the first paragraph is the poem as I orginally read it several years ago, the second part is more of it that I found online today.
Subjective Pronoun Me, Stephen Bohler
Petrified was on top of Fears station
clinging to the edges and looking in all directions.
Cruel was burying Despair in the sand,
and when Anxious began to push me up to help Despair
Vengeful held me back
Dreary came over and laydown next to me.
Nervous kept yelling at Curious to stop going so far into the ocean.
Baffled watched Inspired build a beautiful sandcastle.
Selfish was busy stuffing sand into his pockets.
Crafty seemed to be making some kind of submarine out of seashells . . .
All this I watched (Attentive made me) quietly under a palm tree . . .
My emotions returned to me one by one as I slept in the warm sun.
Confused wanted to be last, but he was finally coaxed in before Calm returned."
I first read this poem in Rolling Stone magazine several years ago. The article was about the death of Stephen Bohler, an NYU freshman. I read an article online that described him as a popular kid-a juggler, a diver, a poet, always dashing uptown to play soccer in Central Park. He was a liberal, a vegetarian, a conscientious objector. He wanted to write a book called My Life As a Non-Fighter, and talked about it in a school essay: "I have not begun the book, but I have not really lived my life," he wrote.
The day that he died, he had taken psilocybin mushrooms a hallucinogen which robs anyone of any judgment to speak of. Stephen fell or jumped off the balcony of the NYU library right in front of some of his friends. The coroner ruled this death an accident rather than a suicide but opinion differs on whether or not Stephen killed himself intentionally or had taken so many drugs he was out of his mind. Students at NYU created a tribute to him and other student who had died: A vast collage of yearbook-style tributes hangs on a cinder-block wall"-you're my hero, because you brought your own Tabasco to college." Maybe he thought he was just playing around, but the thing is that powerful drugs don't play. They also don't discriminate: Men, Women, Sisters, Brothers, Fathers, Friends, Poets, jugglers, people are going to write books, people who's lives haven't begun get high enough to walk off buildings, literally and figuratively. Some don't, though, some get help, which is out there, thanks be to God.
I didn't mean this one to be so depressing, because it really is about the poem which I think is creative and clear and lovely. Ani Difranco has a song lyric that says, I'm 31 flavors and then some. This poem clearly describes the flavors of our personality and how they interact with each other. I was in high school when I read this for the first time and tore it out of the magazine of the people I was babysitting for and have kept it ever since. This is beautiful, self-reflexive, with strong images and personification. Subjective Pronoun Me, Thank you Stephen Bohler.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
Poetry Monday
Birds in Winter-Judy Loest, local poet.
Hokusai’s crane stares down
From my bedroom wall
Graceful on his icy bough
Like doves outside in snow
These January mornings are truth
Laid bare, a cold combustion
Of white winnowing earth
And air. Even the sparrows
Have fallen, tucked around
And still as stones
While earth takes back
It’s dead. A single crow
Skims the grizzled hair
Of kudzu along the river,
Vanishing in hoary smoke,
There is no hiding here
In this unforgiving season,
In the silent stare of sparrow
And the dove unimpaired
By guilt or reason
Nothing reminds the body
Of it’s simple needs or place
In the inscrutable hurl of time
Like the stillness of birds in winter.
Hokusai’s crane stares down
From my bedroom wall
Graceful on his icy bough
Like doves outside in snow
These January mornings are truth
Laid bare, a cold combustion
Of white winnowing earth
And air. Even the sparrows
Have fallen, tucked around
And still as stones
While earth takes back
It’s dead. A single crow
Skims the grizzled hair
Of kudzu along the river,
Vanishing in hoary smoke,
There is no hiding here
In this unforgiving season,
In the silent stare of sparrow
And the dove unimpaired
By guilt or reason
Nothing reminds the body
Of it’s simple needs or place
In the inscrutable hurl of time
Like the stillness of birds in winter.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Einstein's Miracles
Here is a weekend of little miracles. This is how they came about.
For the last 9 months I have lived in the open air above market square and the open doors to rooms of 10 other people. Myself rest of the people in the Fellows program have lived Christian Knoxville Real World and there are great and wonderful thinks about that. Lets just talk about some of them: I love that the 402 girls keep a calendar of our life together via the magnet letters on the fridge. Icemaker? it said last week. Wine? this week. Such a challenge because there are only one of each letter but M and W are interchangable and either one sideways is E. Creativity, you see. I love our impromtu dance parties. I love that we have a roof to hang out on. I like that a few weeks ago on a regular Wednesday night Austin made a serious, thorough, exhaustive list of things he could possibly do that night and brought it upstairs to discuss it. I love that Jess has makes consisently excellent playlists and that at night we read each other tweets, texts from last night, quotes and, sometimes, I like a poem. "we have fun" jessica boyd. direct quote. But in the rhythm of these things I have learned about myself that sometimes I need less things. In the muddle of a lot of even good things, I get strung out and exhausted and distracted. I am an INFP, through and through, and sometimes I feel like I'm living in an extrovert's skin; And then I get tired, like I have been lately, in every single way, and feel it in my bones and know it when I yawn, I know it by how sick I get of my own attitude and the way it seems like my prayers hit the ceiling and bounce back to me or don't come up at all. Sometime last week I had prayed what Anne Lamott calls beggy prayers, just messy things. In a very small moment I gave a very small prayer where I probably prayer-whined a little about being tired, might have told God the bit about my bones and my yawn and might have said sorry about my 'tude and then I said, just please remind me what it looks like for you to answer a prayer. I might have forgotten. Just please give me Something. Amen. And as creative as he is and as oblivious as I am, he chose that Something to be big, broad side of a barn big, a whole weekend by myself BIG. This weekend is the National Fellows Conference in Washington DC. I have to work tomorrow night and I couldn't organize my life accordingly and I found myself to the proud owner of an exceedingly rare weekend of solitude and quiet. And as the jolly good fellows piled in yesterday morning, like little peas in a church van pod, I laid upstairs, still snoozing away. I woke up this morning to no sound, to no alarm, and the distinct feeling that I was doing something subversive. Imagine how McCauley Culkin felt in home alone. Enter, Kevin McCallister: "I took a shower washing every body part with actual soap; including all my major crevices; including in between my toes and in my belly button which I never did before but sort of enjoyed. I washed my hair with adult formula shampoo and used cream rinse for that just-washed shine. I can't seem to find my toothbrush, so I'll pick one up when I go out today. Other than that, I'm in good shape." Jump back to my life. Einstein said, there are only 2 ways to live life, One, as if everything was a miracle, and the other, as if nothing is. This weekend, my little given Sabbath, was a most unusual experience, it was the Something my bones and my heart needed: The quiet that was strange and lovely, steady like the rain that is falling right now, and everything seemed heightened, as if there were a bunch of small miracles. I decided earlier this week to embrace my little sabbath, I would make no plans, I would make no to-do lists to find freedom in my silly little weekend; I am, by nature, and anxious little creature, and sometimes silence gets all big and loud and its scary and in no way is it restful. This weekend though, was that not only my schedule mostly clear and my to-do list mostly ignored, my mind was quieted too. Miracle # 1. No small thing. So my weekend was plain, ordinary and free. I want to the gym and took a shower on account of that I needed one and that I like to hook my computer up to Jess's speakers and perform my covers of Coldplay and The Dirty Guvs while I get ready. And, also, because I had told Jess the night before, 'Listen, tomorrow is the day. I'm showering. No questions asked.' I like to keep my promises. So I perform my concert to rave reviews, pulled on the old jeans I stained last week gardening with Sam and my plain target grey t-shirt and went to a bookstore in the afternoon, as a customer. which I never get to do. As it turns out, bookstores are wonderful, relaxing, places to be with lots of things to read for free where no one talks to you or asks you questions and you don't have to clean up any messes. This discovery could only have been a miracle. So I took myself home after a while and layed on the roof with podcast of Krista Tippet interview Paul Eli, author of a book called The Life You Save May Be Your Own about the tradition of great Catholic Writers Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery OConner, and Walker Percy. Eli said that these writers had their lives and their faith "fired by literature", that they had an incredible openness to books as condiut for life. Eli wrote that each of the writers struggled against unbelief as much as they struggle with belief. As a young girl, Dorothy Day had stood in the midst of the San Francisco Earth quake and had watched people mobilize and help each other. She wrote that this made her believe that basically people must be good and created to love each other. That was natural to her, and war and strife were a deformity of that. But what we were made for is to love one another. She went on to live a wild life of a bohemian artist in New York. She seperated from her common law husband and was a found herself as a single mother. She had the baby baptized, and she herself converted to Catholicism and eventually began the Catholic Worker Movement with Peter Maurin in Chicago. While reading the 19th century authors, Dostovesky and Tolstoy, she wrote that she felt like her faith was unlike anyone else that she knew. Those books gave her a sense of the human race as one family, of the interdependence of people; she saw it in the books and knew this was true. In the epilogue to The Long Loneliness, she wrote, It all happened while we sat their talking, and its all still going on. Aint that how life is? Little altars everywhere. Last night I went to a lovely dinner with some rather unusual suspects. As a group we looked like a little mismatched china, charming, slightly strange and a perfect place setting for the evening, which we spent outside for a wine drinking, patio sitting sweet little night. All introverted pre-wine, post-wine we had a big ole time. I went to bed that night sweetly and thankful for all Einsteins little miracles. The next day I woke up to take a little run downtown and met the Rossini fest lining Gay Street. jewerly and music and funnel cakes oh my! I finished my run and talked to my brother for a long time sitting on the bench in Krutch park, right before the rain. I bought some jewelry which I am wearing right now. So I don't know what DC was like, or the car ride in which the guys allegedly spent thursday eating mexican and excess dairy to properly prepare to be road trip intestenal terrorists. With all the quiet of the third and fourth floor, going to a bookstore and not working in it, the rossini, the rain, the forgotten to do list (what list..?), all of this was just to say that I'd whispered up a prayer for Something and in these little things, God has given me what I asked him.
For the last 9 months I have lived in the open air above market square and the open doors to rooms of 10 other people. Myself rest of the people in the Fellows program have lived Christian Knoxville Real World and there are great and wonderful thinks about that. Lets just talk about some of them: I love that the 402 girls keep a calendar of our life together via the magnet letters on the fridge. Icemaker? it said last week. Wine? this week. Such a challenge because there are only one of each letter but M and W are interchangable and either one sideways is E. Creativity, you see. I love our impromtu dance parties. I love that we have a roof to hang out on. I like that a few weeks ago on a regular Wednesday night Austin made a serious, thorough, exhaustive list of things he could possibly do that night and brought it upstairs to discuss it. I love that Jess has makes consisently excellent playlists and that at night we read each other tweets, texts from last night, quotes and, sometimes, I like a poem. "we have fun" jessica boyd. direct quote. But in the rhythm of these things I have learned about myself that sometimes I need less things. In the muddle of a lot of even good things, I get strung out and exhausted and distracted. I am an INFP, through and through, and sometimes I feel like I'm living in an extrovert's skin; And then I get tired, like I have been lately, in every single way, and feel it in my bones and know it when I yawn, I know it by how sick I get of my own attitude and the way it seems like my prayers hit the ceiling and bounce back to me or don't come up at all. Sometime last week I had prayed what Anne Lamott calls beggy prayers, just messy things. In a very small moment I gave a very small prayer where I probably prayer-whined a little about being tired, might have told God the bit about my bones and my yawn and might have said sorry about my 'tude and then I said, just please remind me what it looks like for you to answer a prayer. I might have forgotten. Just please give me Something. Amen. And as creative as he is and as oblivious as I am, he chose that Something to be big, broad side of a barn big, a whole weekend by myself BIG. This weekend is the National Fellows Conference in Washington DC. I have to work tomorrow night and I couldn't organize my life accordingly and I found myself to the proud owner of an exceedingly rare weekend of solitude and quiet. And as the jolly good fellows piled in yesterday morning, like little peas in a church van pod, I laid upstairs, still snoozing away. I woke up this morning to no sound, to no alarm, and the distinct feeling that I was doing something subversive. Imagine how McCauley Culkin felt in home alone. Enter, Kevin McCallister: "I took a shower washing every body part with actual soap; including all my major crevices; including in between my toes and in my belly button which I never did before but sort of enjoyed. I washed my hair with adult formula shampoo and used cream rinse for that just-washed shine. I can't seem to find my toothbrush, so I'll pick one up when I go out today. Other than that, I'm in good shape." Jump back to my life. Einstein said, there are only 2 ways to live life, One, as if everything was a miracle, and the other, as if nothing is. This weekend, my little given Sabbath, was a most unusual experience, it was the Something my bones and my heart needed: The quiet that was strange and lovely, steady like the rain that is falling right now, and everything seemed heightened, as if there were a bunch of small miracles. I decided earlier this week to embrace my little sabbath, I would make no plans, I would make no to-do lists to find freedom in my silly little weekend; I am, by nature, and anxious little creature, and sometimes silence gets all big and loud and its scary and in no way is it restful. This weekend though, was that not only my schedule mostly clear and my to-do list mostly ignored, my mind was quieted too. Miracle # 1. No small thing. So my weekend was plain, ordinary and free. I want to the gym and took a shower on account of that I needed one and that I like to hook my computer up to Jess's speakers and perform my covers of Coldplay and The Dirty Guvs while I get ready. And, also, because I had told Jess the night before, 'Listen, tomorrow is the day. I'm showering. No questions asked.' I like to keep my promises. So I perform my concert to rave reviews, pulled on the old jeans I stained last week gardening with Sam and my plain target grey t-shirt and went to a bookstore in the afternoon, as a customer. which I never get to do. As it turns out, bookstores are wonderful, relaxing, places to be with lots of things to read for free where no one talks to you or asks you questions and you don't have to clean up any messes. This discovery could only have been a miracle. So I took myself home after a while and layed on the roof with podcast of Krista Tippet interview Paul Eli, author of a book called The Life You Save May Be Your Own about the tradition of great Catholic Writers Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery OConner, and Walker Percy. Eli said that these writers had their lives and their faith "fired by literature", that they had an incredible openness to books as condiut for life. Eli wrote that each of the writers struggled against unbelief as much as they struggle with belief. As a young girl, Dorothy Day had stood in the midst of the San Francisco Earth quake and had watched people mobilize and help each other. She wrote that this made her believe that basically people must be good and created to love each other. That was natural to her, and war and strife were a deformity of that. But what we were made for is to love one another. She went on to live a wild life of a bohemian artist in New York. She seperated from her common law husband and was a found herself as a single mother. She had the baby baptized, and she herself converted to Catholicism and eventually began the Catholic Worker Movement with Peter Maurin in Chicago. While reading the 19th century authors, Dostovesky and Tolstoy, she wrote that she felt like her faith was unlike anyone else that she knew. Those books gave her a sense of the human race as one family, of the interdependence of people; she saw it in the books and knew this was true. In the epilogue to The Long Loneliness, she wrote, It all happened while we sat their talking, and its all still going on. Aint that how life is? Little altars everywhere. Last night I went to a lovely dinner with some rather unusual suspects. As a group we looked like a little mismatched china, charming, slightly strange and a perfect place setting for the evening, which we spent outside for a wine drinking, patio sitting sweet little night. All introverted pre-wine, post-wine we had a big ole time. I went to bed that night sweetly and thankful for all Einsteins little miracles. The next day I woke up to take a little run downtown and met the Rossini fest lining Gay Street. jewerly and music and funnel cakes oh my! I finished my run and talked to my brother for a long time sitting on the bench in Krutch park, right before the rain. I bought some jewelry which I am wearing right now. So I don't know what DC was like, or the car ride in which the guys allegedly spent thursday eating mexican and excess dairy to properly prepare to be road trip intestenal terrorists. With all the quiet of the third and fourth floor, going to a bookstore and not working in it, the rossini, the rain, the forgotten to do list (what list..?), all of this was just to say that I'd whispered up a prayer for Something and in these little things, God has given me what I asked him.
Monday, April 19, 2010
poetry monday
today is poetry monday.
this has been posted before but I kept thinking of it today. Good start to the week and to Poetry Mondays. Go ahead, Madeleine.
I hate you, God.
Love, Madeleine.
I write my messages on water
and at bedtime I tiptoe upstairs
and let them flow underneath your door.
When I am angry with you
I know that you are there
even if you do not answer knock
even when your butler opens the door an inch
and flaps his thousand wings in annoyance
at such an untoward interruption and says the master is not at home.
I love you, Madeleine
Hate, God.
(This is how I treat my friends, he said to one great saint.
No wonder you have so few of them, Lord, she replied.)
I cannot turn the other cheek.
It takes all the strength I have to keep my fists from hitting back.
The soldier shot the baby
the little boys trample the old woman
The gutters are filled with groans
While pleasure seekers knock each other down
I'm turning in my ticket
and my letter of introduction.
You're supposed to do the knocking. Why do you burst my heart?
How can I write you to tell that I'm angry
when I’ve been given the wrong address
And I don’t even know your real name?
I take hammer and nails and tack my message on two crossed scraps of wood:
Dear God, Is it too much to ask you to bother to be?
Just show your hindquarters
and let me hear you
roar.
Love, Madeleine.
"love letter" Madeleine L'engle.
this has been posted before but I kept thinking of it today. Good start to the week and to Poetry Mondays. Go ahead, Madeleine.
I hate you, God.
Love, Madeleine.
I write my messages on water
and at bedtime I tiptoe upstairs
and let them flow underneath your door.
When I am angry with you
I know that you are there
even if you do not answer knock
even when your butler opens the door an inch
and flaps his thousand wings in annoyance
at such an untoward interruption and says the master is not at home.
I love you, Madeleine
Hate, God.
(This is how I treat my friends, he said to one great saint.
No wonder you have so few of them, Lord, she replied.)
I cannot turn the other cheek.
It takes all the strength I have to keep my fists from hitting back.
The soldier shot the baby
the little boys trample the old woman
The gutters are filled with groans
While pleasure seekers knock each other down
I'm turning in my ticket
and my letter of introduction.
You're supposed to do the knocking. Why do you burst my heart?
How can I write you to tell that I'm angry
when I’ve been given the wrong address
And I don’t even know your real name?
I take hammer and nails and tack my message on two crossed scraps of wood:
Dear God, Is it too much to ask you to bother to be?
Just show your hindquarters
and let me hear you
roar.
Love, Madeleine.
"love letter" Madeleine L'engle.
Friday, April 2, 2010
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
The Summer Day
Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass,
how to kneel down in the grass,how to be idle and blessed,
how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass,
how to kneel down in the grass,how to be idle and blessed,
how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Me and Linus, Always thinking about blankets.
So recently some friends had the idea of starting up a joint blog where we 3 would contribute and basically write for each other, song lyrics, shout outs, thoughts, musings, messy, articulate whatevers. While fellow blogger talked about the le blog and le Toad Hill le last weekend, I didn’t realize I was actually implicated in this scheme, as in I didn't know I was blogging. I was, point of fact, an occasional blogger, or bloggess, if you will (and you will) but this gave me a degree of blog anxiety; I was intimidated by this. The 64,000 blog question: What in the world will I blog about? I will have to search my life for relevant material, try to think of clever witty stories to weave in and funny words to use, be profound but not too serious, funny but Hell its not like I'm ANNIE. The task is this, as the great and wonderful Anne Lamott wrote, String words together like beads to tell a story. (Anne Lamott, personal hero/literary badass). So I read a someone elses wonderful blog Monday morning, sitting here on the couch in front of the these nice big windows that in this birds nest that has become my home. I was all wrapped up in my purple blanket and drinking the coffee that Mollie made out the coffee cup with the butterfly on the inside that someone bought from the great and wonderful Target, wondering about this blog bis-nas. Jess and I were g-chatting about the blog and I said, mostly jokingly, Listen, all I have to talk about at this moment is this purple blanket and this target coffee cup with the butterfly on the inside. and I started considering my material, which is to say, not unlike Linus, I started thinking a lot about my blanket. I remember the first week the Fellows had moved in, back when we were all brand new, back when we were still forgetting to take our keys before the door locked behind us, back before we had gone on trips and crawled through caves and told each other our stories and created Biz-nases together. Back before I knew that Jess was a BAMF/Computer work enthusiast-back before I knew any of that jazz, that week, that first week, on a morning a lot like this morning, I sat on the ledge in front of the window with my purple blanket and over looked 4 Market Square and did a quiet time: 4 Market Square, 4 Stories up. That morning I had whispered up my quiet prayers, just like I’d sat in my chaise lounge in my apartment a million other mornings with that trusty blanket and the coffee made the way I drink it, my journal and some daily psalm. And before that, me and that blanket lived at MTSU and, even before that, it went back and forth from my moms house to my dads house in high school. I remember sitting on dock at church camp my senior year singing hymns to the starry night sky with that blanket. If this blanket could talk it would probably tell you about all that, about being toted on the church van, and pulling all-nighters freshman year to finish papers, and moving back home, moving back out again to the apartment that I loved with my brother that I miss and, still, moving again to 4 MS. And that first week when I didn’t know anything about anything and neither did any of the rest of the 12 fellows. We were waiting to be comfortable with each other and to have inside jokes to laugh about and to know and be known. I didn’t know anything yet for sure and so did the only thing I knew to do, which was to sit in my pj's with my trusty blanket and ask God to stay close to me until I felt like I did know something affirmative about my life again. And now, with that same old wonderful blanket, this morning, here are some things I know: I know that Austin went to Clemson and made a great Aladdin and loves baseball more than anything. Know that Jess got her first parking ticket EVER yesterday, that her dad brews beer and her family has chocolate labs and she loves Soccer Taco. Rebecca has Reba sweatshirt, that Mollie has love affair with ice cream, that Carolyn likes Virgina Woolf too, that Annie is legitmately hilarious, that a heck of a lot of people drive Volvos or VW’s. I know downtown has a nice view of the sun setting over Knoxville and there is a lovely variety of lazy downtown coffee shops, one of which I will be slinging lattes soon, and I know you all better come see me. I know that there are faces I recognize on these downtown streets and places I have memories all this place. I know 12 other people, I know that I am one of them, I know that God must listen to quiet morning prayers. I know that somebody in room 402 bought a lovely little Target coffee cup with a vine of flowers on the outside and a little butterfly on the inside and it’s my favorite coffee cup in the cabinet. And I just might try to steal it when I leave, so it can too can live with me a long time and tell stories, just like that trusty purple blanket.
Lovelovelove,
Jen
Lovelovelove,
Jen
Monday, February 15, 2010
5 Truths.
The following is cold hard evidence of 3 things I know to be true:
1. I love quotes
2. I love you. and blogstalking/facebook stalking you
3. I steal things.
Guilty on all accounts. Here is a collection, incomplete, but a fair representation of things I've picked up here and there. You might be surprised to find that I have plagarized from your profile/blog/status update a time or two. and because I never forget anything (truth # 4) and because I also give credit where credit is due (truth # 5), names are added when quotes were borrowed. Facebook me some of your own if you read this and have any to add, I'd love that.
Thanks for every single little thing.
love, Jen
People never notice anything. Salinger_ Catcher in the Rye (Rupa) :)
"Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be."
"We are not meant to live merely by what is natural. We need to learn to live by the supernatural. Ordinary fare will not fill the emptiness in our hearts. Bread will not suffice. We need extraordinary fare. We need manna. How else will we learn to eat it, if we are never hungry?" _ Elisabeth Elliot (Annie Murphree's profile, I do believe)
The State killing someone for a heinous, atrocious, cruel act is antithetical and stupid. It is childish. It is false justice. It lets the criminal off too easily, and is not a useful punishment _ it is a blind human attempt to enact divine punishment. As far as humans go, ancient, old testament "eye_for_an_eye" was replaced by something a lot... Read more stronger, a lot more powerful, and a lot more real__Grace. Sentencing someone to Live with their own dark conscious, allows for the depth of an act to sink in, and possibly have the effect of leading that person back out of the dark place that they are in, and back towards a relationship with the loving Creator of life itself. Anything less is a complete failure on our part, and is admitting the defeat of a light that we are told in inextinguishable. But that's just what I think...doesn't mean I'm "right"...but what seems "right" to me... David Carl Waggoner, via Jessica Bocangel’s status update on facebook.
When it comes down to it, once you become dissatisfied with your own behavior, only two things will give you the wisdom and motivation to make necessary changes: time and prayer." ~Dawn Eden, The Thrill of the Chaste. (Becca Parsley's status update)
""When you told me to pray,"" Jose would remember later, ""it was incredibly earnest. You said prayer was like having this intense, profound longing that you just had to be with. That you put the longing in the hands of God, in a certain way. That it was important to be receptive to the unfulfilled, and not fill it, or deny it."" take this bread. sara miles. (reminds me of Sean)
What pray, do you know about dragonflies?
Or what happens when they die?
Yes, what happens when the gazelle expires in the desert after running for miles to escape the jackal?
What happens when a flower withers?
When the lamb enters its death agony under the butcher's knife? What do you know about it? What if, at that moment,there were high festival?
What if pain turned into joy? What if death became life, more life, all life?
This is the only mystery I have left you with in creation; why do you take it so amiss?
It was certainly a cruel thing for human beings to have crucified Jesus and you might well reproach God for having stayed silent over the tragedy of Calvary, and yet...Have you experienced the resurrection?
Have you made the transit from the visible to the invisible, to see what happens?
Certainly, if everything ended with death whether for the dragonfly or for the grass of the field or for my son Jesus, you would be right, but... It isn't like that.
Life goes on. It not only goes on, it develops, grows, matures, Life is eternal and you haven't seen the best of it: the kingdom
__from "And God Saw That It Was Good" by Carlo Carretto
""……the measure of civilization is not whether it puts a man on the moon, but rather how it treats its poor."" —— Frederik Herzog, Justice Church, 1980.
The truth must dazzle gradually lest every man be blind.
_ Emily Dickinson (Via Meg)
Lord, the night is strange with unquietness——what our hearts seek is hidden by shifting cloud and the memory of what we had hoped to forget. Have mercy, holiest God, on our unbelief. We would not have it so, but our chilled hands slip on the icy rail, and our numb feet cannot find the ladder’’s rungs.You are fed up with words, and I don't blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell the truth, nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic.
__ Thomas Merton
Sometimes I just have to pray for the strength to conquer myself. (someone, don't remember but how true).
"It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one..Karl_A_Menninger
"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word "darkness" on the walls of his cell" C.S. Lewis
""I think if you were to cut us open what would fall out would not be our intestines and our pancreas. I think that what would fall out would be words, the words that we hold layered and packed in our bodies, emotions just one right on top of each other, the words that actually meet air in our lifetime are few, compared to the un_lipped and un_tongued words we hold inside."" _ Emily Dickinson (Cory)
People change and forget to tell each other. ~Lillian Hellman
"The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars etc., is sure to be noticed.~Soren Kierkegaard
(Jackie Johnson)
" It matters enormously if I alienate anyone from the truth." __CS Lewis
The hand of day opens Three clouds And these few words _ Octavio Paz, (Via Cara)
Forgive the conjunctions and double infinitives and the not said. I don't know really what I wanted to say but want you to have a few words from me this Wednesday morning. We are like two animals escaping to dark warm holes and live our pains alone. _ Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans (Cara)
He is nearer than we might imagine. Sage, in an email, summer of 2008.
Andrew Largeman: I was a little boy and somebody made a shitty latch. That's what I think. That's what I think about the whole thing, OK? And I'm not gonna take those drugs anymore, because they have left me completely fucking numb. I have felt so fucking numb to everything I have experienced in my life, OK?And for that... for that I'm here to forgive you. You've always said that all you wanted was for us to have whatever it is we wanted, right? Well, maybe, what Mom wanted more then anything is for it to all be over, and for me, what I want more then anything in the world, is for it to be OK with you for me to feel something again, even if it's pain.
Andrew Largeman, From Garden State, Murphy's profile. love this.
Cry freedom cry From a crowd 10,000 wide Hope laid upon hope That this crowd will not subside Let this flag burn to dust And a new a fair design be raised While we wait head in hands Hands in prayer _DMB_ Via Murphy's profile.
"'Thou shall love the Lord they God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind' That is the first and greatest commandment. The problem is, how to love God? We are all too conscious of the hardness of our own hearts and despite the religious writers telling us that feeling is not as necessary, we do want to know we do feel and love God". Dorothy Day, Via Sage, indirectly.
1. I love quotes
2. I love you. and blogstalking/facebook stalking you
3. I steal things.
Guilty on all accounts. Here is a collection, incomplete, but a fair representation of things I've picked up here and there. You might be surprised to find that I have plagarized from your profile/blog/status update a time or two. and because I never forget anything (truth # 4) and because I also give credit where credit is due (truth # 5), names are added when quotes were borrowed. Facebook me some of your own if you read this and have any to add, I'd love that.
Thanks for every single little thing.
love, Jen
People never notice anything. Salinger_ Catcher in the Rye (Rupa) :)
"Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be."
"We are not meant to live merely by what is natural. We need to learn to live by the supernatural. Ordinary fare will not fill the emptiness in our hearts. Bread will not suffice. We need extraordinary fare. We need manna. How else will we learn to eat it, if we are never hungry?" _ Elisabeth Elliot (Annie Murphree's profile, I do believe)
The State killing someone for a heinous, atrocious, cruel act is antithetical and stupid. It is childish. It is false justice. It lets the criminal off too easily, and is not a useful punishment _ it is a blind human attempt to enact divine punishment. As far as humans go, ancient, old testament "eye_for_an_eye" was replaced by something a lot... Read more stronger, a lot more powerful, and a lot more real__Grace. Sentencing someone to Live with their own dark conscious, allows for the depth of an act to sink in, and possibly have the effect of leading that person back out of the dark place that they are in, and back towards a relationship with the loving Creator of life itself. Anything less is a complete failure on our part, and is admitting the defeat of a light that we are told in inextinguishable. But that's just what I think...doesn't mean I'm "right"...but what seems "right" to me... David Carl Waggoner, via Jessica Bocangel’s status update on facebook.
When it comes down to it, once you become dissatisfied with your own behavior, only two things will give you the wisdom and motivation to make necessary changes: time and prayer." ~Dawn Eden, The Thrill of the Chaste. (Becca Parsley's status update)
""When you told me to pray,"" Jose would remember later, ""it was incredibly earnest. You said prayer was like having this intense, profound longing that you just had to be with. That you put the longing in the hands of God, in a certain way. That it was important to be receptive to the unfulfilled, and not fill it, or deny it."" take this bread. sara miles. (reminds me of Sean)
What pray, do you know about dragonflies?
Or what happens when they die?
Yes, what happens when the gazelle expires in the desert after running for miles to escape the jackal?
What happens when a flower withers?
When the lamb enters its death agony under the butcher's knife? What do you know about it? What if, at that moment,there were high festival?
What if pain turned into joy? What if death became life, more life, all life?
This is the only mystery I have left you with in creation; why do you take it so amiss?
It was certainly a cruel thing for human beings to have crucified Jesus and you might well reproach God for having stayed silent over the tragedy of Calvary, and yet...Have you experienced the resurrection?
Have you made the transit from the visible to the invisible, to see what happens?
Certainly, if everything ended with death whether for the dragonfly or for the grass of the field or for my son Jesus, you would be right, but... It isn't like that.
Life goes on. It not only goes on, it develops, grows, matures, Life is eternal and you haven't seen the best of it: the kingdom
__from "And God Saw That It Was Good" by Carlo Carretto
""……the measure of civilization is not whether it puts a man on the moon, but rather how it treats its poor."" —— Frederik Herzog, Justice Church, 1980.
The truth must dazzle gradually lest every man be blind.
_ Emily Dickinson (Via Meg)
Lord, the night is strange with unquietness——what our hearts seek is hidden by shifting cloud and the memory of what we had hoped to forget. Have mercy, holiest God, on our unbelief. We would not have it so, but our chilled hands slip on the icy rail, and our numb feet cannot find the ladder’’s rungs.You are fed up with words, and I don't blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell the truth, nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic.
__ Thomas Merton
Sometimes I just have to pray for the strength to conquer myself. (someone, don't remember but how true).
"It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one..Karl_A_Menninger
"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word "darkness" on the walls of his cell" C.S. Lewis
""I think if you were to cut us open what would fall out would not be our intestines and our pancreas. I think that what would fall out would be words, the words that we hold layered and packed in our bodies, emotions just one right on top of each other, the words that actually meet air in our lifetime are few, compared to the un_lipped and un_tongued words we hold inside."" _ Emily Dickinson (Cory)
People change and forget to tell each other. ~Lillian Hellman
"The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars etc., is sure to be noticed.~Soren Kierkegaard
(Jackie Johnson)
" It matters enormously if I alienate anyone from the truth." __CS Lewis
The hand of day opens Three clouds And these few words _ Octavio Paz, (Via Cara)
Forgive the conjunctions and double infinitives and the not said. I don't know really what I wanted to say but want you to have a few words from me this Wednesday morning. We are like two animals escaping to dark warm holes and live our pains alone. _ Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans (Cara)
He is nearer than we might imagine. Sage, in an email, summer of 2008.
Andrew Largeman: I was a little boy and somebody made a shitty latch. That's what I think. That's what I think about the whole thing, OK? And I'm not gonna take those drugs anymore, because they have left me completely fucking numb. I have felt so fucking numb to everything I have experienced in my life, OK?And for that... for that I'm here to forgive you. You've always said that all you wanted was for us to have whatever it is we wanted, right? Well, maybe, what Mom wanted more then anything is for it to all be over, and for me, what I want more then anything in the world, is for it to be OK with you for me to feel something again, even if it's pain.
Andrew Largeman, From Garden State, Murphy's profile. love this.
Cry freedom cry From a crowd 10,000 wide Hope laid upon hope That this crowd will not subside Let this flag burn to dust And a new a fair design be raised While we wait head in hands Hands in prayer _DMB_ Via Murphy's profile.
"'Thou shall love the Lord they God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind' That is the first and greatest commandment. The problem is, how to love God? We are all too conscious of the hardness of our own hearts and despite the religious writers telling us that feeling is not as necessary, we do want to know we do feel and love God". Dorothy Day, Via Sage, indirectly.
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