May we, in our judgements from afar, never forget the desperation of aloneness we once knew like second skin. In our judgement, let us look to our own scars, and to the one whose scars set the world aright, and remember that pain is a gateway to birth and death. Let us be the guides that lead the broken into light and life. Let us forget the judgement that is finger pointing and gossip that leads to shame of another, bitterness, sadness, ultimately death. Bring the Light. Be the light.

~MDW

David and Joseph

Joseph was royalty.

He had the blood of kings in his veins.

A chosen king.

As improbable David’s anointing

Was Joseph becoming the Father of the King of Kings.

Carpenters and shepherds. Shepherds and carpenters. Blue collar workers with royalty in their veins because the God of the universe knew

No one

Could achieve true Greatness with their own strength

No one

could earn status in God’s kingdom without His secret ways, His blessings, His miracles

No one is wise enough, powerful enough, perfect enough

To end up the King of Israel

Or the unintended Father to the King

God smiled,

moved some impossible

parts and pieces together

And blew divinity into the line of David. Knocked him to His knees.

And to Joseph

He Whispered a similar task

To be the shepherd to the king of kings

David fell, Joseph nodded, God smiled

and a King was born.

~MDW

Once a year I have a very festive and fun open house for the Art I’ve been working on throughout the year. It’s been so fun to get to know neighbors & new friends better through these events in our home. If you live in the KC Metro area, swing by and see our updated gallery space while eating holiday treats, coffee, coco, etc. If you don’t live local, visit www.illuminatetheordinary.com to find great gifts as well. 😊

Our new baby. KC Underground Our new dream, baby, vision.

A team of visionaries has been dreaming about a church spread throughout the city with One dream, One focus, One vision.

The Church in Kansas City has always been that–ONE church. ONE church to bring the help, healing and hope of Jesus to the people. To see Heaven come down and the streets filled with the light of the True Love of the Gospel.

Jump into our dream! If you are alive and breathing, there is a place for YOU!

Join us for one of two informational meetings at Westside Family Church, November 18 at 12:30pm or November 25th at 6pm

God is on the move. We are ready. Let’s go…

Visit https://www.kcunderground.org/ for more info.

My true baptism into living-alive-in-beauty happened upon landing in Kansas five years ago to this very day.

Every morning in this new-to-me place, I woke up to the endless possibilities of mud on the trails and backwoods  barbed wire fences just beckoning me to cross.  I laced up my 15 year old hiking boots, and just walked far, wherever they would take me.  

I spent a year walking through every season, trekking through the forest.  I walked off old hurts and injuries, strength returning to the broken places.  I came upon  venomous snakes, had a few stare downs with seemingly rabid opossum,  turkeys, deer, beavers, more snakes, old barns, and a mysterious house that only revealed itself after our first autumn here, so cloaked it was In vines, ivy and shrubbery.  

 

I startled at the site of a coyote one day, and his primal gaze on mine, two feet from me forged something new in my being of wild adventure.  Fear had no place here on this new pathway.  I had lived fear for my whole life.  Fear abandoned me and clung to the mud, sticking there, covered up now by layers and layers of Kansas dust and wind. 

Shame had always left me winded, until it blew away one day while walking across an abandoned open prairie while I strayed as close as I could to the embankment by the river.  I picked up a feather, held it to the sun, saw the light through impossible networks of lines and colors.  Illuminated, I let the feather blow on the wind, twirling and swirling through the air, then landing in the river, mysteriously carried along with it my shame and regret.  Gone, and I hardly understood why. How could a moment of my whole being alive to beauty change me so deeply?

In the evenings, I’d venture across the prairie to the Sunset Tree, holding up the western sky In all of its glory, strong arms, carrying the weight of the glory that comes with Kansas sunsets.  Marveling upon colors new to me, golden leaves clapping and slapping in the wind, the sunsets stretched from sky to sky, as far as my eyes could see.  Down, down the sun sunk, the color of the sky changing moment by moment.  Each breath a new color, a new tone.  Mesmerized, I stood up in the glory of the most alive beauty I’d ever known.  

My anxiety set with a hundred of those sunsets, carried with the sun to an unknown place, far from here, away from me, I now walk in the glory of that sun.  It is my secret strength, the mystery of it, the glory of it wrapped in new grace forming around the edges of my heart. 

Joy sprung out at me with an echoing surprise one day as I walked down the muddy trail.   A Storm siren waled in my ears annoying my solitude, until I heard something I had never heard and maybe never will again.  A pack of wild coyote pups howling and howling, matching the storm siren in loudness and favor.  I stood dumbstruck as I listened to the patch ahead of me, to the six pups howl away. I never realized I had been passing their den within a few feet day after day.  I laughed with joy so deep down in my spirit, something new like life awakened me.   The sleepiness of my weary soul, finally alive to joy and beauty, unexpectedly.

I miss the wildness of the Kansas we came to, the wide open plains, the wildflowers stretched from east to west, the sun setting behind the sunset tree-The owls hooting at me as I passed their secret spots in the woods, sneaking up on to beavers happily swimming for joy in the pond.  

The prairie is cleared now, mud paths now asphalt. There are tractors swiping lines of dirt day by day.  Piles of mulch ten feet high stand where the barn and old house used to be.  The old well I found, that was so very mysterious is now filled, gone forever.  A deep sadness with the loss of these images, my mud path that lead to so many adventures.  But it is a new day…. 

I finally wore down my old hiking boots, sunk way down into the thick Kansas mud one day, the tread giving way as I lifted up my foot, ten pounds heavier with mud.  I got new boots.  They’re sturdy, have walked new miles, excited to find new horizons.

I am alive and bold and strong and good.  God is great and he is the Lord of the Prairie.  His sun shines in me and echoes of joy are now mine, and I am happy.

He walked with me as I became Alive to Beauty.