A Life that mattered

+

"The thief comes to kill, to steal, and to destroy,

I have come that you might have Life"

-John 10:10

~ Merry Christmas ~

Fire

+

Rushing Wind,

Blow

Through these

Our Upper Rooms

Remove with your Breath

fears

short-sighted sentiments

dreams which displace your Dreams

Propel us from our hiding places

Into this planet You so love,

Potent

Powerful

Pentecost...

For a Second Time

Make us Flaming Tongues

Onto which You turn

The Bellows of Heaven

Flood again

 Your beloved world...

...This Time,

in

Fire

+

"His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones"

-Jeremiah 20:9

Mercy Triumphs Over Judgement

"OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEAVEN, HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME,

YOUR KINGDOM COME

YOUR WILL BE DONE

ON EARTH

AS IT IS

IN

HEAVEN."

+

"I have given help to one who is mighty [giving him the power to be a champion for Israel];
I have exalted one chosen from the people."

Psalm 89:19

Choose.

"This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you, 

that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses,

Now choose life"

-Deuteronomy 30:19

+

Poised on the brink of Choice:

Life or Death

Birthright or Bowl of soup

Blessing or Curse

Hanging in the balance...

...Heaven halts and holds its breath

As again the familiar scene plays out

Man wielding the Fearsome Weapon of Free Will

The consequences of which

Have been unleashed

Unmercifully

onto

Mankind,

A piece of fruit from a forbidden tree

A road not taken

An Ishmael

The terrible tension

The tears of Time Immemorial

The Anguished Cry

The worlds watch, 

Weeping

While with a glad hand

We forfeit freedom

And once again

Choose

Barabas

+

"Choose this day whom you will serve."

-Joshua 24:15

Choose.

"This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you, 

that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses,

Now choose life"

-Deuteronomy 30:19

+

Poised on the brink of Choice:

Life or Death

Birthright or Bowl of soup

Blessing or Curse

Hanging in the balance...

...Heaven halts and holds its breath

As again the familiar scene plays out

Man wielding the Fearsome Weapon of Free Will

The consequences of which

Have been unleashed

Unmercifully

onto

Mankind,

A piece of fruit from a forbidden tree

A road not taken

An Ishmael

The terrible tension

The tears of Time Immemorial

The Anguished Cry

The worlds watch, 

Weeping

While with a glad hand

We forfeit freedom

And once again

Choose

Barabas

+

"Choose this day whom you will serve."

-Joshua 24:15

Oasis

+

Lovely Light moving

Like water flowing

Reflecting

The True Beauty

You who sit and stare

Mesmerized

With this mirage

Turn and See

The Oasis

+

"In the image of God

He created them"

-Genesis 1:27

Flood

"Your Kingdom Come"

-Matthew 6:10

+

The current of me

Consumed in The River

of You

Flowing, Coursing

into this world,

Covering, Flooding again,

Leaving nothing afloat

But the Ark of New Beginnings

Suffering no lower life

Save this only,

The Dove

The Olive Branch

The drop of me

in the Deluge

of You

+

"Within me, I carry God.  Within God, I am carried.  There is no separation, only the forgetting of union."

-Julia Cameron

Omega

+++

From the "Let there be..."

To the "Did God really say...?"

From Eve's death-dealing "Take and Eat..."

To Christ's Life-Giving "Take and Eat..."

From the start to the finish

From Alpha to Omega

Just as In the Beginning was The Word,

In the end,

The Word Himself 

will have

The Final Word.

+

"Who has performed and done this,

Calling forth [and guiding the destinies of] the generations [of the nations] from the beginning?

‘I, the Lord—the first, and with the last [existing before history began, the ever-present, unchanging God]—

I AM He.’"

-Isaiah 41:4

Blue or Brown?

The Blue eyes/Brown eyes social experiment,

now We are the guinea pigs.

+

Disdain in man is a fickle tide

Careful how you dole it out

Careful who you decide to despise

For Tomorrow

That tide will turn.

+

"Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in His name [identifying themselves with Him] after seeing His signs (attesting miracles) which He was doing. But Jesus, for His part, did not entrust Himself to them, because He knew all people [and understood the [a]superficiality and fickleness of human nature], and He did not need anyone to testify concerning man [and human nature], for He Himself knew what was in man [in their hearts—in the very core of their being]."

-John 2:23-25

"One day they're crowning you king, the next day they're crucifying you."

Racism or Terrorism?

+

Our problem,

(as we've been led around by the nose of late to believe)

is not

  Racism

Our problem

is 

Terrorism

Racism is merely the Trojan Horse,
the fox we've all been chasing around,

like chickens with our heads cut off

While our country and countrymen, black and white, are under attack

While our government turns a blind eye

While we go on ignoring The Man behind the curtain,

Our heads too easily turned by shiny objects 

bright tv screens

smoke and mirrors

bells and whistles

and the like

If the atrocities committed on our country's soil beginning

in Dallas,
in Broad Day Light,
in Cold Blood,

had been perpetrated by any other terrorist group,

we would have declared war on them,

not offered them a tea party at the White House,

much less funding 
much less press time.

Newsflash: Terrorists' lives don't matter.

Ours do.

The problem's not getting solved
Because we're solving the wrong problem.

+

"Leaders should never bury a problem; you can be sure it will eventually rise from its grave and walk the earth again."

-General Colin Powell

I Dare You. (Re-post of 7/21 - Bears Repeating.)

"Let us Dare to think, read, write, and speak!"

-John Adams

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil 

is for good men to do nothing." 

-Democratic President John F. Kennedy quoting Edmund Burke

+

Our fear until recently, was of terror from without: terrorist groups like Isis and the Taliban, and the threat these groups posed against Americans.

Now there is a new terrorist group - and Isis must be laughing up a storm - as cowards who call themselves Americans, claiming to represent an entire demographic, willingly enslaved themselves to agendas of others who care nothing for them and began Thursday, July 21st, to terrorize their own country, 

and the lives of their own countrymen, black and white,

all the while insisting,

that their lives matter.

(This begs the question: To Whom?)

Isis doesn't need to send terrorists into America anymore; 

with the support of these pawns and puppets, 

a pandering media, 

a mute public,

 and an anemic government, 

they will likely, instead,

 simply send their regards.

+

"They had lives to live and families to take care of...they needed to feel safe crossing town...More than anything they needed a sense of security and the knowledge that someone was in charge -- Someone in charge of keeping ministries from being burned down, museums from being looted, infrastructure from being destroyed, crime from exploding, and well-known sectarian differences from turning violent."

-General Colin Powell, 

regarding the Iraqi citizens after Houssein's regime had been dismantled

"Bad ideas don't die simply because they are intrinsically bad.  You need people who will stand up and fight them, put themselves at risk, point out the weaknesses, and drive stakes through their hearts."

-General Colin Powell

Soak

+

I seek not Rote and Rhetoric,

Tedious Recitations,

Tired, Tiring Prose...

I crave a Companion,

Like David,

Earthy, Amateur,

Unprofessional, Unpolished,

Who was after My Heart,

Not only My Hand

I tire of jots and tittles,

i's dotted, t's crossed...

I search for one

who would trade dogma for Deity

Who would know Me

not just what is said about Me

I long for one

with whom I can walk,

A sponge I can soak

and saturate

in Spirit

Through whom I can be wrung out

into this,

My beloved world...

+

"Here am I, Send me"

-Isaiah 6:8

Remember.

I wrote this six years ago, a tribute to the day we all remember, and to the ephemeral unity the destruction paradoxically brought to our country, its leaders, and their constituents, when, for an all too brief and beautiful moment, congress stood together on the steps of the white house, actually holding hands, and there was a fleeting forgetfulness of differences and division, a trading of the self-serving status quo for one of self-transcendence, a laying down of the vitriol that too often trademarks our government, and a taking up of the standard,

 - may it be said of us again -

"United We Stand"

Two towers fell today ten years ago

Two lives torn apart and ten million more

Two parties came together and cried out to One God

Dual towers downed ending duality on our sod

But oh what ephemeral unity

Was born of death that day

That Tower fell so swiftly

So silently gave way

To ambivalence and bickering

To answers we could not find

To forgetfulness of heroes

To the novocaine of time

The best of human nature

Could not stand the test

But sadly deferred

Humbly bowed

And laid itself to rest.

 

-E.A.A. "Hindsfeet" 9/11/10

~ ~ ~

"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity...For there the LORD commands the blessing"
-Psalm133:1,3

Live

+

We breathe our single Breath

of this life,

While just on The Other Side

of the ephemeral

Waits

The Eternal...

The thinnest veil,

One step over,

We find ourselves

- and are Found -

in Breath Himself

We fall into

What has filled our lungs

and finally

finally

Live

+

"...God Who holds your breath in His hand..."

-Daniel 5:23

Fear Not.

+

God would not have said,

"Fear Not"

If there was anything to be afraid of.

He is not a man that he should lie.

If He says,

"Don't be afraid."

It means fear is unwarranted.

It means we're good.

It means He's got this.

Fear Not

For I AM with you.

Be not dismayed,

For I AM your God.

I will strengthen you

I will help you

I will uphold you with My very own hand.

-Isaiah 41:10

+

I dare you.

"Let us Dare to think, read, write, and speak!"

-John Adams

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil 

is for good men to do nothing." 

-Democratic President John F. Kennedy quoting Edmund Burke

+

Our fear until recently, was of terror from without: terrorist groups like Isis and the Taliban, and the threat these groups posed against Americans.

Now there is a new terrorist group - and Isis must be laughing up a storm - as cowards who call themselves Americans, claiming to represent an entire demographic, willingly enslaved themselves to agendas of others who care nothing for them and began last Thursday to terrorize their own country, 

and the lives of their own countrymen, black and white,

all the while insisting,

that their lives matter.

(This begs the question: To Whom?)

Isis doesn't need to send terrorists into America anymore; 

with the support of these pawns and puppets, 

a pandering media, 

a mute public,

 and an anemic government, 

they will likely, instead,

 simply send their regards.

+

"They had lives to live and families to take care of...they needed to feel safe crossing town...More than anything they needed a sense of security and the knowledge that someone was in charge -- Someone in charge of keeping ministries from being burned down, museums from being looted, infrastructure from being destroyed, crime from exploding, and well-known sectarian differences from turning violent."

-General Colin Powell, 

regarding the Iraqi citizens after Houssein's regime had been dismantled

"Bad ideas don't die simply because they are intrinsically bad.  You need people who will stand up and fight them, put themselves at risk, point out the weaknesses, and drive stakes through their hearts."

-General Colin Powell

Like Father Like Son...

But God, I look nothing like you...

...[God Smiles to Himself....] ....My beloved child, you will....... you will..........

+

 "For if we have become one with Him in the likeness of His death, we will also certainly be one with Him and share fully in the likeness of His resurrection."

-Romans 6:5

Irony

+

We exhaust His world

with our

tiresome turning 

of

Wine

back into

Water,

then wonder why the world

doesn't want to come

to the party...

What's worse,

we weary our Host Himself,

Who

went to all

the trouble...

+

"I did not come to you with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of The Spirit, and of Power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in The Power of God."

-1 Corinthians 2:1-5

I have a Dream...

+

not white

not black

but Perfect Yellow Flowers

Full of Light

Daring the darkness to defy them

Tenaciously Trumpeting

Refusing to be bested

Blasting Their Beauty

against the ugliness,

which, for all its raging in this world

Will Not Succeed

in silencing

Their Still

Small

Thunder

+

"We do not war against flesh and blood,

but against the rulers, against the powers, 

against the world forces of this present darkness,

against the spiritual forces of wickedness

in the heavenly supernatural places."

-Ephesians 6:12

Prayer for America

+

Lord, Your sheep...

So many,

Lost

White, Black, 

Women, Men

Led around by the nose,
Your posterity reduced to puppets,

Enslaved by the false shepherds

of fear, of media, of government

Who bid them do their selfish will

instead of Yours

Leading Your sheepfold off a cliff

Shepherding them to their own destruction

Dividing the House against itself

Ensuring its fall

Dwarfing terrorism from without

Stirring up terror within

Oh Good Shepherd,

Raise up again

The True Shepherds

over this,

Our Country

Those who know Your heart,

Those who love Your sheep,

Those who belong to your House

and know how to lead us

Home

+

Our Father in Heaven, 

Hallowed, Feared, Revered be Your name again in this country,

Your Kingdom come, Your will be done,

here, in America, in this world,

as it is in Heaven.

Matthew 6:9-13

For Garrison Keillor, a Tribute

+

He gave me Words to hold on to

For Dear Life

His Stories were White Blazes

in this Appalachian Trail of Time

He tethered me in

When I was out

His voice was a thread

through this tapestry

This Story teller tucked me in

when the world outside was wild

He was Gentleness and Calm

when inside me the storm raged on

His 'been there done that' transparency

Saved me more times than He knows

His message of Amazing Grace

His "You are never alone"

He walked us Home

Like a Father would

Leaving footsteps we could follow

This Pilgrimage made bearable

and all the solitary hours...

Now it's Time

He takes His leave

And bids us a beautiful Journey

Leaving Light behind him,

like breadcrumbs on the Path

May the same be said of me

+

"Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people."

-Garrison Keillor

Thank you, Garrison.

Tradeja.

+

For every drop

of your blood

of your sweat

of your tears,

Every drop of

My blood

My sweat

My tears...

...Tradeja.

+

"He took up our pain, bore our griefs, carried our sorrows...He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes, we are healed."

-Isaiah 53:4-6

Vocare

"The Word was God." - John 1:1

"I am the voice" - John 1:23

+

Sacred Cyrano Union

Word

and

Voice

Still Spoken

Still Creating

Beautifully Blended

as In The Beginning

the Let There Be

Still Speaks

Bringing the Beloved

to Life

+

Begin Again...

+

Daily Reborn

Out of this chrysalis

Into a world

Also longing

for

Rebirth

I breathe Genesis Breath

Into every seeking soul

laying Potter's Hands

on sacred heads

speaking "Let There Be..."

into cocoons of clay...

Till the Beloved

Once Again

is Reborn

+

"Blessed is the one whose strength is in You, whose heart is set on pilgrimage...

they pass through the Valley of Weeping and make it a place of springs

and the early rain forms pools of blessing."

-Psalm 84

Torn

+

I have sweat so much blood

In this Eden turned Gethsemane,

Died so many deaths,

Been consumed in the furnace of this world,

That I am now

More Spirit than substance

More Flame than flesh

Torn

Like that Veil

Two thousand years ago

To let in Heaven

-The very Veil men, 

mere hirelings who purport to represent Providence

Have spent centuries patching up,

The repulsive presumption of peddling Providence from pulpits

The high treason of imposing taxes on the exports of Heaven -

So He finds a way around

As He always has,

Like a River running around impertinent pebbles

Like an Ocean surging over impostor shores

Through Ruffian Royalty

Through human holy of holies,

Through those who,

Like their Leader,

Would lay down their lives

Would give their all

Would be Torn

So that Living Water

and Covenant Blood

Could once again

Flow Freely

For the sake of seeing His Kingdom Come

For the sake of His Will be Done

For the sake of once again

Letting in His "Let there be..."

For the sake of His Beloved,

Let us be

Torn

+

-Matthew 6:10

Beloved Beginning

+

We all know the story,

"In the Beginning

God Created..."

Birds and Brooks,

Moonrises and Mountains,

Wind, Sand, and Stars...

All that we see

He brought into being

By speaking a Word,

"Let There Be...",

~ With one Staggering Exception ~

When it came to creation's climax

The Most High's magnum opus,

Namely,

Mankind,

It was not a detached dictum

With which we were fashioned,

But rather God made a distinction in our design

By taking a Hands-on approach...

All the wonders previously formed

Became mere backdrop

As in this pinnacle moment,

"Let there be..."

became

"Let Us make..."

The Potter proceeded to push up His sleeves,

Pick up His clay,

And with a tenderness that brought all of Heaven to tears

This Master Craftsman got His Hands dirty

As He,

In The Beginning,

In the first intimate interaction

Between Deity and dust,

Skillfully Sculpted

His friend,

His companion,

His Beloved

+

Genesis 1:26-27