My Favorite Place

It had been a long time since I had ventured into possibly one of my favorite places in this fair city. Amongst the sprawling landmarks, esquisite landscapes, the lakes, the parks, and even the open plains I found myself on my back porch. Honestly it is a sheer place of contentment in a metal chair with feet on a fairly damp railing. The entire porch got set ablaze with the aromas of my coconut, lemongrass, and ginger tea with just a hint of lighter fluid from the grill. Sadly due to the rapid urbanization of the area most of what could be heard are cars on the freeway or a truck delivering hallowed goods to the compellingly cordial Kohls in the distance. Yet amidst the exhaust releases coyotes still howl and crickets still chirp in perfect harmony, granted they don't have much variation but they harmonize oh so eloquently. However, the main reason I love my back porch, primarily in the summer, is because of all the lightning bugs. A hundred or so feet from my porch is a little gorge with a creek and on the other side is a canvas of trees that tower above the grass of my back yard. Hundreds of fireflies flicker and dance all night long and illuminate the covering darkness with great finesse. I mean, in this day and age one sees all sorts of lights everywhere in various colors and intensities. With the exception of the sun, moon, and stars most of these are fueled by the combustion of power plants and the splitting of atoms. Be it oil, kites, or any other source of forging mass ammounts of electricity what was spoken into existence on the first day has become utterly taken for granted. Mind you we shouldn't leave food out for a sun god or anything but since the light bulb amusement often seems to leave (for most) after childhood.
Sorry for the tangent, but I miss the days when I was just a wee munchkin frollicking in a field chasing those little bugs. Granted I totally will most likely do that after this post, but seriously, these things are amazing. Amidst the stars, urchins, and I'm sure at one time unicorns God crafted fireflies for His very own enjoyment. It is interesting to think that even up in heaven the God of Revelation 4 looks down at those little flickering insects with a large grin on His dazzling face. As they dance and I am sure tell jokes in morse code their is an infinite God who takes sheer delight in the workmanship of His creation, from the blinking to the buzzing. In Him all things consist and everything that has been made was made by Him, for Him, and to Him. He truly is good in everything He does. Yet lightning bugs are incapable of love. They were not made in His image and He did not die for them. In all of His delighting in them God did not make them for communion, but He made us. Not only do we (believers) live in Christ but, he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. (1 Cor 6:17). How much more is our destiny and lives certain that Christ Jesus, the uncreated God of everything, is not just in us smimming amongst the kidneys and spleen, but is part of us and we are in fact part of Him. We are an extention of Christ cojoined and treasured beyond comprehension - comprehension at this point should even be a word thrown out. Recently, ergo the past two days have been shaky, I honestly don't know what happened but it has been like mistaking a train for a baseball, something analogies fail me right now. But He is good, I am at a loss for language but our destiny and inheritance are sure. Halelujah. My Jesus, yes, He is God.

A couple of side thoughts, a (PS) if you will.)
I love my nightwatch family especially my PR team and Chauncey who I kind of went off on and he was so patient with me, a darn fine guy. Also, though I have had it for a year I have totally fallen in love with the album Floating World by Anathallo. God bless I'm off to the porch again and most likely to bed.

My Current Mood

Factions

The secand glance
Penetrates the haze of gunsmoke
Objects of masquerade
The tiers of obsession
Compete for ordination

Fallen lips
Cheeks smeared with eyeliner
Hushed moments
Embody the nightly pillage

Business cards voice numbers
Revelation pulls supremacy
Martha become CEO
Mary forever held in stocks
Where she sits and smiles

The Shanty Towns of the beloved
Held at arms length
Redaing pamphlets for apostacy
Wounds never beneficial
The towers begin to shake with dry bones

Architecture rearranges into shambles
Dust gives birth to life
Like Adam's first kiss of breath

Showmanship has eaten the passion
Fighting to justify reception of love
Running around each with a baton
Moving to depletion with storm on horizon

Responsibilty whats that
Not quite yet
It has for too long been assumed
For too long feared

Eclectic images dance in the moonlight
To the sound of horns being blown
Amidst the convoys of radio waves

64's Meanderings

Sweat stained brim towers above
The tense eybrows that twitch in repose
Direction and discernment rearing shove
Window cocked listening to the winds prose
A transfer of solar bliss brushes the arm
As the fist clenches tight the braided cargo
Return to the stench of a familiar false alarm
Confiding in the dribble from dialogue from Fargo
Don'tcha Know
Eyes glance through the dashing foliage
Presuming adventure of the pioneer past
Intrepid contellations remain on the same page
Fading memories fighting to forever last
Nooses for old friends and comrades
The shadows of legacy to be left unfulfilled
Traversing into nodadic and schemed tirades
Nearing the day futility has finally been killed
Speech rolls off of a drunkard's waving tongue
Descendants from the popular farce play on
Love being caressed and then placed back on it's rung
Wondering if the seldom movements were ever wrong
Words fall to the ground and float overhead
The solace found in hope's gleaming eye is all thats afloat
Synopsis of the cliff notes of life still on my bed
Wondering who would have had these words wrote
Grammar plays on through the night as a dying breed
Language drifting like the Appalachian semi
Word becoming flesh for the illiterate to feed
Love breathed out of a smoke ring tepid in all it ever touches
Rhyme dies off yet posture remains
Through the noise of combustion and convolution
The revolution on the verge of a myth
Spurs on the noble and hopeless alike
With the large hand that holds the bruised
And breathes life into the embers of disillusion
A future is certain
A past is distorted
A present is over scrutinized
Be still and know
He is God

Shiny Happy People

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.... once again the words of Michael Stipe repeat on the white rectangle above me. There is a big business for sentiment in the world and one cannot help but get sucked in. Each longs to be part of some spinning montage that depicts a group growing up, learning, making mistakes, falling in love, and at the end contently riding into the warm glow of a setting sun with a sigh of accomplishment slipping out a slightly cracked grin. I'm breaking through, I'm bending spoons, I'm keeping flowers in full blooms, I' looking for answers from the great beyond. All in all looking for adventure in the quirks we hold as our basis for living, friendship. Who can hold onto that forever, there is time where one is young and at one time can soar. I mean of course there is an apparent end to that, I think it's far closer to 30 than 25 but one has to look for that menaing to pursue boldly that which burns within. Inherent clarity seems to come in all shapes of lacking yet we pursue on.
I write these words to myself and a ouple others, more or less to just type something. I would spill my thoughts and feekings on all sorts of issues but I mean, I like what I have and am sure it would not be for the best. From my mouth people can be either blessed or hurt and I feel that the slips of encouragement only mask the wounds which in the past I have doled out with little thought.
My good friend sits in the other room right now as I type and he eats something to hold him down for the few hours of sleep he is getting tonight. Tomorrow night he and another friend of mine leave to see a slew of bands and a large mass of hippies in Tennesse at Bonnaroo. Amidst the dulcid tunes of the White Stripes, Mute Math, Tool, the Police, the String Cheese Incident, Robert Randolph and the Family Band, and Wilco they will mingle with good ol' hippies running around yelling, "T-Shirts and Morphine five dollars!" Yeah, and to be honest I heavily considered going intending to pray and intercede but most likely would end up just seeing shows and praying in tongues on and off. I mean, going into this trip I expected spend a ton of time reading, in contemplation, and kicking it at RiHOP. Yet that has not been the case at all. In weakness you learn to love. Some call it the wilderness, others complacency, honestly I want to live again. The one thing that has been moving and directing my heart is waining into a place hovering right over despair and clinging onto the goodness of God.
My heart has had it's ups and downs. I mean I type this to pretty much Charity and Kacie and I truly thank you both for your friendship. Yet broad scope back into play, I have never lived or been fuled by anything. Opinions wane. Will I live live to 83, will I live to welcome me... who knows but slowly I move to the goal. God opens things when it is his time yet my mind holds static as my heart dangles by a thread chasing what feels a carrot on a string that is always out of reach. So follow me, don't follow me. I've my spine, I've got my orange crush. I mean I have all the right friends and am in a place in which a vision should spur me but has not sunk in. Thats me in the corner, in the backround losing my religion. Its going beyond words yet morphing slowly into a symbiotic being trying to do nothing but uplift and love. Nowhere but up to pour my heart yet it is far to easy to question the answers that pop into your head....
To be blatant, IHOP and the prayer room do not hold my heart. I mean I am there and I love the teachings and the people but my attention is shot and I feel like a hypocrite who spouts off prayers more confident that they are heard but am lost and as a crappy student feel entirely out of the loop. I love my friends but I need discipleship. Don't get me wrong I appreciate the words and prayer sessions but I mean I run a race I have run by myself and to be honest I live in an environment where pretty much every one deals with their own issues and fight scrape to get some sort of solace. I mean don't get me wrong there are leaders but no one to look up to, no one with time that is. I give what I can.... I lack direction and all seems to be a blur. I wish I could play music. I wish I could overcome my distraction. I wish I could watch a romantic movie with hope. I wish I would just step into what I was made for if not know something more than words that have become cliche.... In the meantime I let my scattered thoughts dirft around before sleep and listen to REM. Its the end of the world as I know and I feel fine, should I I don't know. All I know is that sweetness will follow.

*Bonus - count the REM references

Mirrors & Smoke

So, my first stint in Richmond endfs tonight. Tomorrow I embark to Atlanta and the mosey over to Norfolk VA and back to where I am. Here are a few thoughts and/statements regarding the current scenario.

*I miss QT, who knew, I mean honestlt sometimes you are just jonesing for a taquito or an eggroll, both of which are of clearly atrocious quality but a taquito and an eggroll none the less.

*Nothing out here is open past 11 pm unless it is a regular alkeyhall bar or the bar of the hookah variety. After being at the hookah bar twice, I yearn for the House of pancakes, they close out here by 12.

*My heart goes out heavily for this city, after seeing friend after friend in sullen monotonous dribble I have this dull ache to be hear, nothing throbbing but enough to make me go, hmmm......

*RiHOP (Richmond's International House of Prayer) is frankly amazing. It is downtown in Carytown which is a cross between the Lawrence, Wesport, and the Plaza. It is two blocks from a strip club, surrounded by bars and clubs, down the street from Edgar Allen Poe's house, close to where slaves were held pre-sale, and a few blocks from the oldest Masonic temple in the US. Let me tell you, spiritual significance. The few times I have gone I have just been blown away by the presence of God. God has big things and intercession if fueled as from outside the windows in this second story loft can see every walk of life.

*I may be taking annother direction in life. This time where as unstructred and uninhibited as it is has left me with alot on my plate. I may pursue the one thing that honestly burns in me, which may lead to me leaving FSM, it is all just very theoretical but life is changing, seasons are dawinng and I stand no only at the forefront of my existence.

*I plan on coming out here more frequently I hope and would love to bring my family out here to see all the great things God is doing. On that note I miss my family at IHOP dearly from the PR Team FTFNF and foreign and student friends alke. My heart aches fo rizzle.

*I am planning on sometime in the near future switching to wordpress I mean I hate blogger layout, and shoot its what all the cool kids do, I mean and then actually getting invovled in a blogging community, that would be fun.

*My summer has now been given the two albums which will most likely etch the memories into my life. These include Silverchair's Young Modern and Jars of Clay's Good Monster. Silverchair where as they are not redeeming really the music alone if breathtaking. It is an album in which I can get utterly consumed with auditory bliss through almost every second of listening. the same goes for Good Monster, however, the lyrics are phenomenal, with hints of blue grass roots I get propelled into thought and smiling whilst jamming.

*Richmond is a good city, I mean historic, beautiful, and in deep need of God. My heart is still deeply ties to this city even after four years. I miss Kansas City its true.