19 Mar 2012

Right now, let me say that I cannot find a home for my heart. I am going to take a leave from this journal for a space, perhaps two months. There is so much to do, but then again, when is there not? I always say, it is better to be too busy than not busy enough. I must therefore be truly blessed. I am traveling to a far place, not important where, actually, just to know that perhaps I may find closure to one great avenue in my life. Who is to say what the future brings? It may all in fact work out splendidly; even if it be a miracle for that to happen, I am a believer in miracles. Any rational person should be. May I keep my trust in the Lord, whatever may come, and whatever may come, may I count it all joy. Truly, what else can he who believes try to do, and be?

posted by John H. Doe @ 12:01 am

16 Mar 2012

what i believe aligns not the axis of anything great
but it is better to hope and to be wrong
in my heart i envision a twist by the hand of God
where the fate once lay flat, forsaken
(no hurt in the world is so deep to touch the void)
strange: love is that beyond which cares
and i wonder at the source of my careful letting go
no sign to tell me why the signs are true
here in the haunches of world soul, tensed and taut
(even angels climb stairways to heaven)
of heroics and victories must our stories set sail
voyages less turning, more heartbreaking
here in the moment, we are spirits at war with time
suddenly to see how we came to be here

posted by John H. Doe @ 12:01 am

13 Mar 2012

Bosch: Tree-Man

Click on the pic for a larger version.

posted by John H. Doe @ 12:01 am

10 Mar 2012

One thinks, sometimes, that maybe I am meant to be a man of sorrows. I’m reading the Book of Job, and this puts something of a perspective on my own troubles. Job was meant to be a man of sorrows, never mind that he is at the end given more than he lost in the middle: because the middle undoubtedly happened. Shall I myself thus content to be put in the darkness? Shall I think that ultimately, God will do me right, yea, within this, my lifetime? I can do nothing more than hold on. If I cannot put my trust in the Lord, what is there left for me? There were two others in the Bible known by the title. Perhaps, like Jeremiah, shall I buy a field, to hope for future crops? Perhaps, like our Lord, shall I ask why God has forsaken me? Then, to awaken, and to find, strange, how the world is made new…

posted by John H. Doe @ 12:01 am

7 Mar 2012

The preacher and the writer may seem to have an… easy task. At first sight, it may seem that they have only to proclaim and declare; but in fact, if their words are to enter men’s hearts and bear fruit, they must be the right words, shaped cunningly to pass men’s defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds. This means, in practice, turning a face of flint toward the easy cliche, the well-worn religious cant and phraseology, dear, no doubt, to the faithful, but utterly meaningless to those outside the fold. It means learning how people are thinking and how they are feeling; it means learning with patience, imagination and ingenuity the way to pierce apathy or blank lack of understanding. I sometimes wonder what hours of prayer and thought lie behind the apparently simple and spontaneous parables of the Gospel.

– J. B. Phillips

posted by John H. Doe @ 12:01 am

4 Mar 2012

light above light, a halo of a halo
and a string of fate is plucked
to sound the white notes of a dream
as change gives birth to time
leaving contrails of diluted bliss
we outrun the pegasus, outfly
a hundred years’ rain in one second
to be as love would set afire
illusions burn away from sheer speed
to hold a candle in the storm
this is the prophet’s perfect peace
to sound as a star igniting
walking the earth the hand of a dream

posted by John H. Doe @ 12:01 am

1 Mar 2012

War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
– Thomas Mann

Never go out to meet trouble. If you will just sit still, nine cases out of ten someone will intercept it before it reaches you.
– Calvin Coolidge

Re-examine all that you have been told… dismiss that which insults your soul.
– Walt Whitman

We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.
– Omar Bradley

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
– Oscar Wilde

posted by John H. Doe @ 12:01 am

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