Our Godchild

Isaiah 9:6 “For unto us a child is born”

…unto us, unto each of us a child is born, each of us is born our own individual godchild.  This child to be born in you and in me is not the same child, just as you and I are not clones of each other.

My godchild is unique just as yours is.  God has different gifts to give each of us in our newly birthed child, gifts that had been designed for us before our birth, gifts we will use to promote love and joy and peace.

This godchild in each of us will be a son, the transformed masculine, thinking, willing part of us, now with new God power, now willing God’s will in us, embracing the guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit, imbued with all the creative insight and compassion our inner feminine can provide.

My Friend Has Moved to Assisted Living

I found her sitting for the last time

in that comfortable chair

on her beloved front porch

where each day for who knows how long

she has sat

observed the neighborhood

waved at friends

entertained guests

and enjoyed the sights, sounds, and smells

of the place her home has occupied these fifty years.

“I don’t have a very good attitude,” she said,

as my heart filled with grief

and my mind’s eye saw the view

from her new “place”—tree-less commercial construction everywhere.

How can we not become attached

to place and things and people

since our nature embraces beauty in all?

How can we not meld into our environment

in almost indivisibility?

How can God’s Spirit compensate when

our oneness with creation is torn in two?

Oh, Lord, have compassion!

Ann Glover O’Dell

2 July 2018

The Call of Grace

What do we make of grace?—

that mysterious component

of the one we call The One?

And ‘the call of Grace’ that beckons our response?

Does ‘grace’ define forgiveness

or contain something more?

Does ‘grace’ include compassion?

And share equal bill with love?

 

Perhaps the call of Grace

an invitation hand-delivered so-to-speak

by Holy Spirit messenger

disguised sometimes as heaven’s hound

full cognizant of needed scent

whose Master has but to loose the bonds

that hinder him from leaping forth

to find the trail and once come near

nip at our heels until we turn relenting.

 

Ann Glover O’Dell

19 September 2016

Poems for Peace (remembering 9/11)

HOW CAN WE BE AT PEACE?

How can we be at peace when

spirit’s doors are locked against it?

Locked and bolted ‘gainst

we know not what for the

unknowing makes us fearful still.

Fearful of whatever lies beyond

paltry presumption of control

beyond concentrated consciousness

that knows so little

understanding even less.

Fearfulness that lies in wait

albeit quite against its will

for frequent fear is nonetheless

predictable and anxious huddling

in its womb is still more

to be desired than any sort

of openness to expectation’s

swaddling cloths of vulnerability.

How senseful that our fear

that chronic lodger

continues welcome with its stale

foul breath and stained attire

when we the landlords

with our legalese

could if we dared

advertise our “rooms to let”

and interview new prospects

always with the veto power

tightly clutched  within our ring of keys.

Ann Glover O’Dell      19 April 2004

 

NOT AS THE WORLD GIVES

‘Not as the world gives’

is your peace you said

yet we would be

content just now with

what the world defines

since such unpeacefulness abounds

we cannot entertain the notion

of a state within

when  all about us

life’s demise looms large.

 

Power plays take center stage

and those rehearsing roles

soon star in great performances

surprising e’en themselves

with prowess and precision patterning.

 

Oh greed where is thy pain

which piercing self to inner well

of generosity so makes our

substance sharing

more to be desired

than much fine gold?

 

Where is the understanding

of that peace not understood

by mortal minds but mandates

light’s deep penetration of the

soul’s storehouse of truth?

Is there a spirit energy

encased within your peace

propelling us

to show the world the way?

Ann Glover O’Dell   20 June 2004

 

BLESS AGAIN!

Oh, One, who once in time blessed

world with your creation

who promised greater blessing

to  begotten and beloved

who blessed with beckoning finger

a journey from the known into adventure

who blessed with ripe womb fruit

the barren and despairing

then tested trust by bid  progenicide

who staged new blessing by surprise deception

dishonor and a wrestling match

who blessed by  rank denial the boons requested

and blessed again with secret benediction

the ones you named your one and only ones.

 

Oh, One, come bless again!

o’erturn the graves of hatred

revive still births of spirit

spill out the coffers’ gold.

 

A Jubilee we seek, we need

where all now cleansed and shining

is ready for the new creation song.

Ann Glover O’Dell   4 June 2002

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GOD’S COMPASSION

As one of the primary attributes of God, compassion is also one of God’s greatest gifts to us.  The more intimate our relationship to God becomes, the more compassionate we become in our relationships with others.

Compassion suggests a great deal more than sympathy or empathy.  Compassion means to passion with, to share the passion of the other—be it fear, pain, sorrow, or despair.  The word has its roots in the womb work of reproduction.  When we are compassionate, we participate in the creative work that each kind of passion produces.

What an opportunity we have each time we allow our innate wombedness to participate with another’s.  Something of God’s goodness is sure to result.

Called to be Messiahs

messiah= anointed one, messenger, deliverer

Are we ready/willing to be an anointed one? A special messenger? One visited by the Holy Spirit? Not one filled with hubris but rather filled with compassion and patience?

The holiness within us—the soul that is the part of us that will never die—the godness in the center of our being—that holiness yearns to be experienced by the totality of our personality.

Our inner sacrality does not, however, and will not interfere with our free will which is also sacred—meaning that our free will is totally under our control. It will not be compromised, even by the Wisdom Energy of the universe.

The kind of messiahship offered to each of us does not include an outward coronation or temple dedication. Rather it is manifest in the invisible placing of holy oil and the knowledge imparted to us that we are chosen. That we are God’s only begotten in whom he is well pleased. And with whom he desires intimate relationship.

Only then do we realize we have a special message to deliver—the message that is the deliverer– and we realize what that message is.

29 April 2015

COMPASSION

We must die to our agenda for compassionateness before we can be transformed into truly compassionable individuals. Whatever goodness and compassion our conscious will has chosen as a worthy goal and has attempted to achieve must be sacrificed in order that God’s agenda may take precedence—i.e., take complete charge in us. What that means—how God’s agenda is made manifest—is that we participate fully in the consent to, the receiving of, and the putting into action God’s desire.

Having been washed of our own agenda—no matter how good and godly it was—there is space in our conscious will for the Spirit, which now has been welcomed more fully in to our soul, to feed God’s agenda into our consciousness, which, through our continued free will, participates with this agenda through its own creativity, energy, and with its own peculiar talents of organization and execution.

Though the conscious will continues to make decisions, flowing in and through those decisions is the compassionate, creative, renewing, transforming power of the Spirit from our soul space that is continually enlarging ever since we gave the Spirit permission to clean house—not a case of suggesting to consciousness what needs to be discarded or helping to carry off pieces of detritus but to take charge and do the job solely on its own Spirit terms.

Ann G. O’Dell
10 March 2009

(note: The secret to giving Spirit permission to clean house is accessible to everyone in the book Humpty Dumpty Hatched, available for downloading on this website.)