...and so I'll make myself a sandwich

^Actual sandwich.

A few days ago (as of the time I am writing this, of course, because I cannot know when you are reading this nor the relative timing of your reading to my sandwich making. Are those alfalfa sprouts?) I decided to make a sandwich for lunch. It had been quite some time since I had performed this task. I was rusty.

BREAD. I should preface the meat of this story by letting you know that I am currently (again, at the time I am writing this, well... not at the same time, just generally in this period of my life) reading the book Praise Habit by David Crowder*. If you have not yet read this book, you should, it is delightful. If you have yet read this book, you should again, the second time is at least as delightful. The main message of this book is one of becoming a constant praise to our God. The wording of that last sentence may sound odd, but it is intentional. Crowder* challenges us to turn Praise into our life and to bring the rescue of Jesus with us into everything we do. This is the context in which I decided to make a sandwich.

MAYO. At the outset, I planned a very simple sandwich. But I decided to make my efforts more worthwhile by adding some gravy in the form of lettuce, cheese and mustard. I fully believe that this decision was made based on a larger decision that I made to be more proactive in my life. This proactivity is in the form of me being more purposeful, working harder at life, not being a victim of circumstances, exerting self-control and self-sacrifice, making a better sandwich.

HAM. As I said before, I was rusty at this sandwich-making. I discovered this quickly as I immediately forgot that this process required bread and a knife. This was to be the beginning of a time of mistake-making. The rest of the mistakes are as follows:

-Drop mayo on the table (Eww).

-Fail to find the LARGE lettuce container in the fridge.

-Drop the Kraft American Cheese Single on the table.

-Forget to shake the mustard.

-Proceed to pour mustard-juice all over the bread, paper towel and table.

-Manage to spill pickle juice all over my hand, fridge and floor (Note: this sandwich contained no pickles.)

All of this failed to frustrate me (see MAYO). I found a bit of humor in the situation, actually. I also found an essential truth of life. As I was nearly finished, I was mentally reviewing the mistakes I had made and I came upon the following thought:

"No matter how many times I messed up along the way, no matter how long it takes, I'm still gonna have a sandwich to enjoy when I'm done."

LETTUCE. This sandwich-making escapade had turned into a spiritual growth moment. I realized that this same truth holds true in my attempt at living Praise. The fact is, no matter how many times I mess up along the way, or how long it takes me to learn His lessons, God's plan will still be carried on to completion (Philippians 1:6). This brings the focus off of myself and my mistakes and my depravity and on to God and the good work that He will complete and His desire for me to further His Kingdom, in His Name.

MUSTARD. In order for me to contribute to the Kingdom, I must be willing to put myself in situations where faith is possible. Which situations are these? They are often uncomfortable or awkward social scenarios where I have the opportunity to be an ambassador for the Kingdom in the lives of others. These are things that I naturally avoid because they are outside of my control. These are places that require faith. The book of James instills in me the belief that this faith is more than simple trust. Internally trusting the Truths of God's Word and the Rescue we find in the Life of His Son requires external action. Maybe the faith comes before the action, but maybe not. This duality is why James says that faith without works is dead (2:14-26). Certainly, however, works without faith are equally lifeless. The two must exist together. Mindless action is death. Action-less belief is death. A life of action informed by faith is the Life Christ has for us.

CHEESE. It won't always smell good. Along this Way, as we are going, we will make mistakes. We will drop mayo and cheese on the table, forget what the LARGE lettuce container looks like (seriously, the thing is huge and obvious), forget to properly prepare the mustard and spill pickle juice all over everything. But instead of sitting in our mess and wallowing in our own misery, we should follow the advice of Joel 2:12-13.

"'Yet even now' the Lord says, 'return to me with all your heart - with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Tear your hearts, not just your garments!' (13)Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and boundless in loyal love - often relenting from calamitous punishment." (NET)

BREAD. So we don't just ignore our mistakes. No, here the Lord says to return with fasting, weeping, and mourning and to rend our hearts. Our mistakes and our intentional sin are to be taken seriously. But our return to Him will require that we move past this point of mourning. Again, I'm not trying to trivialize the mourning for our sin. Our sin grieves the Spirit (Ephesians 4) and should grieve us as well. Godly sorrow is an integral part of our faith. But we should not be crippled by our failures or disabled by our disparity. We have to believe in a God who has more in store. He is making us a sandwich.

Symphony

I am Your instrument.

The touch of Your hand,

the breath You breathe into me,

these are Your Love language.

But lately I've been playing myself.

My hand, my breath, my composition.

My sorrow, my death, my destruction.

A screeching lie I cry out to You.

The tinder is running low.

The flames approach my branches alone.

My life begins to approach the bone.

I squirm and squeal and hide.

But You reveal what's inside.

You found me in the gallows of self-abuse

strangling on my poorly tied noose.

As You cut the rope, i fall to the ground.

Then You breathe Life into me, a shiftless mound.

And once again, we are making music.

Poetry Jam

We join together in praise song

We join the trees

We join with their leaves

In singing,

screaming,

shouting

The praise of our one LORD.

His name is every breath we breathe

and wind blowing through the leaves.

His Mercy is the tears on our cheeks

and the way the branches creak.

His Justice is the blood in our veins

and their sap that stains.

His Love

endures

forever.

Questions [or Answers (or God is God)]

Why do we stop at caring?

Why do we forget our calling?

Why do we ignore our calling?

What makes my comfort and convenience more important than the advancement of the Kingdom?

What happens when we live like The King is on the throne?

Here's some news for us all, there would be no throne if The King were not residing on it. Think of the implications of that. If God is not God, then there is no God. Most of us are familiar with the idea of "making gods" out of the things around us. But the truth is that we cannot make God. We cannot put something on the throne. Because no matter how much we idolize something, it cannot be God. It can't provide for our needs. It can't help us live outside ourselves. It can't be the source of Truth for our lives because there is not Truth in it.

There are some inequalities that I should highlight.

"truth" does not equal "Truth."

"god" does not equal "God."

"a throne" is not "the throne."

There is a fundamental shift in mentality that we must make to understand the difference between God's Godness and a romantic relationship's godness. God's Godness obsoletes the godness of self-focus. His Truth exists on a level beyond that of your News Feed. His is the throne of justice and love, of power and mercy, of glory and grace. We cannot make this throne nor can we or any of our idols occupy it.

So back to the questions. Why do we stop at caring? Why is it that, with all our good intentions and after so much good teaching, we consistently fail to do good? Simultaneously, this question has no answer and many answers. It has no answer because nothing can occupy God's throne (see above) and in light of that fact, there is no reason for us to not live accordingly (see below). But it also has many answers because, with our broken (but naggingly persistent) human perspective, we find all sorts of other thrones to set our sights on.

Again, these are not the throne of the Most High, and they cannot provide the way He can. I reemphasize this because it is this crucial fact that we so often forget or ignore. THE THINGS OF THIS WORLD CANNOT BE GOD. Or, to put it in a nicer way that may... resonate more with some of you, "Creation cannot sustain what a Creator was meant to provide." It's when we forget this that we begin to make things more fundamental to our happiness or identity than God. Just the other... okay, it was this morning. Just this morning I found myself telling myself (and God) that if I just got this one thing, then I could serve Him better. If He would just gift me in this one certain area, then I would be able to obey, but if not, then I would just be stuck in sin.

I was blatantly crafting idols in the presence of God. There He was on His throne and there I was bowed down before it, telling Him how awesome He is and how blessed I am by Him. As I was talking, I sat up, pulled out a pocket knife and a small chunk of my heart. I started carving and telling Him that if I could just have this one hole filled, if He would just make this one part work a little differently, then I would start living like I was praising. Fortunately, on this particular morning, I realized the eminent consequences of my actions and allowed Him to fix the parts I had tactfully destroyed by filling them with Himself and His Truth.

One bit of this Truth was that I would never be satisfied, equipped, or fulfilled by anything but Him. The temporary things of this world will always betray us and will never provide what we truly need. So it's senseless to turn to those things in attempt to solve our problems. It's time we started living like we know this.

To return to the questions, what does this life look like? What does it look like when we realize (as in, "make into reality through action") that God is God and [insert "god" here] is not? To put it concisely, it looks like Jesus. But the idea of Jesus is an awfully large package. To unravel that a little, it looks like going into the world showing how much He loves us. A little more unpackaging and we start to see things like seeking after justice and having real, honest humility. We look a little deeper and the packing-peanuts of love (noun), joy, peace, patience et al. start to appear. After sifting around in these for a while we find some of the Bible's most explicit directions: love (verb), heal, preach, pray, give, serve.

So the question is not "Who?" nor "When?" nor "Why?" nor "What?" nor "How?" That leaves us with just one option. "Where?" And if we are looking and listening, He is faithful to provide an answer to this question as well. Then it's our turn to start living the answers.

Childlike Faith

I'm sitting at Starbucks, sipping on my free pumpkin spice latte sample and nibbling on the apple fritter sample that came with it. A dad walks in with his two young boys. I can feel the play in their eyes. After they order, the barista treats the older of the boys to one of their coffee themed stickers (the younger boy didn't want one). He gleefully peels back the wax-paper backing and plants the sticker on to his jacket. Under Dad's prompting, he heads to trashcan by the door to dispose of the wax-paper backing. I watch as he playfully tosses the paper in. But then he approaches the can and peers into the depths of its belly. For several seconds he is lost inside this unexplored wonderland.

When was the last time you lost yourself in a trashcan?

For this boy, the world was a giant playland full of adventure and excitement. Do you think God might want more of us to see His creation this way? Think back to your childhood. Think of the games of House or School or fighting imaginary bad guys in your backyard with the big stick you found during yard work that morning (or is that just me?). When did that stop?

Perhaps a better approach: why did that stop? Was it because those things no longer amused you? Was it because your imagination had run out of ideas? Or was it because the world told you it was time to "move on"? Did you ever try to go back and play those games after you had stopped? It was difficult to imagine a new reality after this one had been so well defined, wasn't it? But a true faith requires this sort of imagination. We "can only imagine" a realm of perfection that is only realized after death. We have to imagine the kind of world that God wants us to be creating. We are called to imagine the life that He would have us lead and then to chase after that. We must imagine an infinite and perfectly steadfast, loving and kind God because anything else would be us trying to put bounds and limits on Him and His love. In his book Velvet Elvis Rob Bell says this about our minds and God:

"The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. We are dealing with somebody we made up. And if we made him up, then we are in control. And so in passage after passage, we find God reminding people that he is beyond and bigger and more."

The truth is that we don't know infinite and boundless in our daily lives. We have nothing else to help us understand that idea. We live in a world with edges and compartments and limits. I'm not saying that God is imaginary, nor that our imaginations can understand Him. What I'm saying is that when we lose the ability to imagine a reality that is beyond our own we lose the ability to understand that God is ununderstandable, that He is beyond what we can know. When we lose track of this fact, we start to worry that science might disprove God. We start to worry about tomorrow. We start to doubt that God can provide. We start to trust ourselves because that is what our reality tells us to do. But how can we remedy this?

We need to return to a childlike faith. We accept our identity as children of God. We need to embrace the idea that our reality is not all there is. We need to be sure of the fact that we are unsure. Like Jon Acuff said in his Stuff Christians Like blog (there's a link in the title), we need to "put aside [our] pursuit of perfection and just color." And maybe with this change of perspective we will be more willing to try new things. Things like talk to that one person you always see at that one place but just keep ignoring. Things like encouraging that girl who has given up on herself. Things like selling everything you own and moving your family of 8 to Uganda to find out what God wants you to do there. Things like listening when you pray. Things like obeying God.

Let's make God's world our praiseground and see what a childlike faith can do in a grown-up's world.

"Unless you accept God's kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you'll never get in."

Mark 10:15 (Msg.)

Through the Looking Glass

Here I am.

Bloody and filthy and ragged

And smelly and sobbing and dejected

And bruised and battered and broken

And beautiful.

A Picture

How can I tell you?

Can I scream it like the leaves in the wind?

Can I ring it out from atop the clock tower?

Can I echo it softly through the wind-chime pipes?

How can I show you?

Can I soar majestically then land in your hands?

Can I paint it on a sky-canvas like the setting sun?

Can I roll it out over hills and fields like golden grain?

What could I possibly do to capture the complete, beautiful essence?

To make it more than the layman who would say

"I love you."

9.7.10

My soul knows its directive.

You have spoken life.

I long for action.

I have been steel, sharpened.

My breath longs for combat.

Lord I am ready to march

And You have given the order.

Bring Peace to my soul

So that it will be prepared

For War.

Capacity

I'm in a room.

The sign near the door says "capacity 150."

I am surrounded by at least 300 people walking in a mob of a circle.

They are all shouting at me.

Telling me how to live.

How to achieve happiness.

Their voices alone exceed the capacity limit.

I recognize some of them.

I see important historical figures and famous faces from several religions.

I see school teachers and classmates.

I see police and businessmen.

And I see regular people.

The walls of the room are plastered with different media devices, all contributing to the noise either vocally or visually.

The ground beneath me lifts me up and the crowd continues to circle and shout beneath me.

I elevate into another room that has a single incandescent light shining down from above me.

The capacity sign I made is hanging by the door.

1.

But the silence is no reprieve.

This room is as maddening as the first.

I wander about the room, building the world for myself.

Nothing is required, no sense must be made.

But progress is seldom and small.

I lay down under the tree I made.

Nothing was required, but I made a tree.

Then the room-world falls to pieces around me.

As the pieces fall, some gather on the sign and now it reads 2.

I close my eyes in fear and when I open them again I am lying in a new room.

There is no source to the light that fills the room.

There is no sign by the door.

There is no door.

There is but one voice and I am drawn to it.

It never sounds distant, but it has direction.

I walk through the pure white with silent footsteps.

I sit on the solid white ground and look out over the solid white pond.

A solid white bird flies silently and swiftly just inches over the solid white water.

It zooms towards me and then zooms back over the water.

As I watch the solid white poetry in flight, the solid white voice asks

"Who made the tree?"

Shift

Glaring upon the faceless visage of time

I find my gaze more penetrating than before.

Within its eyes Perspective dances nimbly a frolicking step full of insight.

The dancer's gift no longer eludes me.

In the once-empty space between the steps

I now find The Old Man breathing softly in his lounge chair

He tells me tales of times gone by

And sharpens my Spade for times to come.

And on the step, a Seed is planted

Each one casting a shadow of Truth

Guiding me to its roots with its growth.

Strength wanes and as I fall out of step

The shadow becomes one with the Darkness

And my eyes turn to more familiar places.

Runaway

I turn away every chance I get.

I signal right, veer left and drive the wedge in deep.

I'm blowing past the stop signs we used to make

And pretending that all the lights are green.

I see your lights flashing in my mirror

But it's starting to pick up speed.

A crash,

A bump,

And a moment alone.

And now it is more than a seed.

And in that moment I see what I've done

As I approach the look at the end of my leap.

But there ain't no rest for the wicked

And I'm worried because I can't sleep.

Mowing

It is more than a song

It requires more attention

It cannot be forced upon

Yet it cannot escape detection

It seeks you where you are

Yes, even now

It's presence transcends all

No matter when or where

Nor who, nor how, nor time

Nor what you think you are doing there

What matters is surrender

Victory through defeat

A defeat that changes everything

Surrender, but not retreat

The white flag waves and all is joy

You disappear into that song

And lose your way in its sweet harmony

Just to find where you belong.

7.27.10

The song is the beating of my heart.

It is the rhythm of my soul.

It is my every waking moment.

It will sing through my final lull.

The voice is ever gleaming.

It shines among the stars.

Its light invades my being.

It beams of the love that You are.

The melody tastes of Your power.

Its flavor is like none before.

It dances with every taste bud

and leaves them wanting more.

Drowning

Lord, hear my voice!

I cry out from the darkness, oh God!

I feel the tempest creeping up behind me.

Even its tip-toe steps cause the ground to tremble.

Cover me in Your love and grace, oh Lord,

so that tomorrow's ending matters not.

For, either way, I'm drowning.

SICM Psalm

Your grace is not enough oh God.

It is not enough to bring me to your glory place.

No, it is not enough to tear this veil,

nor enough to bring us face to face.

Lord, your abounding grace knows naught of "enough".

Your infinite mercy does not honor my cry for an end.

Your grace, oh God, is more than "enough" can hold.

It is more than my sin can rend.

This grace consumes humanity and still hungers.

Lord, Your grace is not enough.

O-B-E-Y

A praise song rises up in my soul

Not with familiar words or music

but a deeper tone of glorious praise.

Endless nights of desperate search

and finally an answer is found:

"See where you are? That's where I want you!"

And so I take a look around.

For now I have found my role.

Though my time here may be quick

here I remain, until He sends me other ways.

Love Like a Hurricane (or "Funeral Flowers Bring Bridal Showers")

The shiftless body is placed in the ground.

The displaced earth is gently returned to its original resting place.

Ceremoniously, one scoop at a time, the dirt falls until the burial is complete.

A kind and weary hand pats the mound,

One last time.

And with that, the rain begins to fall, soaking in to unsettled soil.

Weeks and months go by and still the rain falls.

Finally realizing its call, life creeps slowly from the grave.

The rain fades slightly, in awe of the miracle it has seen.

Slowly, gradually, firmly, strongly, over months and years, life flourishes.

Every time the rain returns, it is astounded by the growth it sees.

But the growth of one is not enough, and others sprout up near it singing the same praises.

Monday.

Spring has sprung but my heart is still in Winter.

The grass grows green and flowers bloom

but I'm still stuck in my heart of despair.

I need arms to fall in to;

a dry pair of shoulders to cry on.

Because my arms are weary from breaking falls

and my shoulders are still damp from winter.

What I don't have, I cannot make.

Promise me, Summer. Swear to me, Break.

3.31.10

What could I ever do

to show my love for you?

Searching, I try to find a way

to express something that words can't say.

The depth of the thing is greatly tall.

From its top flows a waterfall.

The mist of it travels wide,

watering all the countryside.

The lilies grow, their flowers bloom.

Life grows over the empty tomb.

Caterpillars feed on the lily leaves,

then curl up to rest inside their sleeves.

Trees blossom and bear their fruit.

The robin enters, its voice a flute.*

It nimbly hops around the tree,

then plucks a juicy fruit-meal free.

Back at the nest, eggs begin to hatch,

a treasure emerging from a chest with no latch.

Down below the fox pups play.

Their coats glow brown in the light of day.

Pouncing, rolling all around,

soft paws make a padded ground.

Up above, a noise is heard.

A bee buzzes by, its wings are blurred.

It zips and zooms back to the lily field

and gathers up its golden yield.

A cool breeze brushes gently by.

From the sleeve emerges a butterfly.

Flowers, birds, fruits, and bees,

waterfall, foxes, swaying trees.

All this beauty in just one view

of the crazy love I have for you.

*Admittedly, the flute is not the most bird-sounding instrument, but I couldn't think of a fruit that rhymed with piccolo.

Random Thought...

I think it helps to remember that you were a baby once. There was a day when you could do nothing on your own and the only way to support yourself was to cry for help from others. You were completely vulnerable and susceptible to all of the dangers around you. You had no way to protect yourself and virtually no way to impose your will. Every single part of your life relied on the grace of another. Every part of your consciousness was devoted to those who devoted themselves to you. And in those first few years, everything was true. The good times were good, the happy times were happy, the sad times were sad and the confusing times were confusing.

No matter how far you've come, how much pride you have, how confident you are in your own abilities, how independent you think you are now, always remember that you, too, were a baby once.

In many ways, we all still are.

Dolby Diety

I cry out in the hanging silence.

Hearing nothing but my own sobs, I grow tired.

The doubt that clouds my mind brings only fear.

But out of this fear emerges comfort, joy, peace.

The music is all around.

"Can you hear it?

Are you listening?"

The cinematic is everywhere.

"Have you seen it?

Are you watching?"

Every noise around me is an instrument in a beautiful symphony of sound.

"Why do you long for a soundtrack when the score is being composed right in front of you?"

I have missed out on this profound production all my life,

Simply because I forgot to listen, forgot to watch.

And now, revealed to me again, I cannot look away.

I hear nothing outside of this orchestra.

My own attempts to bring shape to silence shatter.

My soul begins an ovation while You are still recording.

Jolly Old Saint Valentine

Who's the one who gets to say

that all our love gets just one day.

We box it up, won't let it stray

confine it in whatever way

We can find on Saint Valentine's Day.

We play along with this tradition,

employ it for our inhibition.

Then we hire a statistician

to tell us how love faded away.

We can't even find it on Saint Valentine's Day.

Is this what the worthy Saint intended?

To hide our hearts, not get them mended?

To give love just one day to be tended?

This love has so much more to say

than we can find on Saint Valentine's Day.

So this year let love break freely out.

Discover what its all about;

Daily, open emotion's spout;

Experience day-to-day

the feelings we save for Saint Valentine's Day.

Seeded

This tree has been replanted.

Pulled out by the roots and brought in to Eden.

Yes, it is rooted firmly in Paradise,

but its canopy still stretches over its old home.

The nutrients come from perfection

and the winds blow into the darkness.

In one world, but of another,

this tree blooms constantly and never drops a leaf.

Stretched over the divide.

Its fruit inebriates the soul.

Enamorado Preocupado

For an assignment in my Spanish 203 class, we had to write a Spanish love poem. I was immediately excited for this and here is a copy of what I wrote (It is supposed to be funny):

Enamorado Preocupado

Para ti mi corazón se quema.

Entonces, voy a escribir una poema.

Este poema es sobre el amor.

Escribiendo estas lineas me hace a sudor.

Nada puede separarnos,

Excepto, quizás, unos libros.

Me he sentido así por un año.

Ahora, necesito ir al baño.

Dentro de mi esta un fuego grande.

Pero, tiene que esperar hasta mas tarde.

**If you cannot read Spanish, copy/paste this into Google Translate

(Un)Deserving

Choking, strangling, drowning without You.

The world is the trap that I am drawn to.

It can give me nothing, fulfills no need.

I want a different air than what I've breathed.

I am reinvented in Your prescence,

raised from a dead or dying essesnce.

Now I can feel my lungs become the sails,

that only Your breath of life can propel.

From this cliffside Eden of hope and love

I glance down at the sea and leap from above.

Save me in Your endless mercy and grace;

catch, carry me back to this perfect place.

I've earned nothing and You deserve it all.

But still You save me from my self-inflicted fall.

I can never repay this wonderful grace,

so I will live my life to sing Your praise.

Lost in Love...

In the frontier of mercy and hope

I find Your grace abounds on each slope.

I cross the stream into Your peace.

You show Your joy in each sheep's fleece.

To this expanse, there is no end.

I pass the plains and feel a trend.

The place where the sky praises You,

Take me there.

The place where the wind praises You,

You take me there.

The place where the grass praises You,

You hold me there.

In this infinite wilderness

I lose myself in Your righteousness.

Each day a new journey in You.

Every find brings blessings anew.

But no end to Your love I find.

So I will search till the end of all time.

Bonus Post! (or 3 + 4 = 7)

So I was thinking about the crazy things that my mind has been thinking about lately and I remembered one thought about the teachings of our culture specifically when it comes to the transition from Sky to Earth and how we draw the line separating the two.

We are taught at a young age that the sky is everything down to the ground. In our crayon depictions of our worlds, we are told to extend the blue that we place above all the way down to the green that we place below.

But as we live our lives in these worlds, we don't think of the sky as being just anything above the grass. We say that tall trees and buildings "reach up into the sky". We say that a level-headed person is "down to Earth". This language (among others) establishes a definite space separating the sky, "above", from the Earth, "below".

The focus of my inquiry is on that third party in our world. What exactly is that white space that children leave on the page between the blue sky and green grass? It is in this white space that human life occurs. This is where we place our double-square-windowed homes and our stick-families. So, what is it in us that separates life from its surroundings?

To answer that question with a question: what do the sky and ground have in common? They are perceived as pure space, being outside of time. We view the sky and the ground as eternal constants. They always have been, always will be. But the stuff in the white space is temporary, ever-changing. Even as children, we realize this sense of fleeting life and so we separate our temporary selves from the eternal around us. But our teachers tell us to fill in the white space with Sky from above. And so we do. And so we should. Why? Because the connection between sky and earth is what makes life more beautiful.

Origin

Been working on this one for the past couple days, hope you like it.

The power of Creative thought

is often lost, less often sought.

we know not if it comes or goes;

we just feel original flows.

Is it the Lark, rising above?

Is it from house, or tree, or dove?

The answers can't be written down;

all we can "know" is all around.

So where are we left? High and dry.

"Knowing" nothing of eye or sky.

And as we try to learn of all,

imagination trips and falls.

We won't know the power again

of the moment before paper meets pen.

How He Loves

Couldn't find a way to write this better so here you go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJyW55AXJAk

That is all.

Incomplete Thoughts

The song of my soul is a joyous one.

It sings words of hope, and mercy, and peace

because I have found the one missing piece

that a Father gives kindly to his sons.

No longer written by worry, self-doubt,

this song sings of a new banner for life.

From here, with this high, to times of great strife;

This new song now sings so graciously out.

Proverbial Blessings

Life is a beautiful interview.

Heaven is when you get the job.

Where the Wild Thing Was

*NOT POETRY*

I have been writing a place narrative (essay) over the past few days; ergo, less poem writing. It's just over 2 pages double spaced, but that is still way longer than any of my other posts on here. So, in the spirit of equal spacial-distribution rights, I will try to make this post about as long as the rest and just make the title a link to where you can read the entire essay elsewhere. I think I still have a couple of lines to fill up to be about even, so I suppose I should think of something to talk about so that I can fill up those lines with me talking about that thing. That should do.

Also, I will be AFK this weekend so I will still be writing, but not be able to post till Sunday/Monday.

Open Mic Day

I'm sitting in the CUB on Open Mic day.

I came to do homework or eat, not to play.

But, alas, today is Open Mic day.

So I have to listen to what everyone else has to say.

One's not a virgin; One's sister was gay.

I didn't need to learn these things today.

I needed to finish writing an essay.

But that's what happens when you come to the CUB on Open Mic day.

//There is a good story behind this one.

//If you really want to know, you can ask me.

Haiku

Writing a paper.

Have no time for poetry.

I'll post the paper.

With Friends Like These

We live our lives in revolving doors;

constantly turning our backs on what we know.

Just when we have something good to hold on to

the door comes 'round and we're forced to let go.

The best things in life are left outside, waiting,

while the worst ones manage to force their way in.

We lose ourselves in this whirlpool of destruction and death,

completely oblivious to the presence of sin.

Then, suddenly we awake.

We build a bond that this door can't break.

It pulls us out of the crowd

and invites us to life on a cloud.

Black

The weight of emotion bears down,

threatening to rip or tear.

It covers everything in a dark hue; black;

starkly contrasting the bright, barren canvas.

Nothing can be done to prevent this darkness;

there is no saving light.

Because the light is the void that the darkness fills

and this darkness enables sight.

eXhAle

A sea of faces in a crowd.

A dozen stories, a thousand experiences, a million decisions behind each one.

One is living by number,

inside the lines, a sing-along.

And one is sure of nothing,

living in the Jeopardy song.

Or one is sure of everything;

even sure he's surely wrong.

No matter what you think you know,

these faces won't stay long.

For the whole of one life is like a vapor,

Here today; tomorrow, gone.

Decisions...

I have always assumed

that it was my own choice

to follow with my heart

and listen to that voice.

That voice that tells me where to go,

or sometimes when or why or how.

I always thought it was my choice,

but I've proved myself wrong just now.

It seems nice to think that I had a say;

that I was the one who made things this way.

But the one who taught how to rhyme,

the one preceding space and time,

it was truly His decision

to make this trans-dimensional love collision.

Dream On

You've heard it before, but not like this.

It always sounded difficult and not for you.

But now you stand there staring it in the face.

You whisper, "Bring it." and suddenly it's simple.

Chasing dreams is just living life with a purpose.

There's no extra action needed, just more focus.

It's not some crazy-action-movie-stunt-fest, just life.

And all you have to do is keep on living and keep on dreaming.

iNk

The story of the heart is written without an eraser.

Every slip of pen and blotch of ink stays with you forever.

The tales you tell and webs you weave from the heart are here to stay;

Legend fades and webs wither, but the feelings never go away.

So guard your pen. Write softly, smoothly; never for an attack.

For once the feeling has been felt, you can never take it back.

1.1

In two-thousand and ten, paper meets pen.

I've chosen to write a poem every day.

In order to keep up with this new way,

at night or in morning, I'll write where I lay.

Whether days are good or the weather is grey;

if the thoughts in my head go or they stay;

no matter what others do; what they say;

even when I'm keeping bad thoughts at bay;

in times when kisses don't begin with Kay;

when I can't tell Sarah Palin from Tina Fey

if I'm close with God or drifting away;

I've chosen to write a poem every day.

Paper, meet pen; It's two-thousand-ten!