...trying to stay sane in the insane world...via photography, poetry, painting, graphics and thoughts...
Monday, March 31, 2014
I'm at the empty poem-bottom of life
falling through hope deeper than deep
down to a nowhere-somewhere
where my soul blindly sulks
Must hang on to that nothing
falling free, bumping into space
the walls of which are darkness
the groans of which, unhinged
Tis a journey to a new land
where surprises lay in the breeze
and flowers sprout to blossom
my blood longing to Spring
The sun will bring new insights
the moon-still night delights
and God will be my life-shield
causing demons to book their flight
The drop requires much patience
a suff'ring truth, a dread
with pounding on the down-swing
kneading me into bread
Can't tell where I'll end-up
but up is where I'll end
though my feet flounder while falling
the bottom will be my friend
I'm running on the edge of tomorrow
waking in hope of life today
being true to my feat's inspiring
discovering me along the way
The great moment of my life will be death, to die by choice, giving myself to Love, in freedom, with no turning back-a holy release.
We are all beautiful before we grow old. But it is when we grow wise that we are more beautiful than youth.
falling through hope deeper than deep
down to a nowhere-somewhere
where my soul blindly sulks
Must hang on to that nothing
falling free, bumping into space
the walls of which are darkness
the groans of which, unhinged
Tis a journey to a new land
where surprises lay in the breeze
and flowers sprout to blossom
my blood longing to Spring
The sun will bring new insights
the moon-still night delights
and God will be my life-shield
causing demons to book their flight
The drop requires much patience
a suff'ring truth, a dread
with pounding on the down-swing
kneading me into bread
Can't tell where I'll end-up
but up is where I'll end
though my feet flounder while falling
the bottom will be my friend
I'm running on the edge of tomorrow
waking in hope of life today
being true to my feat's inspiring
The great moment of my life will be death, to die by choice, giving myself to Love, in freedom, with no turning back-a holy release.
We are all beautiful before we grow old. But it is when we grow wise that we are more beautiful than youth.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
...his relatives came to take him away since people were saying, "He is out of his mind."
-Mk. 3:21
maybe
they're right
Christ is damn mad
or
the earth's
damn mad
or
something's
damn mad
'cause I'm damn mad
mad at the dam-ness
that's damnable
around me
that's damnable
around us
including
our own dammed selves
cursing each other
with ev'ry damn
that dams
our mad hearts
with those
damnable dams
"I'll come to keep you warm."
- words of a long-standing friend
Fruited-faithfulness
-Mk. 3:21
maybe
they're right
Christ is damn mad
or
the earth's
damn mad
or
something's
damn mad
'cause I'm damn mad
mad at the dam-ness
that's damnable
around me
that's damnable
around us
including
our own dammed selves
cursing each other
with ev'ry damn
that dams
our mad hearts
with those
damnable dams
"I'll come to keep you warm."
- words of a long-standing friend
Fruited-faithfulness
He offered to warm me
and I would take it
I would take him this cold night
as the snows rise upon the fields
to blanket and hold the heat
Yes, I'd take him for warmth
midst the chilly-breathing atmosphere
I'd take his warmth any day
a love-gift he offers me
For something deeper than flesh is touched
something years alone witness to
Here, being is being with
is being without words
or intercourse
but fruited-faithfulness
Through baptism and loving, God has His hooks in us through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. It is difficult to shake God loose from us. We can neglect and forget about God's presence within us, even abandon God but God tenaciously clings to us, refusing to release us to evil. God will always be present for us and with us.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
No Black Indians in the Museum
As only America can do
the Indians appeared as colored shades of white
pure and uncontaminated
Is it possible that their tales were a mirage
as they looked toward the Mason-Dixon Line
while marching West toward Nebraska?
America must be pure
As only America can do
the Indians appeared as colored shades of white
pure and uncontaminated
Is it possible that my ancestors changed their skin
while greasing their hair?
Did their pigment slide off after their bath?
Is it possible that their tales were a mirage
as they looked toward the Mason-Dixon Line
while marching West toward Nebraska?
Even the naked amazons were displayed in shorts
lest their brown pricks offend their host
No Black Indians blurred the surrender of Geronimo
in his favored place near the Great White Chief
America must be pure
Keep Blacks far from the History Show
lest the casinos remove their support
justa
too many justas
heard them all my life
justa guard
justa clerk
justa janitor
justa nurse
justa lector
justa jerk
justa nigga
justa clerk
justa boy
justa toy
justa mu-tha
justa thoroughly
some thin' disregarded
soem thin' discarded
a substitute
and nimcompoop
all justas
with no justice
a justa thing
being a justa nothin'
heard it all my life
Friday, March 28, 2014
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
All matters of things shall be well.
-a personal revelation
-a personal revelation
living in suicide
impotent and puzzled
i can't get angry without
yet not knowing how i feel
it's buried that deep in me
sleeping in my mercurial swamp
nursed by the cypress leaves
harboring the poisonous moccasin
they coil in my faceless gut
unhappy with unhappiness
angry with discontent
loving without love
this aint' living
though it's the living i've got
so i hang myself with crammed feelings
tossing me about from limb to limb
dangling like a lynched outsider
thrown o'er a bridge to swim
am i a danger to society
a predator for the lost and forgotten
as if the last testament of my glory
is entry into the realm of the dead?
this is a wretched state of being
of living with myself as if damned
struggling against insanity
pretending i'm not really the bed
Monday, March 24, 2014
*Only by living life can you free yourself from it. So live it to such a degree that it befits you.
-Karl Jung
*Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth - that man[humankind] would not have attained the possible unless time and time again he had reached out for the impossible.
-Max Weber
-Karl Jung
*Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth - that man[humankind] would not have attained the possible unless time and time again he had reached out for the impossible.
-Max Weber
Sunday, March 23, 2014
*Waiting for Warmth
the water is running
as I stand before the mirror
waiting for it to warm
to wash, shave and comb my hair
waiting, too, for something else
a coldness in me to go
in the light of a love
that won't run out as I grow old
in the winter a stillness stirs
my eyes pool
a spring clears my way
washing me with tear
-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.
*After I Tie My Shoes
an island
rises
around
a lagoon
of delicately balanced
delay
I linger there
in the surf
of the coming day
to notice how
nothing
moves
every
where
-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
song of the disinherited
yes
i would like to tune my voice so as to speak with a song
but my lips can't form the text in such a way
as to bring truth to the fore
for my throat reverberates with an agony of images not my own
theirs must be spoke with a tinge of pathos
with a stroke of conviction
so that we'd hear the truth within
not our ears but our guts
in the heart of ourselves
as a word forgotten
a sound turning us toward them
as if they were ourselves
someone important
someone humane
someone to care for
that's what i'd like to issue from my mouth
such a sense of guilt
as to move us to act for once
with conviction and not money alone
with money but with love as well
so
bear with me
as i make low grunts and moans
so as to disturb
so as to perfect the sounds of caring
so as to carry the tones that stir to action
holding to a center rich in silence
silence to hear the voices rising from despair
hoping for someone like you to come along
and join them in their song
yes
i would like to tune my voice so as to speak with a song
but my lips can't form the text in such a way
as to bring truth to the fore
for my throat reverberates with an agony of images not my own
theirs must be spoke with a tinge of pathos
with a stroke of conviction
so that we'd hear the truth within
not our ears but our guts
in the heart of ourselves
as a word forgotten
a sound turning us toward them
as if they were ourselves
someone important
someone humane
someone to care for
that's what i'd like to issue from my mouth
such a sense of guilt
as to move us to act for once
with conviction and not money alone
with money but with love as well
so
bear with me
as i make low grunts and moans
so as to disturb
so as to perfect the sounds of caring
so as to carry the tones that stir to action
holding to a center rich in silence
silence to hear the voices rising from despair
hoping for someone like you to come along
and join them in their song
Thursday, March 20, 2014
poor jesus
we dress him in theology, atomize him with dross
then kill him with sentiments and bury him 'neath floss
while with our halitosis, we subdue the cross
if Jesus were a Punk, at least he'd be somethin'
but we manacle his feet and mangle his person
snip his balls and skewer his lips
his agony is us, believers who mistrust
the good news of him cause it's not politically correct
he's a nigger-slave, a German-kraut
a sneaky Jap, a Russian bear
clothed in pink, in red, black and green
any ideology we're against in the twistings of our pen
poor Jesus, in ideologies pressed
i'd snatch him from heaven
and clothe him in flesh
*It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
-Frederick Douglas
*Love wants eternity; it's closer to death than to life: nothing can prevent it from sooner or later being crucified. Only friendship comes back to life. But the world does not care for the kind of love which opens up, even here, onto the beyond. Such love is frightening, like everything that is not chained up; it is both liberating and disturbing.
-Jean Sulivan
*The greater scandal is that love is preached as a tranquil, social wisdom, confusing it with the natural love of family, or with philanthropy. It is not the coupling of husband and wife that the church blesses...but the asceticism that marriage implies. Marriage without austerity is the modern form of prostitution.
-Jean Sulivan
we dress him in theology, atomize him with dross
then kill him with sentiments and bury him 'neath floss
while with our halitosis, we subdue the cross
if Jesus were a Punk, at least he'd be somethin'
but we manacle his feet and mangle his person
snip his balls and skewer his lips
his agony is us, believers who mistrust
the good news of him cause it's not politically correct
he's a nigger-slave, a German-kraut
a sneaky Jap, a Russian bear
clothed in pink, in red, black and green
any ideology we're against in the twistings of our pen
poor Jesus, in ideologies pressed
i'd snatch him from heaven
and clothe him in flesh
*It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
-Frederick Douglas
*Love wants eternity; it's closer to death than to life: nothing can prevent it from sooner or later being crucified. Only friendship comes back to life. But the world does not care for the kind of love which opens up, even here, onto the beyond. Such love is frightening, like everything that is not chained up; it is both liberating and disturbing.
-Jean Sulivan
*The greater scandal is that love is preached as a tranquil, social wisdom, confusing it with the natural love of family, or with philanthropy. It is not the coupling of husband and wife that the church blesses...but the asceticism that marriage implies. Marriage without austerity is the modern form of prostitution.
-Jean Sulivan
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
what happened to me that i died at ten:
hounded by memories ans suppressed rebellions
i flounder searching for answers to dark queries
who cursed me with so much pain?
i stand in the dark night of my soul
none appears and i knock about on the walls of my failures
hoping to sense the pitfalls before they suck me in
with a crack at its base, where the light sneaks in
who feels what i feel?
stuffed into attics where musty air clings?
too many falls? too many beatings?
too much blood purpling my skin?hounded by memories ans suppressed rebellions
these pull me down with angers and doubts
carrying me into the cesspools of distrust
into deep gullies of hovering despairwho cursed me with so much pain?
have my eyes failed, darkened by cataracts
blocking any light or hope of redemption?i stand in the dark night of my soul
searching about for light to clear a path
an entry to a way i need to gonone appears and i knock about on the walls of my failures
stumbe into the debris of my iconic mistakes
claw at the curtains shut in my escape
when will the day of awakening arrive
when the moment of eureka?
i know not but inch along like the blind without a canehoping to sense the pitfalls before they suck me in
hoping a voice informs me that the road is straight
that there's a door ahead somewhere
with a crack at its base, where the light sneaks in
and the base boards are loose
and air slithers in to feed a nosewho feels what i feel?
who knows the road i've been on?
is all life bad or an ugly dreamstuffed into attics where musty air clings?
answer me
Sunday, March 16, 2014
crazy!
the beggars have gone crazy
fending on hunger
shuffling listlessly down alleyways
they poke for scraps in garbage bins
remnants of superfluous food
dumped to keep the city clean
i look into their ragged face
and see the lines starvation makes
whittled by the elements in all due seasons
hand outstretched, begging for a mammonic gift
my hand should stretch, asking pardon
while drawing in their beggar's breath
i should bend my head, requesting a blessing
and wash the feet of these long neglected
but i give nothing more than a glance
an emphatic No quavering in my spit
walking quickly, n'arily a glance
*How does one give life without bringing death? Who has resolved the enigma? Hades and Dionysus were the same god. A sacrament was necessary, a seed of resurrection, so that lovers would stop being afraid, would no longer spy on one another, and together would pass through the gate to the universe of persons.
Those who love one another want proofs. And when the proofs have been given, when they have said, "I love you, I love you," with a voice that was only the sigh of the flesh, sometimes nothing more remains of what had been proven except habit, social necessity, and money. When people love each other, they want each other completely, but by devouring one another, they are lost. Woe to someone who wants to know the other completely. Even more wretched is the one who believes he has succeeded!
-Jean Sulivan
Friday, March 14, 2014
hidden matters
i.
walking the Projects Gallery floor
i was stopped by a red-house of anger
a 2x4 stationed beside its lips
filled with words of silenced pain
it was as if it were
a hanging piece of mem'ry
a trail of tales long buried
now stretching to Today
a storage-bin harboring sin
polluting the grey cavities of some brain
ii.
i pondered the flights in my soul
the flotsam of sin nailing me to a cross
the contents of my red-house of anger
maintained discretely above my nose
hidden matters rose within me:
murderous rage of an abandoned child
racial slurs covered with burrs
the loneliness of being left alone
night after night in my red-house hiding
cowering like an arsonist with a torch inside
to burn toys meant to make one smile
to fill brothers with a terrifying fear
iii.
i slipped away with luggage in my head
relieved that i harmed no one on the way
*What does it matter if the cities are drab, the streets mean and ugly, so long as we bring them a beauty from deep within us. Inner warmth can make those cold, hard streets friendly.
-Jean Sulivan
*Not to laugh, not to weep, not to detest, but to understand.
-Jean Sulivan
i.
walking the Projects Gallery floor
i was stopped by a red-house of anger
a 2x4 stationed beside its lips
filled with words of silenced pain
it was as if it were
a hanging piece of mem'ry
a trail of tales long buried
now stretching to Today
a storage-bin harboring sin
polluting the grey cavities of some brain
ii.
i pondered the flights in my soul
the flotsam of sin nailing me to a cross
the contents of my red-house of anger
maintained discretely above my nose
hidden matters rose within me:
murderous rage of an abandoned child
racial slurs covered with burrs
the loneliness of being left alone
night after night in my red-house hiding
cowering like an arsonist with a torch inside
to burn toys meant to make one smile
to fill brothers with a terrifying fear
iii.
i slipped away with luggage in my head
relieved that i harmed no one on the way
*What does it matter if the cities are drab, the streets mean and ugly, so long as we bring them a beauty from deep within us. Inner warmth can make those cold, hard streets friendly.
-Jean Sulivan
*Not to laugh, not to weep, not to detest, but to understand.
-Jean Sulivan
Thursday, March 13, 2014
i don't know what it is that moves me
sitting here bored as the fumes from the factorywaft through the open door staring
a tv screen of bland people talking
floating across each other with nothin' to saydoesn't move me
all's bland this morning
and in me a dull-weighted mind waits for somethin' to happenwhich must happen within
while i ponder or squander
perhaps it's better to sit here doing nothin' it seemsand see with open mind what might occur
perhaps one thought will raise a sensible remark
offer some bone with meat to chew onor mem'ries will rise from the basement of my mind
or my heart might touch an emotion carrying me back in time
perhaps God will stop while passing by
smell my blood and notice i'm lost
perhaps peace will be that much more
for a moment established in the land becausei sat still long enough to bother no one
anyway i'm here sitting and waiting
bored and drawn awaiting whatever will befor the next hour or half or which ever comes first
*The Christian world had grown afraid. It wanted everything to be in order, smooth and shiny; it wanted to reconcile the taste for power and prestige with interior liberty and freedom. When Christian liberty becomes the heart of people's existence, they lift their heads and raise their voices. Like animals who panic and turn tail, who can smell danger faster that the wind can carry it to them, the scribes and pharisees showed an obstinate and endless patience as the strove to immunize and neutralize society against the threat of liberty. For joy, which is born of freedom and only from freedom, is a deadly peril. It shakes walls, enlarges the soul, strips off old skins, and tells the stranger, the blacks, the Chinese, "You are my brother, my sister." To the atheist it says, "We share the same belief"; to the prostitute, "You are no worse than many others; in fact, you're more honest." With its sense of humor, joy sees Christian liberty as rooted in faith; in its winnowing-basket it sorts out what is alive and what is only of archaeological interest. Leaving the past behind, joy strains toward the future, treating what has been already been achieved as of little value.
As long as liberty and joy could be restricted to rituals, to certain special days and designated times, the defenders of religion were content. Since it would be too risky and too costly to allow freedom to intrude on their everyday life, they decided to live only on the outside and fell back on official ceremonies, reassured by the good will that such observances presume. They hoarded much of their energy by not really living, and used it up by practicing extreme caution while taking close notice of others. It's hardly surprising that so many have left the church without regret or remorse, deeply convinced that they were faithful to the best that was in them.
A person is alive only to the extent that she achieves spiritual freedom, radiating the spirit of alleluias, no longer responding to external commands, having become one with God - who never gives an order because He is love. Civilization, culture, the Vatican, the pope, and the church exist only in order to permit each of us to become alive and free. I think people like Strozzi do more to expand human space than the cosmonauts. What he represents is the leaven at work in the dough, which will take some time to ferment. People like Strozzi are opening up the spiritual space for a new renaissance.
-Jean Sulivan
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
*People are born only at the moment they come to terms with spiritual liberty.
-Jean Sulivan
*The Christian world seems to have patiently accomplished the feat of transforming the most scathing part of its message, Paul's song of liberation, into an object of sickly hymns and mental illusions, a refuge for misfits, leaving atheism to rediscover the explosion of liberty at the heart of life.
-Jean Sulivan
in my head was a single conversation
robed like royalty in an amalgam of antagonism
it said
there's too little blood feeding dead trees
neath the brains of the dead
lay the blood of the slaughtered
as enemies
they won't kiss
but their bodies bleed
i hear them drowning in whispers
like soldiers drugging themselves for bravery
churning and chugging out the drama of war
they drag us to death
as if we needed the ride
who will stop them once the engines roar
once reason knows marijuana as fuel for the road?
even our leaders sleep upon peace
why fear?
we'll love them with might
digging them from their privileged graves
piling their bones upon the festive fire
joy will fill our hearts
and we'll wonder why we waited so long
-Jean Sulivan
*The Christian world seems to have patiently accomplished the feat of transforming the most scathing part of its message, Paul's song of liberation, into an object of sickly hymns and mental illusions, a refuge for misfits, leaving atheism to rediscover the explosion of liberty at the heart of life.
-Jean Sulivan
in my head was a single conversation
robed like royalty in an amalgam of antagonism
it said
there's too little blood feeding dead trees
neath the brains of the dead
lay the blood of the slaughtered
as enemies
they won't kiss
but their bodies bleed
i hear them drowning in whispers
like soldiers drugging themselves for bravery
churning and chugging out the drama of war
they drag us to death
as if we needed the ride
who will stop them once the engines roar
once reason knows marijuana as fuel for the road?
even our leaders sleep upon peace
why fear?
we'll love them with might
digging them from their privileged graves
piling their bones upon the festive fire
joy will fill our hearts
and we'll wonder why we waited so long
Monday, March 10, 2014
*The true birth of a person takes place when the spirit takes over - not thoughts, not ideas, but spirit - when prejudices fall like dry fruit under the wind of liberty, because mental attachments are mortal than those of the flesh.
-Jean Sulivan
*Death does not always come just a the end of life. There are a great many living dead among us, people who exist only as part of the crowd, content with merely being on stage in the theater of the world. Those who have not awakened, who have become rigid in their values and principles, vises or virtues, who are intent on making themselves believed, have betrayed their baptismal names, even though they pose as venerable defenders of the good, the honored, and the blessed. They have not yet been born. People are born only at the moment they come to terms with spiritual liberty.
-Jean Sulivan
-Jean Sulivan
*Death does not always come just a the end of life. There are a great many living dead among us, people who exist only as part of the crowd, content with merely being on stage in the theater of the world. Those who have not awakened, who have become rigid in their values and principles, vises or virtues, who are intent on making themselves believed, have betrayed their baptismal names, even though they pose as venerable defenders of the good, the honored, and the blessed. They have not yet been born. People are born only at the moment they come to terms with spiritual liberty.
-Jean Sulivan
he
he was like a moonless midnight
something to be stared into
until ones eyes formed a familiar something
a face one knew
an aura-producing body
lit like a voice once dead
standing silently like the night
bearing a light beyond the mist
he was like a prehistoric creature
some Madagascan bug moist and light
dancing on a green path of moss
love-making without a mask
yet close to death
perhaps
it would be safe to dance like him
touching the earth
as if it were the only home we knew
or cared to know
with divinity near
he bore into the darkness
the face of fear
the face of flight
the face of terror and shouted
stand fast
this too shall pass
then laughed thunder into the sky
and rained down tears
to flush away the fears
he was an epiphanic magus
drawing night into the embrace of day
playing with darkness
repeating the sounds of children at play
he is the revelation of Silence
his story weaving within our own
Friday, March 7, 2014
am I a dead man walking imagining release from prison smiling
un-embittered toward the falsely blind in life innocent and cased in their
icy lips of death
all for a moment with wide-opened mouth a bit of heaven smiles the
sun's birth gleam releasing beams warming eyes picturing Juan
here beneath the sun where tree-shadows cleave and grey skies flee in a
muddled mess I rest to cool and sooth to balm and rub my aching feet
awaiting the darling silent-night the Noiseless One Who cloaked in
darkness whispers I'm here
why is it with all-Jesus around we un-Jesus everything and run
to the roaring demons we choose while he sits silent on the stoop to our
room a cavalier destroying fear and the Death of night
when victims scream and souls stumble in the shadows of their lives
when we cloak our being and corset our skin with drugs and rye he
uncovers pretense shoving the angelic aside to eat some meat and
hoist a drink unbinding guests and showing the way
un-embittered toward the falsely blind in life innocent and cased in their
icy lips of death
all for a moment with wide-opened mouth a bit of heaven smiles the
sun's birth gleam releasing beams warming eyes picturing Juan
here beneath the sun where tree-shadows cleave and grey skies flee in a
muddled mess I rest to cool and sooth to balm and rub my aching feet
awaiting the darling silent-night the Noiseless One Who cloaked in
darkness whispers I'm here
why is it with all-Jesus around we un-Jesus everything and run
to the roaring demons we choose while he sits silent on the stoop to our
room a cavalier destroying fear and the Death of night
when victims scream and souls stumble in the shadows of their lives
when we cloak our being and corset our skin with drugs and rye he
uncovers pretense shoving the angelic aside to eat some meat and
hoist a drink unbinding guests and showing the way
Thursday, March 6, 2014
*...Someone who withdraws from society and breaks with its prejudices - of course he's going to be different. Think of an artist who has maintained - or rediscovered - a childlike perspective, who doesn't see things in the ordinary way. The crowd simply does not understand him. They only know how to see what they have already seen. It's the same story with a person who has a deep interior life. She becomes a puzzle as soon as she plunges into the very depths of the soul, and when she returns to everyday existence again, she seems enigmatic. When we hear about Cure of Ars lighting his fire with bank notes, we think he's crazy. And Catherine of Siena shows an equal lack of common sense when she spends the night talking to an assassin, and accompanies him to his execution the next morning, receiving his head in her hands. We're amazed at Francis de Sales when he breaks his fast by peacefully munching nuts - which makes it impossible for him to celebrate Mass. From his point of view, it was more important to give pleasure to the friend who had presented him with this gift. And we have just as hard a time understanding the Son of Man as he approaches the fig tree.
You remember that day when Jesus, followed by his disciples, comes upon the fig tree which has no fruit. Jesus curses it, even though the Gospel says "it was not the season for fruits." Voltaire lets out a guffaw. Bertrand Russell, one of the leading thinkers of our time, is exultant: "Look at what Jesus did; he was neither wise nor even very smart." And there's nothing more enlightening than to tell the story of the fig tree, or any of the hundreds of paradoxes in the Gospel, to respectable Christians: their faces are suddenly overwhelmed with incomprehension, bewilderment, even panic. They're like cattle on a cement prairie. As if what Jesus was talking about were figs! In fact, the story challenges all of us who are so quick to plead necessity or common sense, to defend our habits or our laziness, so clever at offering explanations, so ready to justify, to erase, to invoke time or age or the season as excuses. Men and women are made for the unexpected and the impossible - the Gospel keeps reminding us of this. We may even have to pluck out our eye in order to see. "God" means there is nothing that 's impossible.
-Jean Sulivan
You remember that day when Jesus, followed by his disciples, comes upon the fig tree which has no fruit. Jesus curses it, even though the Gospel says "it was not the season for fruits." Voltaire lets out a guffaw. Bertrand Russell, one of the leading thinkers of our time, is exultant: "Look at what Jesus did; he was neither wise nor even very smart." And there's nothing more enlightening than to tell the story of the fig tree, or any of the hundreds of paradoxes in the Gospel, to respectable Christians: their faces are suddenly overwhelmed with incomprehension, bewilderment, even panic. They're like cattle on a cement prairie. As if what Jesus was talking about were figs! In fact, the story challenges all of us who are so quick to plead necessity or common sense, to defend our habits or our laziness, so clever at offering explanations, so ready to justify, to erase, to invoke time or age or the season as excuses. Men and women are made for the unexpected and the impossible - the Gospel keeps reminding us of this. We may even have to pluck out our eye in order to see. "God" means there is nothing that 's impossible.
-Jean Sulivan
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
attracted to darkness and the underground of crime where the thugs make
play and the prostitutes prey where killers love blood and laundered funds
standing in the quicksand of filth and strife smelling of ordure Jesus sets
to save many are rats in the sewers of life
dwelling in the bowels of indiscretion in the hell of the righteous never
sinned they sink into mire attempting to swim
clinging to to the cross while tossing dice darkness inhabits the channels of
minds while hearts hold visions of a freer day
clawing for escape and picnicking on the edge they claim their loss and
bungling search their desire to upend their collapsible dream
play and the prostitutes prey where killers love blood and laundered funds
standing in the quicksand of filth and strife smelling of ordure Jesus sets
to save many are rats in the sewers of life
dwelling in the bowels of indiscretion in the hell of the righteous never
sinned they sink into mire attempting to swim
clinging to to the cross while tossing dice darkness inhabits the channels of
minds while hearts hold visions of a freer day
clawing for escape and picnicking on the edge they claim their loss and
bungling search their desire to upend their collapsible dream
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
outside
you were always outside
you lay bent
folded in twain
awaiting birth
wanting contractions to begin
but they lay still
needing a nudge to budge
a movement within
none could midwife you but you
being both fetus and womb
you hold the force to deliver on course
stretch, contract, accept the tear
birth the child gasping for air
*We must stop using theology and law as instruments of control, unless we want to produce a world of slaves - and ultimately of rebels.
-Jean Sulivan
*...poverty is not a matter of whether the cross you wear is made of gold or wood, or whether or not you own an amethyst or an American car. Poverty begins in the depth's of one's existence, in the language and style which emerge from the depths of night. Poverty springs from the heart, out of an experience that remains unformulated, in words still heavy with darkness yet shining with light, the only kind capable of evoking friendship and a taste for the impossible.
-Jean Sulivan
Monday, March 3, 2014
Why imprison me?
What's your fear?
Is it that your secret might be revealed
and the cover o'er your sins fall away?
The burden in your hiding
maximizes my transgression.
So, what is your fear:
that I might descend the cross and blabber all?
*Each one of us, each group, each class, has a special way of acting and living. For a long time now the people with power wanted us to believe that their moral law was the only true one. They had a monopoly on morality. But what interests me is this: what seems immoral to us is actually moral for a particular individual. After all, the gangster has his moral code, and so does the prostitute. You have to start with that, and to be ready to set out along with them, beginning today, over the long road traveled by history and the Bible.
-Jean Sulivan
*You have to accept living persons on their own terms, with their own reality. Instead of flinging values at their head, you have to take them where they are, whether on the level of instinct, or law, or freedom. As for values, I don't know what they are. Yes, I do: they're idols. The moral law doesn't exist in come cut and dried form when you are dealing with human beings. 'Order is already present,' Claudel said. 'Why torment yourself when it's so simple to obey and when order is already present?' But order is not a simple given. Laws are not the work of some director-general, administered by delegates. Morality comes into being when life calls out to us. It is created and brought into existence within the agony of history by each individual in turn, not in some arbitrary fashion, but organically.
-Jean Sulivan
What's your fear?
Is it that your secret might be revealed
and the cover o'er your sins fall away?
The burden in your hiding
maximizes my transgression.
So, what is your fear:
that I might descend the cross and blabber all?
i've been duped by truth
i trusted her promise of freedom
that an honest mouth and an open heart
had no enemies to fear
so why stand i denied
whipped like a slave of old
branded a jew in yellow
marked with a plague of hearsay
laying in this womb of agony
long thorns pierce my lips
circle my hands and feet
even a scream is invitation
a stamp affirming my inanity
so i swallow a thousand times hard
shutting the throat that bellows innocence
i damn my tears with a smile
cursing the god of the hard-hearts
jesus is cheap anesthesia
a quick-whiff that drugs the pain
before he returns to cook my ass
a nigger under siege
history repeats with crowds and thorns
a donkey haltered at the base of the cross
will you call or come
o good and faithful servant
will you come cursing censures
justice dripping from the corners of your lips
like a magma the side of a belching volcano
*Each one of us, each group, each class, has a special way of acting and living. For a long time now the people with power wanted us to believe that their moral law was the only true one. They had a monopoly on morality. But what interests me is this: what seems immoral to us is actually moral for a particular individual. After all, the gangster has his moral code, and so does the prostitute. You have to start with that, and to be ready to set out along with them, beginning today, over the long road traveled by history and the Bible.
-Jean Sulivan
*You have to accept living persons on their own terms, with their own reality. Instead of flinging values at their head, you have to take them where they are, whether on the level of instinct, or law, or freedom. As for values, I don't know what they are. Yes, I do: they're idols. The moral law doesn't exist in come cut and dried form when you are dealing with human beings. 'Order is already present,' Claudel said. 'Why torment yourself when it's so simple to obey and when order is already present?' But order is not a simple given. Laws are not the work of some director-general, administered by delegates. Morality comes into being when life calls out to us. It is created and brought into existence within the agony of history by each individual in turn, not in some arbitrary fashion, but organically.
-Jean Sulivan
Sunday, March 2, 2014
*Things As They Are
underneath
an ember
in the night
stirs
from cell to cell
from each to each
put there
under the spell
of reasons
from above
when things as they are
become clear
then
stirs a temper
underneath
so then
cell by cell
each
learns to leave
the fear
-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.
*Skywater
in
not telling how
without touching
they met
far enough with the other
to rain
the cry of heaven
upon the dry
of earth
to draw the earth
of father
to the sky of mother
so
a child
named
Silence
Everlasting
is
born
to be known
thereafter
as
no
other
-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.
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