the flaming bush

in my dream i entered the conspicuous territory of Highliman and witnessed a line of virtuosi from throughout the ages. they wound serpentine through the city streets, down corridors, and behind allyways. one after another they took a pair of shears to the flaming bush, pruning it how they saw fit. the paparazzi had a field day. they each damaged the bush by their unrehearsed imaginations until the flaming bush vanished. though it disappeared, they knew it reamined and continued in turn, sometimes shearing thin air, but for the fear that the flaming bush remaimed behind sight.

i haven't written this idea as a poem yet. it has to do with the present state of philosophy in the wake of surrealism and all its destructive effects. the present philosopher doesn't want to be rational so much as to startle the present ethical situation (for further see, Peter Singer's Writings on an Ethical Life). the continuity is broken between what has been thought before and what is thought now (at least in ideal, nevertheless we emerge from what has preceeded). thus, we are disenchanted from reality, spirituality, which is the heart of reality. in compromising the Truth of the Lord who Reveals, modern man aimlessly attempts to reconstruct reality, but the only forseeable result is an even more senseless and disturbed application...

so as i've been reading a great deal lately i am confident that the Church (universal) has adequately handled the sundry obstacles that we face presently, even dealing with matters prior to their fruitition. it must have beeen because they bathed in God's Word on a regular basis and weren't afraid to read that which lends threatening voice to the religious, regular practices of Church in worship. a few of the books are as follows: "Ideas Have Consequences" and "The Southern Tradition at Bay" by Richard M. Weaver, "Modern Art and the Death of a Culture" by H. R. Rookmaaker, "Your God Is Too Safe" by Mark Buchanan, "The Great Divorce" and "The Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis, "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte, and "Knowing God" by J. I. Packer. it is these and other books that have reinforced my belief that the Church acts now as a bastion of sustaining truth, not only for out present age, but for generations to come.

Dear Nearly: Part 10 "Linguiniless"

it has been so long, but apparently, not long enough. i was so close this time i could feel it's natural fulfillment. but such is your way Nearly, beckoning a chain of events and curtailing them by your sake cleverness. at my grilfriends party, while we were eating a delicious meal of linguini served two different ways, spinach salad, and bread so dense eating was akin to pumping iron, my enjoyment was dimininshed by the understanding of your presence. who could have invited you i don't know, but you were most unwelcome in the mucus memebrane of my sinuses; acting as a bouncer of fragrance and flavor. every time i raised the fork to my mouth i was dissappointed by the vapid, banal repitition of flavor. the cooking was magnificient and i Nearly, could just taste the wondor of it all by mixing an active imagination with the density of steam rising from the table. i remember as i took the bread and began to chew i could envision the morsels of Irish past; as i would bite the Linguini from my fork i could picture the pasta of Tuscan Kings; and as i finished off the remainder of my romaine, spinach salad i saw Hobbits dancing around me mispronouncing words and cuddling with people. so as it were, my taste was distilled by the appetite of my imagination. that's what you get, Nearly, next time remember, at your stunting presence i will be finishing things above and beyond my means...(photo by: annonymous)

"The Veery"

(photo by: anonymous)
when day is hushed and hidden,
and golden words are mute,
the elegist of evening
touches his silver lute.

as if the light were lyric
that from the first star gleams
for through the dewy pinewood
the glimmering choral streams.

as if through lonely oriels
of sundown's gorgeous fane
resplendent dying beauty sang
anthens of love and pain.

as if the rosebay's beauty
in music overbrimmed
till all the fading forest hears
her radiant vespers hymned.

as if a heart long harried,
and scourged by many a rod,
had triumphed and were singing
safe in the arms of God.
by Archibald Rutledge
from "I Hear America Singing"

beaded beard of the future

and gave him back to his son

it is difficult to make assumptions about the intense relationship between God the Father and God the Son, but we know that it is unuterably intense--too powerful for human ears to hear and too marvelous for naked eyes to read: that is why i believe Christ layered his teaching with thick imagery and dynamic repitition. thus, Jesus administered the teaching of he and his Father's kingdom carefully. the father-son relationship in contemporary society is tainted by technology, civility, and sin--as our Mastor said, "because of the hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so". culture affects an understanding of the father-son relationship as well. nevertheless, God doesn't demand a perfect replica of his Father-Son relationship, but he does desire balanced, loving families. here is the struggle. the enemy, the evil one, and the prince of lies wants to destroy the family.

so we see his abject dealings in Luke 9:37-43, but we also see our Mastor at work to do good. an account of the boy with an unclean spirit. Jesus comes down from the mountain and a great crowd meets him (37). next we find out that a father cries out to the Christ for his sons well-being (38). this scene touches me. the people are multitudinous and desperate and a man raises his voice. he singels himself out. the leppers did this; the bleeding woman did this also; the nine who were blind did this; now the healthy father with the possessed son does this (39). how humiliating. "i am not ill, but my son is taken by an evil spirit. my pride and joy is siezed by a spirit. "it makes him vomit." the crowd looks on. "it shatters him." the crowd looks on. "it hardly leaves him." the crowd looks on. "it'll kill him." and still the crowd looks on (i wonder if he isn't bubbling in tears). his desperation is heightened when he says that the disciples couldn't help his son he doesn't wish to truoble the Messiah, but he's forced to seek the help of Christ (40).

Jesus then rebukes not the spirit in the boy but the spirit of the age; not the ill-humored boy but the ill-humored generation. this boy is possessed by a daemon, but more importantly--the root and heart of this sort of activity--people don't believe. after having studdied this passage, i am sure that Jesus wasn't upset at his disciples over lacking a degree of faith but a kind of faith, for he goes on to tell his disciples he wouldn't be here much longer (44). it seems he also addresses the crowd of people. so the "faithless and twisted generation" are those who do not believe the Salvation of God; those who concern themselves with things of this world instead of the things of God; those who love themselves and avoid God (41). Jesus proceeds to heal the boy of possession, "and gave him back to his father. and all were astonished at the majesty of God", as seeds of faith were cast into the crowd and into the home (42-43).

in twenty-first century America, the government has become the father of families; the fathers have become the inmates. you sit and listen carelessly and indifferent. that's because many of you are selfish and other's of you are just selfish. Jesus shows here that he is interested in reconciling son to father and father to son. when there is reconciliatory work in the family you might almost say "and he [being Christ] gave him back to his son]. he makes ammends in families and heals the wounds created by daemonic activity. if you want to be involved in the work of Christ then you must make orison that you might be involved in the harvest of the lost, for Christ came to seek and to save the lost. visit the prisons, the nurserys, and the homeless shelters. the psyche wards, the bars, and the hospitals. it is the administration of the gospel that restores families and makes beautiful once again what has been maligned by the malitious enemy. let us consider non-believers and seek to do wonders for them in the name of Christ, delivering them from eternal anguish and mortal affliction. if you watch deplorable events on the news or watch a man curse at his wife or watch a fight break out in the mall, watch yourself and see how your witnessing is, because it is the gospel that saves--regenerating individuals and society.

4% at Twenty-Four on April 3rd

i've been able to visit four percent of the countries in the world and i don't really care to pretend about "all" the others in that i'm finite and i stopped pretending when i was eight. now i'm twenty-four and must set pecendence to God's eternal will for my mortal life. if it were my choice though, i'd go to northern Africa and teach in a university while setting up an orphanage for discarded kids. due to the often innane nature of desire and the irreconcilable pretense of dreams, i don't put much stock in this. i also have other unrelatable desires for the more immidiate future, so the likelihood of itinerating the northern division of Africa, namely the capitol of Tunisia, Tunis, and surrounding counties when necessary, grows in dubiety. nevertheless, i predicate to visit other countries eventually. that's probably a poem...