That Funky 70’s Hit

For dVerse Poetics --I couldn't get Lillian's birthday website link to work either, so I simply chose a memorable hit from my childhood.  Grand Funk Railroad's "The Loco-Motion" is the first No. 1 song I remember from my childhood in the 70's. It seemed to be everywhere on the radio all the time. But the song had been recorded first by Little Eva and been No. 1 in the 60's; later in the 80's Kylie Minogue took it to No. 3 on the Billboard. Not bad for a song about a train dance, chug-a-chuga! Click on Mr. Linky to join in!

The 70’s made a lot of commotion
The worst in hair, the worst in fashion
I ran around in patchy jeans and braids
You were cool in long hair and good grades
Then one day the neighborhood was jammin’
People snappin’ fingers and gyratin’
Kids in diapers and granddads in knickers
All fancyin’ the music, ignoring the snickers
“Come on, come on,” “chug-a-chuga,” swinging hips
“Groovy!” “the loco-motion” on everyone’s lips!

I Would Be A Leaf

I would be a leaf
in Thy kingdom, LORD,
to drink the glory of You.

In the portmanteau
compartments of life to carry
Your photons of life.

Replenished daily
by the fountains of Your love
sky-full, earth-replete.

Dancing in the wind
whose great power tender breathes
Your eternal joy.

Stormed by sorrow, strife
refuged by Your haven-wings;
exulting, there soar.

Maple in Spring
Haiku 5-7-5
Sammi's Weekend Writing Prompt #228 – "Portmanteau" – exactly 59 words
Cee's Flower of the Day (FOTD) - September 26, 2021

Haiku Bouquet

can it be
you and me
in heaven?

        in the spring
        dance begins
        to flower

                come summer
                time’s bouquet
                radiant

                                in autumn
                                we breathe scents
                                of harvest

                                          winter turns
                                          on icy
                                          heels, shivers

                                                            time is now
                                                            eternal
                                                            singing day

                                                                                   first Adam
                                                                                   fell, second
                                                                                   Adam saves


1 Corinthians 15:21-28
For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.
For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him.
When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

Retro Haiku 3-3-3
Eugi's Weekly Prompt – Bouquet – September 16
Cee's Flower of the Day

Redbud Joy

buds careen in bursts

dark limbs reach skyward

the breeze tickles pink

blue spins on green

winter’s undone

For Cee's FOTD, September 14, 2021: Rosebuds

Flower of the Day Challenge (FOTD).  
"Please feel free to post every day or when you you feel like it.  
Don’t forget that my FOTD challenge accepts gardens, leaves and berries as well as flowers."  

A Common-Place Jotting: Corrie ten Boom

Common-Place or “Locus Communis” — a place to remember

Corrie ten Boom (1892-1983) and her family helped Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust during World War II and, by all accounts, saved nearly 800 lives in the Netherlands. They were devout Christians.

On February 28, 1944, a Dutch informant told the Nazis of the ten Booms’ activities and the Gestapo raided the home. They kept the house under surveillance, and by the end of the day 35 people, including the entire ten Boom family, were arrested, Although German soldiers thoroughly searched the house, they didn’t find the half-dozen Jews safely concealed in the hiding place. The six stayed in the cramped space for nearly three days before being rescued by the Dutch underground.

Ten Boom Museum

All ten Boom family members were incarcerated, including Corrie’s 84-year-old father, who soon died in the Scheveningen prison, located near The Hague. Corrie and her sister Betsie were remanded to the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp, near Berlin. Betsie died there on December 16, 1944. Twelve days later, Corrie was released. None of the other members of her family had survived.

In 1971, she wrote a best-selling book of her experiences during World War II, entitled The Hiding Place in which she recounts her extraordinary experiences through World War II and illustrates how Christ’s strength sustained her.

The above biography taken from biography.com.

“In darkness God’s truth shines most clear.”

Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“I have experienced His presence in the deepest hell that man can create. I have really tested the promises of the Bible, and believe me, you can count on them.”

Corrie ten Boom

“Worrying is carrying tomorrow’s load with today’s strength- carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn’t empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.”

Corrie ten Boom

“If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. If you look within, you’ll be depressed. If you look at God, you’ll be at rest.”

Corrie ten Boom
Continue reading “A Common-Place Jotting: Corrie ten Boom”

Dead Rights

Image by Hans Braxmeier from Pixabay

The sun had taken flight with midnight near
The killer stops uncertainly, afraid,
Behind a sound he hears, sinister, clear,
A hollow breathing, ice-cold hand now laid
Upon his shoulder, grips; he springs away,
As if the fiends of hell were at his heels,
But still pursued, his face with terror, gray.
At last he turns, with courage bold, then squeals
As dead Lucille peals, “Now see how it feels!”


Well, Halloween’s just around the corner isn’t it? 🎃👻 Update: And right on cue, I’m number 13 on Mr. Linky! Haha.

Laura at dVerse's MTB: "Since today is the 9th of the 9th month it is fitting for that numeral to inform today’s poetry form –  so let’s meet The Novelinee!. . . Yes, it’s a nine line stanza poem overlaid with this rhyme sequence:
a,b,a,b,c,d,c,d,d" also written in iambic pentameter. 

The Load

Genre: Fiction; Word count: 100
Come along and join in with Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers.
Rochelle asks that we use the photo prompt (© Sandra Crook) 
and limit our words to 100 or less.

I counted them too, you know: every turn, every curve, every meter. Every pothole, aggravation, near disaster.

For what it’s worth, the load was never the point.

It was where I was going.

My only regret is you were stuck with me for every millimeter of it, and you hated it.

Life was too slow for you.

It was too fast for me.

I had a load to carry: responsibility to those who depended on me.

You were looking for an escape.

I was looking at the journey’s end.

I wish you could know now it was worth it.

In the Pink

Azalea

Profusion of pink

Distant memory of spring

As summer’s gold wanes

For Cee's FOTD, September 7, 2021:See the gorgeous red zinnias on Cee's site.
Flower of the Day Challenge (FOTD).  
"Please feel free to post every day or when you you feel like it.  
Don’t forget that my FOTD challenge accepts gardens, leaves and berries as well as flowers."  

A Common-Place Jotting: Communion with God

Common-Place or “Locus Communis” — a place to remember

John Owen (1616-1683) was a theologian and Independent minister, and one of the more prolific writers of his time. He had one of the greatest minds of the seventeenth century, and engaged in the scholarly debates then current. He was a defender of high Calvinism, a chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and an administrator for the University of Oxford. His works were widely read in his lifetime and continue to be published today.

“The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to him is not to believe that he loves you.”

John Owen, Communion with God (1657)

The excerpt below is from the same work by Owens, quoted in Randall J. Pederson, The Puritans Daily Readings (pp. 258-259):

“By nature, since the entrance of sin, no man has any communion with God. God is light and we are darkness; and what communion has light with darkness? He is life, we are dead; He is love, and we are enmity; and what agreement can there be between us? Men in such a condition have neither Christ, nor hope, nor God in the world, “being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them” (Eph. 4:18).

Now, two cannot walk together unless they be agreed, (Amos 3:3). While there is this distance between God and man, there is no walking together for them in any fellowship or communion. Our first interest in God was so lost by sin, as that there was left unto us (in ourselves) no possibility of a recovery. As we had deprived ourselves of all power for a returnal, so God had not revealed any way of access unto Himself; or that He could, under any consideration, be approached unto by sinners in peace. Not any work that God had made, not any attribute that He had revealed, could give the least light into such a dispensation.

The manifestation of grace and pardoning mercy, which is the only door of entrance into any such communion, is not committed unto any but unto Him alone in whom it is, by whom that grace and mercy was purchased, through whom it is dispensed, who reveals it from the bosom of the Father. Hence this communion and fellowship with God is not in express terms mentioned in the Old Testament. The thing itself is found there; but the clear light of it, and the boldness of faith in it, is discovered in the gospel, and by the Spirit administered therein. ‘And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.’Ephesians 5:11

Communion is the mutual communication of such good things as wherein the persons holding that communion are delighted, bottomed upon some union between them. So it was with Jonathan and David; their souls clave to one another in love, (1 Sam. 20:17). There was the union of love between them; and then they really communicated all issues of love mutually. In spiritual things this is more eminent: those who enjoy this communion have the most excellent union for the foundation of it; and the issues of that union, which they mutually communicate, are the most precious and eminent…

Our communion, then, with God consists in His communication of Himself unto us, with our returnal unto Him of that which He requires and accepts, flowing from that union which in Jesus Christ we have with Him. This communion is twofold: it is perfect and complete, in the full fruition of His glory and total giving up of ourselves to Him, resting in Him as our utmost end; which we shall enjoy when we see Him as He is; and second, it is initial and incomplete, in the first-fruits and dawnings of that perfection which we have here in grace.

It is, then, I say, of that mutual communication in giving and receiving, after a most holy and spiritual manner, which is between God and the saints while they walk together in a covenant of peace, ratified in the blood of Jesus. We thus pray that the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who has, of the riches of His grace, recovered us from a state of enmity into a condition of communion and fellowship with Himself, that we may have such a taste of His sweetness and excellencies as to be stirred up to a farther longing after the fullness of His salvation, and the eternal fruition of Him in glory.”

“So much as we see of the love of God, so much shall we delight in him, and no more.”

John Owen, Communion with God (1657)