Strange the things that keep hope alive. That which is dissipated by shouts, sustained by whispers: what casual glance ignited the cool blue flickerflame? What steady breath blown keeps aglow these careful embers? Yet myself I have been harboring at least one hope for years now, one that St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, might himself tell me to let go. Sometimes it is the feeling that one cannot process how it could not be true, that to counter a certain hope would be to destroy rather central structures in one’s soul. Have I been a fool to keep hoping for impossible things? Though in truth, I can still see the possibility in it… There have been signs, I think, and that has been part of it; but what is prophecy, and what just the wishful thought? Or is it all a test, to see if I can as the prophets could: to believe in something until it happens. To see if I have the mettle to be a believer true, to see past doubt, if it makes sense to me in my inmost. If the promise has been whispered from on high, who never fails to deliver…
28 Jan 2012
25 Jan 2012
The Kiss
There at my fingertips
danced the magic of a world;
there at my feet swam the rivers
that flowed through galaxies;
there, there at eye level
an angel prince who whispered
eldritch things, my secret name.
I remember the trees
all spoke in their arcane tree intonations,
that sung from bark to bark
the eons of withstanding;
I remember the mountains
that a lifetime could not climb,
whose peaks reached into the third heaven;
I remember, I remember rain
that fell through seven atmospheres
and carried the scent of the uppermost sky
down into the valleys of mist.
And if I think correctly,
all of it together, freely given me
for a thousand years, could not equal
the secret in your kiss:
there, where the real meets the dream,
through the infinite looking glass;
I remember as if it happened just now,
and as if it never happened:
all the magic in the world,
I could taste their every inkling.
22 Jan 2012
Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said: “Father, to the limit of my ability, I keep my little rule, my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and to the limit of my ability, I work to cleanse my heart of thoughts; what more should I do?” The elder rose up in reply, and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: “Why not be utterly changed into fire?”
19 Jan 2012
16 Jan 2012
Quiet night, and I wonder at the world. I have thought that I knew my purpose, and that no mystery was beyond me — that I had been given sight — but what was truly mine but vanity, and chasing after wind? If there is an underlying Reason, I think perhaps it is too deep to ponder, too obscure to scry, and if any says he knows the mind of God, what he sees is merely his own reflection made into a graven image. We must do what we can, it is true, but let it be known that we have only faith to guide us. However well we know the ways of this world, we have only the barest premises to make choices that are half random. But it is also true that we may desire to do right. We may believe there is right and wrong in this world, and strive to do what in our eyes is the good. Knowing that our compass will never point to true north, we can do what is in our ability: to put our hearts in the right place, and know that we tried. To be able to look ourselves in the eye. To be able to sleep the sleep of the righteous.
13 Jan 2012
Men stand much upon the title of orthodox, by which is usually understood, not believing the doctrine of Christ or His apostles, but such opinions as are in vogue among such a party, such systems of divinity as have been compiled in haste by those whom we have in admiration; and whatever is not consonant to these little bodies of divinity, though possibly it agree well enough with the Word of God, is error and heresy; and whoever maintains it can hardly pass for a Christian among some angry and perverse people. I do not intend to plead for any error, but I would not have Christianity chiefly measured by matters of opinion. I know no such error and heresy as a wicked life… Of the two, I have more hopes of him that denies the divinity of Christ and lives otherwise soberly, and righteously, and godly in the world, than of the man who owns Christ to be the Son of God, and lives like a child of the devil.
10 Jan 2012
OK, maybe I am a bleeding heart liberal, after all. I like to think I am a moderate. But when those right wing nutjobs appropriate Christ like they do, it really makes my stomach turn. Don’t even get me started on the Bible. Having read it 8 times, now, there are things in there that are completely whiskey tango foxtrot. But I’ll save that for later. These millionaires who claim that God called them to run: do they understand that Jesus stood up to what was then the religious establishment, who professed to serve the same God he did? That where he did anything close to violence was to the money changers at the temple? It was to those who dealt unfairly with money, and said they acted in God’s name. This was the closest to hatred that Christ ever got. Hello, rich Christian politicians, this means you! You cannot serve both God and riches.
To those who instead hate anyone else simply because they are different from what they know, how in the f*** do they get off doing it in the name of the Lord? This is the dude who was criticized for hanging out with the non-Sunday teatime crowd. This is the dude who said, let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Do you recall, maybe, a “love your enemies” in there? Even if we were to count them as enemies, to feed them and take care of them. To anyone who claims some subset of the population is going to hell for what they are, instead of how they treat people: you burn the bridge by which you yourself need travel to be saved. To you who call yourselves righteous, who claim to know the will of God, I say to you, the perverts and drug addicts precede you into the Kingdom. Only one of us was ever perfect, and he said how we act towards others is how we are, in fact, acting towards him. By how we judge others, we will be judged.
I guess this is all I’m really saying: “‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?” Then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.”’” [from Matthew 7, NRSV] Chew on that.
7 Jan 2012
i am afloat on the skin of the watery destinies
the liquid realities mixing with my own skin
until i am the color of whatever happens
in the season of the snows, adrift in nakedness
i do not notice my own evaporation
until i am high in the notice of the moon
and the demon tries to tip the whole balance over
so distant gravity tries to rouse me from my perch
slipping from thought as if i had no weight
unloved by the hours that pass me each on to the next
every stranger is familiar, or i am grown old
though i know some fossil fires cruder
i wait as all the motion keeps vanishing
have i always known time’s next-door-neighbor?
now, the kind of change in the pocket of a dream
now, the traveler without place names
i know how i arrived here, alternatively, rambling
though i don’t remember this particular future
what i have seen could fill a mirror
the sentiment of myself in plastic wrap, disposable
one cold day to freeze my watery eye
if i have not seemed to be present, take note
i have eked out a positive sum to the seasons
for i have collected all the scraps of perception
that twilight mistook as unchanging
and i have become my own, very breath:
steady, with rhythm, the essence of life’s matter
4 Jan 2012
My thought is perched upon a precipice, looking out into the unknown. Perhaps it is time for my mind to stop wandering. I wonder what these dreams I have really mean, whether they are worthy of me, and I worthy of them — there is work to be done, I know that for sure. I have gone down enough pathways that led to barrenness, that twisted back on themselves, and that just go on and on without end, that I am wary now of where I should step. But go, I must; this is for certain. And I do not know which part of the adventure will be why I go, so I think I must taste it all as if such wine shall never be bottled again. Into the uncharted: I imagine that what is meant to be will happen, like it or not, and saint or fool, I must claim my destiny. Dream my dream.
1 Jan 2012
28 Dec 2011
Little things come daily, hourly, within our reach, and they are not less calculated to set forward our growth in holiness, than are the greater occasions which occur but rarely; — in some ways we may turn them to more profit, inasmuch as they do not war against humility, or tend to feed self-conceit. Moreover, fidelity in trifles, and an earnest seeking to please God in little matters, is a test of real devotion and love… Let your aim be to please our dear Lord perfectly in little things, and to attain a spirit of childlike simplicity and dependence.
25 Dec 2011
21 Dec 2011
God help us. Has it all truly ever been like it is now, the flimsy veneer of something we like to call “civilization”, over all the brute, savage gestures that underlie it? The veneer of which seems at times altogether desiring to collapse, to fail, and then we know not what to become of everything we ever have come to understand? Is it actually a better world now, as if it were the case it has ever been like it is, that these days things are merely more transparent, and so it seems the worse than when things were only done under cover of darkness and ignorance? For this is an evil world, which is why the Devil could offer it to Christ as that greatest temptation. To hope for better — when was it ever not a fool’s errand? Yet it is only in the darkest darks that some lights can be seen, and we must be such candles, through wind and rain, to preserve these fragile fires as we must. The alternative is no alternative, for what profit a man to exchange his soul for anything? Sometimes so tempting to give in, and be done with it… God help us.
18 Dec 2011
a song that is sweet and sad flavors the air in bitter caramel
and i wonder what it would be like to be back among the living
i follow the faintest scents of prophecy, but if i handle the words
they slip slip slip like so many wisps of weary candle smoke
disappearing to the magic of what the mathematics reveal
the voice of God for to unlock in every molecule of space
there are secrets in the strangeness by which destiny deals
where have i been, that thought and flavor are so familiar?
surely down in the waking world, forgetting all that matters
casually bleeding precious time, waiting only for the last zero
15 Dec 2011
We are all God’s children, or nobody is.
– Jonathan Barnes
Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
– Robert Brault
When we understand that man is the only animal who must create meaning, who must open a wedge into neutral nature, we already understand the essence of love. Love is the problem of an animal who must find life, create a dialogue with nature in order to experience his own being.
– Ernest Becker
Love and pity and wish well to every soul in the world; dwell in love, and then you dwell in God.
– William Law
If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?
– Stephen Levine
