it's about...

...time to come back.
Christmas was awesome, but I let too many other things crowd out too much of it.
just another day, but it ain't. it's supposed to change things. it's supposed to change me.
it always does. I want it to, more than ever.
I glimpse a self I don't hate, ever so briefly.
I see things in others that I let slip away all too easily. good things that will overpower the rest if I let them.
I need to be changed, a lot.
God, thank You. I love You, and I love them. wife, family, friends, this life is less than nothing without them. You are enough, but I'm glad you choose to reach me through them.
I reeeeeally wish I'd milked this year for more of You, wish I knew more of my life made You happy.
sorry.
like to try again, 'kay?

peel

this is a big f*ckin' onion.
too many layers.
know just enough to know I have no idea.
this layer looks a lot like the last few thousand.
I am grateful that some appear to really like onions, or can find the hope of good in them somewhere.
damn if I know how they do it, though.
this hurts.

burst the bubble

Had a couple of great conversations with two of our close female friends this weekend. One of them is a Navy wife whose husband used to be stationed here, transferred to Washington State and is packing up to move to Hawaii. She called my wife and I in tears because she was finding this latest move even more draining than the others. She misses us and a tragically small number of other good friends she's made in her years of doing the Navy Hop all around the country.
She was telling me about the difficulties she's had connecting with people at her church, and when she told me about their approach to ministry and relationships in general, I can understand why. And I don't know how she lasted as long as she has in that place.
She described an environment where "fellowship" is a mile wide and an inch deep, where trust is rare, where politics flavours relationships, where "concerned brothers/sisters" report possible lapses in others' Christian behaviour to the pastor, where it's all about image over substance, sin management instead of life transformation, and where tips and techniques and platitudes keep the naughty little sheep corraled neatly in a tiny corner of the Kingdom of God until He comes back to claim them.
That's only my impression of her description of this place, and shouldn't be construed as a judgment, because I'm in no place to make one. But I have personally been neck-deep in such a place, and the sad thing is that once it infects you, you bring it everywhere you go.
If what's coming up next shocks you, you probably need it. If you think I'm off base, or crossing lines that shouldn't be crossed, by all means let me know, but please be prepared to defend your position with the Word and the Spirit. I have heard most if not all the arguments before.
The incident she described which left the greatest impression on me was one where a young sailor who was a shipmate of her husband's was on the floor in the front of the church, praying and weeping as he struggled with something obviously very painful and difficult. As she was a good friend of him and his wife, she went over and laid a hand on his shoulder while she prayed for him. Afterwards, when she was leaving, she was stopped by two women of the church who asked her how she knew the man. When she replied that he was a good friend, they told her that the church usually has male pastors pray for the men.
This reminded me in stark raving colour of how incalculably blessed I am by my friends here, and how ruined I am for what most in our culture call "church as usual." For Christ's good sake, what was dangerous or inappropriate about that? This was not some clandestine tryst, this was praying for someone IN CHURCH. Dear God, these people would have a stroke if they walked in on us and our friends at a cell group meeting.
I bought into this way of thinking long ago, that women and men had no business ministering to each other in any deep fashion unless they were married to each other, that appropriate boundaries between the sexes preclude almost any affection beyond the briefest and most perfunctory of hugs, that the only way men and women ought to need each other is in the context of marriage or blood relations.
Stuff that.
If every good and perfect gift comes from God, then what am I to make of the good works that have been done in my life through my friends - including my sisters in Christ? Who, if not Him, gets the glory for that? These convictions that I'd had were screaming at me when I first joined Grace and Peace Fellowship, when these incredible women were beckoning my wife and me farther and deeper into more and richer life in Him than I'd ever dreamed possible. I begged my wife and my brothers to tell me I was doing something horribly wrong. I would confess to them dreams and desires of (healthy) intimacy with my sisters and wait for the ax to fall. It never did.
What if intimacy really is okay? What would you say if I told you that once when I was facing a very painful time of healing, that it was a sister, one of my best friends and the wife of another of my best friends, who was walking me through it? What if I told you that at one point she wrapped her arms around me and held me? Held. Cuddled. Lingeringly embraced. Prolonged body contact. There. I said it. Are you scandalised? My wife was holding me too. Does that sanctify it, or make it a threesome? If you choose the latter then someone needs to bitch-slap you until your ears ring.
The whole time they were holding me I was begging God to forgive me. WHY?! I didn't initiate this; all I did was receive it. Blissfully. Do you really think there was anything sexual in it for me, her or my wife? There wasn't. So where's the problem? How sexual do you think I want to be with a friend like that? I am committed to her well-being and that of her husband and children. I love them far, far too much to cross that line.
Here's the kicker: I DON'T WANT TO. Not a bit. There is no desire in me to be immoral with these people I love so dearly. I love my God, my wife, and them too much for that consideration to be anything but repulsive. This was okay because they saw what God has been doing in me, and freely choose to partner with Him in it. Nothing has happened in a corner. My wife has been there through all of it. She trusts me and our friends. My sisters trust me. My brothers trust me with their wives and children. There is nothing I want badly enough to throw that away or even threaten it.
Don't get me wrong. I had good reasons for subscribing to those beliefs, such as deep-rooted problems with lust and a decades-long addiction to pornography. For a sizeable stretch of my walk with Christ those restrictions were healthy and necessary. My own personal observations - and experiences - have confirmed that there is indeed real risk of unhealthy attachments between genders. The enemy puts a great deal of his limited resources into destroying families. Even now, there are definitely some things I won't discuss with a woman other than my wife. I'm careful who I'm alone with, and for how long, and about what happens while I'm there.
My problem is less with those beliefs than with the depressingly prevalent attitude in the Western church that such strictures are the immutable and undisputable will of God for all people at all times. That attitude has no basis that I can find in Scripture. The more I follow Christ, the more I see the fear that is driving so much of our thinking in the Church today. Fear is really nothing more than misapplied faith. We put more faith in our own depravity and fallenness than in God's desire and ability to redeem and transform them into His glory and power and love. That is an insult to His sacrifice on the cross for us.
Any relationship includes risk if it's going to be deep enough to matter at all. There is real danger in using a stove. But that doesn't mean you never learn to cook; it just means you wait until you're mature enough to learn how without burning yourself.
I love and need my brothers, but God never intended them to be enough. I need my sisters. I need the balance their femininity brings to my hard-edged little world. I need them to keep inviting me farther into life and beauty, to awaken that which God made me to be. Their touch, the scent of their hair, the gentle, firm press of their embraces, their trust in and acceptance of me when I dare, ever so tremulously, to burst the bubble, arouses in me something so pure and priceless, so worth fighting for, that the lust that so used to define me cowers and slinks into oblivion. Nothing else in my life has given me such power over those base appetites, nothing else has helped me become truer to my own wife like their love. Many will flatly refuse to believe what I just wrote, but I am no liar. And those things are the design of no one but God. The Church needs to be a place where such intimacy can be nurtured and practiced, because it will destroy by contrast the bondage of sexual and emotional vampirism that the enemy has been weaving between man and woman since the Fall.

"well, I'm lost, I'm angry, and I'm armed." - Mal

Back on the Internet after a few days with a fried modem. Posted most of this on the RH forum a couple of weeks ago, pretty much sums up my stance on an issue that's important to me. If the fact that it is scandalises you or fills you with contempt, convince me of my error or stay out of my hair. I'm willing to learn, but not to engage in empty invective, and maybe it's not so unthinkable that I could possibly be learned from on a point or two. It's amazing how many people will line up either to lambast me as a bloodthirsty warmonger because I believe in the God-given right to defend oneself or (especially) others, or to deride me as a limpwristed fence-rider because I'm not itching to pull a trigger at the merest hint of a threat. Stuff them all. They aren't living my life or addressing my responsibilities. I am.
So...
If Christ meant "turn the other cheek" to forbid defence as well as revenge, then the Christian response to all forms of evil is non-resistance. On a personal level, that means to let the pedophile have his way with your child, let the rapist enjoy your sister or daughter or wife, let the assailant do what he will with you. On a national scale, that means no police, no military, no defencive capabilities of any kind for a nation that calls itself Christian. How long would such a nation last in this world?
If obedience to this precept precludes the use of any sort of violence, then Christians have no place in the military or police. If this is true, then my brother-in-law, several good friends, and God alone knows how many more professing Christians are not only walking in sin, but making a living off of it and in some cases leading others into it. Also, were all Christians to take this view to heart and leave such professions, then that means in the case of the United States that everyone who pulls a trigger, drops a bomb, or drives a warship (or issues orders to those who do) answers to no higher authority than Uncle Sam. Am I the only one shuddering at that prospect?
This also raises the question of why Jesus commended a Roman centurion (a senior NCO in the Roman army who likely had spilled a great deal of blood in his day) for faith that put that of all Israel in the shade, yet made no recorded attempt to urge repentance in the form of leaving the legions. Also, if my understanding of history is correct, the soldiers who questioned John the Baptist on what true repentance meant for them in practical terms were likely Roman, i.e., armed agents of a rapacious pagan empire. Yet John (who was Spirit-filled from birth) never suggested that they leave the service of Rome, only that they conduct themselves therein in a manner that reflected the fear of God and love for those He loves.
As an aside, I find it telling that although police organisations tend to favour gun control, individual officers (and I know two well enough to call family) tend to be some of our nation's most ardent supporters of the Second Amendment. Yet perhaps no demographic is at greater risk of injury or death by a firearm in the hands of a private citizen. They simply make the distinction between a law-abiding citizen and a criminal. It's a judgment of actions, not heart or human worth.
Just to be clear, let me state my own position:
I do not own firearms because I fear death. I don't. I know where I'm going, and frankly, the sooner the better. I own firearms because they expand my options in the face of unrestrained evil. They are by no means my only options, or even my first. I will avoid trouble if at all reasonably possible. I will pursue peace with all as much as it depends on me, though sometimes peace is achieved because the one who would gladly and callously break it chooses not to because they don't want a load of 00 buckshot in their thorax. I will risk my own life tremendously to defuse a confrontation with someone who wishes harm to myself or those I love without violence. I will never pull a trigger or even brandish a weapon if there is the merest hint of any other reasonable option. I will never, ever take or even threaten a life to preserve mere money or property. I would vastly prefer to deter aggression than engage it, but if armed I am much better equipped to do either. I am prepared to face evil unarmed, but I don't want that to be my only option.
And honestly, I don't know how someone can love an enemy and shoot him to death at the same time, except that an evildoer can make a choice that leaves no other reasonable option for he who would act in love. C. S. Lewis, a former WWI infantry officer, went into much greater depth on this issue in his essay Why I Am Not A Pacifist, from his collection The Weight Of Glory. I tend to trust the perspective of those who have been there, because frankly, I'll be happy if I never do.

scenosaur

So long ago. No internet or cell phones or iPods. Cut-and-paste involved sharp things and chemicals, both of which we were already intimately familiar with. Vinyl records and scratchy radio shows on far-off college stations at weird hours. Piles and stacks and oceans of cheap cassette tapes, endless combinations of nameless songs by bands whose names we never learned. A pathetic few of us huddling together under the disapproving stare of the rest of our species, and reveling in it. Sick of the masses sieg-heiling their pet guitar gods and Spandex-clad generic messiahs, the party-hearty cultural fog of the 1980's clinging to every surface, the faceless dread of being showered with ICBMs resolved into a bitterly cheerful resignation, the fever and push to become a something that does nothing but consumes and conforms and flees for its very non-life from anything that would cause an actual thought.
We were always hated and misunderstood, which sounds self-pitying and melodramatic even when it's true, but we didn't brood over it except for brief spells which we would help each other out of any way we could, be it a kind word or a slap in the head or an explosion in the backyard. What did the normals know about us, or care? We had each other, and we knew there were others of our kind all over the world. The power we wielded to rip holes in the illusory fabric of normalcy was intoxicating, whether at school watching the same tired drama day in and day out, or packing into Bunny's Escort to the Crystal Mall in full regalia to flaunt our outcast glory, or tormenting a house full of stoners and metalheads with "music" so bad other punks hated us.
Been on both sides of the stage at a million shows. Black Flag was my first. Leon and I must have been the youngest there by a fair bit, and damned well the scaredest, pasted up against the back wall of UConn's Student Union Ballroom. The Ramones, Husker Du, Supertouch, Sheer Terror, Chronic Disorder, Bloodbath, Forced Reality, Killing Time, Big Mistake, Hatebreed, 25 Ta Life, Eastcide, Follow Through, Stepkid, Smackdown, The Afflicted, Rotzkinder, The Enemies, Golgo 13, No Innocent Victim, Headnoise, Flatfoot 56, The Dropkick Murphys, The Last Hope, Madball, pH, Under Investigation, Suiciety, Think Tank, Crossthread, Warpiper. Some were huge, legendary, eternal, others were gone as fast as they formed with barely ten kids to remember they even existed, but it was still heat and sweat and leather and nicotine and beer and blunt-force trauma and grins and yells and boots and fists and patches and ratty old Chucks and one big happy dys-f*ckin'-functional family.
They are my tribe. I love them. Some are older than me, some young enough to be my progeny. They are all wonderful. I love their honesty, their feverish yearning for reality, their refusal to pretend that the world isn't going to hell. I mourn that their best efforts all too often short-circuit themselves, yet even so they struggle with all their heart to be so much more than just another clique with passwords and secret handshakes and uniforms. I grieve that they are millimeters away from understanding the One Who died at the hands of the authorities whose sham and hypocrisy He exposed, yet they revile Him because someone fed them the lie that He and the "authorities" are on the same team.
I fed that lie every time I caved in to the pressure to be someone else's idea of holy, every time I poked around someone's life and made arm's length judgments out of fear rather than speaking truth in love, every time I worried more about what my new church "friends" would think than what those beautiful, ragged, heart-kicking kids needed to hear from a God Whose love for them put Him on a cross.
I don't know what to do for them anymore. I don't know if I can even go back again. I want to, somehow. On God's terms, not mine. But dear God I want them to know Him. Fuck religion. If they meet - really meet - Jesus, they'll fall in love with Him, and religion will slide off them like snot off Teflon. They'll be just what the church needs. I think they already are.

jones

this hurts like f*ck.
I am being crushed under something I never thought I could have too much of. love.
some things really are so good that there is no "too much", except that my capacity for them is pitiful.
God, do You understand what it means to be so needy that nothing ever assuages the ache for more than a moment, and those moments so rare and precious rocket through Your soul like emotional heroin? did You have friends here on earth who filled you with this yearning, this terror that the love You have for them will never find its mark but choke the life from you because it's so huge and inexpressible that it turns Your spine to water?
why is it so natural to believe that they don't understand, don't care (they don't have to), don't need anything they will ever find in me? why the need to be needed? I wouldn't wish this on anyone, least of all them. they have done nothing to make these doubts realistic, it's my fault, not theirs.
why can't I make them see, or if they already do, why can't I know that?
the glory of You they reflect used to inspire and revive me, now it makes me want to flee and hide my poverty of life and mind and vision.
when will I ever learn? why do I still feel alone and unseen?
I want to honour what they have invested in me, because it comes from You.
God I believe. help my unbelief.
it hurts it hurts it hurts. there is no pretense to strength or might or power left. I am undone. I've heard this is a good place to be. wish it was easier to agree.
how will I ever offer this love to someone who needs it if I can't grasp it for myself?

thank you

how did you know?
you saved me again.
threw me a lifeline just as I was starting to cosy up to the idea of drowning.
your timing is impeccable.
not really your timing, but His, yet the choice was still yours.
I'm trying, God, I'm trying. don't know why I lose my grip so easily, yet even that helps someone. and what a someone.
it would seem that nothing I do matters because it will all work out for someone's good in the end.
but it does matter, because I still want to choose something better than hate and death.
even more than that I want to see what you see when you look in this direction, to know as well as you do that the contempt I am bracing for when the guts tumble out does not exist, that the love waiting for me is huger than the contempt would be even if it did.
I do not know how to fully believe, live, own what you say about me, but I want to. you're one very large reason why one of my most repeated prayers to God is "Lord, I believe - help my unbelief."
the gift you just offered me in His name gets every scrap of whatever belief I can muster.
and I believe that someday that will be enough, but I will not quit.
I love you.

pause

This is not meant to be an indulgence in self-pity or bitterness, only honest questions and reflections that I'm likely to lose if they aren't written down.
At this moment (I will speak for no other) I am well. Hope is within reach, even close. It is certainly real. More to the point, it is mine. It was meant for me, and it was meant by Someone Who is as willing as He is able to give it to me.
I don't want to squander this, for I know that trials and attacks are ahead, and I do not trust myself to prevail against them. I will, however, trust God to walk me through them. I want to learn and imprint the truth that now seems every bit as huge and all-infusing as it truly is, but which I have all too often lost my grip on. I don't ever want it too seem like the mockery I have been guilty of reckoning it to be in my forays into death. I know He has forgiven and restored me, and will continue as often as needed to see me through to the end of the war. That does not diminish my yearning to stand fast and overcome so He won't have those things to forgive me of again.
I am grateful beyond words for the people He has brought me to. I had no idea this could be real, even less of an idea that it could include me. How did I ever make it this far without them or others like them? Why do they endure me like they do? The things I have invested in them seem so trivial and superfluous compared to what they have lavished on me, the places in their lives and hearts they have freely let me into, the seasons they have shared with me. They are beautiful, and I want that beauty to envelop and define me, to not merely tolerate my admiration from a distance but to invite me to become a part of them, and they a part of me. I want to live forever in the knowledge that they are the gloves on God's hands with which He touches me in this life.
I need them, and at this moment I can allow myself to know and accept that. How could I refuse such a staggering, ever-renewing gift?
I need them because I love them. I need them because they are where I want to be. I need them because I fear the pain that lies ahead. I don't know why; I should be used to it by now, and that's not a self-indulgent whine but puzzlement as to why I can still be so easily set back by adversity.
I don't want to be capable of losing the knowledge that I am just now daring to reach out and caress. I don't want it to be lost in the enemy's smoke-and-mirror show that God has never once failed to expose for the sham that it is.
I haven't been taken out yet. God has borne too monstrous a cost for my redemption to leave my fate in my own hands. I feel the fear, but I will not let it chase me away from Him or the future and hope He has for me.

days of awe

I don't like what the recent mess on the forum has revealed about me. More to the point, God doesn't like it.
I felt ignored and forgotten, and that I had lost what had once been considerable power to stop the kind of carnage that the forum now seems to typify. Many better people than I'll ever be made the points I yearned to make better than I ever could have, and were lacerated or swept aside. I watched my place among them evaporate, and somewhere along the way I stopped wanting it back.
I'm not sure if that's a sin, but the attitudes I've given place to are. I chose not to be a part of the solution, but rather to watch the problem morph and multiply with a shrug and a bitter smirk. I allowed myself to judge people without lifting a finger to help them. And I regret that deeply.
So God, please forgive me as I forgive these whether they need it or not. I don't wish them anything but Your best. Defeat and division to the enemy and not to them. To them be Your love and grace and mercy and peace, and to You be all worship and honour and glory forever.
I don't know what to do after this, but it doesn't matter. I look in on things and realise how little I know of what's right and wrong and what really matters. I still don't see a place for me there. I no longer feel indispensable, and the fact that I ever did feels slimy and shameful. There is nothing I can bring that can't be matched or bested by scores of others. I guess the only reason that I ever let myself feel vital there is that so many treated me as though I was. That was intoxicating, and when the high wore off, I crashed.
I'm really sorry. I love them, and I love You.

it's all right not to speak if you've got nothing worth hearing

this is unfortunate, but it has to come out somewhere.
the forum that I once knew as a haven and a refuge, where anyone was safe except those who were looking for others to use as spiritual scratching posts, is now a spiritual litterbox.
not that many, even most, of those who post there don't care, but a pathetic few who don't are ruining it for those who need it most.
if I still had a voice that meant a goddamn thing there I would tear these whores a new hole. how many others are going to give up and die because someone else has to swing the biggest dick in the theological locker room? I won't, I have real friends within minutes of my real-time address, but what about Moriah or all the others who got driven off?
stuff these slaves. to look at them you'd think Christianity was the most Darwinistic game in town. I hope every sodding one of them gets a chance to face the same tests they lambast others for failing.

moving on

I wish I knew how to make it stick. Or that I didn't care. Everything and everyone moves on. Or almost everyone.
None of this will matter. What matters is out of reach and needs nothing from me. If I get the joke, fine. If not, no loss. Move on. How do they do it? How was I doing it and why is it so easy to stop me?
What hurts the most is being mocked by the knowledge that even in those few sweet moments when I was doing it right, it wasn't that big a deal. The thing I lusted after without reservation, to be good and right and wise, that I was convinced that it couldn't be wrong to lust after, and it's no big deal when I get there. There's nothing better, plenty worse, and nothing is ever enough.
It is not okay to need people or desire anything at all. It is not okay. It leads nowhere. The joy only makes the pain more intolerable, and even writing that is terrifying because I still want the joy. I, I, I. What a whore.
I don't want to believe that I matter again unless it will last. I would kill not to ever care about mattering again.
I am and have been very bad. Please forgive me, but know that I cannot make myself better. No excuses.

life among wolves

the all-pervasive lie of the world casts gentleness as the worst kind of weakness - the kind that one who has it is stupid enough to let hang out in plain view.
I'm a fairly expert poser, but I know very well that the truth of oneself will always be revealed. I wish that caused me more joy than sorrow, but there it is. some are weaker than me, many stronger. whatever.
I can do damned little about that, but I can choose what I believe, even though I have been so hardwired to believe the lies that believing something else is the hardest work I have ever done.
the more I look back on some of the paths I yearned to follow for so much of my life, the less I believe I could have hacked it without being destroyed, or changed into a person that wasn't God's idea at all for me. that hurts like f*ck, but I have friends who have lived on those paths who believe in me more than I was ever able to. to feel like something that's indelibly tattooed on your soul is out of your reach because you're too gentle to embrace it feels like a slow death. there is nothing to do but trust One who knows better because He made me.
a large part of me still wants to be revealed as the embodiment of all the qualities I have lusted for and felt so incorrigibly bereft of, but if I make that my aim I will lose sight of what makes life worth living.
so I'm gentle, hesitant, quiet, apt to listen and watch before acting, quick to appreciate beauty, annoyingly open about the things that touch my heart, unfailingly surprised and dismayed every time life reminds me of a truth that should have long ago ceased to catch me off guard - that the world hates and fears that kind of person and is bent on destroying it, and no one is so divorced from the world that they are incapable of the same hate and fear - including me. but I get over it and start again, cuz I'm a hard f*ckin' target. and it's still a piss-poor idea to harm someone I love. to be gentle doesn't mean I'm incapable of brutality, only that I'm unwilling to be given over to or defined by it. those who are have lost the ability to see the end of the war or even hope for it. not going there.

catching up

Dear Aunt Esther,
I would certainly understand if you were a mite too distracted right now to pay much attention to this. You have a great deal of catching up to do, and I wouldn't begrudge you that for all the world.
You are catching up on life. That seems an odd thing to say at your funeral, but I know as solidly as I can claim to know anything that you are more alive now than I have ever been. Looking at what you have endured these last few years, that is a great comfort.
I am at a loss to even approach summing up what it meant to me to have you and Uncle Bill in my family. Your marriage brought two very different families together, and the very best attributes of both made your home the safe, welcoming place that it was. You always made us feel like you were as eager to see us every year as we were to be there. When you visited us up North, you brought the warmth and welcome of the South with you, and it always seemed to linger a bit after you'd left.
I remember coming down for Melissa's wedding less than two months after Uncle Bill died. I saw in you perhaps the most conflict I had ever seen on a human face - deep joy and deep grief fighting for first place. I remember feeling very sorry for you, but it wasn't until later that I saw how tremendously strong you had to have been to face that and prevail. You were hurting badly, but you still had much to give to all those present just by being there.
Your love and faith are a legacy that illness and loss and all manner of life's trials have only seasoned and strengthened, even as that same love and faith strengthen those who were blessed to call you friend or family. This world may take little notice of your accomplishments, but that means nothing to us. We know better.
I can't thank you enough for your love and example, nor can I thank God enough that you are now free of the sickness and sorrow that you knew all too well in this life. It hurts to see you go where we can't yet follow, but you now know better than any of us do that the reunion will be more than worth the hurt. As I said, you are catching up. With your God, your husband, with all you love and cherish. And you have eternity to do it. I don't know when I will join you, only that I will one day. Thanks be to God. I love you. And thanks to you and Uncle Bill for all the orange Push-Ups.

prayer

God have mercy on us.
I don't think I have the balls to face the prospect of seeing us through Your eyes.
You are love; are we so far gone that the only way to love us is to pull the plug?
We're pretty far gone; I know that much.
I'm not excited, I'm terrified.
I don't know what to do. Most of us aren't even looking to find out, and in that we are horribly wrong.
Nothing is too difficult for you, but some things may be too distasteful, and for that You cannot be blamed. I pray we aren't there yet.
You know what's best. That comforts and terrifies me. There's nothing here worth saving unless You say there is. I pray You can do so without denying Yourself.
In the name of Your Son Jesus Who spilled His blood to bring us to a much better place than the sewer we have made for ourselves, let it be according to Your will. Amen.

winners and losers

Winners and losers, turn the pages of my life
We're beggers and choosers, with all the struggles and the strife
I got no reason to turn my head and look the other way
We're good and we're evil, which one will I be today?

There's saints and sinners
Life's a gamble and you might lose
There's cowards and heroes
Both have been known how to break the rules
There's lovers and haters
The strong and the weak will all have their day
We're devils and angels
Which one will I be today?

[Chorus:] Are you happy now with all the choices you've made?
Are there times in life when you know you should've stayed?
Will you compromise and then realize the price is too much to pay?
Winners and losers, which one will you be today?

There's a a light and a dark side
Standing at the crossroads, there we'll meet
There's prophets and fools there
The lies and the truths will be at our feet
I got a reason to turn my head and look the other way
It's heaven and hell here, which one will I live today?

Which one will I be today?

- Social Distortion

where are your accusers?

I was sure that the only reason they stuck around was because they didn't know what kind of fuckup they were dealing with. Now I think they do, and they're still here. That hurts almost as bad as being alone, because I can't understand it. The most beautiful thing involving other humans that's ever happened to me, except perhaps marriage, and it's so alien to all I've ever been wired to believe that I'm locked out of it by my inability to grasp it.
I understand punishment, reprisal, reaping what one sows, the law of returns, call it what you like. I do not understand an economy where my most inexcusable defects do not mark me for contempt and rejection. What the hell's in here that's worth what one has to endure to get to it?
Someone please pick up a fuckin' rock so I can get a clue again. Oh God, please don't. Whatever. I don't know. I wish I had a brain. This heart shit is getting old.

exchange

1 Corinthians 15:35-49.
We try so hard to be immortal, invulnerable, to rise above the predations of a fallen world that beset us from the outside and betray us from within. God sent his beloved Son to assume the form of the only innocent man who ever lived for the purpose of being tortured to death, and He did it for no other reason than to cancel out the debt we could never pay. And he sought to cancel that debt because only then could He lavish on us what we so doggedly yet despairingly strive to secure for ourselves.
Sown in dishonour and weakness, raised in honour and power. In seeking strength and honour we cling to the very things that keep us from them. Sincerely, perhaps, but still clinging. It is such a job to get to the point where we even realise that, and then there's choosing what to do with that realisation.
When I obtain something at great personal cost, I will defend and retain it relentlessly, even if it is miserably inadequate for its intended purpose - unless something better can be had. What God offers is not only vastly better, but free for the asking - or almost. It will cost me that which He seeks to replace. And that is terrifying when it has already cost so much. I can easily believe that what He offers is better - until faced with discarding what I have in favour of it. I have invested so much of myself in these things, and now He strolls in to toss them out? All they have cost me screams in protest - unless I take a good hard look at what His offer to me has cost Him. And when I can finally choke down the last of my shame, I find it a little easier to remember that He only seeks to toss those things to make room to give me Himself - and then what else could I possibly need? What have I ever accomplished by my fuming and fretting? Hasn't He prevailed in spite of all my efforts? Have my seemingly bottomless defects and ineptitude ever thwarted His plans for me of good and hope and a future?
The terror and the beauty of it is that I depend on Him even for the faith I need to let go, and the grace to cover my lack of it. The amazing thing is that He understands, that even having paid such a monstrous price for His gift to me, He sees my struggles and losses and what they have cost me - and He still cares. But only to the end of setting me free from them, of bringing me to the point where I value His sacrifice so immeasurably more than any paltry cost I could have paid. All the things I have fought for and invested in will only retain their value if they are lost in and to Him so He can raise them by the same power that raised Him from the dead - the very resurrection He would share freely with anyone willing to accept it, if only we can let ourselves die.
I pray He knows as He knows His own Self that this is what I want more than anything else to be true about me - that I who was dead in futility and weakness am now raised in His love and strength, that I have attained the adoption as His son for which He has predestined me, and that I reflect His glory in the unique manner for which He created me. The only thing worth fearing is failing to receive that indescribable gift from Him, and the only way I wish to be free from that fear is to receive it. And there is no one on this earth whom I would wish to miss out on that.

the times they are a changin'

free to leave, but go where? they claim to accept, but it's mostly tolerance. patiently waiting for the kid to get a clue he will never grasp. what really stokes and fumes deep within me is lost on them, and maybe on me too because I can't remember it anymore, and I can't grasp their world any more than I can make them understand mine. they respect my freedom to be myself which means I will always be a million miles away.

even so they are changing me irrevocably. I don't know what's right or wrong anymore. I watch and embrace and tolerate things that something inside me is screaming at, and I no longer recognise the things I thought I was made of.

I love them too much to walk away but am too weak and deformed to keep up with them, and who the hell am I to think any changes they needed would come through me, even if I wanted to make them or even knew what they were?

I have no idea what I am turning into, only that I like it even less than what was before, if that's even possible.

courage?

From Old French corage (French: courage), from Latin cor, “heart”. (Wiktionary)

this ain't heart, that's just a muscle in the ribcage.
this is duty and a lack of alternatives.
this is a machine that doesn't know how to stop.
this is fear of punishment and of losing a place that was never mine.
the kid never learns.

fragged

Heart like a grenade. Fragments everywhere. Pieces in Kentucky and North Carolina and a couple of schools I'd really not want to ever set foot in again. More pieces embedded in other people - family and friends here, in other cities and states, in Germany and Iraq and Australia and Britain and God knows where else. Others thrum and burn at a voice or a song or a memory. Some have been flung so far out into space as to be almost nonexistent.

Such a short fuze. Takes no pull at all to set it off. One word or verse or thought in the right place and it's fire in the hole. Anger to joy to lust to despair to euphoria to numb.

Whole hearted. Sounds great. Lots of pieces for God to collect. Only He can find them. What's my part of the deal?

reload

New Year's Day.

Not a bad one. This year the wife and I were up too damn late New Year's Eve watching Twilight Zone reruns and playing Trivial Pursuit with Kevlar and K-bar at their apartment with their cat Spyder going berserk around us. Finished the bottle of Tullamore Dew that Cap'n Caveman was kind enough to buy us at Knox last June. Got up too early and did not much, at least not much I'm going to detail here. So there was plenty of time to think.

I don't want to think anymore.

Last year at this time wasn't so hot. We went to a NYE party at church, after the previous night of watching Hogfather at J & J's while thoroughly 'faced on Pusser's. I put my arm around my niece Koly when someone old enough to know better made her cry with a thoughtless remark about her musical tastes (which are, by the way, superb). We did iPod karaoke over the PA system and I watched much more talented vocalists than me prove themselves to be just that. Then we got all introspective and asked ourselves what we made of 2007 and what we should do about 2008. Not good questions for me. I lost my grip and made a general arse of myself. Woke up the next day feeling horrible, went to the range with Craig and managed not to put my Mosin-Nagant M44 under my chin, though I badly wanted to.

New Year's is the same anvil I've been beaten on every year. And I am not looking any better. Everyone tells me I have changed dramatically and still am. I want to see that. I want to know what they know, but I don't. When I lost it at the karaoke party someone very dear to me held my hand and told me that it wasn't my fault. In general, in a broad-brush, all-encompassing sense, it wasn't my fault. Life wasn't my fault. I wasn't my fault. She cut through the fog and effortlessly saw something I didn't, and I wished I could see it with her, but I couldn't, and I still wish I could, but I still can't. I'm trying. I'm failing.

I love these people. I want to be on the same page with them. But the love that feels like it could crush my ribcage like a grape doesn't come out the way it should. Love gives and doesn't run out. When I move toward them it feels not like giving, but taking more and more. I want to give, act, live, move in that love but it falters. The defects and weakness rise to the surface and there is nothing to give that's worth receiving. They tell me I do okay by them but it's not okay on this end. The love curdles into an ache that never goes away. It turns into glass walls and I can see my friends on the other side and we can pass little things back and forth underneath but I can't break the glass.

Every new year is a reload. Fresh start. But I'm not fresh. I'm tired. I want to hide from desire, from yearning, from heart. There's no place to go, so obviously I won't. Just on the off chance that it means a goddamn thing, I'm not a volunteer. I was, and I'd like to be again. Endurance is a good thing, but it can't be the only thing.

God, don't leave me here. Did you make this for nothing? Your prerogative, but I was led to believe that You didn't. Desire is a lie and a baited trap and a mirage to chase into oblivion unless You fill it. Please.