Dis-Spirited

Your carcass lays dispirited

emptied of life

like the bottle in your hand

searching for the Spirit

midst highs that drown

cloaking your suff'ring

dulling the nightmares

 strolling by

You swill with a similar someone

that laughter might rise

and your garbled talk supply

what's missing all the time

Now laying drunk on the  ground

you witness to your flight

and the shallowness of brotherhood

bottled against the Light

*Thoughts of Alan Jones:

  -Can we hope to get away from self-preoccupation altogether?  We can try.  The effort is worth it, because  in seeking to pass through the narrow gate  one begins to learn a little of what it is to love.  It is hard, because it means looking and being temporarily blinded by what one sees. "There be in God, some say, a deep dazzling darkness," wrote a seventeenth-century poet, echoing the earlier tradition of the Eastern Christians.  This darkness forces us to talk about God only in terms of negatives, of what God is not.  When we use positive terms, which we must on occasion, we must remember then that we are actually talking about an idea of God - just as when we see moonlight, we must remind ourselves that we are really seeing the sun's reflected rays.

  -We can only say that God is both unknowable and inexhaustible.  The Christian believes that this unknowable and inexhaustible God has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ, and that it is after his image that we are made. That is a lot to swallow.  To really believe we are made in his image means a revolution in self-understanding.  "I" would have to be understood in terms not only of the life death and resurrection of Jesus; "I" would suddenly become unknowable and inexhaustible, and so would everyone else.  It would means giving up my patterns of knowing and feeling with regard to God and the world.  The implications of this for self-understanding are momentous.  Just as God is "hidden" from us, so too are we "hidden" from ourselves and from each other.

  -Any attempts to trap God in an image, form, or figure is both futile and dangerous; dangerous because God becomes "God" - and terrible things have been and are done in the name of "God".

  -...the formlessness is for the sake of freedom and expansiveness; because the things that matter, like love and truth, shrivel and die when they are held captive too long in an image or idea.

dancing before God

with ribbons of air

riding on my hands

i am a troubadour of yore

feet stirring to song

my body bounding with Spring

i am a joy-child

 leaping in the open air

dressed in a gown of light

free in the arena of life

-If Death doesn't get you, somethin' else will.

*Thoughts of Alan Jones:

  -We cannot live without images and pictures, and yet they always fall short of the reality.

  -If a worshipper should makes a mistake, do you not think that God will know his/her intent?

  -Feeling, not understanding, is very much a part of popular North American religion.  To suggest that there might be something beyond thought and feeling sounds very strange, and very threatening. Religion in our culture has become something of a commodity.  We want to possess as much "religion" as we can in order to enjoy the emotional satisfaction it brings.

Violated bones

The trailing exhaust

that covered him in its haze

that one brisk autumn morn

was a convenient screen

He dashed across the street

where care's absent need

scoured the street with eyes

long deprived of love

He hungered for care

searching for eyes to heal him

touch him with a savior's glance

binding his face in a smile

Not much, just a touch

a friendly glace, absent lust

that need and that alone

would sooth his aching and violated bones

*All are in Christ and Christ is in all.

*Sometimes we sin because we don't "know" what else to do...and God understands.

Thoughts of Alan Jones:

  -What do we see if we take the time to look?  We see disconnection, absurdity, and glory - certainly these are contradictory things.  If we look hard enough, we see a great deal of glory and promise.  Unfortunately, our vision  is often distorted by pain and suffering.  But we need to look at pain and suffering if we are to see past then to the glory and the promise.  There is real glory in a way of believing that tries to be honest about what it sees.  This has, at least, the promise of maturity.

  -The two approaches of the spiritual path belong together.  It cannot be overemphasized that they are complementary: negation and affirmation are the negative and positive poles of a fully charged battery.  While one side says "Yes" to images, ideas, metaphors, the other side says "No" or is silent. This dialectic is vital for the transmission of life and energy. Without one or other of the poles there is death.

  -We cannot live without images and pictures, and yet they always fall short of the reality.