...trying to stay sane in the insane world...via photography, poetry, painting, graphics and thoughts...
Monday, December 30, 2013
*telling the truth sometimes involves abandoning your friends.
-New Statesman
living trust
times there are when words are spittle spat upon waves from mouths spewing lies and we are drawn to drink it in
times there are when we sit in boats floating towards a distant rock no rudder no oar to move us from the shore
times there are when we walk on thread juggling our lives beneath safety nets as a fog creeps in to steady our feet
times there are when speakers stammer to speak new words from texts that hammer faithful trust beyond imprecisions
times there are all too much but we carry them with heads held up our bodies broke our spirits intact
Jazz and a Spring Bulb
Tombed in the sterile womb
with dead life forms the wintery scene-
blanketed o'er like a fluffy quilt.
Star light and moon light with
sun light; coolness and chilly with
the warm heat - 'neath a cancerous belt.
Footprints painted on a paper cup
and transmigrating the seasons time
dopish, sleeping in the new spring time.
Ambrosia drunk (the god's own dew)-
staggered - and ermined in the
Tabor splendor: garmented bright.
"It is good for us to be here." - Voice
mad thunder clouds on a windy day;
marriage, love, impregnated earth.
Partition! Break and quiescent pain;
lab'ring joy - (stretched up, a limb);
a late resurrection - but Resurrection.
-New Statesman
living trust
times there are when words are spittle spat upon waves from mouths spewing lies and we are drawn to drink it in
times there are when we sit in boats floating towards a distant rock no rudder no oar to move us from the shore
times there are when we walk on thread juggling our lives beneath safety nets as a fog creeps in to steady our feet
times there are when speakers stammer to speak new words from texts that hammer faithful trust beyond imprecisions
times there are all too much but we carry them with heads held up our bodies broke our spirits intact
Jazz and a Spring Bulb
Tombed in the sterile womb
with dead life forms the wintery scene-
blanketed o'er like a fluffy quilt.
Star light and moon light with
sun light; coolness and chilly with
the warm heat - 'neath a cancerous belt.
Footprints painted on a paper cup
and transmigrating the seasons time
dopish, sleeping in the new spring time.
Ambrosia drunk (the god's own dew)-
staggered - and ermined in the
Tabor splendor: garmented bright.
"It is good for us to be here." - Voice
mad thunder clouds on a windy day;
marriage, love, impregnated earth.
Partition! Break and quiescent pain;
lab'ring joy - (stretched up, a limb);
a late resurrection - but Resurrection.
Friday, December 27, 2013
Questions
Are these but so many meanderings
so many waters coursing the pounded rocks
so many streams flowing deep in the earth?
Are these but so much ink dried on yellow skins
so many parchments witnessing the age-long quest
so many hands penning tales of journeyed souls?
Are these but so much clay pressed upon the wheel
so much mud spun into the shapes of Man
so many palms molding pots for drinking Life?
I know not but wonder while observing all
peaking into the heart of Matter's bubbling stuff
the stuff our life-course is shaped, by and by.
O God, Player, Redeemer, Word of Life, Son
nestled in the flesh of every womb-borne child
speak your glad-tidings that we-explorers may know
may create the questions whose answers are You.
Are these but so many meanderings
so many waters coursing the pounded rocks
so many streams flowing deep in the earth?
Are these but so much ink dried on yellow skins
so many parchments witnessing the age-long quest
so many hands penning tales of journeyed souls?
Are these but so much clay pressed upon the wheel
so much mud spun into the shapes of Man
so many palms molding pots for drinking Life?
I know not but wonder while observing all
peaking into the heart of Matter's bubbling stuff
the stuff our life-course is shaped, by and by.
O God, Player, Redeemer, Word of Life, Son
nestled in the flesh of every womb-borne child
speak your glad-tidings that we-explorers may know
may create the questions whose answers are You.
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
*The Homelessness of the Wise
The three wise men or women,
if you will
had to leave home
to go in search
of the Great Mystery
calling to them
from the night sky.
To seek the divine
in the human
is, always, to leave home - to leave
those comfortable ways
of thinking
and feeling
that are no longer
enough.
This is the homelessness
of the wise
who find new birth
again and again.
This is gift.
This is the Christmas story
You and I.
-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.
Monday, December 23, 2013
dark, my doubt; skim, my muttered faith
I walk the damp corridor of shaded and filtered light
bearing in mem'ry the martyrs of Japan
their Rising Sun
empty dreaming, ones response to fate
helpless forgetting the torture-plight
for what would I say standing before the inquisitor's mace
coaxing me to renounce my faith
is Jesus alive enough that I'd offer my life to death
I can only hope the coward in me would sputter Yes
Following Night's yonder star
Through the woods you lead me
along my path to Dawn
to your Tree uplifted
to say "Into your hands"
Along that road to Daybreak
through the dark-wood beckoning
with tears during the trekking
and visions ever harkening
I stare straight through the Night
along the challenging journey
entrusting myself to your Spirit
the compass for my wandering
I stumble into Dawn
saying farewell to my crutches
to the landmarks I had chosen
walking where you've led
following Night's yonder star
Friday, December 20, 2013
*...the world is the creation of the God who is incarnate in it. God became incarnate historically in a local symbol to draw our attention to the truth about the world: that in reality the flesh is good enough to be God's own garment, good enough to be loved into conformity with the divine will. St. Paul could say that everything is good when received with thanksgiving, for thanksgiving is the acknowledgement, the realization that everything has God as its source and its incarnate principle.
-Alan Watts
-Alan Watts
calvin klein could never veil
what i see
you
show beyond the threads
or swash of cotton cloth
"clothes make the man"
they say
but it's soul
your soul
that's real
supporting flesh
as beautiful as yours
"go naked"
is more than a Mystic phrase
it's core
where God begins
and we end
undress man
and know yourself
for once
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
*Our personalities, individuality's along with our dysfunctions make life interesting, frightening and humorous...and God loving all in the midst of it.
*Self-improvement is always a personal project which may affect another positively.
*Self-improvement is always a personal project which may affect another positively.
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
engulfed in our darkness
trying to unblock the Light
Go 'round
Skirt the box at the core
in the center of the street of our lives
the one holding the secrets
the shadows of our lives.
Lay it in another's yard.
Blame them for the contents veiled.
The beauty of its packaging
will surely draw a reply.
Paint it invisible.
Cover it with the greenery of hope
that in time it'll disappear
fly to the stratosphere of Aeon
removing reminders of our faults.
Such the difficulties of truth-owning
the defects of flawed perfections
the problem of nudes midst the naked
honoring the box in the square.
Sunday, December 15, 2013
We write back and forth
with greetings of friendship
unsure our bonding
while longing for one.
Our smile is broad
upon receiving a letter
but wait we will
till our eyes spy the other.
We melt into our ages
our flesh altering with time
doing the predictable everyday
till a face stands at our door.
A stranger-friend rings from the porch
awaiting a reply, an opened door
unsure our bonding
while longing for one.
So how shall I smile
unsure of our bonding
peering through that face
since the longing is gone?
with greetings of friendship
unsure our bonding
while longing for one.
Our smile is broad
upon receiving a letter
but wait we will
till our eyes spy the other.
We melt into our ages
our flesh altering with time
doing the predictable everyday
till a face stands at our door.
A stranger-friend rings from the porch
awaiting a reply, an opened door
unsure our bonding
while longing for one.
So how shall I smile
unsure of our bonding
peering through that face
since the longing is gone?
how i wish
how i wish the tree was your friend
your companion-mother
in whose lap you'd rest
to dream and talk
to suck and sulk
to grow into yourself
and find your gift
and be affirmed when it speaks with you
and know that God loves you there
and here
and ev'ry place you'll be
cause God loves trees
and ev'ry child out there
ev'ry you
where'er you'll be
who e'er you art
*"Unveil our eyes, give us confidence, do not let us be ashamed or embarrassed, do not let us despise ourselves.'[old Christian prayer] The opening of our eyes should go with a more total acceptance of God's world, even as it is now, still incomplete, still in the making; and part of that acceptance is the acceptance of ourselves in our totality. Nothing less that this totality can sustain the integrity which should ultimately be ours.
-Simon Tugwell
Friday, December 13, 2013
*Neurosis is another word for describing a complicated technique for avoiding misery, but reality is the misery.
...to see reality one must die and be reborn.
...What does it mean "to be born again for humankind?" It means for the first time to be subjected to the terrifying paradox of the human condition, since one must be born not as a god, but as a human, or as a god-worm, or a god who shits. Only this time without the neurotic shield that hides the full ambiguity of one's life. And so we know that every authentic rebirth is a real ejection from paradise, as the lives of Tolstoy, Peguy, and others attest. It takes people of granite, people who were automatically powerful, "secure in their drivenness" we might say, and it makes them tremble, makes them cry-as Peguy stood on the platforms of Parisian busses with hot tears rolling down his cheeks while he mumbled his prayers.
-Ernest Becker
water scene
i.
you smile edging toward the ledge
you tease Death laughing into the deep
tempting Neptune to kidnap you
to grab you a diver
at no risk no pain
an explorer with sleep to gain
ii.
shall i leap into the water
ask the sea to be my mother
or should i sit on the rock
and relish its stability
till the typhoon flies
or a branch brings peace
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
I hold you, scarred one
as you press against my chest
a John against a Jesus
a needful youth of twelve
for warmth, embrace, certain
of unpaining love and care
Your bereft hands finger
those of mine and arms as well
affirming that flesh's soft
in a zoo of rhinos on the prowl
You slouch like a new champion
who's run the course of life
in want of some elusive prize
so long slipped from your grasp
But now, for one moment
however brief or short or long
your heart has banished panic
your face bright-full of quiet
while comforting peace enfolds
the frantic frame in search of home
You're held secure
i recall the tears of '68
viewing Pelle and his Fa
but without mine
in a theater full and dark
a single beam of images
broadened wide the silver mind
'pon which mem'ries drummed
played in still successions
as i wiped my tears
each tear's lost remembrance
fell free from needled ducts
that rolling into this night
when dad slips to my mind
once more
he is here...
yet we aren't...
...the tears having fed
the growing need of us
*A problem is, more essentially, a unique situation calling for expression. It calls for a poet, a painter, a composer. And sometimes in God's providence, we may be that poet or painter or composer. Each individual situation in our world is an artistic, rather than an administrative challenge.
-Simon Tugwell
Monday, December 9, 2013
Racism USA
I see changes coming
but fear we may forget
the kind of people we've already been
Behind our smiles of comradeship
social accommodations are easily breeched
and the return to bias is conveniently brief
Scapegoating rises easily from our souls
with simple gestures and rapt remembrance;
a familiar tale will toss us back
to patterns germinating within our flesh
One nagging itch
releases the venom of the past
warming our memories
gathering the fragments of hate'
Carnival masks are donned, dusted
patched and polished to spite;
facades, reshaped, hide our face
guarding our eyes lest they show ugliness
Racism is the easiest cover-up of national sin
once we're convinced that every one's in
*The ultimate goal of everything is God, and God cannot be caught by our scheming. To quote Meister Eckhart again, 'Anyone who looks for God in any particular way, gets the way and lets go of God.' Just as the source of everything is to be situated ultimately in the incalculable spontaneous gift of God, so too its fulfillment depends on God.
-Simon Tugwell
*...the only achievement required for an inheritance is the achievement of a death.
-Simon Tugwell
*People's lives are changed by casual sayings that they misunderstand or mishear.
-Simon Tugwell
Sunday, December 8, 2013
*out
of light
of darkness
of every
I am
at play
on the edge
of the deep
I miss
being
in
but more
and more
I miss
being
out!
-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.
*Voice Lessons
out of suitable
silence, a cave
perhaps, a mist
you come to
the awe
hiding in loneliness
out of infinite
attention to nothing
above
or beyond you
you
sound
-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.
*Meister Eckhart insists that we must be so united with God that we act from the very ground of our being, which is identical with the ground of God's being, so that, like God, we require no further reason why than God does. 'If anyone were to go on asking Life, "Why do you live?", for a thousand years, they would get no other answer (supposing Life could answer) than this: "The reason why I live is that I live".... If anyone were to ask a true person, who acts from their own (inner) ground, "Why do you perform your actions?", if they answer correctly they will say nothing other than this, "I act because I act."'
-Simon Tugwell
Thursday, December 5, 2013
*We can get into the way of thinking that everything that we do needs some kind of extrinsic justification. Asking 'Why?' can become addictive. We have, by and large, become suspicious of people just doing things because they want to. When all else fails, we resort to curious pseudo-justifications, like going for walks 'for the exercise' or riding the motor bicycle 'for the experience'; worse still, we go all solemn and declare something to be 'important'. So we decorate harmless occupations with high-sounding significances, like taking tea with someone 'just to keep the contact' or 'in case he wants to talk'.
...we can forget that no amount of trying ever automatically produced the desired result.
-Simon Tugwell
*If we are to be and to act like God, if we are to appreciate the act of God, we must come to appreciate the point of pointlessness, the joy of unnecessariness. We must learn to pay attention to the satisfaction there is sometimes in just doing something for its own sake, and not bias our view of life too much in the direction of those things which are always a struggle and which are always justifiable in terms of some solemn intention.
-Simon Tugwell
...we can forget that no amount of trying ever automatically produced the desired result.
-Simon Tugwell
*If we are to be and to act like God, if we are to appreciate the act of God, we must come to appreciate the point of pointlessness, the joy of unnecessariness. We must learn to pay attention to the satisfaction there is sometimes in just doing something for its own sake, and not bias our view of life too much in the direction of those things which are always a struggle and which are always justifiable in terms of some solemn intention.
-Simon Tugwell
a prayer
brace boy the wood
that Jesus now thrusts
at your brawn, brown shoulder.
slave the bar crossed as "t's"
stationed in "death".
know once again
what care and choosing love
would bear to son you
an Adam-signed creep
plodding the earth
important worth with the Spirit
in to live-forever.
sine aqua
cactus plant
dried out reservoir
staring prickly toward the calm sky blued
and cleared of rain-clouds___
un-whetting souls gorge with eyeballs
your lot of earth pleasuring
toward mirages mirrored from your root
it is a gravitial fixation
of the spirit's parching thrust of vapors
clinging to atoms away on tour.
prince charmings of fairy cattle
and tales that happily end
ne'er knew the bleached-bone whiteness
that staid cacti present
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
*If we are to be and act like God, if we are to appreciate the act of God, we must come to appreciate the point of pointlessness, the joy of unnecessariness. We must learn to pay due attention to the satisfaction there is sometimes in just doing something for its own sake, and not bias our view of life, too much in the direction of those things which are always a struggle and which we are always justifiable in terms of some solemn intention.
-Simon Tugwell
-Simon Tugwell
Sunday, December 1, 2013
*Forgiveness is reckless. It squanders itself upon rogues who have no intention of improving themselves. All it asks for is that it be received. The only unforgivable sin is the sin against forgiveness, the sin which directly and immediately refuses forgiveness.
Now it is in this spirit that forgiveness must be received too. We must enter into the spirit of it, and that is the Holy Spirit, God's Spirit poured out into all the world. We must not try to pretend that somehow we are forgivable and that that is why we are forgiven. We are no more and no less forgivable than anyone else. If we try to privilege our claim to forgiveness, it is not forgiveness we are looking for, but some other kind of recognition. If it is truly forgiveness we are after, then it must be unconditional and unlimited forgiveness. And we can receive that only if we are prepared to accept the company that forgiveness places us in. It is no good wanting to be forgiven and then reserving the right to look round disapprovingly on all the other (people).
This is why forgiving is so inseparable from being forgiven.
-Simon Tugwell
*Even if you've got shackles on your feet, go. Be fearless and walk. Stand for your cause even if you are martyred.
-Faiz Ahmed Faiz
*Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather, the judgment that something else is more than fear. Enjoy what you do. Enjoy Life.
-Chandan
Now it is in this spirit that forgiveness must be received too. We must enter into the spirit of it, and that is the Holy Spirit, God's Spirit poured out into all the world. We must not try to pretend that somehow we are forgivable and that that is why we are forgiven. We are no more and no less forgivable than anyone else. If we try to privilege our claim to forgiveness, it is not forgiveness we are looking for, but some other kind of recognition. If it is truly forgiveness we are after, then it must be unconditional and unlimited forgiveness. And we can receive that only if we are prepared to accept the company that forgiveness places us in. It is no good wanting to be forgiven and then reserving the right to look round disapprovingly on all the other (people).
This is why forgiving is so inseparable from being forgiven.
-Simon Tugwell
*Even if you've got shackles on your feet, go. Be fearless and walk. Stand for your cause even if you are martyred.
-Faiz Ahmed Faiz
*Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather, the judgment that something else is more than fear. Enjoy what you do. Enjoy Life.
-Chandan
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