2009Aug3 at 0813 (Heart Thoughts, Personal Life, Poetry)
Tags: ambition, broken, crush, dead, desire, dim, flame, hate, heart, Jon Foreman, light, longing, love, mission, pure, remember, wisdom
I’m sitting on my bed
Jon Foreman echoing in my head
Music releases my emotions
And feelings of longing raise me from the dead
My chest splits down the middle, a door is opened
From the whole on its left, the heart there is broken
Its light is dim because it’s far from him
Who loves it as much as his own
That “him” is I
And I think I know that guy–
Who can let ambition run his entire mission
And use others to fuel his desire.
But let the flames grow higher
On all that I aspire
If it lets the heart of my love grow dim.
I will hate it and crush it and have no more of it
And remember our hearts instead
And learn of her feelings and all of their dealings
And seek what she’s thought and all that it’s brought
And keep her heart strong, in my chest, where it belongs.
Oh God, let ambitions be dead.
Oh God, give us pure wisdom instead.
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2009Feb24 at 0230 (Community, Conversations in my Head, Gatherings, Heart Thoughts, Personal Life, Poetry, Thinkables)
Tags: arms, battles, bind, blind, blood, called, ceiling, chaos, claim, clean, command, damp, darkness, desire, die, dirty, distinguish, domination, doom, dry, evil, face, feelings, fighting, flatter, flesh, floor, food, free, freedom, gavel, God, hands, hear, heart, hell, hold, honest, humiliation, ignorance, judgment, kitchen, lies, lives, Lord?, man, master, matter, name, one another, others, pan, passion, past, peace, pitiful, plea, please, pleasure, point, pot, pressure, pride, prize, race, reach, refuse, relate, relationship, rest, return, save, sea, shame, sight, sky, sounds, speak, sweat, terrified, thought, throat, truth, understanding, validate, wait, walls, waste, weight, what?, where?, why?, willingness, win, words, yell
Chaos swirling rapidly around
So many lives, so many sounds
The kitchen’s dirty, dark and damp
The master’s calling for food
But I can’t see.
I could.
I used to distinguish from pot and pan;
The dirty and clean;
The ceiling and floor.
But not any more.
Now I feel,
I feel for real.
I see there are so many lies.
Now I see,
I see the sea.
And my hands reach up for the skies.
Freedom, freedom calls my name
The truth will set you free.
Bind the evil,
Kick it out!
And then please hear my plea
And then please speak with me.
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -
Peace, peace, peace, be still
The words come from a dry, croaking throat
Evil has won
But your saving us, son
Live in hell so that we may die
In our pitiful, passionate pleasures
I’m fighting, yes! But what for?!
I’m living, yes! But what for?!
But what for?! But. What. For?!
And why?
…It doesn’t matter now, it seems
The passing has already come
I’m truly flattered now, it seems
…no!
I refuse.
I will not hold up your face any more
I will not validate your lies.
You are just a man like me…
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -
I have been humiliated
Entirely so
And yes, I feel it too,
The pressure to race, to win, to hold
From others as well as my own.
But when: to rest, to wait, to hold
One another instead of a prize,
In honest, willing thoughtfulness
Not dominant, prurient pride.
Where is the peace, my Lord?
Where is the desire to understand?
Where is the ignorance slight,
And thoughtfulness true?
Where are the battles finally won?
In your arms I’ll rest, my Lord
But to return to the darkness?
Truly Lord, what lies in the wastes?
The flesh and blood, claimed by One
Who dooms to ignorant fate.
And the hearts of some, claimed by One
Who choose to wait and relate.
Still, the darkness weighs heavily
The master’s voice yells again
But only so long as to give commands
And next the judge comes in.
The master points,
I feel ashamed
Then terrified as the gavel is raised
Over his head,
It weighs so much
He sweats but his eyes are blind
Then he lets it fall onto my chest
And my doomed life spatters
Over them and the walls
And finally, I am at rest.
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2009Jan5 at 0134 (Community, Conversations in my Head, Heart Thoughts, Personal Life, Statements, Thinkables)
Tags: ask, atrocity, authority, bitterness, circumstances, community, desire, enemy, expression, freedom, glory, heart, Hitler, illusion, knowledge, love, neighbor, Operation Valkyrie, peace, potential, seeking, shadow, spirit, terrified, trust, truth, tyrant, vision, want
I saw a story of the Operation Valkyrie today, which attempted to assassinate the most infamous tyrant of our time and establish another rule. The following were my thoughts afterward:
“As much as we can blame, and choose to blame on Hitler and the like, the spirit which drove him through his atrocities still lives in many of us today. We have only found different ways of expressing it: the want. We all have want, and we’ll do what we must to acquire it.
Hitler was only raised under different circumstances with a bigger vision and illusion for his desire…”
Realizing I was terrified of the possibilities this could hold–within myself and within those who I will be associated with in the future–I concluded with a plan:
“I will love my neighbor and give them peace and give them freedom. I will give them truth, but only to those who are seeking; only to those who ask. And for those who do not, for those who proclaim in their heart that they are an enemy of mine and the God that I know and love, I will give them also to that highest authority and trust Him in all things–even though this land of shadow end in bitterness, as it surely will. All glory is God’s alone.”
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2009Jan5 at 0139 (Heart Thoughts, Personal Life, Poetry)
Tags: calm, child, desire, desperate, dramatic, eyes, fear, fright, heart, love, quiet, search, tender, thirst, unsatisfied, weaned
A child beats the breast of the one who bore him
Desperate for more; unsatisfied; thirsty; fearful that there will not be enough; that he has not enough.
Searching, searching, frightfully, dramatically, pushing all others away,
In isolation, searching, clenching, squeezing for more.
Unaware of the tender presence,
Unconscious to the loving eyes.
“O Lord, my heart is not haughty,
Nor my eyes lofty.
Neither do I concern myself with great matters,
Nor with things too profound for me.
Surely, I have calmed and quieted my soul.
Like a weaned child with his mother;
Like a weaned child is my soul within me.”
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2008Dec15 at 1218 (Gatherings, Thinkables)
Tags: ambition, bring, desire, fulfillment, gathering, intimacy, knowledge, need, offering, openness, together, want
We gather together now for what we want, to fulfill our ambitions and desires.
No longer do we gather together to simply bring what we have; no longer for the intimacy of offering, the openness of need.
Do we know one another – beyond our wants and what effects them? Do we care to know?
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2008Dec2 at 1220 (Personal Life, Theology?, Thinkables)
Tags: body, Christ, Christians, community, desire, imagination, insanity, reality
Pushing insanity: every Christian’s imaginary friend, Jesus Christ, created by him or her to fill the lack of community that was realistically meant to embody Christ.
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2008Nov11 at 1151 (Poetry, Thinkables)
Tags: afraid, anger, comfort, deception, desire, irony, laugh, mourning, pain, response, smile, transient
Oh how deceptive we are–even to ourselves–
I smile when I’m afraid and laugh when I’m in pain;
Yet mourning comes when the transient things do not comfort
And anger flows in streams down my face when I do not obtain what I desire.
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2008Nov3 at 1158 (Personal Life, Poetry)
Tags: anxiety, curses, desire, despise, eyes, God, grace, knowledge, love, lovingkindness, mercy, oppression, pain, piety, praise, reflection, reverence, shame, speak, truth, violence
My God is abundant in loving kindness and tender mercies.
I look on those I desire influence over,
Those I called ‘my loved,’
With a critical spirit.
I am shown their pain
To my eyes their oppressions are revealed
And I desire to make known their foolish ways
To return what I see to their own eyes
That they might be shamed in the terror of it all
That they might see their ways and change them
I take their words, I observe their actions
And I return with my own as their accuser and judge
And it never worked.
They reacted as a cornered animal,
Lashing violently at me in desperation, in defense
Instinctively protecting the wound which my piety so maliciously inflicted
Then they came to one of two things:
They despised me above all;
Or revered me as something greater than men.
And what an oppression this is
To receive my own lack of mercy in the terrible curses of one;
And to simultaneously endure the incessant praises – to my worthy-less glory – of another
“O Lord!” I cried “What can be done?
Come Lord, what shall I say?
Visit me Lord, what shall I do?
Your presence reveals all truth,
Please come to this place Father!
And He did.
And His overwhelming presence silenced my heart.
When all was made still,
He spoke in a whisper,
“I am the revealer of mysteries,
I alone change the hearts of men.”
So. I spoke to my King about their pain,
I told Him of their oppression.
And to my heart, it’s foolish ways are made known
What the Lord sees, returns to my eyes
But in His love, I am not put to shame
And I am not anxious to change my heart
For He takes my words, and observes my actions
And replaces them with His truth, full of love and grace
My God is abundant in loving kindness and tender mercies.
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