February 2012
4 posts
1 tag
pushing the river
the weary darkness of my soul
my eyes turned to light
teaming moments of trauma
like teeth dug in my side
i would run but that is all i’ve done
i would sit so long as to bring an early death
but this all a moot point at the end of the day
so, i wonder in my thought as i begin to survey
yourmoneyisours:
“When a man of peace is killed by a man of war, he gives a light.”
- wendell berry
1 tag
1 tag
gray bleeds orange
The deliverance meets me here
wedged in the movement of this town
wheeling around in distance, the birds—parrots mostly
squawk by to the dazzling skylight
The gray bleeds orange
surf wax, whiskey and the tree tops my company
i listen again, to the arid evening turning to this night
beardom has tested my thoughts and times I hold sacred
We are older here with hast taking its toll
blood and its...
January 2012
10 posts
1 tag
“Be blessed, David. And dwell in the fullness of the love that so many have for...”
– caroline clunk
1 tag
todah, torah & thanks
The late great Rabbi Jacob Milgrom invited his colleagues from the Protestant seminary, where he was teaching, to partake in a Passover meal. When the Baptist students saw that there were several bottles of wine on the table they subtling drew back. But the chancellor reached out and inspected one of the bottles. He read the label and said, “Ah, its okay boys—it is...
1 tag
1 tag
bloody soul—partly a poem but a tune I...
1 tag
pieces lay bare
windy scenes of the aftermath, gripping huddle of the survivors
and hollow sounds of excavating misfortune
here in the scattering the claims lay heavy
weighted by time and the erosive distance from event
the pieces lay bare
glimmering under the bright sky, held by the cold ground
they congeal as i look over them—hoping they hold
in the resemblance of memory, bursting in light
a scene so...
1 tag
“you is kind, you is smart, you is important”
– the help
1 tag
“the impossibility of fully accounting for oneself is conditioned by the...”
–
slavoj zizek, the nieghbor: three inquiries in political theology
1 tag
unsettling
There is this quote that rings in my head lately as I read for class and make my way through the Torah. It goes something like—scriptures are unsettling but it is because of the unsettled Character behind the text. It is quite a claim, I am realizing, that Someone is not only with the most challenging of texts but also within the content of these stories of desperation, judgment, humanity...
1 tag
1 tag
report of sorts
I just got back to Pasadena a few days ago. I’m crashing in my buddy Adam’s old bed and using his pillow until I move into a new place this Saturday. The “Six Man Crew” pad is nearly on Colorado Blv, where the Rose Parade marched by just hours ago. And so it begins, a new year, a re-engagement with school and a new cell number (616.258.9004). The journey from Michigan to here was a good time. I...
December 2011
18 posts
1 tag
“the path is made by walking”
– nora gallagher, practicing resurrection
1 tag
babies & hearses
Every moment, every subtle touch and each hellish thought finds placement in the Divine economy. It is subsumed, eventually. And so, it is that our human longings, as shattered as they are, were worth trusting at some deep level. At the vocalization of lament and sorrow, we find God—when the rug’s pull lands us on our back, we have a view to the stars. And maybe I am the pathological optimist,...
1 tag
vexing brightness
the wick is silently breathing in
it’s afraid to end its humble moment
when light filled the room with praise
And the calm clear orange fluttered in space
oh vexing brightness time not concerning
you bend with the wind and collect at the heights
giving what you must and what we all see
exposing the depths and the ways we might be
1 tag
“we are words on a journey
not the inscriptions of settled people”
– w.s. merwin
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
“take out a cup
and some bread
and put it in the middle of the table,
and say...”
– rob bell (via kolyswis)
1 tag
twilight
decorate the sounds,
and dance the rhythms that send you…
beyond these shores,
into what you don’t know no more…
1 tag
1 tag
endings & sendings, landings & ledgers
I told my counselor that I wasn’t sure how to end, say good-bye and leave Michigan this time around. When I moved a few years ago I was under the belief that I was just saying a see-ya-later-kinda-good-bye to everyone. Turns out, when you move, you loose contact, people continue on and things are never the same. This is how life goes—it flows on with and without you. So, reentering the...
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
“hardly escaping the limitless machines
that balk his thought and torment his...”
– wendell berry
1 tag
family tree
i went back, to boyhood moorings to find where the tug holds rootage
i walked long to stand next to this tree blown by the fall
there is:
no fruit to its branches
no temptation
no edenic fauter
achy, old, desolate and wanting
while winter is coming back, slowly taking everything the years gave
freezing tears and halting hollow hopes.
so, i’ve thrown hands to the skies hoping like...
1 tag
1 tag
our mother eve in 'the city of god' || a...
It is hard to underestimate or overstate Saint Augustine’s influence on Christian thinking from the late 3rd century onward. That is to say, he is highly shaping in Reformation thinking as well as in Roman Catholicism. One can see his influence in Reformed Doctrine, such as: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, and well, we can just say the whole system of...
2 tags
November 2011
21 posts
1 tag
wirkungsgeschichtliches bewußtsein & the mediation...
It has come to my attention that the world is as it seems, sometimes. Things are fragmentarily realized in glimpsed form all the time but this is characterized mostly by surprise, not the usual consistent performing patterns that we make our world out to be.
You see, everything changed when I got an iPhone: my calls clearer, self-esteem brighter, and my getting back with people...
1 tag
“good stories defy summary”
– stanley haurwas
1 tag
1 tag
tell'm the stories
tell’m the stories
of the arid open plains and cut ridges of the knife edge
of the tops and bottoms torn between solum soul
and the beating burning trees lost behind you
tell’m the stories
of thick airy space and the blazes that bend through wind and wilds
of the fearsom twitch—gut held to the ground by thunder
tell’m the stories
of gone and given
risking in all...
1 tag
“redemption remains a vague rumour, and only those possessed of a true...”
– john milbank, being reconciled
1 tag
me talk pretty one day
And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping
I...
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
synonymic ontology || gregory of nazianzus’...
What we have in Gregory of Nazianzus is a specific instance of an individual capable of dismantling the arguments of others, in such a way, that they are left wondering what they meant in the first place. This is central to how Gregory plays with arguments concerning the unity of the Trinity. He shows how the use of metaphor gets confused with a lived reality of the Trinity. Although much of...
1 tag
ol'timey saturday
Leaf piles crunch and my hands are cold
an ol’timey Saturday is ready to unfold
Glimpse the sun feel the air and walk about
don’t shower just roam and whistle out loud
The fall is dying fast but I’m slowing down
crawl’in draw’in waid’in through town
Looking from tree tops out over the fields
hoping this season is going to yield
Something new or even old as I think away
this moment all of time but...
1 tag
cairns of the cosmos
It’s those people that have gone before you that give you a dash of hope concerning the path. Sometimes you don’t even know who they are, but there is always the sense that things could be much darker or even a bit more bright.
What is this awkward between we seem to traverse? Somewhere on the spectrum of hope and hell. I can’t seem to shake the fact that life is a paradox, I guess? As soon as you...
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
the swagger
living the song i’ve been trying to sing, with no melody to hide from
put to the wind of reasoning heavens and the thoughtless bribes i took
up in the low-grade teeming hells, moments happening all at once
i give eye to my lonely toes trying to walk, but oh so crooked
dancing days to the glim beat of hope tempered in the strut
the swagger of a full town—settled now in the fog
...
1 tag
