Words

Peacocks and ostriches, and chickens. We personify this and that to create allegories and allusions.

We move between being actor and spectator.

We talk of the natural world and organic food. We talk of spirituality.

We talk separation while wanting to be connected.

And someone reminds us about goodness, kindness, holiness.



Shall we have charity, humility, and obedience as guides in our lives? Shall we be prolific writers?



We are more than our slang and syntax, more than our anecdotes and allusions. We are always searching. We are always lurking here and there. Different things unsettle us. We seek that which is beautiful. We want our lives to resonate.

Repetition

A repetition, a songsheet echo of the some distant Freshman Year event of stromboli and french fries.

Our lives are filled with campaigns, promises, and memories.



We echo are friends, our families.



We talk about handkerchiefs and elections and typographical errors and movie messages and newspaper headlines. We want success, victory. We talk about the weather, hope, and love.



Life is repetition. Life is an echo.



Life is an unwritten elegy. Life is filled with half-imagined eulogies for lost love, lost friends, lost keys. We allow ourselves to collect and save books, clothes, wine, art. We are required to remember Tippecanoe and the hypotenuse angle.

We seek understanding. We find another echo, another repetition.

echoes and other Prayers

Motion is more than movement, motion is a time of anxiety, a time of anticipation, a time that is all sensibility, all prejudice. Motion snaps and distorts. Motion creates a strange touch on exposed skin.



There is a soft, lilting echo which waits, which relates and which creates this and that, hope and love.



Sleepiness sometimes accompanies thinking about tomorrow.

We often talk goodness and kindness. We all want to share love.

GK

Details. Tiles. Light. Darkness. Doors. Silence. Wanting. Asking. Thinking. Contemplating. Reflecting. Leaves. Windows. Half-heard.
Half-seen.



Our memories create a marvelous gate of wood and iron and gold for the hemisphere of yesterday, the present is remote
, tomorrow is alive and local with sounds and smells of August encouraging our approach, gently, kindly.



Voices heard and unheard. We approach the hemisphere of yesterday with marvelous sentences about nothing, marvelous prayers for those whom we love.



Twigs snap. We talk about our lives, we talk about goodness and kindness. We talk about prayers and believing and forgiving and letting go.

Search

Monogamous memories retain half-heard anecdote about something important.



There is an eternal search for grace, goodness, kindness. The search is both private and public.



There is poise and confidence in the silence. We must allow ourselves time for service, study, silence.



We stood here in the silence of half remembered college newspaper stories. 
Remembering our innocence, remembering our laughter and then someone said something about the weather. Truth rustles, honor bustles, hope rustles in the silence.

We create and delete files, create and delete hope in ourselves and in others.

floating rippled

Look in the shadows, look in the shadows.

Someone says something about the Whiskey Rebellion, someone remembers a story about the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

We relate, somehow we wait.



We linger here in the silence of half remembered college newspaper stories. Of memories of van rides and staplers and interviews and headlines and articles on student government and concerts and drinking and sorority dances and fraternity keg parties and moonlight walks from academic buildings to residence hall. 
We linger in thoughts of pizza and music and this and that. I remember wanting to somehow become a
 split-second saint sacrificing myself to save all those who I love and all those who I profess to love with the gentle gracefulness of a floating rippled nimbus cloud.



And all the ladies ordered grilled salmon on spinach while the men recited Washington's Farewell Address.



Sigh and sink down in groups of chattering, polished teeth talking of celebrities, talking of politics, searching for something to believe, searching for something to hold on to.

Finding momentary interest in the mystery of a stranger, in the mystery of a chocolate covered strawberry on a random street corner.

Remains

I remember wanting to somehow become a
 split-second saint sacrificing myself to save all those who I love and all those who I profess to love with the gentle gracefulness of a floating rippled nimbus cloud.

Budweiser and Yahoo and Panasonic and other words confront me, taunt me, haunt my imagination with a directness, with a shadiness expected yet foreign.

Everything remains noisy, crowded. So much is seen yet unseen.



Open in the window, open in the window.

Remember Freshman Year and the Whiskey Rebellion, remember the Quakers and that story about the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

We relate, somehow we wait.

Fields of Life

We stood here in the silence of half remembered college newspaper stories. 
I showed her this – a picture of sunlight on a champagne flute. I remember wanting to somehow become a
 split-second saint sacrificing myself to save all those who I love and all those who I profess to love with the gentle gracefulness of a floating rippled nimbus cloud.



Life is filled with pedestrians, policeman, people with pets.

Memory is the artist’s companion at first, and we linger there in our thoughts reliving some event again, on the crowded, jostling sidewalk, where a Scottish wind stirs and makes a sound like waking bagpipes. Memory is the companion of hope and love. Memory is the companion of prayer. In the realm of silence memory leads us to London, Paris, Berlin, Milan, and Glasgow. We are ducks by a fountain. We are in the realm of the seen and unseen, the heard and unheard. We are dreams, we are tears. We seek innovation, we seek examination. Each moment allows us to think of exclamations and proclamations.

Life is filled with pedestrians, policeman, people with pets.



I remember wanting to somehow become a
 split-second saint sacrificing myself to save all those who I love and all those who I profess to love with the gentle gracefulness of a floating rippled nimbus cloud.

Budweiser and Yahoo and Panasonic and other words confront me, taunt me, haunt my imagination with a directness, with a shadiness expected yet foreign.

Everything remains noisy, crowded. So much is seen yet unseen.

Farewell Address

Hunger and thirst are always waiting, always relating. Stomaches may growl, tongues may become dry. What can you tell me about Marbury vs Madison? Do you remember the Louisiana Purchase? Let's talk of the Battle of Tippecanoe. And all the ladies ordered grilled salmon on spinach while the men recited Washington's Farewell Address.



Tecumseh and Harris did talk about doing a reunion tour but the other band members couldn't decide whether to agree and so there was a conflict over the tour name, tour dates and some reporter called it the Battle of New Orleans or was it the Battle for New Orleans. Well the tour almost didn't happen. And everyone talked about movies from 1985 and television shows from 1995 and music from 2005 which such crisp tones that there was such a blur, such confusion. Where were goodness, kindness, friendship, hope? Subsistence replaces substance in many contemporary conversations and the diagnosis and prognosis for mayhem and miscommunication and misunderstanding is the melange, accepted and approved by many between bites of scones and sips of espresso.

Our lives are a jumble of fact, fiction, fantasy. There are multiple interpretations for each word we say, each word we don't say.

Pedestrians

Pedestrians all are we, searching for one form or another of coupledom, talking about one form or another of love. Life remains a truly crazy show and tell experience of wacky proportions as everything is rippled, everything is widowed. Everyone is encouraged to leap and laugh at the most inappropriate times. There is to much time to linger and loiter in the ethos of fake hope, fake love, fake friendship. Dusk will arrive soon. Truth will arrive soon. What will you say.



Does day frighten you? Do shadows calm you? Is there softness in your dreams?

Questions, questions, always questions.

There are fir trees and rose bushes. There are coffee shops and department stores. There are horses and dairy cows. There is humility and compassion.

Pedestrians all are we, rushing, often rushing and not seeing, rushing and forgetting why we are rushing.

Three

I remember wanting to somehow become a
 split-second saint sacrificing myself to save all those who I love and all those who I profess to love with the gentle gracefulness of a floating rippled nimbus cloud.

Budweiser and Yahoo and Panasonic and other words confront me, taunt me, haunt my imagination with a directness, with a shadiness expected yet foreign.

Everything remains noisy, crowded. So much is seen yet unseen.

here and gone

I remember wanting to somehow become a
 split-second saint sacrificing myself to save all those who I love and all those who I profess to love with the gentle gracefulness of a floating rippled nimbus cloud.



We heard people talking about the US Open, people talking about fir trees. There were girls talking about boys and night time and boys talking about quarterbacks, running backs, and tackles. We heard people talking of the dusk. We heard people talking of how on some summer nights insects hover in the stillness and silence of the twilight searching for pools of water, pools of truth before they decide to annoy us.



Lost children are always called, Lost children cause eyebrows to raise and pupils to bulge, and foreheads to furrow. And someone talks of some quarterback. And someone talks of the night.

And each second there is always time to remember, there is always time for goodness and kindness.



With all the feelings of six year old who lives only for hamburgers, lettuce, cookies, milk, squirt guns, cowboy hats who often stops my thoughts, returns to my imagination with yesterday's dreams, yesterday's lost appreciation for simplicity.

How crowded the sidewalk is today.

The Day After

We stood here in the silence of half remembered college newspaper stories. 
I showed her this – a picture of sunlight on a champagne flute. I remember wanting to somehow become a
 split-second saint sacrificing myself to save all those who I love and all those who I profess to love with the gentle gracefulness of a floating rippled nimbus cloud.

We stood there in the confusion of hunger and thirst, of being friends, of being modern, of being urban, of being us. And there was all of these smells and things to sample, to want to sample. There were pools of chocolate and powdered sugar and bananas, pools to be seen. 
I remember wanting to somehow become a
 split-second saint sacrificing myself to save all those who I love and all those who I profess to love with the gentle gracefulness of a floating rippled nimbus cloud.

We stood there in the silence of half seen newspaper headlines, boldly announcing protests and revolutions.

Life # 14

Life is an unwritten elegy. Life is filled with half-imagined eulogies for lost love, lost friends, lost keys. We allow ourselves to collect and save books, clothes, wine, art. We talk of English, French, German, Italian, and Scottish poets. We confuse the elegy and eulogy and have silly arguments with our friends and loved ones about silly things which we only half believe. We remember cousins and pets and tennis players. We have favorite movies, favorite months. People live, people die. Each day we live a little, each day we die a little. How often does diagnosis and sickness and recovery enter our conversation, goodness, kindness, and holiness are often retrospectively refracted or retracted while we are sometimes dazzled by chattering, laughing, polished teeth. We silently touch our private grief, remember the conspicuous bewilderment we tried to avoid – each one of has a badlands, a wastelands waiting to be displayed for the public, with all the sensibility of hiding each injury, each pain from the doctor until amputation is the only solution. The decision to live, to love, to hope requires patience, confidence, selflessness. The decision to live creates many conversations, many subjects. Life is lyrical, filled with repetition, filled with both conscious and unconscious echoes of other famous laments, of other famous litanies, and in particular seen and unseen moments of compassion, visible and invisible moments of mercy, and we allow ourselves to create private interior unwritten elegies and prayers. We allow ourselves to find time for contemplation and reflection of a noisy, crowded street, to compose our stories, to find the humorous and the haunting and the haughty in our lives.

Memory is the artist’s companion at first, and we linger there in our thoughts reliving some event again, on the crowded, jostling sidewalk, where a Scottish wind stirs and makes a sound like waking bagpipes. Memory is the companion of hope and love. Memory is the companion of prayer. In the realm of silence memory leads us to London, Paris, Berlin, Milan, and Glasgow. We are ducks by a fountain. We are in the realm of the seen and unseen, the heard and unheard. We are dreams, we are tears. We seek innovation, we seek examination. Each moment allows us to think of exclamations and proclamations.



Life is an unwritten elegy. Life is filled with half-imagined eulogies for lost love, lost friends, lost keys. We allow ourselves to collect and save books, clothes, wine, art. We talk of English, French, German, Italian, and Scottish poets.

And He Said

The lucky people treat each moment of their lives as if it were a work of art—high and delicate art—and only an artist can see and understand it; but no art is necessary in existing within our celebrity saturated, opinion masquerading as fact society dominated by a fickle ever changing, ever churning popular culture; anybody and everybody can do anything and everything and there is a pill for this and a lawyer for that and responsibility must wait, there is no need to understand or tolerate or relate. Life is crowded, cluttered, polluted. We are all exposed to desire and disease and diversions, distractions, and detours. Some are making stories out of gossamer, others out of twine, others barbed wire.

Living is no longer an art. We search for humorous stories to remember, to tell, to understand.

Bubble

Sometimes our companions like to spin out their gossamer and twine stories to a great length with such great proportion and depth and allusions and allegories, and may wander around as much as a nineteenth century tour of the Continent with stops in every great city, every grand town, each good village that amuses the narrator, and leaves the listener lost nowhere in particular, simply lost in a world which hopes to be comic and witty and humorous and romantic and loving filled with honor and friendship and love and good manners and good food and good stories. Life does not always have a point. Our conversations are not always brief. Hopefully, each day will gently bubble along.

Life is filled with pedestrians, policeman, people with pets.

Where Was I

We often hear stories about lost loves, drinking too much, lost keys, and police officers who like donuts and appear when we least want them to appear.



This is an age of offbeat humor, edgy gritty torn from the headlines mentality of fear and suspicion. Everybody has a past, everybody has a story. We are encouraged so seek out each of these stories. We accept them as part of our society but we do not always believe them. Some are truly sad, truly depressing, some are truly humorous, some are comic, some are witty. Many pretend to be humorous, witty, comic, tragic, depressing. All depend upon how the story is told, the words chosen, inflection, enunciation, pronunciation. All stories require each listener to have a little patience, appreciation, imagination. Life is a combination of relating and substance.

Observe

Take the elevator, take the elevator

Someone says something about the Whiskey Rebellion, someone remembers a story about the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

We relate, somehow we wait.

When to Say

How beautiful and distant life can be. How beautiful and dangling love can be. Neither life nor love progress in the way of great literature or Hollywood movie formula. There is much to think about, much to avoid.

There are always distractions, diversions, and other detours waiting to tempt us.

How wonderful life is in the abstract. How many cliffhangers had you lived today!

How many moments have you been left dangling, how many times have you left someone dangling?

And in the distance there is always a crowd, sometimes real, sometimes imaginary; approaching, retreating, attacking, surrendering. There is always a crowd, seen or unseen, visible or invisible.

A crowd relating, a crowd waiting.



I do not claim that I keep in touch with friends and family as well as I want to do it. I only claim to know how much I think about different people from my life, and remember them in such a manner as to feel their presence almost daily in the few moments of silence and reflection that I allow myself each day.

Where Am I?

How comforting! How appealing! How I want to sample and savor them all.




This moment both pleases and frightens me. There are many people I have never met. Each day I pass by this person, that person and never see them. each day another stranger dies, another stranger is born. I pray for both in the abstract because neither are real in the way people you see every day and laugh and joke with and listen to gossip with and then try to avoid.



In repetition there is comfort, in repetition there is hope!

Thoughts # 11

Talking about parades and processions and cheese and crackers and crowds eating healthy snacks, and children wanting new toys and parents wanting little Tommy's clothes to last a little longer, remain clean a little longer, this is heard, this is felt. There is hope. There is death. There is music. There is fear processing into the conversation, into the imagination hidden within thoughts of eating right, calorie count, freshness. How attractive things do look, how appealing things often are. There is interest. There is want, there is need.

The dead watch from rooftops and street corners with a delicious interest in what they hear and see when they observe you and me. 






Sigh and sink down in groups of chattering, polished teeth talking of celebrities, talking of politics, searching for something to believe, searching for something to hold on to.

Finding momentary interest in the mystery of a stranger, in the mystery of a chocolate covered strawberry on a random street corner.

What I Didn't Remember

Of course religion and silence are often extolled and often misunderstood. It is easy for selfishness to overpower, to outnumber goodness. Modern science, modern thought waltzes with pop culture and recruits new dancers, new followers, and doubts and fears do grow! How archaic the words friend, honor, love sound.

Twenty years have past. Twenty lives have ended.

The streets are empty one minute, crowded the next. Groups sit down, groups stand up. They talk of what has been played and replayed and displayed on TV. Interest follows repetition, interest searches for questions about you and me. How they want to see our lives on the TV between mattress commercials and foreign car commercials.

Quiet # 190

New Beginning, New Hope, New Prayers.

Visual images replace words.

Appreciation, Gratification, Imagination.

Lessons in relating, Lessons in waiting, Lessons in Silence.

the gathering unrest

The unrest in the Middle East contains a warning for the rest of the world. All people deserve to be treated fairly. The principles of social justice that Jesus taught remain relevant today. All countries, all societies should remember and implement them.

The needs of the individual must be considered, must be remembered, must be respected by all governments. Basic human needs for food, water, clothing, shelter must be available.

The gaps between rich and poor are growing wider and wider each year.

There is violence in our country. Violence against women, violence against children, violence against minorities. Within our society, each day the media presents new reasons for anxiety, for fear, for apathy. There is a murder here, a rape there, armed assault over there. Each stranger has the possibility of helping improve or helping destroy our lives. None of this is new. This has been going on since the beginning of time. Violence has always been a part of human existence.

The gaps between good and bad are growing wider and wider; the secular society wants to confuse us, wants us to see life in shades of gray, instead of black and white. If science can present a rational sounding argument for a behavior then it must be acceptable. Almost every sin is excused and explained away in our society. Popular culture is only concerned with the immediate, not the long term. Popular culture likes encouraging unrest, self-doubt, fear especially when there is a way to profit from someone's misfortune or fear of a possible misfortune.

How many people profit from the misfortune of others?

As Christians we must always strive to respect life, to encourage others to respect life. We must remember Jesus' teachings of mercy, compassion, charity. We must include them in our daily lives, in our interactions with everyone we meet.