Changes . . .
New layout. Thoughts? Color, font/text size, etc?
Seriously, I really hate learning a whole new language: php, css, html. . .Can I buy a vowel?
Also some “new” music posted. Enjoy.
I Don’t Watch “televangelists,” But Sometimes …
I moved to a state whose pimp hand is strong and wears many, many rings.
It stings a little sometimes when you turn on the tv and someone is screaming JESUS!!!!! as loud as they can while asking for $5,000 to so they will pray for you; a scared one night stand. Or realizing that you can never listen to a certain gospel song again because it’s the same as driving while the song your spouse had sex with another to is playing in the background. Or finding that terms like “denomniation,” “charity,” and “exegesis,” have no meaning if you’re tricking out for a mass media audience. When you have so many Johns lined up, who needs a message?
I can’t watch televangelists.
But every so often, my pudgy fingers can’t hit the channel button fast enough, and I’m trapped. Amid a bout of sweating, running, jumping, blessing, and some other activities I have yet to identify, a preacher made a point which stuck with me. Paraphrased:
Sometimes, or even often, the temptation to sin is not in the OBJECT of temptation, but rather in the PROCESS.
It isn’t a matter of trying to obtain something that is “wrong,” “evil,” or “sinfull.” Often what we are trying to gain something that is in fact “good”; something God would want us to have, or the desire to have it is based off of a natural, God-given impulse. However, the problem is in the process of obtaining it: we are trying to obtain outside of how God would have us.
We are seeking a good thing in a wrong way and that is what makes it sinful.He went on to use the example of the temptation of Jesus: He already owned/would own all of the things Satan was offering. There was nothing “wrong” with Jesus taking them, save for the person offering them: the process.
I found myself stunned at the accuracy, but disheartened at the hypocrisy. This was still a multimillion dollar making spiritual pimp saying these words, regardless of the truth. I was left wondering, “yeah, but how well do YOU follow these words Mr. I have a whole display at Barnes and Noble ? How often did you grab the golden apple before it was properly offered? Huh? Well answer me as I scream at you through the tv!”
Eventually, I turned off the tv, since no one inside it was listening to me, and in the darkness of the dust covered screen I saw my reflection looking smugly back at me.
It’s getting harder and harder to differentiate between the sound of Divine sighing and laughter.
Don’t Ask Me About Thanksgiving
I’m way too political. I’m my sister(brother)’s sibling.
Read a book: 
Judo Dogs!!!111
I just can’t help myself.“my Religion”
My religion
has something to do with the memories of those low hills
and the fireplace and orchard
beyond the stone wall.
In those days, life was painted
greens and autmums, pond colored.
Shouts of feild hockey players,
napping ideas, voices cloaking
hours
in the library until the time you see your own reflection
in the darkened window.
God hung like a slient transparent sheet
outside the chapel glass
lit from inside
by invisible lamps.
Lust was soothed by prayer
in the chapel balcony.
Sometimes
you love so much in one place
you almost drown in the bittersweet
bliss of it
These days, I come out of apartments
smelling of rancid oil
and splatted hope.
I build ambivalent wings
and try to learn to fly with them
and share them with these broken, colorful people.
Now
my gods live in their rafters.
~ Matilda Cantwell
(Emp. mine)
_________________________________________
I really wish I had written this poem, but someone else beat me to it: A fellow poet from Becoming Fire.
It defines with clarity the bond between a clear past and a present chaos. Completeness, compassion, confusion, and Christian co-dependancy mixed with unasked questions: Almost a new Psalms 42, but not quite. But close enough.
Trying to re-examine Galatians chapter 6 and this poem sprung to mind.
Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ . . . But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For each one shall bear his own load. ~ Gal 6:2; 4-5
Almost a contradiction until you learn that there are two different words for “burden” being used, but even if they were the same, there is a clear indication that one can only “love” so much, before it is unhealthy: enabling, self-destructive, frustrating, sinful.
Drowning in the bittersweet love for another is still drowning: a slow and painful death. This not of a “greater love has no one than this” type either.
Sometimes you have to let people make their own choices, and they will have to deal with the consequneces, with or without you.
So,
May the road rise to meet your feet
May the Lord gaurd between you and me
May you live in the center of peace, and
May you find your dreams.
(from “Benediction“)