She smiled but inside she was hollow,
She laughed over the screams she couldn’t swallow.
No one knows how she feels inside,
Life battles death
But she’s only along for the ride.
-Fin. I have nothing more to say about it.
If you love…
March 22, 2008 at 8:03 am (Drabble, Life, Love, Separation)
If you love, you will be filled with joy and hope.
If you love, you will see life clearly for what seems like the first time, every time you look through your love.
If you love, you will experience life as it is meant to be experienced.
If you love, you will also lose.
When you lose, you will be filled with hurt and with pain.
When you lose, you will be blinded to the beauty of life.
When you lose, you will be dulled to the sensations of truly living and may only exist.
When you lose, you will heal.
And if you have loved, you will love again, even in the face of loss.
The Ballad of Us
February 15, 2008 at 6:21 am (Drabble, Life, Love, Separation, Thoughts, Uncategorized)
You held me close as the music played on. I rested in the surety of your arms. For a moment, everything was perfect. For a moment, everything was still. Everything but us.
The music changed and we changed with it, twirling and whirling with every trill and twist. Your arms tightened ‘round my waist and mine on your shoulders. I tilted my head and gazed at the stars. You laughed and I came back to the earth.
But when the music stopped, we were both torn. We knew not how to dance in the silence. The silence remained as the stars faded.
Soon it was you and I. We two stood face to face. And there were no words.
Your arms fell, mine dropped away, and still we stood. We stood until there was no ground and finally stepped back. The silence grew until it was all around us, near us, and inside us.
There was nothing but its sound.
The world stumbled, stopped, and breathed.
New music began and you danced. I looked on, until there was nothing to see. But still I looked. When I could see again, a new image burned my eyes. You were there and in your arms you held another. She was different. Different, different; not me. The music trilled and still you danced. I could not dance to these notes.
I started to fall, my knees to weaken; when the silence that had been so loud ceased and I was not still deafened. In my veins a new music pulsed and swayed. I stood straight with the force of it and found I could stand no longer. I could only dance.
And so I danced. I twirled, I whirled, I laughed, and I spun. The music was around me, near me, and in me. I danced it, spoke it, breathed it and it consumed. There was nothing else. There was no you, no me; only music.
Now music slows and I can see. I can see you, and you dance. I dance, I watch, I wait. I wait now for silence. Silence, that we may both stand still again.
** So this is pretty raw, no editing yet but let me know what you think about it.
Beauty in the breaking…
October 25, 2007 at 6:44 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: beauty, brokenness, idealism, randomnicity, Theoretical heresy
I hear the word broken a lot. My heart was broken, this world is broken, our culture is broken. Haven’t you heard the same sayings? What I find interesting though, is how often the word broken is equated to the word hopeless. I find this to be a very narrow view of brokenness. There is beauty to be found in the breaking, because with the breaking comes rebuilding and new growth. You may agree or disagree with me, but what can it hurt to hear me out?
Let’s start with the first of those sayings; my heart was broken. Surely you’ve felt like that at some point. It’s my opinion that we all have. Some of us have been in love and dealt with the so-called broken heart that way; but that’s not the only way to experience a broken heart. It’s my opinion that a broken heart can come from multiple sources, a fading dream; a faltering relationship; a family crisis. The list goes on but you’re tracking, right? Right. Moving on.
In these instances we tend to do one of two things, hole up and nurse our wounds with liberal dosages of self-pity and self-indulgence or we turn to others around us and rely on them to bolster our inner resilience to pain. I prefer the latter option but I’ll admit to taking the first more times than I should. For awhile, no matter how we deal with the trauma; it hurts. We feel like we won’t be the same again, even if we won’t admit that to anyone but ourselves.
But as we learn to adapt to this new void in our lives and the presence of pain, we begin to heal. Whether we’d like to… or not. And one day, we find that the pain has lessened and we can’t really remember why there was such a void in the first place. We miss whatever it was, sure, but we know now that we can live without them.
We so often overlook the beauty of this process. Humans by nature can and DO adapt to physical, emotional, and mental change in an extraordinary way. If we turn inward, we tend to develop a strength and self reliance that we did not previously possess. If we turn outward and rely on others, we tend to gain an appreciation for those around us and find that we have a strength in ourselves to be able to turn to another person for help and we have a strength in them. They support us, hold us, and sometimes carry us through things that we can’t face on our own. That’s a beautiful thing, in my opinion.
We hear the term that this world is broken often in a religious or spiritual setting. And to some degree that’s true. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t hope for the world or that it’s devoid of beauty. Call me morbid, but would we see the beauty if there was no ugliness? I don’t think that we would. For instance, there are a lot of problems with environmental development and conservation.
But honestly, would you care at all about the environment if it was beautiful and perfect all the time? No. You’d take it for granted like everything else. We take for granted the very air we breathe until it chokes us and only then are we motivated to do something about it. Only then do we realize how great it really is and gain appreciation for it. And that’s another part of our nature.
The same goes with crime and deceit. If there was no crime, where would the place for heroism be? If there was nothing to fear, how could there be bravery? If there were no lies, how would we know the truth?
I know that that’s a little hard to digest, but think on it as we move on to the next saying.
Our culture is broken. Are we truly broken? I don’t think so but I can see how others may make this judgment. Our culture to be truly broken would have to be devoid of all beauty and all things that are good. I can’t see how that’s true. Go anywhere in the city and you can see evidence of brokenness, sure. There’s a single mom working the cash register and she looks like she hasn’t slept in days. There’s an old man who’s trying to find the right kind of bread for his diet and he just can’t remember the name or where to find it. There’s hundreds of animals in shelters awaiting euthanasia. And even worse than that? There are hundreds of thousands of children that will go hungry tonight for reasons that have nothing to do with them.
Where is the beauty in this? Where is the hope? In you and I and in others like us. That single mom working the register? Wait a few customers and then she’ll get a kid coming in to buy candy bars. Maybe he’ll tell her a joke or say something to make her laugh. Maybe he’ll just smile, but he’ll do something to lift her spirits and help her get through the end of her shift. The old man? A young carry-out will be on go-backs and see him, stop and ask him if he can help. He’ll help him figure out what he needs, maybe he’ll take him to a courtesy phone so that he can call his doctor to ask. And no, not every animal in that shelter will make it out. But maybe one will. And that one animal might just become the world to the person who adopted it. And maybe, just maybe, that person will adopt another and one more animal will get a second chance at life. As for the children, that is a sad thing. It really is. But what if someone decided to help? One person, making a donation to an organization that brings food to families and to children who are having a rough time.
It’s my idea that we’ve seen enough of the brokenness and the hopelessness. It’s time to start seeing the beauty. Because if we can see the beauty, we can appreciate it. And if we can appreciate it, than we can crave it. To crave beauty is to put into motion the act of creating beauty. If we crave it, not only will we preserve it but we’ll work to create it in any way possible. It might be donating to an organization, it might be helping someone with their groceries. It might be something as little as picking up a piece of trash and putting it in a waste basket. It might be a smile to someone who looks like their day has sucked.
I’m sure that you’ve got the point by now. Yeah, we have a lot of things that are broken in our hearts, in our world, and in our culture. But there is beauty to be beheld in that brokenness. I can’t say this enough, when we see beauty; we appreciate it. When we appreciate beauty; we crave it. And when we crave beauty; we create it. It’s a part of our nature.
These thoughts may be right, they may be wrong; I guess that’s for you to decide on your own. But if I could leave you with one thought it’d be this: Actively look for beauty in the breaking. It might just change your life and that might just change the world.
“Every new beginning…
August 28, 2007 at 8:59 am (Drabble, Jesus, Thoughts, Uncategorized)
…comes from some other beginning’s end.” -Closing Time by Semisonic.
It’s in a strange way that I think about this tonight. Bear with me as I try and collect my thoughts.
As a follower of Jesus, I wonder a lot about beginnings and endings. More so about the latter and far more than is probably healthy; but I digress. I like to think that my beginning wasn’t brought about by my conversion to Christianity or some little prayer that I said in Sunday school. I like to think that my true beginning came when Jesus had the inspiration for me.
This is how I imagine that moment: Jesus is sitting on his couch and chillin’ with some angels and suddenly, he puts down his beer and stands up with a joyous shout. The angels are probably looking at him like; “Oh, dear god, not again!” and Jesus says; “I just got the sweetest idea ever!!!” And naturally the angels, being the boring trolls they are, roll their eyes at him and wonder when it’s going to stop.
I figure he turns on his tv and flips some channels until he lands on one showing my now-mother and now-father and even my now-siblings, and he says to himself, that’s the one. That’s the family he decides that I need and that need me and it’s perfect. Why is it so perfect? Because he took the time and designed where I would go himself.
Then he starts working with me. See, I think he starts working in my life before I have any concept of him and before I’m even conceived. I think Jesus gets up and walks over to look out the window and he just watches his creation for a bit. He starts designing and planning and when he thinks he has it right he smiles to himself. He decides what basic talents, skills, or gifts I have and as he’s thinking I come into being. My parents learn that they’re gonna have a little one soon.
He gives me my own unique way of processing things and he gives me a set of gifts that he knows I’ll use in my own unique way. And then I think he laughs out loud when he settles on my sense of humor. He shakes his head and wanders to the study where God’s doing his paperwork and runs the idea by him and God thinks about it and changes something here or there. And then? I’m here, welcome to planet earth, Ness.
And boy are my parents surprised. They expected a boy. Well, my mom knew something was kinda screwy with the whole gender prediction thing. I think she caught on to Jesus’ whacked sense of humor. I grow up and I learn and as I’m learning, I’m changing. Those core pieces that Jesus gave me are starting to morph into their own thing and I think that Jesus is constantly flipping to my channel and watching to see what will happen next.
There comes a point where I learn about him and about God. I learn about these people, my designers and my creators. Somewhere along the line I decide that I want to know these guys. And so, I do the little ritual and say the little prayer and now, next stop heaven, hope the ride was nice. But it’s not like that. At that point, something happens. The me that I was becoming, changes. In a way, it ends. I start wondering about these guys and learning and for awhile it’s all great and I’m starting on this journey that’s new and super exciting and Jesus gives me a cell phone, version H.S.1.0 and I’m lovin’ it.
But this beginning ends too. It ends when I come out of the “wow” phase and transition into the “work” phase. Some bad things happen and some hard things and some things that I don’t find fair and somewhere alone the line, I turn off my cell and throw it in a drawer. It stays in that drawer and a time of aloneness follows. I begin to drift away from people and from Jesus. I ignore his calls on my home phone and I erase his email address. I do things my own way.
One day I open the drawer when I’m looking for my car keys and my lighter and I see my cell phone. I grab it and I turn it on and there’s an error message; it doesn’t work. So I get angry and I throw it against the wall and I scream and I rage and then I get really quiet. I ignore the pieces broken on the floor and I walk out, but as I’m walking out I catch a glimpse of my home phone beeping with a message. I listen to it and it’s from Jesus. I start to erase it, but I change my mind. I call J.C. and he answers on the first ring.
It’s so good to hear his voice that I start crying. I’ve been such a jerk and I’m sorry, I tell him. He says that he gets it; and that it’s okay.He still wants to be my friend, he still wants to be in every part of my life. I want to tell him he’s crazy to take the chance on me and I still do. He says that he knows, he made me and asks if I still have my phone. I tell him the truth that I have it but I broke it and he sends me new one with a camera and unlimited minutes. It’s pretty high-tech and I’m still learning how to work it but that’s part of the appeal. He says it may take me awhile to get it, but I’m willing to figure it out. He asks what I’m doing Friday night and we decide to hang out at my house and play guitar hero.
And that’s kind of where I’m at right now. I’ve started to end the stage of ignoring Jesus and started to begin the stage of hanging out with him and getting to know him. I’ve always known that he’s the best friend I’ll ever have but I haven’t been the greatest friend lately. I still have trouble and sometimes I ignore his texts or blow him off when we’re supposed to hang out, but I’m getting better at it and he knows that I’m trying. And he loves me, that’s the amazing thing. He still loves me no matter how much I screw up and he still helps me whenever I ask. He never gets bored and sometimes he just laughs at how I turned out. I don’t think he planned everything to a T and it amuses the hell out of him sometimes. I tell him that he should have given me better coordination and a better metabolism; he tells me that I could have used some better listening skills. I scowl and change the subject and he laughs, because he’s like that.
Now I think that a lot of the reason I stopped hanging out with him in the first place is that I was freaked out and I thought of him all wrong. I was so scared of dying and going to hell, respectively, that that was the only reason I wanted Jesus around. And now I think differently. Dying isn’t the END of my life, it’s the BEGINNING of the best part of it. It’s like the getting key to Jesus’ house. I mean, hey, someday I’ll die and I guess I could think of it as someday I will cease to exist on this earth and have no friggen idea of what comes next. Or I could think of it this way, some day this part of my life will end and I’ll die. But that’s kind of like growing up and once I do it and I get a house key, I can go over, push Gabriel’s fat ass off the couch and ask Jesus to grab me a cold one too. And that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.
So for now, I’m going to continue to get to know Jesus and to hang out. And I think a big part of that, is finding out who he is to you. We spend so much time compartmentalizing him and dissecting him that we miss out on who he really is. He’s an individual and personal God who wants to love us and to be our friend and to have the same in return. And really, is that so bad? Is that such a harsh thought? No, it’s really not. To use “Christian lingo” for a moment; “Accepting Jesus” isn’t the end of your fun exciting life. It’s the beginning of it and the end of monotony and of loneliness and of despair. It’s the end of a bad day at work and the beginning of the weekend, it’s… you catch my drift.
**Okay yeah so super rough and not actually a literary piece. Just basically what I was thinking about. Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Critiques? Agreements? Disagreements?
The Evils of Fortune
August 2, 2007 at 7:08 am (Drabble, Philosophy, Thoughts)
Drink a drought from a never ending flask,
The world is yours, you’ve only to ask.
Drink deep of opportunity and of fortune;
Take no notice of your soul slowly dying.
Pay no heed to reason; keep drinking, keep denying.
It seems that today, getting ahead and achieving society’s warped idea of success is what’s most important. We waste a lot of time chasing after these illusions of grandeur only to notice that we’ve screwed over everyone we knew in the process and lost ourselves along the way. I don’t really understand this.
I mean, I do. Everyone wants to get ahead and to get noticed; everyone wants to win. But is winning more important than the way you play the game?
Take chess for instance; in chess, you have to strategize to make a checkmate. You have to carefully and relentlessly plan to the best of your ability and take every action into account. If you move your pawn to E5 you could lose him, but in doing so you might be protecting your rook from your opponent’s knight. Now when you have a skilled opponent, the game becomes not only challenging but fun. Because half the fun is anticipating your opponents moves and plotting your own, while engaging them in a staring contest to falter their confidence. By the end of the game, while the win is still important, it isn’t what makes you a good player. The process, the strategizing and the plotting, those are the things that measure your worth as a player. Not how many times you win, but how difficult you made it for your opponent to over come you or vise versa. A win with a game so challenging and stimulating is to be celebrated.
Now, if you had just had beginners luck and by miraculous happenings you acheived a checkmate, the win would not be so gratified. It would just be that, beginners luck. You would not have gleaned any skill off of your opponent or impressed yourself upon their memory. You would fall into the category of fools that claim to play chess well when all that they have at their disposal is a sickly arsenal of cheap tricks and unfathomable good luck.
If we are given or win everything, does it matter as much as if we had earned it or achieved it by our own wit and skill? I would think that by working hard and putting our best foot forward at all times and in all things, we gain the most. We gain experience, knowledge, and eventually wisdom. We end up learning what it is to connect with other people, to engage in this amazing thing called life with them. And along the way others learn to connect with us, and to engage in life with us. Throughout this process of connection and discovery, of playing the game, we gain so much. We are changed and we are molded into the persons that we are to be.
So with this in mind, is success really fame, fortune, and grandeur? Is that the true meaning of success; the end result of labor? Or has labor itself become success? I cannot answer that for everyone but in my own life I stick to the idea that to work is to succeed; and success is not limited to mere material things.
Strange and raw thoughts but it is a strange and raw night for me. Forgive me my errors and feel free to offer your advice.
