!

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  2. Thanks for visiting, Michelle. I doubt you knew because I just started writing it after years of thinking I'd like to and years of not being able to figure out what I wanted it to be exactly and and then deciding, the month school starts back up (how's THAT for a challenge?!) that if I waited til I was focused enough and had enough time, I'd never begin.

    Not sure what happened with the link---thanks for hunting me down anyway.

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  3. Enjoyed your 5 on Michelle's blog!

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  4. Thanks, Tabatha! I just checked out your website--can't wait to read more!

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