The Ending

After years of sharing my thoughts, stories, and poetry. I have found my life going in new directions. While I love writing on this blog. I have decided to start a new project. Please join me at my new blog (link below). Thank you and God Bless.

http://digitallettersoffaith.blogspot.com/

Airless

Drawn taunt, a vacumn, a wall
chest tight, sides pinned, pained
Body rigid, wound tight
lungs airless, hungry yet dry
nostrils flaring, mouth sucking
Air! Oxygen! Anything,
Just to breath, to feel relief
to hold life, to live, to rise
or perhaps: find peace.

Wicketty Wack

Shadow places, wicketty wack
with dark flowers, darker rain
greys and black on black on black
wicketty wack

bricks of dark and a vacume
the thrust of archetecture
the doom of progress
the black and greys and shadows
play, rewind, play again

wicketty wack, goes the slap
the stars in colorless glory
float before bright green eyes
and it rains wicketty wack

shadows and black paint
glass that can't be seen through
rain which is felt and not seen
a metalic taste, blood black

bricks in darkness and endless hole
the tumbling modern view
the doom of technology
the loss of morality
play, rewind, play again

wicketty wack, goes the slap
and history comes back
in black and black taps
and the rain goes wack, wack, wack
wicketty wack

Glory's Seas

A drift upon dark lonely seas
My heart navigating to lust
Astern defiently to G-d
listless, tideless, without wind
a boat, stagnat, waiting endlessly
Yet I turn, and You redeem
a storm takes up boat
billowing sails full of love
waves wash and toss about
mercy thrusts my heart forward
to break against the Rock
only to anchor me safely in hope
love breaks, tears away the rot
Grace rebuilds, boat, mast, sail: Gloriously
And joy finds heart enveloped
transformed, whole, patterned
Ready to sail, full sail, on glory's seas.

Creating a Digital Life

My brother, at age 13, as finally started to join the digital life with his first personal email account. This might seem a stupid simple step which doesn't mean much. In today's world digital life is expected. Babies have a digital life (due to their parents uploading pictures), that will travel with them all their lives. However, it is creating the first digital life, the person that you are online, which seems so significate.

An Email account is the first step in a very deep hole. Facebook, twitter, blogging, and who knows what else, becomes almost as important as life itself. Pictures which seem funny at 13, will look horrible and might be detrimental at 18 when your hoping to go to college. Life online has a weird powerful implications into our regular lives. Once you start to be plugged in, its nearly impossible to be unpluged.

My brother's excitement is understandable. I'm sure at 13 an email address seems like the first step in becoming a grown up. When I was 13, I wanted to start working so I could make money (and buy things that I wanted). I didn't even think about an email address till near the end of high school, when it became necessary. I wonder how my parents, who still aren't very plugged in (dsl, cellphones (not smart phones) and my mum never used FB are as close as they get), are going to teach my brother about building his online character. And who can tell what that online personality will mean by the time he's my age and out in the 'real' world.

Running the Race

It was kind of like a slap in the face. That moment when you’re expecting pain, you know you’ve been hit, but the full extent hasn’t gotten to your brain yet. Then I was transported back to my sophomore year of high school, sitting in Bio class, glued to a TV watching the towers burn in NYC. That memory of the first tower falling mixes with the images from Oklahoma. My mother hadn’t wanted me to see those images, had tried to protect me from them. The images of children, the same age as my brother, covered in blood, limp, obviously dead. Then the pain sets in and I’m back to the present, looking at pictures from Boston.


My family has always been sports intensive. But from the merriment of different sports, soccer, baseball, football, volleyball, and others; we slowly gravitated to running. My sister got into cross country. My brother wanted to run too, so my father started to run to keep him company. Soon my father was running his first ½ marathon, followed by marathons, lots of marathons. We started the tradition of running a 5K every Thanksgiving. My dad started getting the Running Magazine. Running permeated our lives, and it still does. Less than two weeks ago I decided to do my first ½ marathon this fall.

Runners have a certain resilience that bleeds into everything they do. In my experience, most runners have supported some cause or run in the memory of someone dear to them. Running is a very personal, individual, event. However, when you become a runner, you become part of a family. Runners keep track of their own. I’ve had complete strangers, give me encouragement and push me to the finish line. Not only that, but many runners run for reasons outside themselves. Whether it’s raising money for a cause or running in the memory of a loved one or even protesting injustice. Many runners aren’t in it just for themselves.

That’s why the attack in Boston seems so senseless. The finish of a race should be a moment where the pain becomes justified and joy abounds. In Boston that glorious personal victory was turned into a dark ugly scene of blood and destruction. And it would be easy to only see the bloodshed, to only see the worst of the situation. We can ask why and who. We could wallow in the despair of another heartless, senseless attack.

However, that’s only part of the story. The best of human nature always get shown during and after acts of horror. People carrying and comforting complete strangers, Bostonians opening up their homes and restaurant’s giving away free food. There other a huge number or stories of people doing things that can only be call heroic. For all of our ability to be killers and destroyers; we humans can also be selfless and caring. So despite the darkness and the horror and all that blood; I will bend my thoughts and prayers on the good things. And I will give thanks to a God who despite our propensity to great evil, created us with the ability to do greater good.

‘Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,’ Hebrews 12:1

Beginning of a Story: The Chasm through the world.

I wrote this today during work. I would like to clean it up a bit and make it a short story. Not sure how to end it though. 

Sarah stared across the chasm of the world. The world which tumbled in two halves around twin stars, the world to which Sarah had been born. Although it should be said that she was born to the eastern half of what was once a complete and whole world. No one knew how the chasm came to be. The two tribes had very different ideas of how it happened. The scientist in the Northern City of Washburn, held that a great world war, mainly the weapon’s used in that war, were the cause of the chasm. The Southern spiritualist believed that the great gods, in their wisdom, had separated the world, so that the people would not destroy each other completely.

Sarah wasn’t really interested in why the world had been split in two. She was more interested in getting to the other side of the world. It had never been done. At least that was what everyone always said: Her parents, her teachers, the librarian, and her friends that where training in the ways of the spiritualists. So Sarah, along with skeptic Jerry, and followed by a very spiritual guardian Sam, decided to train with the Scientists. The Spiritualist’s, believed that the world must stay split, and travelling to the other side should be forbidden and impossible. Whether it was forbidden because it was impossible or impossible because it was forbidden had never been made clear. Sarah hated the silliness of it.

“Perhaps it is not a question or can or cannot, but should or should not.” Sam had said mysteriously when they were a day out of the southern city. Jerry had argued with him the rest of the day on the semantics of word usage. Sarah had only half listened. She wasn’t interested in semantics; she was much more interested in possibility. The can but should not, wasn’t something she was going to waste time thinking about. She had no interest in sub-planting the gods, destroying humanity, or even changing history. She merely wanted to reconnect the two halves of the world. If they had once be one, why shouldn’t they be again?

“We should travel by sea, it will be quicker.” Jerry said.

“Not necessarily” Sarah replied, daring to argue with Jerry. “There are bandits and pirates. If we run into them, it would be a much longer trip. Also the weather is harder to predict.”

“Distance-wise the sea is shorter” Jerry said unwilling to concede completely. Sarah had learned long ago to use Logic against Jerry and to only fight when she was going to win. This had created a friendship of mutual respect between the two of them. If Sarah had known Jerry viewed her as the leader, she might have been tempted to use more of her power.

“Sam?” Sarah said asking her guardian to voice an option. Despite their difference in belief, Sarah had a great respect for Sam.

“There are robbers in the woods, if we go by land, so either way is in fact dangerous. A fact that I expressed to your father before we started the trip. I believe that the sea passage might not be the safest or quickest, but it is perhaps the best option. I have friends in the Dam City; we can get passage from there. It means travelling half the way over the dam and is perhaps the longest way. But it is also the safest.”

“You should have mentioned that earlier.” Sarah said softly. Sam seldom offered information.

“Do not offer unasked for wisdom” Jerry said mocking the voice of a spiritual elder who had often spouted out weirdly annoying says throughout their early education. Sarah smiled despite herself. Sam tried to look offended, but Sarah could see his eyes smiling.

“Jerry to you have any problems making for the Dam City?” Asked Sarah, she didn’t expect Jerry to disagree.

“The City of the Damned? Sounds good” Jerry said drily. Sam winced at the word play.

“Alright then, Sam you seem to know the way, led on.” Sarah said, she normally laughed at Jerry’s jokes, but this one gave her pause. The Dam City was often called the Damned City, because of its location. It was said living close to the chasm did weird things to some people. There was a sect of Spiritualist that believed that jumping over the edge, into the chasm, wasn’t suicide. Rather it was a return to the gods and this return was often taken by those who were old or sick.

The Great Eastern Dam ran along the edge of the chasm. When the world was one, there had been a great ocean between the east and the west. To keep the water from pouring down into the Chasm, the long forgotten people had built a great Dam. The Spiritualists believed that this was done with the help of the gods, who held back the waters from the edge for 40 days and nights. The scientist scoffed at this. On top of the dam to the south, a great road had been built, leading to the great Dam City. The City itself lay halfway along the great Dam and was a hub for trade. It was also the site of a great holy place, which was build below the city on the side of the chasm. Great patios and balconies were built out over the nothingness. How deep this holy place was, no one seemed to know. The monks who lived there moved ever downward, but visitors were only allowed in the top two stories.

From the dam it was possible to see the other half of the world. It hung oddly about a mile away. Between the two halves several rocks and boulders hung at various heights. How they stayed there was under heated debate. Gravity it seemed did not affect them. While the great rocks seemed to float, nothing else did. A kite which flew wonderfully on the one side of the dam would fall like a stone on the chasm side. A rock that was thrown over the chasm would quickly fall. Some said quicker then on the world. And yet there were stories of people falling over the side, only to find themselves pushed by the wind back to the surface.

Sarah stood on the edge of the Dam staring out over the chasm. Behind her rose the great city. It was walled, but huge expansions existed outside the original walls. The wall on the side of the dam was little more than four feet high. The main assaults had always come from the sea. Jerry and Sam had gone together below to visit the holy site. Sam had gone to see his friends. Jerry had gone to be skeptical of spirituality and see what he called ‘a triumph of earth bond bodies’. Sarah had no real wish to travel to the holy site. She had already seen it. She had seen many of them. Her father had been raised and trained in the north, but he had become interested in the holy places of the south. Thus, all throughout her childhood, Sarah had been dragged from one holy site to the next.

Sarah wasn’t interested in the sites on this side of the world. She wanted to see the sites on the other side. Her father despite his background in science had told her that this was too far. Her mother had nearly fainted. But Sarah had been born with more than her share of her father’s determination. After all it takes a great amount of determination to travel on a great never ending pilgrimage. The boy who had grown up a scientist was now called the great travelling holy man. Sarah the daughter of the great travelling holy man, wished to be a scientist. Perhaps someday she would be called great.

The blue sun and its twin yellow sun were setting to the west, far behind her. The blue sun was already below the wall of the city. The yellow sun following close behind. ‘Forever the two twins dance around the heavens and forever would the two halves of the world dance around the suns,’ read the small green pendant Sarah’s father had given her before she had left for her own journey. Sarah touched the pendant unconsciously as she stared at the other half across the world. Darkness would soon make it impossible to see that far. Later that night the suns would show briefly through the endless chasm a shadowy light. While the light shown the holy men would sing loud prayers and bang on drums.

“Were you waiting for us?” Jerry said breathily from her left. The many stairs did not seem to have exhausted him, only make him energetic. Perhaps her father was right; Jerry would make a great holy man.

“Just staring out at the other half” Sarah said with a wave of her hand. Much slower then Jerry, Ben came up exhaustedly, heaving large gulps of air.

“Did you enjoy your visit?” Sarah asked politely.

“Amazing” Jerry said simply. Sam only nodded between breaths.