We’re giving away husbands on a game show.

“I know many people are concerned about the destruction of the sanctity of marriage, as well, and they view this as a threat. But let me ask you something, ladies and gentlemen, what are we really protecting when you look at the divorce rate in our society? Turn on the television. We have a wedding channel on cable TV devoted to the behavior of people on their way to the altar. They spend billions of dollars, behave in the most appalling way, all in an effort to be princess for a day. You don’t have cable television? Put on network TV. We’re giving away husbands on a game show. You can watch “The Bachelor,” where 30 desperate women will compete to marry a 40-year-old man who has never been able to maintain a decent relationship in his life. We have “The Bacholorette,” in reverse. And my favorite show, which thank God only ran one season because it was truly distasteful, was “The Littlest Groom,” where 30 desperate women competed to marry a dwarf. That’s what we’ve done to marriage in America, where young women are socialized from the time they’re five years old to think of being nothing but a bride. They plan every day what they’ll wear, how they’ll look, the invitations, the whole bit. They don’t spend five minutes thinking about what it means to be a wife. People stand up there before God and man — even in Senator Diaz’s church — they swear to love, honor, and obey; they don’t mean a word of it. So if there’s anything wrong, any threat to the sanctity of marriage in America, it comes from those of us who have the privilege and the right, and we have abused it for decades.”

NY Senator Diane Savino

A post. a window.

I wanted to post two pages from my journal. one of the pages, because it was part of my shaken response to the death of my grandmother last summer and is honest. someone may find themself less alone in reading it. that is worth the exposure. and one, because it is what I want to be known if I died soon.

Reminds me of my friend Eric.

Who has not forgotten the sunset.

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone—
and how it slides again out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance—
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love—
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you as you stand there,
empty-handed—
or have you too
turned from this world— or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

~ Mary Oliver

What does my life say?

From NPR:

To reclaim their “honor,” families in Syria have been known to kill raped female members. Even if families allow such women to live, they are not eligible to marry.

“We sat and discussed that we want to change this. We don’t want to change just the regime in Syria, but also this kind of stuff. So we will marry them in front of everyone,” said Ibrahim Kayyis, a 32-year-old baker from Jisr al-Shugour.

To do what is right at the expense of what is easy or socially acceptable is to the Glory of God.

They gave it a name.

how many floating clouds of feeling

are given words

by different cultures with different tongues

that value different things?

I've been looking for this word.

You start.

"The chief Raoni cries when he learns that brazilian president Dilma released the beginning of construction of the hydroelectric plant of Belo Monte, even after tens of thousands of letters and emails addressed to her and which were ignored as the more than 600 000 signatures. That is, the death sentence of the peoples of Great Bend of the Xingu river is enacted. Belo Monte will inundate at least 400,000 hectares of forest, an area bigger than the Panama Canal, thus expelling 40,000 indigenous and local populations and destroying habitat valuable for many species - all to produce electricity at a high social, economic and environmental cost, which could easily be generated with greater investments in energy efficiency."

I am torn. By my life, the power to be one man, and the current of influence I may be a part of... for change, for fire, for busting down walls and ripping out the pillars of hungry made-up gods. I want to destroy factories, I want to sew something, I want to tell one person, look them in the eye, and say 'stop consuming so much. you are cancer.' And see the look on their face that says, 'you start.'

I believe in such cartography.

“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.”

—Michael Ondaatje | The English Patient

Being alone is first in being in love

““The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person - without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.””

- Osho, Being In Love

Consciousness is

Thinking

Thinking is hard. I've heard is said that

genius is nothing more than continued attention,

I think that may be true.

I am possessed by desire to know and be known and feel and be felt

and if I am not seeking, I am sinking.

I am like a shark in that way.

But I know great men and women that are not like sharks at all,

to the naked eye, they seem much more like lonely bears

that forage and eat berries (somehow supporting their mass) and sleep

and are formidable in their own way.

But maybe we are all sharks, or maybe I am a bear,

I get excited when I think I may have it all wrong, because that is fresh and I am a learner.

Here is something I think I know: We want what we are not, because at the root, we want to control all of creation, and control comes from ownership and understanding.

I believe that is why we are attracted to opposites: to grasp them, understand them, own them and control them.

We do not fear what we understand.

I am a student of movements of the heart

I am a student of movements of the heart

when the clouds like milk in water billow and spill

down the low places of the mountains

and the late sun light is too smooth to believe,

I am a student of movements of the heart.

when I am bestowed a life of co-toil in worthy soil

with kin closer than blood by choice and not by choice,

and wake every day springing from my floor

ready to do what I was built to do,

as a pelican must feel when it sees its wings work on the lift of wind by the crest of waves at the shore, I am a student,

when a best friend is committed to raise too much money

for too high a mountain and kids too burdened with chains they did not fasten,

and a best friend shares a cigarette with me to confess his sins and

make me feel less alone,

I am a student of movements of the heart,

for they are neither joy nor sorrow,

but one part longing, one part hunger, another thirst,

and a space in my chest and fingers and knees,

that makes me wish to be barefoot,

to burst into mist and mingle there

where I have no body but all of it at once.

Critics as creators

There are critics,

and there are creators,

and so often, I am a critic of critics and a fan of creators,

but there are critics who are creators, because they see the world around them, assimilate it, and hold it up as something that can be grasped. I like them.

“Many films diminish us. They cheapen us, masturbate our senses, hammer us with shabby thrills, diminish the value of life. Some few films evoke the wonderment of life’s experience, and those I consider a form of prayer. Not prayer “to” anyone or anything, but prayer “about” everyone and everything. I believe prayer that makes requests is pointless. What will be, will be. But I value the kind of prayer when you stand at the edge of the sea, or beneath a tree, or smell a flower, or love someone, or do a good thing. Those prayers validate existence and snatch it away from meaningless routine.”

- Roger Ebert

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

From The Country of Marriage (Harcourt, 1975)

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,

and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,

we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don’t know ourselves.

Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,

we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,

we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like
burnt paper.

~D. H. Lawrence

I can hardly wait

for the day that all this contrast

comes in to focus,

and I see it from above.

but oh how I love the pitch and peak of the story, the flashlight

at God's chin as he reads me

my next turn.

We all agree. Yes we do. Yes.

If I am being honest,

and not the kind of honest that asks for the

permission to say hurtful things under the mask

of honesty,

but honest in the sense that I share something that

may be unpopular:

I'd say 95% of the time

I fear exploring my culture-enforced beliefs,

I fear questioning the doctrinal authority of Paul,

and the salvation story

and the implications on sin and judgment if choice is an illusion,

because of social discomfort and alienation,

rather than upsetting or frustrating or disgracing God.

I wonder what that says about my true allegiance,

and if I am unique,

and the Christian quest for truth over the establishment of a comfortable culture

and the fiction of communal accord.

I do not know the seasons

“There are no miracles beyond the seasons, yet you and I do not know the seasons. And what if a season shall be made manifest in the shape of a man? In a field I have watched an acorn, a thing so still and seemingly useless. And in the spring I have seen that acorn take roots and rise, the beginning of an oak tree, towards the sun. Surely you would deem this a miracle, yet that miracle is wrought a thousand thousand times in the drowsiness of every winter and the passion of every spring. Why shall it not be wrought in the heart of man? Shall not the seasons meet in the hand or upon the lips of a Man Anointed? If our God has given to earth the art to nestle seed whilst the seed is seemingly dead, why shall He not give it to the heart of man to breathe life into another heart, even a heart seemingly dead?”

- “Jesus the Son of Man” Kahlil Gibran

One world, under Man.

secular Humanism: the belief in finding the right through reason and philosophy:

a good theology for modern government, I'd say.

Christ-centered historicism, pre or post evangelicalism, universalism in the prism of Jesus, post-emergent realism, Zionism: isms looking for the right. some truths are focused on heaven. some truths are focused on the sexy idea of truth.

some truths are grounded and fed by fear and the loneliness of the soul. no, they all are.

And the mysterious clues get picked up, like bones in the badlands, of a brontosaurus,

and legends of dragons are written,

and the Cretaceous period is mapped out day-by-day as if we were there, by men who write backwards...

and reverence for the way it is is lost.

and worship for what it must have been is a golden calf.

I love the assembly line and hate the responsibility of one life under God.

and I worship what it must have been and drink and laugh.

April 26

"The inner wagings of biology and heart, reason and instinct. I detest my attraction to beautiful faces and bodies... how they can pull out of me more attention, laughter, focus... and tell me that beauty does not fade. ha. We are all promised by our lust that the taste of beautiful skin will satisfy our lonely bodies. It does not matter how many books, parables, films and songs I hear and see and read about the fleeting dangers of choice by physical attraction... we will still war with its silver tongue. I sometimes wish to be blind and content as an island and straight as an arrow and married. strikingly handsome. or fit. or fat and jolly. or a cow in another pasture, mocking me by paying no attention across the fence. I say sometimes, some more than others, some not really at all. I just hope to be good. A good boy with the talents in this box clutched in my arms."

Something I wrote

Something I wrote while in love with an impossible love and reading Rumi:

covered mystic poetry from a desert man

that removes the shape of

the soul, dissolving

self into The Friend,

I am possessed

marching possessed

in the mirror I hold

to set side by side

self and other and

skin - bone - breadth - hair

skill - speech - heat - hunger

pull and ignore and conquer

slave slave slave

slave slave and

not a bond-servant to

this

dip into mystic river,

free me. freedom. or

give me, and let it be dry.

or teach me how to

love, or what to love, or

break me, Spirit, in the Texas soil

like my sister

and sew me again and kill

me and wait, in white snow cover

for spring. or something else.

there is man and there is woman and

i have come to believe that gender is a layered thing

in every child of God.

It is a load-baring block in the wall,

but it is not a kind or a label or the wall itself.

masculine notes. feminine crescendos.

these things matter,

but in a world of education for all

and unity for love equal to function,

there is a wife who leads the family in her firm choices.

there is a man who shows tenderness for the quiet sheep.

there is a woman who seeks first the counsel of her husband.

and there is a husband who has never known why he feels.

and this is not an abomination.

this is the varied faces of God lived out in a union,

in the complexity of this human experiment.

and this I believe:

one day, the fractured identity of mankind will be made perfect,

but I do not believe the current mingling is without it's timely perfection,

and I do not believe that redemption will produce

a cold man who leads and makes no mistakes

and a sweet woman who quietly waits for instruction.

our Lord is not so boring. and not so poor an author.

God bless us

to the exclusion of lesser borders,

we have been given favor

because our Constitution was formed in His truth,

He gave unto us a ripe and virgin land

barely spoiled by the animal-men here before,

a stain easily under-rug swept to make way for providence.

"A man can be a Christian or a patriot, but he can't legally be a Christian and a patriot - except in the usual way: one of the two with the mouth, the other with the heart. The spirit of Christianity proclaims the brotherhood of the race and the meaning of that strong word has not been left to guesswork, but made tremendously definite - the Christian must forgive his brother man all crimes he can imagine and commit, and all insults he can conceive and utter - forgive these injuries how many times? Seventy times seven - another way of saying there shall be no limit to this forgiveness. That is the spirit and the law of Christianity. Well - Patriotism has its laws. And it is also a perfectly definite one; there are not vagueness's about it. It commands that the brother over the border shall be sharply watched and brought to book every time he does us a hurt or offends us with an insult. Word it as softly as you please; the spirit of patriotism is the spirit of dog and wolf. The moment there is a misunderstanding about a boundary line, or a hamper of fish, or some other squalid matter, see patriotism rise, and hear it split the universe with its war-whoop. The spirit of patriotism being in its nature jealous and selfish is just in man's line, it comes natural to him - he can live up to all its requirements to the letter; but the spirit of Christianity is not in its entirety possible to him.

The prayers concealed in what I have been saying is, not that patriotism should cease, and not that the talk about universal brotherhood should cease, but that the incongrous firm be dissolved and each limb of it be required to transact business by itself, for the future."

-Mark Twain's Notebook

a spider web is stronger than a stone

these few things

they are related one to another:

pornography is an abuse of intimacy through removed observation.

defiling the sacred through exaggeration and inflation.

and from it, comes mutant expectation and fantasy.

what then, is the Notebook? Atonement? Love Actually? Titanic?

We, all of us, want to feel valued and loved

not for what we do, but for who we are.

But such a 'who' is elusive, because of course,

we are what we do.

I have never loved a stone for who it is.

modern masculinity is vacuous.

it highlights the strength and not the character.

and from it comes a kind of death.

it teaches the man to compete, rise, tower,

isolate and dominate,

all the while his right-man self is weighing the cost

in the shadow of silence

in the shadow of almighty humor

and the razor lies of comparison

and for it, a man's self is retarded as without water in the sun

until it is first uncovered by a girl.

but oh, oh, to uncover yourself

commingled with the drunkenness

of a woman.

the chemistry, attraction, and desire for a woman

is like a shaky mirror held before you

on a roller coaster freefall. you see something of yourself,

but for the gasping collapse of lungs

you may mistake that shaky falling face

for your true self. because apart from her eyes locked to yours, and asking you pointed questions for the first time, you've never been considered. studied. and so studied yourself.

she asks so that she might understand and own.

a brother asks so that he might delight and share.

that quoted, 'you too?! I thought I was the only one.'

this is why male friendship is a cornerstone

of the man complete.

and the liberation of a man to love his wife completely.

unrequited love is beautiful

because the pain makes you feel important, betrayed by the order of things,

and the love remains unsung eternal. and therefore perfect. unburdened by the decay

of infatuation.

remove desire, and we die.

this is why contentment is not true peace. it is death.

be content to sip your coffee and read a book for a weekend.

and a day, no, a week will pass, and you will kill the moth

in the window just to watch it die.

this is why old age so often becomes sadness:

when we become irrelevant, no longer depended on,

when our life is reflection not ignition, we can feel the wicking death

creep up our pant leg.

and why heaven must be something different than we think.

If the sin of Adam bestowed death unto the world,

and before the leopard lay with the lamb,

then why does the spider have venom,

why does the lion have claws and the eagle talons,

why would the Maker sew a shark for peace when it was so

meticulously pieced for death,

why is the decay of canyons the mark of their beauty?

perhaps his gift was the death of man alone.

and if heaven is eternal life in heavenly body,

it must carry with it some disappointment.

because eternal youth for the saved

would rob me of my memory of my grandmother,

her perfect crooked hands and white hair, the softness

of her face is only as it can be with the badges of time,

i do not know Betty Jo at 20 years old.

and the vivacity of youth and quick movements are not what I miss,

the slow simple gentle hands, those I miss.

but even so, how selfish of me.

a man has in him two possible foundations:

'I am worthy.'

'I am unworthy.'

and these two things will dominate his social posture.

they will fuel him in the thrusting of a new exchange.

when he is in a room of people, he will feel either

'I am energized to explore these new people and they are energized to explore me'

or he will feel

'I am a vacuum of non-contribution, and everyone else is aware of this.'

and the one cannot understand the other.

Music is science

In science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Christianity we find the poem itself. - CSL

I wrote this to a friend, or something like it

every wooden man

has a galley full of slaves

rowing to the shores of their

future freedom

but not before their present bondage.

and here I spill out the sides

from the wicked man's perch

he hears

the negro spirituals condemning

him with their guttural harmony

flavored by the gasp of a woman

dead in child birth.

I am a wooden man

looking at Canaan on the horizon

propelled by my shackled brothers

and hatred of my port and bow

but a believer in their freedom

the death of my way of living

and the resurrection of other dead.