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dreamprayact

~ Reflections of a preacher, poet, and contemplative activist

dreamprayact

Tag Archives: marriage

Looking for You

03 Saturday Jul 2021

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in grief, Reflections

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

grief, healing, heaven, life after death, love, marriage, sanctuary

Valentine’s Day 2011

I’m told you’re looking down on me from above,
but I don’t believe it.
I don’t want you looking down on me
from some lofty perch.
You never did that in life,
so why would you start now?
It’s odd to even think about you
hovering over me –
how high I’m not told –
viewing my life as a spectator,
watching me move from here to there,
seeing me make my mistakes
and not being able to prevent them, 
having little to do with me really,
other than to observe my days
and pray for the best.

In life,
this life,
you were always by my side
and I felt your deep presence.
You were my sanctuary – 
where love flourished,
where healing occurred,
where life was restored each day,
where hope never died.

On this side of the veil
I still look for you
in this sacred meeting place
where egos fall away
and love
without conditions
abides.

You don’t look down on me from above.
You look
as you always have,
into my eyes,
with a tenderness
too deep for words.
You draw me out
and love me,
unreservedly,
truthfully,
and that is a gift
that can only be given
from the inside.

Mark Lloyd Richardson
July 3, 2021

The things you notice

07 Wednesday Apr 2021

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in grief, Reflections

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

broken heart, grief, home, love, marriage

Pacific Grove, California, 2015

The Things You Notice

How sometimes you say we
and sometimes you say I
and you mean essentially the same thing

How there’s hardly a moment goes by
without a thought of her

How the sky is still a fainter blue

How the sound of Latin music
instantly has you imagining
her swaying body

How the birds sing a sweeter song
when she is in your thoughts

How the sun still chooses to rise

How you search for every scrap 
of memory to sustain you
through the lengths of night and day

How your heart is warmed
whenever someone says her name

How the road home still stretches north

How even everyday household tasks
remind you of the loving care
she took in making your home a refuge

How the softness of one of her sweaters
leaves you longing for her tender caress

How the waves still collide with the shore

How an image of her
often triggers
an avalanche of emotion

How your hand reaches in the night
for her side of the bed

How there is still no cure for the broken heart

~ Mark Lloyd Richardson
April 2021

Morning memory

16 Tuesday Mar 2021

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in grief, Reflections

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

death, dying, grief work, love, marriage, memory

Photo credit: Sallie Woodring

In the morning
as you cautiously rise
from your side of the bed
I am there.

I am waiting
hoping
it has been a restful night. 

You are out of breath
from the simple act of sitting up. 
You are tired
in more ways than anyone can know.

Yet your smile reaches out
and melts me.
Will I remember
the feeling
of this moment?

Memory is imperfect
when up against the complex beauty
of a human soul.
Memory only goes so far
and then you want nothing less
than to be in the presence again
of the one you love.

You are sitting there
on your side of the bed
and motion me to come near.
The nearness
is the most comforting
to you
as well as me.

You lean forward
placing your head against my chest
and rest
and breathe
quietly
prayerfully
beautifully

and then
you raise your head
and look into my eyes
and I into yours
and without words
we are reassured
love is here.

Our vows
till death do us part
will soon reach their consummation
and yet love only increases
and mystifies me
in its tenacious hold over me.

You are the rest of me
you said to me more than once
and I truly believe it
for in those eyes
I get lost
in you
for all time.

~ Mark Lloyd Richardson
For my beloved Dallis
March 16, 2021

A letter to my love

11 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in grief, Reflections

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

death, dying, grief, love, marriage, peace

Dallis & I on the Big Island November 2014
(Photo: Wendy Granger)

My dear Dallis,

Sweetheart, I know I told you as you were dying that everything would be okay … that I would be okay … but it was a lie. I don’t like lying to you and I didn’t intend to do so; I was just trying to convince myself, and I was telling you what I thought you needed to hear so that you could let go and be released from a body that was failing you. But now I am utterly heartbroken. I feel completely lost without you. I want so badly to hear your voice again. I want to kiss your lips. I want to hold you and be held by you.

What touched my life so thoroughly during our love affair and marriage is how you would look at me with such affection in your eyes it melted my heart. You brought me to tears so many times just by being honest with me about how you felt. We told each other our deepest truths. We relied on one another to always care most about the other. 

I can’t believe how lucky I was to have you in my life for nineteen years. If I had known sooner that our time together was nearing the end, I would have stopped working earlier and devoted all my time to you … to us! I would have reveled all the more in your smile and laugh. I would have asked you to tell me more about the greatest joys of your life, all the way back. I would have wanted to watch your New Zealand slides with you, and have you regale me about that favorite adventure of yours, years before we met.

I would also have wanted to hear more about the places of pain and disappointment in your life, many of which I know about and others I imagine were left unsaid.

This grief hurts beyond imagining. I feel like I’m dying inside. I struggle just to do the simplest things and get through each day.

I wish there was a way to communicate with you, my beloved. I write these thoughts I’ve been thinking and wish I could get this message to you. You were the very one I needed in my life. You cheered my successes, savored our relationship, and gave me every bit of yourself to love and enjoy. You were my anchor, my safe haven, my source of lightheartedness and joy. 

I’m trying to figure out how to live without you near to me, your physical presence that is. I have never been through more painful days than these. A heavy sadness follows me everywhere, even to sleep. Nothing in my life experience compares to this aching I feel in body, mind and spirit.

Dallis, my beautiful one, it is my deepest hope that you are where there is no more pain and no more crying, and where you know deep and abiding peace. I also hope to see you often in my dreams.

You will always have my love,

Mark

Let Us Claim this Day for Love

26 Wednesday Jun 2013

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Peace with justice, Reflections

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

beloved community, biblical obedience, California Proposition 8, covenant, Defense of Marriage Act, ecclesial disobedience, human rights, marriage, marriage equality, same-sex marriage, social justice, United States Supreme Court

scotus-domaTwo historic and significant rulings came out of the United States Supreme Court today – one striking down key provisions in the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and giving legally married gay and lesbian couples a pathway to receive federal rights and benefits already enjoyed by straight couples, and the other one ruling that California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state, could not be defended on appeal. It is a wonderful day for fairness and equality under the law! It is a day to celebrate that human rights must exist equally for all people regardless of sexual orientation! It is a day to acknowledge that marriage is at its core a covenantal relationship of love between two human beings!

Episcopal Bishop Steven Charleston writes of this historic day: “Let us claim this day for love. You and I, all of us who share in the witness of faith, let us stake our claim on the next twenty-four hours as a sacred space. Let it be a time of freedom. A time of peace. A time of healing for all people, without distinction, without restriction, a time set aside for those who need a place of safety in which they can recover, hope and be filled with the strength of dignity. Let us announce to the world: this is our time and these, all of these, are members of our beloved family.”

From a Christian point of view, I affirm the following:

1)    All of us are members of God’s beloved community;

2)    There is no distinction in God’s eyes between us;

3)    Each of us is free and empowered by God’s abundant grace to become the person we are intended to be;

4)    Each of us learns what it means to be fully human through the most trusting and intimate relationships we are able to fashion with another;

5)    Marriage is about love, and we love because God first loved us, not because we are so naturally good at it;

6)    Marriage is a covenantal relationship in which persons seek God’s blessing as they give themselves to one another for a lifetime;

7)    Marriage is about the deepening of love and commitment, not gender;

8)    It is far more important to the success of a marriage to have the qualities of integrity, honesty, compassion, forgiveness, humility, humor, and mutual respect, than it is to have one man and one woman.

There is so much more work to be done for equality and justice for all of God’s children, both in society and in the church. My own church, the United Methodist Church, is trailing behind other mainstream progressive denominations in this regard. I wish I did not have to say that – on the other hand, there are hopeful and courageous signs that we are becoming more inclusive and may eventually get it right. In the meantime though, “ecclesial disobedience” and “biblical obedience” will only increase. It is not possible for us to do otherwise!

More to come.

Words (c) 2013 Mark Lloyd Richardson

images

My Beautiful One

17 Thursday May 2012

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Poems

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

beauty, love poetry, marriage, relationship, risk, Romance, San Luis Obispo, sweetness of life

Nine years ago today, Dallis and I stood on the back deck of Al and Catherine Topp’s home in Los Osos, California, surrounded by family and a few close friends, and said “I Do” to one another. Each of us had been married once before, and we grasped the enormity of getting a second chance with one another.

Mark & Dallis Richardson wedding dayWe first met a couple of years earlier when her mother was hospitalized and I went to make a pastoral visit (this is a whole other story with a few interesting details that may need to be told some other time). It was more than a year after this hospital visit that we went to see a movie together (“A Beautiful Mind”) in San Luis Obispo and ended up falling in love! Within a few weeks of this first date I wrote the poem below – the first of many love poems I have written for Dallis.

Bluffs at Montana de Oro State Park

My Beautiful One

In these green hills beauty speaks its radiance
in lustrous grasses draped in dew,
in calm shade of oak and pine,
in sunlight dancing amid the shadows…
speaking, speaking for the world’s delight.

In these wild bluffs beauty risks its heart
in thunderous crash of breaking waves,
in plunging cliffs of sculptured rock,
in enormity echoing amid the sameness…
risking, risking for the world’s repair.

In these soft meadows beauty plays its aria
in mellow throat songs of nightingale,
in whispering breezes off the sea,
in sweetness rising amid the sadness…
playing, playing for the world’s pleasure.

You, my love, my beautiful one,
are the spoken radiance,
the heart’s risk,
the playful aria for me.

Happy anniversary to my beautiful one, whose presence makes life sweet!

Words (c) 2002 Mark Lloyd Richardson
Photos (c) 2003, 2010 Dallis Day Richardson

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