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you weak on your feet and keep
you from climbing high beyond
this worldly seat."
Poet Harris expresses a sincere hope that readers will find their own personal path to God within her words. She refers to those who have helped lead her, those she loves, beginning with the “Love Smile” of “the one God sent to me to make me lowly and free.” She invites a special friend to “Be Found Still Loving Me”: “I’ll always thank God for you / In the misty blue days.”
She honors her “Mother Dear,” humbly declaring that, “Your daughter loves you; one day you’ll see.” Her works contain vivid natural imagery, as in this prose offering: “There’s still plenty of room on this eagle’s wings where I lie, always being healed as I lie still.” Some pieces employ mild humor, such as the notion that “God is the umpire of our fate,” or the depiction of a shopper, “hoping to score the sale of a century (ooh!),” renouncing the store’s grip on her since “there’s never enough to fill this hole in the soul.” And she thanks God for earthly love, “for sending you just in time to be mine.”
Modestly providing little information about herself, Harris instead paints a gentle self-portrait through the thoughts and feelings put forth in these short but profound glimpses. Here, life experience reveals her sustaining love for God, for God’s creation, and for the best that is to be found in humans, even in herself. As God continually shows his presence in various ways—“the immortal light,” the “hand stretched out still to heal,” “the briskness of the breeze,” and the “grace to run the race”—Harris can find him in laughter as well as in powerful waking dreams. Her God-focused collection is quietly inspiring, imbued with messages to help and heal, reaching out to contemplative adherents of the Christian faith.