"we were made to live creative lives."

off brand cereal with cheap milk
in a plastic bowl that matches our translucent
red and blue plates.
they were given to us because we had no dishes.

(but we don't mind. they go well with our broken table
and magazine artwork on the walls.)

and if you think about it, we're trading nice dishes, a larger apartment and a little more heat
for a life that demands truth, honesty, and a brilliant community with those we see every day and with the One we can't see every day.

when there's no tv, no internet,
and nothing too senseless to distract us
we become more creative in everything.

we've found new things to talk about.
new things to pray about
new things to fight for
and new people to embrace.
i've learned more in these four months
than i ever have at any school.
[not that school is bad. it's just different.
the learning environment institutions
provide have proven to be the bane of my existence.
however... that too will be an adventure
when the time comes]

when we find ourselves trying to push to the middle of God's will
things get rough, challenging, and often awkward.
we get angry and frustrated with ourselves and each other
because in all honesty, none of us are perfect in the slightest
and we are very prone to miserable failure.
however, a wise man once said that God doesn't use us
in spite of our weaknesses
but through them.

if we have committed ourselves to Christ,
we have committed ourselves to each other.
not just the ones who are white or black. or rich or poor.
Christian or Muslim.
we are called to reach out to all ethnicities.
with our truth, yes.
but also with our hands, our hearts, our ears, and our conversations.

i've made some incredible friends that are nothing like me.
one of my closer ones is a mexican immigrant in his late forties.
a brilliant man with hundreds of stories and a heart for God's people.
where would i be without him?
farther from Christ.
and what would i be if i had never said hello?

praise Him with drums, strings and joyful conversation.
worship with feasts with new family and a hunger for abundant life.
My God is good because he loves in a way that doesn't adhere
to our greed and our selfishness and narrow perspectives.
He grows and fills us in a way that makes us His.

He's a consuming fire.
plan on spreading it.
but as we know, fire isn't tamed...
so plan on getting burned (and know that it's good.)

shake the dust

yesterday i watched a nearly immobile woman who is coming to the very end of her life story be helped to the front of the sanctuary and lead everyone (without any prior worning or preparation) in the song "running for my life." I've never seen someone so elated because of Christ in my entire life.

over the past month i've met several guys who have beaten addiction and homelessness and are now finding jobs to start new lives. They have hope that for once in their lives something will go right because of who's hands their lives are now in.

i've met jobless women who volunteer every day that they aren't job searching. they serve 200 people food and take a small bag of whatever is left home for themselves.

during my two days of homelessness i encountered a woman with a beautiful heart
who took a friend and me under her wing, taught me to panhandle, and helped me find food and money.
she gave me her only spare sign
which was "i'm just hungry" scribbled the backside of an bus advertisement
and half of her earnings
just because she wanted the two of us to eat.

That is Christ.

If you allow yourself to stand with your feet cemented in your comfort and allow the dust to collect on your shoulders, you will never see Christ as He hoped you would.

the frantic construction of a palisade between God and my own selfishness

i'm starting to come to the realization that joy isn't necessarily a sum of your happiness over a certain period of time. It's not the amount of fun we have or achieving our goal of frowning less and smiling more. I think that it may be part of it, but when i look back on the most joyful times in my life and back on the joyful times of Paul and Daniel and Isaiah, i can't say that it was because there was some overabundance of sunshine and unusually green grass that they found on the other side of some white picket fence.

cause in all honesty, when we're trying our best to do what God wants

(at least in my personal experience)

anything in overabundance is scarce except maybe second chances and undeserved love.

and joy.

cause i mean, my happiness doesn't come from myself. it's difficult if not impossible to take no other resource but ourselves and flip our mood to be something authentically good. Why? because the center of our discontent isn't anything outside of ourselves. we can blame everything, but ultimately it's because we are doing too much or too little of something.

Alcohol and over-socialization are only two of the virtually fool-proof ways to distract ourselves from the fact that the joy we have falls short of what it is we're actually craving.

what i'm trying to work out is that what we're craving
this comfort,
this sense of belonging,
this sense of identity,
the sense of accomplishment,
and a means to reach all of these,
and even though we can fill them with all of our stuff (that's always really cumbersome and really, really empty,) something always ends up falling out or falling short.

In between the lamentation or discontentment we call our short lived high "joy."

but for some reason or another, when i tie a blindfold around my eyes and march to the beat this ancient drummer that i'm trying so hard to know and understand, all the things that i've convinced myself that matter like financial comfort, my dignity, or my own plans for my ministry end up building a barricade between myself and the life and Christ have for me.

such a bulwark keeps us far too focused on ourselves, and i think that is the root of our discontentment and the ultimate obstruction of our joy.

just an observation.

chapter 6: chicago or "let's see what happens"

by tomorrow night i will have met my new family,
moved into my new house,
and begun my next task for the son of david.

i'll meet new people
make new friends
who need him as much as i do

and i will love them
and love them
and love them.

when he shows up, i won't be surprised.

faith?

pause the music on my playlist above.
it will be much more enjoyable with the correct music playing.

the winner is... devotchka

we've been trusted with things that only we can do.
so we've got to go to do what we have to.
but you need to know that i try daily
to love you as much as you have loved me.
i am the most blessed... though i don't deserve it.

the trickle effect of power and a literal take on the whole "mustard seed" thing.

our heroes are idols standing on thousand foot towers with power, influence, merchandise and witty catch phrases. They promise us solution, fashion, and thirty second prayers to save us from Hell. We flash pictures of their faces hugging poor black children and elderly women in nursing homes just before they retreat to one of their beverly hills fortress... which is one of several.

we drool over their beautiful faces, their inspirational words, their wonderful intentions, and then we wait to see change trickle down from their sky scraper status and giant-sized power to us.

we argue what will be best for the world, we vote, we listen to sermons justifying the military gaining ownership of the cross, we decide that an unborn baby's life should be protected but a criminal's should not, and we wait for the big dogs to change the world for us. we are then left to pat ourselves on the back and sleep through the night knowing that we've done what's asked of us. We are the good citizen.

widows are made from campaigning and overworked heroes. Holy families eat their overpriced post-church meals disregarding the several nearby who would trade their bottle for half a sandwich. All of us rely on services and organizations and politicians to help the world. We love the poor when we get up on saturdays and go to the food pantry. we do something nice for the community for that annual event. so much is missed and left to wilt in the shadow of government plan and the church's limited interests.

meanwhile, a few start to realize that passion, motivation, and a legitimate love for neighbors and Christ spreads fast enough to make an arsonist envious; and while the heroes bicker over each other's opinions, much needed change disseminates households, neighborhoods, cities.

we become friends with the poor. we pick up trash because it helps others enjoy creation. we reach out in love rather than obligation or some twisted sense of self gratification. we write to the soldiers and we baby sit their kids out of love, not pity. we demolish social status and give our extra coats... not because it's nice, but because it makes everyone a little more alike.

but i tell you:
vote, find your opinion, volunteer.
then pick up the pieces that all of these things leaves behind for the sake of being what Christ asks us to be.

it can happen
or it can end with my punctuation.

He will be pleased. I swear it.

from eyes gazing up at our shining city.

every single time i hear exhausted chord progressions
with tired, stereotypical lyrics sung in your identical voices
and watch you smile at all the people you've gotten to sing along,
my toes curl and my eyes tend to role.

however, when you shout through your cross-shaped megaphones
that you're presenting this bland and empty lump to the most creative, brilliant, and deserving
as an act of worship,
it makes me want to smash your oh so coveted acoustic guitar
into your faux-hawked, soul-patched face.




our shining city on a hill has termites and water damage and is rusting and falling apart from the inside out.
to be quite honest, i'm not so sure that i'd want to be a part of something that is noticeably messed up from a distance.

------

reconstruction is essential
and it starts with you and me.

it's not actually what i want

i opened my window in time for the rain to stop and my disappointment was immediately met
with the urge to be somewhere else. even if i am the first to preach against it, i sometimes rationalize that just a day or one hundred miles would fix everything that seems to be out of whack in my chest.

that kind of perfection only lives inside black and white televisions



and as far as i'm concerned, the color is worth all the malady of occasional unrest.

and my heart is broken before work

St. Petersburg police cut up tents of the homeless










with liberty and justice for all.

the breath of frigid air after the exhale of smoke.

he had these aspirations of being a writer, a beat poet, a rapper, a teacher, a famous musician, and a silent revolutionary. everything was perfectly designed and had a consistent underlying utopian aroma.
but as he expected (and hoped)
he had come to the inevitable place where he stood at the edge of everything that was familiar
and looked out at the world completely unversed.
he asked his father if it were safe to jump






and his father said

of course not.
but the consequence of not jumping is too severe.

sparrows

i came across some letters that a convict wrote back in the day. He laid out these sixteen points that have inspired me to love the sparrows
like a brother loves his brother,
or a mother her son,
or a lover his wife.


I don't really know how yet,
or why, really.
but i have an ambition,
i have One leading me,
one beside me,
and a heart that's still beating.


The next chapter in this story is finally less about me.

an epiphany.

I'm not so sure i can change the world or lead these people. I'm unable project my heart loud enough for coats and ties to care, and I can't feed all the mouths that I would like to. I can't tear down the all walls i'm suppose to or teach all the cold hearts how to be warm.

I know for a fact that I cannot do these things.

However, I'm convinced that we can.

Tie your blindfold, darlin; It's nearly time to jump.

so when all else fails..

"For it is a fire that, kindling its first embers in the narrow nook of a
private bosom, caught from a wandering spark out of another private heart, glows
and enlarges until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men and women, upon the
universal heart of all, and so lights up the whole world and all nature with its
generous flames. "

that's a bit from Emerson's essay on love. he was referring to it in the romantical sense at that point.

i feel that it's something to strive for, lovey-dovey or not.

in hopes to destroy the wall created by those who help.

There is a blatant difference between the people of the social classes; A very distinct constant that separates the pinstriped plush from the pauper. The difference is something far more obvious than money... it's one of those deals where everyone knows it, but no one talks about it.

all sorts of people hurt, all kinds of people are addicted, and all types of people partake in domestic violence. These aren't characteristics of class. these are characteristics of people. Money has absolutely nothing to do with it. There are people who have been well informed about investing, banking, mortgages, budgeting and government aid for schooling. There are others who don't really have the money to be advised. But money is the difference in class, not the difference in people.

Money doesn't create separation. money doesn't force individuals apart. money doesn't make the majority of your friends within the same monetary standing as you. Money doesn't make you the more significant and hold more worth.



This narcissistic perception of ourselves does.


I stood at the top of a hill that plateaued under a bridge downtown today. There were hundreds of liquor bottles, fast food bags, used condoms, containers from donated food people picked up from Daily Bread. The place was dirty, graffitied, and isolated from the rest of downtown. I passed a guy on the way there who I'm sure had been there a few times before, and I gave him a friendly hello. He responded seconds after we had passed each other with an inaudible grunt; this was after he stared at me as if i was crazy. I didn't belong there, and he knew it.

The class itself is divided by money, yes. but the dividing wall that ultimately divides God's children rests on the soul fact that we want to view ourselves as better off, as more in tune than those around us. We crave this need to hear from those in close proximity in our lives that we're doing something right, that we're successful, that we're loved, that we're witty, that we're beautiful, that we're wanted.

People see the poor as just that.

Poor.

Therefore, we, the UNpoor, see ourselves as their source of hope. We as the unpoor see ourselves as what these people should be more like. because we have our lives together, because we have a car. because we have nice clothes. because we sit behind a desk all day so that we can by the new shoes and plasma screen and vacation want. The poor are the sick, and it's up to the rich to heal them from there terrible fate.

Our relationships with the poor revolve around donating, around helping. we are the supplier, we are the doctor. We hand out food and donate clothes because "they need it". Sitting and smoking a pipe with a less fortunate friend for the sake of friendship has never been considered an attractive act of kindness. There is no organization involved. nothing to promise you safety. It's nothing you can take your Christian friends to and help the hungry and feel good about yourself.
So this healthy, loving exchange between people never occurs. Because it doesn't fit the comfortable mold of the contemporary idea of "loving the poor."

And our excuses? We can't instigate friendships? we don't live in the same areas? we have nothing in common?

we have the same hurts, the same questions, the same kinds of relationships... we'd just never know because clothing and houses and distanced neighborhoods get in the way.

Those with less see that, i've been told.

Being on the "more fortunate" end of the spectrum may be nice for the reputation and ego. But it leaves very little room for love. It seems to me that those who don't have a lot seem to understand the idea of love and God.

Jesus Christ seemed to think so
.

"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God."

tears from the saints

-------
[My friend, if you cannot see over or much less tear down your wall, perhaps you aren't meant to do it alone.]



We are a family of a gargantuan number. We have our brothers and sisters dying from a lack of hope while we sit and proclaim that we are God's faithful children. Love is perverted by the media and men who make their living by selling the one's they're suppose to be cherishing.


What is it going to take for us to understand? Will it take more extremists smashing airplanes into buildings? Is it going to take more orders to fly our planes over there to kill their people, innocent or not?

Last time i checked, knocking on your neighbors door and buying lunch for Leroy from the corner of 5th and Main didn't have to be instigated by a life-altering predicament. For whatever reason, our society has decided that mass death and tragedy is a fitting catalyst to start loving each other.


at least for few months... until the shock of the towers falling becomes old news, and the acts of love quickly become shooed away by our business of life. Because our lives are far to important to jeopardize by truly helping someone else.

It makes me sick that Christian America finds so easily what needs to be done to progress their own holiness, but so easily overlooks and neglects the ones suffering down the street.

The churches are not steping up to the plate,
So now we as the church will.

Father, we will lead them home.

love like smoke

We all should start swinging... And I mean literally start throwing our fists left and right towards everyone we so deeply hate. The immature, the piercing, the angry, the unforgiving, the liars, the heart breakers, the thieves, the murderers, the terrorists, the parents, the children, the deserving, and the not.

I mean come running at them out of nowhere like some gurrila ambush and catch them completely off guard, so that when they see at the last second what they have coming, they won't have time to react, besides maybe a bit of profanity or some awkward sound or movement.

Like, no jokes. everyone should ball their fists and throw them in the direction of the hated. Have every single bit of anger and rage built up so that you can finally let everything out at once, rather it continue to build up over time.


and in a split second, alter the course of our hands so that they fly past their faces and wrap around their backs in an unexpecting embrace. and I mean press the insides of our fists to their backs and pull them into us in a desperate and defeated act of humility.

yeah, we'd squeeze a little hard than necessary, and yeah i'd kinda hope my tears got all over his nice new shirt. and i'd fight to restrain my voice as i told him everything i could think of that made me hate him so much.

but then we would finally let go, and look at them straight. look at them dead in the eye

and be able to apologize for everything; and at the other end of the spectrum, would finally be able to forgive everything. It would be done with. Everything.

It sounds simple and improbable. But i'm positive that we'd see that suddenly eye contact wouldn't be such a burden, and love would pervade the heart like cigar smoke in the lungs.

dislocated hips and scalded lips.

So I have a question.

How do we go about worshiping God when we can never begin to paint an accurate picture of who he is? How can we as people possibly give Him something that's fit? How can we take our tainted, blemished, and faithfully screw-up lives and present something to Him that's acceptable?




I've been thinking about how let down He must feel. How hard it is to watch us and allow us to choose to hit the ground running from Him, only to fall flat on our faces and into the most turbulent of situations.





So how can i possibly show substantial and legitamite gratitude to the King who gave me something to contribute to His sovereignty. I'm no longer living to make a living. Because that, i think, is the saddest, most tedious fate imaginable. instead he asks me to pick up His flag and march, to become part of something that will never die out. Revolutionary? That's a radical title, but it's something to strive for.

how can I give something suitable back? what can I bring to the table that leads God to say "Thanks bro. I needed that."

Isaiah was a great follower, but it wasn't until God brought handed embers to his lips that he saw and understood how much this Guy deserves,


I'm fed up with not knowing who I'm living this thing for. And if it takes wrestling with Him, or having His touch scald my skin, I'm willing.

It's worth a handicap.

A quick 4am proverb.

When our futures are certain (and when I say this, I mean however broad), the segment of time between now and our futures becomes far more precious... And I've realized that this is so because I've never had to prepare for something so epic and beautiful.

How much can one person grow? I mean to answer this.

some beat poetry and commentary.

[You spat in the dirt and healed the blind man's eyes to lead me to the fact that I'll never really understand





and that sometimes it takes the sharp pain from the bright light that blinds me so that i can eventually see and to finally know my real name.



--some percussion interlude of sorts--


And the whole thing makes me sick sometimes, because I'm ultimately the reason you were bound and stuck up there like some piece of art on a wall. And you've become art on my chest that reminds me that there's more



so much more to this whole thing. ]

--------

It excites me that the way I string together my words on paper, the music I make, and my ridiculous, elated dancing are all my language in which to worship creatively.

basically, He comes down to saying this:

Love them all and worship One; do it creatively... And in the most literal sense of the phrase, to hell with the rest .

Pointless and impulsive.

My, my, my.

How I love having a camera of my own.