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.