MADE IN THE IMAGE is now available!!!

Jane’s new collection of poetry, MADE IN THE IMAGE, is now available from Lulu Press!! Here is what three readers have to say in praise of the poems in this book:

“Jane Beal has the gift of tongues. She speaks in many voices: with the whispered wish for water in the wasteland; the yearnings of Yeats; the ecstasy of St Teresa; the chaste eroticism of the Song of Songs. She speaks in many voices but always with the One Voice that conveys the unity of meaning through the poet’s polyphony.”

~ Joseph Pearce, author of Divining Divinity (www.staustinreview.com)

“Jane Beal takes you on exquisite journeys to the mountains of love just as poignantly as trips taken to the underground of human behavior. She is a modern day psalmist.
”

~ Yolanda Calderon-Horn, author of Step Out of Weeping Shoes (lopsidepress.com/gallery)

“These poems move from the painful terrain of women’s mistreatment through the ages and all over the world to an ecstatic vision of 
humanity as made in God’s image. Beal’s poetry bears witness to suffering from a compassionate and devotional place. As she says in “Psalm”: ‘All my longings lie open before You.’ As a reader, my longings are laid open by her work.”

~ Marie-Elizabeth Mali, editor of The Book of the Villanelle (www.floweringlotus.com)

You are invited to preview the book at MADE IN THE IMAGE at Lulu Press!

Read Full Post »

Verses from Psalm 77

I said, ” Let me remember my song in the night; 
let me meditate in my heart.” 
Then my spirit made a diligent search …

I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
yes, I will remember your wonders of old.
I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds.
Your way, O God, is holy.
What God is great like our God?
You are the God who works wonders;
you have made known your might among the peoples.
You redeemed …

Your way was through the sea,
your path through the great water;
your footprints or unseen.

Commentary: In Psalm 77, the writer reveals the secret life, his inner life with God. For a singer, for a poet, to lose his song in the night is a great sadness heaped upon other sadnesses. But here, the psalmist determines to remember his song. It is not that he will sing a new song, as he has in the past, but that he will remember his song that once was new and find consolation.

He’ll not only remember his song but the deeds of the Lord and all His wonders. The memory of past redemption comforts and consoles the psalmist even more deeply than his own old song.

When he speaks of God’s path through the sea, he speaks of something impossible for human senses to perceive but something spiritually necessary for the human spirit to receive as truth. God’s footprints may be invisible … but God did walk on water.

The Gospels record that Peter saw Jesus walking on the water toward him in a storm. Peter said that if he were truly seeing Jesus, Jesus should command him to get out  of a boat. Jesus invited Peter out on the water, and Peter accepted the invitation.

What are the invitations of God in your life? What are the invitations in mine? What storms are troubling our boats?  

How can we find the memory of songs and the wondrous works of God in our souls that might give us the courage to step out  on the water?  

Even when we do not see it, there is a path.

Read Full Post »