Rumi-nation

Your way begins on the other side.

Become the sky.

Take an ax to the prison wall.

Escape.

Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.

Do it now. …

Die, and be quiet….

Your old life was a frantic running

from silence.

The speechless moon

comes out now.

Vetern's Day...

by Siegfried Sassoon

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

towriteagain

i fathom despairing feathers
that lace along the waters edge
keeping time with the deep color of the current
a rush of air then lifts
them higher

your blessings
my easy goodbye--
what is the word . . .?
I need
another word for goodby that means
"oh-how-i-hate-to-see-you-leave-and-feel-the-cool-distance"
a word that means
i love you so muh
our parting makes me come just
a little apart, when i too, turn
to leave.
our back echo that unexisting word.

perhaps laughing
is like rising, like growing
from the inside out

put back your wounds and pardon your past
rest in comfort
for your battle
is already won

snow.
they are flakes of history
i saw them outside your window.
three years of love, or so,
the seasons themselves attest

just because it is hard,
does not mean it is not
the right thing

you have always been
the right thing

up in an airplane

flying in an airplane actually forces you to draw closer to god weather you want to or not. In some way you expect part of it, that is depending on how morbid you might be in expecting your untimely demise. But there is something about the gripping fear that takes a small moment of faith and expands upon it. It had the potential to make something wonderful. We're all so... terible really. We need fear and horrible things or else 90% of us would never face God or anything. We would just coast. And watch tv, and seek headonistic experience. Thank you God for the blessing of a terrifying, exasperating, infuriating life.

Abandon Everything

Matthew 19:13-15

13Some people brought their children to Jesus, so that he could place his hands on them and pray for them. His disciples told the people to stop bothering him.14But Jesus said, "Let the children come to me, and don't try to stop them! People who are like these children belong to God's kingdom." [b] 15After Jesus had placed his hands on the children, he left.

Deuteronomy 11:13-21

¹⁸ Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ¹⁹ Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ²⁰ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, ²¹ so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the LORD swore to give your forefathers, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.

I have a niece who’s name is Zoë. She’s 3. She and her family came down for a visit not too long ago and, among other things, we all had a chance to hang out in the back yard one afternoon.

I built a sandbox back there for just such occasions.

We could hardly get Zoë out of it. And the sand box is something that I can still get. I can still sit in there with her and play and shovel and in some way understand the allure of the sandbox. So we were back there playing in it, and she did something surprising.

She was just sitting there in the sand and then she leaned forward and laid down in it on her stomach. She started making a face plant sand angel, arms and legs moving the sand around. It was great. I just sat there watching her and thinking, I should have made this thing bigger—I want to try that! She was just swimming in the sand, and she gave no explanation to me as to why, because I am sure that it was clearly evident to her, and needed no explanation.

Now her mother and my wife were a ways off and I don’t think they saw what was happening. I had a flash of concern, I thought, Should I stop her? Should I get her out? Maybe scold her? But at the same time I thought of what the damage really would be; a little dirt in the clothes? Maybe some sand in my house when she changed for her bath? I can handle that. So I just let her keep on. And while I was watching her and laughing, I thought to my self, Now THAT is playing in the sandbox. That is some serious sandbox time. I thought too that since I didn’t have kids, I didn’t immediately know what was the right thing to do, what were the rules, but the more I watched her just wallering in the sand the less I figured that I needed to stop her.

She saw me chuckling and grinned this huge grin at me and then sat up and started heaping sand on my knees.

Kids are great aren’t they? The Bible has some very specific things to say about children as well, and even makes some of its most important stories include the childhood of that person. Isaac and Ishmael, Joseph, Moses, Samuel, David, Josiah, Timothy. There are verses and verses of what the Bible says should be done to and for children.

Genesis 15:5 talks about children as a reward from God, as part of His promise to the people of His own.

Exodus refers to the people of God’s chosen as children. Over and over they are addressed as such.

Psalms 8:2 describes children speaking about the strength of God and silencing His enemies!

Mark 9:37 is a passage which has Jesus telling us that to be welcoming to a child is to welcome Christ himself.

Matthew 21:16 Jesus talks about reveling in the songs of praise that children were offering him.

We read another few passages this morning. All of these things add up to one thing in my understanding that children are important.

And that may sound like a, No Duh, kind of thing to say to everyone. Obviously kids are important, where would the human race be without them?! We have children’s camps, children’s time in church, children’s Sunday school, pre-school, Montessori, baby Einstein, transitional children’s food, children’s fashion, toy sections in every store on the face of the earth. Obviously children are important!

But, really, I am meaning that children are spiritually and emotionally important to us. Think about a child, and not about the mundane misunderstandings that have to take place in order to get them to live in the world of adults. Think about that kid in the sand-box and what is really occurring there. There is complete involvement, an eagerness to participate, laughter, questions, and imagination.

Apply those same ideals to worship, or our life of faith and children can cultivate the spiritual life of others with those traits.

Everything is new to them and they help us see God through new eyes. They ask questions that help us clarify our beliefs and add energy to our own prayers to God.

What is worship? Children worship with each new discovery of their lives. The aspects of worship--reverence, respect, love, awe, praise, adoration, appreciation, and honor—these come naturally to children.

With all of these things in mind I think I might go one step further and say that children are spiritually integral to our lives. In that mind set it gives new meaning to the phrase “Be fruitful and multiply.” But those words make a strange kind of conjunction with what Christ says later about children and the kingdom of heaven don’t they? God isn’t telling us in Genesis to populate the earth with our progeny just for the sole purpose of crowding the land with swarms of humans, but instead is giving us a biological charge that he knows will be another way for us to understand and experience God while on earth.

Because you have to be an adult to perceive the wonderful things that children do. As a child you are just living life. As adults we can see the experience and understand it and allow it to affect our spiritual nature. But we have to allow it.

In the Gospel lesson today, we have a pretty classic tale that we have probably all heard before. Jesus is out and about with the local people and there are whole groups of them who have brought their children. Now, children in this society are viewed very differently than today. They are socially and physically powerless. Nearly half of all children in the ancient world died before they were 12. In gentile communities a child would often be abandon if the family couldn’t provide for it.

The disciples in our reading are busy being about the work of the kingdom. They have the Roman and the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees breathing down their necks at every turn. They just don’t have time for the foolishness that politically powerless children represent at this engagement. Jesus needs to be about telling people how to throw off the yoke of oppression and learn a new way to seek the will of God. This is important stuff. Take your kids and go home people. The word rebuke in our reading is “epitimao” in Greek and means strongly hindering. You could almost imagine the disciples as line of bouncers at a concert, refuting those who aren’t making the cut, denying entrance to the backstage.

Jesus however turns all of those notions completely on their ear. He realizes the truest form of what the Father was saying when the original couple left the Garden of Eden. He is able to see beyond the social feelings of the time and see what God means for in our children. And he says two very important things. First, that while he and the disciples are working to bring the kingdom, it doesn’t belong to them! It belongs to the following generation. He says to the disciples, you are working for a legacy, not for your own interests.

The second thing he tells them is that further if you cannot act like a child in regard to God you will never be able to receive what God has in store for you. And then the scripture does something wonderful. It describes Jesus’ tender actions that have become the inspiration for scores and scores of paintings the world over. He takes the children in his arms and blesses them.

This is a blessed statement for us. In these few words Christ gives us subtle and important instruction in life. First that we are required to think of our actions here as a legacy for the following generation. And not just the day in and day out grind of providing for the family, putting food on the table, and clothes on their backs. But instead the spiritual provision of how to act, how to seek God and how to understand the faith.

And as is His style Jesus asks us to do something and then in the same series of sentences tells us how to fulfill the change. You want to know what you need to teach your children? Well, it’s what they already do by nature. How does a child believe and love? Ever had a child zero in on that one special stuffed animal? They believe that against all the evidence this thing of fluff has emotions and heart just like any of us. They love it with all their hearts making no distinction. The commit to it with total abandon.

I think again of little Zoë in the sandbox. Embracing every grain in the joy of the feeling and the ability to just play. That is the heart that God is requesting from us. He tells us, if you want to see the true kingdom, then come like this. Concentrate only on me, commit to the action with everything that you are. Wallow around in my Love!

Go on a walk with a child. We were walking with Zoë and every pebble she picked up was interesting and special. She gave every single one of them to my wife to put in her pants pocket. We would only walk a few steps before she would pick up another. Children approach the world with wonder and questions. Reverence, love, awe, praise, adoration, appreciation, and honor come naturally to children.

God tries over and over through scripture to have us understand the meaning behind that. The importance of this constant wonderment.

The verse from Deuteronomy might seem a little odd this morning, but I want to draw it in here. In verse 19 when it starts talking about how to teach the children, I think it is making a little joke. “When you sit at home and when you walk on the road, when you lie down when you get up…” Yeah, on the one hand it’s a great piece of scripture that tells us that anytime is the time for talking about God and who He is, but more than that it’s making a little joke about kids in general. What parent reading that wouldn’t think, yeah, if I can get a word in edgewise. Kids ask questions and talk before bed, they need stories or extra hugs or water or whatever, they talk getting up, they talk on walks they talk when you are sitting, they want to involve you and play, and DO…

In one way it is saying that we can teach children and answer their questions not just in the church, and that means all of us, not just the parents of those particular kids. Yet in another way it is exemplifying to the adults what kids already know. God is everywhere, worship of God can be everywhere, and out hearts should be in that desperate place of needing to find out more and more and more all the time. God is infinite. And if we really believe that then we can also believe that we will never really know all there is to know about God.

I think we get to a certain point in our adult lives and think, well I know enough now. I might figure out a thing or two here and there, but really.. I’m kind of done. Much to our great and faithless tragedy. We loose the ability we once had as children to be in constant question and wonder about all the facets of God.

And so God blesses us with children; who have that awesome ability not only to quiz you to death but to love you implicitly at the same time. And that is a great way to treat God. Question and ask out of that desperate need to know Him and His world better and better and still Love Him without any reservations.

So you want to enter the Kingdom? Not only are we called to live and work for it, in order to ensure the legacy of faith and a beautiful world for the next generation, but each and every one of us, must realize the amazing power and blessing that comes from living a spiritual life exactly as a child would live it. Get in the sandbox, and lie there with total abandon.

The German

4 oz Chocolate Ice Cream

2 oz cream

2-4 shots of Khalouah

Top with whip cream

drizzle with dark chocolate

PanGalactic Gargle Blaster

• 1 oz vodka (that Ol' Janx Spirit)
• 1 oz Clamato (oh, those Santraginus fish)
• 1 oz ice cold gin (Arcturan Mega-gin)
• 4 oz Zipang Sparking Sake (Fallian marsh gas)
• 1 oz Creme de Menthe (Qalactin Hypermint extract)
• 1 Jalepeno (tooth of an Algolian Suntiger)
• Sprinkle with lemon zest (Zamphuor)
• add an olive

WARNING: Drinking Pan Galctic Gargle Blasters may cause serious damage to the rods and cones in the human eye, thus explaining why consumers of this beverage have often reported it to be green in color when, in fact, it is not.

Saggitarian Spritzer

5 oz. Prichard's Rum
2 oz. soda water

Handfull of Rasberry (puree or muddled)

Dip the rim of the serving glass in sugar and then fill with crushed ice. Fill carefully with spritzer. Lance rasberry with toothpick and serve.

fractured raptured

fatally raptured rhyming

canticle of death

what started out as song now drive some bitter sweet and melencholy harmony

all my wonderings, pointeless wanderings,

make me wonder if I have gone tone deaf

stone deaf after all

i have intrest

in remaking myself into myself

but get lost in the endless and pointless excersise

everything is decaying versus the wonder of the fight being worth it

longer and longer and longer sentances describe what we wish to capture again as children

looking

for fatality

You May Fear Us...

Because we stick to darkness....

un even

trying without sucess not to talk to myself

i'm looking into a storm and seeing instead the land of promise

un even lanes ahead

searching my recent past in a move of desparation

trying to build it up

blow it up

smash it back down to peices

so inspired it all ends up on what scraps i can muster quickly

slowly realizing i don't even need my sunglasses

as two points of a line race divided against a continent

Choices Choices Choices

We live in a dualistic world. We can have two kinds of wisdom. Earthy and spiritual.

What we sow we reap. Sow in peace, reap righteousness, "right ness" with God, OR we can choose to sow discord and reap unrighteousness.

We have a choice. Some people might say its not fair to have the burden of it on us, but it is. It might seem daunting, or hard, but that is our responsibility to perform. And we can have help. Prayer and communication with God yield His help to do these things, but drawing close to God is always going to be our decision and our action that controls it.

And we have a descion about that too. Recently I have been listening to Charles Stanely and he talks a lot about the importance of time spent with God. You can check it out here. They are clips of the In Touch radio ministry he does. He makes some good points, nd I am sure he would tell you that he is not the first to say that time with God is important, but one thing that was simple and interesting was this: you become who you hang out with the most.

And i tought back to how we used to marvel as teenagers when we would suddenly say things or act in the same ways as our friends. Just tonight my wife said "Crabcakes" which made me giggle cause its something I say from Spongbob.

So if we want to be like God, make Godly choices and percieve life in a Godly way we have to commit to spending time with God. Stanley suggests that it not even have to be a lot of time. Even just 5 minutes, but as we grow and speak with God the discipline we learn will draw us in to more time, or what you might think of as the "best" amount of time which could change from day to day. Keeping in mind that the time doesn't have to be in structured prayer or Bible reading, though those certainly could be a part of it. The time could jsut be spent in simple conversation, questions, railing, argument... all the thigns we do with friends.

I already framed it once...

Really?

Is this the product of Public schooling?

Wall Nuts

There is something about the approval of our fathers we all crave. What ever enzym deeply rooted in our heritage takes root in us at the earliest of ages. In sad ways some people seek the approval that will never come, or for the wrong reasons, but I cannot explain why I still feel great about myself when my dad says, "well done."

We are our father's children after all.

the high minded social network discussions

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CT wonders how it is that rats know when it is time to leave the sinking ship?

2 hours ago · Comment · Like

BRC at 12:45pm July 6

Hanging out down in the bilge, they get an early warning when the water starts to rise. Which applies to rats both literal and figurative.

CT at 12:56pm July 6

but if the ship is sinking can we really make the rats out to be bad guys? And if they aren't bad literally are they bad figuratively? Maybe we as a society need rats to be our early warning system.

BRC at 12:59pm July 6

If rats are bad guys, it's usually for some reason other than making the ship sink - it's the disease-carrying and thieving they are more guilty of. Ship sinking is usually more due to icebergs/sleeping watchmen. Or pirates.

CT at 1:02pm July 6

yes, but their merit as early warning systems for the sinking of the ship --- shouldn't that allow them some measure of forgiveness for all the desieasery and theivery?

BRC at 1:14pm July 6

it's only an "early warning" for the rest of us if they tell someone they are leaving.

SW at 1:17pm July 6

Ship sinking could also be caused from rice. Think about it. You put a ton of rice in the hull of a ship and it gets wet, expands, and then cracks the ship's frame. Very dangerous cargo to transport in the days of wooden ships. Of course, if they had rats to eat the rice, no problem, well, except for lack of merchandise.

EH at 1:49pm July 6

Y'all need to pick of a copy of William Hope Hodgson's "The Albatross"

CT at 1:51pm July 6

See there is ANOTHER thing that rats are good for. eating the rice that might other wise expand and sink the ship.
But... then of course we would have to discuss the quantum effect that rats saving and abandoning said ship. And the overall moral effect that eating/stealing/saving/abandoning the ship might have on both the crew and the rat populace.

CT at 1:54pm July 6

Plus, Hodgson falls into the same social trap as do we all. The rats in his story are "imprisoning" the woman and need to be battled. But isn't that an assumption on the part of the woman? Maybe the rats are filling in the cracks and her weeks worth of supplies would be worthless if the boat sank prematurely. Just as we all assume we know the identity of the figurative rats in society and how to best deal with them

EH at 2:12pm July 6

Okay, okay. Go read "The mystery of the Derelict" then or go get the exciting part in my note.

BRCat 2:21pm July 6

Or you could watch the bonus feature on the Ratatouille DVD that talks about the historical relationship between rats and humans and draw your own conclusions.

CTl at 2:23pm July 6

HA HA. I love the juxtaposition: Mystery of the Derelict, or Ratatouille bonus features. Surely we dwell in the information age.

Half way done begun

Driving in my car I listen to tapes. Of music, essays, comedic farces, but so many of them are halfway through. Tape decks in cars are notoriously slow. You know? Like there is some government mandate that says this must be so. The economic collapse will continue and the terrorists win if the tapes in cars rewound at a reasonable speed. But because of this slowness, I don’t rewind. I just continue to listen to the tape from where ever it is. The last half and then the first of an album. Never mind the artistic integrity of the set list that was design with great care by the musical artists. Halfway through and then begun the essays that I fully understand only after hearing the first part of the argument, last. The comedic genus that is at first wasted and then relished as the set up for previous jokes is finally understood. It’s too bad really.

Drop leafs and return envelopes

In some country, that may as well have existed on the moon, the government –of the moon people—blanket the cities with leaflets. This really happened. In Russia I think. I envision an old WWII bomber filled with staunch faced goons throwing armfuls of pink and white paper out of the belly of the flying beast. Farmers below looking up athe fluttering mess, this floating whispering montage of fluttering bodies. Perhaps they seek out those who can read to decipher the strange words.

But this reality that I imagine is far away. This happened. One book of stories, of history, tells me. But sitting here, now, I have no connection to the small town farmer, just as you have no connection to me, Not really. I am not a real thing, I am not an actual person. I am some figment, and assigned profile within your mind to give a body to the voice over with which you read. You cannot make me real.

Offensive Usage of Wiper Blades

Some people just cant stand to have their wiper blades on. I, really, hardly notice. Sometimes in life that is how it is. We see tings close to us, like wiper blades, and depending on our moods they can bother us or not. Sometimes we see the wiper blades, sometimes we are able to see past them. Peering at the road. Then sometimes we see the water sloshing. The rubber squeaking. And all of it rubbing someone the wrong way.

This Old Poor

Poor house. I watched family after family move in a nd out. Like creatures living in an old oak. Like grubs really. Like parasites in some fashion they burrow in bring with them all manner of relatives, of things, clothes, toys. Then they leave. Poor house is left with just a little more old. Until you finally look like a man wearing down on his last legs. You sign more. You creak more. Each pop of a joint tells the story of another family who had come and gone and grubbed out your innards. Perhaps eaten away the last of the heartwood. But before the families stoop signaling that last finality that would leave you to fall away, there come the lovely scavengers. They pick clean the bones, making something stark and still beautiful out of the refuse. In place of life they leave art that still yet becomes the home for others. Poor house reborn through those who still have an eye for the magic of transformations.

Why Did the wise men come?

What caused priestly Zoroastrianists to come to worship Christ? Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar, Hor, Karsudan, Basanater, Kagpha,Badadakharida, Badadilma -- What ever names you want to give them -- why would forigen non-believers come to see one who was supposed to be Jewish Messiah? Would Mary and Joseph let them in to see 2 year old Jesus if they knew that they weren't seeking the Messiah but Saoshyant instead? Were they?

Enigmatic figures in scripture always spark our imaginations.