at the gate

Meet me at the gate
My love, my only.
No, not the one by the field.
The one at the brink of your mind.
The cusp between silence and Everything After,
between here and beyond,
between what was and what can be, what will be, what must be.
Meet me there or I shall have to go alone.
For I must go.
Indeed, I have already begun.
Meet me at the gate, my love, my only.
Before it is too late.
And I am gone.

Still in progress

Return Flight

From her window seat Margie watched the mountains slide beneath the plane, but her mind was on her husband, Joe, beside her. Joe crunched complimentary peanuts, loudly. Drops of condensation fell from his plastic cup onto his white shirt, slightly tinted pink from the time he had done the laundry. His glasses rested too close to the edge of his tray, Always smudged, Margie noted.
She had sighed when Joe made the taxi turn around for his forgotten luggage. She had tapped her high heel as they waited at Check-In. And when they missed their original flight and had to settle for the 2:00 to Denver Margie became deathly silent, her way of saying, This is all your fault.
“Is there a doctor on board?” a voice rang out. Panic and tension settled like an L.A. fog. Margie froze. Joe did not and knocked his glasses off his tray as he jumped up.
He moved down the aisle, quick and agile. Relief spread across the flight attendant’s face as Joe laid a silver-haired woman across two seats. He pounded the woman’s chest with efficient, knowledgeable strokes. He was calm, commanding. Margie remembered this Joe. Even his hair had lost its grey in the dim lighting.
“Thank God he’s here,” a man whispered behind Margie.
The silver-haired woman opened her eyes. There was a collective sigh of relief followed by a long applause. Joe walked back to their seat. Someone whistled. Another thumped his back. There was a firmness to his step, a glow to his eyes, which looked to Margie. See I am needed, they said. Was he surprised himself?
Margie reached for his glasses on the ground, which had broken in their fall, and gently placed them in Joe’s outstretched hand.
“We can fix this,” she said.

Resurrection

Jamie looks out the window of her one bedroom apartment at a dying tree. Leaves are snobs, dressing in their liveliest garmets, brilliant shades of amber, before greeting even humble Earth. In Jamie’s lap is a book, Myths and Fairytales for Children, a gift from a tearful worker at the pregnancy test center. She numbly thumbs through it with her right hand, while her left hand, ringless, rests on her growing, round belly. It will be the only gift her child receives.

A page catches her eye. She stops. It’s a bird, ablaze and falling to Earth.

Fire falls from the phoenix’s wings, Death to Life from ashes will spring, it says.

She vaguely recalls a story about birds or angels flying around a throne. There was something about a burning coal and holiness, too. But that wasn’t this story. Ah, church, she remembers, a place she can no longer go.

Fire drips from the tree outside, holy hotness sent by the angles to purify, falling like the phoenix.

Will this child rise from the ashes?



Funeral

Baby, Baby, she whispered wetly into my ear. She cried and hugged me as we stood beside the open coffin. She wrapped her arms around my back and brushed my hair away with her sweaty palm. She enveloped in her embrace, and she nearly kissed me when she spoke. I didn’t really even know her. I tried to cry. I thought it might help.

It’s going to be okay, she said.

I didn’t know why she was telling me this; it was her brother.

She was eleven, and so was I.
This was our first experience with death.

Brokenheart.
The heart that was broken by the heart that was not.
Oh life, it is too much with me.
I feel life all too keenly, and it is filling up my insides with a burning, molten liquid, golden like the flashes of sun,
those swords that slice through the foliage, green and ripe.
Passion.
Its color is brilliance- gold, bronze, and silver.
And it is inside me.
If only it would burst and beam out of me I could be whole and not broken like the heart that was not broken.
Like the one who was not broken.
Like you.

The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place

The Great Salt Lake

Well if you find yourself falling apart
Well I am sure I could steer
The great salt lake

Oh my heart! O my soul! My heart is too full right now. I feel the world a little too keenly right now. It makes it hard to stay in my skin.

"Blessed are the people who know the festal shout, who walk, O LORD, in the light of your face." Psalm 89:15

"My heart became hot within me. As I mused, the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue: 'O LORD, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!'" Psalm 39: 3-4

one day i will live in a tent...

two random thoughts

First, I believe that everyone should have one object that they really want that they have to wait for for a long time to get or possibly never get. Even if you can afford it and even if it would be easy to get or even if someone offers it as a gift the object should not be had by the person who wants it simply so that he can learn the value of the object and more importantly the value of really wanting something. The art of valuing things, waiting for them, working for them, and saving for them is a lost art. Too often and too quickly can we obtain whatever it is that we want; literally, with just the click of button or the swiping of plastic we can have whatever we want. Sometimes it is much sweeter to want something than to have it.

Second, among other random thoughts, I am in love with a song. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYUFcxBq1y4&feature=av2n.

Flightless Bird- Iron and Wine

I was a quick wet boy, diving too deep for coins
All of your street light eyes wide on my plastic toys
Then when the cops closed the fair, I cut my long baby hair
Stole me a dog-eared map and called for you everywhere

Have I found you
Flightless bird, jealous, weeping or lost you, american mouth
Big pill looming

Now I'm a fat house cat
Nursing my sore blunt tongue

Watching the warm poison rats curl through the wide fence cracks
Pissing on magazine photos
Those fishing lures thrown in the cold
And clean blood of Christ mountain stream

Have I found you
Flightless bird, grounded, bleeding or lost you, american mouth
Big pill stuck going down.

Hello blog, it has been awhile

right now i am so overwhelmed with the love of the gospel, the significance of sacrifice, and the revolution of grace. i just finished harry potter about an hour ago- for the first time- and this undoubtedly has something to do with what im thinking right now haha. harry potter was awesome. i cried. it was actually pretty life changing, so don't get me wrong, but im so glad that real salvation, real redemption, and my dear savior are so much better that harry, dumbledore, and the rest of the crew. im super analytical and could sit down right now and draw all the parallels possible between the gospel and harry potter, and i certainly think that the book echoes of love, sin, sacrifice, and redemption which all truly great stories must do, but as i read the ending of the 7th book i kept feeling like something was missing, something wasnt complete. I know what it is. Harry didnt die. I wanted him to (as much as i wanted him to live forever), knowing only a sacrifice as great as death really brings salvation. Jesus died 100% and that made all the difference. He didnt just return to normal, everyday life after the cross. Yeah, he was made alive after death and is still alive right now, but he experienced utter, complete, and total punishment. He endured it all in one deathly act of finality and wasnt allowed to pick back up his life on earth afterwards. It's the sacrifice, the cost, the burden that gets me. it is the irreversibility of his circumstance that puts fire in the belly. This type of totality and burden is different than the kind of sacrifice harry made. furthermore, despite all of his good deeds and wisdom and love for harry dumbledore ultimately was weak, messed up, and came to and end. I imagine god as a type of dumbledore who wasnt weak, or tempted, or scared, or unsure and obviously this comparison falls desperately short of the weight of his glory but in my mind that's one pretty awesome god. thats the kind of god that i cannot wait to jump into the arms of, to talk for hours to, to cry with, to laugh with, and to learn from. Lastly, there wasnt redemption from the malfoys. sure, the malfoys werent as bad a you think they are at first, and you end up sympathizing with them. but there's no real sorrow or regret from them, therefore there is not real forgiveness either, and consequently they arent really made whole or brought back in the end.
I love harry potter and it is such a refreshing and revitalizing reminder of redemption, but it doesnt hold a smoldering wick to the cross. it cant. im not sure j k rawlings wanted it to. but it is an excellent tool for stirring up the passions in peoples' hearts, prompting them to find redemption and love, and that is the real magic of harry potter.