they yell, they howl

they scream against the soft-sounds

as if God rides on the breeze

on the rim

but no one hears Him

these sounds

are they a "Why?", a "Help!"

a call to awaken those with shut eyes

those with plugged ears?

some sit in prayer

list'ning to the unlikely

to the in-between

where the holy lies

where poems are writ on patient souls

between the silence and the words

i hear, "Wake Up!

God's closer than you think"

i listen to my wavering voice

the incredulity within my belief

this strange encounter is music

an invitation to sing ones self

into a question

there God and i duet

there

a temple is built of song

*Human nature: the beautiful face with  the ugly scars.

*Loving one another is loving God...with all the if's, ands and buts...but it isn't easy.

*I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

  -Galileo

*Painting is a faith and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

  -Vincent van Gogh

*Thoughts of Frederick Buechner:

  -And in the end they got him(Jesus).  And forget all the grim paraphernalia of his death because the obscenity and horror have long since been ritualized out of it.  They got him, that's all.  He wasn't spared a damned thing.  It was awful beyond telling, god-awful.  And then it happened.

  -... but the temptation to settle for the lesser good, which is evil enough and maybe a worse one - to settle for niceness and usefulness and busyness instead of for holiness; to settle for plausibility and eloquence instead of for truth.

  -...to acknowledge a miracle is to have to act on it somehow - to become some kind of miracle ourselves - and that's why they scare us to death.