tremor

Time ticks by; we grow older. Before we know it, too much time has passed and we've missed the chance to have had other people hurt us. To a younger me this sounded like luck; to an older me this sounds like a quiet tragedy.

It’s coming you know, the big royal screw up. That thing that will shatter relationships, break your faith in others, break their faith in you. There will be an event, perhaps many, which will cause you to be shunned from your community; it will break you, and build for others paradigms for others to classify you for the rest of your life. The rock tumbler of life practically dictates it.

Some dodge it better; while others pretend it doesn’t exist. To them, the world is cause and effect; a chain reaction tipped off by from a sequence of events we build because of suspect character. It’s not fate, it’s not inevitable, but it is much more than an occurrence confined to the select few of lesser moral character. And this belief is a tragedy.

I’m just a soul whose intentions are good, oh Lord please don’t let me be misunderstood…

Character is like concrete. For every day living, for walking on, making roads and sidewalks work, it is sufficient. But put it next to something ‘natural’ like a river or a tree and pretty soon it’ll be sunk in, cracked and in need of repair. They built the worlds largest bridge out of it, and failed to acknowledge the major fault line below. Three years later, and the “character” of the concrete is being questioned. Concrete, like character will fail us.

“And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened.” - God

I have lived barely a quarter of my life (I think otherwise…) but it seems like every human being I see in the course of a day has a problem, some thing some wound that is sucking up at least 70 percent of his or her radar. And the more perverse side is how much energy some spend rationalizing their own problems to convince themselves that the rest of the world is more amoral than we are.

If I die, and my soul be lost, nobodies fault but mine…

If I had to paint the colour of those who are the most ‘able’ advocates of the amorality of others, and the prolific proponents of their righteousness – it would be, sad to say: white. If I had to give them it a gender, it would be male; a religion: Christianity; a generation: X.

Human kindness is overflowing, and I think, I hope it’s going to rain today.

Perhaps the glaring contrast between my experience last week and this one is what forms this picture. Spending a week with a group of native people, ranging in age from 27 to 47, sounded like a track off a Nina Simone album. The song has soul, not so much in that the voice is powerful – but rather it is broken, pathetically optimistic and shatteringly real. A 26 year old, with a wife and three kids, lifts up his shirt to show me where his cousin cut him from the navel to the nipple for some feud, a 47 year old who doesn’t need to tell me their life story but in a laugh can say that she has seen much, experienced much and yet has still something to offer.

Oh sinner man, where you gonna run to?

The group that I am most familiar with till now, tends to sound more like a Gaither brothers rendition of “Mansion over the hilltop”, just keep smiling and singing and maybe they wont notice…Character commentary has become the strongest armor and the heaviest sword at the same time – we haven’t noticed that the slow dance is going on, while the room is burning – and we’re wondering why it’s so damn hot. Because many fear that if we lower our guard, if we extend the sympathetic, but genuine “I understand” for even one second, the whole world will disintegrate into chaos. We’re taught that to admit reality, to live outside a lifeboat theology (just keep paddling..), to fear, is not to fully trust God. Whoever started this, must have had a whole lota things going on.

How often is it we are rescued by a stranger, if ever at all? And how is it that our lives can become drained of the possibility of forgiveness and kindness – so drained that even one small act of mercy becomes a potent lifelong memory? How do our lives reach these points?

Here comes the sun little darlin, it’ll be alright..

I stood in the credit union watching a grown man in a wrinkled, dirty dress shirt, hold a syrofoam coffee cup, eyes baggy from days without sleep and retinas red from more than a few tears, and listened to him explain how the long march of Perdoe, leading to his expulsion will go I could think of nothing but of where his resting place will be.

Q: What animal would you be if you could be an animal?
A: You already are an animal

So why do I write this? Four or five disjointed paragraphs on the faults and faith of others. In part because I feel the tremor already of a (one of many) big screw-up. I can’t tell where it’s going to come, but I feel it. Is that totally self-deprecating of me? Perhaps. But I want to articulate now for myself that it will come. I want to recognize that no matter how big the bastard, we all came kicking and screaming from somebody’s womb, and we all will end up on lifesupport in some underfunded hospital, being looked after by a (dis)orderly. I think more than that I want to convey that pathetic hope that I saw last week in my newfound native friends to the crucified man I conversed with today.

I’m drunk right now baby, but I’ve got to say – I never could tell you what you mean to me.
What’s love, but a second hand emotion?

For whatever reason, I have a deep respect for singers who are able to convey their pathetic hope through song. They say that to suffer is universal. Yet to identify with suffering, to provide hope in suffering, or just simply to acknowledge suffering as being legitimate is all to rare, especially in my context. Moreover, to recognize suffering that is brought on from your own royal screw ups, and to be offered a hand of grace to be pulled out seems to be a wisdom that is, in my surrounding, sadly not universal.

All of our questioning, every broken dream, all of the anguish that the soul has ever seen, finally finds a resting place in you…

Maybe the natives I met are pathetically realistic. I think if ever there was a group to understand what screwed over, shunned and drop kicked out of life looks like – they would. We will all break and be broken in ways that can never be fixed; and if no one has ever told you – consider yourself told.

You know sometimes baby I’m so carefree; with a joy that’s hard to hide. And then sometimes it seems that all I have is worry – and then you’re bound to see the otherside.

letters from the trench

As for the ___ situation. I (obviously?) haven't been in touch with ____ about it - as when we (you and I) ended our discussion I mentioned that I wasn't sure how to see if it affected them in any impactful way.

My only thought is this: that Christianity/ Christians need to be a people willing to engage in dialogue without pre-condemming the situation before it happens. In the world, Christians become so quick to offer their advice, suggest a "solution" or give their well intended two bits, in an off putting manner. It suggest a superiority, and ironically an ignorance - that the solution has been thought through and there is no room for change, dialogue and ultimately growth.

So often swing to either extreme- condemn them in our minds and don't confront them, or confront them in a condemning manner. Either way, we loose. Sorry if this is a tangent, but I think it applies to the current situation. The accused (just like all of us), for all of the good that is in him, has many areas to improve on; but I don't know if he is given the opportunity to see them and/or to improve on them. My suspicion is that more often than not "we" pre-condemn him, or just think the best thing is to not give him an avenue for change.

So, my thought is really only that we have to offer the accused an opportunity for change. Change could come in the form of 'live and let live' although I doubt it. Change probably would come from being able to ask the accused what the intent was behind those words, describe what the result was (incase it is different from the intent), suggest that the situation be reconciled between the accused and the accuser (ie. suggest that accused offer what he wants to the accuser), and then leave it as is. You are not pre-condemning the accused by assuming ill intent, and you are not pretending like you know the steps the accused needs to take to 'make it right.' Further, I think you are not making the issue bigger than it is.
By doing this, you are loving the accuser (in that you are protecting/preserving), and I think loving the accused in that you are giving him an opportunity for growth.

This said, I really hold no judgement on what way you choose to go with. My colleague reminds me to choose the hills on which I want to die - and while I think that lead to a selfish approach to management, it certainly is a strategy that I use often, and know it sometimes to be the wisest approach. For example, the reaction to my email last week. You may have way bigger fish to fry and Satan loves to get us mixed up in skirmishes on the periphery

Anyways, sorry, those are my somewhat scattered thoughts.

and hollywood burnt

THEIR NAMES


Their names linger on the tongue:
Fallujah, Ramallah, Samarra, Ryad --
Like water, whispers, illicit love.

But in the rubbled streets
Fear, hunger and flames
Embrace flesh, whole families

Burning homes to ground
Memories to ashes
All that was precious to the dead

But is of no value on this earth
To the living who ignite the fires
The ones who erase their names.

Word

I am your friend, I am not your psychic hotline. I am your friend. I'm not interested in impressing you or making you seem impressive to others. I want your intimacy. So before you rush ahead and ask me to lay out the future of the world for you, would you be willing to be my friend for a while? Would you like to hear my feelings and sorrows, joys and hopes?

The body was in the fetal position, it was black but not like the colour black, more like a shadow black - unable to see due to a lack of light. The tree above it was light, it was either gold or just really bright and its roots went down under the ground and enveloped the person who was in the fetal position just below the ground. Kind of like a tulip from a bulb. The tree was one of those big bushy, kind of "perfect" trees but from the top of it grew another tree - exactly the same - bright, and perfect. Not perfect in a "holy" sort of way (lets not get carried away), but perfect in just that good solid tree with a nice bulbus top sort of way.
Then the whole thing enveloped/imploded and it was gone.

No idea what that was all about.

Smoke and Mirrors

I must admit, that my writing is not only moody, inarticulate but it's just kind of poor. And I am sorry. Much was learnt this past weekend, The Word, was (finally), THE word. Real, unchanging, articulate, and far from poor. As a "being" trying to mimic the word, my failings have been made clearer to me, than probably ever before. But what has made all the difference, and I kid you not (really), is that having THE word being revealed to me has somehow made my failings, not be fixed like a poorly raised barn, but rather they have made my words, my failings, be...eraseable? I have found freedom in being able to toss the imitations aside (not that it as easy) and begin to believe again in The Word.
When I realized that my sentences were written, not in ink but in pencil - and that I was able to re-write, have other people edit my work, and just generally examine the story I was choosing to write - wow, it made all the difference.

I understand this too is not the best explanation of what has happened. I'll try again when I have more than 3 minutes. But I wanted...to put in a word.

not yer morning reading material

Hey Jesus, are you still feeling sad? or will you come down from the cross to play?

Jeff's theology (right now)
Faith is a bitch. We must start here. If we start here, then perhaps everything else will make sense. If we start from a perspective that faith is easy, faith is glorious, faith is amazing - ultimately we will fall hard on our face (or we should, because dammit everybody else did). When I say faith is a bitch, what do I mean? perhaps more appropriately, it's that hope is a bitch. Faith, hope - hmm what else can I throw in there?
Today, in a response to a caring individual who was wondering why I hadn't brought 'my condition' before the congregation, for prayer etc. I had a moment of clarity.
Why hadn't I stuck it on the mass prayer chain? This week was the first that I had really requested prayer to anyone in a while - so why not a whole body surely more people = more power. At least that's what the prophets of Baal thought. And that's where it is at. Standing on the mountain, dancing, repeating a line over and over, crying, prostrating, getting whole teams to do it with me - will that convince the maker of heaven and earth to set fire to the calf?
Will 400 voices twist the mighty arm? Is it possible that God just doesn't want/need to do anything here? That this is just business as usual - people get sick, people die all the time - how much time is wasted in prayer meetings that could be lived. Why am I a special case? Do I believe God can heal me? Absolutely. Do I believe that 400 people praying is going to make that a reality? Not really. Do I realize what I'm saying? Maybe.
After her husband disappears, she is left, a complete wreck, alone, isolated and afraid of everything. Shocked and confused she doesn't touch the items in the house, hoping that when he returns it will all be as it once was. A month or so passes the wallet that sits in the entrance is gathering dust, the food in the fridge has all gone moldy, the half a can of beer, totally flat. She goes into panic, carefully sealing each item in ziplock bags, trying to preserve forever the memory of what once was. A year passes, she's moved on. Sort of. The "stuff" is all put away, the walls have a fresh coat of paint, new flooring and new sofa's. She has rediscovered her old friends. But the nights are still empty - and here her mind wanders. Faith picks up, but not faith in God - he ran off with her husband. She knows it's stupid, but goes to visit the psychic her friend recommended. Shelling out the $150, the psychic tells her just enough information to inspire hope that she could hear from her lover. That her lover would communicate like this. A week passes, she goes and visits again. This time it's $250 - it's a high demand industry. Again, the psychic stumbles around and then happens to say something that the widow can latch on to. While she's confused at why her husband would want to communicate through this woman, in this place, she continues to go back and back, each time a bit more hope, each time leaving a bit more empty - knowing she is getting ripped off.
And so I go for my umpteenth doctors visit - maybe this time I will hear the voice of my lover through a Doctor. At least it's not costing me anything but time.


don't quote me on this one.

hmm

slowly, steadily, surely, the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled (habakkuk 2:3)
"Many people wear themselves out trying to fill a vision God didn't give them. So where did their visions come from? a) the most dominant influences in their lives b) their need to "prove" something to someone c) their unresolved issues
Abraham leaned his lesson the hard way. God promised him a son. But he got impatient worried about getting old, took bad advice and ended up fathering Ishmael.
Be careful; all your praying, planning and pushing wont turn the wrong road into the right road. Furethermore, God won't empower you to do what he put into somebody else's heart to do. That is why it's foolish to compare yourself to others. God didn't promise you what he gave them. You're unique. So is his plan. People who make this mistake end up with a sense of failure and frustration because they're constantly measuring themselves up by someone else's assignment. If you're not 'graced' to do it, you'll wear yourself and everybody else out."