October 2009
3 posts
valley camp
have I fallen asleep at the gate? in he came, crashing pillars and pouring pots of soil, seed, and flower. for the first time in my life his whispers heeded, and scripture turned to poison and the promise of new life a frightful thing behind a heavy curtain. who have I been named today? I have not met him, and pray His promise to the one sheep run up the mountain.
Oct ‘07
I have walked...
ambition.
i want to be great because i want to be worthy of creation i want to show that this kit can build a tower and be ravished upstream and grizzly eaten i want that tower to be appreciated, first by the tool giver but evidenced by my community is that the praise of men? i cannot quite see the selfless life realized in the pursuit of greatness maybe selflessness is not self-diminishing but right...
I have never voiced this: I have little faith and live in fear of oblivion.
September 2009
2 posts
“The proclamation of the Church must make allowance for this freedom of grace. Apokatastasis Panton? (Universal Salvation) No, for a grace which automatically would ultimately have to embrace each and every one would certainly not be free grace. It surely would not be God’s grace. But would it be God’s free grace if we could absolutely deny that it could do that? Has Christ been...
War is a force that gives us meaning.
War and conflict have marked most of my adult life. I have been in ambushes on desolate stretches of Central American roads, locked in unnerving firefights in the marshes in southern Iraq, imprisoned in the Sudan, beaten by Saudi military police, deported from Libya and Iran, captured and held for a week by Iraqi Republican Guards, strafed by Russian Mig-21s in central Bosnia, shot at by Serb...
August 2009
14 posts
“ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and...”
– John Steinbeck
Voltaire*
An appeal of significant measure -
upon my meditation of the great canons of idea – theology, philosophy, literature - I question, of what method may these thoughts be birthed, or then, consumed? For hundreds of years, a small cherry; picked, roasted, brewed - has fashioned a medium for which intellectually charged dreams of revolution, revelation, reevaluation; and lastly rebirth – are...
love this.
And then he prayed, “God, I’m asking for two thingsbefore I die; don’t refuse me—8 Banish lies from my lipsand liars from my presence.Give me enough food to live on,neither too much nor too little. 9 If I’m too full, I might get independent,saying, ‘God? Who needs him?’If I’m poor, I might stealand dishonor the name of my God.”
JR
“If I were more attractive,
the smiles I attract and
the exchanges she engaged...”
– JJ
Nibbled.
I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, …but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures...
Character.
character is higher than intellect. Thinking is a function. Living is the functionary. The stream retreats to its source. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think. Does he lack organ or medium to impart his truths? He can still fall back on this elemental force of living them. This is a total act. Thinking is a partial act. Let the grandeur of justice shine in his affairs....
“glory
Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to...”
– JR
i wish
as much as i wish i might i should not love you any extra for my love is not too big, or hard, or tall, or fat, or wide, or wrong. but unmoving! i should not love you anymore yet to end my love is too big, too hard, too tall, too fat, too wide, too very wrong. as much as i wish i should as much as i wish i could
“If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious...”
– in response to race riots of white attacks on black neighborhoods CLAUDE MCKAY wrote: IF WE MUST DIE
“Ultimately, your success will be determined by the amount of risks you take.”
– kjl
“Education… We all are involved in the condemnation of words, an Age of words. We...”
– r.w.emerson
July 2009
16 posts
I am not a writer; I do not have the discipline. Type, re-type, edit, re-write, and edit, throw-it-away, start again. I’m not a fan. I was raised by an English professor, who tells me that writing is very rewarding and that it pays little-to-nothing; paradox. However, many people (I) craving a creative out-let suffer, they (still I) have failed at mastering the guitar, consequently,...
Children, do you want to know by what your hearts should be guided? Throw aside your longings and strivings after that which is null and void; get rid of your erroneous thoughts about happiness and wisdom, and your empty and insincere desires. Dispense with these and you will know Love.
-KRISHNA
“That this social order with its pauperism, famines, prisons, gallows, armies, and wars is necessary to society; that still greater disaster would ensue if this organization were destroyed; all this is said only by those who profit by this organization, while those who suffer from it – and they are ten times as numerous – think and say quite the contrary.”
– Leo Tolstoy
“Our culture has truckled to the times — to the senses. It is not...”
– R.W. Emerson
the fear of poverty
Seneca (in the time of Nero in Rome) believed that living a moral life did not consist of rejecting the world, but of doing away with the fear that motivates our frenetic consumption: the fear of poverty. In a letter every culture jammer should read On Festivals and Fasting, Seneca counsels a friend that the path to inner peace is to adopt a ritual of practiced poverty:
“appoint certain...
“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and...”
– Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy
a perspective
“I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or have been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are condititioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of...
“Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.”
– John Updike
“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in...”
– Gustave Flaubert
“Natural gifts carry with them a … danger. If you have sound nerves and...”
– C.S. Lewis
from Little Gidding.
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime’s effort.
First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of...
Heaven.
take away the desire through achievement or rejection
and you destroy the forward. if I make the summitI must quick to find the next
or I will sink and dielike the hunters in the ocean. when I grasp the girlwhose shape I have dwelled on
her shape will remainfor a while, and I will grow comfortable
in my ownership, and lust againfor other mountains. It must be so.
We are built for...
Deep calls.
Jeremiah 17:9
The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?
Romans 11:33-36
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
“For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him that he might be...
“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by...”
– George Bernard Shaw
“Intro to Virginibus Puerisque:
My dear William Ernest Henley,
We are all busy...”
– Robert Louis Stevenson
“Above all else, it is about leaving a mark that I existed: I was here. I was...”
– Felix Gonzalez-Torres