Tag: Christ

The Cost of Discipleship

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When I feel like I don’t deserve what’s coming
I get tempted to run away
Often I make it to the door
But 95 percent of the time I stay
The reason isn’t because I’ve gained some clarity
Or feel like I should be a screen for folk’s projection
It’s because I know that he didn’t run away
Which created the path to resurrection
All of us have been crucified before
It makes sense to want to escape it
But the power that’s on the other side
Only comes when we choose to face it
That doesn’t mean that you should be a victim
Or try to keep your abusers near
It simply means that only perfect love
Can cast out the toxicity of fear
You see this Universe has a crazy way
Of calling up what causes revulsion
Through a process that rarely goes away
It’s called repetition compulsion
That means even when we’ve been hurt before
We keep the patterns in our life
With the hope that one day we’ll learn the lesson
And handle the situation right
But that’s a peculiar kind of insanity
That makes us become what it is we hate
In a backwards way of trying to save ourselves
From the behavior that becomes our fate
That’s why I’d rather wind up dead sometimes
Than become what tried to destroy me
Efforting to cast out all my cares
So that the Creator can employ me
To most this sounds like a justification
Or an extreme version of denial
But to me I can’t return to innocence
If I never go on trial

© Copyright 2024 Pedro Senhorinha Silva

Ego Trippin’

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A million opportunities
For me to be
A million different people
Who were never me
Negative one
Plus infinity
Makes me less than the man
I’m supposed to be
Made like the Creator
Supposedly
But show up in my power
They’re opposed to me
The essence of the One
Is meant to flow in me
And flow inside of you
Hopefully
But we’re taught not to try
To live in a lie
See ourselves as less
The higher us we deny
On earth as in Heaven
I see it so clearly
While the Logos Way
Is disappearing
We’re called to show love
But we’re steady fearing
Wanting to escape
We hope the end is nearing
But we’re back in the beginning
There’s no loss and no winning
Reality is virtual
So we’re virtually sinning
Missing every mark
Too fast and no aiming
Preaching to the choir
Is so spiritually draining
But here is my thesis
We’re stuck in mimesis
Copying the bound
So we don’t know what free is
It’s not supposed to be this
Leaders who just hinder
Taking advantage
Because your souls are so tender
Don’t knock, but still enter
Hypocritical mind splinters
So consistently cold
It’s like perpetual winter
Frozen in place
Condemning with no Grace
Filled with emptiness
Like a room with no space
So come face to face
Breathe the Breath of the Living
Surrender everything
To be eternally giving
Take part in the Whole
Out of the many become One
A million choices become choiceless
Now the ego trip’s done

©️ Copyright 2024 Pedro Senhorinha Silva

Trusting the Process

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I pour my self into You
Trusting You will never spill me
Never fearing emptiness
Because I know You’re here to fill me
The terror known by many folks
Who can’t contemplate Your Promise
Is dissolved the moment I witness You
So I give it all to keep me honest
I don’t want to pretend to Trust in You
Only when for me it is convenient
Then as soon as I don’t get what I want
Realize that I don’t mean it
To me Trusting You is its own reward
In fact it’s my only Treasure
Because anything that does not have You there
Will never stay together
From the beginning and to the end
From the first and to the last
Without You nothing that seems to matter
Ever truly has
Nations continue to come and go
Things that were enter non-existence
While people pretend to get it all
Through selfish one sided resistance
A horrible error in calculation
No one can hold their breath forever
Whether you last exhaled or last inhaled
The project of breathing is both together
And that’s what this world’s forgetting
Perhaps some of us never knew it
Oneness isn’t the strongest wins
It’s polarities congruent

©️ Copyright 2024 Pedro Senhorinha Silva

Whenever I write a poem, it is the fruit of weeks if not months or even years of spiritual labor. I don’t write to influence. I write to express. What emerges contains every part of the process that you would witness in the natural process of growing an actual fruit tree. And I never give way to the temptation to pick the fruit early. When it’s ripe, it falls on its own.

As the video explains, this poem was born out of two months of struggling to write about trust and a bout with a short term unwellness that rendered me extremely contemplative. What the video doesn’t say was that for most of the three days that my body was fevered and in pain, I was repeating “Thank you God. I love you.” as if it was my breath. I did this in part because of a practice I developed a long time ago based on James 1:2-8 where adherents are advised to count all of our trials as joy. And the other part is that I imagine that most people’s conversations with God are about asking for things they want to come in and things we don’t want to go away. So, I just decided that I would not ask God for anything and just be thankful. Besides there were a number of times when I was a pastor that I would suggest to people that they say “thank you” as a part of their process. So, I had to take my own advice.

Now, before you get into this video, let me me warn you that it may come off as a little irreverent. It isn’t meant to be. But, it is meant to make folks think. It is meant to challenge you and to basically call out where I think our lack of trust is leading us. I put this out here in trust. I guess that is where I will leave it.

Indescribable Impetus

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You will ask me how I got here
In reality, I do not know
I surrendered to my brokenness
What you see now is emergent flow
It is not a part of Creation
Since it was before things are
The zero point of beingness
Collapsing distance from what seemed far
Be still and then you’ll know
Has nothing to do with stopping
Just as rising from the fall
Is not a consequence dropping
It is more like finally arriving
To the place I never left
By getting to the “other side”
Through borrowing another’s death
Now coming back to life
I choose to live like I’m twice born
Reinhabiting an incarnation
Through the veil that has been torn
Now when looking through the windows
I see what cannot be described
To those who breathe like they are living
But have yet to come alive
This is now the indescribable impetus
For everything that’s coming through
My actions coming from inaction
A human being before I do.

© Copyright 2022 Pedro S. Silva II

You can listen to this poem on Pedro’s Poetry Podcast.

The Visitation – Being a Healing Presence

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In our spiritual community at First Congregational Church Boulder, UCC some of our members are reading a small book called, The Art of Being a Healing Presence. Those of us reading it, are part of a small group of people who are choosing to heed the call to embody a healing presence with community members who are open to our invitation. Over the months that we’ve been meeting, my heart has increasingly found joy in our time together encouraging each other as we discover the gift of Visitation together. I wrote the following poem to/for them to both express appreciation for their gifting of themselves and to remind them that when we are being present, every moment counts.

The Visitation
It was only for a moment
It was here and it was gone
But when they think of the Visitation
The Presence lingers on

Breaking into Time-space
Eternity in half an hour
When two or more gather here
We’ve invited in the Power

Never underestimate,
What a moment can unfold
A single earthly encounter
A lasting balm for the soul

You were called to bring the Presence.
Being is what you do.
Giving form to the Love,
That preceded me and you

© Copyright 2018 Pedro S. Silva II

Matthew 18:20
“For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

He Fit the Description

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They told him “put your hands up.”
He did and that day he died.
Innocence put to death.
His crime was he complied

The authorities are the ones who killed him.
He must have “fit the right description”
They called him a troublemaker.
Never mind it was a fiction

It wasn’t just the way he looked
It was also the way he saw
He loved outside the rules
To them it violated law

He was out with his friends
No one knows what he did wrong
But they came for him with their weapons
They already had them drawn

Though unarmed and non-threatening,
They started drawing near
To me it’s quite ironic
That they were filled with so much fear

What were they afraid of–
The stories they were told?
“You better watch out with a guy like him.”
“He’s been known to lose control.”

“Have you seen the crowd he hangs with?”
“Let’s look at all the facts.”
“A gang leader if there was ever one.”
“He should have never crossed the tracks.”

“He dines with people known as criminals.”
“He’s friends with women of the night.”
“Believe me he’s not innocent’.”
“Something is just not right.”

That’s the kind of messaging
That makes those like him such a threat
No one ever gets him
And we still haven’t seen him yet

That’s why still today we kill him
In the bodies we see as least
And yet many of us say we follow him
I thought he was called “The Prince of Peace”

He died so we could stop this
But still we choose to pay the price
Because whenever we kill the innocent
We are always killing Christ.

© Copyright 2016 Pedro S. Silva II

martin-luther-king-and-his-hands-up-huffington-post

No matter what one thinks about Christ, we know what innocence is and what it isn’t in the depths of our being. When we deny that knowledge, we deny all that can be right in this world.

Fighting Over Crumbs

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All things to All things
Nothing is denied
But we’re fighting over bread crumbs
Because someone believed a lie

So now we kill each other
In our constant pursuit of more
We believe we are “consumers”
Because we don’t know what we’re for

Infinite Creation
Nothing more or less
But instead destruction follows us
When we put us to the test

Addicted to the thought of conquering
Sixty steps till we unlearn
That the truth of life is obvious
When we’re not looking for our turn

In the mean time there’s confusion
We’re told we have to choose a side
Contests between “us” and “them”
Where the winner doesn’t die

But what if someone told you
That everything is yours
And everything is everyone’s
And no one’s keeping score

The House is not divided
Upon the Rock is where it stands
Never to be shaken
By unreasonable demands

But because it can’t be broken
It won’t resist what it is we do
We can lie all the hell we want to
Because all of it’s untrue

Though we deny the Absolute
It simply continues as it is
Fully realized. No need to strive.
For it’s the life that we all Live

It’s the Bread that’s not devoured
Though we eat it to our fill
Diminishing every sense of loss
Like nothing ever will

 

Spontaneous Cypher

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Wonder where I’m coming from?

Let me get you up to speed.

If it’s true–God provides

What I want, I don’t need

Being less never is

In the One Source of All

But let the world tell it

We’re divided by our falls

Makes us so small

Man this grift amaze me

Used to say, “We all One”

But they called me, “Crazy”

Now to me it seems lately

It’s the Word of Truth

The lie of separation

Is now busting loose

Because I Am you are

One Light Two Stars

Shining inside out

So we never go too far

Well that’s about it

That’s All I want to say

Now that that’s off my chest

I bow down to pray.

Nothing Is What It Seems

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Nothing is what it seems

There’s always something underneath

Hidden worlds in every event

Taking action to be released

All you might see is what’s in front of you

Meanwhile a mystery unfolds

While you’re focusing on the “important things”

Secret stories are being told

Like the alarm that you just slept through

That will you make late to that early meeting

You will experience as an inconvenience

When in truth it’s an Angel’s greeting

Or that relationship that ended

That you thought would be forever

May be causing you a lot of pain right now

But it would be worse if you stayed together

Or what about that job of yours

That leaves you daily stressing

You think it’s about how much you’re paid

When it’s about how much you’re blessing

Your child who will not listen

That one who never stops debating

May be getting on your very last nerve

But you don’t know what they’re cultivating

This is what I remind myself

When things don’t seem to go my way

That God is shaping something in my soul

That is not always on display

And this isn’t true for only me

But for everyone around me

Even the people I consider not so nice

May have souls that would astound me

That’s why Abba tells me not to judge

My sisters and my brothers

Because we might see what our bodies do

But most times we can’t see each other

Of course you may not like this line of thought

I’m not suggesting that you should

All I want to do is encourage you

Because there is underlying good

It may be difficult to fathom

Especially when looking at the past

But even if everything went your way

It still was never meant to last

This world is like an incubator

That’s meant to help us build our strength

Not a place for us to make a home

Or seek to stay beyond its length

And everything that happens here

Is always more than it appears

Because we’re learning how to better choose

Between what’s from joy and what’s from fears

We’re being prepared for our true nature

That was not meant to stay in time

We are practicing being human

So we can handle what is Divine

 

© Copyright 2015 Pedro S. Silva II