New Moon, Moon Me

How I wish Annie was my cousin and Justin was my big brother…but for now they collaborated on the newest album for the Twilight series. I must admit, whaaat? But, since I’m hopelessly in love with them, I respect their decision? Regardless of bad decisions, sweet turkey they did something together! Now that is a fantastic decision, deserving an exclamation  po!nt–musical phenomenon! And, if New Moon is the conduit for such things, then I may go see this film…

here’s what I could find of their song, entitled: Rosyln (not Roslyn)

A Room with a View

 

 

The Breast

(loosely in light of Melanie Klein’s work on Envy and Gratitude : )

The milk’s rivulets had gaps and refrains

My stomach had hints of pleasure

But, before my tentacles could slap

onto this sensational feeling

Vanish

A wailing full of reverberating sounds

Bursted into the stark silence of empty spaces

Alarmed by my voice, I frightfully dart 

Comfort

The warmth from her body 

Cradling my impotent frame

was not enough for the 

hunger that bellowed before the gods

Insatiable

And now enters into the looming empty spaces, 

blame

She withheld life

She repudiated the possibility of pleasure 

Ragefully traveling inward,

abstractly constructing my means

for attaining my needs

I am forced, in light of my humanity,

to erect structures, creeds, polarities

to follow and embody

Goddammit

I will be cursed till the day I die

with the flaws of her and, 

the routes of mine

Unto life, yet unto death

without bodily termination

Just the tangled messes

Circling around

Round the impressionable, unguarded rooms

I watch and often help the little people

tie. tie. Tie up the once fertile rooms

And I watch myself turn away

Finished

Her goodness is not nestled inside,

as I am held by my destructive impulses, dangling

over my unconscious pangs for Protection

Love me, protect me, please dear God see me

These being the keys for unlocking

the rooms strewn with passionate vows

Come

But do not, because once you loosen a strand

I will hang you with it

Your goodness will morph before our eyes

Defective

Let me heal me

Let me erect my vivid phantasies,

As lovers, composers, magicians call to life theirs 

But, they are groaning and pushing

their phantasies into ripened, holograms of truth 

for all to feed on

Whereas I, I stay fastened to my frustrated emptiness

Despair

Becomes me, raging haphazardly around the good

Meanwhile, I greedily embrace myself as bad,

sending myself into the forbidden circles of lust

There, the reverberation of echoes answer “yes”

You, are, alone, yes.

Dizzy

I find myself singing

“ring around the rosy pocketful of posies, ring around, ring around

Ashes. Ashes.

We all fall down”

I am down in my remains and without the pockets of posies, I say

while my fingertips gently brush past them,

a hand gently moves my face

Surrounding

Posies, upon posies whispering to me

Love is here

Love is here

Love is here

Ashes, ashes we all fall down

Together

I will be failed and I will lust, I will fail and they will lust

Yet, love is somehow finding me,

filing into the unkept rooms of secrecy and deep pain,

and slowly, very slowly filling them

Life

My Reasons for Putting off the Uniform

Another article by my winsome and thoughtful brother on his route from ROTC to pacifism:

I watched a movie not too long ago. It was called “To End All Wars,” a true story about four Allied POWs during WWII who endure harsh treatment from their captors without fighting back. The forgiveness and grace offered by the POWs in the midst of persecution so shocks the captors that a camp-wide revival begins to take place. The film touches on themes about self-sacrificing heroism, the power of forgiveness over hatred, the futile tragedy of war, and God’s way of peace in the midst of it. After watching the movie, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the radical teachings of Jesus and why I decided to get out of the Army: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if anyone would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles” (Matthew 5:38-41, Revised Standard Version)

So, I suppose, the cat is back in the bag. I’m one of those: One of your classmates with long hair and facial hair worthy of 20 pushups, a lap around the campus, and a stern haircut; One of your classmates who sleeps in until 8, sometimes 9, and wears clothes from H & M and Banana Republic throughout the week. I am an ex-Army ROTC cadet and on my way to becoming a pacifist. There is a certain stigma to being a “quitter” from the Army and definitely for being a pacifist. “Unrealistic”, “naïve,” or “impractical” are terms thrown around to describe pacifists. And there’s no doubt that people look down on me for not staying with the Army and question my motives for doing it for only a year. I joined ROTC at Wheaton because I saw the Army as a way of bringing peace to the conflicted parts of the world by resisting evil. I began to see, however, that there were non-violent ways to do this, and I began to explore what creative resistance to evil looked like. Referring back to Matthew 5. In his article, “Doing Justice to Jesus” preeminent New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has this to say: “Turning the other cheek, going the second mile, and so forth, were not a summons to ‘be a doormat for Jesus’, but were themselves a call to non-violent resistance, not just non-violence”.

The Jewish community at the time when Jesus was saying this had embraced a tradition of holy war, and was seeking vigorously to promote it. Wright also states in his book that, “Jesus in his teaching, and his challenge to Israel, aimed precisely at telling Israel to repent of her militaristic nationalism. Jesus was offering a different way of liberation, a way which affirmed the humanness of the national enemy as well as the destiny of Israel.” Pacifists argue that there are ways to protect others without violence. Action does not have to equivocate to violent action. The Biblical mandate to defend the poor, the orphan, the widow, and the ethnic outcast is not inherently connected to some sort of violence.

The question about war and pacifism is clearly a very emotional and controversial issue. I have wrestled and struggled through it, in theory and in practice. I saw my future go from a potential 4-year commitment fighting in Afghanistan to now, a potential commitment to serving with a church in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia fighting to bring food to famine-stricken land.

I began engaging with this issue with pacifists on campus who I deeply respected. They wanted to completely reject war as an option for bringing peace based on the teachings of Jesus. With their help, I began to see war as an uncreative option, and that there is always a third way, that suffering in the name of Christ is better than taking on violence in the face of conflict. It seems to be a very deep part of the Christian tradition. Indeed, Church Father Tertullian said in his Apologeticus that, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”.

I continue to grapple with the fallenness of our world, that there are sinful systems and dictators that must be called to account not only in the next life, but in this life as well. I do not want to be naïve of our world’s brokenness, and I do want to be harshly realistic. But I see people like Jesus, Ghandi, and MLK who used non-violence, and I cannot help but be moved, shaped, inspired to be radically engaged in the volatile parts of the world without a gun in my hand. I continue to pray and study through this profound question and continue to hear Jesus’ prayer ring out in my head: “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

Life of Blessing, His Name Is Asher

This is a newer song I’ve written for the piano and it’s based off of My Name Is Asher Lev in which Jay and I were ruined momentarily while reading it. We had a discussion about the necessity of venturing outward from familiar traditions and thought in order to embody the creative, generative self that speaks gritty, embodied truth. This incarnate truth enlarges the territories of love and freedom. Both are very dangerous in dark hours, whereby we cling to the warm and cooing truths of others in order to not stare into the possibly grave, mysterious, unanswerable faces of God. So, a small song is due from the challenge of staring into the often unknown-ness of God, in which surprisingly and inadvertently empowers blessing to arise, uncomfortably so, but still arises with the new dawn.

 Go outside from what you know

They’ll protest to keep you home

Wear your discipline round your neck 

And don’t go past the lines in the sand

Because we’re,

bound to safety

We’re hushing all the anxiety

That we may not know, 

we don’t know

Go outside from what you know

You will find skin unnamed

Who will tempt your blood ties

So, step through lines with your home on your back

Because we’re,

staying with purity

We’re nulling all fantasy

That we may not feel, 

we don’t feel

Go, go, won’t you go

Because we’re, 

fighting against beauty

We’re loosing all sensitivity

That we may not weep

For all that’s killing you and me

Go, go, won’t you go

Listen To Me

*my rambunctious day in the rain at the park with Steph, Micah,Caleb, and Owen as well as this blog Steph recommended are the muses for this… 

 

The earth cried today

This is why you were spit out of the winding downward, metallic slope

Your body involuntary

as it flailed to the beckoning birch bed

Shocking laughter

e     n    sue    d

The aged ones locked eyes and bursted

with life while standing on the 

bed of wet tree parts

as the remembrance of

the few frames of unbidden movements

flashed before our faces,

again and       a         ga in

What if we all became 

unseamed in that moment?

Filled with surprise,

covered with earth’s tears and landscapes

while time stopped and the baptized leaves

Rose all around us,

swirling

Lifting us up so,

we could somersault through the

drop    let   s

Then gravity would slowly draw us onto sea of greens

Allowing us to roll down the gentle bank,

missing all of the craggy jaggy

arms and legs of those who exhale air for you and me

Bre eee   ath   e             in

Rest chases us into the cloud’s resting stops

The muddiness dresses us up

We all then prance,

wildly  

But wait,

no, no stop thaaat!

Come here! Listen!

Don’t do thaaat!

Sweet moses.

My dried insides tighten

Loosen

Tighten

Loosen

Ti   gh  t en

Their faces find mine

And, I’m tackled to the ground’s vulernability

with giggles, wet suits, and boots with silly horns

Unseamed

I

Be      come

to them, to me, to the freewheeling experiences of

moments without time and demand

Where elation is our mode of travel

Unseamed as I say “listen to me”

Hate Crimes, Still A Long Way To Go

“FBI figures from 2007 show that anti-Latino attacks account for about 8 percent of all hate crimes. About 35 percent of hate crimes were directed at blacks, 16 percent at homosexuals and 13 percent at Jews.”

read story: White Boys’ Homicide

Eleanor, Won’t You Be My Granny?

Homes

October Thirteenth

Your eyes have roots in my mouth

Your flushed cheeks have breathed hot air into

my ears

I sit at the feet of those with weathered lots

But, my flesh is standing

Pacing, itching, beating my chest

with loose ends

Later I find,

Your documenting hands have held still the earth

Your darkness has dove into the pit of my stomach

I sit like the one who feels

Feeling the stories of others

But wonder will it ever be mine alone

The scenes, the characters, the deep-seated, freely given expressions of

a felt life

So I will

prick me with ink,

cut off my hair,

strike my wrists from untold pages of separation,

and wail wildly at my homemade wall

Then I ask,

Who is this for?