Reflections on a Commonplace Mystery (Song of a Perfect Sky)

Sighs of deepest blue
Thunder from shade to shade,
Spilling into the next
Until they are caught between the waves of cloud.
Mirroring the ocean of cares
And overcrowded lives,
Or refracting the silent, endless darkness behind,
Creating a vast diluted glimpse of the roar of light beyond?
In that shimmering depth plays a silent orchestra,
Vibrating and coalescing into a hymn of color,
A symphony of colossal, unbridled existence.
How many have heard its song
But never grasped the myriad thought
That painted its melody of incomprehensible blue?
A Song that seeps into the ears of our hearts;

Hearts that have so often forgotten how to listen;
Hearts stepping their crippled, staggering beats toward it:
That final, forever hope of hearing.

At night my soul lies awake

At night my soul lies awake
Full of thoughts of tomorrow:
Hopes of breath, dreams of life...
Half buried heartbeats
Sunk beneath the faded earth of a watercolor life.
At night my heart lies awake
Hoping once again to breathe,
Longing for fresher air
Than can be found in the ever-present
Smog-ridden downtown of day to day appointments and schedules.
And again I see You,
Through the distance of my so-called life.
You are the Soul Waker,
The longed-for beat of every heart;
Who defies logic and flies in the face of our Towers of wisdom,
Only to redefine them, to build our hearts and minds back to
The Source that pierced the emptiness, the Cripple’s First Step, the Tidalwave of Color in the Newborn’s first sight.
And yet I let this watercolor life call my name
Louder than the sound of your love ripping galaxies to find me;
And the smog of these days fills my lungs, stops my heart.
This is my town. Sometimes it seems like it's all I've ever known.

Prayer

Give me a song
That I may sing it for her.
Let me breathe her in
And hold my breath past time.
Let me catch her petals as they fall
And glory in each new bud as it adorns her graceful branches.
Let my heart find its strength not in itself,
But in my promise never to fail her.
Let me never fail her.

(Untitled)

He has let me hear her heartbeat
That I may feel.

I love you to tomorrow and back

I love you to tomorrow and back.

It's funny to think that there can be a love can't be proved, no matter what we do.
It is out beyond the goodbye kisses or the heartfelt smile-framed words we offer.
It is out beyond the quiet side-by-side moments when the sun slows to let you watch it melt along the horizon.
It is out beyond the perfect gift, the deepest embrace, the most tender kiss, as we seek to pass on wordless world-sized emotions carefully packaged in a single touch.
But this world cannot contain a love not from it, not made for it, not seen in it.
Even trading one's life for another cannot encompass a love that is deeper than life, stronger than death.
For the human body is not powerful enough to portray something as big as oceans-- oceans whose mountain-filled liquid skins have sparkles that hold their own galaxies in their blinding depths.
How can such a love ever be proved in a world that cannot hold it?
How can time ever tell of something far greater than times greatest imaginings?
How can love that has been given the very breath of heaven and can walk the fires of hell and not be burned-- how can such a love ever be painted in a single lifetime?

I love you to tomorrow and back;
With this breath and the next.
I love you with all that I know, and all that I never will know.
I love you with a heart that knows its own weaknesses but refuses to surrender to itself.
I love you with all of the tears that I couldn't cry.
I love you with more than I can feel.
I love you with a love that is bigger, stronger, faster, fuller, and more pure than I can ever be.
I love you more than you or I or anyone will ever know.
I love you farther than I can run and higher than I can see.
I love you past all that I wish that I wasn't.
I love you longer than I can live, and nearer than I can feel.
I love you to tomorrow and back;
With this breath and the next.

Let me rest in this moment

Let me rest in this moment,
A breath from your lips,
That I may see your face
And hear you breathe, and nothing else.
Let memory desert me
And the future wait it's turn
As I baske in the glow
Of your sunrise.
Many are the men who have sought you,
And many are the poor souls
Who have sold themselves to an earth-made counterfeit.
But no one who has recognized the seal of heaven
Can deny the loving craftsmanship
Hidden and streaming from everything that is you.
Like the light of a thousand mornings
To one long-pressed beyond the night of eternity
Is My Only to my heart.
I cannot but feel
That my heart was made in part and in whole
To seek to grasp but a whisp
Of the fragrance of the splendour
So carefully woven into hers.
The mystery lies in this:
My heart is His
And hers because she is His perfect rose.
Let me love Him with all that I am
That I may love her with
But a strand of the tapestry
Of love that he has spun for her.
Let my heart be lost in His
That I may see her face
Through the light of heaven's
Brilliant grace and unfading truth.
Let me give myself to Him
That someday He may let me borrow
Her for but a day.
My life is but a moment,
My striving but a breath.
Let this end be my breath in this moment.

(Untitled)

Some things in life don't seem to make sense
until you're able to see them in past tense.
But even then some things don't seem to get clearer;
they only fade like watercolor in the rain as you come nearer
to the place where you thought that everything
would be alright;
finally in your sight,
ready for you to hold.

And there you are,
and I want to run to you.
But am I finished running from myself?
I'm ready to fall forever and never get up
from a love that never asks if we'll be strong enough.
And if my heart breaks let it break beneath the waves
that leave me knowing that I loved all I could and never asked for more than that-- never wanted to be saved.

Old Song 1

I'm breathing, but life is more than this day to day
Leaving You behind with open arms
Feeling like I've lost myself somewhere along the way
Kneeling to see if I'll find Your heart here on the floor

What would You say if I asked you to take everything
To take all of me away
What will You do if I offer all of my heart to You?
I guess that's the chance that I'll take

I was young once

I was young once. Staring at the world through the eyes of youth—watching the birth of a new valley at the top of each hill. The world held sun-filled unquenchable colors that flowed from horizon to horizon. Layers of carefully stenciled glory flitted through every moment, changing in the next only to be more beautiful. The air was sweet on warm summer nights when time stood still and the stars left their deep blue home to be captured and treasured in the small shining jars that echoed our hearts.

But time was ever reckless, hurling us onward toward the sunrises and sunsets of a thousand new days, heedless of if our hearts are ready to let go of the hand of yesterday or not. And the colors, once so brilliant, soon hid from our eyes in the shadows of our memories, lingering on the rim of our sight and calling to us from the dreams we forget as we wake. And eyes seem to forget the meaning of sunsets when hearts feel only the ever widening distance, the ever lengthening steps from the doorstep of yesterday.

Until I met you. Hidden in your heart I found the unquenchable colors once again. The stenciled glory of every line of who you are captured my soul and reminded my starving heart of what true beauty is. And I found, once again, those moments when time stands still as I try to catch the fireflies in your eyes and treasure them in my own small shining jar.

I was young once, and there are times when I wish to once again grace the doorstep of yesterday. But when my weary eyes finally rest on your heart, I find myself wondering what new valley is being born on the other side of that hill. And it is then that I am ready to reach out and take the hand of tomorrow; and learn how to grow young again with you.

The voices of evaporating rain

The voices of evaporating rain
remind me of the times that will never come again.
Captive in a moment,
I've done my time when comes the next.
But will the gift of this breath be freedom
or a notch upon the wall to prove that I was here?
And I realize that we can never capture a moment;
only let ourselves be captivated by it.
And the more time that we spend inside the cell of every second
makes us thankful for the next
and longing for the last.

Here outside the garden I've found things that scream of You
With the strains of bold remembrance fighting through.
But the days, they lose their meaning when the war drowns out the songs
Of a time when time was never meant to heal all wounds.

So don't lay me down when the world has layed me out
And out of reasons to go on.
Dust me off; I'm down, not out, when weak is strong.

Life is full of casual observers. People who would rather stand still and never have to face a new horizon, than to join the race and risk being trampled. They are the living sidelines, wishing for a chance to feel the wind in their faces, but fearing that the same wind will keep them from pressing on.

Not all of us dare to run, because when you run, there's a chance that you'll fall. But the joy of the Christian life is this: when you fall, you can fall on your knees and ask for the strength to carry on. Jesus died so that you could run.

New TNS Song

Brian Bandas and Chris Webster

I sit and watch the world live out my hopes and dreams
Sick of hearing that it's better than it seems
And words lose meaning when the silence leaves them numb

Do I keep this hope alive to watch it die
And is it failing if you never get to try
All that I can see are the things I've never done
Is it wrong that sometimes I want to go home?

And as we've seen this far
It's a cold, hard world
But close your eyes and it's gone
If you dare to run
There's a chance you'll fall
But at least you dared to run at all

Heart to Grace

Sail across the oceans in your heart
The sunsets in your eyes
Turn the pages, things you never said
Swim the tears you never cried

So far away from where you are
Wish I could silence all ways
The darkness falls upon your heart

If I could stop the world
And heal it just for youI'd let my heart be ripped away
But could I know more than
The One who drew your eyes?
I will trust your heart to Grace

The pages that we keep

Walk the fading captions of memory
Through the words and whispers stuck inside the head
Silent, screaming colors caught from blink to blink
Folded up and kept, or thrown away instead

Will this moment carve a masterpiece of mercy
Hewn into the sands that time sought to unmend
Stained with the colors of the love that never flees
Or will it join so many others on the floor
Crumpled, unarranged in the quiet confusion of their end
Tossed aside and laid to rest among its scar-torn brothers, evermore

Time has no enemies but these
No adversaries but the pages that we keep

It seems there are oceans,
More than miles between who I am and where you are
With silence, the distance
Tears the miles into years and the light is fading

But if there are miracles
And hope for today
I'd follow this rainbow
To where you are
And if their are moments
When time has no say
I'll wait for you anyway

And if
I had the chance for one more dance
I'd give
my breath away
If I
could hold your hand, throw my heart to chance
I'd stay
Until moments dance away