I have become as a child of daylight — not as I once was, darkling avatar of the night, back in the lost hours that lifetime ago. I admit that I still desire to work into the wee corners, and sometimes it is just to stay up to while away the time in random virtual places, but these are not the wayward activities that once took my everyminute. How I then denied that any of it could make any sense: no, not in so many words did I spell such a thought out, for I made myself an artificial mystery, but this was the tantamount to all my philosophies. (Of course, if you could even call them so, for they were at best dabblings within systems of thought that never even pretended to complement one another.) But here am I now, as if turned knight from knave, though no, not quite knight, I know. As if awake, now, from a yawning slumber, though well aware that not all these memories were merely dreams.

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes,
That call me on and on across the universe,
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box they
Tumble blindly as they make their way
Across the universe
Jai guru deva om
Nothing’s gonna change my world,
Nothing’s gonna change my world.

– The Beatles

Anselm Kiefer: Resurrexit

Click on the pic for a larger version.

The true ground of most men’s prejudice against the Christian doctrine is because they have no mind to obey it.

I tried to follow the morality of pop culture,
the philosophy you find in the movies, or the comic books:
not so easy without special effects, or super-powers.

My mind is fog, and no thing will hold its place there long enough for me to examine what it may be. Random images drift through, and I wonder if they are mysterious, or merely foolish. That is how life goes, does it not? My body is this day in discontent, and I think at times it is one measure that I suffer for my sins, though I may still think that God is merciful, and many measures would I deserve for my accounts to truly be balanced. Yes, so it goes. Sickness shall pass, and I will not think as I do now, and not even wonder what it was that had a mind to visit my conscious mind in these times. Perhaps this, then, shall serve as record: I existed, even now, when I am closed up tight in my room, and none but a few know at all that I am. This is just a sigil in the sand.

Weak and imperfect men shall, notwithstanding their frailties and effects, be received as having pleased God, if they have done their utmost to please Him.

Lo, I have seen the coming and going of a dream, and have stood alone, braced against the winds of change. The world rushes by as surely as I stand still, while I glimpse a piece of what is happening, here and there. My heart has been broken in all these many places, these many times, and every time, I thought it would never mend, and every time, the pain became not but a memory that lined the expression on my face. (Oh, it does help to express these things, for every artist dips his brush in the pools of his despair.) So it goes. I wonder, now, if I have been here as long as I think I have, for I have learned so little about what anything means. My youth, perhaps, were lost years, when I knew so much more than was ever prudent to know. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, though, because I ignored all that was closest to me. And lo, I say I have seen the coming and going of a dream, but another one shall come, by and by.

Storms

In storms we looked out,
forbidding days, when we lit lamps
in the middle of the afternoon,
and wondered about those we loved.

Some of us needed more from life
than to merely be passengers
on this journey, and rode out
even when the wind tried to throw them.

Some of us pretended
that nothing ever would happen
to any of us, sometimes out of love,
sometimes from a kind of despair.

But we all knew enough, those of us
who could bear the thought,
that it is a mystery why some are taken,
and some left to pick up the pieces.

For all we know, God sent the storms
to spite us for our sins — but some of us
hear the whisper of His love,
even when the wind howls.

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,
They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind,
Possessing and caressing me.
Jai guru deva om
Nothing’s gonna change my world,
Nothing’s gonna change my world.

– The Beatles

Jean Metzinger: Dancer in a Café

Click on the pic for a larger version.

It was no exceptional thing for Jesus to withdraw Himself “into the wilderness to pray.” He was never for one moment of any day out of touch with God. He was speaking and listening to the Father all day long; and yet He, who was in such constant touch with God, felt the need, as well as the joy, of more prolonged and more quiet communion with Him… Most of the reasons that drive us to pray for strength and forgiveness could never have driven Him; and yet He needed prayer.

Lord,
                let someone who has lost their faith find it today.
                let someone believe in miracles today.
                let someone who is in despair find hope today.
                let someone find love in the unlikeliest of places.
                let someone in the dark find a light.
                let someone know that you are there.
                let someone find peace today.
                let someone’s heart be opened today.
                let one person discover the wonder that’s been all around them.
                may a sad soul be glad today.
Amen.

We measure things in millions, now, and give no second glance to the number. But we do not comprehend what it really might be. One can say he can spend a million dollars, but he does not dole it out one dollar at a time; it is in sizable chunks, and perhaps, after it is all gone, he never actually experienced all that such a number could mean. We are overloaded by these numbers; billions are even worse. A million, one might, through patience, absorb — a billion, though, no human being ever truly held this number in his head. Ever. He may have held the ten digits that represent it, but that number is beyond this mortal brain to process. And these numbers are said so many times, that one has no opportunity to truly wrap one’s cognitive facilities around them. One should respect such numbers. They are more than the stars you can see in the sky with the naked eye, even out in the deepest country field — when the whole of night is ablaze with the punctuation of God.

“What would Jesus do?”: perhaps this is not the question to ask, for we mere mortals; firstly we might muse, “What would a saint do?” — and consider how above a saint’s ways our Lord would be.

I wonder at nothing and everything, like the night sky:
perhaps not mediocrity, this upon which we sit and stare,
but like the averaging of features makes, beauty, indeed.

This Is Just to Say (2)

I dreamed of you
again last night,
as if the past
were still alive

and I still have those
ticket stubs from
our first date,
and our first kiss

But I understand
you never felt
what I felt,
or will ever know it

(forgive me again, William Carlos Williams)

Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise Physician prescribes because we need them; and he proportions the frequency and weight of them to what the case requires. Let us trust his skill and thank him for his prescription.