The vengeance of the turba

The depths of Holy Saturday is being lived

in all the darkness and hell hidden below

as the lives of many priests are splayed

by the investigative pen of hungry reports.

It is not these servants of The Holy alone

who have sinned in the manner of the criminal flesh

but all in the nation of the safe and secure

of Puritans sure of salvation by promised decree.

For who dare imagine that after their plunge

some smoke of Satan would darken their soul?

When denizen-followers of the Papist State 

stand bare on TV revealing their flaws

it's simple to snip the balls of consecrated flesh

of celibates who know that they are enfleshed

then fart in their faces and puke on their names

now that we've seen their Jockey's dropped.

The vengeance of the turba has opened wide

and the venom of envy flows out onto the streets

pleading that the swords of justice be unsheathed

till the blood flows from the beds of their sons.

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -God's "appearance" in the world shows us how we are to "appear" to one another.  The pattern or paradigm of God's self-giving is found in John 15:15: "I call you servants no longer; a servant does not know what his master is about. I have called you friends because I have disclosed to you everything that I have heard from my father."

  -I can know myself only insofar as I am willing to disclose myself to others and to allow others to disclose themselves to me.

  -God is Trinity, and so am I.

  -I am invited to define myself in terms of my future instead of my past.  This is liberating because, as a believer, I trust that my future is in God.

  -This does not mean that my past is is irrelevant.  It means that my past is interpreted in terms of my future other than the other way round.

Questions for WAR

Does your blood bleed the flag

because you dwell in this land?

Did your ancestors mold the earth

upon which you proudly stand?

Is your birthplace so sacred a miracle ground

that God knows it and it alone?

Why do the nations rage in war

as if their people were creators of all?

Do the tears of children change

when their eyes see the innocent slain

or they scour the garbage mounds for food

when they're shot cold in the head?

Whose pain is noble where bullets lodge?

What wounds distinguish friendly fire?

What corpse is perfume drawing flies to feast

or you to nurse upon their bones?

Do blind patriots condone the perverse?

Is the mute flag mouth-piece for the dumb?

Stare into the eyes of Death and see yourself.

Stand bravely midst the wayward bombs.

Dig for mines for your dinner table.

Grind the poor into meal for tanks.

Do doubts ever rankle your peace-filled mind?

Do your prayers wrestle our virgin flag? 

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -The dominant lure of life is toward the "We" and we may thank God for our neuroses in that they are, at least, signs that there are cracks and cervices in the egocentric shell we build around us.

  -...our falling apart can be a sign of God's work in us.

  -We prevent our own healing when we misrepresent what is going on inside us, and lie to ourselves. 

  -Only those who go through the crisis, only those who endure "the perils of the soul" and dare to brave the unknown dangers of the future find the way to new, mature and productive life (Fritz Kunkel) 

gasp for air

gasp for air it's said

gasp to live a minute longer

gasp while pushing off the force of self

to belong completely to the Force of Life

my head submerged beneath the waters

beneath my wants

beneath addictions holding bound

holding bound my preferred attachments

against my soul

 against my good

against my distant wish

to fight against my God no more

to give-in long enough

to behold forever with a throbbing heart

with a lively passion

breathing free

that drowning would be pleasure

a gift for touching Life

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -...solidarity with others us essential if the soul is to be made and re-made.

  -I am, paradoxically, most myself when I can say "we".

  -(The) sham "we" makes us feel safe and at home for a while, but it often depends on excluding others and even persecuting and killing them if our safety is threatened.  A family can be a prison house of the soul.  Each member must serve its honor and worship at its shrine.  Freedom and spontaneity are crushed by the family group.  A nation can wound the souls of its members by belligerent and exclusivist policies formulated in the name of "national security."  That is why the making of a soul requires us to break out of the small groups in which we live and find our true Self in an ever-widening circle, first in the whole and then in God.

  -...since it is going against the stream of life flowing towards that wholeness which is in God, the ego is always on the defensive, always at war with others and with itself. 

A laughable matter

It seems that...

and no matter what...

things continue...

Since we are caught...

our own intransigence...

'cause sin is real...

and own the truth...

cutting ourselves off...

separating us from ourselves

and the God of our creation...

engulfing us in this darkness

trying to block the Light

Blind

I do not

hurry

because

listen

more

because

touch

gently

because

I long

to

see

                                                      *Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -The second and third conversions are necessary precisely because they reach those painful depths of personal suffering and terror that routine religion simply cannot touch.  Without the second and third possibilities, the first conversion can easily become a masquerade that keeps us infantile (rather than childlike) and prevent us from moving into a maturing faith.  "Nothing is as apt to mask the face of God as religion," wrote Martin Buber.  Soul making has to do with the removing of masks and with setting us free.  We are called to enjoy the very life of God..., and it is to that life that we must...turn.

tears know me

not as cascades

but as sighs

as moist corners

of leaking glands

yearning to scrub

and clean my eyes

clear of crusted years

of dirt-mound mem'ries

and dulled emotions

which like muzzled dogs

strain to romp and bark

with a freedom found

chiseled in the heart

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -All of this has some serious implications for the way in which believers spread the good news.  It requires a rigorous honesty in the way human beings experience the world.  The first conversion is important as the first step on a long journey, and the different churches can help each other to emphasize this first step.  It may well be that those churches which understand themselves as catholic and sacramentally oriented have neglected the first conversion too much.  They tend to take it for granted and hope that people will want to walk in the Way by a sort of osmosis.  The evangelical churches, alas, know of little else but the first conversion.  We need all three.  The first calls on us to be born again, the second and third invite us to grow up into "the fullness of the stature of Christ."

  -Unless there is a change and renewal from within that takes into account the hurts and tragedies of human life the second and third conversions seek to address, millions will be left with out spiritual sustenance.

  -Human longings and human needs are much the same everywhere, regardless of class or education.

still

sit in your heart

still

as life's busy-ness

swirls

and you upon her venture

dance

a bell sings through 

the night

its voice radiantly

light

awakens you

to walk 

*Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology.  He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar's gown, bid farewell to his study and wander with human heart through the world.

-Carl Jung

prophet

prophet purpled in passion and penance

something aches in your craw

you rail, you scale, you slash, you burn

something's beefing up your heat

something shoves you toward us

you'd like to flee but your feet twist you about

positioning you body as a compass toward change

toward rememb'rance, rethink and vital reform

your words enclose us like skin

we claw and scratch and cover our ears

but like hot molten lava your message burns through

and we listen or threaten, declaring you insane

you stand firm in the center of your Trust

your fleshy mouth speaking the thoughts of God

as we scurry about rationalizing the Word

your words sear our hearts with the Fire of Truth 

Historical information is always after the effect and rarely makes a difference.  Sometimes it becomes more brutal as a corrective of the supposed or brutal wrong.

Jesus is the trigger in the trap that brings down those values and principles upon which our systems stand.  He forces us to re-think our relationship to the divine, religion and the state.

*Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts.

-Daniel Moynihan

*Democracy cannot be "promoted" on top of a mountain of corpses.

-Asef Bayat

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

   -...do I worship God or do I worship my experience of God?  Do I worship God or do I worship my idea of God?

  -From time to time we fall flat on our faces.

  -We make mistakes, and thank God we do!

  -..."the ego had to break, something absolutely natural and seemingly good, seemingly perhaps the only good, has to be given up.  After that there's darkness and silence and space.  And God is there."

  -We tend to make religion only of our better moments.

contention in the air

clouds call on the wind-song flying

loosely moving by whim-some laws

via hot and cold waves of of the morning

the sun and moon lights of night

the fury of tornadoes scream

with lightening on the quiet days

with adventures and grey might

at high levels taken in stride

the shapes formed by their blowing

are beheld by eyes of awe

thet're heard by ears of fear

'cause contention's in the air

*Up to Now

go

in

slow 

bow

know

Now

(Incarnate)

                                                         -Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -...part of self-knowledge is the acknowledgement of our soul-sickness.

  -...it is fatal to interpret Christianity as a program for self-improvement or self-fulfillment.  It is now, as it was then, a response in obedience to the God who calls us out of our lostness and pain into the light of (God's) future.  Believers are people who are always making new beginnings.

floating empty

there ain't no what i need

where i stand upon the shore

hope has been drowned in a swamp

mired in an empty effort to reach a wharf

i build a raft that might take me home

thick arms of clouds release their thunder

as if storms move love in an empty chest

where gold nuggets count for nothin'

i enjoy the water spilling from the clouds

but my marbled heart can't hold the drops

and flushing ennui into the sea requires a flood

through whose embrace it'll quickly pass

from this raft of bamboo planks

sufficient for one who has lost his oars

i float empty toward a wobbly dock

to await redemption wrought by the cross

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

-The three crises: The first crisis is one of meaning;...The second crisis is one of betrayal....The third crisis is one of absence or emptiness.

-My quarrel with popular evangelism and its love of easily digestible solutions is that it concentrates not on dismantling of the false self, but on the baptism of its neuroses and pathologies.  The idea is that the convert is to hand everything over to God with the naive understanding that that is the end of the matter.  There is not enough emphasis on the need to reorder the personality and redirect the character.  Instead, our weaknesses and fears often get redirected in the service of a new found but false faith.  This weak and timid person is converted into a narrow-minded fanatic, when what was demanded of true conversion was a way of dealing with and transforming the weakness and timidity. But it takes a long time for a life to be totally converted, and most of us want instant conversions and overnight transformations.

-...religion is (in part) what we do with our craziness; and it should be no surprise that Catholics at times play snakes and ladders.

-The making of a soul is hard work, and yet it is also free gift. God's wild card of unconditional love is secure and sure, but we are found and lost in our choosing.  We are free to get lost and stay lost.  It is, therefore, legitimate to understand soul making and conversion in terms of progression and growth.  We are free to slip back.  We  are free to fail.  We are free to say "No."  Perdition - which means being lost - is always a possibility, and rescue is always near at hand.  The choice is ours. 

Dying dad

Between laughs

remembrances descend

somber like dead balloons

leaking whatever life remains

He looks beyond looking back

probing deep down

through the ground of crumpled colors

through the tired and piled balloons

Between laughter

his sober thoughts gather feelings

grains of gratitude and sorrow

or more for us who want to know

He smiles again

dispelling our dis-ease

lest we dive into a funk

a desert without reprieve

But midst our labored exhalations

we pretend exhilaration

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

-It takes a long time to make a human being, and conversion is that continual process of being made and re-made.

-Desert believers know that however we have come to acknowledge Christ as Lord, there is always more of him to know and more of ourselves to know and surrender to him.  This means, among other things, that we don't all have to experience the same things at the same time.

-If we follow the life of Christ as set out in the Gospels...we find a range of possible experiences. 

Blaming escapades

We'd like to save ourselves

but can't

We blind ourselves to our escapades

escaping, if possible, the original fall into dis-grace

We fall deeper into the ancient hole

dug while fleeing the first

It's tragedy we long

Responsibility we set aside

Felix culpa we sing at Easter Mass

yet quickly suppress the message therein

wrapping it in blaming tones

unable to face our own

With difficulty we accept ourselves

and the pathetic state of our kind

but if we would responsibly say Yes

our present stumbling would occasion grace

If  death doesn't get you, something else will.

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -Evangelism has been infested by the desire to package things for easy consumption.

  -...you can't sell Christ the way you can sell a car, a deodorant, or a bottle of scotch.

  -The question for the desert believer is to tell the truth in faith so that what we are and what we present is both genuinely hopeful and uncompromisingly realistic.

  -The Gospel is grotesque.  We have got to give in to that idea, no matter how repulsive, no matter how - and especially because - it goes against every culturally conditioned notion of "significant issues" we have.  The Gospel is ludicrously incongruous in our world.  It is not headline material.  It cannot make it onto C.B.S. News.

I'm old enough

I'm old enough to say Yes to sin

and not get stuck in the game of blame

I'm it

I'm the one

My sin shines before me and Thee

No cheap release from responsibility

My sin is mine

It's mine to repent

For the wicked are healed by love

if we but do it

if we but die and keep on dying

till what is seen is You

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -Yes, love has teeth!  It asks us one terrible and demanding question; "What are you going to do now?"

  -Being a lover, becoming a soul, means making choices.

  -We often mistake maturity for a dampened ardor or a dried-up enthusiasm.  True spiritual maturity is the serious honoring of the validity of our deepest longings. 

  -I am rescued time and time again from the vicious narrowness of my own projects and schemes precisely by the agency I both dread and long for.

  -Jesus calls me, but I don't like some of his friends.

Tensioned silence

Silence

at once arrogant and shrill

speaks a truth about relations

louder than words could say

as these two stand

at the thresh-hold looking

staring blankly past their eyes

their lips sealed against the word

that would free the caged Bird

Silence

like God is silent

silent yet speaking

speaking like God won't slay

by speaking

holding them in tension

attending to the other's absence

to the other's presence

brushing each like a whispered hope

a fermenting dream

believing that one day

someday

appreciation will blossom

embracing and kissing

wondering why it took so long

to speak

*The only face I see of God is the face of another human being.

*The past is history, the future a mystery but today is a gift which is why it is called the present.

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -The double desire to love and be loved is common to everyone.  It is the ancient drive of eros that unites us one with another.  Eros is not simply the drive towards sexual fulfillment; it is the impulse towards any satisfaction and completion.

  -God is the One who attracts, lures, draws us to "himself."

  -All our desires spring basically from the same source.  All our "erotic" impulses, even when misdirected, destructive, and erratic, relate in the end to the "Love of God."  Love in this sense is much more than a romantic urge.  It is the desire  of every creature to find its proper place, to find its true home.  It is like the force of gravity, which pulls things to their rightful place in the scheme of things.  Water finds its own level.  Smoke from a flame naturally rises upwards.  So it was believed that everything spontaneously tended towards its own place.  It is love that draws everything to its own unique home - for Dante, it is that which literally, makes the world go round.  It is this love/impulse that we all share in common.

  -To be a lover is, by definition, to be someone on "his" way home.

A wild chap was he

walking slowly through the wood

eyes grabbing each movement of leaves

the dance of trees, the swaying wind

He was a wild thing the land reclaimed

for ev'ry ant and twittering bird

entertained his curious glance

His was no rush past nothin'

No insignificance dodged his sight

for ev'ry piece of life be there

a presence like God in hiding

covered neath clods of green

Just an old man they thought

strolling through the park

an almost dead somebody

or nobody meaningful to watch

But there in his eyes shone wonder

and his heart beat life's excitement

walking slowly through the wood

watching expectantly for life

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -While I do not want to reduce Jesus Christ to a mere paradigm, he is at least that for me.  He is the means by which I interpret myself and my experience....Jesus is God's Word to me about myself.

  -In Christ, nothing has to be left out, or sanitized.

  -The two great characteristics of the desert believer are joy and gratitude.  These are the marks of the converted life.

Seismic the destruction bottled 

to maim, to kill, to dominate the horde

then beamed like some lighthouse on a nervous shore

spilling blood bottled as a Nobel prize

It seems callous, heartless, emotionless to a fault

that what's been cursed a hundred thousand times

is sanctioned by the maddened peons

appealing to the insanities of the crowd

as enough death to consider to consider us strong

Leaders salute stagnate air

gas-passing o'er the media wires

building ardor 'mongst us slobbering for war

leaping hard-drugged under the cauldrons of hate

encased in some magical Easter wrappings

protected from our enemy's hands

awash in flat promises of victories we'll win

I go crazy, wondering if God knows what's about

wondering how we slaughter each other patiently

marching 'neath the banner of theological themes

God has given us to enter the fray

Stories and tales are repeated year after year

Murder and gags torture the Word

all for the good of the conquering nation

arrogant leaders of a people with anxious gods 

Not enough death to reconsider ones worth

nor enough Earth destroyed to reconsider our cause

We kill off and on to purify our world of dread

purging the universe of the demons occupying our minds

There upon a cross the Best Victim hangs crucified

begging forgiveness of the Father since we know not what to do

But Some Thing's been long released

and we claim it's not tears

We mull with eyes watering

envious for peaceful years

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -In order to be formed into a person, a human being has to be organized around a center.

  -...we all find a center, a love, and order our lives within the circle of our allegiance.

  -The desert believer's soul is formed through (their) double process of the making and breaking of circles.

  -Lovers understand this because they have to learn what it is to hold another without chaining up the other's soul.

  -The God of our Savior Jesus Christ is the center of a faith that is as much concerned with braking and letting go as with holding and binding.  It is a faith for lovers.  The believer claims that this double action of holding and breaking is characteristic of the life of God himself.  Love is God's name.  Genuine lovers and true believers know how far they are from being able, in any consistent way, to hold and let go at the same time.

  -The inability of human beings to reach out and touch each other causes many of us to suffer from a deformed and crippled sense of self.

Our daily bread

Bread buttered with tears you see

bread that curves our hungry lips

bread that fills the bellies of our lives;

bread that smells of war and pain

the fractures of rape, the tortured minds

neglected love, abandoned friends;

bread torn apart by folks we know

fam'lies that pound us into dough

bending wills, reshaping souls;

bread, Your bread, spit before the poor

avoided in clubs and on city streets

blamed and cursed for being too near.

This is the bread that is daily

that bread upon which we prey

the bread You offer us pray upon

with tears and shame, re-membering

to shape us whole as nurturing bread.

This is the bread we're given to eat

bread to be given, given as feast.

When our teeth grind the host

blood unveils the whisp'rings of our lips;

your Christ leaks through what we intend forget

each drop of Him falling 'pon the weak of us;

and when your priest holds aloft the sacred host

it's us You see clown acting our own charade

our false and tainted scripts revealed.

Skilled Molder of the Human Clown

knead the dough of us anew

that we might feast without our guilt

bearing the shame that truly frees;

and You weeping with crucified love

with tears to wash our crusty hearts

press forgiveness into our filthy hands

the bread You unstintingly give.

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -Victims bear no responsibility.  They live in a world where blame and fault can be laid elsewhere.

  -For those who profess and call themselves Christians, the lens through which everything is interpreted is a person: Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection.

  -We cannot do without a paradigm to help us live.

-Human beings need a ritual, an icon, a holy place that will lift them our of the terrifying grip of a deadly everydayness.

  -"Choose and be chosen" is a law of the psychological and spiritual life.  No one can avoid choosing or being chosen by a "paradigm."  It is where we locate our sense of identity, where we find ourselves, our place.  Human beings have found their identity in such diverse models and paradigms as celibacy, sex, war, reason, equality, buffaloes, snakes, tea, peyote, alcohol, tranquility, money, ecology, psychoanalysis, Mao, and Christ.  Choosing, therefore, is very important, because who we are and where we stand will depend on our choice.

no sound

he made no sound

laughing

though belly bobbed

though cheeks bounced

though hands waved

he made no sound

laughing

like some dog whipped

silently snipped

Don't Perturb flashin' 

nervously 'cross his mind

in a death-trap house

a forbidden zone

making sound splatter

so thus he was there

in comedy's air

making no sound

laughing

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -Human beings take a long time to come to maturity.  We are not made overnight.

  -If we would learn about love and the making of the soul we have to enter the world of metaphor, and image.  We have to surrender our desire to control reality by analysis and system building.  These are vital skills for human growth and flourishing; but love (and therefore soul making) require surrender.

  -Soul making involves the willingness to cultivate a certain disposition towards the world and to other people; an attitude of receptivity and openness.

  -The hardest part of moving into mature believing is to allow oneself to be the object of God's delight.

Artificial passion

I.

What's artificial is their passion.

It's akin to the "Just Like" colognes

from the dollar store:

no pain, no doubts

nothing hot enough to burn someone;

nothing raw enough to expose ones blood.

It's sanctity that's dead letters in a book

ones we dream"if only's" about.

II.

I trip upon my struggles

my pretences to follow you

to cling tenaciously with passion

to whatever I need to mimic you.

Your feet have pressed into the land

their mark of passion that's real obsession:

red roses soaked in gall

beaten and stirred to the sweetest fragrance

borne stately like thorns circling the skull

and binding like nails through one drooping wrists.

You rub against my coward's flesh

to summon me whene'er you call

your niggling spirit pushing me 

through tears difficult to swallow.

III.

There's no escape but death

no assurance to measure ones step.

Send quickly then your Paraclete

and coax me up your hill.

I'll cry, "Abba-Daddy, give me a hand"

cause I'm scared to taste your redemption meat.

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

-Love is a kind of pain for which we are starved.  The pain comes when all that we have tried to deny will be denied on longer.  The soul suffocates when it is walled up. No wonder it resorts to violence when the pressure gets too much.  Love, the wild card, comes to such a soul by first puncturing the hardened shell in which it has encased itself.  Love, therefore, often comes as a terror - a threat to the self-protecting carapace under which we shelter.  A friend explains to William Golding's hero Wilfred the dire consequences to the soul that constructs for itself  a protective shell.

You see, you are what biologists used to call exoskeletal.  Most people are..endoskeletal, have their bones inside.  But you, my dear, for some reason known only to God...have spent your life inventing a skeleton on the outside.  Like crabs and lobsters.  That's terrible, you see, because the worms get inside, and...they have the place to themselves.   So, my advice...is to get rid of the armour, the exoskeleton, the carapace, before it's too late.

The task of love is to help us rid ourselves of the exoskeleton, to lay us bare, to set us free.

visions of a promised land

the silent tears of the foreign-languaged

heated by the visitation of homing mem'ries

brew in a cauldron of screaming images

spilling o'er the edge like waves on a turbulent sea

their minds, a roiling lake sloshed about in reflections

churning dreams bombarded with sorrows.

they are invisible bodies wallpapered with greenbacks

that monied hands hang like carrots before their face.

affections rise for air in hopes drowning in need

when they think about their fam'lies, oppressed and baited.

visions of a promised-land seduced by a prostitute's voice

they chanced their bodies against the desert's death

thrilled to have arrived across the borders of fate

with homes awaiting the news of freedom's price.

sons and brothers, dad's of various stripe

bear the blows of their scourging

escaping toward a promised life.

Rachel wails still the song forlorn women wail

when the loves of their lives are ghosts haunting their dreams.

they who ne'er wrote, lay dead with sand in their eyes

while the captured are bound to the land of the their birth

handcuffed in jails, awaiting some sentence

no better saved than those who escaped near-free.

but God loves each howe'er their plight might end

for each is Jesus bent upon the pillar of their scourgings

receiving wounds bearing the carcasses on their backs.

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -Love...can easily become a device for avoiding unpleasantries and denying tragedy.  In the name of love we tend to deny "pity, joy, grief, and passion" and all for the sake of an egocentric "peace".

  -It is in...daily incidents when pity, joy, grief, and passion are denied that the soul is aborted.  Our neuroses are God-given signals to us of these denials.  Life will not be denied.  If we cannot or will not live it out creatively then life erupts in "a good drunk", a fit of meanness, or uncharacteristic behavior.  We often hear someone say, "I don't know what came over me."  What "comes over us" is those parts of us that are denied and unlived.  They need air.  Without it they smell, and the odor of those repressed and unlived parts of us eventually finds its way to the surface.

  -...our weaknesses are signs of life trying to get out.  Love without a strict regard for the truth of what lies under the surface of things is not love at all.  Souls are not made by lies, denials, or avoidances.

small minds

the time is not ripe for the adventure of peace

small minds swing on the play toys of power

history yet nurses off the blood of the envied

her roots entangled in the bones of the quelled

the conquerors of evil bind the dove in chains

her olive branch stripped to whip the bad

the righteous empire uses the trappings of faith

to dispose of God, their collateral pawn

their every move reflects the will of God

on their journey to victory, in the excitement to win

they chase the leaders of the world they choose

clothed in the muck from the swamp of their lies

kingdoms lay on the gurney of destruction

wronged and mocked by infidelities to justice

small egos rule the halls of conquest

their ribald spirits re-imaging the world

through tales their blind eyes tell themselves:

that the darkness they see reflects the desirable light

along this path many nations journey

in pursuit of empire fashioned by their hands

rulers of fancy chasing their need for image

they guide their flock toward an acridly flavored life

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

-To be a soul (to be fully mature and alive as a person) is to struggle in hope with love, because we know that at our deepest we are loved.  To be a soul is to know what it is to be a terminal case - to come to terms, however minimally, with the fact that we are going to die.  To be a soul means to know what it is to struggle for, to achieve, and to be denied power.  To be a soul is to live in time, with all its opportunities and limitations.  Our life is a story that slowly unfolds in time.  The believer understands that the great wild card promises that we are to be understood, recognized, and known in terms of our future, which is secure in God, rather than our past.  This means that there is much to regret, that past does not determine who and what we are.  We are in God's hands...the past does not have the last word. 

Why do you warn your children, "Be careful!"

when you enter my neighborhood?

Don't you see

I've lived here all my days

through its dangers, trials, toils and joys

or are we more alike than some

cause in your neighborhood

I watch for the boogieman too?

On this Thanksgiving Day in the USA 

I thank all of you who look at and enjoy

or dislike what I place before you

for, at least, looking at it and expressing

yourselves over it.  I enjoy realising 

that these images and thoughts, held to myself

over these many years but now freely released 

for both myself and you to see and ponder upon, 

and, for me, to rejoice in and over,

however painful some situations have been. 

If nothing else, I have discovered 

over these numerous years and multiple experiences 

that God Is Love..and is that, Absolutely.

Enjoy your days...with gratitude.

"When people are saying, "Peace and security", then sudden disaster comes upon them like pains upon a woman in labor, and they will not escape."
  -1 Thessalonians 5:3


i pray against empire
against it's pledge of universal freedom

a copy-cat mickey mouse way of living

where ev'ry mall repeats another

and we kill ourselves striving to look alike

"God, spare the world this imitative curse"

i pray against empire
against its pledge of universal freedom

informers with a patriotic scent

stir toilets to analyze ingredients within

where ev'ry enemy of mine will be theirs

and i'll be suspect when i finger their friends

i pray against empire
against its pledge of universal freedom

protective pulp circles the fearful seed

and like religious kitsch fills its emotional needs

moments of humor are primed by sitcoms

the last laugh for all being History's ghost

i pray against empire
against its pledge of universal freedom

the poor are snuffed, intellectuals spurned

the arts are targeted as corrupters of youth

the military machine drives the minds of most

distinguishing not between friend or foe

i pray against empire
against its pledge of universal freedom

peace and security no one can give

when your mind's not free and your spirit's chained

for fear smothers freedom, love frees one up

the kingdom of the human always tragically ends

i pray against empire
against its pledge of universal freedom



*Reflections of Alan Jones:

-The wisdom of the saints and mystics comes to us only after we have placed ourselves in a  position of waiting and receptivity.

*Longing and desire play a great part in soul making.  It is as if God has deliberately put unfulfilled desires into our hearts so that our hearts may be stretched beyond their present capacity.

*To be a soul (to be fully mature and alive as a person) is to struggle in hope with love, because we know that at our deepest we are loved.  To be a soul is to know what it is to be a terminal case - to have come to terms, however minimally, with the fact that we are going to die.  To be a soul means to know what it is to struggle for, to achieve, and to be denied power. To be a soul is to live in time, with all its opportunities and limitations.  Our life is a story that slowly unfolds in time.

*The believer understands that the great wild card promises that we are to be understood, recognized, and known in terms of our future, which is secure in God, rather than in our past.

on the horizon

i ask myself

who will see it

who will notice those cries heard in the night

be complicit in the crimes outside our door?

will ours be a voice trembling 'neath a dimming bulb

warning that the light we see is dark?

totalitarians love war as if bred for their tables

blood, the red wine coating their throats

when people disappear, they'll help them hide

because crimes against the struggling are cause for more

we'll shake our heads when the warning sirens wail

longing that the enemy would learn that we are right

who imagines our sincerity to be tainted

nothing is more natural than knowing God's on our side

when we smell flesh as the dust rains upon our heads

will the silent torture of convictions spew vomit on the streets?

when The Bomb. our bombs sprinkle the lawns of our villages

will then a whimper arise to explore the rubble of despair?

when bodies return wrapped in their symbolic flag

will it be too late to redirect the silent movie

to cancel the show about dandelions on our lawns

and show the face which horrified the dreams of our parents

now possessive of our lungs as a suffocating theme?

are we to salute or weep the dead murdered at our hands

for they will be our brothers, our children

our neighbors slain upon the carpeted earth?

then the airy transparency of our majesty

will lay crumbling like a yellowed constitution

released finally from its vacuumed tomb

who will see it

who will notice

complicit in the crimes outside our door

as oblong clouds stretch cross the azure sky

as if beds awaiting heads to rest upon?

*Human nature: the beautiful face with the ugly scars.

*"Whatever remains unconscious emerges later as fate.

  -Carl Jung

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -Gigantic questions about love, death, power, and time feed the soul.  They do not confront us as problems to be solved, but as mysteries to be wondered at, or intractable darknesses to be raged at or endured.

  -...we need to learn that there is power in surrender, in contemplation of the gigantic things.

  -Without the willingness too be still on the beach and play poker, we won't have the energy or resources that laughter and simple exhilaration in being alive brings.

  -Soul making...has something to do with paying attention to the Things Invisible, things which do not lend themselves to manipulation and control.

A wild chap was he

walking slowly through the wood

eyes grabbing each movement of leaves 

the dance of trees, the swaying wind

He was a wild thing the land reclaimed

for ev'ry ant and twittering bird

entertained his curious glance

His was no rush past nothin'

No insignificance dodged his sight

for ev'ry piece of life be there

a presence like God in hiding

 covered neath clods of green

Just an old man they thought

strolling through the park

an almost dead somebody

or nobody meaningful to watch

But there in his eyes shone wonder

and his heart beat life's excitement

walking slowly through the wood

watching expectantly for life

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -...the shortage of mystics, desert believers, explorers of the the inner world is the reason why we are undergoing a crisis of soul in our society, why we do not know how to love.  Love is transformed into psychic poison when it is used as a means to an end, as a way of "solving a problem." 

  -...we need to understand that our basic relationship to reality (we might even say to God) is one of gift, the wild card.

  -Souls come into being when they are willing to contemplate gigantic things, when they are willing to allow the wildness of the wild card to enter their systems.

  -Gigantic questions about love, death, power, and time feed the soul. They do not confront us as problems to be solved, but as mysteries to be wondered at, or intractable darkness to be raged at or endured.

  -...we need to learn that there is power in surrender, in contemplation of the gigantic things.

  -Without the willingness to be still on the beach and play poker, we won't have the energy or the resources that laughter and simple exhilaration in being alive brings. 

...if we had not loved each other,  none of us would have survived.

-James Baldwin

Outagamie County Jail

Who would have thunk?

Who would have thought it?

Would it ever have crossed the old folks' minds

that in this place of enclosure

Negro children would be skippin' for joy

in jumpsuits, binding them to jail?