Short breaths and slow prayers

There are distances and calculations on my mind. A revolving mass of intangible obstacles orbits my head, till exhaustion brings me to that dreaming space. My thoughts are a wasteland of fiction.
As I sort through what's fantasy and memory, I wonder if those years are reconcilable to me.

Brother-King, what impossible feats do you have at your command to terraform such a planet into the kingdom of heaven? I'm thinking through an incomplete melody, the sound is still sweet, but the lyrics are lost on me. I'm listening for the words in between, but I feel incapable of any capacity of trust. I'm dying for the mystery inside the miracle, and I'm appalled that there's something in me that thinks its identification is elsewhere. This shouldn't hurt, should it? The stress in my back persists as I run home, I have short breaths and slow prayers. The anxiety seems chronic to our sub-species and also hereditary and to be transferred by bloodstream. I've thus contracted doubts and ghosts and lies. How can something so empty seem so romantic to me?

The Desert Emissary has been digging with me for months, and we've been pretty sure these caverns go deeper. He's been pushing me to build a temple, and I've been speaking of taking up sword and spear. My patience fled when the scramble started again, and I've felt pretty raw ever since. Still reverberating spurned memories, I can't believe that nostalgia is getting to me. Every illogical sentiment springs rage where romance once grew, I can't trust the possibilities.
My brother Emissary listened diligently as I tried to find the end of me. No magic could conceive the desire my blues seems to need. I'm not a travelling man at heart, I'll come back home to hide away in a couple of rooms. Sometimes I have to leave though, when I'm being beckoned by this hollow sober sickness. I know glittering spectres can't lead me across burnt bridges. I know self examination can't produce all the answers to the unsettled questions I carry. I guess I can't see everything.

I want to see everything

I wish to be the effective wordsmith that with each syllable manipulates fates and illuminates weighty truth. Rather, I'm more of a miner digging through hard stone, stuck on a hunch that the gold is just on the other side of the bedrock. If my soul is a cavern, I'm the one trying to burrow deeper into secret subterfuge. Any futile labor biased falsehood leaves wonder betrayed. I've left my wonder betrayed.
If the evidence that darkness has no substance is written on my hands then why are eyes so desperate to see it? I can't wrap my mind around it. I can't wrap my mind around it all.

And I'm wondering if wandering blind is the intention, if my life started out an exodus
Forty years in the desert till I stepped up for my fathers. Time burns before my bed, and my mouth waters while I watch. By the power of fantasy, our hearts are unaligned to reality, by the power of fantasy, our eyes turn from truth.

On many attempts I've sought out a change in intellectual process, but the fruit of knowledge has grown bitter in my mouth too many times. I've been stubbornly building a tower of babel and I've been making a lot of loveless noise. Should I shut my mouth, I hear the voice of God. In all my searching, I've been speaking through the subjects, but grief comes quickly to rambling men.
Thankfully,
The Entity of Weight comes to threshing floor to wrestle the punksaints and eternal cowboys. The mystery of his breath brings reasoning men to bow in worship. His words are sharper than any sword on my belt, and his eyes burn like lamps, bright with understanding and clarity. Humility comes over the room like a shockwave, we know our Messiah has returned.

 Quiet and patient, I wait on the Master.

Like a child, I am received by the king. Like a blind man, Jesus gives me sight. I can't see everything, but the love of my life is within constant vision. I can lay down the mantle of scientist and pick up the yolk of this relationship. And my Brother-king, he is making a way for me, he is making a place for me to call my own. When mischief of this world burns away, I can come to him and receive my home. Sweet vision, lay my mind to rest, I make my home in your sacred heart.

Nourishment

Cultural inclinations and categories hold their meaning in daily communications, actions and perceptions. My ability to be different from all the other regular attendees is completely uninspired and if I ever hope to grow to become something greater than whats under the sun, I have to meet the expectation for depth that I have committed myself to.

Why pursue such a vigorous course? Because I have all my cards in the truth. I am dedicated to alleviate the falsehood in my mind. I've been licenced to carry this sword on good faith, and I have been coordinated into glory and interwoven into wonder. But I cannot recieve hope on an empty promise, nor can I receive the blessings of a false deity. I tell you the truth, I've struggled my whole life with false deities. I'll count sleepless nights, clocking in to a network of shame and fallacies. Behind my eyes lies distorted chemistries of addiction and narcism. Thought that I looked like a more honest man, but I always had a sneaking suspicion that I was a thief at heart. I'll trade that heart in, but I'm hesitant to receive unwarranted gifts from a mysterious warrior. But when the sun comes out, I always see that he is a King cloaked in purity, flowing from his heart and lips. He's got a gnash in his side ten inches wide and there are holes in the same hands that fed me bread when I was a kid.

 I'll tell the king, I remember very well the times when I was fasting and I didn't mean to be fasting, but I went without. I would reflect on those who daily went without, they were on the television right after the commercials for my favourite fast food joint. Being a greedy child growing up under the Nazarene I had mixed feelings about nutrition. I spent my time speaking to the romantics; I liked the story they whistled up during their hopeless nights. The consequences of amusement park love songs seemed to rest as far away as I wished them to be. When I grew up I witnessed how many go lucky killers had nostalgia as their epitaph and the kids on the block had rumors about my tombstone going up as soon as I hit rock bottom. I was pretty sure that was what the Juggernaut had planned for me. Had I forgot the one who was broken so I could be remade I don't know if I would have gotten my nutrition straight. If I ate what they fed me, it didn't matter how much I received because tommorow I'd be twice as hungry as yesterday, with a headache to top it off.

Juggernaut made so many promises, and I believed everyone. His soul was as hollow as mine, but I grew up under the Nazarene. Instead of  leaving me to despair, at a young age, I knew a king who died to fill this empty carcass with an everlasting spirit. Serenity, selfless affections, an exuberance of life; these were laid into my hands as gifts of grace. And as I ate of them warmth returned to my body. The wellspring cup of saving blood overflew and ran down my beard onto my chest as I drank. As I returned from my impoverished place into the tabernacle of holiness that he declared my home. Communion fed my soul and brought me home.

Look and see, a Grand Commision followed by resolutions based in eternal convictions fertilizes a heart to grow deep roots of hope. Earthquakes come and apostates are confronted and weakness undermines all my self righteous claims. But the hope remains, and the gospel remains. Brother-King is walking with me uphill as I dwell on destruction, bent in stubbornness on vindication and pride. With each step I'm belittling a creator and spitting curses and spurning righteousness, all the same he claiming me as his own. God's wrath is satisfied in the substitution of blood and the ordinance or restitution is completed in my communion with an intimate deity.

 I cannot turn from the sun for its radiance surrounds me; and Christ, in all his providence, remains present in my insecure immersions in idolatry. I'll take up sword and cross; Grace in all his majesty compels me by beauty; securing for me daily, riches in dreams and aspirations for compassion and reconciliation, that are beyond me.

The milestone hosannah

Take away this median, I will not just be the medium, but the source. On short notice I would like to concieve into you a different spirit. I'd to renew you with my enlightened insight, and captivate you with my self-produced piety and power.



No, I do not see into the everlasting nor do I understand the inner workings of eternity. I am not the infinitely righteous incarnate, but I am often defining myself by the thoughts of existential corpses. I will stand on these vanity based prophecies; I might curse your soul, but I will glorify my pride. It's not necessarily that I have a warhead planted at your head, but the shrapnel is coming your way all the same. Deception captivated my fathers generation like it has captivated mine. And in time, if I am not constantly aware of my speech I will leave a trail of humans caught in the confusion of my hypocrisy.

Woe to the one who speaks much.

Christ, you said your burden was light, but my burden seems to be a milestone. How can this be the plan? That you would have a carnal creep like me, to keep care to the King's most precious sheep? In retrospect to the relationships you blessed me with, I understand my depravity. With the depth of resolve came the struggle to vindication. In vindication and a search for comfort, I became the anesthesia for truth, and the sound of my voice caused men to cringe.

 Do the prayers dissipate the pollution, if the poison was my own solution? By my own hands, I cannot bring comfort to your weary shoulders, I can alleviate momentary pain, but suffering returns of it's own accord. By my own hands, I cannot muster anything lasting. Should you like to stay by my side, I will leave, and I will fade away in time.

I appeal to the mercy promised in abundance, destined to overthrow the earthly authority. I knows the ruins and wreckage among the temples will bust within the fire when the everlasting meets the definite. Thence comes forth the radiance of the Glory of God, and the cold nights will be no more. Sore eyes will find their renewal and nicotine tarnished tapestries will be washed with the blood of the lamb to be as bright as the sons of thunder.

Hosannah

Jesus Christ. A human ruler and a holy king, the suffering servant. I need my life in your hands. Drinking from your wellspring of life, the Spirit of peace and intimacy, I receive the proper words, not to vindicate myself, but to exalt the sacred heart of my beloved Lord. I rest always in my confirmation by this war language, knowing that I am ever-tethered to the sustaining Grace of my Savior.

Glorious light, the way is bright for those whom you call blessed.

Good Jesus, the treasure that you have bestowed at this wretches feet. Ten thousand upon ten thousand upon ten thousand blessings. The melody of your compassion breaks men at their ankles; raptured by symphonies of restitution, and by rhythms of resurgence we are compelled to weep at the feet of the bloody lamb, Son of God and Son of Mary.

As I breathe in the fragrance you were anointed with, I am reminded you were blessed by a prostitute, and you word is spoken through the words of a murderer. Your heart is the ignition and composition of compassion, and by your hand skeletons find skin and flesh. By your hand I find enough hope to sit and be silent and know that you are God.

Blessed be your name.

One thousand blessings and One thousand Curses

Perturbed.

Well, I'm either riddled with anxiety or I'm coercing myself into a drone state of apathy to alleviate the discomfort of feeling like a deadweight. I wonder if there is a difference between being sober and wild with apprehension and expectation, every turning corner a sensation. Still the same in the end. One thousand blessings and one thousand curses. I curtail the list of grievances and exalt with incense and mihr the good and sweet sounds. I apply the echoes of wonder to my daily doctrines and to my planned outlines of the destiny of all. Isn't that the requisite for love based hope, a fucking happy ending?

Still we are burning in our passions and our lusts and we are on fire with tension in our gritty bits as we try to give a fuck about each other. Dear God, I don't want to place aside that struggle for honest meaning for a little time groping your shame centered features.

We exchange stories collected from our hysteria. We are not still as we sigh and wish and wish and wish we could collect those elicit feelings captured in our perfect polaroids. I'd like to place my hand on yours to calm your quivering spirit. I'd like to place my hands on your shoulders and bring back a relaxed state to your heart. I'd like to introduce you to my freaky and fiery friends, whom all have nuances I find extremely charming. I'd like to see my mother console you through your difficult mind, past all the obstacles constructed, by you or my adversary.

I'd like to see a hundred friends gathered round a birthday cake, as every one of them sing to you to the best of their ability a song you probably hate. I'd like to see tears in your eyes, as you realize everyone of these people love you and would give anything for you. If I told you this, you would have a million objections, I know. But I wonder if the thousand blessings I'll pray for you tonight would outweigh the nine hundred ninety nine curses you place upon yourself.

My rotten soul would curse you one time out of spite. Out of its satanic nature. And I'll wonder if I'm the spitting image of my father. Adolescence counted by the clock of sexuality. You might ask if this is really true, if my issues are really this carnal. I'd admit that I'm a blasphemer like the rest.

I just hope, that with the one thousand blessings we got, that maybe my Brother-King can work out something.

For your soul and mine.

Lets, make a promise you and I. Lets value honesty and humility for the rest of our days. I'm convinced I'm wrong on so many accounts, and I keep losing track of those who keep me accountable. Summers surrendering back to the confines of my second guessing spirit can't keep me a child forever. I have to make these blessings work and I need to place confidence on something other than myself.

I have to try to figure the outlaying and arithmetic of my words and boundaries before I go doctoring blessings under laden with self-righteous curses. Every relational entity is fragmented by broken hearts, and I am weary from this asunder fabric we call a church. But it's a melody I can't criticize, as it carries the crucifix for my benefit.

Ten thousand upon ten thousand blessings poured out unto me. Call up the resistance and tell them their tears are for naught, I have a home in heaven. Come along. Cast down your burdens and spit your worst curse my way. Could we stumble into heaven? I'm sure my Brother-King could work something out.

Culture War

No, I cannot put down a hand of blessing upon injustice. Twisted words and neglected context brings a man into disparity. The flustered words of the mother hen won't break down the sin sewn to the backs of these cowardly men. Same way I cannot pull my brothers from the lions den. We could take cynical steps towards undermining their upbringing but you can't wage a culture war and succeed in saving their songs.All my friends would rather raise their glasses then sink to sharp swinging words. Those demons will drag us ten feet deep. Power holds no meaning in regards to the souls uplifting.

No, I don't know where to go with the layman. I would rather spin him up a story to satisfy his rumbling spirit, but he wouldn't wrestle the truth down like I would like him to. He'd fight it for a minute, but then lay for a drink, in the customs he's accustomed to, despite the growing severity.

You ask me, whats so severe. And I'm sure the flustered hen could tell you. She might say the plot is out of order and theres a darker deviousness that would ensue. Just mischief you might say, were not bound by the law. Yet consequences are heartbreaking and mediocrity gets raised as a higher and higher standard of living.  We exalt empty promises, and witty comebacks. That's our victory, that's our solution. But demise is awaiting your last heartbeat. And I wouldn't have it. The thought wrecks me.

I could find words. I could find answers, but It troubles me to systematically meditate upon regiment and structure. I've seen enough hollow homes cascading around as successful stereotypes, playing the worlds game, trying on the emperors new clothes. I understand the flood in this context. God in the highest is here to appease loneliness. But his work seems to overflow with abundant victory despite whatever reason I use to conduct orderly diagnostics.

God, I am convicted of using a scarecrow. I am frightened by falsehood, yet I am addicted to hypocrisy.
The scale of destruction frightens me. I have fantasies about annihilating my enemies, about ripping them limb from limb so that terrorism might seek shelter and not find a place to hide. I am not the Christ. Neither is the Church. But we are missionaries of the ministry of reconciliation. We exist as salt and light and his joy, even if the truth of this is found to be absurdity.

The greater absurdity is this culture war. Neither evangelism nor reconciliation. Before a war against secularism, can we have wrestling within the Church for unity?

For what is a marriage but intimate?

Kid, you could be King

"Turn away from sin, and lift up the cross once again, I can only hope you'll see the need for change"

"Come, now is not only the time for you to not only hear but to move

your hearts become lukewarm
With one foot in fire,
you are bound to burned by the flames"

"Lord have mercy..."

Uncomfortable King, Suffering Servant, I have siphoned sin, I had a communion of death, shared between me and the victim. This is no place for the light of the world to be found. Why do I keep what holds me down? Why don't I unsheathe my sword and massacre my assailants?  Why don't I prove that the impossible has it's evident control? 

And again I speak forth

Why diverge into a subversive role? Why submit your soul?

CONTROL. CONTROL.

He grins and bears his teeth, as I watch for eyes of loved ones to turn away, he says to me

I'VE FOUND A BETTER WAY, I'VE FOUND A BETTER PLACE! LETS LEAVE THIS TOWN, YOU HAVE NO PLACE AMONG THOSE BURIED DEAD IN CONVICTION AND CONDEMNATION.

LET'S DRESS YOU UP IN REAL SLEEK IN FINER SILK. COME ON, YOU CAN BE KING. YOUR ABSOLUTION TO A OXYMORON ASTOUNDS ME, RID YOURSELF OF THIS UNJUST LOYALTY TO TYRANNY (OR IF YOU PREFER, ROYALTY).

and if that weren't enough he goes on to give me my alternative,

INSTEAD YOU COULD TAKE THAT CROSS YOU CARRY, AND HANG IT AS A MILESTONE AROUND YOUR HEAD. I'LL EVEN WALK YOU INTO THE WATER WHERE YOU CAN BE DIE THE DEATH THAT "THE JUST ONE" SPOKE OF. YOU SPEAK OF ANOINTING WHEN ALL I SEE IS YOUR BROTHERS ALREADY BURIED IN THEIR GRAVES. 

he asks me, WHO OWNS THE LAND KID? DO YOU SEE THE AUTHORITY THAT KEEPS EACH SLAVE IN HIS PLACE? WHAT DESTINIES DO THESE FOOLS HAVE WITH OR WITHOUT YOU? 

And I look momentarily at the work of my hands, and think to myself, my God, I am just building up an idol. Why speak when I am blind, why work when my hands just bind. So here I find myself, lukewarm.

Its as if, if I can find a way to frustrate grace, I seek out every justification to do so.

I spoke to the Desert Emissary last night before he dropped me at my house. We talked about how the pendulum swings, and where we leave our hearts. We talked about how we misunderstood time and how we didn't have the right souls to keep glossy eyes.

And we talked about where our victory lied.

When I write down everything Ester-Darker tells me, its apparent where the water runs. Where we can find life to drench our dry bones. Yes, the centrality of Christ is fustrated by falsehood, by that old flesh trying to rise and claim a right to conquer me.

I told the kind Emissary, in all his patience, that our old flesh had no such deed. And in fact, it was because we are eternal kids of the kingdom, that we find that our attempts at building a tower of babel are always undermined. Instead there is an agreement with us, that upon becoming sons we receive a father. And we are victorious because he sent his king to conquer death. And that is the truth in its finality. 

I have been hearing chains for most of my life, around my ankles, around my neck. And I've wondered where they led, and what they entailed. And I thought that this temple or sanctuary or tabernacle could be tall enough to break me free. Now that I've felt the claws of Ester again, I'm reminded by my Brother-King that this tabernacle purposes as a reminder that there is nothing I can do to achieve these spiritual things that my heart yearns for. But by the blood on my hands, by the lamb I slew, the answer has been recovered.

Oh, seven-horned lamb. How can I ever forget this debt of mine? How could you look out into eternity and stand sovereign in your peace knowing the debt would never be repaid.

Take the sacrifice. Not my will, but yours.

Be my sacrifice. Not my will, but yours.

It was your thought, that I could be one who pleases you. Not mine.

Not my will, but yours.

A wish to arise

When someone tells you they see great things in you, maybe for you it builds great courage.

But I'd like to say, that more than I'd like to say, falsehood has a place in my mind to drive that courage away. And fear instantly arises. Its scary how often that serpent can contort his words to look like a suffering servant.Whats worse, is that despite the tiresome work that that imaginative engineer put into building a discerning mind, with full volition I cast empathy aside. Its not like a spell was cast over me. There is no warlock in the closet, no witch hiding beneath the bed. Merely an idea that I could find better rest in a place where men die a lonely death. For all the fruit, that purity, empathy and humility might provide, I'd rather hide from the truth that the heart of God desires that the suffering of man has an end, that doesn't merely lie in our obliteration. 

I'd rather hide in obliteration. 

But I can't. I'm a slave to righteousness, and I will have to see this leprosy leave. Those gluttonous idols are one by one exiting my house, and I'm feeding them bits of soul as they see their way out. And I reason with myself, why would I exalt tyranny over majesty. Why would I trade your love instead of holding onto the pillars of trust you built within my soul.

I always fear I've fallen in love with something thats not you. Loving my righteousness rather than the righteous king. Loving the way I sing rather than a savior befitting of melody.

Savior, bring the defiled to repentance in my house, cause I feel like a pharisee.

I don't think I'm befitting a temple so holy. Don't think I deserve these eyes extended. I'd rather sit a home alone, choking on carcinogens waiting for the cold to pass so that I might breathe my last breath and die. But its not me who reigns here. You cast me off the throne, and you breathed life into the bones. And I gotta settle down in this new life. I've found my bearings, whats a wish to arise?

Tell me Maria, whats a wish to arise?