Egregious Reader

ITs from a poem I wrote called childhood ... I will post it all for something new to post: waken, quicken, open and crack the gulf divides and out of earthy black comes a new sprout a dead baby fell upon that ground once long ago ... there it laid covered a body in peat moss preserved and ignored for thousands of days. snakes shed their skin, children their insides. The shell remains and walks on, the heart is laid to rest. the body is heavy from new rain, swollen in the grave. maybe the time is now. when it will rise to the top not resurrection just to finally be uncovered. A choice will be yours, will you look upon this death? Will you weep? Will you take this little one into your arms cradling loss? Christ have mercy on us. You must become like one of these little ones ... You must become like one of these little ones ... His kingdom come, will open dead eyes. Your shell will find the past unchanged, but the child alive again like a new sprout from the dirty old ground of personal h...

This was a very good book ... not consistently or at least some parts were less interesting than others. His explanation of spiritual life is solid and refreshing and his history of the "disapearance of moral knowledge" is very important. I see in the acknowledgments that this was adapted from 8 talks he gave on the topic and it does feel like that in some parts. BUT, there is much to recommend and as far as something readable like this, I know of no better book to show us some ground to stand on. Overall he helps me see that academic and high culture has effectively killed all knowledge beyond narrow physical and scientific truth and has failed to replace it with anything solid ... and so effectively has left us to the wolves. By wolves I mean advertising and media ... they are the new meaning makers since all other traditions have been exploded. No wonder we are in deep need of a shepherd. Another way to put it, to borrow from Dorthy Sayers, is that society increased litera...

"There is only one right way of asking men to believe, which is to put before them what they ought to believe because it is true; and there is only one right way of persuading, which is to present what is true in such a way that nothing will prevent it from being seen except the desire to abide in darkness; and there is only one further way of helping them, which is to point out what they are cherishing that is opposed to faith. When all this has been done, it is necessary to recognize that faith is God's gift, not our handiwork, of His manifestation of the truth by life, not of our demonstration by argument or our impressing by eloquence; and that even He is willing to fail till He can have the only success love could value--personal acceptance of the truth simple because it is seen to be true." (John Oman quoted by Dallas Willard in his Knowing Christ Today, 2009) This is what we hope to do ... this is truthtelling.

Home is probably one of my favorite words. ... I found this in a notebook (I usually try and rip out the pages of my little yellow pad so I can file the keepers and throw the rest away): Homeless in America I have prayed and been in prayer and seen my fears entombed in the image of homelessness, without place in the world. I am going home. OPEN Open a door, that I might come in. Any door? No, no, no ... No hole in the wall, no luxury of experience no fine dining just laundry, labor and love ... A home.

"The availability, the freshness, the uniform perfection, and absence of demands that we value in Cool Whip we seek in persons as well, and being aware of how widely Cool Whip persons are appreciated, we seek to restyle ourselves in that image. Accordingly, as we remake our personality and appearance to lend them the appeal of availability, we foreshorten our existence into an opaque, if glamorous, surface and replace the depth of tradition and rootedness of life by concealed and intricate machinery of techniques and therapies." ---- Albert Borgmann ( The Invisibility of Contemporary Culture ) We are pulp and glamor and this is what dazzling success has done.

This is the Western world for a few hundred years: let's explode the Bible and in its place let us revere the human mind. With the 18th century French Red Republicans let us hold a service to the "goddess of reason" in Notre-Dame Cathedral. "It took place after a day of looting of the Paris churches. Carlyle graphically described the return of the looters to the Hall of the Paris Convention: "Most of them were still drunk with brandy they had swallowed out of chalices--eating mackerel on the patenas. Mounted on asses, housed with priests' cloaks, they reined them with priests' stoles. They clutched in the same hand communion-cup and sacred wafer ... Mules high-laden with crosses, chandeliers, censers ... thus did the profaners advance toward the Convention, in an immense train, all masked like mummers in fantastic sacredotal vestments ... God was evicted the next day in Notre Dame, and in various other churches. In Notre-Dame God's place was taken by...

One way to understand the planet earth (and don't we like to talk global nowadays) is to travel far and wide ... to galavant across the continent and the big sea. We like to think that people who are well traveled are wise and understanding (don't get me wrong there is much good to come from travel). BUT that is not the only way to know the world ... and in fact it is only a way of understanding the surface. In fact, much of that has been little more than walking a concrete map ... their understanding is paper-thin. Another way of understanding the world is to buy a lot of land and live there for a long time ... maybe your whole life. To spend a lot of time walking in your backyard and looking at the trees and the bugs. Listening to the birds and observing the seasonal changes. Going to the same spot for groceries and talking to the same neighbors. This brings a different type of understanding of the world around you. Today, we often try and understand sex and relationships in ...

I am supposed to read something tomorrow night at our 5X15 night (15 artists sharing something for 5 minutes each). I feel pretty close to choosing a handful of my poetry and reading it (3 or 4 short pieces that I had previously strung together) ... I am just very aware at how stark and angry it sounds. I wonder how it will come across and what is more, most of my writing is like this. I don't know if it has to do with maturing or dispossession, but I find it incredibly hard to write about light and beauty and joy ... most of my writing is about sadness and loneliness and the unending (though often unnoticed) troubles in our country. I take comfort only in coming across some great writers who seem to give credence to my way of writing and the topics I am always tackling with pen and lyric. I am thinking of Walker Percy and his belief in the novelist as diagnostic for the soul. And Flannery O'Connor and her grotesque and violent short stories that are able to push us to the edge...

Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again Oh, the ragman draws circles Up and down the block. I'd ask him what the matter was But I know that he don't talk. And the ladies treat me kindly And furnish me with tape, But deep inside my heart I know I can't escape. Oh, Mama, can this really be the end, To be stuck inside of Mobile With the Memphis blues again. Well, Shakespeare, he's in the alley With his pointed shoes and his bells, Speaking to some French girl, Who says she knows me well. And I would send a message To find out if she's talked, But the post office has been stolen And the mailbox is locked. Oh, Mama, can this really be the end, To be stuck inside of Mobile With the Memphis blues again. Mona tried to tell me To stay away from the train line. She said that all the railroad men Just drink up your blood like wine. An' I said, "Oh, I didn't know that, But then again, there's only one I've met An' he just smoked my eyelids...

OK so granted much more needs to be argued to even explain what pretechnological Age means and to give context for this quote ... but blogger don't have time for that right now so: "Oppportunities in a pretechnological society were to be grasped and acted out as a destiny. More precisely, one opportunity among others, however few, was to be taken up and lived out in a lifelong commitment; and all other opportunities ceased to be open and to exist. In liberal democracy, on the other hand, any one opportunity never turns into destiny but merely into a state one is free to leave for the sake of one of the many opportunities that have remained open." (Albert Borgman Technology and the Character of Contempory Life P. 91-92) When freedom is the highest value commitment is not. When commitment is in place there is a much more vigorious form of freedom preserved. I am in bondage to my wife in that I am responsible to my voluntary vows of life-long fidelity. However it allows me ...