Blocks.

Sometimes doesn't it feel like that?

“ I am a child of unbelief and doubt even now and (as I well know) I shall be to the grave. What fearful suffering this desire to believe has caused me and still causes me as it increases in strength in my soul as the contrary proofs multiply! However, God sends me at times many minutes during which I am entirely at peace… and during such minutes I have composed for myself a confession of faith… this is it: to believe that there is nothing more beautiful, more profound, more sympathetic, more reasonable, more manly and perfect than Christ, and not only nothing like Him exists but I say with jealous love, that it even cannot exist. And even more: If someone were to prove to me that Christ is not the truth, I would rather remain with Christ than with the truth.”
-Dostoevsky letter to the woman who gave him a NT on the way to prison in Siberia. (Overman,127)

I heard this quote first from a dear Russian friend of mine. He said that I needed to understand that he was a child of his generation and that this rang true for him. As we read in the pages of the Fabric of Faithfulness about a faithful, unified worldview that stands the test of time, a bit of sadness rose up in me. Maybe more a longing. I would love to cast judgment on many of the characters. The more I tried the more frustrated I became. While I can see some in our program have a solid fairly unified worldview that will take them far, I have seen mine shaken when I least wanted it to be and when I most needed a solid one.
Much of my time might be spent subconsciously avoiding such truths. I have been tired staring into the darkness of my desires and the consequences of their fruition. Suffice it to say that in many ways my heart has been jaded. I have longed for the breath of fresh air. A good man is truly hard to find.
And I guess that is some of the ridiculousness, in the actual “worthy of ridicule” way, of this train of thought. It ends up and a Cartesian mess. I become the universe and the universe is me. When I fail, then it falls a part. Right to do all, egoism that fails or mechanical propositions that lead one to deny them to be fully human become more reality than Russian novels.
Remember your creator… it sticks out solidly, “It is not too late for your salvation, but too late to serve as the presence of God in the midst of His creation.” I have lived in a world of self-imposed perfection, partially due to lack of correction, but mainly due to fear. As a child of my generation, I find Christ almost too good to be true, but a life without too empty for the embrace of the alternative.
This is where Christ is so necessary and I am so desperate. This is where I desire to experience the reality, but not the pain, of death so that I may be hidden with Christ in God. To be alive with His eyes to see the suffering around me, but to have the salve of His Salvation and Grace to ease and comfort. For miracles and healings and hope to be seen so that this doubt can be banished finally. Because too often and of late it is the question: why? Why do I do what I don’t want to do and that which I do I don’t? Truly what can save me from this fragmentation as the kid good enough to be passed by without aid and not bad enough to require repair? What can be my portion and render the broken new? Thanks be to Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yes, things that are complex will become simple and the simple complex as time passes and the diapers come off. Yet, if there is a jealous love that remains, then the integrity of that solid frame can survive. And if He makes all things new, then into grace I can fall. These thoughts are really slightly embarrassing as the though naked I am exposed as who I am before you. Our view of man is something that I have had to rethink. I was such an optimist. Maybe functionally a closet humanist. Now I am left with the deflation and rest of fallen people in a fallen world in need of a Savior now and evermore. So here’s to Russians, their long winters, and their even longer books. And here’s to the rest of a coherent worldview and the frustration of realizing places I haven’t functionally had one and the growth that comes from it from the hand of the One who can restore the years the locust have eaten.

doors closing... please stand back

Steel cages
faces that flash to fade
Bodies that strain to evade
So close acting far away
better recant any semblance or way for...

C
o
n
t
a
c
t

ignore basic interactions
the very substance of reactions too perfectly natural
Too perfectly mechanical
Too perfectly contrived to believe it as anything other then what it is...

Suppress and push back the instinct
Hide behind word and glaze over it with notes
Beauty to stay
hidden behind cold grim faces
Acknowledgment denied to hold a space in
Steel cages

Because sunlight is only a stop away

Stages of a moon...

When it doesn't hurt anymore.
That is what was said.
That is when.

Pixels of truth
curiosity waxes into
dissatisfaction which wanes into sadness...
Find rest O my soul


Seek it!
Why the urge to drink from tepid pools
that rise and fall and poison like mercury?


When the truth hits home... it's what I always knew.
Words that denied Fact
that proved lies
told and almost believed
almost
but for Truth

Why drink?
Why?

Find rest my soul in God alone.
A command
A telling
a refusing to listen to a lie which will never curb that longing
"Wait for the Lord;
Be strong and take heart
and wait on the Lord."

Praise the Lord

A command against unwilling
A do to bind a won't

For He knows that we are but dust...
Dust with unveiled faces.

It burns, that light, but where else?
"To whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life."

"For God alone my soul waits in silence;
from him comes my salvation"

To choose to hang on to the good.

Such a fight. A challenge.

I choose it these days.

I told a friend of how I asked last night. All I could do was laugh and smile about it. So much affection. Sure there is pain, but it wasn't present then. The Lord has a way of rescuing me from my memories. I turn in on myself pretty easily. I get lost. I lose grip and let it slip away...

I mourned with another friend last night as well.

It brought up pain this morning. The delayed realization and re-exploration of a wound. Test it. Probe it. Feel the scar. The nerves have memory and respond as they should although they were severed. Oh the beauty of reconciliation! Oh the pain when what I desire in that has less and more to do with me than I would wish.

My sin is ever before me...

When I close my eyes.

But there is something that must overshadow it, or despair will call me back into its hold and slide my joy into the pit. I will fall back into a garden after an act that severed so much. Separated from source. From good. From Origin.

So beautifully deceptive. Elegantly crafted repackaging of the same old questions:

"Can you really trust that? Are you sure that is actually true?"

It is such a humbling task to remember. To remember the good. To remember my culpability. To remember the resulting despair. BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, to remember a Savior and His work. Remember...


FIX YOUR EYES. "Get over yourself and actually live for others." That must be the reoccurring cry. Live in His freedom. My actions don't save, but His did and I must react to them. I must react and remember...

"And there's a memory of a window
Looking through, I see you
Searching for something that I could never give you
And there's someone who understands you, more than I do
A sadness I can't erase
All alone on your face."

Finally...

I told them all today. Finally. It is real. Not a dream. It will be hard. So much change. So much new. And I have so much to finish. But things worth it have a price. A sacrifice. And with it comes the glory of new freedoms. And restraints. And stretching in ways I'll never have seen before I jumped in. But that's life...

Bricks...

I got hit with a brick. Literally. My boss, who is like a brother to me, well, we were on a fun run (jumping on rocks through creeks, climbing walls, running on/over downed trees on our property) and we toss rocks/logs back and forth to work our upper body at the same time. Really, it is "grown-up" play-time while getting a hard cardio workout at the same time. Kids have it right. Get out in the woods and run hard and laugh hard. For us it generally involves a lot of laughing and is humorous to watch other people. I had a particularly hard time jumping a wall/sign. Well, Dailey, which is his name, tossed a brick, because that is what we were tossing at the time, to me, at the same moment that I stumbled over a rock. I caught the brick, but not quite soon enough. It had enough momentum to hit me in the teeth as well. Kinda funny huh? I will say, that I stopped for a minute, spit out the tiny chips of enamel and finished the run. Gotta man up, you know? Can't let a brick stop you.

Conclusion: Apparently, I can't play dodge ball, because I can't dodge a brick. "If you can't dodge a brick, you can't dodge a ball."

Greg Laswell

Who would've ever known it could be this easy
Oh, I was a long, long way off
And just like that it's over
Everything that I knew of love
I was a long, long way off

And I think I like how the day sounds
Like how the day sounds through this new song

Thank you for opening the window
The sky is clear as my mind is now
I was a long, long way off
Join me in welcoming the sun in
It's much brighter than the night I hid in
I was a long, long way off

And I think I like how the day sounds
Like how the day sounds through this new song

From a long way down
Yeah, it's well worth the time that it's taken to get here now
Yeah, it's well worth the time that it's taken to get here now

So go ahead and bang a gong
Nothing can drown out the sound of the whisper of my love

And I think I like how the day sounds through this new song

And the lines have all been drawn
I know where I belong, where I belong
Oh, won't you sing along?
Oh my love, won't you sing along?

A quote to think about...

"For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again."

It's funny when I allow passion for life/God be stollen from me, as though it is someone else's doing. Now I am begining to feel again and be purposeful about it. Try things I never had, and more forward in passion...

Another thought:

I realized that If a perfect God forgives me for what I can't seem to forgive myself, who am I not to live in His forgiveness? To hang on would mean that I downplay the character (specifically: Righteousness, Holiness, Justice, Mercy... well, the list goes on) of God and then claim my past as more important than what is immediately before me.

BE HERE NOW.

The End... Is a process.

I am now at the place where I desire the best
And for her to have a future
I wasn't there for a long time
And I won't be there to come...





"So when God casts us down, we must be content to lie til God bids us to stand up, and God's Spirit enters us to enable us to stand up."

J. Burroughs "The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment"