slow drag 

a jag

of youth on the prowl

for a dad

fled from hell

to hell

and stench

and chains

and dreams of riches

with bubble baths

and worn loins

and sad laughter

for a dead child

dogging messiahs

to heal their tears

blowing bubbles to air

nursing with care

feelings coddled in worth

for some body

dads stalk sure

their youth

and lost boyhoods

still lost

wending

and twisting fixations

with restless lust

like blind men poking

into their wooded past

eros tracks the young ones

in the shadows of the street

with the phantoms of their soul

near the crevice in their heart

a carnal quest of lost gods

seeking a ME in their eyes

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -The Hebrew Bible helps to make us rebellious, as does  the Christian mystical tradition.

  -The mystics believe that the universe is trying to tell us something about ourselves.

  -Love itself is a form of knowledge.

  -The point of reading the Bible is for mystical transformation, not for defending a particular position or punishing those whom we  regard as deviant.

  -Conversation is closer to conversion than we thought.  We have to be in an obedient community, one where the members listen to each other.  According to this tradition, life is the peregrinatio pro Christo, "exile for Christ's sake," an ongoing process of conversion.  Conversion means continually being pierced to the heart, also called compunction - a form of clarity that makes us open to new possibilities.  Like a good conversation, conversion offers the constant promise of change 

Sitting on the edge of tension

waiting, taut, for the door to spring

The black hole of its invitation

holds me at bay

Staying put in the dark of it's off'rings

while the Spirit tames the chaotic sea

shapes me 'neath the troubling waters

bears me through on rustling wings

like Jesus saying "Yes!" to the Father

kneeling in Gethsemane, sweating blood

*Reflections of Alan Jones:                                                                                                                     

  -In the pursuit of truth and the stories that seek to contain it, we need a way of speaking that opens and suggests and does not conclude or define.

  -An open, supple system is not wishy-washy but morally challenging.

  -The main text of our culture is that we are rivals of each other for finite and limited resources.

  -...we may live better than most of the inhabitants of the planet but "the fact that compared to the inhabitants of Africa and Russia we still live well cannot ease the pain that we no longer live nobly.

  -Our dominant story of competitive violence tears at the social fabric by reducing life to a contest to see who can have the most and who can have it first.

  -Truth is about trust, about a covenant that binds the haves and have-nots in one community.  Truth in the end is about kinship.  We are members one of another.  We are pilgrims to, not the possessors of truth.  We have to be on the move and it is no accident that the second book of the Hebrew scriptures is called departure, exodus.

when much is spake, little's heard

silent

the Word lept

one winter night

in fleshed response

to pleas soaked in blood

*Play, play, play while day has dawned cause night comes so quickly.

*...trying to make holy-sense out of the insane around us.

*"You're invited to sing the wrong song."

  -anonymous WSU student

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -...a revered text like the Bible has the power to hurt and to heal, depending on the community holding the key of interpretation.

  -A flat, literalistic approach to the Bible-as-truth does damage both to the text and to those for whom it is the authority.

  -One of the great results in the pursuit of truth, however, is the unmasking of the ideas we take for granted.

  -It is a crucial element in our search for truth that we sometimes undermine the authority on concepts and constructs.

  -...the God of the Bible has a great deal to teach pilgrims of the truth, not least because much of it is written in Hebrew, a language well-suited to our journey since it is endlessly imprecise and unclear. 

Self in a fallen world

Rocks we throw at God

the Self that is un-fallen

as if like our bruisings

tint God black and blue

We toss our suicidal selves

from bridges uniting nothing

into to pits of self destruction

driving dark delusions

Then we fall upon the earth

piling our bloody boulders

at the feet of Jesus

to balance and steady the cross

*We can all speak as if we're innocent yet we are all guilty.

*I'm gonna stay Black and die.  What the fuck!

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

-The great enemy of freedom is fatalism - the acceptance of the inevitable as inevitable.  Part of the work of truth is to subvert some of the texts we take for granted and reveal them as frauds.  Even though a text is inevitable, it does not have to be this or that text.  We have a choice.

-Many of us are kept afloat by subscribing to an energizing lie, to the distortion of a particular text. To suggest that a person's treasured story about themselves could do with some revision is very threatening even when we sympathize the condition.

-Often our descriptions of mental and spiritual states fit a particular cultural situation, and the descriptions change when times change.

-A text is a particular interpretation of a set of facts, and it is good from time to time to review the facts we are interpreting.

screaming sounds

society gone mad

children in tantrums

in fits without respite

music polluting

boggling our ears

fouling the day

corrupting the night

mooching off death

cause Life isn't sung

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -...being in a perpetual state of revolt is another way of remaining under the spell of our past.

  -No one can live entirely without an appeal to the authority of a story or text, and authority always has something to do with what we think is the truth.

  -A new story is possible when something happens to us to break the force of habit and recover our power to choose.  We have a choice with regard to how we live in the world; each of us has a personal covenant with life and with God that is shaped by a story.

  -One way to get at these hidden covenants is to ask, "What is my unforgivable sin?"

Ruler of the Nations

constant, silent lover

faithful sempiternity

vapor-soft whisperer of joy

lusting for the longing Spirit

fanning the still ember of flame

into hot-heat from the cold heath

the coals ache for your blowing

push fire toward the whispering wind

that the vim held in their veins

flair with the glow of your presence

branding love in the hearts of all

lighting bonfires in the universe allied 

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -Life is both a festival and a nightmare of mutuality and reciprocity.

  -Imagine someone knowing you better than you know yourself and finding you lovable!  We barely know the truth about ourselves.  If we did, we would behave differently.

  -Have I the depth of imagination to see something splendid struggling in the life of every human being, even the most wicked?

  -Light comes when you look into the eye of another human being and know that he or she is your brother or sister.

roach-fate

you don't know what hit "chou", roach

as i slammed hard like a thonging bomb

to splatter-bomb you into yellow ooze

squished over four inches of brown

pressed into the linoleum floor

my rubberized sole rid me of you

you and your playful hide and go seek

as you ran for your life in the muggy damp

tween the bathroom tiles of green and blue

yes! i stopped "chou", roach

smashed "chou" with human craft

and with my hatred of your sneeky kind

i squished "chou" joyfully dead and fine

'o'er the space of that immobile floor

no! you don't know i hit "chou", roach

when i caught "chou" roamin' about my room

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -It is a fearful and wonderful thing to be a human being.  The theological way of expressing this truth is to say that we are made individually and collectively, in the image of God.  This is the deepest truth about all of us.  The divine is our true form, beyond our grasp and yet in our flesh.

  -Institutions help or hinder us in our being open to the true form.

  -In order to tell the truth I need a deep connection with my own inner life, a respect for those with whom I am closely associated, and a commitment to building a community of free people.

  -Human unhappiness springs from a faulty diagnosis of the human condition.

rains fall

as if this town needs cleansing

as if a foul stench rises from its core

perhaps this the reason for

these heaven-dropped tears:

to scrub blood from the pining streets

murders are up, statistics say:

race and rape demand attention again;

drugs make cash while frying heads;

the heat from guns bake more than bread;

nearby the homeless rest in parks

while food spoils sitting on a shelf

this storm cries about us this night

dropping hints

there's something odious about

but rain can't wash these stains down drains

and down-pours never scrub the human heart

soul-tears and hands-on, along with other dreams

wash open wounds scarring the city's charts

*Every place one settles in, has what one needs and don't want.

*Generosity is the one thing that cannot admit of delay.

  -St. Gregory of Nazianzen

*Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must  be demanded by the oppressed.

  -Martin Luther King, jr.

*Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better.

  -Samuel Beckett

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -We cannot help having minds furnished with something, so we might as well see to it that they are as well furnished as possible.

  -It is a fearful and wonderful thing to be a human being.  The theological way of expressing this truth is to say that we are made, individually and collectively, in the image of God.

  -The divine is our true form, beyond our grasp and yet in our flesh.