Thursday, April 28, 2011

Meet the Smiths


"Say boooooooooooooooooooo!---"
"God is bigger then the booggy man. He's bigger then Godzilla or the monsters on TV oh--"
"...where is my hair brush, oh where is my hair brush?"
"--I gave it to the Peach 'cause he's got hair!"
"You're my cheese burger my yummy cheese burger be back for YO-U!"
"...Peter,"
"Yes,"
"Did I ever tell you how I feel about my nose?--"
"Keep walking, but you won't knock down our wall!"
"WE ARE THE pirates who don't do ANYTHING!"
"Peter"
"Yes"
"You didn't see or hear anything. Got it?"

This has been Steph Writing Random Crap. Tune in next time to hear her sing--
"Everybody's gotta baby kangaroo, yours is pink but mine it blue...first was small but then they grew oh everyone's gotta baby kangarooooooooooooo!!!!

Monday, April 18, 2011

wanna hear something awesome?

"...maybe you people [pastors] just get the sickest cribs in heaven but idk if it's worth it..."
"
getting = earning,
lol nothing you get out of this job is worth it
what you recieve is though"


Note to self: in the presents of true pastors, I have the right to remain silent.

Young?

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.
--Bob Dylan

I can't say it'll last forever, heck it's probably not going to be the same after next week. But today it was nice to be young. Only the photos hold any semblance to "forever" but only the people in the pictures get to be "young."

Thursday, April 14, 2011

just4lolz

I just thought I'd be super-hipster-Christian and say something about Hell and Rob Bell. Rob Bell. Hell. There I did it!

...

Light on, light off, light on--I realize my eyes are open and so are the blinds. Roomie's bed is well made, the checker pattern pulled tight over the small mattress. I'm in a twist of several blankets, it occurs to me I have no idea the time.
One, two, three--deep breaths, the last moments of sleep. The earplugs come out. The world is set in chaos. Neighbors-Below blast worship music, I remember "Encounter Day." The living room sounds of the Threesome. Music blares form the kitchen CD player: Tangled Sound Track. Roomie dances by the front door. Husbands are in discussion.
I smile. The skin pulls tight from chapped lips.
One, two, three--a failed count down to lift off. Roomie waltzes into the room, apologizes for waking me. We laugh, I emerge.
The living room is a picture of cohabitation. Each careful to encourage, filled with dainty apologies. Do I know these people?
Simple conversations, husbands-weddings-onday6.com, friends-fights-prophetic words. Small talk.
I sit on an ever floating sea, begging to dive past the water's surface. Longing to plunge into the unseen, an ever more powerful part of life. We float, as passengers, with views from fogged glass, everything in part. We sit as passengers, unintentional, and along for the ride. Is the point discovery or destination, to see or to live?

Sunday, April 10, 2011

...

A new thing

Becoming someone else

Contorting to what I want


Something simple I once was.

I am.

I want.

I fragment my wholeness

and observe the broken for tips.


I learn and forget.

One more drop in the bucket

to becoming what I never wanted.

Looking ahead

I see, and admire,

and I become only to my dismay.

Not that the grass looks any less greener,

rather I am exactly what I wanted.


Who gave man this power?

Isn’t it far too much decision,

to get what we want?


I am what I sought after,

a fragment so beautiful,

a well contrived expression.

Here's to you,

my chameleon voice.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Godspell


Mom, rest assured that there are good people in Bethel so long as they know of this movie…okay so only one other person knew about it but we brought 1 ½ converts with us…

It has to be at least five years since I saw it and now watching it again I’m blown away. Images of Jesus filter through my perception and meets the forms of dancing hippies. Suddenly the once strange movie is momentous, the songs are controversial, and the antics are meticulous. These people are my heroes, these players, playing out the age they lived in. The age of fierce fundamentalist-religion and the wild Jesus People movement, clashing like the Pharisees with Jesus. I’m in awe of what the last generation left us with; the hope of a good God.

Jesus, in all his gawky and odd splendor, running and splashing, wanting to “get all washed up.” Jesus, who warns to turn the other cheek, a test failed, and a smile to the one who repented, this Jesus, who laughed and danced, who jested at his own analogies, this is my Jesus. Who was a live and passionate, but so quick to return to joy form anger. Praise God I saw this Jesus.

This pictures of a loving, hippy, friend. This Jesus was 150 pounds wet and yet a guy you couldn’t think of a situation to not trust him in. I think more and more this is what I see in Jesus. What an odd time to reveal Christ. Yes, here and now at ‘bible school’ (lols) it doesn’t seem too strange but when every other abstract seems determined to get into my head there He is. When Love and Grace are opening up a revolution, when church history is flooding into my heart and I’m screaming “FULL!” there’s, Jesus.

(It sounds more heretical around here)

That every layer that encompasses me, this explosion of the Christian world that I am left with and the power of what we are called forth into, is only a brighter understanding. That none of these things seem to be hindrances from God. It sounds super-spiritual, so spiritual that this ubercharismatic land wouldn’t call it religious per say, to want distance. To hear the call of Jesus and then abandon everything I have written here. To live in an eternal prayer closet and forget all the Grace, Love, and Church… But Jesus doesn’t seem daunted, no, what glorious nerve that He would be glorified in it. That I can look at the tears on an actor’s cheek in 1973, to the words once Hebrew now English, 2000 years prior, spoken by Him and He is still glorified. Glorified no less than before, never waning, awesome, God. This is a revelation of heart and mind, to see in layers of Love and of Grace, to see the time between then and now, still He is glorified.

My mind is blown

Monday, April 4, 2011

A Post

I need something to post and well, I wrote this so, here it is. A post.

Sun rise today was more beautiful than one would expect on Buckeye. The shabby stuck-o houses were a more vibrant orange in the morning light then their paint managed on its own. The trees clinging to life around the street were beginning to wake up from their brief winter’s sleep. One particularly large tree looked as though it would not wake up this year. Its tall frame was a cold ash-brown like one of the foothills that rose opposite the house the tree stood beside.

Underneath its bare branches stood the owner of the house. He gazed out past the immediate raven just beyond his yard to inspect the sun peaking over the hills. The twigs above him painted dark lines across his face which constantly changed with the movement of the wind somehow fitting the musing hidden within his buried brow.

The sun finally overcame the far off hill, beaming the warm morning light in a new found strength. Its yellow light stung his eyes yet it had already blinded him, reducing everything else to dark silhouettes. The man’s liquid blue eyes began to tear though he refused to look away. Brushing them away quickly his hands remembered the stubble creeping across his face.

Suddenly everything was back in motion. The trees were hissing with the new breeze and the grass whipped and scratched about his bare feet and legs. Below the house in the valley someone could be heard yelling in reply to a barking dog. Even the flowers seemed in a hurry to live. The sounds of cars on the nearby highway were in roaring chorus. The house itself was full of sounds hustling and bustling as the day began.

The man looked from the house to the sun rise again. The inevitable union with the chaos he could already hear inside. He stole only a few moments more as the wind settled a moment longer. Something evaded his lips, a word that to think it was too loud an utterance. It was a question he couldn’t bring himself to reason, a hope he loved only a little more then he hated.

He drew another deep breath looking out over the horizon. In a moment another gust of wind swirled around him. The grass hissed and the leaves which scratched over his feet tumbled on the ground. The sun was still rising peaking from the clouds that had made the morning so beautiful.

His eye could no longer dare to look up into the sun, her beauty leaving him wet eyed and blind, he focused back down onto the valley before him. It grew more detailed as daylight began to fill the crevasse.

The trees bellow were more dead than alive, their brittle branches were adding to the roaring torrent around him, birds and children’s screams could be heard off a ways. Everything came pouring in at once. Sound, feel, sight, flooding in, all saying so much but the meaning eluded him.

“Kirk?” someone called from the house.

“WHERE?—” he yelped with a jump. Embarrassed he turned back to see if someone had heard the word which had leapt from some dark recess of a thought. Much to his relief the call had come from some room deep within and from a voice far too preoccupied to notice him.

He stood alone under the tree and looked back once more to the view below. One more moment of peace, even though it and everything around him seemed to be casting him out of this serenity. Something desperate welled again inside; a cry too broken for a living soul to hear and almost too much for one to carry. He held it within him a moment longer along with all the air in his lungs. The wind began to pick up again. The chaos resumed this time it did not cease. Something sounding like broken glass came from the house only this time the different kinds of turmoil were as one and the man could no longer distinguish the hiding place from what he hid from. Everything rushed back into his senses; he could feel the ache in his chest beginning to wane.

Over come, now with the fear of losing it he dropped to his knees unconsciously plugging his ears with his hands. Once in the new found silences everything else fell away. He could feel his heart beat and hear his breath in his ears. The ache within him throbbed to the beat, he had no idea he was so attached to it.

“No,” he breathed, the words a gain escaping from his lips from some deep dark recess.

“Where are you?” He gasped, the thought of these words being released seemed so momentous, but when spoken they were dull and awkward. It was all in a language so clumsy for such a deep cry.

I am right here

Everything stopped.

The man opened his eyes, realizing only then that he had shut them. The wind, not even a breath and the light around him, was again soft and yellow. His hands relaxed to his sides as he stood silence blanketed the air which seemed thin around him. He looked around at the grass which was also still until his eyes fell upon a pair of feet. Following them up to the face of their owner he discovered that he was not alone. The embarrassment of what might have been witnessed flushed embarrassment across the man’s face with a small spike of anger.

What?

“What?” said the man. Somehow the only thing sillier then what he said was how he had felt only moments before.

They stood, simply stood there. The man was unable to come up with something to say, and the other man seemed unwilling to help him out. They stood and nothing passed before them, everything had already been played out upon the man’s face, though something deep within burst at the seams to get out. Something so much like the ache in his chest, though it was no longer a hollow feeling but one that overflowed.

“What are you doing here?” the man asked when he could no longer take the yearning within him. The foolishness of his words were only fully realized once they were ringing through their ears.

“What am I doing here? What are you---”

“I—I mean you’re here,” he burst; his breath seemed to be in some far off place while his words were everywhere at once.

“I am,”

The other man smiled in a way that lit up his whole face and the face of the man. His eyes shone like part of the sunrise itself as though he was a part of the scenery, or perhaps, he even dulled it in comparison.

“I see,” said the man still out of breath. The deep goodness which swelled within him was now contented to stand forever more in this silence while his mouth was not. “Well that’s, good.”

The other man could hold back in his smile no longer a loud ringing laugh with shook the trees and mountains alike. A great, warm, rich tone which made the man’s knees knock beneath him though he felt stronger now than ever.

“I am”

P.S. happy birthday siss...