If what they do does not make you destitute, or in some way derail your life: if all they can do is take your money, then they cannot take a thing away from you that you do not give them: for all of what you truly possess, what is truly yours — your soul, your humanity — this is yours, and only yours, to keep or waste, by what you decide to be and do when you are wronged. This is the love of God, that He made it so that the material things are only as valuable as how much you have decided your treasure is to be these things; where your treasure is, there your heart shall be also, the good book says. When you decide that you will not be one iota less kind to someone else because of something evil done unto you, this is treasure indeed. Gold cannot buy such graces, and sometimes, we lose a little material to gain meaning we might never have received had we not so lost.

We must not content ourselves with liberty and consolation and gust in prayer. We must come out from prayer the most rapturous and sweet, only to do harder and ever harder works for God and our neighbors. Otherwise the prayer is not good, and the gusts are not from God.

danger most perilous which drips as like the tears of love
we believe we know of which we speak and which we enter into,
but in that thousandth time, the breath of God blows us clean away

I speak, and the world hears none of it.

I listen, and there is only the sound of the river.

I look, and the sky seems poised to fall.

I wonder, and dreaming welcomes me.

I jump, and I am above the world a second.

I cry, and I am stared at by strangers.

I speak again, and I understand it, now.

Where there is love is where earth and heaven intersect.

Have we become blind to the arbitrary irregularities of mass-produced things? The misapplied glue, the margin left for small industrial misalignment, the outline around all molded plastic things — we do not question any of these slipshod applications. Have we never had the expectation of the precise quality that perhaps we once did? For we perpetuate the species when we expect nothing more from items so. I remember that I did notice when I was young that these items mispronounced themselves, but believed that this was how it was meant to be done. This is what comes of everyone having everything, perhaps. Just that now, I have glimpsed where people have done, created things that they cared about, and how seamless all of it could be. Yes, this came as a surprise to me, too: some people care. There is such a thing as craft existent in the world. Or at least, let me take it upon myself to perpetuate the myth. May I pay attention to what comes from my hands, I might say. Let not my eye be blind, and “acceptable”.

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’,
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’,
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’,
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

– Bob Dylan

Giorgio de Chirico
Melancholy and Mystery of a Street

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4.

interwoven light and darkness, moonlight mixed with mud
stormwind will know how fractures the stainless glow behind the clouds
lightning in the distance: the sky cracked open to expose the electricity
here, where the world ends every hour on the hour, i wait
the fabric unravels, and the shimmering pours out in a million threads
the shadow slips between the pages of forgetting, and never was
this trail out of the collective mind bears footprints tears could not erase
what comes this way has no name, and no one will ever speak of it
the dragon in the sky whirls the tempest and is pure sound thrashing
all paths break; somewhere a hand pockets a sliver of sunlight
i open my eyes, and no one can see me but the angels, everywhere

Nothing shall be lost that is done for God or in obedience to Him.

– John Owen

In my soul, I have drunk of sorrow, the blue coolness that seeped through all my chest; I have tasted the emptinesses that were sharp, and those that were dull, the black tastes of those nothings. I cannot say that these were friends of mine, but I might feel that I know them well, and kept company with me in their own way — however much sensations themselves can be said to be alive. As I continue with this process life, I find that I have stopped asking why, and didn’t notice the absence, for the effect was the same whether I placed the question before me or no, that the cosmos would only answer if I myself wrote it in the ether. In fact, most of the questions now that I ask I know only my eyes will ever see, the only one who will ever care that such seeking existed.

I do not know what I expect, anymore. Things happen, I realize things, but I feel like the chapters of my life are merely copied and pasted, altering the small details of time and other minor attributes of placement; there is nothing new under the sun anymore. Is this what it is like to get old? Is this what dying is like? I know I am only half serious, but that half is deadly. I know in my heart that I prefer meaning to any pleasure, but I will search out whatever pleasures I can and take the meaning only if it happens along. This is the unreliable narrator that I am in my life; I cannot trust me. In my soul, there is a tragedy that will never be written, for the words cannot reach it. But it is there, staring at the darkness and the light, wondering that “why” it will never ask.

Hearts will break for nothing at all.

Dreams come true in the strangest ways.

Time makes no excuses, expects none.

Love can make absolutely anything priceless.

Beware if ever death winks at you.

Purpose only aims at moving objects.

Light shall shine, always believe this.

What can we boast for ourselves? That we did as we were told?

fire touched me at the edge of the horizon, lingering
spoke the angel through the flame, that apocalypses come and go
then i float outside myself, but find no enlightenment there

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony,
I met a white man who walked a black dog,
I met a young woman whose body was burning,
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,
I met one man who was wounded in love,
I met another man who was wounded with hatred,
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

– Bob Dylan

Francis Bacon: Man with Dog

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The less you feel and the more firmly you believe, the more praiseworthy is your faith and the more it will be esteemed and appreciated; for real faith is much more than a mere opinion of man. In it we have true knowledge: in truth, we lack nothing save true faith.

What comes now? I taste the air and some strange scent colors it so, some hint of mystery whispers to me. Who is to know what the future brings? Here is wisdom: even the prophets were surprised when what they had foreseen had come to pass. Dreams can only speak in riddles, visions mix with imagination so that neither are distinct. Though sometimes, it is true that we find ourselves ready when these things arrive, unexpected or no. I am not saying to repent, for the time is at hand — this has been so for two thousand years. It is something I spy with the eye of my psyche, like a ghost yet to be born: something crouched to shake the sky when in its bounding shall leap. Perhaps it will be a small, thing, after all, but such that things will all change — if I have the flavor right of it, what tastes like change to season this world of daylight.