Self-Stirred To Capability
by Michael Doyle

Stepping up to live and serve
I walk in more blessings than I deserve
In this faith, I grow and grow
Living more love than I might know

Guilt and innocence is our culture
Litigious in nature is what we nurture
Caught up in a rusted triangle of blame
It's the shame drawn into our game

Pointing at the victim in ourselves
Believing the frame of every villain on the shelf
Trying to make sense of chaos, we ask for rescue
Ignoring that our best help is God's own due

Awareness and ownership are the answer
To live in shame acts like societal cancer
A product of the fall, we make help a four-letter word
In all the troubles that are mostly self-stirred

In the image of God, we must take responsibility
Finding our best answers to our capability
From this dynamic, we change from casting blame
Making the choices to change our own game

Man's search for meaning is one of choices
The one that allow us to speak our own voices
It's how we learn to look out and perceive
And brings the best of health that we can conceive

We are born to be nurtured into possibility
Giving our best in all of our known probabilities
Wholeness becomes an expression of our authenticity
It be truth and substantive to become our legacy

This redemptive view takes away the shades of blame
Taking our stuff as owned to change life's game
There is no need to repay any sort of vindication
You feel when you're triggered by every violation

In every setting, we are to respond as we must
Living out God's love and walking in needed trust
Walking in the patience that we might yet endure
Trusting with faith that time finds its way to cure

To be a nurturer, is to let life run its flow
No victims; no villains; life has its own roll
We can only walk along each other, side-by-side
Letting each carry their weight, we quietly confide

That each of us works out of a place of abundance
Living full lives with measures of robust confidence
That we can overcome every sense of tribulation
But in some things, there cannot be a ready solution

Don't chase after others, seeking their own consequences
All healing is limited and a matter of providence
Life plays out in real-time in our lives of freedom
This is the way of the earth and the Father's Kingdom

Pausing for breath and a moment's share of reflection
Breath by breath, we let go to reach God's connection
Each of us must play our own separate sort of game
Each of us coached and nurtured past the show of shame

This then is the path that builds toward integrity
The voices we choose to listen to build our legacy
Striving toward health in holding to our accountability
Solid, honest feedback is the source of authenticity

If we remain humble enough to live up to being great
As fierce listeners and humbly reconciled to our fate
Iron sharpens iron as as sense of interpersonal tether
As each of us walks together into a future that is better

The predictable is more often than not from disease
The healthy is unpredictable putting us off our ease
Daring to create is life's enduring and best connection
As life works its way toward our final destination

The artistry of God is disturbing at the core of our hearts
As the relationship grows for us, part-by-part
Moving into participation and not just vapid justification
Life is to be lived gently not in harsh rationalization

There's a learning to live that becomes how we will live
Learning to take what we are given and learning to forgive
And then pushing through in everything that we must take
This is spent our lives are spent in all we make

(c) April 23, 2023   Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved