September 2011
21 posts
not ought.
The last line of my favorite play (that happens to be a tragedy) reads,
“The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest have borne most; we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.”
It is a heavy play. And maybe that’s why I love it. There isn’t a happy ending, and the silence at the end is deafening....
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possession.
“Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
Is it possible, just maybe possible, that Jesus meant not only everything I have, all the things that I possess - all those dreams and all those expectations and all those future plans? Where do I sell them? Where do I give them away? To whom?
I think I know the answers, and I think I...
sweeping.
In my life, I’ve made no room for doubts.
I have them. Oh, I have plenty of them. But I throw them out.
I cannot handle the intellectual clutter - it makes me have to face the reality that this life isn’t neat and clean.
So I throw out these doubts and questions and fears and traces of longings that aren’t allowed because they’ll mess up the perfect living room life...
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Just now,
Just now,
I read a poem
that made me cry between the stacks
of tattered books. Sighing in heavy, familiar air, I had nostalgia for places I’ve never been, feeling made
for something ancient and dramatic, if I was made for anything at all.
Here I sit, bent crooked, under all these stories under all this stress heavy with a heart that is clamoring for bitter action and for...
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Tony Hoagland, "Personal"
sharingpoetry:
Don’t take it personal, they said; but I did, I took it all quite personal— the breeze and the river and the color of the fields; the price of grapefruit and stamps, the wet hair of women in the rain— And I cursed what hurt me and I praised what gave me joy, the most simple-minded of possible responses. The government reminded me of my father, with its deafness and its laws, and...
“Hope is much more than a mood; it involves a commitment to action. Its moral...”
– John Polkinghorne
parousia. (a september poem)
My pulpit has been reduced to dust, to steel shards and screaming people. Our liturgy is revenge. Our homily on death in the name of retribution - that bastard child of justice. We celebrate an anniversary of the human annulment. Divorced, from the only One who ever loved us. We will never know what we look like. And now, once again, we ache with the possibilities that...
the milestone. →
This podcast brought tears to my eyes. Listening to it was like listening to every single question and struggle and passion that I’ve had in the last three years of undergrad come into a whole. I fought with it and laughed with it, and ultimately, it read me back my soul. It is the milestone that marks that from here on out, from this day forward, I will spend my life basking in the ideas it...
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litany by literature #1
It seems I am a sighing soul in Limbo, where there is never an end in sight. The weight of this sad time I must obey, cloaked in the weariness of a burned bright night. I am caught, my path obscured,in a forest of frost with the woods all dark and deep. But sojourn on I must, reminded of my hope, and those promises I have to keep.
grace.
I have almost 100 pages of Metaphysics to read. I have class schedules to figure out, and a quiz to take, and I’m running off about 3 hours of sleep and 9 cups of coffee.
I have all these things to do. Tasks to complete. Things to read. Thoughts to think.
“Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee. Take my moments and my day, let them flow in ceaseless...
I am a teacher.
I am a teacher.
In the way I move my hands, I am a teacher.
In the way words move me, I am a teacher.
In the way my heart beats faster to the tune of learning, I am a teacher.
In the way my soul is fed by questions, I am a teacher.
In the way I desire to give knowledge, I am a teacher.
In the way I desire to always learn, I am a teacher.
I am afraid of the ways I am a teacher. I...
open ended.
I am grateful that grace is an open-ended conversation.
I am also grateful that I am not on my own to figure out all these questions I have right now. I am grateful that I have a God that is big enough for my questions, my frustrations, my demands for answers and justice and revelation and clarity. I am grateful that He is my Father, who gathers me up in His arms and tells me my favorite stories...
"the queen of all sciences" - aquinas
“[T]heology … may find itself the one discipline capable of integrating the otherwise unconnected disciplines that constitute the modern university… . ‘the purpose of the university is to find love at the heart of all things, for love is the cause of the world. This does not mean that the study of atoms is going to show that love rather than neutrons and protons is to be...
Hop. (9/6/2011)
It used to be a world of Hop on Pop, and all those things like believing that when you are the sidelines bursting out of your self to scream into the action, that you would. That you wouldn’t be paralyzed with fear, told you weren’t good enough, ignored. Those were the days when every one got some kind of trophy. And now there are cents in your pocket that aren’t...
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