i am aloft, floating in a stream of information
the idea has been hiding in oblivion, dug out from creation
i have picked at the outline, careful not to break the metaphor
clumps of false equations lie all around me
i do not know to where i drift, but trust these currents
to where next i must excavate, sift through the unknowns
where i dig, i shake the dust of immortals
[Book again.]
The street view is washed in light. Everything is clear. The air is fresh, for a city. Where have I been? I seem to have blinked into existence fully grown, here in the shade of the standing city, and the memories in my mind are all fake, a simulation of a life implanted by a team of mad scientists. Down the street a woman has turned the corner and walks in my direction on the other side of the street. I am assuming that what she is wearing is season appropriate, and wonder if I myself am in some state of nudity that I have forgotten about. I look down on me, and then wonder why I picked these clothes on me, vaguely groping into my memory to fumble about the some sort of matching algorithm I use to pick the proper colors from the clean pile of clothes that I’ve neglected to sort from my last wash. Proper enough, I suppose; I don’t recall being too fussy. I might guess these garments were the ones on top.
I have at times a sense of the impermanence of things. That the most solid of stone, which is oft mentioned as having things carved in it — that it, too, will pass, will crumble into dust. Just like us, dust to dust. When I lived in San Francisco, there was a time when I experienced a short earthquake: sitting at a desk at work, suddenly the whole building shook. And it was at this time I was the most aware about how flimsy the entire structure was, the building which seemed so solid when the ground was stable. How great the powers of nature. And I think, too, time is the most awesome of these powers. Which seems to do nothing, and everything, too. Driving the trickles that forge the mightiest canyons, inexorable.
We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.
the rhythm of my suffering is as echoes whisper
the movements of my heart are as blind footsteps in eternity
my hope believes in these poetries, subsists on promises
What is your code of honor? Do you have one? I know I certainly don’t. I overheard a cartoon character on TV remark, “Who has a code of honor?” as if it were a ridiculous thing, and another character say, almost under his breath, “I have a code of honor.” Is it like chivalry? No one ever talks about that any more, though in fact, its demise probably came later than the code of honor. What is a code of honor, anyway? Is it so far removed from the modern consciousness that the words have a meaning that has been blown into the winds of time, scattered beyond fathoming? It sounds rather cool, if I think of it, and perhaps I will develop one for myself, based on what I have seen of my own behavior. My self-given nickname is “paladin”, after all. Sounds like something I would do.
The soul at times will pine for impossible things. Like to turn back the years to some hour long subsided, which one forgot to make the most of on the first go. Could we truly have made things better, if given the chance? Would we all make the same mistakes, only the second time with better rationalizations? For I think I will listen to the music of times gone by, and long in my heart some unnameable desire, but I must listen to the logic that comes from my head. To desire well is a form of wisdom in itself, and I must train myself, I think, to want what can be. If not want only what should be. We are all human, and perhaps we cannot always strive toward the better alternative, but we are all born with the capacity to try. Even if we cannot reach the pinnacle, we may still breathe the air up there.
Faith is the acknowledgment of the entire absence of all goodness in us, and the recognition of the cross as the substitute for all the want on our part. The whole work is His, not ours, from first to last.
in the vastness of alone am i a pebble in the desert
the society of my mind has its infidels, bent on war
(i hover: a center, a dreamlike quiet stills my know)
a madness so perfectly designed, as to make one sane
i breathed in the vapors of time, as to make one wise
drifted from island to island in imaginary eternities
(i have seen out this window the dreaming pass by)
the vision pours from my eyes, formless and void
words spoken in solitude return to their source
I have seen the images arcane, whose meanings come later. Curious prophecies, which say one thing, but hide their true consequences. I suppose it is as God spoke to His chosen in riddles: diagrams that cipher into something only viewable from an angle like hindsight, the puzzles only time can solve. These are emblems of the aesthetics of God, the secret books where all noble knowables dwell. The clandestine structure behind all information. If we are lucky enough, we serve as conduits of primal things, larger than us in one way or another, the fluid of destiny. A patch in the fabric of eternity: threads that weave infinity somehow in our finite hands form shape, and texture: and we know without knowing how or why that some unfathomable truth has flowed through us, into being from the void.
People don’t understand what it means that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. Quite specifically, that we could never be admitted into Heaven because we are sinful. We all fall short of the glory. We may only enter because Christ can enter, and because of His reward: that he may invite as many tagalongs as He sees fit. That is what is meant by His being the only way to salvation. Life and death rests solely upon His saying, “I know him,” or “I know him not”: this is the Judgement. And no work we do in this life can earn this path, for all who live besides Him sin in some way, some how. Though faith without works is hollow, it is by faith alone that we are saved. This is the miracle. We become friends of Christ, He told us, by doing as He instructed, and so will be granted the gift of the Resurrection. We only do this when we believe He is as He said He is, and are given the Holy Spirit, which He sent us after He came back from the dead, and ascended to His right place on high. This is the narrow way, and wide is the way to destruction. Believe, and be saved.
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– John Mayer
