The Soundtrack Of A Day.

Today a woman of eighty said to me, " Everything is always changing. The world moves so fast. I am left behind."



Maybe it is just the way my soul is attenuated, maybe it was the frail if not fearful timbre of her voice, maybe it was all the recent end-of-the-world gum-flapping, but her words followed me as I worked. Their seed slowly seeping into my sub-conscious. My mind's radio re-tuned to the all-pop-dirges-all-the-time station. It played...

Miracle Legion - The Backyard

Think it was the hottest day of the year
Even still we started fires with the ember
Sweetest Sadie held on to her memories
the world was so big and I was so small
and your voice was always the loudest of all

Yesterday we cut down the apple tree
cracking wood made my little heart tremble
I wish I didn't have to try so hard
but little boys gotta lot to remember
the world was so big and I was so small
and your voice was always the loudest of all

I loved the days I spent with you
And I still have all you could offer
the backyard looks so empty now
then I think of her, I think of her
the world was so big and I was so small
and your voice was always the loudest...


The recent tribute album to Mark Mulcahy, Miracle Legion's front-man, to help with the expenses after his wife's death. I cannot hear this song with out thinking of her. Something, some melancholy twinge in all his songs predicted the sorrow of her death. Dinosaur Jr. covers "The Backyard" on the album.

Track two was The Weepies "World Spins Madly On"...

Woke up and wished that I was dead
With an aching in my head
I lay motionless in bed
I thought of you and where you'd gone
and let the world spin madly on
Everything that I said I'd do
Like make the world brand new
And take the time for you
I just got lost and slept right through the dawn
And the world spins madly on...

...The night is here and the day is gone
And the world spins madly on


Deb Talan and Steve Tannen are The Weepies. Their music has been described as "subtly intoxicating folk-pop".

When I was younger it was a doe-eyed sense of adventure that pulled me from between the sheets each new morning, and as I became aware of the suffering of the world it was the inner rage to right the wrongs of injustice. But some-days the dull grind of disappointment creeps in. The world spins along at this break neck speed and all our best intentions fly right off, spinning into infinity.

Then a down tempo country-fried version of R.E.M.'s "You Are The Everything" by the band Redbird played in the little radio in my head ...

Sometimes I feel like I can't even sing
I'm very scared for this world
I'm very scared for me
Eviscerate your memory
Here's a scene
You're in the back seat laying down
The windows wrap around
To sound of the travel and the engine
All you hear is time stand still in travel
And feel such peace and absolute
The stillness still that doesn't end
But slowly drifts into sleep
The stars are the greatest thing you've ever seen
And they're there for you
For you alone you are the everything
I think about this world a lot and I cry
I've seen the films and the eyes...

R.E.M circa 1980 something...

Later, after work, the weight of it all. The helplessness at not being able to stop the onslaught of injustice, the every-always feeling of futility that finally reaches its terminal velocity. I drove around for an hour, mind reeling, heart crushing, speaking, then screaming my mantra into the dirty little temple of my jeep. "It's not OK. It's not OK!!" Over and over and over again. The days headlines like a ticker tape in my minds eye. My thoughts turning over and over again to the children being brutalized, to the chasm between the rich first world and the unimaginable poverty of countries like Zimbabwe where the average per capita income is 200 dollars a year, or the price of a North Face jacket, or a pair of Citizen's For Humanity jeans, or one of many Coach wallets.

There was just no consoling me, the darling Spirit tried, but I resisted. Why do I always resist? Perhaps it is wanting to own my discontent, to prove that I am worthy to bear the burden of another's sorrow? Back to the couch where I crash these days. I tried to find sleep but instead found myself, or that is the ghost of myself, wandering through the halls of memory. Conversations with the skeletal remains of other former phantom selves, wanton little bastards, full of ambition and selfish pride. Not me anymore I muttered under my breath but there is no denying the common lineage. So I lay there, teeth-gritted-fist-clenched-eyes-watering-heart-sobbing. When I get like this I can't even pray.

All the while, for the first time today, my mind's radio is silent, except for a low hum, a faraway buzzing, and a sensation like the halo effect around a light in a fog. I put on some music. The only thing I can stomach is what suits my mood, depressed as hell. Radiohead's "Gagging Order" from the Com Lag album, "Exit Does Not Exist" a Modest Mouse cover by Sun Kil Moon, and The National's "About Today".

Mark Kozelek, formerly of Red House Painters, who now uses the moniker Sun Kil Moon

But it's like drowning on dry land. I try something less dark. The familiar favorites. Blitzen Trapper's "Wild Mountain Nation", "Crossing Muddy Water" by Counting Crows, The White Stripes "My Doorbell". All the songs that feel like flying. But I do not find my wings. The melancholy returns like a cancer. But not really like a cancer at all. Anymore than tinfoil is silver or a light bulb is the sun.

Jack and Meg White of the insurmountable White Stripes.

So I decide to put on some gospel. Try to decompress into His heart. Wrap myself in His tenderness and try to make sense of it all.

Mute Math's "You Are Mine"

Everyone has their obsession
Consuming thoughts, consuming time
They hold high their prized posession
That defines the meaning of their lives
You are mine
You are mine
You are mine, oh mine
You are mine
There are objects of affection
That can mesmerize the soul
There is always one addiction
That just cannot be controlled
You are mine
You are mine
You are mine, oh mine
You are mine

Mutemath, just plain raucous live.

John Mark McMillan's "How He Loves Us". When his voice breaks in the last verse my eyes swell up every time. This song as much as any, brings me back to the Father's heart.

He is jealous for me
Love's like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory
and I realize just how beautiful You are and how great your affections are for me.
Oh, how He loves us so
Oh, how He loves us
How He loves us so.
So we are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes
If grace is an ocean we're all sinking
So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss and my heart turns violently inside of my chest
I don't have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way
That he loves us,
Oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves
Well, I thought about You the day Stephen died and You met me between my breaking
I know that I still love You, God, despite the agony
...they want to tell me You're cruel
But if Stephen could sing, he'd say it's not true, cause...[voice breaks]...
Cause He loves us,
Oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves

John Mark McMillan performing his song "How He Loves". Many of the versions of the song change the lyric "sloppy wet kiss" to the sanitized "unforeseen kiss" robbing the line of it's power and intimacy.

And my heart's prayer tonight, from the David Crowder Band, "Deliver Me".

Deliver me out of the sadness
Deliver me from all the madness
Deliver me courage to guide me
Deliver me Your strength inside me
All of my life
I've been in hiding
Wishing there was someone just like You
Now that You're here
Now that I've found You
I know that You're the One to pull me through
Deliver me loving and caring
Deliver me giving and sharing
Deliver me this cross that I'm bearing
Oh, deliver me
Jesus, Jesus how I trust You
How I've proved You over and over
Jesus, Jesus precious Jesus
Deliver me
Come and pull me through
Come pull me through

On most days I am so thankful that in this big world of screaming chaos Your voice cuts through Jesus, the still small voice of Your Spirit. And in a world that is spinning madly on out of control You are unchanging, You are permanence, the rock on which I stand. And when I am sad for this world, when I am sad for me, You are my joy, You are my rest. Your love is the song of my heart, the soundtrack of my days. But on a day like today, when it all gets a little much...

Sing over your child Father. Sing over us all. Sing, for our hearts are broken. Sing. For we have lost our way.

God Hates Fags?

So if I were to say, " My friend, Tom, loves kittens, especially kittens with mittens. Oh, how Tom is smitten with mitten-clad kittens." Then based on that statement you might assume several things. 1. That I know Tom and Tom has told me of His special love. 2. That I have it on good authority from a trusted source, i.e. the personal journals of Tom or the officially sanctioned biography of Tom, that he loves them kittens in mittens. Or 3. That I am completely deluded, and that I made the whole thing up.




Fred Phelps of the now infamous Westboro Baptist Church has claimed to speak for God for some time now.

Mr. Phelps and a few of his friends.

And not that I want to add any credibility to this man or give yet another platform for his message, but I do want to set a few things straight. God does Hate. Scripture spells it out. God, who is love, also hates. So, in the name of fairness let us find out what or who God hates. Not my words mind you, nor Mr. Phelps, but only the things that God says He hates:

1. The worship of, the sacrifice to (especially of children), and the building of, idols.




2. Divorce, although He allows for it.

3. He hates men who love violence and cover their cloaks in violence. I'm guessing that's a euphemism for bloodshed.

4. He abhors pride and the work of prideful hands, especially, but not limited to, palatial estates celebrating ones own greatness.

5. He hates an unjust scale. Assuming that means corruption, bribery, theft, and extortion.




6. God also despises those who have been put in charge of protecting His children but have been derelict in their duty.

7. He hates religious sacrament done without love and humble service.

8. He hates wickedness, lawlessness, and of course, the tried and true standard, the object of His relentless rage, sin.

But what about the sinners?? What about them fags? Them fallen soldiers??




Any mention in scripture of his animosity toward them? Doesn't God's unfettered, incomprehensible and insatiable hate foment at their very existence??




Hmmmmm.... Apparently not. Apparently, while we were all yet sinners, He sent His Son, Jesus, to make a way for us to come back to Him. To replace the Hate he has for our sin with the love He has for His son. What I'm saying here folks is this, God don't hate fags.

Now. Mr. Phelps. You are full of Satan. You are the spawn of Satan. He is the father of lies and you are full of lies. You prove you are your father Satan's child by those lies. And the hate you are so fond to claim as righteous indignation born of God is merely a pathetic veil that doesn't even begin to mask your Satanic pedigree, your Satanic progeny, and your continuing Satanic legacy.

Mr. Phelps. God loves fags, God even loves you. But shut the Hell up!

It's The End Of The World As We Know It, And I (Don't) Feel Fine.

The 66 U.S. station strong, Christian radio network Family Radio is headed by 89-year-old Californian Harold Camping. The network has been spreading his message of the approaching doomsday, as in today doomsday, as in May 21st, 2011 doomsday. Sigh....

According to Reuters "[Camping] had said doomsday would begin in Asia, but with midnight local time come and gone in Tokyo and Beijing and those cities already in the early hours of May 22, there was no indication of an apocalypse.




Family Radio officials, with the help of supporters, had posted over 2,000 billboards around the country warning of a May 21 Judgment Day.

Retired Metropolitan Transportation Authority worker Robert Fitzpatrick, 60, said he spent more than $140,000 of his savings on subway posters and bus shelter advertisements warning of the May 21 Judgment Day.





"God's people are commanded to sound the warning, to sound the trumpet so to speak so people know," Fitzpatrick said of his advertising blitz.




You know, I don't even want to weigh in on this....but it's really getting to me.

Dear Mr. Camping and every other doomsday prophet, prophetess, and armchair eschatologist. STOP IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You inoculate against the imminence of Christ's return. You disembowel the sense of urgency that should pervade our every day lives. Stop it. Seriously. This is the very reason why the scripture says no one will know the hour of Christ's return but the Father. And once again the Word of God is trivialized, marginalized and ridiculed because His "mouth pieces" do not pay attention to what He's already said.

And if it's just too much time and money on your hands....there are 27 million people enslaved today, millions of children trapped in sexual slavery and horrific forced labor. Take to the airwaves man and be a voice for the voiceless victims. Geez. I don't mean to be so hard on you Mr. Camping, I am sure you had your reasons, I mean we all long for His return, but redeem the time while there is still time. Be His hands and feet. Love recklessly, give with ridiculous generosity, and rescue those perishing with urgency.

In other words, until that day, live like there's no tomorrow. Your actions will speak louder than your predictions. Your humble service will herald His return...and maybe even make a few people long for it. May even speed the day.

Molech

Molech (also variously known as Moloch, Milcom, Malcam) was the name given to the national pagan god of the Ammonites.

"They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin." (Jer. 32:35)

Molech is often linked with Asheroth the fertility goddess. Always the common context, the sacrificing of children, the flames of desire. Sexual virility as a reward for worship, life in the death of innocence.

It all seems so silly, so barbaric. The dust-covered stories of forgotten pagan sects. Demonic ritual reserved for the most psychologically deranged, the sexually depraved. And yet today the unborn are sacrificed wholesale for sexual independence, for renewed virility. The children of the world are are thrown into the flames of the Molech machine. They are sold into sexual bondage and forced labor and the machine is fueled on their sweat, their tears, their broken violated bodies.

Where is the justice for the children sacrificed to our Molechs? The gods of our insatiable appetites our selfish desires. Where are their rescuers?

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Gospel

Sometimes, sometimes I am soooooo over me.

So yesterday this lady asks me for a ride. Her car is broken down, or whatever her story is, doesn't matter if it's true. So I say sure. Load up friend. And we're driving, and it's obvious this girl's lived kinda hard. All the tell tale signs of drug abuse. And I know I need to say something. But I don't.

Instead I make small talk. Real small talk. The weather, the economy, then when we're about to mile number two and she's determined I don't have a lady in my life, she says..."You play?" To which I'm like..."Play?" To which she grins and says "you know friends for the evening. Helping each other not feel so....lonely. Everybody's happy."

Then as I politely defer, she asks if I smoke weed, asks if she can borrow six bucks for some Lortabs. She's got a bad headache and she's busted. I tell her I can't. She says, "You're some kinda straight edge" and laughs. I force a chuckle and all the while I'm thinking, it took her maybe three minutes to boldly offer me the use of her body for the evening, for her to admit she uses drugs, needs them for her "head ache". And did I offer her the hope I have in Christ. Did I at the very least ask her if she knows He loves her? Did I offer to pray for her "head ache"?

No. I just dropped her off to meet her "uncle" at a truck stop.

And then when she said, "you were a real Godsend, that woulda been a looong way to walk." I just smiled sheepishly like the coward I am and drove away. God sent me alright and I blew it. Geez.

Slavery and the Politics of Meaning.

In response to the universal health care debate Rand Paul said "With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have to realize what that implies. It's not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery."







Dear Rand. I humbly disagree, the politics of health care aside, it is an abstraction, the lack of freedom to do what you want is NOT the same as coercion, torture, rape and violence. And subsequently, in the land of the free and the brave you can quit your job as doctor, and you can become anything, even a politician. There are 27 million people in very real slavery today, 27 million men women and children who fear for their very lives. Please find another word to make your point!

Jesus Christ 2012: The Messiah For President.

So would Jesus run? Would you vote for Him? Would He win? Which party would endorse Him?




Jesus was too poor to be a Democrat and dressed too well to be a Republican...but seriously. Jesus, the King of Kings, wore a crown of thorns and a robe of whip marks and torn flesh for his royal vestiges, and gave His coronation speech on the cross. He never made one political move, never picked a fight with nobody. He got a little pissy that one time in the temple, but that was just cause some fellows were trying to profit off the good news of redemption. (Let him who has ears to ear....)

Christ/Huckabee ticket?

Jesus lived in a time where His country was under foreign occupation. There was a eugenic campaign at the time of His birth which was enacted for the sole purpose to eradicate Him. Such was the fear that He would lead a revolt. And such was the anticipation. His countrymen longed for freedom, for national sovereignty, for the promised age of peace. But he shrugged off their requests. When they chaffed at paying taxes He told them to give Caesar what was Caesars. When His closest friend drew his sword in the garden of Gethsemane, the Nazarene carpenter told him to put it away. This was the chosen one, this was the man from the bloodline of Kings. The political climate was ripe. It was His for the taking and yet...

He never did it. He never chose the path of earthly power and position. Nor did He ever speak a harsh word against the Roman government. His most potent remarks were always reserved for the religious leaders who exploited the desperation of the people. In fact Jesus presumed that it was the sole responsibility of the religious institution to take care of the poor, not the government. Jesus showed the power of submission, the beauty of peace. He knew all of heaven had His back and so he gladly turned the other cheek.



The day will come, the prophet Isaiah says, when the Government will rest on His shoulders, when he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. When the increase of his government and peace will have no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.

But until that day, these are the politics of Jesus: whoever wants to lead must serve, who ever wants to be first must be the servant of all. For He Himself did not come to be served, but to serve, and lay down His life for all. Love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Love justice, love mercy, walk in humility with Him. Take care of the widows and orphans in their distress. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, do unto others as you'd have done to you.

Would Jesus run for president? Naw. Would He win? The lobby of the sick and the poor and the voiceless rarely have the strength or the cash or the platform to grease the palms of democracy.

Would I vote for Him? Of course. I love Him. He's the best man I ever knew.

Bin Laden Is Dead.

Bin Laden is dead. The people are salivating. The twitter chatter like a jr. high sleepover, giddy and godless. The facebook statuses like a million little epitaphs, cruel, and callous and cavalier. So why do I feel sad? Is it un-American to say I don't feel better. I don't feel a sense of closure. And the dish of revenge, served cold, tastes alot like bloodlust.


Is this the face of evil? Is the world safer? Is the night through, has day dawned eternal? Does my Savior rejoice tonight? Surely the man was a blunt instrument of darkness...but when we rejoice in death...does life lose a little of it's sanctity? Fascist Islam has a new martyr, our president and his people a new trophy, and hell, hell has another soul on which to dine.

Mr. Bin Laden. You were a real son of bitch. But I never prayed for you. I never once asked God to convict you of your rebellion, your brutalities. I never once asked him for your salvation. Murderers have often found redemption in the heart of God. Moses murdered. King David. The apostle Paul. They killed for some of the same reasons you did. And yet God forgave them. Used them to deliver a nation, rule a chosen people, build the church as we know it.

Am I glad that Bin Laden cannot kill again? Sure. If the war on terror is over, if the great utopia begins, heaven on earth, swords into plowshares, lions laying with lambs and such. Yeah, that'd be great. But the storm is coming. The great storm to end all storms. Pray for your enemies now, while there be few, for the day will come, and it may be soon, when your enemies will outnumber the stars.

Forgive me Father for not loving my enemies. When You set the example, when I was still Your enemy. You laid down Your life for me on the cross, because You are love.

Glorious Reunion!

Never has there been a better picture to me of our hope. Never a more heart gripping, tear jerking preview of what's to come. When we are caught up in the air to meet our Savior. When we enter our rest, when we make it home. When finally we hear those words we long to hear, when our Heavenly Father says, well done daughters, well done my sons.

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