Broken trails and winded sails.
Sold for a pittance;
Auditioning for your pity.
Hearts to open,
White paper to be wrote upon,
Black ink and three red soaked nails.
Dirt and dust.
Words covered in rust.
The us in trust.
Negotiate whimsical notions of melancholy;
Walk alongside this precipice.
Fasten all hope.
Anchor it.
Take hold, grab onto my wrists.
Don’t abandon the shattered heart,
Before grace rescues it completely from the abyss.
(RL2018)
Jaded.
Silence and emergency,
In bludgeoning contrast, clang in discordant unity.
The murderous, winsome sin of vain words
Like a hammer into a child’s birthday cake,
Crushes the crisp dew.
Fresh condensation from heaven
Poluted by shattering humiliation,
Breathes hopelessness.
The abyss yawns;
And with the crushing of this child,
its monstrous smile,
Gets ready to feed off of this child’s broken heart.
Silenced, yet emerging,
God responds,
Hope breathes, and pain retreats,
At light breaking through broken glass.
Inner screams, through sigh and powerless frustration,
Answered by prayer and Spirit-filled consolation.
Though there,
I was unaware,
That the shadows of angels were always obscured by the dark.
©RL2018
.
Schoolyard popularity
Social media celebrities
Armchair activists ignoring reality
News feed narcotics
Narcissist neurotics
Status anxiety?
A “like” is not endorsement
Endorsement is not a comment
Silence betrays arrogance?
Fearing opinions
Impression management
Feeds perceptions
Poses vs. tags
Covering and uncovering
Wrinkles and rags
The calm update hides a post-atomic sky
Words are lost in the smoke & desolation
Blind mirrors reflect no light
.
©RL2014
. ‘Sin is mainly located not in political and economic structures, but in the human heart; good and evil are not political categories’
(J.Ratzinger, cited by O’Sullivan, J. 2006 in The President, the Pope, and The Prime Minister, p.194)
Christian. Ignite Hope.
Christian. Write.
Christian. Shine.
Christian. Unchain.
Christian. Gather.
Christian. Sever.
Christian. Bind.
Christian. Empower.
Christian. Sacrifice.
Christian. Love.
Christian. Say ”No”
Christian. Say “Yes”
Christian. Breathe.
Christian. Live.
Christian. Comment.
Christian. Eat.
Christian. Be Content.
Christian. Exercise.
Christian. Rest.
Christian. Obey.
Christian. Grow.
Christian. Go.
Christian. Listen.
Christian. Question.
Christian. Discern.
Christian. Fight.
Christian. Serve.
Christian. Repent.
Christian. Pray.
Christian. Learn.
Christian. Translate.
Christian. Interpret.
Christian. Apply.
Christian. See.
Christian. Encourage.
Christian. Challenge.
Christian. Walk.
Christian. Follow.
Christian. Seek.
Christi n . Be found.
Christian. Bless.
Christian. Hear.
Christian. Heal.
Christian. Forgive.
Christ . Victorious.
….
‘The focal point of the Church’s action is the decisive activity of prayer…Because prayer is the decisive activity, prayer must take precedence…, and in no circumstances must it be suspended.’[1]
….
Christian.
Don’t forget.
References:
[1] Barth,K. 1938 Freedom Under the Word, C.D 1.2 Hendrickson Publishers 2010 p.695
{inspired by St.Patrick’s Breastplate}
.
Ask me what I see, and I’ll show you battle scars.
Tell me what I’m not
and I’ll show you my old home, and its prison bars
Tell me how I’ve failed,
and I’ll show you my bible,
its well-worn corners, impressed with the mark of a child’s hopeful embrace,
and how, though, lost in a sea of loneliness
that child broke through the bitter dark.
Tell me to prove this
and I’ll show you healed marks,
of how they illustrate a trophy of grace;
the miracle that is this mended heart.
Tell me why I’m not enough
and I’ll tell you of teen intoxication,
of long midnight footsteps away from temptation,
and the gut wrenching sound of the devil’s bark.
Tell me how none of this ever happened,
and I’ll take you right back to the start,
then speak of father wounds,
and in minute detail, roll out the saga of abuse
and the many cruel people who joyfully played their part.
Scream at me that I’m wrong,
and I’ll have to walk away,
for I was there in that moment,
you abandoned your right to have a say.
(©RL2017)
“Create in me a clean heart, O God,and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.”
– Psalm 51:17
.
The appearances of tended wounds and mended hearts,
offer little room for understanding how tender they still are.
The former dances with the latter.
Perception is distorted by this intoxicated waltz.
Complimented by self-medication
and a patient’s self-prescribed dose.
Complicated by
Its dark promise, its false solace, its temporary pulse.
But by all means salute;
stand in wonder.
Give up your “like”, your “share”, your applause
Gather the wounds, see the marks.
Be sucked in to the pit;
watch the walls fall apart,
as the veil lifts and reveals the devil behind the self-righteous mask.
Time gasps in horror.
Suspense grips the scene from right to left.
From clock to clock,
beat to beat.
From silence to infuriating,
Tick.
Tock.
Don’t be fooled.
Leap beyond the crevices created by human haste;
Cut through the noise of a fool’s embrace
For encased within both God’s command and claim,
is seared into human history and human hearts,
through living Word, and touchable scars.
The witness, not written by any movement of stars,
His “remember me!, whispered,
carried, through epochs and delivered thus far.
God breathed humanity into His name
And from the breath of angels,
their baritone awe is the same,
of wonder,
at grace,
of hooded silhouettes
and impossible handshakes.
(©RL2017)
‘Nothing is worse in times of danger than to live in a dream world. To warn a [democratic] political system of the menace hanging over it does not imply an attack against it, but is the greatest service one can render that system.’
(Jaques Ellul, Propaganda, xvi:1965)
In March I announced my idea (Author’s Note: As Things Stand) for a side project for the year. The plan was to piece together a book of poetry/prose inspired by theology. Most of which is available under the poetry tag in the menu at the top of this blog.
I’ll be working on indexing that poetry as time permits, in order to make accessing them easier. I plan to do this with my other articles as well. I’ve been piecing this blog together for just over four years now and I’m thankful that it’s been more than just a benefit to me. I don’t claim to know everything, but I aim to know what I can, and then share from that base. This approach is what I hope the build my two hundred page book of poem, prose and hand drawn surrealist art from. For now, the plan is to publish an e-format book and see how it goes from there.
Rather than pen out a large volume of work on theology right from the start, I figured a book of theo-poetry/prose was a good place to start.
The tentative title is: Inhaled Grace Ignites and the only real artwork of my own I’ve come close to being excited about, for the cover, is this one:
