Breathe

Breathe out, breathe in, out with the old, in with the new, breathe out, breathe in, out with the old, in with the new, breathe out the death, breathe in the life, breathe out, breathe in...out with the past, in with the future, breathe out, breathe in, slowly, surely, slowly, surely, breathe out, breathe in, out with the old, in with the new, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out the death, breathe in the life, breathe out, breathe in...slowly, surely, slowly, surely...

(Referred via Jason Evan's blog)

The struggle for independance of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt has inspired many contemporary leaders. Today, confronted with those who wish to separate religion and politic, we must ask : who are today's slaves ? Where are today's Pharaohs ? And, where are today's Moses ?

--from here

On that note:

Now it's time for suffering
To shed the skin to which you cling
A relic of my everything
Is all you've left to hold...

---from Skin Shed by Argyle Park on the album Misguided

(From Jason Evan's blog)

Let me say, with the risk of appearing ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love. It is impossible to think of an authentic revolutionary without this quality... One must have a large dose of humanity, a large dose of a sense of justice and truth, to avoid falling into extremes, into cold intellectualism, into isolation from the masses. Every day we must struggle so that this love of living humanity is transformed into concrete facts, into acts that will serve as an example...
- Che Guevara

The temptation to disassociate the divine from material reality marks the beginnings of kitsch. For, once unhitched from the divine, the complexity of the world can be too easily by-passed and ignored.

(from here)

From the fake Santa Claus to the real one!

The Burden of Gifts

It may look as though “identity” only justifies its continued existence by underwriting commerical exchanges. Plenty of people came back from their “identity-finding” expeditions in Tibet to devote sustained attention to the question of just which bottled tap water best fits their lifestyles. But that appearance to the contrary notwithstanding, “identities” attract such deep and persistent attention in public discussion partly because the debaters sense that the outcome of this debate will shape who we may be in the future. Once the notion of “identity” takes a single, transmittable, reliable pattern online, we’ll begin to think of ourselves as instantiations of that pattern, in the same way we think of ourselves as our job descriptions (“I’m a freelance consultant,” “I’m a writer,” “I’m a software engineer”).

(From AKMA Random Thoughts )

(Originally by "Norm" in The Door Magazine Chat Closet)

Imagine the planet below you is not the Earth, but some planet you are given to govern in the new Kingdom. Imagine what people live there. Are they humans like us? Will they be able to see you, or will you be at an accelerated speed like that episode of Star Trek so that you are invisible to them. What will you do for them? Will you impart to them laws to live by? Will you take part in their redemption? Will you be a prophet like Elijah or John the Baptist pointing the way to God? Will the planet you rule be something from your imagination - like an idyllic scene from your most beautiful dream? Will you whisper in the ears of the philosophers on your planet; tidbits of the secrets of the universe like perhaps an Augustine or Luther?

(Referred by Alan Creech)

The problem of the individual and the community cannot be solved at all if the height is not achieved where the sovereign source and end of both individual and communal existence are discerned; and where the limits are set against the idolatrous selfworship of both individuals and communities.

--Richard Niebuhr

"Silence is frightening because it strips us as nothing else does, throwing us upon the stark realities of our life."

-Dallas Willard

(Originally found here via John Campea)

Another (attempt at) Haiku (Inspired by a Haiku post yesterday at The Door Magazine Chat Closet)

Gift so hard to buy
Giving tangible result
Only poverty

(Original Haiku by me on December 19, 2002)

(Inspired by a Haiku post at The Door Magazine Chat Closet)

Consumer orgy
Dematerialize it
So life can come down

(Original Haiku by me on December 18, 2002)

(Originally referred by John Campea)

When you buy gifts:

1) We need to distinguish between necessities and luxuries, and normally we need to reject both our desire for the latter and our inclination to blur the distinction.
2) Expenditures for the purpose of status, pride, staying in fashion, and "keeping up with the Joneses" are wrong.
3) We need to distinguish between expenditures to develop our particular creative gifts and legitimate hobbies and a general demand for all the cultural items, recreational equipment, and current hobbies that the "successful" of our class or nation enjoy.
4) We need to distinguish between occasional celebration and normal day-to-day routine. A turkey feast with all the trimmings at Thanksgiving to celebrate the good gift of creation is Biblical (Deut. 14:22-27). Unfortunately, many of us overeat every day.
5) There is no necessary connection between what we earn and what we spend on ourselves. We should not try to buy things just because we can afford them.

from Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ronald J. Sider

(Originally referred by Jordon and Wendy Cooper)

I used to be a learned professor. Now I'm a learner.
When I was learned, life was a quiz show. Now that I'm a learner, life is a discovery channel.
When I was learned, it was a question of how much I knew. Now that I'm a learner, it's a question of how much I'm being stretched.
When I was learned, knowledge was everything. Now that I'm a learner, kindness is everything.
When I was learned, knowledge went to my head. Now that I'm a learner, knowledge travels the longest foot in the universe–-the foot that separates my head from my heart.
When I was learned, I used to point my finger and pontificate. Now that I'm a learner, I slap my forehead all the time
When I was learned, I used to think I was the best. Now that I'm a learner, I do the best I can.
When I was learned, I was frightened of new ideas. Now that I'm a learner, I'm just as frightened of old ideas.
When I was learned, I looked to the past: to have confirmed the set of beliefs I already had. Now that I'm a learner, I look to the future: to grow, be stretched, and remain open to what I don't know.
When I was learned, I knew where I was going. Now that I'm a learner, I don't know where I'm going----but I know whom I've going with.
When I was learned, I loved to talk. Now that I'm a learner, I'd prefer to listen, because that's when I'm learning.
When I was learned, I had something to teach everybody. Now that I'm a learner, everybody has something to teach me.
When I was learned, I was impatient with dumb people. Now that I'm a learner, I'm grateful when people are patient enough to dumb down to me and care enough to smarten me up.
When I was learned, I thought that all knowledge was a form of power. Now that I'm a learner, I suspect much knowledge is a form of weakness.

(To see the full article by Leonard Sweet, go here! )

(From What's Holy About War?, The Door Magazine, issue #184):

The other night I saw a minister of the gospel on MSNBC who was asked whether she thought Osama bin Laden believed in God, and her answer was, "It's not the God I know. It's not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."

Well, uh, no it's definitely NOT the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It's the God of Abraham, Ishmael and Muhammad. But at least this woman had the good sense to identify that particular dividing point in our spiritual heritage. If she'd stopped at Abraham - the one we ALL agree on - then maybe she would have been making a point about bin Laden's heresy. Saddling him with two spiritual forebears he never claimed in the first place is the equivalent of a Satanist condemning a Presbyterian in the name of Madalyn Murray O'Hair's ghost. She seemed to be making HIS point, not hers.

(one of my poems, dated December 11, 1993)

Once Oppressed By Thorns

Thorn in flesh-- remnant of briar patch; it lingers
Like an albatross, piercing the heel.
The swift discouraged in race.
Descent into thorns; the beyond oasis shocked
Yet pondering the fate of this Achilles.
Piercing-- thorn obliquely throttling the seed of the soul.
Blue to read and clear-- Broken sensuality cries. Fire split!
See the dripping from a shattered heart exposed!
Wedge bluntly enters logic's domain usurping the ruler.
Thoughts scatter in flight. Ruins of nest remain!
Fantasy flirts; Addiction seduces; Death delights.
Perfume envelopes playfully.
Comanion with Adam's mask shares wounds.
Perfume's stench evaporates.
Thorns trampled by Vengeance.
Friend guides this Achilles onwards by walking.

Storytelling brings us home to our hearts. It requires no props, no money, nothing but revealing history, our experience, and our inner world. It doesn't matter if you're gifted at weaving a yarn or simply speak from your heart. What matters is that you tap into the wonder of your own life and share it with others. Telling the stories of our lives to each other brings a richness of spirit and validates our specialness. Storytelling ignites our imagination as we create pictures and scenes from words. It is also a wonderful way to build community.

(Charlotte Sophia Kasl, A Home for the Heart, 167)

Immortality

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it by not dying."

--Woody Allen

"The response of faith drops the demand that we keep living history and accepts the fact that, in the final analysis, we are born to die...It means that we have to face the loss of our historical potency. After we die, we cannot make history. True, a few important people will still have lingering influence through their works, or their memory may be used as a symbol for some cause or ideology, but they cannot make anything."

(James R. Wilkes, To Wrestle and To Dance, 130)

Soul development

An individual soul can be likened to our universe. Just as the universe is thought to have had its beginning at the moment of the Big Bang, so an individual soul might be understood to have a definite birth at the moment of conception. Just as our universe has been expanding, the inner universe of a soul is constantly growing. The inner cosmos, like the outer one, goes through many phases in its evolution. Connections in the mind rapidly multiply in early infancy, just as the most important developments in the physical universe occurred in the first few minutes. Gradually, in both cases, a unique identity emerges. Both are immortal but also have a definite beginning: the 'birth' of the universe involves bringing together and reorganizing pre-existing fundamental particles, while the creation of the soul involves imprinting eternal spirit with a unique identity and character.

(from Anjam Khursheed, The Universe Within, 160)

Understand that you have within yourself, upon a small scale, a second universe: within you there is a sun, there is a moon, and there are also stars.

--Origen (cited in The Orthodox Way, Kallistos Ware, 43)

Inspiration

Take your breathing...It isn't particularly pleasant, and it certainly isn't unpleasant. So your animal brain judges it irrelevant. Talk about ignorance-- it only happens to be the mystery that sustains your life and connects you to every other living thing!

-- A Return to Innocence: Philosophical Guidance in an Age of Cynicism, Jeffrey M. Schwartz, 190)

If we only knew that we are powerless all the time and these artificial worlds of comfort are just an illusion.

(From The Weakest Link by Derek Darby)

(From The Inner Limits of Mankind,E. Lazlo, pp.25-26)

The blame is tacitly and shifted to the nature and finitude of the environment, and engineers are scurrying to their drawing boards to redesign it here and there so that we can remain as and what we are.
It is forgotten that not our world, but we human beings are the cause of our problems, and that only be redesigning our thinking and acting, not the world around us, can we solve them.

(From The Way of the (Modern) World by Craig M. Gay, 295-96; 299-300)

Of course, one of the deepest splits that has opened up within our modern civilization has been between our need for genuinely personal relatedness and the dreary impersonality of so much of modern institutional life, a split that has been helpfully characterized as a kind of "overgrowth of objective culture" at the expense of truly human subjectivity. This overgrowth of objectivity is evident in the "managed" quality of modern political life; in modern science's "objectification" of the world and in the utilitarian spirit of modern technology; and in the modern economy's "leveling" of all quality by means of merely quantitative monetary abstraction. Indeed, the overgrowth of objective culture is even evident in the so-called private sphere of subjective autonomy, for it appears that self-constructing individuals quite often envision and treat even themselves largely as manipulable objects....It is, of course, not terribly surprising to find that the overgrowth of objectivity in modern society and culture has yielded the fruit of loneliness. Unable to truly apprehend others, the self that is possessed by the spirit of objectification is itself reduced to an object incapable of truly personal existence. The cost of establishing control over the world by means of technical-rational objectification, in other words, has been nothing short of personal existence, and we have established a measure of control over our world only to discover that the self-understanding responsible for initiating the process-- which seemed at first to be so confident in its position in the universe --has by now vanished into "postmodern" nothingness. This is perhaps the supreme irony of the modern intellectual condition. The immensely painful and nature of this condition, furthermore, which might otherwise be such as to call the whole project of objectification into question, is assuaged by the distractions and diversions of consumer culture...

Liquid Gift by Mortal from Pura
(Jyro)

your wounds
your eyes
your strength
your lies
i want more
want it all
everything
everything
reveal yourself to me!
show your face
show your veins
scratch your scales
lift your wings
spill your blood
bare your soul
sacrifice
this is gold
reveal yourself!
until your self is revealed
and if i never touch your scars
I'll know who you are
only if you tell me
and what if i will never know
how you're hurting so
only you can say
life is loss
death is gain
if love is truth
say your name
i want more
want it all
everything
everything
reveal yourself to me!
until your soul is revealed
i see your self in me!

Quiver by Jeff Johnson from The Isle of Dreams

The cycle continues,
As the waves keep on crashing in,
While the ground that I'm walking on
quivers with each blow.

And a voice from within longing to be free cries:
"I can't take this anymore..."

Still the voice from within longing to be free cries:
"I can't take this anymore..."

But the cycle continues,
And the waves keep on crashing in,
And this dream that I'm living in...
...it quivers.

However hard I try, I find it impossible to construct anything greater than these three words, "Love one another"--- only to the end, and without exceptions: then all is justified and life is illumined, whereas otherwise it is an abomination and a burden.

---Mother Maria of Paris (cited in The Orthodox Way, Kallistos Ware, 40)

On that note:

From This Beautiful Mess, Sixpence None the Richer...

love, salvation, the fear of death (slocum/arhelger)

well i'm staring straight into the face of hell
you're so close and you can't even tell
i'm so wrapped up inside
because i don't have much to love

horrified i reel from pits unseen
falling off my pedestal of plentiful deeds
as it crumbles down on top of me
i contemplate my lack of love

come and save my soul
before it's not too late
i'm not afraid to admit
how much i hate myself

all these gongs and cymbals ring inside my head
surrendered body to the flames has singed the skin
can't speak in tongues and even if i could it's nothing
because i cannot love

come and save my soul
before it's not too late
i'm not afraid to admit
how much i hate myself

well i'm staring into the face of hell
i'm so close and i can't even tell
i'm so afraid i'll amount to nothing
because i cannot love