Of Glorious Scars and a Back to the Ring: The Weary Gladiators Song

Worlds apart for the meantime in the salty light of the past. Part burning the other an enslaving blast to the quicksilver present. When chance is a game of choice. In a fire drawn from the furnaced bosom. Amongst friends amongst thieves. Ones who plant the dirk of shadows. Weighty matters of yesteryears. Amiable yarns and enraptured nights, untouchable peccadilloes and charred caissons. Love quadrilaterals in the foyer when you have already sat to dine. Foolish gold with the world already in hand. Glassed over eyes, tense brow, retreating tongue. At court with the ghost of a queen who passes time beyond the empirical sea. Alive but in muted tones. Downward glances and moccasined footsteps away. Contempt of hum-drum melancholy is the chance encounter. Not for temptation but for days of yore. Times when castles ruptured and gladiators could barely raise a shield to stop a strike at their hearts. Finally he set his glaive and buckler aside and free of fear but marked with scars he lept. Falling was never such bliss. Now, then, and forever and a day.

The Fulcrum of Spring

The fulcrum of spring is found in dissident hope,
Order, wrought from outside the system.
Debts settled with terrifying speed.
For now, for then, forever.
This doldrums reality, myself crushed from the start.
Then shorn from the walls of our reason.
Ripped clean exposing withered souls.
A Victor with his hand upon us.
Compassion for us. Hope now with us.
A resurrection then. Everything now.
Forged hope in the heart of the fulcrum of spring.

The Tyranny of a Short Term Memory

Safe suburban sprawl, at the strip malls bosom.
Sedulous calmness of the young wife content behind locked doors, behind manicured arbor, manicured perceptions.
She is peaceful in a pew, dressed down, hair up tightly.
At a beige carpeted altar where a heart finds fair repose, down cartooned nursery walls, halls, in search for a child and being discipled in their faith.
Reversed directions, transversing monotonies. The tyranny of a short memory. Quick turn of the page, a new chapter, might as well be the first chapter, all before it met with a curt mental segue or a knowing better smirk.
A cranky insatiable soul like rain at the doorway, key poised at ignition, the last tenuous thread of an already supposed completed tapestry. But there it is for all to see. Your nobility is stitched in every aspect, framed blue and red.
And you were a Queen of Kampuchea,
How could you turn that page? Leaden, unliftable page. Etched on your soul. Hidden by your amiable myopia. And we lost you. And your quick passage was the exact Pyrrhic essence.

True Worship, Right Praise

The day that a praise song was not a praise song, when guitars did not wail,
and no arms were raised. When praise was all about voice and age and the kernel was not lost in the mix but obliterated. Many were there the day, the day that music lived and worship died. If only he could have been wise in instrument choice, in the relevancy of the riff maybe there could have been that feeling. And we are in a season of genre and acoustic hubris. Maybe if he had aspirated his falsetto just how and delighted with the proper dove animation behind forgotten lyrics. And they scoffed and turned up their radios tuned to the latest economy driven tune sung by the third different artist but this time with five part harmony and an extra “Praise” shouted at the 1:30 mark. And you are to be swept out by the force of true worship. You fool, you thought you could fight the dragon of pop culture and the passion of hearts tuned to pure worship. And woe to those who had been so confused for years before that they had settled on such utter drudgery and must feel lucky now that they can at least spend part of their Earthly time in proper Heavenly praise. Your theory of music is cold friend and so institutionally distant from the dressed-down, rootsy. And they have drums! A beat echoing from anything else is nothing. Take solace. Find hope in ministering to untouched demographics. But do not soon forget the feeling. The moment that music was praise.

Bagby

From the rooftops,
From the rooftops,
Love was shed on Bagby,
Your world at my feet, in the Canterbury’s glow
From the doors, From the doors,
We rushed, in our tracks,
As the quiet throng hangs as a sable wreath
A person, struck, below the hollow moon,
Your hidden husk of deadly gain, dirge
Word swirls as we jostle for room.
Crying choirboys, crying debutants, our duct-taped resolve
And your fragility is my frailty,
He did not know, he did not know
Your path, now crossing ours, forever changing ours
And the painful memory of you, of your love, Shed on Bagby

On the road to Slaughterville

On the road to Slaughterville, not as bad as it seems.
On the road with you, and the shadow that is me,
Hard won miles that take me away from them and their choices,
Is that not the goal, the finish line, the victory? Escape.
This fine night, this fine Oklahoma night, amongst rustic views,
And free from my pressing world we drive, with windows down,
With tongues loosed, with souls light and carefree, Hard sought peace
Is never where we want it, don’t you agree Kelly? What if we had turned away from Slaughterville, away from this razor sharp epiphany? What if these miles had been has-bins, the cruelest irony? But you call me to the road meeting rubber and the quickly passing asphalt. There were fireflies that night in those dark fields, behind my eyes, burning like but not as embers from the fire. Burning away memories and expectations, not unlike these incendiary prairies Kelly. They burn because they are consumed from wind and spark. I burn because my myopia was nearly fatal. Did your soul cancer perish in fire that night as did mine? Not from words, not from deeds, not from Normans sprawl, or from the eternal clay plains bathed in our headlights. The choice to turn towards Slaughterville, the choice to turn away, the choice to turn in spite of gravity asking us to stay. It wasn’t like the journey cured, that these rotating tires mended or that my life was anything more than the next billboard, the next masochistic armadillo. Change came because change is unavoidable where expectations cease and hurt is forgotten. With the summer wind, with the humming radio, and with expected ruin just ahead. What else but demise could lie in a city so ominous, like a frantic reaper amok in the fields of our better reason. Hear me then, and heed this then, do not fear what lies ahead, in Slaughterville’s lawns and parched Main Street. We would never know it for we never knew the full length of the journey. The destination was second, not one could fault us if our epic arc ended in meek retreat. This traipsing off was never about us was it Kelly, but about the chance to bolt from earthen orbit and set path for a city so far from where we had come.
So with hushed tones, with vibrant but muted memory I can lay claim to the road but not its termination. Like the lighting bolt we were against the never wakened farmers realms along the way this night, that perfect free night, we were sojourners. A phoenix, blazing newness, hearkened me forward even on the road to Slaughterville.

All hail Milton and then yet again!
Rejoice at its narrow nature and your racing trim,
When the grade drops off and all is East,
Milton is the memory to a newly beholden feast,
Over, below, and beyond, the mother water the civic throng,
A ribbon pathway a bridge from me to you,
And I can see, something beyond me, nothing new,
Saved old glory like Eden’s newest mooring ,
Madison! Now so close, now through the driving snow,
The rivers storm cannot slow me or the passing tug-tow,
Below, Ahead is my repose, ancient steeples and artful tones,
Here the sojourner is without bonds freed by each hearthstone,
Here under the cliffs and mansion doors, my dreams as high,
My heart as hopeful, as the streets I roam bye and bye, A city,
Alike, like a mortal thorn in manifest destinies psyche,
Madison! The sentry must never be off guard even now,
As he marches in white beard and starry brow, Will he see it?
When the high ground falls, when, then, pollution trickles death,
Down into fount and fender threatening the collective abated breath,
And will you stand, how, by what magic you proud pariah,
Madison, the world at your door, time at your arm, the aesthetic messiah.

The Generalist

From your cube, from your throne on the 15th floor,
With a pen, in your gloved right hand, you divine
Entryway to the kingdom, you bar the door,
Artful hollow observer, what faults can you find?
Reading a face, a curvature, the soup du jour
Blindfolded a finger is pointed, he will stay,
Confident in a reasoning loop, rue the lure
Introverted, retriever, in the type A,

And you adored their story,
And you wave your wand,
And you blow away the chaff,
And you send them on, great diviner

In Memorandum- Moore

Let it be known then that she lives, but in a form so uncouth for a sane world as our own. At this time the demons of the past and the specter of the future mixed with the unspeakable confusion of the present all cast lots for her very soul. Perhaps grace then was her only hope, much as she can now only hope for grace. How fantastic a story for those who know better, how terrifying a tale for the ones who flirt with the same blurred realities that are so carefully pressed upon us. Maimed from the start? Feared into a corner? Broken by a heart that was never meant to be tested? We pray then for a schism from the divisions that paint everything gray.
I can not find such a model that would fix you. A free pass from collapse alas you are already sent low. Far be it from the casual observer to doubt you found your fate, or is that just a soothing thought then that they are high, dry, and middle-class. Altered and numb, stretched and scattered, lines are atrophied and divisions are blurred. Hurried and depressed, broken and lonely, prophecy is self-fulfilled and hope is what she made of it. Cast her off then and send her to heal. In memory we remember her and with tears do the companions recollect a time not so far before. She is weary let her rest. She was hurt now she is free. History is what she made it,

Faster than fiction and quieter than peace this never ending story is true and can not cease, falling ever slower and gaining hope

Into the blue that quickly turned to gray. From stable earth to unstable nothingness. Between me and the cold vacuum of air is a frail shell and the prayers of many. But trust is easy in our able pilot who flies blind but trusts what his mechanisms tell him. A burst of speed and then a vault into an indomitable realm of confusion and rain. Would it be strange if I felt peace at this time? How does one enjoy the ride when in such a precarious void?
Continuum

For Burma: A Lament

Lo, my inner-mind, what many would call my soul was in such duress and was greatly burdened. Equally yoked between compassion and anger.As another decadent American day passed I set my soul as king as my eyes ceded control in the usual suzerain agreement.The first moments of slumber numbed me and behold everything exploded around me not in a wreath of eradicating destruction but of magnificent creation.

Lo, I walked the streets of Yangon. And I Lamented.

What now Burmese brother? I passed through debris both inanimate and living. The sky above now empty of malice and blazing blue where before a great palette painted with all the colors of unstoppable natural force.

The Cyclone. Your autograph on every building, on every face. The Sky. The grand reflector of hope and daily initiative finds no use in the barren stalls of the streets, the barren looks of my brothers. I walk and do not stop to rest, to mourn, for there is no death dread in their grand cycle and weariness is no factor as I press on.

The old man sits on his bucket as I pass, his family sprawled around him crying , baking in the sun. I ask him in his tongue if he finds solace in the light rays. He does not respond, he does not break his gaze.

I pass a group of gendarmes but they cannot suppress me. They suffer with the dispossessed and only fear now drives them to keep order in the aftermath.“Their brave faces are poor masks” I call to them but they are already out of range.“Why do you patrol this wound, this self-infliction” I shriek. “Why do you serve a more enduring tragedy?” But they do not respond and as they march to pillage whatever hope was still seeping and oozing from the receding many waters.

And I walk the beach where the terror had strode ashore from its nourishing pool and crushed my brothers.

Amidst the twisted trees lay the dead. And I weep. I moved amongst them and those who prepared the disappeared. The living’s powdered faces give them the appearance of the lost only distinguishable by their tired slow movements.

Here and then I stop but I do not question my surroundings. The broken buildings marching towards a distant ocean are pall bearers for who it is not known. For all those who perish around me and for the many who perished before I began my sojourn would they be so much more encouraged if these lonely buildings carried away the stench of their seclusion. And by this I meant the head, the masochistic illusionist, who held a world’s attention with the right hand and their repressed culture by gun point with the other behind their back. I cannot find my voice or did I ever have it? I thrash out and falter against the broken down curb and fall to my knees. I can only offer hurried curses of myself and my utter reluctance to look past my own manicured life. The easy way is taken and I blame it all on my people and our idealistic notion of country and success. But as I lay in my own existential ashes my phoenix refuses rebirth. Truly brothers of Burma I am to blame. “It must begin within my own innerwork” I cry and lament. How long I do not know but when I am brought back to my surroundings a young boy stands at my side and he draws me back to the terrible now. Was it that I was selfish or that the cyclorama of this Burma that this boy bears the paint of, the pain of, was just too much for a weary traveler?

He bids me follow and we walk on. This boy is no more than the scarecrows shadow with eyes of the new moon. There is joy there inside his emaciated belly and burning just inside his hollow cheeks. I am almost angered by this and I ask him with a sweep of my hand how this could be reason for his amiable way? He does not answer but bids me on for I must be his witness he says lightly as he labors on. His steps fall heavy for someone of his age but his mind is quick as he points to certain landmarks and people along the way spinning a yarn for his Dante. He wishes to educate me, to make me the reluctant herald when at last I return. He offers no venom even when he motions at the houses and buildings of the head. They have no sway over him not now with his last steps. Where shall I go he asks me, when I fade away? I cast him a vision of my heaven and he finds comfort in this.

We walk on to a point outside the city where my companion has lain down and does not stir. I can offer no help, no sustenance, no aid and as I kneel besides him is heart does not respond and he is gone. I do not weep for this is just a chapter in the greater grand tragic novel.

I steady myself and rise and soon join a group gathered around a simple wooden sign posted near a road up to Yangon. It bears the rust of the present which has recently begun to crumple and reveal a treasure below. In the curvy fantastic dreamscape of their writing it is clearly seen. Rangoon.

And the head could not quell it and those there gloried in the glimpse. In this way the Leviathan brought death and hope.

..the production part of the studio was mine to run and as of yet many of my efforts to rally the workers around the future projects had been met with skepticism. Beyond this, it would a great time of cultural exchange, who would have known that day in December that the harmless White Elephant Gift Exchange for the studio workers would turn into a story steeped in horror and dread. It was hot the day of the party, and very very dry. It was of course the dry season and everyday was hot but this day was of a more sinister dryness and equally malicious heat. I really had no idea what to expect past that most of the workers had expressed to me that they were brining gifts. I should have began to form the first kernels of doubt when I saw Ra digging around in front of his families house on my walk from the drink stand back towards the studio. I would have questioned his spontaneous gardening but my command of Khmer did not allow me to question someone in this way. I sauntered into the studio’s main room and was happy to see that Anne was there to help me steer this event towards something that would resemble a proper U.S.A. White Elephant Gift Exchange. We began explaining to the workers the plan and had the news translated to those who did not speak English. And so it began, we passed out roman numbers to each person with a gift and set the great experiment into motion. An audible sigh of relief left me when the first gift was opened and was greeted with excitement by the openee. The thought that maybe they had not grasped the idea that these were to be gifts that someone would not want may have escaped them but feeling like a good Western missionary I thought the whole encounter might offer vital implements to some of the workers that may save their rice crop or be used to upgrade their motos. My thoughts were shifted back to the encounter as Anne announced that Tyra was to open my gift. I was a bit skeptical how she would react to one old Nike high top, a broken camera, and some stickers I had received in a box of malt biscuits. She was ecstatic and threatened with a wag of her finger that anyone who stole this gift would be the recipient of her rather legendary wrath, a wrath that belied her 4 foot 7 frame. I was quite content with myself at this point. If an old size 12 shoe could elicit such glee then surely the staff had grasped the concept. The next gift to be opened was by my translator and dear friend Bunleang who grasped the box wrapped in newspaper and laughed out loud and proclaimed in Khmer his most amazing gift. He spoke quickly so I only caught the word duckgai. Ra was laughing uncontrollably to the side and several of the guys crowded around Bunleang as he slowly tipped the box over. Like it was loaded on a spring a large gecko leapt out of the box and landed in the center of the studio floor staring right at me. Every Khmer girl in the room shot off the floor and onto every table and chair in the room. Anne and I sat shocked and looked around quickly and then refocused on the prone lizard lying amidst us. I became relieved as I realized it was clearly a plastic toy as it had not moved since its grand entrance from the box. The girls all poised on their chairs began to relax and the boys began to chatter again when the great reptile swung its head to the right. I screamed as it launched forward in a path that would land it in my lap in two or three seconds. Anne joined the girls on the table in one stride as I ran a great fantastic circle route to a waiting chair. It was a moment of frantic, adrenaline charged, bliss.

At this point I should clarify what a duckgai is I suppose. A much larger version of the gecko it has blue and grey stripes and is named after the call it makes at night. They are surrounded by many folk stories one that was very prevalent in my mind at this point was that once they clamped down on you they would not let go even after they were killed.

This was in my mind of course as I ordered the gecko corralled and sent outside. The boys surrounded it in the corner and with great bravery took the gecko outside. We the quick risers began to leave our perches and regain our seats. With order restored the present process began again. Even though the dreams of an orderly gift exchange had vanished I was still strangely content knowing that no White Elephant gift exchange would ever equal that one newly opened duckgai cage lying nearby. The next gift was to everyone’s relief was a pen set. And then someone’s old shirt. And then…well Saveoun was quite surprised to find a freshwater slug in his box. We all nervously laughed at that one, Anne and I making sure that this creature was not mobile before we relaxed. Two living creatures in the last ten minutes surpassed the grand total for my existence of gift giving.

The gifts were passed, and stolen, and repossessed, and all was well with the duckgai and slug safely put aside and order restored. Poetic justice though still lurked in the wings. Ra, one of the last to go, picked up his gift and screamed out as a duckgai sprung out onto the floor once more. This second monster produced as much shock as the first and more so, I mean who really would have thought that two of the guys would have been possessed to package the same large reptile for this event? I stayed off the chair this time but……

The emergent, the poor, and the quest for temporal holiness

So many of us are striving for something different than what we know, what we grew up with. Many are emerging today. Others head for the fields of social ministry and working with the less privileged as their perceived ticket out of the status quo. Others follow the path of personal piety and personal sacrifice to seek a higher state of holiness. Not that all these approaches are wrong, well at least in moderation they can be productive, but do they really solve the problem that began the whole exodus? Does withdrawing from “traditional” church to start new technocratic media savvy churches of the HD the answer or is it a plunge to the other side of the teeter-totter? Indeed does withdrawing help at all? But past this when exactly does the emerging stop and what does the newly emerged individual do when they break out into bloom in all their relative splendor? Where does the emergent person go when they are postmergent? Do they emerge to revolutionize the existing church or have they given up on it all together? Do they plan on their church being how church is done in the future? Do they emerge to build a bridge to the pagan or to raise a drink and a swear word to the church they emerged out of?

There are those whose answer to our current church is to institute a strict ministry to the poor and the oppressed. They trumpet classless society and shared income while tenuously balancing the catalyst of the gospel with the never-ending needs of this world. They look at the alarming facts and the opulent wealth trapping their suburban dream world and toss aside what is being done for the homeless. The “helping the poor as the answer to the status quo” crowd chuckle when someone points at Jesus and the perpetual homeless but scoff at the rich and their impassable needle, and in this want it both ways. But what then is your main goal, their spiritual hunger of their physical hunger? Where does your success come from then, is it when there is no one poor and all are fed and happy? Is utopia then the ultimate goal, is a painless world the final answer to your quest to toss pearls at a terrible swine of a world? Do you plan on your focus becoming the church of the future? Do you threaten the status quo or do you labor out of guilt?

Some seek to answer the question of how to change what many see as broken by seeking a personal holiness. They pray longer, talk holier, and feel more righteous in a move to stop their slide into sin. They rank the holiness of others in their church in comparison to their own quest. They wash their hands of the affairs of others as they look inward. They see trial as cause for more discipline and prosperity as a cause for a pat on the back. They seek others who abide by their own mendicant standards and discuss their humble spiritual workouts and when a winner is found they are hailed as a mentor. A penny for their mandatory quiet time and feeling of spirituality, a dollar for their works-based self-indulgent search for temporal holiness. Do they then influence others so that change might be grasped for the church? Does all their labor grant them anything or does the lashing of their disappointed souls equal a better them? Will their pursuit become the norm of the church of the future? Will they work for grace?

No answers. Just questions. Just hope.

An Open Letter to Belteshazzar Concerning Our Call to the Poor.

Dear Belteshazzar,

I hope this letter finds you well and blessed with a fruitful ministry. When last I left you things were so different than now when uncertainty and the dailyness of life are in such conflict. A mutual friend sought me out recently and during our many and varied ramblings it came out that you have taken a rather surprising position. So now I seek to relate what little I know in hopes that it may be persuasive in your Christian praxis. This issue goes beyond you though friend as I have heard ideas close to this whispered and shouted by others. This position of peculiarity is as follows, Christians should only work with and minister to the poor/sick/oppressed/aliens of this world. And no I will not begin my argument or even reference Jesus statement that there will always be poor as I revolt against such cliché arguments.

First off let us consider that often “poor” in the New Testament speaks to one of two ideas, either “poor financially” or “poor spiritually”. In verses like Matt. 11:4-5 and Matt. 5:3 Jesus refers to the poor in terms of our deficit of spirit not physical poverty like Luke 19:8. I choose to see the gospel as being spread to cure the sinful poorness we all suffer from and not to bring about an end to our physical poverty.

From the above idea we can then move into our great commission where Jesus calls us to spread the gospel to all nations and disciple them. This commission is void of any type of delineation that would have us focus our gospel ministry on any one economic class above another. We see what our true focus is to be in Matt. 26:11, and look then I suppose I have come to the aforementioned cliché verse. In the preceding verses a woman has poured expensive perfume on Jesus and the disciples are indignant because they feel that the perfume could have been sold and the considerable amount of money given to the poor. Jesus next statement is less an argument for us having a fatalistic notion towards the poor and more a call by Jesus to realize that He is the focus of everything and not our acts our alms and charity. In this way if we were to place on a great scale golden blocks adorned on one side with Gospel and the other side with Social Ministry I believe the Gospel block must fall below the level of the other side and in this way be our most apparent and necessary mission. But the other side would not elevate too highly and in this way we must be active and humbly persistent in our social ministry including working with the poor. This work should come naturally as we work out our salvation becoming disciples of Christ. To summarize this drawn out point. We are called to all the nations and not to a specific economic class or sub-culture and past this we see that Jesus and His good news are the center of our ministry and from this we move out telling the gospel and doing good works.

Finally dear friend let me comment on the following idea. When one states or believes that we are called to only minister and work with the poor/downtrodden/etc. this places us on a logic trail towards a sort of “election of the poor”. If we minister only to the poor then is the bible calling us to only seek disciples from the poor (economically)? In this way are we not narrowing Gods atonement to a select few? And past this are we not stating then that the elect are to not be decided upon by our sinful state or our inability to be saved by any act we perform but by which socio-economic class we are born into, fall into, or decide to stay in? In this case my friend then I am inclined to delay my search for employment immediately and indefinitely. Would not scripture give us then a schematic for which we could discern who was poor and who was not poor? I knew many farmers who survived off their small rice paddy and were content and lived a happy life in Kampuchea but would this person be a target for us as we consider them poor? What then of someone who was born in poverty but was raised up through Christian charity to a place where they made enough to live a comfortable middle class suburban existence?

This raising up of the poor in defiance to the wealthy, middle class, and others seems to be more liberation/Marxist dogma Belteshazzar than any proper understanding of the call of our Christian lives. If we keep Jesus as the center of our faith/focus/ministry then we will naturally seek to work with the poor and those poor blokes on that island that have not received the good news yet that we hear about so often. I sympathize with your thought though because how life-consuming the needs of this world can be. How often in my work in the shadows of the Mekong was I overwhelmed with the needs of just my neighbors alone that would have easily possessed my entire energy for years. I hope this pithy attempt at an argument above will be persuasive with your thoughts on the subject, the CEO’s of America would be thankful if you changed your mind. I often wonder if our current fervor to serve the poor is more a fantastic outpouring of our desire to see the gospel spread, or a guilt reaction to our own comfortable Americana existence and I would think that the two are in no way similar catalysts.

I will leave that to you my fellow worker in the land of the two great rivers. I hope you are in good health and that you have found comfort in the CD’s I sent you. While Free at Last may get back to the basics of the hip-hop scene I am confident in your minds eye that their later work will offer you much more.

Your devoted fellow laborer,

Diesel

The Pursuit: The Fight Against Myself and This World

A Journeyman Remembers

… past the opening of the concrete WC and stepping carefully over the broken earth. The sky had darkened as the sun relented and the air was pleasant to breath. Our lips were cracked and throats dry from the bone-dry air that matched the scorched lifeless ground below us. It was my first dry season where rehydrating is a practice that never quenches but only is sent immediately to the front by the body to deal with a perpetually depleted carcass. Wendy walked a bit ahead with Natalie following behind with me in tow. The kids from the camp who usually were always clamoring for a finger to grab onto or a back to ride on had filtered away as the day had worn on and now must had returned to their tarpaulin shelters to divide up the rations. These pumps were ingenious. Ridden like a bicycle to urge water up out of the always sinking water table. There were two of them and we were coming bye them on a trip around the camp one last time before we drove back the thirty minute drive home. We did not say much as talking required effort and we were all relived that we were able to walk without being accosted by request or chores. I stopped by the first pump to take it all in but how could one. A never ending flood plain stretching in all directions with palm trees dotting the landscape. The displaced people here always seemed jittery and they had much to be jittery about. When the rains returned in the summer all indications were that this hastily built refuge would be under water if sickness or an indifferent government did not get them first. Stars were beginning to break out on the low horizon and those are images one never forgets. The skyscapes were always so stunning at Prey Sol especially at this time of night when a schism sky gave both day and night. Natalie was near me and we began to talk about the day and of things that might take out minds far from here. Wendy was walking past the other well to speak to a family who were outside their tent. I looked at Natalie intently as she shared things that seemed so important in this strange place with a beautiful sky and BOOM. The shockwave flashed by us and all three of us instantly jerked our heads towards the sound that followed soon afterwards. A small plume of smoke was already visible off in the distance, out of sight. We looked around and tensed as the moment provided no quick answers to calm our fears. Our roles as sojourners and aliens in this land and especially in such a place of woe and juxtaposed realities as this caused our first reactions to be defense and anxiety. The people though paid us no heed and were instead rushing out of the camp towards an area out ahead. We could hear them whispering and calling out in hushed tones as they moved past us into the gathering darkness. Landmine. We did not follow because we feared and because we knew that darkness meant our exit from the camp. The head lights of our truck blazed a trail as we began the journey back across the dike and over the Bassac. We three never mentioned the event again to each other and we never knew, never knew. Answers are never easy in such a place as….

A fellowship beyond our needs.

A strange dichotomy. A divergent ego/id. We want the dedicated soul masseuse when what we really need is what is best for the fellowship. Selfless dedication that is beyond our comfortable conversants and in the realm of the hard-to-loves and social adversaries. We say age brings understanding but with it a calcified koinonia, we offer un-tethered visions that become the bane of the sojourner and the hungry fringe. Is it as easy as just expanding our circle of comfort, our sphere of influence, our area of concern beyond what we need and into what we are to do? Is there a calling beyond this, a fellowship beyond our needs? Oh harrowing 20’s you have come in with a roar and fanciful dreams of quasi-communist Corinthian/ Ephesian/ Philippian body/ vine/ families that whittle away with the years into fearful imaginings of comfortable American/ Franciscan/ Stoic quasi-mountain men. What house will stand when the walls are moved in or country thrive when its borders are drawn in tighter? Like a narrowing artery what nourishment comes to those who exchange the group ethic for the mantra of comfort and self-preservation? Will the vinedresser not send to the fire a vine that does not grow or offer nourishment to the vines nearby? We must trade our preferences and limitations, our fears and elephant memories, our lines of demarcation whether they be age, gender, or demeanor and with hands clasped and knees to terra consider ourselves nothing beyond our spiritual siblings. How terrifying to the adversary is a fully realized body of faithful fellowshipping friends resigned to their commissions and with every ounce and drop of collective sweat and blood influencing and rallying a terminal society towards the greatest atonement of all. Our minds, our souls, our hands, our feet must think, dream, grasp, and walk as one with the ministering body that will dream as one when they are handed their marching orders and are marshaled away from a vast pool of potential into a terrifying kinetic dynamo. Woe to the head who dreams in monotone or the man whose worldly means hinders his focus on the group ethic.

It must be beyond idealism and greater than pragmatism this that we seek. It must be a well managed structure that’s heart beats to the rhythm of the collective conscience and a space-walking vision machine that loves, lives, feels, and dies within the community of believers. A community that is somewhere beyond what we want, closer than we are probably comfortable with, stronger than any work of our hands, and more God glorifying than any ecclesia of the self or church of the clique.

the mediumless man

There once was a day when the greatest fear of a person was being without a country or a family. Those days are past now it would seem. The greatest travesty in our info-connected-technocracy is to be a man without a medium. By medium I mean without an avenue that can lead to giving information to the masses. Inter-personal has been replaced by inter-societal and we are not judged by our friendships but by the splash we make on a grander scale. The dot com billionaires and the corporate raiders engross us with their daring and we clamor for their advisement. We raise up people who would rate as somewhere between town drunk and town outcast if we knew them at a personal level. Some stand astride their pedestals by their ability to broadcast their looks and their mischievous ways, some are able to engross the mediums even through petty violence and any other number of pliable morals and disregarded laws and mores.

Would I join them if I could? There is no mouthpiece for me though. I am unable to write or speak or dream at a high enough level to garner me the public ear or cunning enough to aspire lower and grab the spotlight through cheap theatrics. In a land where ideas are downloaded from marketing controlled mediums and aspirations are defined by win-at-all-cost profiteers simplicity and truth are as worthless as acting like who we really are and instead screaming out to the masses a balance of who they ask us to be and a reality detached shadow of self.

I am the mediumless man. There is no microphone that can amplify me to a level to matter and no keystroke that can allow me the chance at relevancy. I am the irrelevant fellow to savvy to feed what they force on me but to normal to offer resistance. I am the forgotten demographic, to weak to sport for the cameras and too pietistic to think that my opinion needs to be heard.

i-Pod i-Ntrospection

You have one close at hand. It sits like a quasi-cerebellum offering you a small place to store shelves of information. It is a micro-miracle, it is i-Pod. We love them, we crave them, we justify the need for them. The following suggestions reflect at the least ten to fifteen minutes of deep sustained thinkage concerning the aforementioned handheld musical canons. Some suggestions were too obvious such as the Pre-requisite Piper sermon (your i-Pod is not complete without one) or avoiding egregious mistakes of who did a song. No, the Violent Femmes and They Might Be Giants are not the same group, only one of them could have sung Blister in the Sun.

Suggestion 1- Avoid Giga-Lust. Little did you know that those 80 spacious gigabytes you have in your hand are roughly twice the size of my laptop from a few years back. That means you can roughly fit the entire IT infrastructure of several small developing countries on your hunk of plastic and metal. I do hope your CD collection resides in something larger than a few crates or guess what? You suffer from Giga-Lust. I have seen some pretty wicked cases of Giga-Lust in my days. You know who you are. The excuses are many; “I am still uploading my stuff” (hold on while I upload something on the floor), “I save space for pictures I take” (for those times when only that two inch screen can adequately display your posh photo art), “I need the space for my growing music library” (2 John Mayer CD’s, a Grease Soundtrack, any Josh Groban CD, a Top Gun soundtrack, and an obscure indie rocker for artistic impact does not a library make). How do you know when you have pushed the giga-love too far into lust? Here are a few signs. 1. Your could import the ENTIRE library of Rolling Stones tunes and still fall somewhere south of 20% capacity.

2. If the initial importing marathon when you first bought your i-Pod did not leave you with either bloodshot eyes, sleep deprivation, or a severe case of frozen butt you did not need those extra 47 gigabytes.

Suggestion 2- You are not fooling anyone with Compilation Guise. That is when you add CD’s with a variety of artists that add meat to the scroll down but in reality only add to the clutter and as a wise man once said, “A cluttered i-Pod comes from a cluttered mind”. Nothing is quite as saddening as that day you open with fantastic expectation the CCR file and are met with Around the Bend from Remember the Titans. Suddenly you go from a hearty collection of swamp rock to “that tune” from “that movie”.

Suggestion 3- Unleash the Artist Within with Creative Playlists. Some do not realize the creative power that lies just one finger swipe up on the Playlist option. Here you can line up those songs that make you cry, make you fly, or just hold an amazing amount or historical value for you. Give it a go, add a flashy name to the list, pay special attention to the lineup, and be open to revision as life offers new chapters. Futures can hinge on choices like whether to follow In Gods Country with Jump Around or Eight Days a Week.

Suggestion 4- Time for your help, post other suggestions.

Void

Through the deep woods and farther in still. Amongst the epic stands of trees and softly speaking brooks dwells something far more terrifying than any beast that would stalk me or pit that would trap me. Its mere presence causes the eyes to dart and the fear to rise up and seize power of my better senses banishing them to the far side of the horizon of reason whose long fields fade into haze. They will not soon return for fear sits enthroned and the gate by which I entered lies far past any glimpse backwards. From every hollow and high reaching boughs it watches. It slithers just out of sight up my recently tread path and clings and drenches my feet as I creep forward through the high grass. It has no spoken name and exists in no discernable form. To some a comfort but to ears untuned and a heart bent on attention its form takes on the incarnate figure of unease. Who knew this day it would shadow me and be an unwelcome passenger on my trek beyond the midnight forest? It does not even offer a whisper of conversation but only strides just out of sight. It joined me with my first steps through the gate at first causing me great consternation until my breath was allowed me and with each step I feared less for my life and more so in regards to the daunting sensation that clawed at my ears and numbed my percolating brain. I wanted to scream and wave my arms in hopes of scaring it off but felt that it would not flee far and would just as soon return when my voice ceased tearing at the collective peace around me.

Up hill and down dale through cloistered woodland with each step something else wells up from within. Like the golden tinted dreamscape of a divine internal choir never ending, something deeper than any anchoring root or deep-seeking spring lithely hisses from the inside of my inner-most soul. The ghost. A new voice or a constant cosmic companion I had lost along the terrestrial way? I fear the latter but revel in the comfort of such a friend as this in such a location as i find myself. It illumines not the path ahead but the path of the days ahead. The creature still drapes the path ahead and behind but as strides melt I can see the destination gate ahead. It will not join me beyond the gate, it will await the next traveler. Outside its reach everything that I thought I needed came flooding back to appease my wanton desire of crippling static. How odd the coincidence that the golden song was never so prevalent as when walking the woods with the nameless antagonist.

The Quiet Man

This is for the quiet man. Being of like stature and birth as a man I am in a way qualified to comment and favoring myself one to observe keenly I feel free to postulate. If this certain man fears God and lives a life of all that entails then why does he stand in a corner and with a tepid determination decide on inaction? How non-deafening the un-betrothed man who is called to spiritual leadership and bears the scars of his cultures methods of dating. He stands there with a hangdog stare and paralyzed heart. Expected to lead but what of it? Shall he learn a better prayer to tickle ears or shoulder the daily process of personal sanctification of another? The quiet man is lifted to a most mysterious office of mentor, leader, and catalyst. He can hear what the swirling masses around him make known. A whisper of only a season of courtship and a lifetime of bliss beyond, a call that he avoids the institution of courtship all together, a measure of shame that he has not fulfilled their purpose. No theory is the same as the marketplace of ideas floods the man with a hundred ways of how it is to be and drowns him by turning simple addition into a multiplication enigma. With each day the night falls earlier as memories of past failure and unrealized expectations make a pact with fear of hurt and untranslatable protocols. With phone or a knock, with candy or a bouquet? These choices seem as light as a feather when faced with possible rejection or public scorn. What else can we ask of the man than that he keep laying his heart at their doorsteps, how much do we expect of him after he retreats? Oh man what then? Why have you forgotten your joy and lapsed into arrangements of speed and folly? Oh shadow why have you made awkward the simple things and watered down the complex? Husk of what was why have you been passed over by peers and beleaguered by those you favor? We who stand with him know that he is never beyond hopeful anticipation. Can we share this truth with him or do we deepen his mire? Unsure of his role and anxious as time marches he draws himself to his full height and with terrifying power lets loose a most horrific sigh. Blessed it is that he can still glorify his sovereign in spite of his perceived sophomoric handicap. Is not the loneliness penalty enough when love is deferred until a time not known? Do not ask him why he traded a lion for a lamb but instead offer him shelter for nothing speaks louder than hope when a man goes quiet.

Exodus of the Behemoth

Beware the mighty behemoth of likened stature

Be strong in deference to the milk that feeds vacuum

Hang the jaw that once stood proud in plaster

Be firm in such gray dreams that lay in ashes

Memories so faintly apparent crack in aberrance

Lurid Augustus so enflamed by your own nectar

How strange the Kosdok that pains to hear distant thunder

Empty peals, failed empty peals

The great western empire of shades and fumes

Masked by aggrandized shadows hidden from the crumbling keep proper

They revel in the reflected radiance of so many gilded levees

The shattered whisper reaches their communal psyche, should they heed it?

Come back dear children, return hence to your glorious lore

Seize the gateway with rusted soul raise up Saint Rocks fallen capstone

Empty Peals, failed empty peals

Down the choked riverbed the confluence of collective conscience

No one answers the westward wind with eyes under siege by envy

Foul proud people what god will answer your atheist edict?

Miracles always reached for with a hope mouthed in apathetic hypocrisy

Behold the admiral will only marshal Pyrrhic that fall day

Onlookers and gawkers will answer the clarion when the behemoth shudders

A witness will not be found when the great eyes perfect focus

From dank earthen mounds the sleeper will be awaken

They will muster at the clay feet of the east facing monster

By the first call to arms they will be soothed by foreign alms

Hunger for medium will render them dust on the feet of the powerful

To the ancient hills the behemoth will descend to await a jubilee

A year when the bonfires will rage in the hollows and the ox goad will find grip

A vassal to Jacobs grapple charged with violence and predestined to restore

The Holy Convict

Conviction. The undeniable feeling that some deep held belief is wrong or on the fast train there. Or is it more? I guess deep held does not always qualify. I also suppose that conviction is not always a feeling. Would anyone argue though that conviction does not indeed convict? Its more than a semantic observation. Many times do we not allow convictions to enact the change that they need to. We have to allow conviction to actually take hold and cause change. How often I feel the tinge of guilt that this thing is wrong take a quick sidelong glance and ponder the implications and then merrily move on. Acting on convictions then is the moral here. But then again can there be conviction without morals? A few thoughts on conviction

-Many times convictions are not going to be popular. They will not be popular to those around you, those with the power, and most of all with yourself. They will seem superfluous to our often over-simplified lives. Sometimes it takes an outside catalyst so that the gnawing doubt that you may have had that such a thing was wrong finally finds its legs by a certain song or sermon of great weight.

-Convictions are the products of a well-reviewed body of virtues and morals. As a Christian I am blessed with a time tested and blessed foundation. The key though is to often review these edicts and commands so that our convictions are not whispers of some virtue that has found dust in our minds. Clean them off and they will reflect all the stronger when the light of action strikes them. If we do not understand the place from whence our convictions come then the convictions which we need will not strike the deep blow. Although it sounds quite painful and uncomfortable we must want the sting of conviction to be a killing shot. I mean that whatever truth we have allowed to rust or ordained fight that we have retreated from must be mortally wounded when conviction springs to the fray.

-We must act on our convictions. This is dangerous territory. The line is fine between conviction and folly based on fear or evil. The point above though gives us the answer. We must know from where our convictions radiate. If true sin is the byproduct of an apparent conviction then we can safely assume that it was not a conviction at all. I say true sin because often we have allowed the principalities and dogma of the world to dictate to us a new class of sin that truly is not so. Some would have told Martin Luther that he was sinning greatly by protesting the great wrongs of the pontiff. Many stood against Paul when he sought out to work amongst the Gentiles. Do not allow sin as defined by our cultural and that is not found amongst Gods revelation to jade you. Once again as seen in the first observation many times conviction will not win you popularity but then again for what are we living for in the first place? God or country? Cost or comfort? Reality or relevance? Conviction or a world that oddly seems to move and churn without you?

In Defense of the Spark

Picture it in your mind. Try to imagine just a bit of what ails me. Not pretty of course, not even rational to many I am sure. This really is not some new thing that has just now reached up and demanded my attention or even a long planned offensive that I am certain would offend my honor. No, the answer to why the following was put to print lies somewhere in the middle, such a gray area indeed. But how much of life lies in these very same areas is apparent more and more each day.

I guess it started that night when Brooke napped next to me on the couch as I studied. The thought hit me then, a washing over of emotion preceded the thought. I had indeed reached a place of deep remorse causing a powerful sense of creativity unhindered. With a pen clutched in my right hand and a pad of paper prepared I wrote a poem. A strange one really, that ended with an observation that the sadness was manifested angst that could only be filled with a wife. This was at the age of 22 I believe. I soon learned though that the answer to this did not lie in any woman I then knew but somewhere in a then hazy future. Was the tragedy that I was so shallow as to desire such a thing or the swift reaction I had soon afterwards and clung to ever more that these feelings are wrong and a sure weakness of heart. I cannot claim these long standing conclusions were my own entirely. What is a man but a shady sum of the culture that surrounds him and love and its trappings are surely part of the equation. Trapped I seemed to be, told that love was to be a thing of hubris and heart an object to be gallantly defended. Where then were the defenders of the offensive aspirant or the scarred heart? These were the heroes of none, the people we whispered about as an example to flee from. It is not that now I am seeking to emulate them in defiance of what I today consider a mistake on my part. Instead I am weighing both in hopes of finding a middle way devoid of shrouded gray and emotional whim. I was wrong to fear that poignant moment in Texas now so many years ago. For truly as I march this day I march with the same sense beating ever stronger. I folded on what I truly wanted in the face of a better way. And with each withering year I compensated with friendship and toil. Can it be wrong to desire this, for I often felt it was? Do not cheer for the reckless one they would say for they defy a God who asks us to wait and listen. Herein may then lie my struggle, that being that God has been asked to want us to wait and listen. A reverse of order that stems from a fear of an ever growing riddle of deep relationships. Not that our Lord would sanction a wanton headlong charge void of His counsel. Ah, but here again we are back where we started, lost in a terrible shade of gray. I am not ashamed to admit that I am reluctant, not bold enough to take a firm step, not jaded enough to find an unhindered answer, and not so far gone as to cherish a feeling deep inside that will find completion on a day not so unlike this in a place sanctioned from long before that only now seems a way better than the culture of trepidation that wrongly asks me to languish.

The Discourses of Dr. Oso and the young neophyte.

YN-But here again dear doctor I find myself adrift with no sure anchor. Tell me then, what does one do who is so unwise in the ways of things?

DO-Hail then dear friend! What then has you so inclined to melancholy? Has indeed it been that trip you planned to Philadelphia or has your studies led you to such uncertainty?

YN- Alas indeed my trip to Philadelphia ended so badly as to see me tossed at the foot of the chapel alone and quite disheveled. Surely this adds to my demise but there is something deeper to blame I can be sure. Surely the fact that my season with you must come to an end someday soon plays a part in my unease but what again about my peculiar fondness for the peculiar? I could not help but think your teachings regarding the intellectual virtues seem vague and out of reach in the light of this place where people seem so incensed to raise up the self and break the bonds that bind in the name of progress.

DO- Stop there apt pupil and let us discuss these questions in the order that they assault you. But wait, what then is this that seems branded on your chest?

YN- Oh I had hoped that your eyes would not fall on it. For it weighs heavy and confuses me. It was placed there by the powers that be to foil any musings I might have had.

DO-But what then does it say? DB…F? How strange that someone would feel the need to brand you with D.B.F. As I search my mind I can find no possible meaning for it. Do you know its meaning?

YN- It has been on my mind but I can find no answer. I truly would rather consider other things for this seems to be such a small ordeal although its odd location and enigmatic message I do not doubt will dominate thoughts of me.

DO- Oh no son order this branding of the utmost importance for surely you will find no peace until it is removed or explained.

YN- But venerable friend the burden will surely fade because I can undoubtedly depend on the kindness of those who saw fit to place it to see their selfish plans out and tire and order it removed. The weight of things to come and even my next breath, should not they hold my attention and not the blight that I can offer no defense against. Why can I not depend on grace?

DO- Grace? But have you not so soon forgot the lesson I delivered, Grace is nothing but the uninformed absence of reason. The only way to remove this brand is to engage to their fullest extent our excellent reason and empirical faculties and seek to discern the riddle that you wear. Once we know the meaning then we can petition for grace and the other ephemeral things that appear a faint gray against the firm black and white of our own intellect.

YN- But my mind, can it see me past my last breath or will it not fall to dust someday like my now pained heart? No I must insist teacher that no workings of the mind can unravel the knot tied by a heart self-consumed and spurned. I am a lens never in focus, only in the faded gray of grace can a day soon find me without this brand. But see here! I have allowed it to dominate me and how great my embarrassment will be whenever I am seen! What then teacher shall I retreat to the shelter of my homeland or brush the dust of this land off my feet and seek out a new beginning?

DO- Oh dear I fear this may be beyond any advice I could offer you, have you sought out the counsel of our most wise and intelligent creator? But surely this must be the answer, I am ashamed to say I have reached this point so tardily I must deeply reflect on this late into tonight. Oh it has struck me just now! Your brand could indeed mean Boyish Belief Forever!

YN- I would answer then sir that maybe this brand would mean Do not Belie Faith in your case. For surely your own expectations have clouded you for your letters find no match on my person. I had truly hoped you would be able to reveal my brand for I do indeed know its nature and it seems to be beyond you. I am rended, my heart knows my head naught and in the same way in reverse. I cannot for my life find grounds for this brand, for what then was my crime but to seek out what I am raised to seek and to then put behind me the things that I have learned profit me not? Assuredly if I am not a child of grace then I am lost because there are no fast and sure answers to be had in this place. Dear doctor let me then take your leave and consider this further although I must admit I leave your presence doubting the very core of all that has been taught me. I will raise prayer tonight then that the morning rays do not find me a most despicable cynic as one who tosses away the invisible wind for the cold plains of skepticism.

PRETTY (Please Read Everything That This Yaks….about)

Everyone loves acrostics. BUYTHIS (by ultimately yelling towards history isotopes surge?). It seems a group/company/church cannot assume a vision or implement a new strategy without shrinking and cramming it into letters that will not challenge our apparently feeble brain power. I would classify it as TISK (totally insanely stupid ‘k?). It would be as to cutting out the Mona Lisa in body and dropping the background, eating the white part of the bread and NETCETISH (not eating the crust even though it is healthy), delivering a rousing defense of a friend from prison but leaving out the entire story up to your claim of his innocence. You hamstring the vision, slim down the strategy and serve up an emaciated piece of fluff that seeks to stick in our minds with a catchy array of letters that dictates to the idea how it will be known instead of the idea dictating to the carrying mechanism. We could chalk it up to the next step in the simplifying manifesto that this country takes way to close to the heart. We cut down letters (silent “h” you are next), strive for anything we can put “micro” or “concise” in front of, and masquerade as making life better when in fact we mask a most terrible sluggard. We allow everyday for the center of our very knowledge to be fed us through computer screens and televisions and away from the intuition and sensing of our own intellect. I could call it NUMB but I really could not capture the idea of just how terrible this is by limiting it to four letters even though the word adds strength. Never Ultimately Mumble ‘Bout….the past. New Ultimatum Might Be trouble. I will hand this one off to the 79.6 percent of the business schools graduates out there who majored in that great enigma “marketing”. They are well trained in knowing what you want and hopefully someday soon telling you what to know.

Ironically you may have stopped reading this piece by now because of length. For those who have reached this point I thank you for your diligence and or strange disposition that allow you to subject yourself to such ramblings. For the majority of you who never made it past the word “acrostic” I offer the following which will put the 235 million “marketers” out there out of work by skipping them outright. Behold! “Acrostic Text” where the entire work is written in easy to understand and digest simplicity.

ELC. BUYTHIS(BUYTHIS?) ISAG/C/CCAAVORANSWSACIILTWNCOAFBP. IWCIATISK(TIS’K?). IWATCOTMLIBADTB,ETWPOTBANETCETISH(NETCETISH), DARDOAFFPBLOTESUTYCOHI.YHTV,SDTSASUAEPOFTSTSIOMWACAOLTDTTIHIWBKIOTIDTTCM. WCCIUTTNSITSMTTCTWTCTTH.WCDL(S”H”YAN), SFAWCP”M”O”C”IFO,AMAMLBWIFWMAMTS. WAEFTCOOVKTBFUTCSATAAFTIASOOOI. I CCINUMBBURCNCTIOFHTTIBLITFLETTWAS.NUMB…TP. NUMBT. I WHTOOTT79.6PFTBSGOTWMITGE”M”.

IYMHSRTPBNBOL. FTWHRTPITYFYDAOSDTAYTSYTSR. FTMOYWNMIPTW”A” IOTFWWPT235M”M”OTOOWBSTO. B!”AT”WTEWIWIETUADS.

The above acrostic stands for “Just Let Us Do The Thinking For You And Do Not Mind The Forrest Save The Tree Sitting Two Inches From Your Nose”.