Velvet Bridge

Traps at every turn

2011-08-20T15:03:00.000-07:00

Outside in the snow, the For Sale sign looks fresh as the day it was hammered home. No one knows what the house is worth now. No one will buy it, so that's how much it is worth. Nothing. Despite which, we will owe tax based on that 'two and a bit'. For a house that is currently worth whistling for. I can't figure out the fake money from the real. I walk around this magic box, this trap, with its frost-flowered windows, weeping condensation as the morning proceeds. I gather my briefcase from the console table in the hall. I open the same door I have opened since I could reach the latch. And I head out to earn some money.

Anne Enright, The Forgotten Waltz (London: Jonathan Cape, 2011), 148.

The extra mile

2011-08-20T15:02:00.000-07:00

There is no other place from which empathy
can begin but in negative space.
And perhaps that's what it means
to go the extra mile,
to get the right amount of distance

between how you started out
and where you arrive. Driving back
from the airport, she started thinking aloud,
wondering if the reason Blake gave Behemoth
such a remarkably human ear was to say:

only we know creation is a brilliant atrocity.
Yes, Job replies, glancing in the wing mirror,
the point being, when we remember this, something'll give -
time, most likely - a torn veil which uneclipses
the heavenly bodies, cures the navel gaze.

From 'The Extra Mile'.

Rachael Boast, Sidereal (London: Picador, 2011), 31.

Ed Sheeran - The A Team (Official Music Video) OUT NOW!

2011-08-16T13:45:00.000-07:00

2011-04-18T00:54:00.001-07:00

"...there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save."
— Mary Oliver

2011-04-06T15:28:00.000-07:00

My love, leave yourself behind Beat inside me, leave you blind My love, you have found peace You were searching for release You gave it all, into the call You took a chance and You took a fall for us You came thoughtfully, loved me faithfully You taught me honor, you did it for me Tonight you will sleep for good You will wait for me my love Now I am strong You gave me all anekatips You gave all you had and now I am home My love, leave yourself behind Beat inside me, leave you blind My love, look what you can do I am mending, I'll be with you

2011-02-07T15:28:00.001-08:00

"If you’ve come here to help me, you’re wasting your time. But if you’ve come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."
— Elder Lilla Watson

Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.

2011-02-07T15:21:00.001-08:00

2011-02-07T15:20:00.001-08:00

"Play the game for more than you can afford to lose…only then will you learn the game."
Winston Churchill

2011-02-07T15:04:00.000-08:00

"Being born a woman is an awful tragedy… Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars - to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording - all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night…"
Sylvia Plath

2011-01-28T14:12:00.000-08:00

B.

Take My hand. We can hide in the corner.

Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surrounds us or we light a candle to see by

2011-01-20T10:50:00.001-08:00

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not understood it.
John 1v5

2011-01-15T13:15:00.000-08:00

"I have always tried to let the truth irradiate the history", (Philip Pullman).

Good to see you R...

2011-01-15T13:05:00.000-08:00

As I seek to give R's story a shape that our society might find acceptable, I myself am altered, bruised, crushed.

"An endless stream of people dragged the story behind them but were yet drawn forward by it", (Ismail Kadare).

R, as I bring your story with me, may I only ever be drawn forward.

x

2010-10-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

Picking up broken words
Snipping the tips off
Grinding down the long ones
That wind around your eardrums
Dangerous plastic words
For crowd dispersal
And dumb dumb words
That could blow your head off
This is a story 'bout the three of us
Down by the water and the tide is rising
This world is burning and I'm terrified
I need a little more time with you, oh
I just need a little more time with you
One fine day you'll sing
Your inevitable love song
Inevitable lie song
Inevitable cry son

2010-10-02T01:49:00.001-07:00

"It wasn't necessary to win for the story to be great, it was only necessary to sacrifice everything."

2010-10-02T01:46:00.001-07:00

"...sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself..."
— Donald Miller

2010-09-08T18:13:00.001-07:00

chasing Hallelujah...

2010-09-05T11:23:00.001-07:00

I was giving up. I would have given up – ... if a voice hadn't made itself heard in my heart. The voice said, "I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will beat the odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine. The amazing will be seen every day. I will put in all the hard work necessary. Yes, so long as God is with me, I will not die. Amen."
(2.53.5, Life of Pi, Yann Martel)

2010-09-05T11:20:00.000-07:00

I had to stop hoping so much that a ship ... would rescue me. I should not count on outside help. Survival had to start with me. In my experience, a castaway's worst mistake is to hope too much and do too little. Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away.
(2.58.9, Life of Pi, Yann Martel)

2010-08-17T13:48:00.001-07:00

"That people get too reckless
That even with the simplest of crimes
They leave, blood behind"

2010-08-11T23:24:00.000-07:00

Evening Love Song

Ornamental clouds
compose an evening love song;
a road leaves evasively.
The new moon begins
a new chapter of our nights,
of those frail nights
we stretch out and which mingle
with these black horizontals.

Rainer Maria Rilke

2010-08-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

"The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift." — C.S. Lewis

2010-07-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

"So the poor have hope & injustice shuts its mouth" Job 5 v16

2010-07-12T09:03:00.000-07:00

Through our constant striving for convenience, we are eradicating the raucous and edifying beauty of our true environment and replacing that beauty with a safe but completely faux environment. We have a society steadily undoing itself, it might be argued, by its win over resourcefulness. Clever, ambitious and always in search of greater efficiency, we have, created a world of push - button, round - the - clock comfort for ourselves.

The basic needs of humanity - food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, transportation, and even sexual pleasure - no longer need to be personally laboured for or ritualized or even understood. All these things are available to us now for mere cash. Or credit.

'Show up for your own life...don't pass your days in a stupor, content to swallow whatever watery ideas modern society may bottle - feed you through the media, satisfied to slumber thorugh life in an instant - gratification sugar coma...be awake' (Last American Man, Elizabeth Gilbert).

Sleeping at last...

2010-04-19T14:00:00.001-07:00

Put your coat on, this city trembles.
Keep your chin up, as you untangle God
From cold blood and bruises.

We are X-rays of something broken.
Cursive bloodlines write every forecast:
An orchestration Of dissonance and innocent surrender.

When our color dies,
We will bury the ashes of time,
And we will earn new eyes.

Wrists get tired rewriting futures.
Our bodies beg us to be creatures of habit.
We are creatures of habit.

Only with careful hands
We’ll turn their fangs into feathers and cures.
Only with careful hands
We’ll divide the prisoner
From the pioneer.
Clever beauty,
Umbrellas folding.
In architecture, our lines will measure
A map to find us.
Blue ink will guide us home.

Cranes are creeping, lifting metal,
We will find new ways to settle,
Tipping scales from the killer to its prey.

I can feel the weight around us,
Climbing every rib inside us,
A sanctuary in a lion’s mouth

2010-03-31T16:41:00.000-07:00

At the end of the day, when it comes down to it, all we really want is to be close to somebody.

Scarlet

2010-01-22T09:07:00.000-08:00

Middle of nowhere
Finally you can breathe
Nobody knows your name
It's easier

Shut your eyes tightly
Clench your fists 'til they almost bleed
Cautiously, lightly
Gently expose what's underneath

And all you feel now
Is the scarlet in your day
Even it's real
You can't stay

So there you go
You're gone for good
There you go
You're gone for good

Your mind is swollen
From months of thought without release
They've taken their toll on you
This very moment
Of timid and fragile honesty
Is precious and rare and fleeting

And all you feel now
Is the scarlet in your day
Even it's real
You can't stay

2009-10-24T14:17:00.000-07:00

‘...it is a process, a continual struggle. But it is a necessary step toward redeeming an unjust past, underpinned by notions of restorative and transformative justice, and, of course human rights. Only through such a restorative process can normalisation be achieved.’

Jeff Halper

2009-10-08T10:44:00.001-07:00

To me it seems rather Christlike to be as unadorned as this place is, as little regarded. I can’t help imagining that you will leave sooner or later, and it’s fine if you have done that, or you mean to do it. This whole town does look like whatever hope becomes after it begins to weary a little, then weary a little more. But hope deferred is still hope. I love this town. I think sometimes of going into the ground here as a last wild gesture of love–I too will smolder away the time until the great and general incandescence. (Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, pg. 247)

2009-10-04T15:47:00.001-07:00

"That’s the thing about a human life-there’s no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed."

— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

2009-10-04T15:42:00.000-07:00

"There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts."

— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

2009-08-29T03:12:00.001-07:00

I will set my eyes upon them for good. I will build them up, and not tear them down; I will plant them, and not pluck them up. Jeremiah 24:6

2009-08-28T15:47:00.000-07:00

Steal my heart and hold my tongue.
I feel my time, my time has come.
Let me in, unlock the door.
I've never felt this way before.
The wheels just keep on turning,
The drummer begins to drum,
I don't know which way I'm going,
I don't know which way I've come.
Hold my head inside your hands,
I need someone who understands.
I need someone, someone who hears,
For you, I've waited all these years.
For you, I'd wait 'til kingdom come.
Until my day, my day is done.
And say you'll come, and set me free,
Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me.
In your tears and in your blood,
In your fire and in your flood,
I hear you laugh, I heard you sing,
"I wouldn't change a single thing.
"The wheels just keep on turning,
The drummers begin to drum,
I don't know which way I'm going,
I don't know what I've become.
For you, I'd wait 'til kingdom come,
Until my days, my days are done.
Say you'll come and set me free,
Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me.
Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me.
Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me.

(Coldplay)

2009-08-25T15:45:00.001-07:00

"Remind us that the scars of the self harming woman, scarred for life, is just like me with my scarst hat hinder and equip at the same time. And remember that we, maybe, can just hide ours better."

Clarence Street...

2009-08-18T15:25:00.000-07:00

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

2009-08-12T16:29:00.001-07:00

sometimes we run from the hands of kindness and every now and then we run from the eyes of friends, but you know, sometimes an open door is just so so hard to find...

2009-07-14T16:12:00.001-07:00

You have to live your life on a few levels. One is the day-to-day. And then there’s another level at which you look at your desires in the framework of eternity.

Belonging...

2009-05-24T12:15:00.000-07:00

Community is a strange concept. It’s something we all crave for but few of us experience in its purest form. Many of us talk a good theology of it, but in practice? That’s another story all together. Part of the problem with the lack of complete community is that we, as individuals, usually gravitate toward people who are like us, and shy away from those who are different.

There is a good reason for this. As humans we have inherited an innate fear of difference.
Belonging is an essential component to living “life in all its fullness”, but so often this is marginalised and corrupted by our incessant (though quite natural) desire to belong to groups who are like-minded.

To paraphrase the wonderful Adrain Plass, there are days when I worry and am confused about the Church (about community)- maybe even a little frightened at times, but as we sit in the darkness, i know in my heart of hearts that the church will be alright in the end.

Because there will be people who when the tongues have stopped, and the prophesies have ended, and the kangaroo-hopping has come to a stand still, and the religious posing and posturing fools no-one anymore, will still be ready to share the burdens of the little people who are close to them.

We are one but not the same…….

2009-05-02T10:31:00.001-07:00

A legend tells how, at the beginning of time, God resolved to hide himself within his own creation. As God was wondering how best to do this, the angels gathered round him.
‘I want to hide myself in my creation,’ he told them. ‘I need to find a place that is not too easily discovered, for it is in their search for me that my creatures will grow in spirit and in understanding.’
‘Why don’t you hide yourself deep in the earth?’ the first angel suggested. God pondered for a while, then replied, ‘No. it will not be long before they learn how to mine the earth and discover all the treasures that it contains. They will discover me too quickly, and they will not have had enough time to do their growing.’
‘Why don’t you hide yourself on their moon?’ a second angel suggested. God thought about this idea for a while, and then replied, ‘No. It will take a little longer, but before too long they will learn how to fly through space. They will arrive on the moon and explore its secrets, and they will discover me too soon, before they have had time to do their growing.
The angels were at a loss to know what hiding places to suggest. There was a long silence.
‘I know,’ piped up one angel, finally. ‘Why don’t you hide yourself within their own hearts? They will never think of looking for you there!’
‘That’s it!’ said God, delighted to have found the perfect hiding place. And so it is that God hides secretly deep within the heart of every creature, until that creature is wiling to risk the journey into the secret core of its own being. And there, the creature discovers its creator….

2009-04-22T13:04:00.000-07:00

Today, like every other day, we wake up emptyand frightened. Don’t open the door to the studyand begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do.There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep.People are going back and forth across the doorsillwhere the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.
I would love to kiss you. The price of kissing is your life. Now my loving is running toward my life shouting, What a bargain, let’s buy it.
Daylight, full of small dancing particles and the one great turning, our soulsare dancing with you, without feet, they dance. Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?
All day and night, music, a quiet, bright reed song. If it fades, we fade.
RUMI

2009-03-04T15:25:00.001-08:00

In some odd way I think I like the fact that the destination stays just out of reach, it keeps me moving forward rather than standing still and not searching anymore – but I admit it’s nice to sometimes hear the heartbeat of love slightly pounding – the echo of the eternal.
‘The wind is blowing down the silent river,a shining road that leaves me all alone.A life for you’s worth losing you forever.Some day we’ll stand in God’s fair land, forever home.
I wish that life wasn’t always ending up this way,with Heaven’s love at stake and hell to pay.But you in God’s loving plan might be the missing part.You must live.So I give you to his heart.’
(Alison Krauss)

2009-02-25T10:18:00.001-08:00

‘There’s a loneliness inside her, and she’d do anything to fill it in. And though it’s red blood bleeding from her now, it feels like cold blue ice in her heart….when all the colours mix together to grey.’(Dave Matthews Band)

…as I contemplate town tonight, I preach to myself, my soul if you like. knowing that if i listen closely, if i have the courage to do so, i just may see the divine, and in seeing the divine, i may see others as i should, as they really are…. i may just also see myself.

the trouble is, am i willing to see the truth of who i am, the real me?
for the reason i don’t stop most of the time is because i do not want to see who i am - that person who lurks beneath…
they say the truth sets you free, hmmm, it also breaks you to pieces

‘if i stopped
if i was quiet for a minute
if i was calm
if i was still
if i turned everyone down
if i switched everything off
if i ceased looking everywhere all at once
if i was silent
if i was still
if i stayed at home
if i didn’t pick up the phone
if i was out even when i was in
if i was silent
if i was still
if i slowed right down
if i simply sat here
there
anywhere
if i stood on my head
and emptied out the contents
if i stopped
would you be there
would you speak to me
would i be able to hear you
would it be worth it?
if i stopped
would it be long enough?
if i was silent
would i hear anything?
if i heard something would i know it was you?
if i did
would i be interested?
if i was
would i stop again?’
(Martin Wroe from ‘When You Haven’t Got a Prayer: A journalist talks to God’)

2009-02-18T15:30:00.001-08:00

Will you find me?
Christ the Saviour who we wait for.

2009-02-10T15:49:00.000-08:00

R, you were distant tonight. Far removed from an experienced reality. You were void.

For the first time ever I was unrecognisable to you.
You were sore on me, you were sore on yourself.
You couldn't see me tonight. You wouldn't allow yourself to look.

You couldn't see Me.

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
Mary Oliver

2009-02-05T15:39:00.000-08:00

maybe I need to spend less time thinking about what I see, and more time thinking about why I see it that way...

2009-02-05T15:35:00.001-08:00

‘To be born woman is to know…that we must labour to be beautiful’
Yeats

2009-02-05T15:31:00.001-08:00

‘Beauty does not linger, it only visits. Yet beauty’s visitation affects us and invites into it’s rhythm, it calls us to feel, think, and act beautifully in the world: to create and live a life that awakens the Beautiful.’
(Father O’Donohue)

R, you need your resurrection...

2009-01-14T11:49:00.000-08:00

Have you ever seen a one trick pony in the field so happy and free?
If you’ve ever seen a one trick pony then you’ve seen me
Have you ever seen a one-legged dog making his way down the street?
If you’ve ever seen a one-legged dog then you’ve seen me
Then you’ve seen me, I come and stand at every door
Then you’ve seen me, I always leave with less than I had before
Then you’ve seen me, bet I can make you smile when the blood, it hits the floor
Tell me, friend, can you ask for anything more?
Tell me can you ask for anything more?
Have you ever seen a scarecrow filled with nothing but dust and wheat?
If you’ve ever seen that scarecrow then you’ve seen me
Have you ever seen a one-armed man punching at nothing but the breeze?
If you’ve ever seen a one-armed man then you’ve seen me
Then you’ve seen me, I come and stand at every door
Then you’ve seen me, I always leave with less than I had before
Then you’ve seen me, bet I can make you smile when the blood, it hits the floor
Tell me, friend, can you ask for anything more?
Tell me can you ask for anything more?
These things that have comforted me, I drive away
This place that is my home I cannot stay
My only faith’s in the broken bones and bruises I display
Have you ever seen a one-legged man trying to dance his way free?
If you’ve ever seen a one-legged man then you’ve seen me
(Bruce Springsteen)

2009-01-11T07:51:00.000-08:00

2009-01-07T08:52:00.000-08:00

In his love and mercy the Lord redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. Isaiah 63:9 (NIV)

When he has found the lost sheep, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. Luke 15:5

2009-01-03T23:18:00.000-08:00

I can't let you be, your beauty won't allow me

You don't have a soul, you are a Soul.

2008-12-31T10:39:00.000-08:00

Ladies, 2008 brought dancing.

You have taught me many things this year...
that love comes to those who still hope even though they’ve been disappointed, to those who still believe even when they’ve been betrayed, to those who still love even though they’ve been hurt before.

Thank you
x

2008-12-23T17:04:00.000-08:00

"How do we befriend our inner enemies, lust and anger? By listening to what they are saying. They are saying "I have some unfulfilled needs" and "Who really loves me?". Insted of pushing our anger and lust away as unwelcomed guests, we can recognise that our anxious, driven hearts need some healing. Our restlessness calls us to look for the true inner rest where lust and anger can be converted into a deeper way of loving.There is a lot of unruly energy in lust and anger! When that energy can be directed towards loving well, we can transform not only ourselves but even those who might otherwise become the victims of our anger and lust. This takes patience, but it can be done."Elsewhere he also says that patience it is not waiting for something out of our control to happen, like waiting for it to rain, but "Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient we try to get away from where we are. We act like as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later or somewhere else. Let's be patient and trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand."

H. N.

2008-12-21T10:08:00.001-08:00

There is a beautiful Haisidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, “Why on our hearts, and not in them?” The rabbi answered, “Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your hearts, and when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.”
‘How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded.’
M. Scott Peck, A Different Drum

2008-12-18T13:36:00.000-08:00

"to become human implies two realities. It means to be someone, to have cultivated our gifts, and also to be open to others, to look at them not with a feeling of superiority but with eyes of respect. It means to become men and women with the wisdom of love. For this, we often need help. For many, as for myself, religion can be a gentle source of strength and love, as can a mentor or wise friend.
...the future of humanity is not just in the hands of politicians and of corporations but in our hands. Peace will come through dialogue, through trust and respect for others who are different, through inner strength and a spirituality of love, patience, humility, and forgiveness. Little by little, a culture of competition will be transformed into a culture of welcome and mutual respect. The crises that will come will then not just be moments of danger but opportunities for dialogue and unity, and solutions will emerge."
Jean Vanier

Absent Friend

2008-12-17T16:53:00.000-08:00

‘The night lifted, leaving behind it a grayish light the colour of stagnant water. Soon there was only a tattered fragment of darkness, hanging in midair, the other side of the window. Fear caught my throat. The tattered fragment of darkness had a face. Looking at it, I understood, I understood the reason for my fear. The face was my own.’
(Elie Wiesel, Night)

Why is it so many find their own sadness intoxicating?
What seed is being watered in these feelings?
What are our eyes trying to say with their tears?

Some things just can’t be fixed this side of a much better place.
I have been offered perspective tonight.
I have been granted a glimpse of my own insignificance.

2008-12-11T13:20:00.000-08:00

is our desire to be loved suffocating our desire to love?

2008-12-08T12:36:00.001-08:00

I bruise you, you bruise me
We both bruise too easily
Too easily to let it show

2008-12-05T14:24:00.000-08:00

Just as F is for Feathers
and Forgiving
and Fragile
Or as
N is for Naming
and Nest

for all that is tender
so here will i letter
the thing that
the birds know the best...

that though L is for Losing
it's also for Loosing
and Loving and Living and Leaves

just as B is for Broken
but also Beginnings
like Birthing and Blessed and
to Breathe...

LB

Carrie, simply stunning*

2008-12-05T14:13:00.000-08:00

2008-12-05T14:12:00.001-08:00

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose”
Jim Elliott

2008-12-04T15:30:00.000-08:00

An ability to tap into the hearts of dysfunctional misfits and somehow bring them home is inspiring to me; a genius weaving a grace that brings meaning and hope into the broken, shattered and mundane world of the human.

…here is the opening page of Eleanor Rigby

‘I had always thought that a person born blind and given sight later on in life through the miracles of modern medicine would feel reborn. Just imagine looking at our world with brand new eyes, everything fresh, covered with dew and charged with beauty - pale skin and yellow daffodils, boiled lobsters and a full moon. And yet I’ve read books that tell me this isn’t the way newly created vision plays out in real life. Gifted with sight, previously blind patients become frightened and confused. They can’t make sense of shape or colour or depth. Everything shocks, and nothing brings solace. My brother, William, says, “Well think about it, Liz - kids lie in their cribs for nearly a year watching hand puppets and colourful toys come and go. They’re as dumb as planks, and it takes a long time to even twig to the notion of where they end and the world begins. Why should it be any different just because you’re older and technically wiser?”
In the end, those gifted with new eyesight tend to retreat into their own worlds. Some beg to be made blind again, yet when they consider it further, they hesitate, and realize they’re unable to surrender their sight. Bad visions are better than no visions.’

2008-12-04T15:27:00.000-08:00

someday there will surely be someone

2008-12-01T16:30:00.001-08:00

These days
whatever you have to say, leave the roots on, let them dangle
And the dirt
Just to make clear where they come from
- Charles Olson

2008-12-01T16:29:00.001-08:00

THE PRIEST LOOKED up from the psalms on the lectern, cast his eyes over the hats bowed before him. Feathered, frilled, felt hats in rows like faces. One at the end of the row different. A head without hat. A cat without fur. A bird without wings. Won’t fly far.
Voices danced in song with the colours of the windows. Red light played along the aisle, blue over the white corsage of Mme Dewsbury, green on the pages of the Bible. Reflecting up on the face of the priest. He spoke to the young lady afterwards: ‘You must wear a hat and gloves in the House of God. It is not seemly otherwise.’
The lady flushed, raised her chin, strode out. ‘That’s the last we’ll see of her,’ said the organist.

The organ rang out, the priest raised his eyes to the rose window. He did not see the woman in hat and gloves advancing down the aisle as though she were a bride. The hat, enormous, such as one might wear to the races. Gloves, black lace, such as one might wear to meet a duchess. Shoes, high- heeled, such as one might wear on a catwalk in Paris.
And nothing else.
(By Judy Parker, from 100 NZ short stories, ed. Graeme Lay. Tandem Press. NZ, 1997)

2008-11-23T14:11:00.000-08:00

Prayer...

2008-11-23T03:30:00.000-08:00

God says, "I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, andI will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak." Ezekiel 34:16

Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. Psalm 51:12

The Moon

2008-11-13T09:04:00.000-08:00

The moon's worn thin
Succumbed to the pressure
Her silver dress
Hangs in the sky like a rag
Her coat, her cloak
Her cover of darkness
It fails to hide
The tears that she's cried
Oh she cries
But she still shines
Though the night falls around her
And by her light I find my way
When I fear the path laid before me
I look to the light of her face
And thank her for being so brave
The moon remains
In fullness or frailty
A faithful climb
And I stand amazed at the wa

The other

2008-10-26T02:59:00.000-07:00

…humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative
to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being … she is defined
and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to
her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He
is the subject, he is the absolute – she is the other.
Simone de Beauvoir, 1949:16

2008-10-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

Broken…I now talk with God.
O Lord Jesus my Saviour.
Today my heart is empty.
Pride is the thing I will miss least when time comes to and end.
I need a priest.
I need a preacher.
I need an exorcist to banish the snake I’ve been handling called…self.
I need you.
Broken…I now talk to God.
(Ben Pearson: Taken from Ragamuffin Prayers, CCM Books)

to my ladies

2008-10-24T04:25:00.000-07:00

I wake up in the morning, stumble on my life, stumble on yours.
Is it possible to get love without sacrifice?

If anything should happen, I guess I wish you well girls.
A little bit of heaven, but a little bit of hell...

Sad Song

2008-10-24T03:34:00.000-07:00

Sing a sad song
In a lonely place
Try to put a word in for me
It’s been so long
Since I found this place
You better put in two or three
We as people, are just walking ’round
Our heads are firmly fixed in the ground
What we don’t see
Well it can’t be real
What we don’t touch we cannot feel
Where we’re living in this town
The sun is coming up and it’s going down
But it’s all just the same at the end of the day
And we cheat and we lie
Nobody says it’s wrong
So we don’t ask why
Cause it’s all just the same at the end of the day
We’re throwing it all away
We’re throwing it all away
We’re throwing it all away at the end of the day
If you need it
Something I can give
I know I’d help you if I can
If your honest and you say that you did
You know that I would give you my hand
Or a sad song
In a lonely place
I’ll try to put a word in for you
Need a shoulder? well if that’s the case
You know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do
Where we’re living in this town
The sun is coming up and it’s going down
But it’s all just the same at the end of the day
When we cheat and we lie
Nobody says it’s wrong
So we don’t ask why
Cause it’s all just the same at the end of the day
Don’t throw it all away
Don’t throw it all away
Don’t throw it all away
Don’t throw it all away
Throwing it all away
Throwing it all away
Throwing it all away
Throwing it all away
Throwing it all away
You’re throwing it all away at the end of the day

Everything

2008-10-17T02:39:00.000-07:00

I can be an asshole of the grandest kind
I can withhold like it's going out of style
I can be the moodiest baby and you've never met anyone
Who is as negative as I am sometimes
I am the wisest woman you've ever met.
I am the kindest soul with whom you've connected.
I have the bravest heart that you've ever seen
And you've never met anyone
Who's as positive as I am sometimes.
You see everything, you see every part
You see all my light and you love my dark
You dig everything of which I'm ashamed
There's not anything to which you can't relate
And you're still here
I blame everyone else, not my own partaking
My passive-aggressiveness can be devastating
I'm terrified and mistrusting
And you've never met anyone as,
As closed down as I am sometimes.
You see everything, you see every part
You see all my light and you love my dark
You dig everything of which I'm ashamed
There's not anything to which you can't relate
And you're still here
What I resist, persists, and speaks louder than I know
What I resist, you love, no matter how low or high I go
I'm the funniest woman that you've ever known
I'm the dullest woman that you've ever known
I'm the most gorgeous woman that you've ever known
And you've never met anyone
Who is as everything as I am sometimes

You see everything
You see every part
And you're still here

(A. M. )

2008-10-11T14:55:00.001-07:00

Romans 5 vs 5: And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

Testimony...

2008-08-23T17:31:00.000-07:00

Brennan Manning suggests ‘The question for all of us is what we will really aim at next. If all we are going for is placid decency, routine prayer, well-behaved worship, and comfortable compassion, then we have effectively parted company with the shipwrecked and have no fellowship with the pearl-finder.’'

'I didn't go to the flea market the week of my abortion. I stayed home, and smoked dope and got drunk, and tried to write a little, and went for slow walks along the salt marsh with Pammy. On the seventh night, though, very drunk and just about to taking a sleeping pill, I discovered that I was bleeding heavily. It did not stop over the next hour. i was going through a pad every fifteen minutes, and I thought i should call a doctor or Pammy, but I was so disgusted that I had gotten so drunk one week after an abortion that I just couldn't wake someone up and ask for help. I kept changing Kotex, and got very sober very quickly.

Several hours later, the blood stopped flowing, and I got in bed, shaky and sad and too wild to have another drink or take a sleeping pill. I had a cigarette and turned off the light. After a while, as I lay there, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I just assumed it was my father, whose presence I had felt over the years when I was frightened and alone. The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there - of course, there wasn't. But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond a doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this.

And I was appalled. I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends, I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, "I would rather die."

I felt him sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinched my eyes shut, but that didn't help because that's not what I was seeing him with.

Finally I fell asleep, and in the morning, he was gone.

This experience spooked me badly, but I thought it was just an apparition, born of fear and self-loathing and booze and loss of blood. But everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in. But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever. So I tried to keep one step ahead of it, slamming my houseboat door when I entered or left.

And one week later, when I went back to church, I was so hungover that I couldn't stand up for the songs, and this time I stayed for the sermon, which i just thought was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the existence of extraterrestrials, but the last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape. It was as if people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or 'something' was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling - and it washed over me.

I began to cry amd left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers inder a sky as blue as one of God's own dreams, and I opened the door to my boathouse, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, "OK: I quit."

I took a long deep breath and said out loud, "All right. You can come in."
So this was my beautiful moment of conversion.'

(Anne Lamott: Travelling Mercies - Some Thoughts On Faith)

I don't believe in covering up cracks. Rather I believe in redeeming those landscapes of brokenness and terrifying loneliness and difficulty that we often find ourselves traversing. To fight hard to give back to the little people of this world that which this world had taken so remorselessly from them.

Mike Yaconelli said of himself, ‘I want to be a good person. I don’t want to fail. I want to learn from my mistakes, rid myself of distractions, and run into the arms of Jesus. Most of the time, however, I feel like I am running away from Jesus into my own clutteredness. I want desperately to know God better. I want to be consistent. Right now though the only consistency in my life is my inconsistency. Who I want to be and who I am are not very close together. I am not doing well at the living-a-consistent-life thing.’

Stolen...

2008-08-07T14:10:00.000-07:00

"A young teenager stands like a stone in a world she can’t rise above. Beside her another minor wonders how he is going to be a father to the Son of God.

Dickens once said that , ‘it is a far better thing that i do, than i have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that i go to, than i have ever known.’

it reminds me of the mystery that the great tom waits sings…….come on up to the house….. A friend of mine said the other day that; “I need Tom Waits. I need someone who can sing ‘you’re falling down’ in a voice that raises up. Such a ferocious and beautiful voice. How sweet the sound” … how sweet indeed

Well the moon is broken
And the sky is cracked
Come on up to the house
The only things that you can see
Is all that you lack
Come on up to the house

All your cryin don’t do no good
Come on up to the house
Come down off the cross
We can use the wood
Come on up to the house

Come on up to the house
Come on up to the house
The world is not my home
I’m just a passin thru
Come on up to the house

There’s no light in the tunnel
No irons in the fire
Come on up to the house
And your singin lead soprano
In a junkman’s choir
You gotta come on up to the house

Does life seem nasty, brutish and short
Come on up to the house
The seas are stormy
And you can’t find no port
Come on up to the house
There’s nothin in the world

there’s nothin in the world
that you can do
you gotta come on up to the house
and you been whipped by the forces
that are inside you
come on up to the house
well you’re high on top
of your mountain of woe
come on up to the house
well you know you should surrender
but you can’t let go
you gotta come on up to the house

if i exorcise my demons my angels just might leave too……

Maybe we should wear our broken hearts and battered idealism not like hard-won honours but open, weeping sores…maybe that unlocks the door that leads to freedom…"

Teardrop

2008-08-01T16:37:00.000-07:00

Love, love is a verb
Love is a doing word
Fearless on my breath
Gentle impulsion
Shakes me, makes me lighter
Fearless on my breath
Teardrop on a fire
Fearless on my breath
Water is my eye
Most faithful mirror
Fearless on my breath
Teardrop on the fire
Of a confession
Fearless on my breath
Most faithful mirror
Fearless on my breath
Teardrop on the fire
Fearless on my breath
You're stumbling in the dark
Stumbling in the dark

nf

2008-07-26T17:21:00.000-07:00

Am I loosing my curiousity?

2008-07-26T17:19:00.000-07:00

sometimes I don't want to be in love with you girls...

Essence of all desire

2008-07-26T16:48:00.000-07:00

I have come from town this week tired, weary and worn.
I have come from town this week, my soul, faith and hope, bruised, beaten and sore.
And as I type these words I wonder how our ladies are feeling their way through those same streets tonight.

Nakedness, Anger, Resentment, Bitterness, Greed, Jealousy, Swearing, Shame, Fighting, Fury, Panic, Disgust, Retaliation, Desperation, Lies...big fat ugly lies.

A man kicked off the street because his desire is to be a woman.
A woman kicked off the street because her desire is for cocaine.
Emma and I kicked off the street because our desire is for beauty.

Though absent long,

These forms of beauty have not been to me,

As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:

But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,

And passing even into my purer mind

With tranquil restoration:—feelings too

Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,

As may have had no trivial influence

On that best portion of a good man’s life;

His little, nameless, unremembered acts

Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,

To them I may have owed another gift,

Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,

In which the burthen of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world

Is lighten’d:—that serene and blessed mood,

In which the affections gently lead us on,

Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,

And even the motion of our human blood

Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul:

While with an eye made quiet by the power

Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things.
(Wordsworth)

2008-07-12T04:22:00.000-07:00

"I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love."
(Douglas Coupland, Life After God)

love wounds

2008-07-12T04:17:00.001-07:00

"There is no love that does not pierce the hands and feet. Love's exquisite happiness is also love's exquisite pain. I do not seek pain but there is pain. I do not seek suffering but there is suffering. It is better not to flinch, not to try to avoid those things in love's direction. It is not easy, this love, but only the impossible is worth the effort."

2008-07-01T13:12:00.000-07:00

im presently in amsterdam, trying on the differing shades of red.

remind me when I get home to kiss my mirror.

2008-06-22T03:17:00.000-07:00

I have just flicked through Rob Bell's book, Sex God - it deals with many a thought about sex, God, intimacy, spirituality and argues that you can’t separate these entities, that they are all in fact different sides of the same coin.

This particular story from chapter one, which has the finest title of any chapter I have come across - God Wears Lipstick - moved me to tears…

"In 1945, a group of British soldiers liberated a German concentration camp called Bergen-Belsen. one of them, Lieutenant Colonel Mercin Willet Gonin DSO, wrote in his diary what they encountered:

I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men, women and children collapse as you walked by them…

…One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diphtheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it.

One saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand propping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves….. [a] dysentery tank in which the remains of a child floated.

….It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not all what we wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and i don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick.

Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the postmorten table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At least someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. that lipstick started to give them back their humanity.

Because sometimes, the difference between heaven and hell may be a bit of lipstick…"

and you know, after being in town twice this week, I am now looking for a great shade of red.

Hurt

2008-06-15T01:55:00.000-07:00

I hurt myself today
to see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
the only thing that's real
the needle tears a hole
the old familiar sting
try to kill it all away
but I remember everything

what have I become?
my sweetest friend
everyone I know
goes away in the end
and you could have it all
my empire of dirt

I will let you down
I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns
upon my liar's chair
full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
beneath the stains of time
the feelings disappear
you are someone else
I am still right here

what have I become?
my sweetest friend
everyone I know
goes away in the end
and you could have it all
my empire of dirt

I will let you down
I will make you hurt

if I could start again
a million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way

J Cash

2008-06-14T18:16:00.000-07:00

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--should be clear:
the darkness around us is deep.

2008-05-29T15:06:00.000-07:00

Once love wakes it never sleeps

even when you love a dream

Juliea, where have you gone?

2008-05-28T16:23:00.000-07:00

Woke up and wished that I was dead
With an aching in my head
I lay motionless in bed
I thought of you and where you'd gone
and let the world spin madly on
Everything that I said I'd do
Like make the world brand new
And take the time for you
I just got lost and slept right through the dawn
And the world spins madly on
I let the day go by
I always say goodbye
I watch the stars from my window sill
The whole world is moving and I'm standing still
Woke up and wished that I was dead
With an aching in my head I lay motionless in bed
The night is here and the day is gone
And the world spins madly on
I thought of you and where you'd gone
And the world spins madly on.

The Weepies

2008-05-28T16:06:00.001-07:00

where there is love there is no shame

Whenever I sense a thirst, a restlessness, I have hope for new life.

2008-04-22T04:08:00.000-07:00

So I was offered the following question...

"You work with people who live with failure every day. Have you found that 'backsliding' draws them further from God, or presses them toward God?"

Failure in who's eyes I ask?
Surely failure is more to do with social norms, preferences and ideal isms?

Yet, to answer this question, I have seen in our women, a spirituality , a connection with God, that I have seen nowhere else.

I have come to trust that the greater their knowledge of their own misery, the more profound their confidence in the goodness and mercy of God...for surely mercy and misery are so closely connected that the one cannot be exercised without the other?

Henri Nouwen worte of a constant struggle to distinguish between the voice of his wounded self, which never went away, and the voivce of God. Gradually he came to see that the voice of God only speaks through wounded selves.

In my own life I mainly hear the voice of a wounded self trying to articulate the voice of God.

I live in daily awareness of how much easier it is to edit a question like the one above, than edit a life.

If Emma and I stand long enough we always sense a thirst and a restlessness, and so hope for new life.

2008-04-17T01:46:00.000-07:00

"each of us has a beggar on the streets of our souls. do we walk past with criticism, ignorance, or do we applaud the poor accordion playing?"
Annonymous (for now!!!!)

2008-04-17T01:40:00.000-07:00

some things are loved because they are worthy; some things are worthy because they are loved.
Ian Pitt - Watson

learning to breathe

2008-04-14T05:51:00.000-07:00

Everyone tells you where you need to go
Everyone tells you when you need to leave
Everyone tells you what you need to know
Everyone tells you who you need to be

But everything inside you knows
There's more than what you've heard
There's so much more than empty conversations
Filled with empty words

And you're on fire
When He's near you
You're on fire
When He speaks
You're on fire
Burning at these mysteries

And it is funny, because these past days I have been feeling. Feeling stuff that is sore.
Everything inside me looks like everything I hate.

You are the hope I have for change, you are the only chance I think I am prepared to take.

I'm standing on the edge of me.
I'm standing on the edge of everything I've never been before.
You are the hope I have for change.
You are my hope in this gospel.
You are His kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven.

Roberta, Biddy, Denise...I see you.

Your on fire
When you're near Him
Your on fire
When He speaks

We would rather be ruined than changed...

2008-04-12T07:14:00.000-07:00

My week has passed...I have been in town on several occasisons.

There was little linkage between the seen and an unseen world of justice, truth and love.

Does belief make things real?
Make things feel alright?
Does belief make things true?
Things like you...you and I ?

Today, our ladies rest in my mind...

Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Children chave no fixed preconceptions of reality.

Children know how to accpet a gift.

Children know how to trust.

Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven? The disciples asked this because they were trying hard, and Jesus showed them a child who in all probability neither knew nor much cared to know what the Kingdom of Heaven was nor what such a question might mean. And then He told them to become like that little chiild - neither knowing in the sense of understanding nor caring in the sense of being anxious. (Frederick Buechner)

2008-03-15T16:36:00.000-07:00

There is a day
when the road neither
comes nor goes, and the way
is not a way but a place.
Wendell Berry

the tart with a heart...

2008-03-08T14:54:00.000-08:00

We only see a humans behaviour - we don't see their experience.

2008-03-05T10:13:00.001-08:00

From the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, "Peace, peace," when there is no peace. Jeremiah 6:13,14

There isn't anything false about hope...

2008-02-16T14:45:00.000-08:00

"I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are better left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was as if some beautiful bird had flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free." - Red

Emma and I journeyed into town wednesday evening past.
B was already there.
Standing, watching and waiting.

We stood with her, we worked with her, we laughed with her and we remembered her.

'B - May your heart be speechless
At the sight of the truth
Of all your belief had hoped,
Your heart breathless
In the light and lightness
Where each and every thing
Is at last its true self
Within that serene belonging
That dwells beside us
On the other side
Of what we see.'
(John O'Donohue)

2008-02-15T15:41:00.000-08:00

"Seek the shalom of the city
where I have sent you ...and pray to the Lord on its behalf;
for in its shalom
you will find your own shalom."

to seek truth beyond tradition, beyond definition, beyond image...

2008-02-10T05:14:00.000-08:00

No one on this planet is truly experienced to handle the obstacles we face today...
terror
fear
lies
agendas
politics
money.

The outcome of the prostitution law has saddened me...on how unfair, backwards, upside down, unbalanced, untruthful, corrupt, and just simply, how wrong "politics" can be...

i find myself torn...because this time it’s not that simple...our choices aren’t as clear ...it isn't so obvious...

we think we are free...but in reality fear controls our decisions...

today I feel inspired to want to change myself to better the world...
change myself
change my greed
change my fears...

Im searching after
desire
strength
courage
ability
passion to change