Blog Posts - St Elmos Fire

Sagacity, Serendipidity and Singing Sand Dunes

6/19/2012

On Christ the Solid Rock I stand. All other Ground is sinking sand.

Sometimes you stumble upon some great stuff when you are playing the avoidance game. I was trying to avoid my daily assignment by surfing
the net. While so engaged, I serendipitously discovered the singing sand dunes phenomenon. I was thoroughly absorbed by the topic and of course sought to discover more about the science behind this natural mystique. Apparently, the sounds are produced by reverberations deep in the sand dune due to disturbances on the surface.

This haunting music produced by mother nature reminded me somehow of the music of the spheres which I discussed in an earlier post.

When one thinks about the great mysteries of our universe and and our own planet earth, it really does not require any special endowment of the heart or uncommon sagacity of the mind to recognise that the creative spirit that spawned these natural wonders must be something like a phenomenon.

A supernatural phenomenon. An awesome God who reigns. He's surely alive and His spirit moves across our universe bringing peace and comfort for the gritty grains of pain in our lives.

I am no sage but I can surely discern the nature of God and detect the sounds of praise being emitted from the shifting sands of those singing dunes..
Love and Blessings
TZPora

The Empty Shirt - Father's Day 2012

6/17/2012

The Empty Shirt
By ZPora

The Empty Shirt is Full of Pain
Try as you may It will not Regain
Its precious Contents

The Empty Shirt used to Clothe
A Warm Heart full of Love
One I Adored

The Empty Shirt Mocks and Comforts
A Silent Reminder, A Haven of rest
For my bereft soul

The Empty Shirt is stitched together
With sacred threads, memories of my Father
Who Journeyed safely home

The Empty Shirt could not hold
(Though it tried) the Spirit of St Elmo
That now accoutres me.

Delight in the Beauty that Surrounds You

6/13/2012

I stood looking out my window the other day, daydreaming about a getaway I couldn't afford. I was praying in my spirit that the Lord would make a way for me to go somewhere relaxing and rejuvenating like a Sedona Spa experience, a Kenya Safari or maybe just a little ocean view room at a Sandals island resort. Well of course all dreamy meanderings of the mind do come to an end. Reality soon reclaimed my wandering thoughts and replanted my feet firmly on the ground where I stood by the window to my front porch. Not long after my airborne thoughts had landed with a thud, I began unpacking the scene just outside my window. This is when I had a great Aha moment (aka TZPe). "How delightful and inviting my patio looks this morning." I thought to myself. I grabbed a cup of chai, my ipod, laptop and a magazine and voila I experienced one of the most beautiful moments of peace and tranquility. I had managed to carve out a niche that was quite simply a beautiful, creative space that money couldn't buy. Following that eye opening gaze out my window, I've been making time to sit out there on my very own patio and refresh my spirit daily. The lesson from my experience is that you can create joy from wherever you are. It's all about our perception of the beauty thats always within close proximity.
Love and Blessings
ZPora

TD Jakes Repotted

5/29/2012

Repot & Replant Your Faith ~ Ignite Your Spirit

Ever so often you listen to TD Jakes speak and many many things that he says sinks down into your spirit and ignites it. Whenever it happens you simply want to bless the Lord for giving you an ear to HEAR what He has whispered into his servant's (TD Jakes') ear which is pressed up so close to Heaven's window pane I'm surprised he's got any ears left.
Anyway this past Sunday I had another such experience when I listened to Mr Jakes present the parable of The Sower. And so here a new column in Tzpora's blog has been spawned. In that message, I heard all that the Lord intended for us to HEAR and so each month I will dedicate one of my weekly posts to re sharing the TD Jakes ministry - 'TD Jakes Repotted'. ( No pun intended ). You see not everyone will HEAR in the same way and not everyone will HEAR from the same person. Picture a child who has tuned out one parent or a student who has a mental block to a particular teacher. Operating on the same principle I'm repotting what The Lord has poured into His vessel at The Potter's House and sowing it into the ground with which I'm surrounded, my family, friends, fellow bloggers, fellow humans... Of course I know, as TD said not everyone within the hearing of my voice will receive it either. For some it will roll off like water from a duck's back... oblivious! While for others, they will think, wow 'that's deep' .... But come next week...they will have forgotten....
However, the fertile spirits of this world are with whom we seek to partner and bring into the fold, The Zone. These are they who yearn and struggle... stretch and turn.... towards truth and understanding. These are they who will dance at the revelation of God's good Grace and be changed forever. And so we will build the Kingdom of God, one vessel at a time repurposed , repositioned and poised for the Harvest.

The Brain behind Memory

5/13/2012

Can you remember the last time you reflected on a memory you hold precious and dear. Maybe all the sights, sounds and smells of an incredible cruise to distant sun kissed shores. Memories of azure waters, lapping waves, succulent fruits, colorful birds of paradise, that sea breezy smell... come flooding back to you transporting you to a happy place. You may also recollect some not so fond memories where you get chills or shudder as memory traces embedded in your grey matter recreates an unpleasant encounter.
Isn't it remarkable how our memory works. We conjure up memories by activating neurons in our brains that fire at will, making millions of connections in the blink of an eye to bring to mind encoded information. It's such a marvelous and seamlessly automated process that we never really stop to think about it, unless we experience technical difficulty with retrieval and recall. Like that time I had an epic hiccup in my synapse connectivity protocol at the grocery store. Picture this. It's rush hour on Saturday at one of those confounded self check out counters at Walmart. I am feverishly trying to checkout the babyshower gift (last minute idea) for one of the ladies in my Turkish cooking class and it's minutes before they are set to arrive at my house. Well I am beckoning and glaring at the nonchalant charlatan of a Walmart personnel who is ignoring me, while I am trying to ignore the sparks of hellfire emanating from the other desperate shoppers in my line, when my cell phone rings. It's one of the ladies trying to get directions to my house because her GPS led her astray. I begin to give her the directions while still trying to summon the sloth of a checkout monitor, jabbing at the keys on the blinking machine to get the code for the tomatoes for the stuffed eggplant recipe and bam I can't retrieve and recall the street names that lead to my house.
Epic Memory fail. it was an earth shaking experience to say the least, I couldnt tell if I was having a senior moment or a TZPe moment but luckily I was able to retrieve and recall my husband's phone number which I gave to the lady so she could get clear directions from him because clearly my memory was not in an enlightened state at that moment. No synapses firing here. Anyway I disentangled myself from the death grip of that self checkout machine, fired the walmart guy a look of disdain (wasn't feeling very Christian at the moment) and left.
Needless to say thankfully my brain took me home on auto pilot safe and sound without me having to even give a second thought to how I got there. That's the marvelous machine that is our Brain. How much more marvelous is our Marvelous Maker who IS the Brain behind all things and whose memory never fails when it comes to his beloved children. Oh Lord let me never forget all the way you have led me and when all else fails, remind me who I am to you.
Love and Blessings
Zpora

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Love and Synergy - Contemplating the Contemporary Romance

4/29/2012

Let's talk for a minute about love and synergy and what that may mean for us living in a contemporary world.

    One of my favorite pieces of art work is a striking painting which hangs in my boudoir. The painting by Alex Corrbrey entitled, Synergy is an abstract representation of a physical and spiritual union of a couple. This work adorns our bedroom wall because it symbolises our commitment to work through the pleasure and pain of creating something beautiful - beautiful children, an exemplary ministry, a hub of creativity and a home that reflects our spirituality.
    This thing called love which culminates in the ultimate synergistic act of marriage is sacred, spiritual, sensual and even scriptual. Love in its proper setting is a harmonious waltz, a symbiotic exchange, a tantric embrace, and a synergistic partnership ignited.
     So what does this mean for contemporary seekers of love's flame? Is it any different from the days when Adam and Eve strolled in the garden, when Sarah and Abraham's union gave birth to a nation? Is it a different tune than the lyrical love poem sung in the song of Solomon? {My Lover is mine and I am his}
    Have we lost the ability to harmonize as members of the opposite sex, coming together in the sanctity of marriage to create something much stronger, more powerful than what we could achieve in a solitary and depressing date with a toy. Will our preoccupation with self , hedonism and holding on to our 'self - accumulated' wealth, prevent us from entering into a wholly holy and trusting relationship with our friend as lover.
{Song of Solomon- Woman- "Take me with you, lets run together" Man - "come away with me from Lebanon my bride."}

Synergy II by Alex Corbbrey

Depending on who you talk to these days, love is not so. It may have morphed into a bitter pill fraught with the dangers of disharmony, false testimony
and the ever looming prospect of alimony. When did the alchemy of love of Solomon fame - apples, mandrake flowers, wine, honey and pomegranates sour into a toxic chemical romance. Case in point {Song of Beyonce - the 2012 Most Beautiful woman in the world. She croons, "To the Left, To the Left, let me call you a taxi to pick you and some of your stuff up from the curb - and when the cab comes, quick quick get in it, cos my new lover will be here in a
minute}

    Is love so fleeting because it is so replaceable? But let's do take that minute while we stand in the gap by the curb reflecting on the multitude of infidelities that got us to this spot  on the street corner. As we stand on the sidelines of our relationships eyeing our box of worldly possessions and how much is left in it, let's just pause and shine the light of truth on God's original intentions.
     What was in the manuscript of His pre writing for Humanity's Love Story . Did His idea web not include taking a rib from man and weaving into a woman so as they would become one? Was the story not one based on
synchrony, harmony and synergy - a symphony of two, working in a paradisiacal partnership of mutual respect and romance?
    What happened to the notion of happiness in our relationships when others will admire a lovestruck woman and say, "Who is that young woman that shines out like the dawn? (Song of Solomon) and of the man they will liken his countenance to the sun, shining like a bridegroom emerging from his bedroom (Psalm 19:5).
   Each morning when the new day dawns I still bask in the glow of my partner's embrace and I still kneel and pray that I will continue to set him as a seal on my heart and he in turn will stand firm in our commitment that many waters will not quench our love nor can the floods drown it. In sickness and in health, till death do us part or till that day comes when we stand before His throne to be presented as a bride of the Lamb.
Love and Blessings
ZPora

Love and Synergy - My lover is mine and I am his.... (Songs of Solomon)

Of Poetry Prose and Parables

4/21/2012

Psalm 119:35 - Make me walk among the path of your commands for that is where my happiness is.

Saint Jerome Patron saint of Literature

April is National Poetry month, at which time I must pause por ponder on how our lives have been enriched by the power of the spoken and written word. Poetry is a good place to work out your salvation and to deconstruct your 'trouble'.
The following quote is poetry explained like only a poet can, by Tracy W. Smith, the winner of the 2012 Pulitzer prize for her book of poems, Life on Mars. She says, "For me a poem is an opportunity to kind of interrogate myself a little bit and see what ways I'm complicated by situations or even... I don't know... like somehow connected to in ways that might be uncomfortable. " Here, Smith also alludes to poetry as a platform for demystifying difficult discourses.
        My love and appreciation for the creative arts is surpassed only by my love for the Master Creator, our awesome God. My love affair with men and women who had their way with words begins with my grandfather Ivan (my mom's stories of his wit and sarcasm made me yearn to have sat at his feet). Then there was my high school English Literature teacher who we affectionately called Aunt Beryl. It was she who whet my appetite for the rhythm and rhyme of the written word, encouraged me to lend an  attentive ear to Shakespeare, and who nurtured my impulse to dabble in the writer's inkpot.
        Then on my own I discovered Maya Angelou. I found myself longing for the opportunity to sit at her hearthstone and listen to her heart speak just so her gift of words would somehow seep surreptitiously into my bones.
        In college I stumbled upon Zora Hurston from whom I've often and unabashedly so, stolen the phrase, "I've been in sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the kitchen pots" in my attempts to put a name to pain.
And then like an unfaithful lover, I might then turn and seek comfort in the arms of Kahlil Gibran's truth. When you wrestle with the idea of death and dying of a loved one and your hurt collides with Gibran"s enlightened soliloquys one cannot help but find solace and renewal of spirit. Gibran writes;
"Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you
truly dance"
         At other times when I seek to interpret and interrogate social  injustice issues of hunger, genocide and poverty, I resort to the words of the brilliant,  Ben Okri. In his poem, An African Elegy, he writes about the audacity of hope amidst pain and struggle:

        We are the miracles that God made
        To taste the bitter fruit of Time.
        We are precious.
        And one day our suffering
        Will turn into the wonders of the earth.

        Life's meanderings inevitably leads to the subject of Love. At such a juncture one must for a time make acquaintances with the mistress who so masterfully orchestrates the ode to love's seedier side. Enter stage left, Ms. Elizabeth Smart who weeps for her lover by Grand Central Station,  ere joining the ranks of the children of Israel who wept by the rivers of the Babylon when they remembered Zion.
        Though the theological debate rages, much of the Bible IS a study in prose and poetry. The lyrical expressions of joy, sorrow, praise and penitence of David; the mournful dirges of lamentations; the Love Songs of Solomon which accurately suggests that, "many waters cannot quench love nor can the floods drown it"

        Then there are those awesome literary exchanges between Job and God. One must remember that God is aka, The Word so Job could not really compete in that poetry slam. Here's a snippet of their conversations. God speaking:
        "Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
         Tell me, if you understand
         Who marked off its dimensions?
         Surely you know!
         Who stretched a measuring line across it?
         On what were its footings set,
         or who laid its cornerstone—
         while the morning stars sang
         together and all the angels shouted for joy?"
         Job 38
No wonder His son Jesus also had a way with words and loved to speak in Parables (spiritual truths embedded in earthly prose). Jesus' communication style helps us to stretch our thinking and consider His message of Salvation. In the following parable He reminds us to shine for his Glory in the Parable of the lamp under a bushel (Matthew 5:14- 16 NIV)
        You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.
         Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.
         Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.
         In the same way, let your light shine before others,
         that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

So even as we celebrate a Month of Poetry
let's gather and reason
about the Master Poet for all the seasons
of our lives
let our christian fire burn brightly
A reflection of His great Glory.
Love and Blessings
Zpora

The Zone of Proximal Enlightenment (TZPe)

4/10/2012

The Zone of Proximal Enlightenment (TZPe) is a phrase I have coined based on my observations of my life and others. Anyone is capable of entering this zone, simply by allowing your spirit to enter into a sacred listening stance. There are so many advisors talkers, opinion makers , yellers and detractors, but who says we have to let all the noise figure so greatly in our lives. Why not attempt a paradigm shift wherein all the distractions become ground and our spiritual awareness ignites and takes center stage. Find a quiet space on a regular basis to commune with your Maker and thereby create a zone of Proximal Enlightenment where your spirit is highly attuned to something bigger and greater than self. In thinking about this zone, I will posit here, that it is not a finite state.

Our enlightenment is never quite finished. We are human beings, susceptible to fluid emotions, crises, epiphanies, despondencies, but always evolving.
When your spirit is plugged in to a Higher Love
however, your response to extraneous variables is tempered. You occupy a space of calm in the storm. When we allow our humanity to be governed by this zone it permeates all areas of our lives; generosity, prosperity, sexuality,
spirituality - the list goes on. While you seek after this 'altered state' I would add that this is no easy feat. Just remember that the anatomy of hope
is best viewed through the lens of deep sorrow. This Life journey of ours will consist of firing and tempering. We may sometimes find ourselves writhing in pain on the threshing floor, but the more often we consciously seed into The Zone, the more likely that our lives will be a perpetual harvest of unexplainable Joy.
Hope to meet you There
TZPora

Food Fellowship Family Friends & Fun

4/1/2012

A Shared Meal is a good opportunity to share the Good News

Last weekend I got together with some friends for a cooking class. It got me thinking about how much food has the potential to unify us across places, religion and cultures. When we sit at a table and break bread together there is something rather disarming about that shared meal.
As we chopped, stirred and mixed, we talked and laughed in the same language even though we were from different religions and from far flung corners of the globe - From as far as Peru in the South to Honduras, Caribbean islands, USA , as far North as Canada and as far East as Turkey and Uzbekistan - a global melting pot so to speak. We drank chai together after our meal and as the conversation swirled around me, my mind drifted to a quote by Greg Mortensen, author of the book, Three Cups of Tea - "First cup of tea, you're a stranger, Second cup, a friend, by the third you're family. And as I write this I'm reminded of Easter and our Lord's Last Supper " While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” 27 Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29 I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”
I am looking forward to dining with my Savior, my Lord and friend at that sumptuous meal in His kingdom where we will all partake as one big family of God.
I can hardly imagine how much fun it will be....
Love ZPora

Our Father ~ Yours, Mine and Rhema Marvanne's

3/24/2012

Thank You Father

The Lord's Prayer

"Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
evil:
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.
Amen".
Matthew 6:9-13 (KJV

I will continually rejoice that each day that I exist on this planet
is
one more day to do the work of my Heavenly father.
I rejoice because its all I can do to worship a Father who is so faithful and full of Grace and Mercy. Ever so often our Heavenly
fathers sends us an angel, a comforter, a true friend an earthly mother or
father, a savior like his son Jesus who taught us when we pray to
say
"Our Father which art in heaven, Holy is thy name . Thy
Kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
Stand still for
awhile and let the full impact settle into your spirit.
For
thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory.
Every little thing we do must
be to glory of our all Powerful and wholy Holy Father which art in
Heaven.

Our Father is A Father who gives good gifts and treasures to serve us while we serve our lifetime here on Earth. Good gifts like our daily bread, a loving and priceless earthly mother or father, a soulmate, a friend for the fire, a voice of little angels like my own little son who reminds me to breathe deeply whenever I am yet again overcome by the loss of my earthly father.

Or maybe he sends us the little treasure of mercy called Rhema Marvanne who was sent specifically to minister to the souls of humanity. Her Heavenly Father, before He fashioned her in her mother's womb ( a mother who the Lord took home via Ovarian cancer) planned for her to be his mouthpiece of Power and Glory. See Below where she sings of 'Our Father'.
Am overjoyed that Little Rhema and I both share the same Father which art in Heaven. And so should you!