There is No One Like You (Adv, Days 23/24; HelloGoodBye 09/10) [REPOST]
“I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer.”
–I Timothy 2.8, NIV
There are these days, when it is so difficult to find words that wrap around concepts, that, no matter how concrete in one’s mind, find it impossible to find substance in the barrier we use to communicate called language. In those moments, it seems that experience does precede existence and existentialism, for a moment, seems fun (and fun is clearly the wrong word, but for to-day, for this beautiful-day-before-Advent, will have to do).
Mr. Crowder crowed through the speakers “There is nooooo-one like You…” and in the seconds that followed slivers of eternity slipped through the wall of sound. The elders bowed, the beasts bellowed and the saints sang in holy adoration “Holy, Holy, Holy…”
Hope leaks into life in the most unexpected ways, ways that we’d never ask for, but cannot do without. We’d never ask for them because they hurt oh-so-badly; we cannot do without them because they are the pearls of great price, treasures to be cherished.
—
I’ve been more intentional about writing lately (and the reason for that is coming…). The past two-and-a-half years have been epic, at the very least. The genesis of the journey was in March of O-Six, high-lighted by a late-night {spiritual} beat-down in July {thank you, Mark Driscoll}, and punctuated with new life that October. Two months later, on a frigid Friday in December, Pittsburgh was finally in view. Six apartments, three cities, and 80,000 miles on the Interstate later I landed just where I jumped from. I didn’t expect it, honestly, to be back here so soon, if ever…
(more…)
death and titans/death and taxes (an ode to zwan and crassness)
Everything just feels like rain…
There are these days, the cold and lonely April days (this reminds me of oh-seven) when a cigarette would be really nice. Had I not been so close to one hundred days, I surely would have smoked it. Maybe even a pack; all at once. Or one after the other. Seven minutes a piece. Done in one hundred and forty minutes.
That’s a lot of smoking. I coffee’d instead. (Prince, Bucks, Coffee Co – the girl there was cute. She liked my Bible.)
Lars loves Schrott crassness; it is no secret that none of us have tact.
There are days when you just wanna say it. They’re that shitty. But it’s always been true that when things go low, redemption is at hand and Christ is made sweet(er) than before. It is difficult to see though the fog that is now and it becomes suffocating. Time slows its high paced rhythm and seconds drag like months.
Tick. Tock. Tick…
(more…)
4.14.2009 (Reflections on Kalas and Easter) [a myspace import]
Facebook is too public for private matters. Everyone’s there. Even those who pay me. They should not be privy to the private. (Did I just say myspace is less public? Truth. No one’s here. That’s why).
Mr Kalas passed yesterday (I prefer not to euphemize, but, to-day, I will). He was the voice that was larger than baseball itself; at least for the Philadelphia area. Even I, a Philly-Sports hater and diehard fan of all things Pittsburgh loved the voice of Summer. I loved him even more than our own dear Fratare, and he was special in my 10, 11 and 12 year old heart (think: Bonds and Bobby-Bo). Yet even when someone that special leaves us, the world does not stop its spin, the game goes on, and though we grieve, their vapor has passed. The world and yes, even the game, stops for no one. What a humbling thought this is. We are only specks in the theatre of life; life that has stretched countless millennia. Our span is nothing.
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A Moment
[A Gilead-inspired short prose piece]
Today you awoke, and it was finally Autumn. Actually, it’s not that today is the first day of the Fall, but it’s the first day that you realized it. There you were at the Railway Station, surveying the huddled masses, nervously tapping each of your pockets. You were assuring yourself that all was in its right place. Then, the whistle. The train is coming.
The breeze picks up as the train nears, fronted by a Zephyr-like standard bearer. The gust begins to tug at your skirt, but your legs aren’t cold. The wooden platform rumbles, feeling like the deck of a ship at high seas as it moves with the coming cavalcade.
The Engineer is visible. There is the steam. The Engineer is invisible. The whistle, the whistle, three times the whistle blows. Smack!
Your book fell. You recover it from the linoleum floor. And what is that screaming noise? You look up. It is the birth pangs of tea, steaming and salient on your stove. You throw the blanket off of your legs, and onto the arm rest of your chair.
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thoughts.
We Welcome a New Contributor
_______________
At the behest of Lady Monica Marusek I join your community of reformed hearts and revived minds. I am not a seminarian nor am I on my way to seminary, I join you as a fellow, lets say…redeemed worm. Whose end is that with all faculties: mind, heart, and soul and limbs alike, I may come to know, touch, taste and see, as grace allows, the depths of and implications of the good news. What I am is an artist, in a sense, more specifically a writer, so I confess, at first sight I believed this was a site for academia. Not as if there is a divorcing of the two, knowledge and art, but while perusing the archives of your former posts I found this posted by Paul, as he writes about the change of one’s state of being that is the basis of Reformed Theology,
But this has implications far beyond the theology of salvation. It means that Christians must have a passion that spills over from this change of being. It means that we must appeal to the whole man to increase their delight in God. It means this site must move from posts on the “Knowledge” of the Holy, to sweeping prose, poetry and musings. From deep theology that reveals who God is to soul-stirring poetry and meditations flowing from men and women forever impacted by their encounters with this revealed God.
..and my mind shouts Exactly!
This is what I have ascribed to, this is what then I will join you to do, to write prose and poetry that extols yet grapples with and stirs heart and mind for one end,
seeing Christ more clearly,
that he may be rightly treasured,
and duly glorified.
Pray it be done .
There is No One Like You (Adv, Days 23/24; HelloGoodBye 08/09)
“I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer.”
–I Timothy 2.8, NIV
There are these days, when it is so difficult to find words that wrap around concepts, that, no matter how concrete in one’s mind, find it impossible to find substance in the barrier we use to communicate called language. In those moments, it seems that experience does precede existence and existentialism, for a moment, seems fun (and fun is clearly the wrong word, but for to-day, for this beautiful-day-before-Advent, will have to do).
Mr. Crowder crowed through the speakers “There is nooooo-one like You…” and in the seconds that followed slivers of eternity slipped through the wall of sound. The elders bowed, the beasts bellowed and the saints sang in holy adoration “Holy, Holy, Holy…”
(more…)
