messes of men

"i do not exist,"
we faithfully insist
sailing in our separate ships, and in each tiny caravel -

tiring of trying,
there's a necessary dying
like the horseshoe crab in its proper season sheds its shell.

such distance from our friends,
like a scratch across a lens,
made everything look wrong from anywhere we stood

and our paper blew away
before we'd left the bay
so half-blind we wrote these songs on sheets of salty wood.

you caught me making eyes
at the other boatmen's wives
and heard me laughing louder at the jokes told by their daughters

i'd set my course for land,
but you well understand
it takes a steady hand to navigate adulterous waters

the propeller's spinning blades
held acquaintance with the waves
as there's mistakes i've made no rowing could outrun

the cloth low on the mast
like to say i've got no past
but i'm nonetheless the librarian and secretary's son

with tarnish on my brass
and mildew on my glass
i'd never want someone so crass as to want someone like me

but a few leagues off the shore,
i bit a flashing lure
and i assure you, it was not what it expected it to be!

i still taste its kiss,
that dull hook in my lip
is a memory as useless as a rod without a reel
to an anchor-ever-dropped-seasick-yet-still-docked captain spotted napping with his first mate at the wheel

floating forgetfully along,
with no need to be strong.
we keep our confessions long and when we pray we keep it short

I DRANK A THIMBLE OF FIRE AND I'M NOT EVER GOING BACK! OH MY GOD!

"i do not exist,"
we faithfully insist
while watching sink the heavy ship of everything we knew

if ever you come near
i'll hold up high a mirror
Lord, i could never show you anything as beautiful as You

why not be utterly changed into fire?

there's a lot i could say about the progression of mewithoutYou's music, having followed it since their first album, and continuing to be a fan over the years, but i'm going to let the music speak for itself. look up the lyrics for a greater understanding of the changes in attitude with each year and each album. i love that you can tell that they have changed as people, and their music reflects that. there has been a true transformation...from suffering to joy, from chaos to peace, from hatefulness to forgiveness.

Year: 2002
Song: Bullet to Binary
Album: A-->B Life
Quote from the song: "Don't you tell us about your suffering! No! Look in our eyes! Look in our eyes!"


Year: 2005
Song: Tie Me Up! Untie Me!
Album: Catch For Us The Foxes
Quote from the song: "Didn't You untie me Lord? And now I haven't even thought about killing myself in almost 5 months."


Year: 2006
Song: The Dryness and the Rain
Album: Brother, Sister
Quote from the song: "I'm gonna take that grain and crush it all together, into the flour of a bread that's small and simple and sincere; as when the dryness and the rain finally drink from one another a gentle cup of mutually surrendered tears."


Year: 2007
Song: Torches Together
Album: Catch For Us The Foxes
Quote from the song: "I'm afraid, and everyone's afraid, and everyone knows it. But we don't have to be afraid anymore."


Year: 2009
Song: Bullet to Binary (Pt. 2)
Album: it's all crazy! it's all false! it's all a dream! it's alright
Quote from the song: "We all well know, we're gonna reap what we sow. But grace we all know, can take the place of all we owe. So why not? Let's forgive everyone, everywhere, everything, all the time!"

we feel it in the one drop

i watched a lot of bob marley stuff on the internet. you know how it goes, link leads to a link, leads to a link...etc. but here is a bob marley song for you all. i am loving this right now. just so you know "Jah" is just another word for God in this song. those rastafarians had a lot of beneficial things to say, i am learning. lyrics are below!



feel it in the one drop;
and we'll still find time to rap;
we're making the one stop,
the generation gap;
so feel this drumbeat
as it beats within,
playing a rhythm,
resisting against the system
singing: i know Jah will never let us down;
pull your rights from wrong

they made their world so hard
every day we got to keep on fighting;
they made their world so hard
every day the people are dying
dread, dread, dread
for hunger and starvation, lamentation,
but read it in Revelation:
you'll find your redemption!

give us the teachings of His Majesty,
for we no want no devil philosophy;
give us the teachings of His Majesty,
we no want no devil philosophy.

we feel it in the one drop;
and we still find time to rap;
we're making a one stop,
and we filling the gap:
so feel this drumbeat
as it beats within
playing a rhythm
fighting against "ism" and "schism",
singing: I know Jah will never let us down.

they made their world so hard
every day we got to keep on fighting;
they made their world so hard
every day the people are dying
dread, dread, dread, dread

give us the teachings of His Majesty!
we no want no devil philosophy. can you hear?
give us the teachings of His Majesty,
for we no want no higher ideology.

shut yo mouth

in my infamously despicable youth i had a pretty big mouth. if you think i have a big mouth now, you have no idea. there was minimal to no discretion used and most of the things i said were hurtful, unnecessary, and utter nonsense. this was mostly due to my desire to be loved, a generally sinful heart, and a strange habit i developed of listening to a lot of crap on talk radio. my actions changed in high school when i started reading through the book of Proverbs. i constantly came across verses like, “All the utterances of my mouth are in righteousness; There is nothing crooked or perverted in them.” and, “With his mouth the godless man destroys his neighbor, But through knowledge the righteous will be delivered.” i highlighted these kinds of verses in blue…there is a lot of blue throughout the proverbs, let me tell you.

despite the difference in my life after i confessed my sins to the Holy Spirit (and to some specific people), the temptation to open my mouth has continued. i gossip and put others down in order to pull myself up. i am unnecessarily sarcastic and rude. i feel a certain sickness in my stomach, even as the words are coming out of my mouth. and the foul aftertaste of words spoken will often linger for weeks after i’ve said something particularly stupid. i am annoyed when i see it in other people, and yet i do it myself. the phrase, “Those who know don’t talk, and those who talk don’t know” certainly does seem to be true. like that kid in your political science class who only talks to seem smart, not in an effort to really share or learn anything. who wants to be that guy?

anyway, i’m thinking about these things again. the temptation to do the wrong thing does not often ever completely disappear. oh how i loathe sin! Jesus was falsely accused at His “trial” and said nothing, “What new mystery is this? What blessed backwardness? The Immeasurable One is held and does not resist! Struck by wicked words and foolishness of senseless men, the Almighty One does not defend!”. what if i could just shut my mouth? and the temptation to say anything but wisdom and His truth would leave me. wouldn’t it be glorious?

i’m so glad that, “No clever talk, nor gift to bring, requires our lowly lovely King”.

numbers

one of the highlights of annie dillard’s book “for the time being”:

“The mass killings and genocides recur on earth does not mean that they are similar. Each instance of human, moral evil, and each victim’s personal death, possesses its unique history and form. To generalize, as Cynthia Ozick points out, is to “befog” evil’s specificity. Any blurring is dangerous, if inevitable, because the deaths of a few hundred scholars or ten thousand people or one million or thirty million people pain little at diminishing removes of time and place. Shall we contemplate Chinese scholars’ beheadings twenty-three centuries ago? It hurts worse to break a leg.
What, here in the West, is the numerical limit to our working idea of “the individual”? As recently as 1894, bubonic plague killed 13 million people in Asia—the same plague that killed twenty-five million Europeans five and a half centuries earlier. Have you even heard mention of this recent bubonic plague? Can our prizing of each human life weaken with the square of the distance, as gravity does?
Do we believe the individual is precious, or do we not? My children and your children and their children? Of course. The 250,000 Karen tribespeople who are living now in Thailand? Your grandfather? The family of men, women, and children who live in central Asia as peoples called Ingush, Chechen, Buryats, and Bashliks? The people your address book tracks? Any other group you care to mention among the 5.9 billion persons now living, or perhaps among the 80 billion dead?
There are about a billion more people living now than there are years since our sun condensed from interstellar gas. I cannot make sense of this.”

I was looking at some old photos on slate.com, in light of the anniversary of the events at tiananmen square today 20 years ago. Here are a couple that stood out to me:


this is a picture of the protesting students offering drinks to the soldiers. this is how us brothers and sisters should protest injustice, by countering it with love.


this is some students a couple of weeks before the massacre. they are my age. pictures like this remind me of the acutal person-hood of those involved. each of these people has a life with family and friends who care about them.

dillard warns us about letting people become just a number.
all of us have worth.