fragments  of angry men

cheeks dead

lips glued

belly sore

heart lame

frowns strut

immune to joy

smiles delay

craving touch

no humans dwells 

among their dead

spirit's sour

when bodies pass

lemons mix

sweetening the punch

but no bond ferments

'cept an exodus from prayer

formaldehyde zombies

are enshrined

who will fit them

together again

their plague passes on

hungry for Sun 

*The problem for or with Jesus is that we have made him a "religion" instead of someone we follow.

*One never kills the baby because someone else may abort it!

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -To pray is to set out, to love, to write, to paint, and to die at each instant.

  -...prayer rises up from the heart of life.

  -"Prayer is not perfect", Cassien says, "if the one who prays is aware of himself and realizes that he is praying."

  -...we often try to use God as a tool.  Praying is a struggle.  It's a matter of going beyond faith in one's own thoughts in order to rediscover the original faith.

  -Naturally, God doesn't need prayers.  Let's stop turning him into a potentate anxious for homage.  It's you and I who need prayer so that we will no longer be alone, in order to get out of our shells and rejoin the universal body of love.  We can't link up with others without passing through what is furthest away; to get there it's necessary to lose one's identity.  It's in that loss that I can find you, that you can find yourself.  To pray is therefore to introduce love, humor, and death into every action and ideology.  Hence prayer is the revolutionary act par excellence, the very opposite of alienation.

  -Politeness is the surest way of keeping one's distance.

having that "don't give a damn" feeling

smashed some idols

then glued them together again

can't say where the tears fall from

why my cheeks heat with water

but some hidden well's been tapped

and the plumbers can't cap it tight

been bathing in the torrent of feelings

flushing the tubes of the heart

no reason since my outer shelf is clean

my flesh's been scrubbed with Ivory soap

msut be the glueing of the idols

though smashed

it's tough to let them go

*Our food keeps us alive but it won't save us from death.

*Many politicians words sound like lies.

*Only by living life can you free yourself from it.  So live it to such a degree that it benefits you.

  -Carl Jung

*Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth - that man would not have attained the possible unless time and time again he had reached out for the impossible.

  -Max Weber

*...when asked by an interviewer late in life if he (Jung) believed in God, he replied, "I don't believe.  I know!"

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -Saying "Do not do unto others," relying on prohibitions and taboos - all that is completely pointless as long as the link between myself and others has not been perceived.

  -I prefer a dangerous love, a love that hurts.  Perhaps a wild flower will grow within it, as pure as a diamond.

  -We are never asked to substitute words and ideas for the reality of love.

 -If we think of love as simply the play of desire, of pleasure and habit, if there's no detachment - that is, if sovereign death is not in some way present and absent within the instant - there is no joy.

 -To sin is to deliberately halt along the way and reject the joy of self-liberation.

 -What are we to do in the midst of our tangled lives?  Nothing, except to let love act.  To become its accomplice, in happiness and sorrow.  To put oneself second.  To love without hope of return.  Every pain can become a lasting joy, starting today. 

Fermentation

When we've hopped from gallery to gallery

viewing all the beauty and ugly that one can

what's next except to stop and sit

that fermentation might begin

Who knows the ghosts of Schiele

of Mann or Marks or Jan?

Their subtle impress upon ones soul

might brew inspirations laying still!

Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -Why do you think it's necessary to be poor in order to achieve inner change?  Must one live in a slum? What's the highest salary at which it's possible to encounter God?  This is all ideological twaddle.  Genuine illumination makes one poor instantly; having loses its importance.  Greed is also capable of filling the hearts of the poor who are rich with all they do not yet possess.  What's important is to be open to what takes place, for "Poverty is a great illumination/coming from within." 

  -...it's pointless to imitate the actions of the poor; poverty has to be a new creation, coming to birth in the depths of the soul.  To step forward without anxiety at the high noon of death , in the midst of every human passion.  To accept the world joyously without being duped by its values.

  -The encounter with God is the supreme sign of wealth.  It's better to set out along the road to cover the distance that separates us from him.  And if there's only an abyss under our feet, to cry out or keep silent.  To invite someone to renunciation when the sacrifice is not directed at the good of the other person is to make oneself the accomplice of a deception.  God has no need of sacrifices; men and women do.

  -I don't mind being lumped together with the mass of Christians and feel myself in solidarity with them, but that's no reason not to struggle against false conceptions of love.

Faith

Faith is a dark vein

a Flame astride the Sun

a virgin without semen

giving birth without a man

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -"Let's not kid each other," people say sarcastically. "If the Gospel really penetrated the consciences of individuals and took over a society, life would become impossible.  Let's face it - the Gospel isn't directly concerned with the human species or the family or money or progress."

  -For whoever, neither better nor worse than others perhaps, genuinely fulfills the Gospel is in one way or another excluded and condemned.  The world has to resist love in order to endure.

  -Just as a neurotic who becomes aware during analysis of the roots of his agony is terribly afraid of being freed of it, in the same way many believers exist only in and by means of crisis.  Whether they take a stand against novelty or criticize everything as old-fashioned, they use up all their energy in blame and praise.  But what if the crisis were resolved?  It would then be necessary for them to live the values of contemplation and love.  It's not certain they really want to.  Or I, unfortunately.

ecstasy

is it not like a little child

riding a wooden horse

being a steepled knight

bursting about with play

with wild Exuberance

in-joying in and out

shouting, "Look, Daddy, look"

while the laughter flies

and smiles stretch with glee

with the generations of saints

who know that Candor swells

and the soul-bells peal

in the presence of God

ever present to each hair

ever laughing like a child?

*Live the lie you love the most.

  -recovery addict

*Self-definition is the highest form of integrity.

  -Chris Al-Aswad

*Instead of prostrating ourselves before the future, we should give our own experience its due.

  -Elizabeth Gumport

*People will have a better future if they unbridle their tongues.  When they set themselves free from the slavery of silence, their grievances will be heard.

  -Brahim El-Guabli

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -Christian language, as soon as it moves away from experience and is no longer verified by it, becomes elastic, full of distortions and quibbles, concerned with syntheses and false harmony.  When we embroider emptiness with strict formulas, we have the very opposite of a language of hope.

  -The fundamental sin is not to live ones life fully but to identify it with mental representations. 

  -One cannot tame love and make it obligatory for the greater good of others.

eaten up

eaten up by chatter

by so much talk without respite

no time for chewing nor tasting

leaves ones spiritual cupboard bare

verbiage runs off lips clambering babble

like teething babes dribbling on their spit

need quiet to restock the empty

dry from thoughtless and noisy words

need food nurtured on conversations

words spiced with human sweat

a garden of veggies diced with herbs and sunshine

sprouting from rain in the soil of compassion

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -So many men find an unavowed pleasure in debates, unrelated to any genuine commitment.  Few are ready to pay the price of of tension, suspicion, and solitude.  Nevertheless, the Christian communion is made up of traditions, ruptures, fidelity, anger, love, joy....

  -It's here and now that we must love, play, laugh, and risk our lives.

  -If I say that this world is beautiful and good, that I love it, this doesn't mean that I'm not aware of the horror, the degradation, and the danger of impeding catastrophe.  I'm speaking of what is true in consciences that are stronger than evil.

 -...the person who dwells in her truth transforms the earth.

Dark-Light curtained and near

Your skin is night and day

outward and in

You dress in silence

a garment pure of stain

Your walking is quiet-dancing

hushed movements upon grass

we speak like air with unseen words

through one Word thumping redemptive tunes

loud enough for hearts to hear

in friendship-fire the Spirit bears

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -The object of faith, we repeat, is neither a catalogue of  truths, not even truth; it is to love God in knowing his love of us, even if this love has little in common with what we imagine love to be.  As a result, Christian love consists in loving others, not in words and ideas, but in acts (Jn. 3:19).  It calls for the creation here and now of a new relationship with others.

  -All through history unnecessary shoots have sprouted up, additional canonical and liturgical rules that have petrified our relationship with God and our neighbor.

  -Each generation expresses its spiritual vision of the world and creates its own plan of the Church.

  -Action is born from an interior experience, in the communion of faith, which is itself a creative diversity.

curious God

nursing

pooping

reaching

seeking

searching

waving

holding

flinging

longing

stronging

lifting

napping

helpless

handed

footed

eyed

hearted

fingered

curiously

God

*The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.

  -Carl Jung

*Slavery was an insult to dignity because it arguably obliberated persons: it erased them from the space of value.  This is not only wrong, but vile.  Only once we being to internalize the meaning of this have we made a start.

  -Remy Debes

*Art is a lie whose secret ingredient is truth.

  -Ian Leslie

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -The Gospel enlightens our human condition.  It drags the individual from the clan, from the family, from one's childhood.  It makes everyone solitary, a wanderer, a marginal being.  It is up to each of us to recreate communion, but now with the awareness of individual freedom.  The is always a desert to cross.

  -...when God is repressed, violence is less apt to be offset by love.  A police regime follows.

  -Of itself, faith is creative and places the individual at a distance from social conformity and ideology.  It can be seen once more as what it really is - a force for liberation, not simply rejecting ideologies but pointing out their vice.

  -Christianity is above all a form of human conduct that has been activated by a prophetic utopia in the midst of civil societies.

conversing in the cave 

in the cave of myself

echoes throw back a voice

a shadow holding the presence of itself

i try conversing with God

but receive pure silence

or is it the patient Voice

filtering through my noise?

*Sometimes we are the first eucharist a non-believer eats on their way to Jesus.

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -A religion can be exported as an aspect of colonialist pressure but still give birth to freedom and love.

  -Our spiritual struggle never ends.  No one knows from what direction the Spirit will emerge.

  -When faith becomes what it is, interior liberation, it is spontaneously creative.  The Gospel is corrosive; had you forgotten?

  -By looking on Jesus as a free person I am able to make myself his ally, because he is on the side of the poor and the weak, and against the multinationals and the oil companies and the coffee lobby - that is against everything that keeps men and women from being neighbors, from becoming close to each other in the present moment.

  -The absence of Jesus is the sign of God's love.  It prevents any of our cherished schemes from becoming finally installed.

contemplation

remembering You

by open fire

with  listening heart

remembering You

as of long ago

when we where young

at play in grace

as of long ago

when I was Yours

with fuller heart

and all my mind

when I was Yours

until the end of Time

again to be

in your embrace

until I remember You 

till the end of time

*Every story has a story.  Every story hides a story.

*...there are no pain-free options.  You have to choose which future regret you're going to live.

  -Andrew Anthony

*...you never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

  -Peter Galbraith

*Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it's faced.

  -James Baldwin

*A country that does not undestand its own history is unlikely to respect that of others.

  -Antony Beevor

*Let there be peace on earth...with natural and artificial flavors.

  -words on a Jones-Zilch soda bottle

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -Before the infinity of God, all doctrines and institutions reveal their contingency.  As throughout the Bible, the prophets are those who never leave existing structures intact.  They can at first seem to be primarily destructive, but they create an uneasiness that allows for a new birth.

  -The prophet receives the Gospel not as knowledge but as a word for the present instant, implying both commitment and criticism.

  -It then becomes evident that faith does not tolerate injustice, that God is not on the side of legal justice or envy but demands interior justice.  Prayer can no longer nourish fantasy or veil reality.  In this way the Gospel, read by the prophet in communion with the Church and against that within the Church which resists life and the Spirit, will rouse us from a religion of sloth that seemed to guarantee our relationship to God while leaving us absent to our neighbor.

water

clear waves, splashing dance

holding tight and sucking might

emerging life, disturbing earth

washing souls, cleansing bod's:

you are sister to a thousand moods

offering gifts and myriad goods

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -One can justify everything.  Dialectic, too, can offer consolation and help us to sleep peacefully.  But how can it mask illusion?  The Christian prejudice, in the West as everywhere else, has been to instruct - that is, to cram things in, as if filling a hole, in the manner of national educational examiners, instead of e-ducate, to help something grow, to give birth to new life, to encourage the inner person.  Genuine education implies a process of stripping away, forgetting established mental categories and having confidence in a word that speaks through every race and ends up joining with the Word. 

  -Deprived of its regionalistic conditioning - of that tiny region called Europe - Christianity might be more capable of worldwide diffusion, without any idea of conquest.