Impression - A Slam Poem

Sometimes I sit on the roof of my house and read the kind of books that get you noticed. Sometimes I go to coffee shops and peer over the words of the page and watch people, and wonder who they are, and who their friends are while I sit, hating coffee and loving blueberry scones. I wish Orange Julius would become the coffee shop of our age.

I remember reading an old tattered copy of Wuthering Heights on a plane so that people would think I was intellegent, and interesting to talk to. Sometimes I sit and look at the books on my shelves and am proud of their diversity and number. I love to go to bookstores and look through the classics section so I seem well read but I never read cookbooks in public because I have a weight problem and it makes me look bad, like the only thing i am interested in is where and how to get more food. Books have a way of making an impression, a way of telling a story about the reader and I do read.

And what I read says that I hope for a spooky supernatural kind of love like Heathcliff and Catherine and that I dream of Gatsby's Green Lights and Ash Heaps. The books I read say that I have stood on Boo Radley's front porch and looked around at a place where, "I would be but little happy if I could say how much." I have seen the Phenomenal Woman, stood in the city by the sea, wept over the desolation that I found there, and I reached far in the distance Olympian Glory that Hercules saw when his labors were done.

You see, books have a way of making an impression, a way of telling a story about the reader.

Music - A Poetic Essayish Kind of Thing

Years ago, before the Wesley's and the Gospel hymns... the church sang only the Psalter. In lilting, haunting, melodies they sang out old Hebrew woe, and exaltation. It was the kind of music that made you ache inside, and beg for more of God...

The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want... He maketh me to lie down in green pastures... He leads me beside the still waters...

Fannie Crosby, Charles Wesley, Isasc Watts brought us the wonder of hymnody, story songs that connected the lives of Christians to the stories of Scripture. They painted word images powerful in the imagination, and just a lucid as any painted image. It was the kind of music that made you ache inside, and beg for more of God...

O Sacred Head now wounded, by grief and shame bowed down... now scornfully surrounded... with thorns, thy only crown...

This only recently gave way towards a new movement of music, scaled down from the orchestration of the past, simple ideas strung together with fearless devotion. These modern Psalms of Ascent mark a new journey for Christian persons. The kind of music that makes you ache inside, and beg for more of God...

Indescribable, uncontainable, you placed the stars in the sky and you call them by name, you are amazing God! All powerful, untameable, awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim, you are are amazing God...

Sadly however, you are forced to choose one or the other. You can have only one. God's people, are simply not creative enough to imagine both a guitar, an organ, and the schola in the same room. It must be one of the other... choose you this day...

A Budded Cross

So now that I am all moved into a new parsonage. I have created a prayer room and I bought a large cross for the wall. Oddly enough in my search for this cross I came across several that I didn't really want. Then, as I was looking through several wrought iron crosses, they suddenly all fell off the wall and behind them was the perfect cross I wanted. I took it home, and put it on the wall, and it was perfect...

In my reflections on this new cross since then I have realized that it is a particularly powerful symbol for this time of life. I used to have a cross on my bookbag when I first arrived at seminary. The cross on my bookbag was called a "Budded Cross" and it actually represents Christian immaturity, the tree before it is budded.

This new cross that found me... is made up of carved twined leaves and flowers. It is more than a tree that is budded, but a tree that is growing... and I am humbled... I wonder if I want to paint it... Make it an even more living symbol... Hmmmm...

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

So, I finished it last night... all 652 pages...

It was beautiful, sweet, exciting, funny, brilliant, and terribly, terribly, sad. Truly among the best in the series. THANK YOU JK ROWLING!

I cannot say much more as I will not want to spoil the wonders for others who might wish to read. Instead, I will simply say that, part of the reason that I love the characters in these books so much is that, I realized they remind me of persons in my life.

I can't wait for the next book.

God Smack Greeting Cards - Greeting Cards from God

(Because I thought it would be a funny idea I started coming up with Greeting Cards from God. Thank you Jeana for the inspiration)

Cover -
In this time of sorrow just remember...
Inside -
It's all your own fault. How many ways do I have to say it? "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery"

Cover -
Happy Birthday
Inside-
By the way, everyone knows you are lying about your age... especially me. So stop it.

Cover -
Congratulations!
Inside-
I have never seen anyone climb the ladder as fast as you have... so... why don't you tell me how disappointed are you now that you're at the top? Maybe I can help.

Cover -
Merry Christmas!
Inside -
I'm in the manger... not the shopping mall.

Cover -
Congratulations on your Confirmation
Inside -
I guess I won't be seeing you in church anymore?

Cover -
Happy Wedding Day!
Inside -
If you spend half as much time on the marriage as you did on the wedding you'll be okay...

Cover -
Happy Forth of July!
Inside -
By the way, just so you know... I care about the other countries too...

A Rant Against the Church Corporate

Okay, so this one is a long time coming. I think if I had time I would create a conference built around the ideas that I am about to present to you. You see, I am sick to death of watching the church recreate God into a corporate image. We streamline him, we make him safe, accessable, and in many ways, the church has decided to act as his publicist, or campaign manager rather than pilgrims on an unsafe journey.

Consider for a moment the fact the people such as Joel Olsteens of the world who package God as though he were the first bright hope of self-actualization. According to his Billboards his church will help you "Release Your Inner Champion." Excuse me Joel, but last time I checked my inner champion looks out for his own perverse desires and to hell with God and everyone else. If I could do it on my own, as you so wickedly propose to our "be all you can be" culture, I would not need God to be my champion.

Look even futher however, at how we dress ourselves. In order to be cool and clever we take corporate logos and rework them with cute little christian messages for our t-shirts. In doing so, we adopt the ethos of the corporations whose symbols we are STEALING and are therefore now only on the earth to sell our religious product and make money. Our God technology that works for you is now proudly displayed to a culture that is saturated with advertising images to the point that we barely notice them anymore.

Meanwhile, Christian music, art, poetry, books, and any other form of cultural expression are sorrowfully following corporate trends. Boybands in fashion? Try the Christian Alternative. Grunge? Try the Christian alternative. It just a bit blander than the original.

Long ago artists and musicians like Bach and Michelangelo found thier own voice and spoke with it. God wanted to create something with them, not lead them copy someone else.

The church that allows itself to be tempted into the evil of the corporate businesslike, technological "Gospel Product" is in danger of losing it's soul to the powers of the world.

Widgets - I have to beat JD to the punch...

So I just had my computer updated... and let me tell you OS X Tiger is really really cool. The coolest new feature are this little devices called "Widgets!" They are little icons that give you information. I even downloaded one that will give me the song lyrics of whatever CD is in my diskdrive or whatever song I am playing on iTunes. Rock on!

This brings me to my point for the day and I think Bill Gates is not going to like me. Apple is tremendosly better than PC. It looks cooler, it has cooler features... Apple is the best computer ever.

I wish PC people knew the joy they are missing out on with their clumsy huge boxes of a computer. I mean think about it people. The very look of the computer says something about it. "Look, I'm a gray box.... A great big, hulking gray box that takes up alot of space at your desk. Aren't I boring... linear, modular, manufactured. I have no idea what style or imagination are... I am just one great big hulking calculator!"

Apples on the other hand are desinged, beautiful, portable, and livable. They practically breathe.

So PC people... turn away from your darkness and into the calm soothing light of the Apple!!!

Tin Lizzy Gift Shop - A poemling

Across the sky I see letters proclaiming
"ANGELS ANGELS ANGELS"
And I wish to myself that there would be angels around me
And that I could see them and have a conversation
And talk about God and Saints, sanctuary and pierced sides.

I wish that we laugh and sing and fly together
And that they would bless this flat vast farmland that is my hope and home.
Blessing it that I too may be blessed because from this land was I grown.

But no sooner am I lost in dreams of flatlands, blessings and curses then
The writing changes and I am suddenly pulled from my all things celestine:

"ELVIS STATUES HALF-OFF"

I guess that makes me a pastor...

In the past week I have gone from two to seventeen keys on my keychain. I have moved into a huge parsonage, and preached my first Sunday in church... I guess that means I'm a pastor.

My first Sunday went just fine... I got up at 6:00 was in church by 7:00, in my robes by eight... to serve at 9:30. I guess you might say I was a little high strung and nervous.

So I guess now I'm a pastor. Oddly enough I feel completely uncomfortable with the idea... which tells me I am ready to be a pastor.

When I began seminary back in 2001 I was completely confident. I was sure I could be a pastor with little to no trouble. Now I recognize that I cannot do my job. I am what God wants me to be... pliable in his hands, helpless, in need of his strength and wisdom to complete even the smallest of tasks. It is in this state of utter abandon that I feel like everything is going to be okay. It is like the Wesleyan Covenant Prayer in many ways... the Lord has many services to be done and I am open to them all. Whatever should happen, so long as God is my father it is all going to be alright.

Strength in the Father

So you may ask yourself... why am I up so late. The answer is because I am making the bulletin for church this upcoming Sunday and without ever having worshipped at this particular congregation; it has been quite difficult. In fact, there have been alot of unknowns lately. That is what the world is right now, one great big unknown.

However, I have something to write about that may help. You see the other day everyone in my family came over for dinner... my brother and sister in law, my nephew Seth, my sister and my nephew Logan all crowding with me around my parents table with... well my parents. As inevitably happens, the nephews were playing a game in which Logan was chasing Seth throughout the house pretending to be a monster. So convincing was he that Seth ran into the kitchen where we were all seated and jumped into his father's lap. He was scared at first but as soon as he was in his father's arms, he turned and started to do his "strong man" poses where he shows off his muscles. I laughed when I realized that Seth, safely in the arms of his father was now strong enough to encounter the monster. He was posing to show how invincible he was when he was within his father's arms. With his Dad, monsters were no longer a problem.

So now I reflect on a simple basic truth of the Gospel... which basically means that we will spend the rest of our lives trying to unpack this simple, basic idea.

In our own strength we are filled with fear and weakness incapable of overcoming anything. In our Father's strong arms... we are invincible.

The Chaplet of Divine Mercy

"There is nothing that man needs more than Divine Mercy -- that love which is benevolent, which is compassionate, which raises man above his weakness to the infinite heights of the holiness of God." -- His Holiness Pope John Paul II (June 7, 1997)

One of my favorite devotions is a prayer given to Saint Faustina called the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. It contains within it "a message that is clear and understandable for everyone. Anyone can come here, look at this image of the merciful Jesus, His Heart radiating peace, and hear the depths of his own soul what Saint Faustina heard: 'Fear nothing; I am always with you'. And if (we) respond with a sincere heart, 'Jesus I trust in you,' (we) will find comfort in all (our) anxieties and fears."

Saint Faustina had a vision of what it meant to share acts of mercy with the poor and dienfranchized. She sought to live the mercy of Christ in the world. I too, despite my own fears in this season of my life, wish to see the Divine Mercy of Christ wrought with remarkable zeal and exuberance in the world. I want the lame to walk, the blind to see, and the poor to be full of good things. So I pray tonite:

Eternal Father, you offer us the body and blood, soul and divinity, of your dearly beloved Son, in atonement for our sins. For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us, and on the whole world. Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One have mercy on us, and one the whole world. AMEN.

"I come here to commend the concerns of the Church and of humanity to the merciful Christ. On the threshold of the third millenium, I come to entrust him once more.... "Jesus, I trust in you."

Another Day Dead and Gone

Another day dead and gone-
Much like a promise to
Be and Stand with me against the torrent
Of rain, flooding out of an already empty
Vessel on the waves charting lost courses towards
Somewhere warm and safe
When apparently safety comes in numbers
Bigger than just one ship on
Waves of the kind of loneliness that comes from
Standing alone at the end of
Another day dead and gone.

Wrote this poem tonite, I kind of like it. We'll see...

Sometimes it just has to hurt...

So one of my all time favorite movies is the move "Garden State".

The movie follows the story of Andrew a young man who had been medicated for most of his life as a result of a trauma that occurred when he was a child. As a result, his father put him on anti-depressants to the extent that for most of his life, he has been completely detached from his emotions.

The moment the movie came together for me is a moment after the medications have stopped and the feelings have started to surface, Andrew starts to cry for the first time and says: "This #&*%'en hurts." I know what you are thinking: "What horrible language!"

Look beyond it though... Doesn't it hurt sometimes... So much that normal words won't accurately convey the depth of the emotion? Sometimes, feeling the depth of who you are hurts and we live in a culture that does everything it can to avoid it.

We try to create a million distractions that keep us from recognizing how much it sucks to live in a fallen world and to experience that fallen nature in and around ourselves. We surround ourselves with televisions and movies, and games and noise noise noise, not to mention pornography, materialism, intellectual elitism all as means to numb ourselves, drug ourselves from feeling the pain of living in a fallen world.

It is however important that we do not numb ourselves to the realities of our falleness. It is only then that we can hope to realize the depth of our Father's love and mercy for us. Only by seeing the effects of fallen world not only as an abstract removed external reality, but also an internal reality as well do we realize how important the relationship with our Heavenly Father really is.

Feeling bad, though not pleasant, is a natural and important facet of sanctification. When we acknowledge the hurt that the fall has had on our lives we are then gifted with the power and grace to overcome it. Pain in this case is a very healing thing, much more than the shallow medications we use to not to feel.

The truth is, even in life with God, it sometimes just has to Hurt...

(If you don't believe me, ask the psalmist.)

Cathedral Days

I wish, that right now... I could be in a cathedral (I use the term loosely not meaning the Church of a Bishop but just a big church). A cathedral I mean, of three dimensions. A lot of people are intimidated by the massive architecture of cathedrals. I however, feel at home there. Imagine for a moment the stone and statues, stained glass and artistry. I love these kinds of big places where everything is symbolic. I find such places where the story is carved into the very stone very reassuring.

Right now however, I am on a pilgrimage between one world and another. Hanging out at my parents house before taking my first appointment. I feel naked and oddly alone in the midst of this. There are people that I talk to, even people in the same or similar situations... but they are not HERE.

So I wish I were in a Cathedral, where the wide open freedom of the space welcome me, to inhabit the story of God.

In this moment...

So as you can tell by my previous post... life has been a bit... intense lately. I have been running from one thing to the next to the next and even now I am in that place between one world and another. My room in my Kentucky home is now empty and I am back at my parents house for two weeks until I move into a parsonage later on next month (June). H0wever, my heart is full to breaking with goodbyes... wedding goodbyes, school goodbyes, roommate goodbyes... it really has come to an end this Asbury Theological Seminary thing... It really is over. Now I need to press into the Father more than ever, rely on my friend and brother Lord Jesus, and breathe deeply the Holy Spirit. Only this will produce in my heart the sweet fragrance of rest and peace. Only the love and unbroken community of the Trinity will remind me that though miles part me from my loved ones' in Kentucky who themselves will soon be spread to the four corners, we remain the Body of Christ. Baptized into constant Communion with one the Lord and one another.

The Last Few Weeks

May 15-19 - Finals Week (All my papers needed to be rewritten due to computer failure.)
May 20 - Family and Friends Arrive for Graduation
May 21 - Graduation Day at Asbury/Graduation Reception Party afterward
May 22 - Family and Friends Leave/Church/Jeremy's Graduation Party
May 23 - Travel to Indiana to meet with Church
May 24 - Travel Back to Kentucky
May 25 - Meet with Father Peter for Goodbye Lunch
May 26 - Go to monastery for much needed reflection
May 27 - Have Lunch with Harriet/Clear out box at work/ Assist at Friends wedding rehursal dinner
May 28 - Go to lunch and Museum with Friends/Decorate altar for wedding/attend Wedding/ Attend Reception/ Clean up after reception.
May 29 - Begin Packing/Last Sunday at Saint Patrick's Church
May 30 - Pack, Pack, Pack/Spur of the moment bar-b-que with Friends/Pack, Pack, Pack,
May 31 - Turn in keys at Asbury/Have Pizza with James/Load truck/ Say goodbye :( / Travel to Indiana
June 1st - Wash Car - Breathe (hopefully)
June 2-4 - North Indiana Conference (www.nicumc.org)

The Bare Essentials...

I am going to the monastery for a day and I was told to "pack light". You know, just bring along the essentials...

My Essentials -

Benedictine Cross
Anglican Rosary
Blue Like Jazz - Donald Miller
Celtic Daily Prayer Book
The Holy Rule of Saint Benedict
Bible
Poetry Journal
Pencils x 2

Spring Music Recital

So tonite was my final music recital as a seminarian and besides the lovely tunes from Les Miserables, I sang a song entitled... "Savior of my Heart" by Sheila Walsh, Bonnie Bielec, and John Hartley. I want to tell you about music in my life.

When I joined the Frankton United Methodist Church, we used to sing the most wonderful little song: "There's a Quiet Understanding". It was the song that characterized my early Christian Life. I still remember waliking into my dorm at a secular university and hearing someone plaing the piano in the lobby a song that was familiar to me and my not being able to remember what it was. Perplexed, I asked the gentleman playing at the piano what the title was and he told me, "There's a Quiet Understanding". The walls came crashing in, and filled me with memory.

There's a quiet understanding
When we're walking in the Spirit
There's a quiet understaning
When we gather in his name...
There's a love we feel in Jesus
There's a manna that he feeds us
That's a promise that he give us
When we gather in his name...
And we know when we're together
Sharing love and understanding
That our brothers and our sisters
Feel the oneness that He brings
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you Jesus!
For the ways you love and feed us,
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you Jesus!
Thank you, thank you, Lord.

This song was an Ebeneezer in my life, and now that I am finished with Seminary, the Lord has placed a new stone of memory, a stone of help into my life:

You alone, are the savior of my heart
Tender and Kind and true;
You alone are the shepherd of my soul,
Gracious in all you do
I will seek you in the morning
I will seek your face at night.
How lovely is your presence to me....
Oh Lord to me!
Take my heart, with all it's wandering ways,
Shelter me in your grace;
There I'll stay, till all my days are through
Then I shall see your face.
I will see you in the morning
I will see your face at night
How lovely is your presence to me...
O Lord to me!

This song above all the others that we have sung in Seminary is the perfect note to end on. There is more narrative here than usual, more music than is usually heard, more story than I will relate tonite. I will probably write more on this later.

I merely want to mention that oddly enough, after my recital... I have more peace about leaving this Blessed Holy Ground that is Asbury Theological Seminary.

Post Baptismal Drip

I remember something very powerful about the moment of my baptism many years ago in 1995. Particularly... I remember a single drop of water pouring down my cheek to the bottom of my chin... I remembered thinking that I wanted to wipe it away... but didn't. I didn't because in the moment, my heart welled up within me... overpowering my senses with the Spirit of God.

I remember the warmth of my pastors hand on my head... I remember the smell of the sanctuary... I remember... I remember... I remember...

So seminary has been the awaited consummation of my baptism... If you'll remember, at Baptism, they invoke your name over you... Naming and identity are very important parts of Christian life.

I remember arriving at seminary with one question: "What does it mean to have an identity in Christ?" I remembering praying the same question... and now I know.

"You are my Son in whom I am well pleased..."

Wisdom from The Muppets

The other day my roommate James let me listen to his "The Muppet Show Album." (I recommend you buy it.) The last song on the album, from the movie Muppets in Space, is called I'm Going to go Back There Someday and contains one of the most profound statements I've ever heard:

"There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met..." -- Gonzo

So incredibly true I think. In fact, it led me to the conclusion that The Muppets, much like life... are all about friendship. Seminary in many ways has been nothing more and nothing less than connecting me to friendships, and teaching me how to trust in those friendships.

Recently, I made a new friend who I feel like I've known all my life, and somehow, I don't have word to describe the friendship. This is a very annoying thing to a poet.