tumbo-ing along

validated

2006-02-23T21:30:00.000-05:00

He arrives bound by this mortal coil. Repulses of each breathe, reminds him of the flesh that hinges on limits. He is is bound. Captions became geography and space enlarged in his diminishment. I imagine Him, feeling the rocks under his slumber, the urging of bodily obligations, the reduction of the senses.

There was a reason for this...

and it arrives in His name...

Emmanuel

God with us.

Distinguishable Outlines

2006-02-13T21:56:00.000-05:00

Distinguishable Outlines
For Jamie on our half year as a husband and wife

Approaching a dusked corner on black winged skies,
I recall rough edges of memories
When absence widened my mourning

Yes, you arrive on vows that cry out

Piercing thresholds of muted voices

Yes, these scales, they are falling

Yes, your hands can free me of all these haunts I cling to

Narrowed days, when your body comforts in its sharing
Under shadows of voice
An uplifted arm

You teach me to ascend

Half-hearted slumber, a reluctant arrival,
You sigh into a crumpled kneeling
My eyes observe from a distance

And this beautiful miracle of sighing

And again, I am discovering a renewal of these vows
Surprised by collisions that echo

We hope
We live

We lament
We are here

Stumbling under this grace and

Knowing

This unveiling of a ragged life into something so

Incomprehensibly beautiful…

Advent reflections: Jesus as King and Priest

2005-12-05T12:15:00.000-05:00

Zechariah 6:12-13 (New International Version)
“Tell him this is what the LORD Almighty says: 'Here is the man whose name is the Branch, and he will branch out from his place and build the temple of the LORD. It is he who will build the temple of the LORD, and he will be clothed with majesty and will sit and rule on his throne. And he will be a priest on his throne. And there will be harmony between the two.'”

community

2005-11-25T13:32:00.000-05:00

"If you look at every flower individually, they look quite miserable. Put them together in a vase and they become a bouquet and that is quite attractive. I think about our commuinty often in this way."- Henri Nouwen

discipleship

2005-10-21T08:11:00.000-04:00

"We do not need the grace of God to withstand crises—human nature and pride are sufficient for us to face the stress and strain magnificently. But it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God—but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people—and this is not learned in five minutes."-Oswald Chambers.

ordinary. the weightless identity. invisible. we cry out for acknowledgement. belonging. yet, we think that all this noise making. a facade. apart from God. we conterfeit divine work. we utter theology. shallow charity. pocket change of our hearts.

attempting to be Him

God

I am poor at this

in the end, there is this threshold...with the a beautiful image. the open arms of god....desperate for us to escape the futility of self-examination that will lead us....

to a place

that hints us to

hell.

weathered

2005-10-05T08:04:00.000-04:00

"Sin is something I am born with and cannot touch— only God touches sin through redemption." Oswald Chambers

deliverence comes in spots of sighs. i pray for these chains. i say God is has been so long...so long that i struggled with this...may you deliver me? he responds...these chains have been there for a long time...but they are weathered and rusted...my rain of holiness have made these chains so weak...now walk...into peace...for your salvation will bring freedom. i pull away...and the chains become rusted and blow into orange dust. Mercy. Grace. Power. Majest.

equity

2005-05-11T10:48:00.000-04:00

recovering. restoring by shingled sunshine of windows. i recall memories of shards of lives that i have contributed to their hurts. and i am convicted of my sin. congested memories of fatal insertions and bellowing tears. yet, the depths, there is restoration and redemption. that is the gospel story. forgiveness in the center of our despair. all that reduction becomes convergence...and i realize...that God is so merciful.

discovery time

2005-05-09T18:04:00.000-04:00

i find that i am so embattled with moments of distraction and devotion. i lose my heart to the most mundane activities of surfing through memories, or sucked into the worlds pacifying potraits of significance. but there is this beautiful extension of the hands of God and this gentle voice that is hidden in silence gives me such a moment of understanding...and i surrender to it...with revolving affection and there is so much that i fail to really understand...

my wedding day is coming and somehow it is all so surreal...sharing voices with another in the evening and mornings, to practice our community in love, to wrestle through moments of selfless love...sigh...what do i know...?

here is song that has touched me recently...

Sea Of Faces by Kutless

I see the city lights all around me
Everyone's obscure
Ten million people each with their problems
Why should anyone care

And in Your eyes I can see
I am not just a man, vastly lost in this world
Lost in a Sea of Faces
Your body's the bread, Your blood is the wine
Because you traded Your life for mine

Sometimes my life it feels so trivial
Immersed in the greatness of space
Yet somehow you still find the time for me
It's then You show me Your love

And In Your eyes I can see
And in Your arms I will be
I am not just a man, vastly lost in this world
Lost in a Sea of Faces
Your body's the bread, Your blood is the wine
Because you traded Your life for mine

If only my one heart
Was all you'd gain from all it cost
Well I know you would have still been a man
With a reason
To willingly offer your life

I am not just a man, vastly lost in this world
Lost in a Sea of Faces
Your body's the bread, Your blood is the wine
Because you traded Your life for mine

Just one in a million faces

embrace

2005-04-20T09:35:00.000-04:00

miroslav volf's definition of embrace:

"the will to give ourselves to others and 'welcome' them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, is prior to any judgement about others, except that of identifying them in their humanity. the will to embrace precedes any 'truth' about others and any construction of their 'justice.' this will is absolutely indiscriminate and strictly immutable; it transcends the moral mapping of the social world into 'good' and 'evil.'"

from "weight of glory"-c.s. lewis

2005-04-13T17:32:00.000-04:00

If you asked twenty men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to the desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desire, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. We must not be troubled by the unbelievers when they say that this promise of rewards makes the Christian life a mercenary affair. There are different kinds of rewards. There is the reward which has no natural connection with the things you do to earn it, and is quite foreign to the desire that ought to accompany those things. Money is not the natural reward of love; that is why we call a man a mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money. But marriage is the proper reward for a real lover, and he is not a mercenary for desiring it. A general who fights well in order to get a peerage is a mercenary; a general who fights for victory is not, victory being the proper reward of battle as marriage is the proper reward of love. The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation.

a commute

2005-04-13T10:38:00.000-04:00

in the fading blurs of faces and tense weight of bodies in movement and static, i ache for forever. something relentless the pursuing of a life that is see in their eyes. we seem so aimless in our pursuit of meaning. a whisper tells me of the fallenness of all of this. it is so meaningless...understanding so little about the beauty of resting in love. to revel in the frameless beauty of jazz, holding hands to comfort, leaning our tired heads on one another, smiling and enter into the paradox of community. where are we going? i ask. i ponder. where are are we going? and all the while, there is this whisper. that says, our lives are latent with love. love. agape.

out of mystery

2005-02-16T11:38:00.000-05:00

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.
Wrap it round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements, lock it safe in the casket or coffin in your own selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken: it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."

Eustace

2005-02-03T01:35:00.000-05:00

aslan allegory

discovering words that seem to reveal such a depth of my insidious manner in which i deal with revelation. it is indeed painful...but yet at the end...there is the hope. that comes...it surprises me deeply.

excerpted from Chronicles of Narnia, "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" by C.S. Lewis.

"I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion
coming slowly toward me. And one queer thing was that there was no
moon last night, but there was moonlight where the lion was. So it
came nearer and nearer. I was terribly afraid of it. You may think
that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough.
But it wasn't that kind of fear. I wasn't afraid of it eating me, I
was just afraid of it -- if you can understand. Well, it came close up
to me and looked straight into my eyes. And I shut my eyes tight. But
that wasn't any good because it told me to follow it."

"You mean it spoke?"

"I don't know. Now that you mention it, I don't think it did. But
it told me all the same. And I knew I'd have to do what it told me, so
I got up and followed it. And it led me a long way into the mountains.
And there was always this moonlight over and round the lion wherever
we went. So at last when we came to the top of a mountain I'd never
seen before and on the top of this mountain there was a garden - trees
and fruit and everything. In the middle of it there was a well. . . .

"Then the lion said -- but I don't know if it spoke -- 'You will
have to let me undress you.' I was afraid of his claws, I can tell
you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on
my back to let him do it.

"The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had
gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it
hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me
able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off.
You know -- if you've ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts
like billy -- oh but it is such fun to see it coming away."

"I know exactly what you mean," said Edmund.

"Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off -- just as I thought
I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt -- and
there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and
darker, and more knobly-looking than the others had been. And there
was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had
been. Then he caught hold of me -- I didn't like that much for I was
very tender underneath now that I'd no skin on -- and threw me into
the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that
it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and
splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I
saw why. I'd turned into a boy again."

prior to hello again

2005-01-17T20:52:00.000-05:00

she stood. i saw her smile through a windshield and yet her eyes did not cooperate with her mouth. it was sadness and i felt this thorn in my heart. i wanted to remain in the weakness of occupancy. yet in the absence will be gradations of our faith upon faith. one night we spoke of grace, our intolerable sins and the hope we have on horizons. i ate cold eggplant and vegetarian chicken with her among coughs that forced her empathy in more ways than others. so here we are apart. yet, i feel that it will be abbreviated...with our words, our photographs and the trinkets of prayers that will collage into something strangely and clumsily beautiful.

decrepit

2005-01-15T13:26:00.000-05:00

the state of illness makes declensions of yourself. you no longer feel like the person you have come to know. your body weighs in differently, the way your voice trails in the midst of congestion. aches that burn joints. nose passages feel like rusted rash. you become more aware of the way your breathing that is halted by the hacking of bodily fluids that are too vulgar to imagine. yet, in the midst of it, you realize the wisdom that you are somewhat limited. your body although a magnificant creation is declining into the midst of regression and you are not the god that suppose you are. i read psalm 41 today and it reminded me that weakness returns us to a place that acknowledge that we need something larger than the proverbial "me." so, here i sit, with the weight of my body being afflicted and i look towards the divine one. the one who is more than me...and for a moment i am not distracted by my own sovereignty and i quietly breathe and remind myself you are the god that blesses the afflicted.

mourning

2005-01-02T11:56:00.000-05:00

buried

the weight of the lost in tidal mourning. this mourning...the eyes gasped with personal amputated families. a child buried. burning pyres. tarped bodies. kneeling heaving of wailing. hands outstretched. empty answered prayers. tears flooding the nations. candles melting tears.

My harp is tuned to mourning,

and my flute to the sound of wailing

Job 30:31

the appearance of the darkness of this era of history. bring forth a moment of quiet. i yearn for this mourning to turn to dancing. to be able to see beyond...oh my dearest Lord. Give us your son to your ailing world...and recall us to your afflictions...

the brutality of death...without hope and may we receive the mercy of witness...

"After the suffering of his soul,

he will see the light of life and be satisfied;

by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,

and he will bear their iniquities."

Isaiah 53:11

Dearest One, extend your pierced hands. hard of breath...join the world in this story...may your name Emmanuel (God with us) be more than the rebuilding of concrete, of towns but the home of hearts. where there is absence may you offer presence. where there are sinking heads may you provide a shoulder. where there is the loneliness of suffering, may you weep with them as you did at Lazarus's tomb...Jesus, I believe in you...that your arms are not too short...allow the manifestation of the gospel to be worthy of your name...this is my prayer...

in the center of this conflicted prayer I continue to whisper...

emmanuel

a newest year

2005-01-01T09:02:00.000-05:00

reunion deferred

crossing streets on the eve of another year...conflicted yearnings of destinations. i arrive upon a steel framed home. invited by a man name eric. his smile and welcome is filled with warmth. singular hallways give way to doubting invitees who neither know me and the weight of strangers' conversation bring dread. then there she is...sals, the arriving into her embrace and with weightless hands she takes me on this eve. i remember the winter's reflective heart. she looks beyond me. the night is filled with warmth...among people whom i have yet to discover. a woman tells me of atheist boyfriends, another tells me she is a "bad" christian while in my heart, i tell her i am too. reflecting on martial arts, chinatown youth and the elusiveness of rhythm among asians, assembly language, discovering a common thread of nyu, melody the hidden cat, champagne in plastic martini glasses, couture flowers, denied engagements, 12 minus one grape, irish dancing among drunken stupor of john lee hooker music, smoking menthol cigarettes with tempting scotch, a bend of discovery of meeting the other broken half, utah mormons, marking time with cell phones, wong kar wai postcards...there i was, seeking a destination and getting lost in the midst of all these faces. so beautiful and wanting to enter their lives but realizing the limitations of this life of mine. as this destination closes, she walks me out. and in the breathing of this home, she offers me three words of hope. and my heart's walls crumble as this girl, who hold such tenderness that drafts so much strength, she wishes me well and safety as i leave.

i abbreviate my other destinations.

as i end of destinations. i discover that i want to come home. home. within the walls of shelter. that envelopes. that says there is a reason. reason to arrive. music seems to pass over me and i sigh...i am home...abandoning all for this one...

resisting eclipse

2004-12-31T20:41:00.000-05:00

the erasure of the threat. somehow, i am at this corner and beyond the pale. she is being shone upon with the sun that will arrive to me in half a day. i remember so much of this beautiful woman who have committed my heart with such love.