the lens,
it faces out
to capture
the world,
teaching
us
what we
love most
the lens,
it faces in
to capture
the self,
teaching
us
what we
love most
Month: July 2014
#iammyowngod
we are icons to ourselves,
images carved in the likeness
of what we want to be seen;
impervious porcelain suffocates
til’ we are but death masks.
climb on the camera’s alter
that we might serve up a sacrifice –
one course meal of me…
a one course meal of idolatry
learn
we learn to hide
the fragile glass
of who we were
behind a skin of fire and stone
we bury the bright
beneath a blanket
of silent insulating days.
a child cold in a closed coffin
we fear the songs of the living
that keep us awake at night
with dreams of what we played at
and what it was we were becoming
Desert
the desert sand
stops up the mouth,
it dries the tongue
and it dries the words;
so we’ll let our steps trace,
we’ll let our footprints speak
to future passers by…
Burning the Face of God
I keep my prayers
stoked up inside
like small hot coals
that together
they might burst forth
from out my skull and heart
as a piller of fire to heaven,
burning the face of God
forward
Act I
the wind blows rough
from some place in the core,
where a wilder thing rages
and the bottoms of leaves show
lighter than the tops, to tell –
a storm is coming from afar
and he has lost his shelter to the horizon
Act II
with the heavy hiss of a 3 a.m television
far and faded in another gone-away time
the rain falls fit to tear off this skin
that a raw, new man might be revealed
through pain and rebirth
pulled fresh and breathless from the womb
of a different, darker mother
Act III
pray that in the scented after-shower eve
his breath might cry forth to the world
in small and ragged bits of a life no longer dead
with no sign of Hell left to him but save perhaps
a bright and endless fire in the faraway eyes
that speak of torrid times best left buried
and tongues best left tied to the vines they grew
Stand with Israel
It is a curious phrase – “stand with Israel” that immediately makes one ask “does this mean I/you/we stand against Palestine?”
Just as curious a phrase is “Stand with Palestine” which obviously begs the same question in reverse.
Now of course there are all sorts of people with varieties of experience informing an opinion one way or another. There are Israeli’s who have lost loved ones in the conflict and there are Palestinians who have lost loved ones in the conflict. There are people like me who get their world view shaped primarily by the media I choose to watch/read/listen to.
Figures do not matter much anymore in the middle of this incredible conflict. History does not seem to matter either. Like so many things people have taken sides and lob rhetorical missiles at one-another faster than the actual missiles flying between Israel and Palestine.
There is no dialogue…there is only right and wrong…as in “I am right” and “You are wrong”.
So each of us is entitled to our own opinions however black & white they may be in this complex circumstance. But what about our representatives?
I have heard it asked “What choice does Israel have?” Faced with 1,000 rockets and counting that, albeit have struck head first into the nearly impenetrable Iron Dome missile defense network, Israel cannot simply sit there and take it…can it? It must strike back…right? There are no other options. Certainly children will die while playing soccer on the beach but their blood is on the hand of the Palestinian government…upon Hamas. Hamas’s decisions are Palestine’s and each person must pay for their government’s actions…each person must be a reflection of their government.
“Through fire and water our government will stand with Israel.”
So says the Canadian state.
I ask myself again…is this me? Do I stand with Israel by-proxy? What about Palestine? Can I not stand with both? Is there no middle way?
I am called naive and simplistic. I am called uninformed. This is too complex for you to understand, leave it to the state.
The very statement “stand with (FILL IN THE BLANK)” speaks of taking a side and removing from me the right to take another…after-all my government represents me on the world stage and they have already decided.
I find it ironic that people of a type of Christian faith hold very strongly to the “stand with Israel” perspective with the unspoken “and if we’re not with ya we’re against ya” humming loudly between the lines.
The logic is simplistic…Israel is God’s promised land and Israel is God’s promised people therefore their claims are superior to all others…after all we cannot go against God.
However when Israel is being pelted with missiles by Hamas there is a distinct lack of Biblical dialogue as we say “they must respond in kind…what choice do they have?” What choice indeed? Certainly there is a Biblical precedent for violence as a legitimate response to violence –
“You have heard that it was said ‘eye for eye and tooth for tooth…”
One need only stop there to know that if my neighbour punches me in the face I should punch him back. Certainly the Bible does not say “punch your neighbour so hard they will never get up and hurt you again” but we hear it whispered in our ears nevertheless.
Of course one cannot stop there though can they? Can they?
“But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”
Surely the request of Christ is too much here isn’t it? It stands so strongly against human nature that we cannot be expected to actually do this can we?
I would much rather go on to the next line:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'”
Excellent. I can do this. I mean I hate so many things and so many people that I almost literally have no work to do to make this Bible verse happen – I simply need to exist and the hate will bleed from me as if from a gaping wound. Why should I read on? Why can’t I stop here and ignore the next few sentences?
“I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Ridiculous! Stupidity! Impossible! None of what this Christ calls me to is remotely part of my human nature. It is so counter-intuitive, so counter-cultural that he must mean something else…right? Clearly Christ had no idea what he was talking about. Clearly Christ was unfamiliar with the complexities of the 21st century geopolitical situation. I mean sure if some ignorant 1st century thief took my cloak let him have it…but we’re talking about complicated and deadly missiles being aimed at human beings.
Am I really expected to take the advice of some backwoods, itinerant preaching carpenter who died practically alone having not made enough of an impact on his followers and the people around him to manage to have more than three people with him (and one of them was his mother)? Not exactly a success in comparison to the preachers and politicians of today.
And yet…
There is something compelling in his words. Something inside me feels as if what he asks, however high the price, however much faith is required, is somehow the better path. Even at risk of my security. Even at risk of my very life itself.
The Flat Earth
The earth is flat to the distant eye. He knew this as he stood in middle of the prairie and contemplated the featureless land that surrounded him. A monolithic mass with a horizon too far away to make sense.
Beneath it all she lay lost and away as if covered by a plain blanket with no marker to ever find her again. It was what rooted him to the spot…fear of losing her beyond the distance she had already gone; it was too much to bear.
Minutes turned into hours and he became as still and functional as the erect mast of a sun dial by which the clouds could tell time…should they have ever cared to.
Finally he gave in to a creeping weakness…a cramping of the legs that told him if he didn’t at least sit down he would fall and so sit he did. Slowly he folded up into himself, his posture matching his heart. As he lowered toward the ground he felt as if he were a thousand feet tall and he were sky diving…everything was slow.
Inch by inch and second by second as he sat he became aware of an emerging variety that appeared lost in his grief. Individual prairie grasses took his eye – there was wheat grass and blue stem; side oats and small green clumps of sedge…there again was wild rye and sweet grass.
He took it in and as he did so he placed his hand on the ground to take his weight and felt the good soil beneath. There were hard pebbles and shifting densities, moist from a recent rain. Scattered amidst the grasses were pink wild roses and yellow heart-leaved alexanders.
Closer inspection revealed small ants moving along here and there while the ear led his eyes to dragon flies emerging in the cooling end of the day to feast on smaller mosquitoes.
For a moment he had forgotten her in his wrapt awareness of the utter complexity of the land.Then he remembered what he had lost and laid himself prostrate pressing his cheek and ear to the dirt’s embrace in the jungle of grass and flowers and wept.
He knew she would be ok in this place. More importantly he knew he would find her again. It was not so indistinct and distant now. When he turned over later as the sun had set and the stars had come out to witness them he saw that each was a lighthouse that would lead him back here when he needed safe harbour.
Beneath the silent moon he finally stood and left with the knowledge of the place forever embedded in him.
Consequences
consequence
Line breaks: con|se¦quence
Pronunciation: /ˈkɒnsɪkw(ə)ns
NOUN
A result or effect, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant:abrupt withdrawal of drug treatment can have serious consequences; many have been laid off from work as a consequence of government policies’ (From the Oxford English Dictionary)
In life every choice we make is wired with consequences…it is a law…there is no such thing as a choice that has no consequences for us.
The nice thing about this is that it is freeing. We are not required to ensure there are consequences to another person’s actions because consequences are already part of the natural order.
Sadly some feel they need to become shackled to the personification of consequence in another’s life for all sorts of interesting reasons. Usually these reasons boil down to pain. They are often dissatisfied with the consequences already wired into creation and seek to amp them up by becoming some form of justice or punishment and ensure the other “get’s there’s” so-to-speak.
Ultimately this betrays not only a sadistic vigilante pleasure but also a deep distrust and faithlessness in the justice that is wired into the world.
the ugly inside
there should be a switch
to turn off the ugly inside,
some kind of lever to pull
to wash away the pollution
and reboot this oil-slicked mind
that the killing heart might beat,
beat life instead of death,
instead of being beaten to death
Harnessing Chaos 