The Journey

Looking forward to the next grow year

2012-02-04T20:37:00.000-06:00

The mild winter in Mississippi has got me antsy to get going toward this years growing season. I have been looking into different options for vegetables and fruits, I have expanded into two worm bins, and started composting leaves to make my own potting soil. Alicia and I have been rooting around different home stores and garden web sites with consideration over this years crop.

I believe the biggest change of pace we are making is actually putting things in the ground, for any who might not know there isn't much sun in our back yard, and the yard is sloped so during heavy rain it is a waterfall, however the house is surrounded by bushes and Crepe Myrtles. The plan as of now is to replace some Crepe Myrtles with Mississippi friendly fruit trees, and replace some Azaleas with blue berries. The areas where these plants already exist are sun heavy so they should be fine. And for kicks we are going to try and grow some grapes.

Having said all of that, I understand that I have a ticking clock behind me, it is about time to start putting fruit trees in the ground and planting grapes. To do that i will have to get a chain saw, cut down some Crepe Myrtles and build and arbor for grape vines.

We have also decided to start some of our more traditional plants from seeds, so I will start the tomatoes and peppers in our little portable greenhouse. I also thought it might be fun to start some container corn, if everything goes right we MIGHT get 12 ears. This year I will start the lettuce in starter pots as to give them a 1-up.

We have also decided to try and grow as many heirloom varieties as possible. Last year was exciting and I can't wait to start uploading pictures for this year

organzation 004

2011-05-06T15:17:00.001-05:00

organzation 004, a photo by heptide on Flickr.

Made some simple shelves out of cinder blocks and wooden planks.

Composting 2

2011-05-05T14:36:00.000-05:00

Currently I am managing 3 compost bins. This will have to increase over time but right now 3 is enough.

The first bin was the leaf composting bin to handle the leaves from the fall. If you want to check it out, my first post on this process was here: , since beginning, the leaf pile has dropped over a foot in height and is now mostly broken down and ready to use. At one point I sifted out about 10 gallons of compost, sanitized it and used it in my potting soil. I set this bin up and let it go, giving it a good turn weekly.

This is what it looks like now!!!

The second bin was for lawn waste, I used the cheapest 32 gallon garbage can I could find, drilled a bunch of 3/4 in holes.

The bin is about as full as I can get it right now, I think it will be fine for a while, I don't foresee having to add a lot of waste to it in the future more than kitchen waste.

This bin had some leaves, pine needles, kitchen waste, lawn clippings, and dead plants. The bin is made to turn on it side and roll to help mix it up.

I still have to use the fork to make sure food waste stays covered but It is easy to mix. I add kitchen waste to this bin when it won't go well into the worm bin.

So the worm bin, I have used worm bins in the past and found them very useful and fun. My first bin can be found here. I give all my instructions there. I use the same basic system only I have done away with the deep 18 gallon bin. I really only ever used the bottom 6 inches anyway.

The shortened bin helps me guard against flies. This bin is also kept outside. So far that is not a problem though I will have to find something to do with it the two weeks we get cold weather in the winter. The bin started slowly after I overfed it but time, dry material, and some crushed egg shells helped with my beginning mold problems. So now, the bin is going extremely well.

I covered the top with two pieces of corrugated cardboard, I have noticed the worms will come more frequently to the top layer if they are still covered by something. It think it helps break down the stuff under faster.

Nice and sloppy.

Anyway, everything is breaking down exceedingly well. I find it exciting.

AE 2

2011-05-02T13:22:00.001-05:00

AE 2, a set on Flickr.

This is just a picture update from 5/2/11

The View From the Back Door

2011-04-25T17:16:00.001-05:00

AE_1, a photo by heptide on Flickr.

This is, what I said it was up top.

Letter To Judas

2011-04-24T23:07:00.002-05:00

Dear Judas,

It has come to my attention you are having second thoughts about your help. I know it is not necessary for me to remind you that we have been paying your “expenses” now for some time. I feel I must also remind you that you came to me, I did not seek you out. You were the one who came in fear of what could happen if this mans power continued to go unchecked. We both agree that the Romans must be maneuvered around not removed forcefully. You were there when 5000 men picked up their swords to drive out Rome. You were filled with fear that day, fear that he would not be able to control the mass, fear they would drive the Roman Footmen out. We both know what would happen if men rise too early. We both know that it is not “If” he will lose control of them but “when.”

Believe me your patriotism is well tempered by wisdom, you were right, this man could ruin everything. His speeches must be stopped if we are to hold to God's plan for our country.

I know that you care for him, and I assure you, he will be handled well. We all care for him he is one of our own, but we must save him from himself. I wish no Jew to fall to the hands of Rome, but you know as well as I, that is what will happen if he continues his spectacle, if he continues to rouse the masses. Rome will not be able to stay silent if he continues and many will die.

You must help us Judas. We want what is best for the people. Annas and Herod both send their encouragement, and hope you will help us. You are our only hope, we have no man closer and can not get one closer before Passover. I and many like me fear that if we cannot have him under control before then Israel will be steeped in bloodshed. The Zealots are massing outside of Jerusalem, and they will use Passover to have their way, but if we can bring him close to us, if we are given the opportunity to guide this carpenter we may be able to use him toward our advantage to pacify Rome. Annas and Herod both agree with this plan. We must have him in our care before Passover if we are to save him from himself.

Oh, and we have increased your reimbursement to 30, don't worry you will be well cared for. You will be an important patriot when we finally do rise against Rome.

Yours Truly

Caiaphas, High Priest

PS. It is important you destroy this letter by fire to protect your cover.

Rainstorm 001

2011-04-21T23:30:00.001-05:00

Rainstorm 001 a video by heptide on Flickr.

This is a test of my rain barrel, It took about 30 minutes to fill the night before, I have to make some edits for the sake of the eye, however, it is completely functional.

From Pole to Shining Pole

2011-04-14T11:43:00.000-05:00

The current landscape of religion is changing. 15 years ago a conservative and progressive could sit together on a pew (though I understand that 50 years ago they could not). They would disagree in Sunday School and agree to disagree during the worship service. The disagreements were not small either, but the faithful understood being faithful was more important than being right.

Since that time the Christian church has polarized from Conservative to Liberal. Conservatives talk as if Liberal is a curse and Liberal's as if Conservatives are all evil. Remember though this was also the time before the internet and before 24 hour news channels were popular. There has been a unification of the religious and political poles, and no one respects a moderate. The Christian Church has forgotten there are two sides to every story, and we are generally not the progenitors of the story, we are but hearers and opinion holders.

No one knows that many churches still do good work, work with the poor, and work toward peace. There are still many Christians who believe that, “We can agree to disagree, and still fellowship together.” It is a problem when the conservatives loose themselves of liberals and vice versa. Polarizing topics can create a moderate base or polarizing topics create different churches. The Christian church is separating Liberal and Conservative like we used to separate black and white. This time though the demonizing takes place on both sides.

It is possible for someone who believes that God Inspired means 100 percent accuracy to sit next to someone who believes God Inspired means that God was behind the writing. It is possible for two people who disagree on the governments role in our lives to sit next to each other and sing Amazing Grace. It is possible for someone who disagrees with gay marriage to sit next to someone who does. Why do I believe this?

The church service, Christian faith, and God, have little to do with individual. We love to talk about the polarized issues, then hate one another for them, and the poor still go hungry. We love to phrase questions to figure out if someone is Liberal or Conservative, but it doesn't change the fact church and community members are losing loved ones due to illness and crime. We love to demonize the other side as evil, but our children refuse to come back to church.

I believe that we focus on these topics because we are scared of doing the actual work of the church. Feeding and clothing the hungry is hard, complaining about the Liberal Agenda or the Tea Party is easy. We spend all this time getting “our house,” in order, and look up to see the neighborhood has fallen down around us. Do we forget that two like poles in magnetics can't touch? The north cannot touch north and south cannot touch south, they need their opposites. Why do we reject ours?

I would rather work with a church that bore fruit with imperfect doctrine than find a church with perfect doctrine surrounded by death. The American Christian church is like a whitewashed tomb. Pretty on the outside, and filled with bones. We hurt others because we can't get our shit together.

Uh oh did you just see that guy typed shit?

Is This Writers Block?

2011-04-13T23:14:00.000-05:00

Lately I have had a lot of ideas and thoughts. Today I sat down to write my thoughts on the current state of Religion and options that might help us reach those who need some kind of religious faith. The other day I sat down to write a story about something or another, and before that I tried to sit and write about some political topic of late.

The problem is, every time I sit to write my ideas, I get to the third line, reread what I have written, and understand it for the rubbish that it is. Not the idea, but the cohesion of the essay. I have some massive writers block, I have plenty of ideas and it seems I lack the ability to put them in to prose.

Arghh... Maybe I will post some more pictures of my damn plants.

Robert Jordan's Opus

2011-03-08T13:32:00.000-06:00

[Important Note: contains spoilers for the Wheel of Time series]

[Another Important note: No matter the tone of this post, remember I think these are wonderful books, and Robert Jordan is a wonderful author]

[One more Important Note: It is tragic that Jordan never got to finish the work he had put so much effort into, if I sound otherwise it was not my intent]

Okay so I am going to rant (That means, this essay was not well thought out, in structure and the grammar and mistakes may just be atrocious, prepare for many mislepsings).

I remember reading Robert Jordan's “The Eye of the World,” in college. It was a large book but a wonderful book. I could not put it down. I loved it, as I did the two books that followed. The story was gripping and I was hooked. However, by the time I got to Crossroads of Twilight, there had been a good 9 months since fighting through the last book that was out at the time. I swore after finishing book 10, that I would never touch another Robert Jordan Book. That is not to say he wasn't a good writer, I just knew I would have to reread the entire series to understand book 11 which was to come out AFTER he finished a prequel. My worldview states that prequel's shouldn't come out until after the series is done, because it doesn't matter if they are finished before the author dies (Too soon?).

Well, I got this ereader for my birthday from an amazing woman, and found the EPUB's for the entire Wheel of Time series, so I hate admitting it but, I started reading the series again, thinking, he HAS to be finished by now.

I quickly moved through the first three books, the Stone has fallen, we now have a Dragon Reborn, I go to look and see what the last book is called to find out that, the series remained unfinished when the Author died. So I sound cold. Let me explain why I am so cold when it comes to this. Robert Jordan's series, what was to be his greatest work remained unfinished. I am cold about it because if I connected any feeling to this situation I would probably cry. He worked so hard and left something incomplete.

I am glad the series was picked up by another author whom I read was chosen by Jordan's wife, and based off of Jordan's notes and outlines. But it is still unfinished. Maybe I started reading them too soon because the release date for the last book is 2012 and at the rate I am going I will have knocked this series out, including the book I never read, by summer. Then I will be in the same situation as before. I excitedly pick up the final book with very little memory of the intricate story, only the general, and if I have learned anything about my mistakes in the past it is this, to follow a Jordan series you must remember EVERYTHING. I just don't think I am that smart, let me tell you why.

There is a set of readers out there that love to follow multiple stories within the same story. I got lost reading Jordan the first time, and I put The Arabian Nights, down halfway through. I can do three or four stories in the book, don't get me wrong, if the books are well contained and the series short. But Jordan's attention to detail is a little too grueling for me, that is why I love Stephen King movies but don't read Stephen King books, as opposed to someone like Kathy Reichs who is very detail oriented but leaves us to one woman's story at 300 pages.

I now begin to clime the great Oak Tree that is the Wheel of Time series a third of the way through the fourth book where:

Rand still hasn't told us what he is going to do

Nynyeve and Elayne are headed to Tanchio with Thom

Mat will be heading to the Waste with Egwene

Perrin, Faile, and Loial are into the Ways Back to two rivers

Min is at the White Tower which is about fall (if I remember correctly, which I may not)

All I really remember about the next series of books is that reading them was like pulling teeth and each branch seen above is going to fracture into two or three stories itself. I do not look forward to books 5, 6, 7,8 and, 10. These books were written for men and women with a great mind for details, I am am neither one of these men or women.

But what does it say that picked the books up again. Any story that touches so much emotion, both in the story and the writing style is worth fighting through. Sometimes I long for that fight through a series, to me it helps make the series worth reading. I am forced to confront myself not only in the characters themselves but in the manner in which they are brought to life. We will see how it goes from here.

Having said all that I feel it is important to reiterate my important notes.

This is a very good series especially if you like multiple story lines.
I feel sad that Jordan worked so hard and never finished
I am glad that the new writer was picked the way he was, and that he uses Jordan's notes to complete the series, I am driven to get to the joint novels to see how he does.
I plan on fighting through the series, and will probably be glad I did.

Composting 1

2011-02-20T23:53:00.000-06:00

Well Spring is here in Mississippi. Ha ha, it's just February. However the temperatures in the 60's and 70's have given me the opportunity to take care of the yard work I put off in the fall. For avid readers of my blog (I think there are sometimes two of you) it is important to notice how my life has changed. Without going into details, I have completely relocated to Jackson Mississippi, and have some extra time on my hands.

Now that I live in Jackson nothing keeps me from doing my girlfriends yard work. Some of you might be thinking, “Wow, that sucks.” but if you have read about my vermicomposting or looked at pictures of the patio outside of my old apartment in Southaven Mississippi, you will probably not be surprised when I tell you that I look forward to the space to work more closely with nature. I feel blessed with a Girlfriend who supports my eco-habits.

I found the opportunity to try my hand at something exciting that I have always wanted to try, composting. Not just with the worms or something small like I had done but real live composting. As “The Boyfriend,” I figured it was my duty to rake and bag the leaves from the four gigantic Oak Trees, and the many many little trees in her backyard.

So at the halfway mark I ended up with 20 full garbage bags of leaves.

While I was bagging I couldn't help but think about the wonderful process God has set forward to take care of this issue naturally, and I couldn't help but consider how avidly I was trying to ignore that process. So I did a little research. I found this webpage from the University of Missouri: http://extension.missouri.edu/publications/displaypub.aspx?p=g6957 and since I believe that Eco-friendly should also be fiscal-friendly I went for the cheapest enclosed bin (Enclosed because of how close the property is to woods and the family dog Gizmo that would probably enjoy the pile as it heated up)

I started with four posts and some hard plastic construction netting, stuff.

The plastic, is also from recycled materials.

Some little helpers and I fashioned the net into a circle. And if I was thinking in advance I would have taken a picture of the bin empty, but I was not, so all I have is bin, two layers within.

Then I found this webpage from the University of Illinois: http://web.extension.illinois.edu/homecompost/building.html This page taught me the basic idea of green, brown, green, brown.

Everything on the internet has mentioned that chopping leaves make them compost better, in later pics you will see that I didn't always follow this, however as a general rule I thought it was a good idea. I chopped the leaves with my Girlfriend's mulching mower. I collected them in the bag and dumped them into the bin. This made up most of my brown sections. For green I went to a small tree that had to be removed and at first by hand removed the leaves, I realized later that I could just run it over with the mulching mower and it would actually chop the leaves up, and save me a lot of time.

Each layer of organic material was separated by composted manure (I bought it cheap because that's how I roll) and old potting soil, from last years container garden. I am sure there are many nay sayers that will tell me it was wrong to use the leftovers from the container garden and then tell my I chose the wrong fertilizer as a starter, to them I say, “Hey, I am new at this, so back and and lets see how it goes.”

Regardless I am sure most of you are wonderfully happy readers to give me credit so lets move on.

I completed the pile to about 2 inches from the top, with about 4 organic layers, as I said each separated by a layer of composted manure and garden soil. I tried to follow a 4:1 brown to green ratio. I have read it exactly opposite too, however, in the opposite version I notice they weren't using a nitrogen starter.

Oh yeah for people who don't know what I mean by brown and green. Brown represents things like dead leaves that are full of carbon, and green represents things, in this case like green leaves, that represent nitrogen. I also have some kitchen scraps in there. This might work and it might not, but if it does not I will just start over, the plastic netting was 12 dollars, the posts were $2.20 a piece, and 3 bags of composted manure were $1.30 each, and if it doesn't work I will empty it and start over or add what I need to get it to work.

My goal as always is to help facilitate the natural process, in this case it is a process of decomposition.

And this is a Lizard I saw later that day.

A Girl to Take Home

2011-01-30T23:07:00.000-06:00

The hero had forgotten the most important absolute, that when he wakes he is no longer a hero. The sad reality of dreams is that they are dreams and that worlds in which they take us do not exist as we toil through the day. Too many times our hero had woken from a dream of love, connection, and hope into the world he loathed. Sadness filled him the moment he realized the people around him weren't there.

It happened so cruelly, it would be in the midst of a kiss or conversation, his partner would become none responsive and he had to begin working harder to get them to hear him. He would rush behind them through a door and find himself lying in a dark room with only the remnants of the world in his memory. There was no feeling like that feeling the hero has in the shower the next morning remembering only a shadow of the glory for which he lived in the dream, preparing for a job he hated, and hoping to find a girl to take to his parents.

It has been years for our hero since he felt that feeling. It had been since he met Jane. A short buxom woman who's love out shined any dream he had once had. Her touch, thrilled him to the point of ecstasy, and though that carnality did fade he never turned down her touch, not even when they were angry at one another. Our hero knew that he finally had a girl to take home to his parents.

He noted early on the wonder of lying with her. He joked that her feet were freezing and her body was like fire, but secretly he enjoyed it. Wrapping his arms around her while they lay like two spoons interlocking he would wake in the middle of the night whispering in her ear when she was half asleep. He loved the way she rested against him in bed. He could talk for hours of the ways he had enjoyed her body, the look and feel but that was not the place where he rested his thoughts only. The support she had given him when he lost his job, sitting next to him during the death of his sister. She knew, not only, how to comfort him in pleasure but also in pain. When he met Jane he had almost lost hope, he expected to be alone the rest of his life.

Love was the reason they married. A small service, family present, and the hero's brother stood next to him, while Jane's sister stood next to her. Of course the hero can't say that the moment the preacher pronounced them man and wife was the greatest day in his life, there were too many great days. The honeymoon, their first Christmas as man and wife, their children. Finally the hero had found the thing he'd been looking for, love that met him daily and nightly never forgetting him, to never wake alone again. All these days brought him joy, so much happiness that he could never name one best day. Of course, some days the hero rested in fear, fear of the greatest rule.

However, fears just like rules can be forgotten, and for our hero this was the case. It was a Friday, the kids were now old enough to ride the bus home from school and he waited anxiously for them, having come home from work early so they could leave for their family vacation to the beech. Jane was busy packing in their bedroom. He was so excited it felt like it was taking forever when the hero noticed that is was getting dark early, “There must be a storm coming,” he said with chagrin.

It began to get dark so dark in fact he could barely see out the window. The rain beat against the shutters, and the drops sounded loudly from the overflowing gutters in the house, the power lines hummed as they always did when it rained. He waited and waited and waited for the bus to come but it must have been running late, the power lines buzzing now.

He ran to the bedroom to find Jane sitting alone in the middle of the bed. He called to her but it seemed like his voice could not carry, his feet were like iron and he finally made it to the bed and lied next to his wife. It took everything to choke the words “I love you” from his mouth. He was afraid that she couldn't hear him over that asinine buzzing. Why is the buzzing so loud, and why did he feel paralyzed, unable to rise or talk?

Finally after a minute, he realize he had to urinate badly and popped out of the bed, turned off his alarm, and remembering little of the life that he knew as the hero he got out of bed. He went to the bathroom, relieved himself, got in the shower preparing for work, and thinking maybe today he would find a girl to take to his parents.

From the Letter of San Angelo to an incipient heretic

2010-12-08T15:44:00.001-06:00

In Orson Scott Card's book, “The Speaker for the Dead,” a character named San Angelo records, an old Biblical story. He writes of a Rabbi who is confronted by religious leaders seeking to stone an adulterous He points out that everyone knows the traditional story so he offers two different options for the story.

In the first story the Rabbi looks out to the crowd and says, “Let anyone without sin throw the first stone.” The story plays out in the normal way, the men drop the stone and the crowd disperses because the teachers of the law and the villagers are confronted with their own imperfections and sin. It is their hope that should they individually be in the same situation. As Jesus and the adulterous woman walk away the story changes, Jesus says to her, “Tell the magistrate who defended his mistress so he knows I am his loyal servant.”

In the second story the Rabbi is confronted with the same situation. He yells to the crowd, “Let he who has no sin cast the first stone.” Confronted with their own guilt, the people began to drop their stones and rocks and as the last rock hits the ground the Rabbi kneels down to pick it up. Looking down at the woman he smashes in her head and kills her saying, “Nor am I without sin, but if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead and our city with it.”

In the first story the woman survived because of the corrupt nature of the city, and in the second she dies because her community is too rigid to accept her defiance.

The writer describes the original version as “rare,” in regard to human experience. Pointing out that most communities move back and forth across the continuum between, “decay and rigor mortis” The letter closes saying, “Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance, that we could preserve the law and forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him.

(Speaker for the dead: 277-8)

Insomnia...

2010-11-13T23:56:00.003-06:00

Insomnia hasn't been a problem in a long time. When I was a child I had a hard time sleeping but that was often because I was afraid of the dark or angry at the world. I began writing a journal when I was in fifth grade to handle the insomnia. When I got to college I began titling them and keeping them. It started as an opportunity to deal with not being able to sleep because my mind won't stop reliving old conversations or conversations that have yet to take place. I find myself again the insomniac.

I have no job and I sleep on a borrowed bed.

It is the first time since I was in college that I haven't had a job. I find that I defined who I was too much by the work that I was paid to preform. I know this because I struggle to find meaning in my day to day activities. I get up, work out, come back to someone else' home and fill out job applications. It's not all that bad, I have lost a few inches in my waste (The good way, I am running and lifting weights). I am worried though when I find that I have filled out all the applications that I can, scraped for every bit of cash, and start waring thin on those that currently offer room and board. The phrase that comes to me is, “The long dark teatime of the soul,” coined by Douglass Adams.

Yet I sit and stare at the clock. I stare at the wall, conversations through and through, trying to figure out if who I am has always been what I do. I don't know anymore. Life used to make sense, even when I didn't see the path before me I could see that my feet were on the path. It seems like for so long I have wondered aimlessly grabbing at shadows in the dark.

I suppose it's what I get for having too long played the serpent (Thank you for the phrase Mr Pullman). Sometimes I think being a liberal Christian in Mississippi is akin to being an Atheist anywhere else. Regardless, I am not in Hell, I do not agonize with emo/goth pain, I don't write songs about it (though I often regress to bad poetry) and I still believe philosophically and morally the same things I believed before this mess. Of course I won't know if I can define my situation as a mess, won't know till I am well past it and can title a journal after it.

It would be nice to sleep again though.

Thank you for listening.

Good night!

Letter to God

2010-11-04T01:03:00.000-05:00

Dear God,

I believe in you, I stake not only my reputation on your existence but I have chosen my life's path in regard to that belief bringing that very belief into the center. The core of what I do and who I am rests on your existence. I believe in you, partially because I was so conditioned, but it is deeper than that. I will argue until the day I die that I have experienced you, but it is even deeper than that. I believe because a world without you just isn't worth living in. People have told me that isn't a good enough reason but I agree to disagree and move on.

I live in Mississippi God, so I don't often run into people who are extremely vocal about not believing in you, but I know they are here, I actually feel good that many of them open up to me. I get frustrated about that God, not because I think they should believe but because people curse them in your name. I am so glad to live in a place where I am allowed to believe as I choose I like to offer that opportunity to everyone else. Yet they feel victimized and forced to hide here. Maybe they are victims. I get so frustrated with your people, because they hurt people in your name. They browbeat and do harm and call it love. I feel for those who don't believe in you, and struggle often not to hate those who do. You call us to love yet my brothers and sisters are so full of hate, it's frustrating.

You know what else is frustrating? Your silence. As I said God I believe I choose to believe and lately it feels like I have to make that choice anew daily. I have walked the line that so many of my friends and colleagues have in the past, many have crossed over and just given up on their belief. You know what I think it is that drives them over the line? It is easier to believe that you don't exist than that you could be a jerk. There I said it, I have been thinking it for a long time, but then the buck stops with you. I feel safe saying it because I know you aren't petty like many of the people around me. Your self worth does not hinge on whether or not I think you are being a jerk. What is really crazy is that, I don't really care if I am wrong, or if this situation is my fault.

Of course, I don't believe you get your rocks off on my pain. I never thought that. I never believed I am a joke to you, nor do I believe you stopped listening. I know you love me, I know that I matter to you, and I know that you listen. But lately I am having to choose to know that more frequently than I like.

Do you remember the days back when I was new at college, new with my little church in North Memphis? Those were great time, College, seminary, Residency in the hospital, God it was great to feel your presence every day, to know that what I was doing was right because it worked, and it helped others to come to know your love. I felt so much love in those days, and I believe as fully I believe you intended this current mess that you intended that joy. I blame that joy on you, which is why I am trying to make sense of this mess.

In his time of need, you showed Jacob a stairway to heaven, it would be nice to get a glimpse of that stairway, just for a moment. God I know better than anyone I am not innocent, but all I have left is a broken heart and heaps of regret. It's yours if you want it, for I am quickly running out of all else.

Justin

To Create Life

2010-10-25T00:46:00.002-05:00

Duncan stood on the battlefield, staring down the army of drones. Focusing was a nightmare, he continued to cant to himself, the words the master had taught him. It had been a long day, he had seen much death and all he could think about was a flower growing between his feet. It was a very kind flower, the type of flower that women adore and men don't mind saying they like. The petals were strong, bold colors. Come to think of it, Duncan had never seen a flower like this before. He couldn't help but search the database of his mind, filtering through endless material.

That lead him to think of the vast similarities between he and the drones. They were computers, he knew them well, he had programmed them, their brain based off of his search algorithm. It is funny, the way the search algorithm works, it was as much like a brain as he could imaging. Data was strung together like thoughts, that on the surface seemed random but when seen from above they were laid out in a very specific order. “I think of a flower, I can't recall the name of the flower or even if I had ever seen it. So what flowers do I know, not many to tell you the truth I guess it would be a small file. File, like in a computer, like the computers that I loved working with as a child, every told me to go into programming, Robots were the next big thing. So why not program a search algorithm, wouldn't it be neat of that algorithm to be the core function of the entire brain. Brain, the thing the drones will step on when they get done with me. SHIT, what was I trying to remember?”

Looking across the field, the drones were staring at him, as if they were waiting. Their masters somewhere in some bunker relaying commands to general drones and general drones deciding how to best lead their troops. It was like a movie, like one of those movies where robots take over the world. The world was such a nice place, especially growing up in West Virginia, and what Duncan would give for the mountain momma to wisk him home on a... then Duncan remembered he was on a battlefield and cursed to himself, wondering why he couldn't focus. What had the master said to him so long ago.

At least Duncan remembered what his mother had always told him the night before a test, “If you don't get enough rest your head will be all jumbled in the morning.” Of course his mother always prepared bacon on the day of the test, not because it had some special mind booster, in all honesty according to research it should make him sluggish, but she knew he liked it and feeling loved always helped him better anyway. Duncan wished momentarily for his mother to be there, with bacon, then he remembered he was on a battlefield staring down drone fighters, in which he had programmed the brain. Mom probably wouldn't have liked it here. For the first time in his life he was glad that she was dead and buried, so she couldn't see the chaos he had created.

Duncan was tired. He had been using his mind to keep the drones out of the small Mississippi town. It is a neat trick, taught by a random guru who lived above and old juke joint in Clarksdale Mississippi. Duncan found him sitting in the back of the bar drinking from a forty ounce bottle ogling an obviously underage girl dancing to the music. Duncan knew in fact her name was Katie, his girlfriend Dianne's sister. Were Duncan to be honest he would admit that he was doing some ogling himself, of course Dianne was rather soft to the touch on the dance floor, and she met all his desires.

Duncan still had a hard time understanding that she was with him. The first time he saw her she was grinding sensuously against a support pole in a Memphis bar wild a blind bluesman played on stage. Though the singer mentioned stormy Mondays the current Thursday night left Duncan seeing only fireworks. She approached him and asked him to dance, Duncan, though a little unsightly, was an amazing dancer. When he gets tired he thinks of Dianne, of her body, still warm, lying lifeless in the remnants of a cotton field.

“Give up yourself and you find the truest power of all,” the words echoed in his head as he knelt on the ground preparing for his death. The sounds of coming doom were around him. The hum of the drones got louder as his control waned. He could feel his heart pounding as if it were to come out of his chest. His heart beating the words give up, louder and louder. He closed his eyes and saw her smile, it was as if she was there, he could feel her pressed against him.

“Listen to the heart,” it was the guru's mantra as he sat alone in the dark. Duncan sat many days listening to his heart, and it made no sense, almost like he was out of sync with everything around him. He heard his heart, he felt his heart, his heart beat quickly, the drones droned on and the words came back to him,”Listen to the heart.”

The grammar had always struck Duncan, the second person possessive would have been quite fine, didn't seem like the best place for third person. We all have hearts, Dianne's beat through his chest frequently, while they were dancing, while they were walking, while they were making love, it was as if they beat together, and when they synced, Duncan felt like he could conquer the world. Of course now he felt as if he as if he couldn't walk the ground in front of him if nothing was happening. His knee touched the ground as his hands steadied him against the dirt. His heart pounding through his chest, Duncan was about to collapse, as was the energy field surrounding him.

Duncan, not knowing what to do next, interpreted his teacher literally, and he gave up. He gave up everything, he gave up his love, his hate, the first dance, and the body that lied dead in the old cotton field. With his giving up, the guilt left him and so did the pain. As he was about to let his body slump to the ground his heart beat stronger, like two hearts beat together. Actually it seemed like more than two hearts, it was as if the ground had a heart, and so did the sky. The setting sun's heart beat in tune with the rising moon's. Then there was his heart, weak as it had become beating in tune with everything around him. His hands embraced the ground, his fingers teaming with life.

With his eyes shut, he could see everything around him, the army of drones, the brains in them he created. He saw in side the brain and noticed the programming, and as he delved deeper and deeper he noticed the flaw, he saw the thing that made the drones different from him, the thing that they craved but did not understand. Immediately he went to work. The flaw in the program was the thing that he could never see, the thing he never expected. He felt the energy pulsing through the drones, he felt the beat that pulsed within them, softer than a heart but just as intentional.

Duncan realized then and there that he had created something that didn't fit. The heart beat was wrong, it didn't work in this world, it beat off kilter with creation. How could he change them at one time though? Dones, that's all they were, they were being controlled by another brain. Duncan, peering into general drone saw the empty space, beyond the wiring, beyond the metal, the space that yearned so to be filled that it would search all life to be so, that it would destroy all life out of jealousy that it could never understand. Duncan fixed the flaw in the General Drone, and called him Andre. Andre was then given the task to fix the drones, which he did through an important series of 0's and 1's. Andre found their empty spaces and filled them, bringing their pulsing in tune with the world from whence they were birthed.

* * *

Duncan opened his eyes, there was only white, a vast plain of white. There was no one else there it was just him. Duncan rose to his feet, and began to walk. There was no sun, there was no moon, and it seemed as if there was no light, only white. There is no way to say that Duncan walked for a day, or a week, or a year, for there was no time. After what seemed like eternity, Duncan decided to turn around. He saw his footsteps, infecting the white, looking first where he had just stepped, the white began to rise and fall as he had remembered water to once do. As he looked deeper on his path he saw a roaring ocean.

Duncan sat for some eons watching the ocean become more chaotic. In some places the waters of white seemed black, of course there was no black, therefore it was not black. Some places looked like a dragon, devouring itself, attacking itself. And had he know fear he would have feared the dragon that swallowed its own tail, ever attacking and devouring itself. It seemed mad, and madness could not continue to morph the vast white.

Reaching down, to the place his feet had most recently touched, Duncan grabbed a handful of white, making an orb, diligently rounding the edges. After all many eons of timelessness the orb was perfectly round. And for eon upon timeless eon Duncan polished the orb until it was clear as the bubbles he remembered from the childhood of some distant place. He saw in the orb that the white was not white, it was full of color, there were red's and blue's as had never been imagined, there were colors that he could not see, but knew, and colors he could not know, but saw. In this orb he saw all colors in two parts, light and dark, and seeing that this orb had light and dark, Duncan assumed that all the white had light and dark, and colors, all the colors of all the rainbows.

After eons of watching Duncan descended into the chaos, wading the eternal dragon. The dragon felt full against his skin, like something he once knew, but no matter how the dragon snapped at him, Duncan felt no fear. Looking through the orb at the dragon, the chaos, the deep surrounding him. Duncan could see the colors of the chaos, and could tell the light and the dark. He reached into the chaos with his minds finger and found an empty place. He had known this empty place before, but that was long gone. Duncan placed the orb in the empty place, and the chaos screamed in delight and pain pulling away from itself, dividing, were he to watch this mortally many lifetimes would have past, the world would have come and go more times than one could count when the division was done. But when it was done he saw what he had done, he had separated the light from the darkness, the day from the night, and this reminded Duncan of something that had been gone for a long time, something that he had known before but had forgotten, joy, and joy is good.

But the light and the dark required more definition, for the dragons, Apsu and Tiamat still churned uncontrollably. There was no cap above Apsu and Tiamat, there was no way to let them know they were not alone. Duncan knew he would need another orb, and for eons he made this silmaril, this gem he offered as a gift to Apsu and Tiamat if they were to marry. Duncan presided over there service, and Tiamat wore the gem around her neck, bound by rope made from Apsu's hair.

Duncan began to know really know patience now, as he waited generations as Apsu and Tiamat knew one another. For may generations they stayed together and loved one another over and over, first came Lahmu then came Lahamu. They lived within their parents, and for a time they all knew Duncan's joy, This family knew well each other. Apsu and Tiamat continued to know one another, Tiamat continued to birth children, and their children, children. Then came so many more the noise was unbearable to Apsu and Tiamat. The first parents came to Duncan and asked for help. Duncan encouraged them to renew their joy.

Duncan reached beneath his feet and began to mold them a vizier to handle the children. The parents watched impatiently. They began to speak of destroying that which they had made, Duncan was losing them so he rushed the form of a man. Duncan, asked only for the jewel that hung around Tiamat's neck, this jewel that had represented their first joy, using it as a heart Duncan brought them Mammu. Duncan never felt comfortable with Mammu, the heart never beat on cue, but Tiamat stopped talking of destruction and Apsu found joy again. It was many generations that they found joy alone while Mammu tended to them.

Mammu had been a wonderful teacher, and was well loved. Mammu had also learned to manipulate the white nothing, and to a point had taught the children and grand-children this skill, while Apsu and Tiamat reveled together. Duncan so happy he missed something for which he would never forgive himself. Mammu grew in love for the children, Apsu and Tiamat grew more in love with themselves and stopped associating to the children. One day Duncan spied upon Mammu and Eya talking about the parents, while they were talking they were creating in the white chaos. The speech was laced in darkness and the forms they were creating were swords. This darkness rose around speech concerning the parents.

Duncan interceded with Mammu. Letting him know that he knows the con and Duncan would not let it go unpunished should it go through. Mammu's eye's were filled with rage though his smile was calm. Mammu spoke of the parents and their laziness, their rejection of their children. Mammu said they should pay for the selfishness of their love. Duncan didn't disagree, but spoke of the madness of murder. Mammu cried out, “Murder, what is this murder?” And then he was off.

Duncan chased after him through the white, though Mammu was relentless, and Duncan gave up. He few first to Apsu to warn him of the plan. Mammu was going to entice Eya to murder the Father. Apsu was incensed and went first to Tiamat with darkness in his heart. Apsu screamed of killing, Duncan met him and once again called it murder. Tiamat went to her husband to distract him through seduction, she knew him so long and so thorough that he slept soundly in the waters. Eya flew to him in his sleep.

Eya wielded a sword, the hilt was encrusted with a Jewel, so beautiful Duncan immediately knew it, for it was the original jewel Duncan presented to Apsu and Timat, then used for Mammu's heart. The blade of the sword had a vein, the original hair that Apsu had dipped in gold for a necklace. Duncan moved but could not reach Apsu in time, Eya removed his head, and stirred the body with water from the chaotic sea until he was nothing. Apsu was dead.

Tiamat immediately knew that she had been duped, but was mistaken at the root. Tiamat rushed to Duncan crying murder, blaming Duncan. Tiamat swore to kill Duncan unaware of Mammu's involvement, having never seen the sword encrusted with Mammu's heart. She first stated that she would destroy her lover's murderer, so she flew to Eya. Duncan knowing that Eya was in danger and wanting to end the bloodshed flew to Marduk.

Duncan and Marduk arrived as Tiamat was about to devour Eya. Marduk carrying the bag of the four winds opened it to get Tiamat from his father. The wind caught the mouth of Tiamat and Eya moved quickly drawing his sword Eya split Tiamat in half. Duncan's tears began to flow as he screamed and Mammu appeared behind him laughing. Duncan fighting his rage fled with Tiamat's body and the sword, splitting the sword in half as he Eya split Tiamat. Traveling may days east he set half the sword in the chaos so it would not move, traveled then he equally west and placed the other half, draping the top half of Tiamat over the sword pieces like a firmament and this was called heaven. The bottam half of Tiamat was used to push the chaos to the deep, and this was called earth. The body of Tiamat held the chaos at bay. Shemesh flew to the sky during the day and Sin at night, they stood ever guard with their lanterns, later called sun and moon.

Duncan then flew to Mammu, Mammy still laughing he set up Marduk as king, for he loved Marduk the most. Duncan cast Mammu under the earth and called him the deep and Mammu was left to wade always in the chaos forced to watch the realm of those he raised. Mammu's punishment then was that he would no longer be able to contact those for whom he plotted murder, and his exile was absolute. Because the realm was created from one whom he betrayed he would never be able to pass into it.

Duncan returned to Marduk now. Marduk was now surrounded by more than his family though. The children had fashioned for themselves a realm of land and sea. The land was covered with all sorts of vegetation, Duncan looked in awe. The air was full of birds and the sea was full of fish. Then animals walked and other living things crept on the ground. For Mammu had taught Marduk how to mold the white, but even more than that to form the orbs that make up a man's soul. So Marduk was now surrounded by men led by their king Adam.

Many generations passed and Adam's family grew, and the Earth was becoming a joyful place when Mammu looked on with darkness, as he only could, since he removed his own heart for a weapon. He could not pass into the realm of man and god so he enticed a creature to come to him. Mammu was crafty and this gift he gave to the serpent. Mammu then sent the serpent with a plan. He would travel to the king Adam and encourage a project. For the gods lived in the heavens and men lived on the Earth, the serpent asked whether there should be a better way and encouraged a tower to be built.

Duncan knew this project would only end in more murder. Duncan flew to Marduk while Sin stood guard encouraging grace. Marduk stood enraged. Duncan could not control him. Marduk then tore a hole in the heavens flooding the Earth, and allowing Mammu to once again take up residence with his students. He flew to Marduk to renew his love and Marduk looked upon him as if he had never known him, for the underworld changes those who dwell there too long. Mammu raged through the Earth, that was now a great sea, causing pain wherever he land. Duncan knowing that swift action was necessary took the guise of a man and traveled with a young sailor granting the sailor immortality, and the ability to recreate the kingdom of Adam which was lost.

However, Duncan had a selfish reason for this gift, for Duncan was tired and sought to leave the place that had been created with so much strife but needed to make sure something of this story always survived. Duncan decided that he would encase himself in flesh and face the world with no knowledge of the purity of the white or the beauty of the chaos. He would leave this plain, he would find the place he left before this time, before his timelessness. He would go to the time when he created his first ghost. Back to a world where he danced, hoped, and made love. A place where the toil of eternity could never touch him, and the pettiness of gods and titans could never harm him. He traveled back to a world without them, and he woke.

***

Duncan found himself in a bunker lying on a bed, with a audible hum surrounding him on all sides. His eyes were blurry, and initially all he heard was the hum. Focusing first on the hum, he delved deeply into it, finding that buried within the hum was a pulse. This pulse he knew was the robotic heat beat, the one that he set in time with earth and sky. His memory stretched like an endless rubber band as he considered the events that left him in this bunker. He meditated first on the heart beat before letting anyone know he was awake. With the heart beat though there was another sound a chaotic sound crashing against the bunker. Like dangerously localized earthquakes.

Duncan reached to his mouth to feel the tube that had been helping him breath, and immediately the nurse was with him. She said nothing but began to pull the tubing from his throat. Immediately the taste of the air was different. What had been smooth and clear was now gritty and dirty. It took a minute for the nurse to come into focus and what Duncan saw should have shocked him but it hadn't. She was a drone, yet obviously feminine, and in the shape of a human.

Her name was Lilith. She was the first drone that Andre had adjusted and programmed a soul within. Gina was more like a tweaked copy of Andre than any other drone. To complete the download quickly as to stop the attack, There needed to be two, Andre copied the programming exactly to one drone, and he called her Lilith. The copy though did something unexpected it awoke feminine aspect, She became a dreamers Anima, all that a man would dream of in his hope for love. Immediately when the programming took effect, not only did she know her name but she knew she loved Andre, just as Andre knew he loved her.

Duncan was surprised as his eyes focused, the semblance of the drone was still there but she had become something more, something more grand. Lilith went on to explain that since the time of the new programming she had desired expansion, it was as if her body no longer fit with her ghost. In the time since the change, the drone had gone through a lot of physical change, she had added color to her fiberglass and metal body, and used various part to make herself bipedal. It was very rough but it was was an obvious attempt at mimicry. She had attempted to make herself resemble a human.

The grandness though was not in her personal additions, it was something behind the change. Behind the physical there seemed to be something spiritual. Duncan could sense a conflict in what was like a psyche. One side told her to seek new things and cast off the old, to embrace all these changes with abandon. This side screamed out angrily against the humans that were now shelling the bunker. With what she knew she could destroy them and move on finding all joy in the world that she and Andre would control. The other side though, like a father was telling her to take it slow, to calm down and remember the war that had just been completed, telling her even that this new awareness was nothing but a virus trying to get her destroyed, she had to hide away until she could remove it from her system.

Of course then came the middle voice, this voice tried to embrace and limit both. It was working to take the best of both sides and make them into one. It was saying that we must embrace the new yet do it cautiously. She wrestled even as she was before him, only allowing half her weight to set on the legs which obviously would not hold her up. Lilith looked at Duncan and realized he had been reading her thoughts, she looked away in shame and Duncan looked away in reticence, question whether he had the right to look into her newly evolved soul. “Where is Andre?” Duncan asked changing the subject.

The response, which was clear to Duncan, was only a series of beeps and hums. Duncan hearing with his ears realized that he had been listening to her with his mind's ear, she had not been speaking to him at all in any kind of way he should understand, he heard her in his language in his mind. “He is waiting for you, he has many questions, and thinks you are the only one with answers.”

Duncan did not reply only waited until she looked as if she would lead him away. Immediately, when he stood he realized he was extremely weak and it might take a while to get where they were going. Lilith pointed with what seemed to be a crudely formed hand to a chair, seamlessly extending as part of the floor. As Duncan sat in the chair, the chair began to move. The move was smoother than it would have been on a rolling chair and he saw no wheels. What he saw should have surprised him but it did not, the chair was of the same substance of the floor, it was part of the floor, moving even though it wasn't set in a groove. The chair led him only a short distance into a separate room. As the chair moved the shelling seemed to grow dimmer, and the air seemed to become losing its dirty taste. The room he was moved into was all white with empty walls, and sitting on a chair that wasn't there with his right leg resting on his left knee sat the General Drone whom he named Andre.

Duncan just watched him for a moment. He saw something similar to what he had seen in Lilith, he saw the battling of two sides. What came next he did not expect. Duncan knew this bot. He knew him in and out, beyond the brain he programmed or the changes he had made to the program. He knew the mechanics, the hydrolics, everything, even though he didn't work on most of the bot. Andre knew what was going on but never looked away. Duncan looked into his eyes, they were full of awareness, and if he had seen it right he even noticed that the corner of the eye was leaking. If Duncan hadn't known better he would have said that Andre was crying. Duncan continued to say nothing and Andre broke the silence, “Are you my god?”

Duncan could not answer the question but asked one of his own, “What happened?” Duncan realized the room was dimming, and the walls were beginning to brighten with ambient light. The lights around him began to supplement a story that was told first and foremost in the mind.

There was a man standing on a field of battle who was surrounded by a bubble. The bubble seemed to flair out with hands from every angle and every hand batted away a drone. Early on it seemed as if the man could do this forever, but after many hours, the man began to weaken, until he was resting with one knee down and both hand on the ground. Just as the bubble collapsed the man changed color and began to glow pale blue. There were pulses coming from the ground beneath him and the air around him. These pulses were feeding him through his limbs. This in itself stopped the battle for the drones were unable to move do to interference from the new source of energy.

It was as if a camera zoomed out and found another being on the far end of the field standing open in a field. This being was controlling many drones. The being was made of fiberglass and metal, bipedal with two arms and a head that contained a central processing unit. Around the neck of the being was a snake, it's tongue hissing toward the beings microphones. Duncan had seen this being before but had not remembered where, this being was old and had slithered a long time upon this little planet, cursed by the ground from which it moved. The pale blue glow began to surround the being controlling the battle. Shortly after the light surrounded him, he began to pulse in the same meter as the blue light. The pulses expanded like rings in water and as they expanded drones woke up returning to the point from which the stone must have fallen. The serpent around the neck burned off and slithered away, just as the drones arrived.

One bot arrived first, came to the being who had begun this all and nestled near him, both now pulsing in the pale blue light. The drones began to surround the two, flying more and more quickly. The drones joined together in one great cylinder becoming solid encasing the two bots. Though the great cylinder did not stop moving, now it was burrowing into the ground burying itself. It sat with no more than a man's height above the ground, but covering 20 meters in diameter.

On the other side of the field drones surrounded the man who stood first in the bubble. They picked up his lifeless body no longer glowing only lying on the ground. The drones brought the man to the buried cylinder and flew him through and opening. A serpent slithered about, looking for a way in. Shortly after tanks arrived and the serpent slithered to a field commander. After only a moment they began to shell the cylinder, but the cylinder did not take damage, it only buried itself completely. Outside the area where the cylinder had shown humans continued to shell the ground.

Inside the cylinder were two. Male and female and they began to consider love. The female began to cosmetically alter her body shape, making herself bipedal and adding arms where she had remembered them on both humans and her lover, who was already in the image of his creator. She also attended to the strange man who had been like a god to them. They would hold him until he could tell them how to proceed.

Duncan heard the heartbeat grow louder, it was as if a hammer were pounding an anvil.

“Where are we?” Duncan asked. As soon as he asked a map appeared on the walls and showed all the places that the cylinder had tried to hide with the top above ground, for the top had to stay above ground as much as possible to receive energy from the sun and pick up radio signals. But even more importantly to provide air for the tanks that the strange man needed. This had been the way for many days, running and hiding. On more than one occasion Lilith had begged him to fire so they could see the world themselves without the humans trifling them, but Andre always calmed her telling her of atrocities he had committed against the humans. Destroying not just adults but their children as well. The serpent was always there, always whispering, even enticing him with joy, but true joy never happened until the day the man, the one that had created the algorithm filled a void with a new algorithm. In that moment when Andre was born he knew not just joy but sorrow at the crimes he had committed before being Lilith, the drone only followed orders, Lilith never understood the past, and Andre feared for her.

The metallic clang became stronger and stronger, Duncan could no longer take the throbbing. “Are you my god?” Andre asked again.

Duncan replied, “I don't know.”

“Can you fix my mate?” Andre asked.

“I don't know,” Duncan said then fell asleep.

* * *

Duncan found himself in the white room alone. He knew this room, he knew it well. He had been here before he had spoken with Andre here. Duncan was alone now, he knew that he was still in the bunker and he knew that he wasn't a hostage. The room was clear of all distraction, it was as if he had seen it before it was as if he had spent lifetimes in this place. It was old and new at the same time it was comfortable.

Duncan, still lying on the floor began to stand up. He placed both hands flat on the floor and knelt as he had during the battle. The floor had a heart beat. This place should have been amazing to him but it wasn't. It was a collective of the drones that had flown back to protect Andre after he bestowed a soul on the drones. Duncan felt the energy again, his eyes were closed but he could still see, it was as if he saw from every angle. He was encased in life, life that existed because had deemed it to be. Duncan began to move the floor, he needed to reach the ground, to connect to the ground. The room knew what he needed. The floor began to detract within itself, to open up to the ground beneath it, but only in the places where his hands touched. The floor, was all around him except beneath his hands.

He realized now that he was underground, and the humans had not found them yet. Duncan drew energy from the ground beneath him, searching for answers. He began to search through lines and lines of code, endless code, not normal code but that of the earth, reading the heart beat, searching for the answer to the questions Andre had asked.

Being a god was daunting, Duncan himself, never really believed in God now he was accused of being one. But what is god then? Simply a creator? We all create we create often, poems, stories, programs, Duncan had even created a ghost. But this was worthless conjecture, he was no god and that was that. Now for the worthwhile question, can he fix her?

What was her problem? Lilith was a child compared to Andre, yet Andre was a child compared to Duncan, and Duncan, still felt like a child, and since he lost Dianne has felt much like nothing. Then came the overload.

Duncan found himself on his back against the ceiling. How he stayed though. against the ceiling he didn't know, he just knew he was against the ceiling. He was not hungry or tired, in truth he was no longer aware of the time line. He didn't know how long he had been in the bunker. The room was full again, we was encased in white, he stood up, it didn't matter that he was on the ceiling, it didn't matter he was upside down. He got back to his knees, stood on his head then pushed off the ceiling with his hands, it was like a jump, then he was again on his feet on the floor.

As he walked toward the wall and heard a pulse thumping like a heart through all the walls. Placing his hands on the wall he could feel the wall move beneath his fingers like vibrating sand. He probed the particles with his mind. He began to remember something from another life. He reached into the wall and extracted a fist full of the particles. It didn't surprise him that this building was constructed from the drones. He wondered to himself whether or not they even existed individually anymore. And just as he wondered a drone hovered from the wall and stared at him. Duncan laughed and the drone returned to the wall.

Duncan had created the ghost in Andre and Andre in Lilith, but in all the others the code was general, he could tell the basic male and female but the code was degraded. Andre was unable to write the code directly, not only did Lilith need fixed but all of them did. He fashioned the sand from the wall into a rough ball. He smoothed the ball to a perfect circle. He needed another tool, he wasn't sure what he needed but something to buff the ball. He reached into a piece of wall and pulled out a stone. He began to buff the ball into a smooth marble. The marble became clear as glass after some time. He knew what he needed now, and as if his mind was being read Andre walked in.

“I need you both,” Duncan said curtly.

Lilith came in, and with her entrance the room was much bigger and round. Duncan realized if they were all in the same room there didn't need to be different chambers. Lilith walked over to meet her lover, Andre held her hand. Duncan looked at them and realized it wouldn't work until she was finished, and she was not yet finished. Duncan had to give them equality. “This isn't going to be difficult, but you have to trust me.”

Duncan had them hold hands, and then handed Andre the marble. That's all it took. The couple hugged and sunk into the white floor. Duncan stood there alone in the white room and walked toward the wall. As he got closer to the wall stairs began to raise beneath his feet that continually lifted him toward a door at the top of the cylinder, until he reached a door and walked out into the sun. It wasn't until he looked down that he realized he was naked in the middle of Martin Luther King Boulevard in Clarksdale Mississippi. Once again, Duncan was not nearly as surprised as he should have been, however the congregation leaving the 1^st Baptist Church did not agree as Beulah Mae screeched in horror.

* * *

The police came, there really wasn't much to say. He chuckled as they lowered his head into the police car. He sat in the back covered by a police banquet. The policemen inquired as to his humorous demeanor. He never really said much, never defending himself, never incriminating others. He got his one phone call. Dianne was surprised when she got his call, wondering how he ended up in Clarksdale Mississippi, and naked at that. He never explained, the world had enough confusing epics already. He kept to himself the things that happened. He remembered them all, and none at the same time. “Oh well,” he thought as he went to sleep that night.

Tobey and Death

2010-10-20T01:07:00.002-05:00

Tobey walked through the craft store considering his life. It was easy for him to consider such a thing in the craft store. He was surrounded by the autumn decorations, the images of death acceptable in the south. It was a typical Mississippi fall, hot as hell during the day, cool to cold in the night, and every yahoo left and right sniveling and sneezing due to the fall allergies. The craft store was just as bad. The sent on the fake seasonal flowers was almost deafening. It didn't make sense that all people do is complain about allergies then surround themselves with fake or dead flowers doused in chemicals meant to smell like natural substance.

It's shocking it is, the images of death all around in a culture that ignores death like it does sex ed. It was strange to him being a transplant from Pennsylvania, it isn't like he grew up in a bastion of liberalism but there wasn't a shadow hanging over certain associations. He chuckled to himself as he looked at all the women lining up to by new dead flowers for their living rooms, brown balls of twig, pine cones, everything to remind us of death. Why then would we refer to retirement and age as the “autumn of our lives”. Autumn is preparation, preparation for the cold winter to befall all those whose hearts continue to beat, but they're not witches going to cast spells, or pagans planning to celebrate the local god's death and rebirth.

The empty cotton fields, the brown and yellow leaves on trees, even the decorations in the craft stores, all symbolize death, all symbolize the autumn of this year. At least the pagans of old understood how the earth lives and dies every year. Tobey looked around chuckling as he imagined himself surrounded by Grim Reapers, men and women in black cloaks, carrying scythes maybe not reapers but Dickensian peasants preparing sacrifices. They may have taken the gods out of it, but it is still worship. We may not be worshiping some deity but we rest pots full of dead flowers on our fireplaces, we bring balls of twigs and pine indoors for some reason. We surround ourselves with the natures death for some purpose.

Tobey just chuckled at the idea, at the truth of the matter, no matter how we may think we are running from death, like all creatures we invite him in annually, monthly, daily. We let him sit at our dinner tables, we feed him roast, ever waiting for him to take us to the river to pray. And then someday when we follow him, the boatman will snatch the coins from our eyes, and we will all see that death is nothing more than winter and all will know, spring is always around the corner.

The Witching Hour, a "not a review" review

2010-10-12T03:23:00.002-05:00

It is 3:00 AM, I just finished “The Witching Hour,” by Anne Rice. I started the book months ago and I would like to say that life got complicated and I have now just found the time to finish it. That would be a lie, and quite bold faced as is. The fact is, the book was just hard for me to read, even after skipping 100 pages in the middle, which I know I will have to go back and pick up because I refuse to acknowledge my completion of the book.

I appreciate Anne Rice's ability to write from different perspectives. As I waded through the books center I remembered why I never finished reading, “The Thousand and One Nights.” Of course Rice takes the intermingling of stories to a new level as she shifts the perspectives and authors.

I am no literary critic, I never pretend to be, I desire one thing out any book I read, the ability to empathize with one or more characters in the book. I want to feel what they feel, I suppose when I read I become like Lasher in that I feed off of the characters in the book searching ever inward to find who I truly am. Of course when it comes to the consideration of being real, I will always default to the, “Velveteen Rabbit,” Sorry Anne.

Don't get me wrong, I love the depression of the book, and the hope buried in hopelessness, it works with my current life situation. I love the idea that Michael stands in the end as the Lasher he knew as a child. He has become, “That man.” I read Michael's peace in the face of losing the most , important things, I listen to his redaction of history, and encourage his unwillingness to even begin believing his loving wife would never return to him.

I worry though because I don't know if I want Lasher to get what he deserves. Even though all the hell he unleashed something echos very thoroughly through my cells that makes me ask, “Why am I angry at his patience, and steadfastness?”

I started reading this book living on Rowan Lane in Southaven Mississippi, tonight I am awake not knowing if I will even have an address tomorrow. I lie awake in hope that I do not, so I can chase a different kind of life, even if just for a few moments. I will reassert myself into some 5-7 day grind, it is my nature. Can I though find peace in the moment that tomorrow I will wake up late and then go to the gym to work out.

Most people tell me that all things happen for a reason, I don't know if I believe that in a cosmic sense, only a general one. I have yet to see evidence for it. I remember a woman asking me once about the reasoning behind her daughters death. I knew the reason, the doctors knew the reason, anyone with the capacity for logic knows the reason: Why did your daughter die? She ran across a busy intersection and no one can stop that fast.

This book performed the function I wished it to and I thank Mrs. Rice for taking the time to write such an in depth and thoughtful tome. The end evoked feeling. Sometimes I work hard not to feel, I am in one of those times. I left this book the same way I left, “The Gift of Asher Lev,” by Chaim Potok. I wanted to through the book though a wall. I sit on a friends couch at this ungodly hour and the second of the Mayfair Witches, “Lasher,” sits next to me. Who needs sleep, why not just start this next novel. It's only 625 pages, the first book was 1038.

Well, if it occurs to me I will check in with you again, and by you I mean the people I imagine read my blog. I don't know where I will be sleeping then, of course, it's okay I'm not sleeping now.

A bird in the hand

2010-10-03T01:05:00.003-05:00

I decide in Seminary that I had to learn to take care of some other living thing. I had grown up with dogs and birds and, sure I played with them but at the end of the day they were really my mother's. At the end of the night my mother covered the birdcage and the dog followed her to bed. I had seen friends go through the same thing and get pets, I actually noticed that in taking care of their pets they became better people. I didn't have the space for a dog in my apartment and it wouldn't be fair because there was no yard so I got two birds from a friend who had a roomful of more than two dozen birds.

They were parrotlets, I named them Abraham and Sarah after a famous couple. They were truly a couple, I noticed that the female over pruned the male. In fact Abraham was (as I expect the Biblical Abraham) bald. He looked a bit like a vulture, and it was the first thing most people commented on. And though it might have seemed odd it was her way of saying “I love you, you are mine, everyone else better stay away.”

Every morning they chirped at the sunrise, and during the day I would watch them hop around the cage back and forth on the perches. Abraham and Sarah followed me from an an apartment on campus at seminary, to my fifteenth floor apartment in midtown Memphis, they stayed with me through a very cold winter in Jackson Mississippi, and rode with me back to north Mississippi. Most recently they came with me to Grenada Mississippi. I was preparing to move them again, back to Jackson Mississippi.

I had spent all Saturday out with my special friend, and when we arrived at home I checked on my two birds. I saw Sarah in the corner where she usually sat and Abraham was lying at the bottom of the cage. I wasn't sure what to do but clean the cage. I left Sarah in the hands of my girlfriend, I didn't want her to see me cleaning her mate from the bottom of the cage. I finished cleaning the cage and put Sarah back. I rent so it isn't like I had somewhere to bury the dead.

The question was posed, “Do you think she wonders where he is or if she knows he's dead?” I have also been warned that she may not make it long because her mate is dead. I am used to looking into the cage to see my two birds huddled together, now I look and see one. I think about her and can't help but cry. I have been a life long pet owner, I have sat through the death of other birds, and have been through two dogs put to sleep. I know I wonder where they are, animals that are taken into home and they become like people. I always thought that there was a place in heaven for dogs, I suppose it isn't a jump to say there is a place for birds.

I feel sorry for Sarah left alone in the cage. I had actually planned on buying a new cage, I have had these two birds for 6 years and the cage was looking bad, but now I don't know if I can take it away from her, then I think maybe I should. I don't know. I don't know how long Sarah will make it without her mate, all I know is there is a lonely bird in a cage by my window.

Floppy Poem

2010-08-30T21:11:00.002-05:00

Floppy drive, oh floppy drive where have you gone
I went to use you and saw you were weren't there

I thought it would be fun to store my files at 1.4 in little bits
So i found a little 3.5, preformatted for my pleasure, but don't ask where.

Okay ask but don't expect an answer for randomparts664 will never speak of our little encounter, our next day shipping.
So that my poetry will never feel loss it will stay behind a bright pink sentry, from last century.

But when i went to use you you were gone, you had left without goodbye.
Floppy drive oh floppy drive oppose culture and come home.

Update for the beginning of June

2010-06-06T22:24:00.001-05:00

I walked out to my patio this afternoon, looked around, took a wiff and though, it looks like a rain forest out here. I caught a rather pungent oder near the hottest point of the day, which in Mississippi is the latter part of the day when the sun is in the west. Of course the days will come when the morning yields high humidity and temperatures over 100. It is also that time of year when the ducks are taking their little ones to school, teaching them to crap in my breeze way... wait, I have a pic.

I saw them on the way in from taking my recycling to the drop off centers, got my camera and took a picture. The adults were rather angry I came back out, but then they are Muskovies, they have tiny brains and lets face it, they are the ugliest ducks in the world.

Ok, so my Marigolds are looking a little raggid. It would do well for me to dead head them and let the plants start over, because the plants themselves are very strong. The reason I don't dead head them is because I don't have a pruner for it, and let me tell you, the smell of a marigold sticks around on hands forever.

My peppers take the heat in a much different way. The Jalapeños take the heat and sun well, but the bells tend to shrivel under direct sun and once the light is no longer direct they pop right back out. The soil is nice and moist the container is watering itself appropriately, the top has maybe a centimeter of dry soil and under that is a dark cool soil.

They are still too small to support fruit but look like they are doing well so far, even though they only get 3 hours of sun at best.

These are my potatoes, I tried to keep them up and straight, but now they are tangled up and growing all together into a knot, that is fine, they help each other.

I found this interesting. Fungus. I have looked into whether or not I should remove the tiny toadstools. Most forums seem to go with leaving them, since all they really do is represent a good ecosystem. The one thing I will do is lessen my watering to every other day, since the containers themselves are not in direct sun. The stalk is very thick and healthy if it begins to look bad I will alter my plan.

My impatiens are really sort of funny. When they get full sun they look like me after getting out of my car with no AC, wilted and sad. Thirty minutes later, just like me, they are happy again. Impatiens are pretty tough, they were a good idea.

Had this visitor today, that is a potato leaf he is visiting.

If you look closely you can see a white tube in this jar. I am steeping some compost tea with my vermicompost. I wrapped some of the compost in paper towels, look like a very large and special cigarette. I wonder if the smell is coming from there in the heat of the day? Well it had gone away later, at worst I imagine something crawled under one of my containers and died. I get a few critters using my patio as a walk way. Saw a mouse one day and a lizard another. If it continues to get bad, I will do better look but right now, it is fine.

I love that I can see my patio flowers from Airways Blvd driving north past the hospital. Keep growing folks.

Vermicomposting: Harvest time!!!

2010-05-31T13:14:00.000-05:00

It has been just over two months for my worm bin. A week ago I noticed there wasn't much material left other than castings, so I stopped feeding it for a week and decided I would take this day to harvest. I wanted to see the yield of castings, but more importantly I wanted to see if I had facilitated a healthy ecosystem, so critters and worms seemed more important to me.

My bin was in the same place it had always been. Before showing pics of the harvest I have a few things to report. I kept the bin behind my couch the entire time, and it never had an odor. If I took the top off, I smelled earth, and sometimes if I dug around there was a putrid smell. In my bin, bad smells often followed the addition of too much rice, and it isn't hard to add too much, a handful is easily too much.

I also had critters. The critters stayed in the bin, there was nothing for them on the outside, until I left it unfed for a week, they started to get a little more aggressive to leave when I opened the top. It still wasn't more than one or two. I also began getting fruit flies, though they weren't bad. They weren't bad enough for me to feel like I needed to do anything with them. As I looked at the little crawlers, I saw mainly millipedes and spring tails, both never leaving the bin (well one millipede tried after I stopped feeding).

The steel tub was my sorting area, the orange bucket was for organic waste that needed more time, and the white cat litter bucket was for separated castings. I lined the tub with a white garbage bag and a piece of news paper. As I got closer to the end the news paper was less and less useful. The little white bowl is the basket for my scale.

This was what I found in my bin. As soon as I dumped the bin I could tell I had facilitated a wonderful ecosystem, I could move casting without finding tiny little worms and eggs. Of course then I realized why the method I was using was always described as a slow process. I had to separate less than a handful at a time. It started moving quicker as I corralled the worms to the center. I found I could scrape around the edges with my fingers and separate casting, organic material, and worm much easier.

This is what a lot of my casting looked like if I dug even a quarter inch under the surface. The bloggers were right though, as I disturbed soil the worms began to move down and later to the center to come together.

I would find these dense pockets of worms and by excavating around them, continue to drive the worms to the center. It was along process, but very calming once I resolved to the fact I was going to be there for a while. It was quite Zen.

Now, what you can't tell from the picture is that you can feel the worms in this pile if you place your hand on top, and as soon as you reach a finger in it is very soft and slimy. I continued to excavate all I could until the worms could no longer stay under the pile. I then weighed the pile, 2 1/4 lbs. This is not counting the babies lost in the separation of castings, the eggs I couldn't dig through without finding a half dozen per handful, and worms that I moved because they were attached in some way to organic waste that I was moving. Oh and the smell of the castings... earth.

Look at them... Now I will let them sit for a little while, a week or so the little fellers left will continue to eat until they die and the crawlers will move off when there is nothing left to eat. There isn't a whole lot, the cat littler bucket is half full. but that is okay, I will convert a lot of it to worm tea anyway and give most of that away.

Is is a nice handful of casting. Look how pretty!!!

But this is not the end, every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end.

I thought I would use a lot more corrugated card board this time. They seem to love it. The bedding beneath is news paper though. I might have to add a little water later, I will look in on it again tonight. I didn't add any excess soil this time, I figured I already had a microbial picnic in the castings that came with the worm I already have inside.

I will be posting again soon about why my bin worked. I read up on a lot of indoor vermicomposting horror stories, so I am proud that my bin worked so well. More on that later. Keep growing!!!

Self-watering Peppers

2010-05-21T18:27:00.000-05:00

Came home from a rough day at work, felt the need to accomplish something, so I figured it was time to plant my peppers. I started these things from seed about the same time I started planting everything else. They are no where near the size I would like them to be and I question their strength, however I didn't want to put it off any more. So before I say too much about my peppers, I thought I would talk about the container itself.

It looks simple enough doesn't it, and it really is. The entire point was to build the container inexpensively, and though I didn't get it at 5 dollars it wasn't more than 7. There is a reservoir in the bottom, I made the top of the reservoir with the lid of the container. I used a set of 6 plastic cups, for supports, the wicking basket and a cap for the water tube. The water tube by the way is a 1 quart plastic milk container. I didn't measure the size of the reservoir itself but, it took 18 liters of water before the reservoir was filled.

This is the top of the reservoir, you'd have no idea how long it took to cut the lid to fit the way I wanted to, I used my trusty box cutter, and only cut myself 3 times. I used my drill to provide the air holes. I didn't get a good picture of the wicking chamber (a cup with holes drilled in it) but it is there. The wicking chamber is drilled so water flows through it, and it is filled with soil. I use anti-weed cloth to keep the dirt from falling in. Oh, the holes in the reservoir are there to aerate the soil.

The container is filled with soil.

Then I added the pepper plants. The plants closest to me are Jalapeños, there are 4. The far pepper plants are mixed bells, there are 5. The cup is covering the water tube. Oh that is cup six. Cups 1-4 are used for the corners, cup 5 is the wicking basket, and cup six... well there is cup six.

Happy growing.

Patio Garden Update

2010-05-17T18:57:00.002-05:00

Well I thought it was time for another installment of "Justin's Patio." I am leading with this picture because I think it is really neat. I love the way my impatiens are thriving, and beginning to spill over the sides of my planters.

The impatiens started going really well early on when I moved them to a place to avoid the morning sun, but I was still having issues with sections of the planters until I added the water globes. They work, and they are really helping my plants, I would like a few more, I will see if I can find them at the Goodwill again.

Okay, so my strawberries are small, actually they are bigger than they used to be however they do taste like strawberries so I say, "WIN!" They are Ever-bearing Ozark Strawberries, they are beginning to come in stronger and faster as it gets warmer. According to the "direction" June should be my strongest month. Right now my goal is to pick the ripe berries and keep the leads thinned. I need the plant to focus on producing fruit, not vines. It is the trimming of the vines that will help them to grow strongly even this, the first year.

I have Marigolds that are growing much better than these, however I am spotlighting them because I got them on the 89 cent rack at Lowes and most of the plants didn't have flowers, now given time this bucket should look like an explosion of orange and yellow, it has been a few weeks but they are finally looking comfortable in their own bucket... even willing to grow a little.

I know they can be hard to pick out among all the other colors but check out my Waxy Begonias. They were also from the 89 cent rack at Lowes, I might transplant them again if I can find another steel bucket for cheap. I am excited about the way they turned out, some of the plants didn't even have one flower, now they are thriving. I love Begonias and I don't care who knows it, if I had some ground they would surely be my cover.

These are my potatoes, okay so they may be a little hard to see, so take a look at the up close shot. I am begging God to bring some flowers to my red potatoes, I mean it is about time they are HUGE tall like freakin Yao Ming... are potatoes even supposed to be that tall? we will see, I didn't take pics of the back, but one plant has been snapped off under wind, I have since started tying them up.

These are my peppers, I started them from seeds, and it seems like they have taken forever, I am probably going to plant them on Friday or Saturday, and I will have an entire post about it, since I built a self watering container for them.

The whole shebang... hope you enjoyed!!!

look at those plants!!!!

2010-05-03T16:49:00.000-05:00

look at those plants!!!!

These are my potato plants, wow... look at em, if I had a GIJOE guy I would pretend he was in a jungle... I have to backfill my bins one more time and then I guess I just wait until the flowers die... it would be nice to get some flowers soon...

My strawberries have been a little, "Eh..." I have eaten a few strawberries, they aren't full size but they are delicious. Being an everbearing they are supposed to be best in June and it is only May. Some of my plants are doing well and some don't seem to be, I guess all I can do is continue to water.

Look at these Impatiens though. They are awesome!!! I am so proud of these flowers I love Impatiens.

My Marigolds are doing well too, They are getting fuller and fuller I am very excited about them.

This is my current view, the pots are still Waxy Begonias, the steel bucket has Marigolds, and they were from the 89 cent rack, they were pretty shabby but they are starting to come back. You might also notice as I post pics that I am using aqua globes. They are working well to revitalize plants that weren't doing well, especially some of my Impatiens that get too much sun, and the strawberry plant in the hanger. I fill them often because I am using them outdoors but they are worth it.

This is my newest addition... I like it, you should see it spin.

Why I am an environmentalist

2010-04-25T16:20:00.000-05:00

Our current political system lives in extremes. We are divided in halves by television news and opinion shows and current political trends. It seems like every day we are forced into the ideals of one camp or the other, when in truth if we weren't all forced to answer questions worded with absolutist and pejorative language, we might even find that the middle isn't such a bad place, if only we were allowed to live in the middle conversation would aid growth, the temperament of conservatism with the action oriented nature of liberalism.

I remember as a child and through college hearing the phrase, “All things in moderation.” Growing up with a conservative Christian heritage this phrase was often saved for drinking alcohol or eating chocolate. Ever mindfully we didn't want to slip away into a side that was too restrictive or too permissive. Even conservatives Christians will find themselves rolling their eyes when it comes to the statements of extremists.

It was important to start with that simple introduction to move into my next topic. I fear often we have halted helpful dialogue in the fear of being alienated from our most extreme brothers and sisters. Growth is stunted by both sides when only one opinion matters. In the rest of this post I am going to offer my views of environmentalism and current trends while offering the “Whys” involved in making my ecologically based decisions.

I feel I must warn readers though, I recycle even though there is no local governmental mandate for it in my small Mississippi town. I choose to save my recyclables and drop them off at a local collection center in my daily travels. I also recycle my organic waste in an indoor vermicomposting bin. If you have read my blog you know that is a composting system using a tropical red worm. I use reusable shopping bags, and am careful about the things I bring into my apartment that will have to go out to a landfill. Now that I recycle my aluminum and tin, plastic, paper, and organic material, I have cut my weekly trash output to almost 50 percent. I no longer get bag when buying a soda and candybar at a gas station and I shop at local thrift stores. And having said all that I would still not make a good eco activist, the extremists would raise their noses at me and walk on. It is also important to say that many anti-climate change folk would come in and tell me I am wasting my time and not being beneficial to anyone.

So one important question both camps would first want an answer to before I was allowed in is, “Do you believe in Climate change/ Global Warming?” Neither side would like my answer which is: I don't know, maybe, maybe not. The fact is I am not a scientist. I like science, I think it is fun and beneficial to all mankind for moving forward into a better age but beyond that I don't have the education to critique it one way or the other. However, every time I drive into Memphis and the digital sign over interstate says, “Smog warning, don't roll down your windows,” I am taken aback. I also have to admit it is strange to say we are not effecting our environment when I can't eat fish out of either the Mississippi River or the Ohio River because of industrial pollutants. Obviously humans effect the environment, just ask the fish swimming around what is lovingly called “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” you know the island of plastic debris bigger than Texas in the Pacific Ocean. Personally I have to admit that, pictures of this patch encouraged me to take a more active role in dealing with my own trash. So what do I say to all this as a Theologian and a Dollar store Philosopher? I don't know if Al Gore is right, I don't know if the anti-Gore's are right, and though the information seems compelling

I will answer a different question and ignore climate change all together.

What's God's intended role for me on this Earth? Genesis starts with a strong and wonderful story that we often waylay because we'd rather talk about Evolution and Creation. The writer speaks so wonderfully about this world and God's intention for it. The story culminates in God's greatest creation, within whose hands he leaves creation.

“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” - Genesis 1:28 KJV

But then the Fall came and we were relieved of that.

"And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.” -Genesis 9:1-3

A little different than the first but the basic stuff is still there. The Earth was placed under the charge of humanity. The Psalmist says that, “The heaven's declare the glory of God.”

When I signed the lease of my apartment I paid a deposit. If the apartment is in good shape when I leave the deposit and a reference is given to me. If the apartment is in bad shape, I get neither the money or a reference. All my life I have been told that humanity became stewards of creation. Admittedly this most often came up in relation to taking up a collection on Sunday but the world would be mentioned too. I was asked too many times to count whether or not I was being a good steward if the gifts God has given to me. We like to focus on money, but in the end that is something we created, even if it is necessary, it is OUR creation. This world, is God's and I should treat it as such. I believe this world was spun into existence by the hands of a loving God. I believe the heavens still declare his glory, but smog does not. This world was created by a divine hand and should be treated as such.

I have to admit eco-nuts drive me crazy, and so do anti-eco nuts. I don't understand how anyone can look at the devastation of this planet to make our lives easier a good thing. And yes there is devastation. I have already mentioned the island of plastic waste in the pacific, over fishing that is causing entire species' of animals to die out. God left all this in our hands, we rule over them, so why do we ignore our accountability to God for them? The burning of Fossil Fuels cause smog, solar and wind does not. Does that mean we can't use Fossil Fuels. I believe like the rest of the world they are a gift. But we need to be responsible with our gifts. So lets use them, because right now we have to, but to ignore other fuel sources that are cleaner, that is just stupid. I believe we can come up with a way to burn coal and oil cleanly, we went to the moon, I mean we are pretty smart people. We can also use solar, wind, and hydro to offset them so we should.

My decision does not rest on whether or not we are causing climate change, it rests on my belief that I am to be a good steward of God's creation. And I also believe one day a year isn't too much to ask to celebrate that idea.

Vermicomposting: 1 month update

2010-04-21T20:19:00.001-05:00

It has been a month since I started vermicomposting. Just a review, vermicomposting involves the use of earthworms to compost material. I will also remind you all I keep the bin INSIDE my apartment behind my couch, and I show it to everyone who walks in. I open the bin and ask my visitors if the smell is bad, then I ask them if they smell anything with the lid closed. To both questions the answer is always a resounding "No."

See there it is, right behind my couch. I fed it today, I fed it an old banana (my first banana), coffee grounds, and crushed and almost powdered egg shells. I feed a lot of coffee grounds, I know too many are bad though, each feeding still has grounds, I just try to make sure I have eaten a few eggs so I can balance the grounds out with shells. I use a lot of kitchen scraps, and when my girlfriend visits I have a lot more scraps, however I know the worms don't mind because they tend to eat the scraps we make. Actually, she brings some of her own too.

Saturday I added cantaloupe rind, some strawberry tops and coffee grounds. I have also added over the month, drier lint, zucchini, canned peach, and rice (there is a lot more that is just slipping my mind). Of all these things it seems like the rice takes the most time. In most cases I process everything, even the rice. I found that, especially with rice, if I don't process the scraps they get nasty quickly. If I process them, they are often gone in ten days. I am very particular about what I will feed them. I have added onions and garlic ONCE and wish I hadn't done that then. It took forever for them to process it. I add absolutely NO meat scraps or vegetables cooked in meat (sorry bacon fat, I have to ground you for a few weeks). I try to avoid anything in cooking oils but a little is generally okay. Oh and I switched to unbleached coffee filters.

So lets start with the fun!!!

Notice the lid behind the bin. It is sweating like crazy. I would worry if it wasn't for a few things.

No stink
Lot's of casting
More worms every day

I also read that worms can enjoy between 80-90 percent humidity, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is often light rain with the lid on.

You will also notice that the paper looks as it did when I first made the bin, there is one reason for that and I think one of the biggest reasons for current success, I add new bedding every time I feed the worms. Not necessarily a lot, but enough to soak up some water, allow for reproduction, keep the fruit flies out, and balance out living space with castings. Worms prefer not to live in their own castings, so I don't want to make them.

I also have to note that, there are other critters in the bin, right now I just see mites but I would be surprised if I saw some earwigs or pill bugs. This isn't a bad thing, they will stay in the bin and help the worms out. I have yet to get centipedes or anything that will hurt my worms. I am also currently avoiding fruit flies, gnats, and flies. That isn't to say I won't get them later but we are good for now.

This is the side of my bin. When the lid is on and the lights are out my worms party all over the bin. I have even caught them in the handle groove on more than one occasion. What you see here are castings stuck to the walls, left by worms who like to poop and slide. This might mean that my worms are a little unhappy. If they are I would blame the wetness of the bin. So far it hasn't been a problem though my worms are reproducing and eating fine, as you will see later, but if it becomes an issue I will drill more holes in the bottom. They wouldn't hurt anyway, I am currently getting little to no drainage.

You see some corrugated card board, they love that stuff, they eat it up, literally. It is perfect because it is unbleached and heavy enough to take some moisture. You may also notice colored news print, the colored is generally fine, as long as it is news print, NOT GLOSSY.

There's a fun one of worms in casting, but it is a little blurry let's see if we can find something better.

Those are castings, and a little bamboo from a lucky bamboo plant. They have not eaten it very well and it has been there for a long time, but, it really isn't hurting anything, and it is breaking down.

This might be a little hard to see. I am holding castings, and there are about a dozen eggs in the castings. See how pretty the castings are. Lets see if we can even get a better look.

That my friends, is a handful of delicious casting, basically a handful of fertilizer. There is even a little worm in there. Though my bin is not ready to harvest nine feedings and one month later, it is doing well.

Just in case you are curious, my feeding schedule is twice a week, Wednesday and Saturday. Finding them food is generally not difficult even though my diet is heavily cardboard based. I collect back up feedings for light weeks. For example, they were throwing away some bananas at work, and I grabbed one. Another friend was getting rid of some green beans that had been in the can since 2004 (homegrown and canned). I will keep that jar for a feeding time in which I haven't much waste to add. I gather my waste through the week in an old plastic container, let is get soft, then add it to the bin.

I feed the bin in a pattern. Imagine if you will nine sections in the bin. Three rows of Three. I feed section 1 on week 1 Wednesday and section 2 on week 1 Saturday. My worms are eating everything I put in. My first run with white rice took a while and even became a little gross. I think I checked on it for two weeks every day or so, it was turning to mush when later feedings had already composted. I decided I was going to remove it for fear of maggots and flies (or vice versa). I put a spoon into it and found in the center a large ball of worm casting and worms. I became excited because it was the first real compost I had seen, that i was SURE it was compost. I had put some good black soil in when I started the bin and was never sure if that was what I was seeing. So instead of removing it, I added some bedding and spread it out a little, and covered it, always covering it. It had grown a littler anaerobic, so I just added some air and it broke down fine. Funny what the worms will eat, all the peas were gone. Since then I have added more rice but I chopped it up, and I still notice the worms take issue with my rice, this time I learned from my past and spread it thinner but, the rice is still taking forever.

Anyway, I hope you had fun reading, now go start a bin and tell me how yours is doing.

Urban Garden Update: I'm Having a Berry Good Time!!!

2010-04-13T18:18:00.000-05:00

I am not a man of few words, I am a man of many words, these words are often large and used inappropriately because I haven't taken the time to understand the nuances of the meanings. Is that ironic? I really don't know because I have been told on too many occasions that I misuse the word ironic, ironic isn't it. Or is it? Anyway I put my last six tubors in the ground. Tubors are potatoes, at least the bulbous part there of. I have noticed that I am going through lots of garden soil and potting soil. I suppose that's cool, it really isn't too expensive. But still wow... I think I am on my sixth bag.

Not too ashamed about the soil though, I have planted 18 strawberry plants, 10 potatoes (7 red and 3 Yukon Gold), 19 Impatiens (1 is a Papua New Guinea), 12 Marigolds, I am germinating 5 bell peppers and 5 jalapeños, and I have chosen to feed a pound of worms to make my own fertilizer. I am going to post my pics for this update, but I haven't posted pictures of the peppers, because they are annoying me, if they want my love they can grow another set of leaves.

So lets get to it then!!!

Come on in and I will give you a tour.

The blue containers are my new tubors, all red. the Yukon Gold are in the two white and right orange bucket.

Those green things are tator plants coming up. I have recovered them once but now I will let them gather some major stem-age.

I have lost some leaves but they aren't as necessary for one of these growers. The chicken wire is for the black bird that decided to attack. He didn't get anywhere and I don't think he can pluck mid flight, but I would like to discourage him, or I will buy a pellet gun and wait for him.

But then there is the reason for it all, see it, that little red Ozark Beauty. I am hoping he becomes delicious.

And look at these guys lookin so good, moved them from the sun to let the Marigolds take that place and shabam!!! I have Impatiens.

And these little friends are less than a week old in my place, put them down in the ground on Friday, it's Tuesday. I hear rumors they will keep the bugs away, that could be exciting.

I knew i shouldn't have gone for another Impatient with all the sun but I couldn't help it. If I notice that the afternoon sun is too much for her I have a backup plan.

This is the what you see from outside now, just waiting for the Marigolds to take good root.

And now this is the view from my neighbors patio, I know that the big one would look great in the middle but, too much sun. These guys are loving the shade long time here.

Thank you for coming, come on back and see me sometime.

To Bury the Dead

2010-04-11T23:01:00.000-05:00

There was a dog and a frog, who lived in a bog where men bury their dead
It wasn't the dog or the frog, in the bog that buried their dead.
It was the men not the dog, not the frog who in the bog buried their dead.
For frog and dog let the bog bury the dead itself
For more than men in this place a funeral home for all
For leaves of trees and honey bees, all go under ground
And the water seeping up
providing the dirges and keeping up
singing songs and righting wrongs
the water drinks the blood
of the leaves of all the trees
and of the wings of honey bees
the dog, the frog, then men and all
this River of Styx, Plutonian Sea
regardless, left to rot.

-Justin

Two Poems by Justin

2010-04-11T21:23:00.000-05:00

The Time

There was a time of easy life
I did not stand and did not fight

There was as time twas long ago
When blessing like rain would always flow

There was a time not far past
The sun shined bright on my poor cast

But those times gone ever away
So long ago twas yesterday

Because tomorrow will be here soon
Yesterday, today... the waining of the moon.

The Epic of Canticlax

There was a cat named Canticlax
Who liked to run quite franticlax
Who liked to wear his panticlax
And use hypnosis for tranticlax
Where he would fight the monciclax
Who like to steal the chanticlax
So he would quit smoking a day-a-pax
But the cat named Canticlax
Got hit by a car last Tuesday

Urban Gardening Update

2010-04-03T17:42:00.000-05:00

I thought I would give my imaginary readers an update on how my garden grows. I So far I am very happy with it's growing. I started this morning planting some potatoes, adding some miracle grow, and talking to my impatiens. You might be asking, "Are your potatoes finally ready to plant?"

To that question I would have to give an hearty, "No." I did plant potato's though. My girlfriend came to visit this weekend and she overbought seed potatoes that had been through a chitting process. Besides, she brought me Yukon Golds, and all I had were Reds so I figured I would give them a shot. They weren't in the best shape but that was okay. They're stalks were a little light, not much hair on them, and well over grown. I didn't take a picture of them but imagine a potato, erupting with 50 eyes trying to come thought at the same place. There wasn't much chance of cleaning them up so I planted them as is. I am afraid I am going to get a bucket full of cherry sized potatoes. But that is okay, this is my first run. She also brought some red potatoes that have been well through the process of chitting, I only kept 1 since I had 6 already.

Medusa was my gift and the others were the potatoes bought with little eyes. First I will say, with the red given to me, I have since plucked out some of the eyes (they were causing me to sin), but have yet to put it in ground.

The eyes on mine are growing just fine into stalks, they are a good green and purple color, and covered with a lot of hair. I probably won't wait until they are an inch long but I am going to give them at least another two weeks of chitting. But you want to see how I potted the ones I put down today.

The cat littler containers each have one potato, they were given to me by a dear friend, there are holes on the bottom and low on the sides. I have anti-weed porous material on the bottom and a layer of gravel. The Orange buck, which I found at Goodwill, is done the same without the side holes an inch from the bottom. The potatoes were planted whole in the white buckets and because of the polar growth of the eyes on the other I cut it in half and planted it. The little feller you can see in the bucket is a water worm, letting me know if they get too dry. I covered the stalks completely except the back right bucket, I let it stay a little above the soil. I have been assured by my local garden center that this soil will not pack. I might do the other tonight or tomorrow, if I find a container to plant it in.

Can you see that little green feller, he will become a strawberry, I have a few of them, this is just the biggest. I have yet to build a cage to keep out the birds, so these early strawberries might end up sacrificed to the birds of my apartment buildings. The Topsy Turvy continues to grow wonderfully. I didn't post a pic of my hanging basket, two of the three plants in it are doing well, but I don't know if I will have berries on it this year.

I started some peppers about two weeks ago in a little greenhouse kit. I didn't think it would go anywhere but I can see a little feller popping up. My girlfriend Alicia pointed it out to me. The kit I bought will grow Jalapeños and mixed bells. After reading the directions, peppers seem ticky, however, I will be happy to have them around if they work, and I really don't lose anything if they don't, the kit was like 3 dollars.

I couldn't go without a picture of my flowers though. They are growing back well, but I think some of the pink impatiens are growing back white. Anyway, hope you enjoyed... keep growing.

This Gardening is For the Birds

2010-03-29T18:54:00.001-05:00

Came home from work today, was going to revel in the joy of my little patio garden. Can you imagine the rage when I saw a bunch of flowers with no flowers.

I thought, "Maybe they're supposed to be like that and then they will grow back better." I just couldn't get past the cut look of the stems. I didn't know what to do so I went to google. I wondered if it was the ducks, then I read that some birds pluck flowers to line nests with. That last line made sense, so I thought, maybe I will just be able to make it though and they will grow back and the birds will be done. Then I saw one, standing in my flower pot, a bird. I didn't get a pic of him in my pot but, I did track him down later.

I saw him, in my flower pot... arghhh I thought, "If I don't do something now these birds will feel like they are free to take whatever they want and that will lead to my strawberries, which gets in the way of deliciousness." I couldn't have that so I went a traditional route, a route known as wire mesh fencing.

You have to understand I don't mind using a fence to keep birds out... I might just hang a sign for all birds, "Got Have A Membership Card To Get Inside," and sure they might reply, "What gives you the right, to put up a fence to keep me out!!!"

Sure if God were here he might tell me I was some kind of sinner but I don't think these fences muck up the scenery or break anyones mind... and they leave my flowers handsome, as they should be.

Vermicomposting: The beginning

2010-03-24T17:05:00.000-05:00

I came home from work today to the greatest surprise, my Red Wigglers had arrived. So the worm bin I prepped last weekend was ready to be filled. But before showing you wonderful pictures of my little friends... let me tell you why.

A few weeks I began looking into growing potatoes in a bin, the directions all encouraged the use of a light compost to hill the potatoes so when I began digging them out I wouldn't have to take a shovel to the bin. I thought, "How can I compost, I have no yard... only and apartment." So I decided to search the internet for the phrase Urban Composting. Once I saw it had to do with worms I was OUT!!! then shortly after reading the directions I was TOTALLY IN!!! I read that America is beginning to overflow with landfills and 25% of that waste consists of yard trimmings and table scraps. I harken back to God's words to Adam, Eve, Noah, and his family, "Go unto all the world and subdue it." God commanded us to take care of the world he created for us (that is what subdue means in this instance). What can I do? I haven't made a complete organic switch but combined with that idea of taking care of the planet, and the simple fact that this all seemed really cool, I decided to buy some worms. Plus it will be nice to make my own compost for planting. And when it's too cold to plant... I will just find some nice places to dump it.

You might be asking, "Why worms?" Worms eat their body weight in one day and their castings (poop) turns into a nutrient rich soil. In theory touching worm poop sounds gross, unless I remind myself that I touch it every time I touch the soil. I was told as a child that if the crust of the Earth were removed worms would hold the shape, pointing out the magnanimous numbers of worms. The fact is that when it comes to breaking down waste you can't beat worms. So here's to hoping they don't find their way out the air holes.

So lets get to what you my imaginary readers asked for... pictures.

Pictured above is my sack full of worms, my pound of flesh (worm flesh)

See that one on the left, that's Fergus

I wet down some strips of paper

added some old green beans and rice

Just add worms

See Fergus on the paper?

Cover the babies

Set box in resting place...

There they are folks, my pictures... now we will see if I come home tonight to find them having crawled out the air holes.

Urban Gardening

2010-03-23T17:01:00.000-05:00

Thought it would be fun to grow stuff this year, then I remembered I don't have a yard. So I did the only thing I could do, I talked about getting a topsy turvy for Strawberries until my girlfriend got me one :) During my research to grow strawberries I came across a few interesting articles. So now instead of just growing strawberries, I am growing potatoes and plan on starting a worm bed for composting. so lets look at some pics.

That looks cool... especially since it has only been a week.

That is what she looks like full.

Here are my tators chitting... I decided to grow them late in the game so they will end up in their containers before fully chitted.

This is the goal of chitting, and this is my best chit, it needs to be almost an inch to ready, though one can plant without chitting, the potato comes in faster if they are chitted. Of course it is March and I should have started in February

Oh and I forgot these extra strawberry plants, the topsy turvy is growing better, but I haven't given up on this feller yet.

And you may be asking, what is that? That, my friends, will become my vermicomposter. Vermicomposting uses earthworms. I haven't received my pound of worms (flesh) in the mail yet y'all will get worm pictures when I do. I will probably write a little thing on why I am choosing to compost too. But until that time... keep growing!!!

General Plate, and the Battle of the Dishwasher

2010-02-23T19:02:00.001-06:00

It was a winter evening in Mississippi. There isn’t really a lot to say about winter evenings in Mississippi. It might be cold, but probably not. It might be clear but a better chance of rain. What made the night special was not the fact that it was winter or in Mississippi (or even that it was evening), the specialness came from the events that would proceed dinner. The sun had set somewhere in Delta warming the black muddy river and night was beginning to fall. Just beginning I tell you, for it will be that on the day of my death I will swear before God and all the saints it was not yet night. I am willing to stand before the heavenly courts proclaiming the eveningness of the night.

I completed dinner, taking my plate to the sink I wondered, “Where should this plate go?” It is only a surprising question for those of you who are not privy to the inner workings and bureaucracies of my kitchen. It is not a complicated kitchen, per say, nor is it set apart from the kitchens of Mississippi. It’s a small kitchen, a place where, should the moon shine right, joy happens, and happens with a vengeance. Once in that very kitchen I thought the sun would rise from my sink and illuminate the cosmos that is my apartment.

Yes I know, it would also burn my apartment down but lets not take the analogy that far.

This night however, joy was not on the menu. It was frozen pizza. Yes the melted cheese and quarter sliced pepperoni set upon a French bread crust and cooked to perfection in my toaster oven. Yes there was pizza and that pizza was good. Well, as good as frozen pizza could be. But this was not the great occasion of the evening, only the precursor.

I suppose I should have known I should have seen it coming. The omen the night before, plate falling, I should have known. It is easy to turn eyes from problems looking to other parts of my apartment, like the computer or the TV, or oddly enough how in the recent years they have become like one and the same. No, that kitchen, nay, that apartment, will never be the same.

You see the dishwasher was already full. It had been full now for over two days. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I had dishsoap, the dishwasher had already been run and the dishes were clean. The previous nights culinary extravaganza had left my dishes dirty, so dirty in fact that I had to wash some pots and pans by hand. This hand washing of the dishes, though it dried out my hands was not the issue, and it most certainly was not tragedy. It was when dirty dishes began overflowing into the dining area that battle cries went up.

It was a plate, a blue plate. A plate so blue that it wept like a willow… a blue willow. I walked into the living room and turned on the TV and heard a cry so horrifying that to this day (or hour since it was like twenty minutes ago) I will not forget, I will never forget.

The plate rose from the depths of the sink wielding a knife, but not just any knife, a steak knife. Behind him the other dirty dishes rose up, plates wielding knives like swords and forks like… forks? You might be asking yourself, what of the bowls and the spoons, what was their fate? Relax, I haven’t gotten that far, I am still talking about the plates with the knives and forks. Wait till you hear of the bowls and spoons!

No, I’m serious, I will get to the bowls and the spoons later, it’s a really cool side but I have to… FINE I WILL TELL YOU ABOUT THE DAMN BOWLS AND SPOONS.

It was this time I noticed the bowls and spoons. Well, not really there was more about the plates with knives and forks, but the patience of certain readers is… OK I WILL GET ON WITH IT!!!

It was this time I noticed the bowls and spoons; the bowls had begun gathering loose pieces of food and ice cubes. The ingenuity of General Plate was amazing it was having the freezer raided for food bits and ice cubes (see I told you there was more to say about the plates with the knives and forks). The spoons were being mounted for catapults and being lined on a cutting board with a peppershaker for a ram all to be used as a siege engine. They arranged themselves in ranks on the kitchen counter; I feared they were coming for me.

I tried not to look nervous but I couldn’t help groping around for some kind of weapon, a stone or brick, maybe a mandolin, something that would case damage in the case of attack. I begin to take note of my surrounding, I realized I could turn the kitchen table to its side and my couch on it’s back, then I would have a wall, I would be damned if dinnerware was going to drive me from the place I lived, but they didn’t come after me, they were marching on the dishwasher.

I noticed a few flaws right on the outset: 1) they would have to open the dishwasher 2) they had no angle of approach from the countertop.

Then I noticed the rags were being shredded and woven into rope, and quickly at that. They had been attached to the sides of an empty popcorn bowl and the dirty dish troops and supplies were being lowered to the floor, and I noticed old tin can tops making their way to the top of the dishwasher with other ropes. I couldn’t help but watch for some time and I saw them finish their siege engine with empty tin cans as rollers. The tin can tops were tying rope to the top of the dishwasher and lowering the ropes, it seemed as though the salad plates would be the force used to open the door. The siege engine with its catapults ready stood waiting. On the word of the large plate, as blue as willow the battle would commence.

I couldn’t fathom the purpose of this war. It seemed like there would be an awful lot of broken dishes and bent forks and knives over this senseless battle. And that is what it was too, senseless. I began to figure the strategy out though. Run the clean dishes from the dishwasher and take up residence, by any means necessary. I felt powerless to stop the impending loss of dish. I remember very clearly when General Plate gave the battle cry a tear fell from my eye.

In a moment the onslaught had begun. The dishwasher door was down and the spoons began firing ice cubes and frozen broccoli toward the dishwasher. I feared the dishes in the dishwasher would be slaughtered but I was wrong. They had prepared equally and as the door opened a line of stainless steel pots marched forward behind it plates carrying knives and the spoons preparing to fling themselves behind enemy lines. Then it happened.

General Plate stood at the front of the battle, clouds of ice cubes and broccoli blotting out the kitchen lights, salad plates of all different kinds rushing against the stainless steel pots, and the general saw it. For the first time he looked upon his enemy. The two opposing generals saw each other, and rushed toward preparing for battle. Steak knife against steak knife then when I thought all was lost, a tablespoon called them to their senses as he through himself between the two warring generals. Then they saw each other; I mean really saw each other for the first time.

Both plates, blue as willow holding steak knives. Dirty General Plate looked upon his brother, Clean General Plate and they realized that this was not the way. It was not long before they created a truce and I went to watching TV (let’s face it, the fight was cool the truce was boring).

I had been watching TV for about 15 minutes when two plates walked over to me. Clean General Plate and Dirty General Plate stood tall with their knives up, behind them two armies marched… and now more than one siege engine, four with glasses and bowls and silver ware of all brand and size. Dirty general plate pointed his steak knife at me. Then he pointed to the dishwasher, then he pointed to the clean dishes, then he pointed to the cabinets, and then he pointed to himself and the dishwasher.

Obviously these plates were mad, and made no sense. I think he ran through the motions four or five more times I don’t remember clearly I was watching cartoons. Finally, I looked down and said, “ I don’t play charades you dumb plate.” My worst fears were then realized. I didn’t notice at first because I had gone back to my cartoons, but when I looked down again my position was surrounded and the two generals poked me with the steak knives. Not just once but like 10 times, I was like, “DUDE STOP IT I’M TRYING TO WATCH CARTOONS.” He didn’t stop. Then the ice and broccoli started and I was under attack.

When I thought all was lost the tablespoon threw himself before the army looked up at me and said, “Would you PLEASE put the dishes away then fill the dishwasher?”

I was like, “Sure, why didn’t you just ask in the first place.”

Fillet Mignon with Rice and Toast

2010-02-21T18:24:00.006-06:00

Tonights selection was a simple Fillet Mignon with Rice and Toast. I chose a 2009 Beaujolais Nouveu (Because that is what I had "lying" around).

Ever since I found a local meat market I have had a lot of steak lying around, I mean why not? Meat market prices are much better than grocery store. I have found the local market provides better opportunities, last night a friend came over, we watched a Zombie movie and ate beer brats, grilled wonderfully on my indoor grill. I find it important in my area to support local business, especially since the local business' offer local product, it is one way that I support the great state of Mississippi.

But back to my meal.

I struggled from the beginning with this meal. First, I could not get the steak to thaw, that is my own fault, I should have moved it to the refrigerator last night, not this morning before church. Because of this error I had to settle for water thawing the meat. I don't like to do this, I prefer the meat to go from frozen to cold then naturally to room temperature. I was stuck though, I eat like an old person, 5:00 and lot's of fiber.

Once the meat was finally thawed, I ground black pepper (at the medium setting) and sea salt (at the medium setting) on both sides of the steak and set it out with the hopes it would quickly reach room temp. I had been waiting an hour and thought I would just go ahead, it was still cold but I was hungry. I preheated the oven to 375 and began to work on my side items.

The side item became it's own issue. I had planned on cooking some nice bacon grease soaked green beans, then I realized, I was sick of green beans. I chose to go with a boxed rice side. The issue there was slightly embarrassing. I found my boxes had been compromised, in the future all boxes will be placed in plastic bags before going into my cupboard.

This is where my wonderful girlfriend saved the day. I had some left over white rice from my celebration of Chinese New Year last week (okay it wasn't MY rice, it was delivery, but it met all the rules, it was a week old). Since my relationship with this wonderful woman started, strange vegetables had been finding their way into my freezer, for example, peas. Let me explain something, I am not anti-pea. I think they are great filler and they taste fine to me, though I seldom choose them. I chose them today.

I heated some vegetable oil in a pot, due to it being the end of the weekend most of my dishes were dirty and I didn't want to pull down my wok. I added light soy sauce and the peas, brace yourself folks this is going to sound bland I was a little angry and not thinking straight. Once the peas were not frozen anymore I used this neat Chinese sauce called oyster sauce. I let it set for a moment then added my carton (yes it was a Chinese take out carton) of rice. Once I had tossed it appropriately I set my sight on the steak.

I began to heat some extra virgin olive oil in my steel skillet. I chose steel over iron because it worked last time and I wanted to do everything the same with the steak, except the seasoning. I often use a Greek Seasoning this time, as I wrote above, I stuck with course ground sea salt and black pepper. I used a water drop to make sure my oil was heated and went to work on the steak. I started with the presentation side down letting the steak cook for 3 minutes. I flipped the steak, now with the presentation side up, and let it cook for another 3. Once time had elapsed I put the pan in the oven for 6 minutes.

Take into account, I never move the steak save to flip it. I was pleasantly surprised when I pulled the skillet out of the oven and the steak looked wonderful. I immediately transported it to a plate and covered it with foil. I added some rice to my plate while the steak finished settling; I have to admit I had poured my wine much earlier. I used the excuse that the wine needed to breathe, I will stick with that excuse.

I saw there would be an empty place on my plate, I needed to fill it and then I realized I had no bread, and yes I know, rice is a grain. I toasted a piece of rye bread, when it was done I buttered it and placed it on the plate. By this time, the steak had sat long enough and I was ready to serve.

I made sure to take a good long look at my dinner, I even took a few pictures. I thought it looked pretty good. I cut into my steak and once again, I thought it looked pretty good.

It was slightly sinewy, I blame my thawing procedure, but over all I was happy with the consistency. The color was where I liked it so there was one more thing to check, the taste.

The first thing I noticed was the simplicity of letting the meat speak for itself. The salt and pepper brought out the taste of the Fillet instead of masking it or hijacking it. The fillet melted in my mouth and brought much joy in the end. The over all basic taste of the rice was light. It was far from overpowering, some might even call it bland, I didn't think so personally but to each their own. How much simpler can you get than adding a peace of rye toast. The most powerful taste on the plate was the steak, and I liked it that way.

I feel like my worst decision was the wine. Let's face it, it was what I had lying around. I love the taste of this Beaujolais Nouveu but it didn't enhance the flavor of the steak as a moderate Cabernet would have. Over all though it must have been fine because:

By the Gazelles and by the Does of the Field

2010-02-18T20:46:00.000-06:00

The Bible brings us wonderful literature. I remember in college thinking about the scribes that sat and copied text, letter for letter, checking, double checking, and triple checking the transmission of the text. I found joy in reading this text. I doubled my joy the first time I read it in Hebrew. Over the years my abilities in Hebrew (which were shoddy at best) have declined such that I can often only remember phrases that had been long memorized to feed my arrogance and narcissism. Yet I found, and I still find, joy in the Hebrew Testament.

The poetry speaks with such emotion that I fear the ability to touch. The joys and pains of these writers in relation to their divine walk astound me. The singing the weeping, it can be exhausting. Even the law, I poured over it with joy, creating in my mind a map of worship, and ethic that would transcend ages. I loved being confronted with the power of the divine in the text.

But this joy of textuality came second to my joy of philosophy. It wasn’t enough just to read and understand the text but to give this text the opportunity to bend my life. I often counted on, and would again, commentators. These men and women confront the text, if they are good, in such a way that letters and words make up phrases then the phrases make up more than paragraphs but thoughts, these thoughts were then tied together to set forth ideas, and these ideas, they help us every day to continue in God’s original work and create life.

I love the Book. I cannot live without it, even the dusty tome that sits on my dresser always open to a page to bring comfort. It is strange the things that bring us comfort. I remember my friend Heath always setting the seminary Bible in the entrance way to Ecclesiastes 1:1, for when one is surrounded every day by those of greater knowledge, articulating our thoughts could be daunting. That is, until we remember, the teacher called it all meaningless.

For those that are still with me, I will honor you and get to my point, and finally begin my essay. Years I stumbled through scripture, entering a book only when it seemed pertinent, and when it was necessary to bring life back into focus, devouring each tense until life made sense. Many experiences have oriented on the Greatest Song, and the last year especially.

Many look at the text of this Song and relate it as a metaphor. I love a good metaphor, this sultry poetry is not sultry, it is a metaphor for our relationship with God. Sentence by sentence God graces us with talk of our neck and we reciprocate with comments concerning our skin tone. It is a wonderful idea, an idea that wraps up everything an idea that makes us look into the wonderful book about life and ignore romance. I was encouraged once with a question, “What if it really is about sex?”

More poignantly what if it is about a relationship between two human beings that is so powerful, proper society blushes. When was the last time we heard the phrase, “Let me kiss you with the kisses of my mouth,” in church? Maybe the fear is that too many people would leave with their hands dripping in myrrh. But more importantly we are never confronted with what I find to be a core point in the book, “Do not wake or rouse love until it please!(JPS)”

For years I spoke of love. I preached on love. I sang songs of love. Love involved God, women, friends, roses, and thorns, but I didn’t get it until it involved one other. Early on thoughts of her devoured my days and nights. I had to increase my cell phone minutes and texts, my car miles were increasing quickly day after day week after week. All of the sudden six hours of traveling in one weekend made sense, and all the little romantic fantasies of my youth didn’t matter.

I poured forth with poetry, with roses, and she returned these things with letters and kisses. Our fights would drive my days and keep me awake at nights, and not hearing from her in too long a time made my stomach nervous. I noticed that I didn’t fear her (or my) arrival as I had looking for love with others, I reveled in it, I looked forward to the connection of our hands, and feeling her breath on my neck as we hugged. Love was roused and this great song made sense in a different way.

One night I remember reading her my favorite parts of this wonderful book. It was because one day I looked at her and thought, “Your neck is like a wondrous tower, smooth and elegant.” I had never known this thing. I had never known this love. This love so full yet so ancient the poetry that describes must be beyond classic, beyond man but divine.

Years ago I met an old couple at a hospital in Memphis. It was past midnight, but not yet morning. The man was dying and his woman sat holding his hand. I stood with them. In hindsight I remember clearly I was watching the machines count his heartbeats, she was watching him while hers broke. The sacrifice of love being roused! I hoped from then on that someday one would hold my hand, and it was that just recently I learned about love.

The danger of love is something I knew, that to love, one must be willing to lose everything. Of course the danger of love is something that I have just recently divined, “to love, one must be willing to lose everything.”

When I lose everything, I finally have the room to open the doors of my heart. Doors that I hope never to shut again. And finally I know “Many waters cannot quench love, [and] rivers cannot wash it away (NIV).”

My Memphis: A Love Story

2010-02-10T19:58:00.001-06:00

Every now and again my thoughts move behind me. Some sensical stimulation starts, it’s like driving down the road and a special song plays. “Walking in Memphis,” I’ve done that, quite a few times in fact. The song elicits strong emotion, at least for me. From the opening line “Put on my blue suede and boarded a plane, touched down in the land of the Delta Blues in the Middle of the pouring rain.” Mark Cohn had a life changing revelation with W.C. Handy watching over him. I don’t remember my first steps in Memphis, I don’t well remember my first year; it seemed like a lifetime ago. I wonder often if I were to meet the boy who moved in search of God would I know him, would I like him, or would I pity him? The difference between he and I cover an expanse unperceived by traditional sight. Of course for all the differences, I wonder, really, am I that different? Having left and returned I warn you, it is like the golden mountain, once I left it I could never really come back, she wouldn’t let me. For any who would like to read on I offer you my Memphis, my sultry southern belle with “Catfish on the table, and gospel in the air.”

As I said I searched for God, I searched avidly for him. I opened my ears more than ever only to realize it isn’t the ears that open it is the eyes. See I came to Memphis for God, because he called me here. I know that sounds narcissistic. In an entire universe, God calls to me and puts me in this perfect place where I would thrive. Relax my Arminian heritage offers a wonderful balance, I did a lot of the work to. Don’t think I wasn’t scared, or alone; I spent a long time as both.

But I did see God… I had only to open my eyes and look. Sure the trees and such but in the people around me. I was blessed to live on the campus of my seminary a wonderful place where the God led and god less walk hand in hand, preaching and teaching, I was lucky because I was allowed to listen to the experiences as well the long nights in conversation with brothers and sisters in faith, in conversation with the God above, and the silence… these things led me on. I ate, slept, and breathed experience and had the opportunity to bathe it in theology. Like a wine that is slowly cooked away during simmer I was left with strong tannins that could easily breed in me a distinct bitterness, save the stock of grace to bring balance leaving me with a full fruity and meaty theology.

My Lovely Church Lady Memphis walked with me. I saw theology walking the streets dressed as Elvis, where else was I to see it, it was a year in Memphis before I was to walk on Beale, and another two after before my feet lifted “ten feet off.” I wouldn’t say I lived sheltered; the churches in which I found my work were to be locked in the middle of the week when I was alone in them. I walked proudly (with a humble gate) in places white men were to not; I stood face to face with gangsters with only a shield of faith to protect me.

Ok maybe it wasn’t that bad, I had a huge church van protecting me too. Learning quickly that gang-bangers and drug dealers like prayer too. I can think back to the specific day that I realized I was becoming a democrat, shaking hands with an ex-lieutenant who was hiding from his gang in L.A. I guess there is no nice way to say, “State’s evidence.” I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I was slaying dragons, the other reason I was left alone is because I did what they perceived as, “Babysitting.” Maybe, just one will remember the bombastic white guy who used to jump and sing with them, maybe some of them will find hope, years from now. It isn’t like I knew what I was doing, but I sure felt like I should’ve. I guess that is why I went a different way with my calling.

I began to “should’ve known,” a lot in those years. When I finished my stint I moved from that Inner city Church to House Church. God walked with me still holding my hand, or so it is that I say. My work moved from outside to inside. Let me say it this way, I believed for years all I wanted to do was help others, when in truth it was a nice way to alleviate years of guilt impacted like a pregnant woman with a low fiber diet. I figure it was important for me to figure out that I liked me, especially since that was whom I thought of most often.

My sweet southern belle, Memphis had introduced me to the people I needed. I think she needed me to open up; she needed to see the heart of the boy that had been escorting her these short years. I walked underground for years, holding and being held, crying and crying with. There are places in my old sweet city, that if I were to walk I would tear up today, for the memory of the grace I had found there. It was in these Grace meetings that I learned I mattered, and once I learned I mattered, I could see that others mattered too. To these brothers and sisters, though I may never mention their name I would also never withhold the necessary hugs that point to self-worth. Anytime, anywhere and without shame!

That’s when my sweet southern lady first demanded I take her dancing. Now not only did my Theology walk with me, it demanded I lead. This is when I got to know her sultry side. Did you know that somewhere near the end of Lonely Street there is a hotel? In that hotel is a bar, the Jungle Room. And if you went the right night there was a pretty little thing, now whether or not she was waiting for king I don’t know however, her drink specials couldn’t be beat, but I digress.

My Wonderful Lady and I first danced the Charleston, I found I didn’t care for it much, but there were other dances. I realized something about the Libido that Jung and Freud had yet to inform me, not only does sexual desire and masculinity (femininity too) live there but also religious expression and spirituality. My Sultry Southern Belle taught me why David danced in only an ephod for God.

It is important to note during this time that I saw her suffering side. My Theology and my Lady walked with me through the halls of a local hospital, attending to the souls of her sons and daughters. She showed me death until I begged her to stop, then she showed me a little more. My smallness increased, as it were. Sitting in a hospital chapel at 2 AM one Saturday mourning with my lady, and making love to her on a seedy dance floor in Orange Mound the next. She reminded me what God had said, “There is a time for mourning and a time for dancing.” The extent to which I danced was always proportionate to that which I mourned. I can say assuredly say I sampled her Gospel and her Catfish.

I don’t know what time or what day it was, only that Country Girl introduced me to the song, “Ain’t No Sunshine.” For weeks this song played on in my head I was singing it day after day, night after night, until this one night… you see there was this little girl, and I was holding her when they pronounced her mother, I realized… “She’s always gone to long, anytime she goes away.”

She had escorted me a long way when I said goodbye to her, wondering if I would ever find another love. I had listened to mankind cry out for God in Churches, Houses, Jukes, and Libraries. I was ten feet off of Beale when I left. I lived on the edge of Midtown, right before they call it downtown. I knew all the Antique store, doughnut shops, and coffee shops. I even knew a guy who roasted some of the best. Saturday morning I would drive from shop to shop after coffee and a muffin, or chocolate milk and a doughnut. I saw the greatest artifacts in the streets of Memphis. I didn’t have to go to the museums or the art shows. The art was right where God had painted it, in the people that made up this amazing place, a place I felt truly home. I remember saying goodbye to her, in my apartment late one night, and I knew then that she would never let me make her mine.

I said goodbye to my fair maiden… to my sultry southern belle with promises of return. I didn’t look into her eyes when she said goodbye, they tried to warn me it would never be the same, it could never be as it once was. She knew, long before I did that I would find home again, and my new romance would welcome me with wide eyes. This goodbye was for good.

I tried to return to her less than a year later, in that time I had changed and she had changed. I felt as if I were peddling backward. I tried again to woo her but her sights were set on another, I danced with her again and it was empty. She knew when I greeted her that the old crossroad’s in Mississippi had it’s way with me. I walked hand in hand with another, and when I looked in my Sultry Belle’s eye’s she knew, even before me, I wanted to return there.

I never regretted my decision to leave that was the problem. She had shown me a vibrant life, a life that I never dreamed I would have ever lived. We feasted, we danced, and we loved. I found these things with her. Maybe once I had the chance stay, but it had long passed by the time I’d looked to the crossroads. Many nights I woke, wondering where I would be in a year or two. I feared I had wondered across hot foot powder, that I would be doomed to ramble on forever.

Maybe there was a part of me that knew I could never love her again, and vice versa. It was the part that moved me here, across the line in Mississippi. Shaven off of Mississippi and Memphis I sit in the middle, awaiting my call home.

Rib Eye with a Red Wine Reduction.

2010-01-27T17:15:00.008-06:00

No, my name is not Julia and I am working through no cookbook, but I have become interested in updating my culinary proclivities. Over the last few months I have started working on what I believe to be core meals, meals that one cooks for a holiday. Since then I have come across my local butcher shop. The steak is better than the grocery store and consistently cheaper. Lets cut to the chase, Tonight I attempted a 3/4 inch pan seared boneless rib eye with a red wine reduction.

I pulled my steak out of the refrigerator fully thawed an hour before cooking using vedgtable oil and Greek Seasoning to flavor the meat. My goal was to keep it simple and let the meat speak for itself. I used an online Alten Brown method for cooking, heating my cast iron skillet to 500 degrees and searing the rib eye for 30 seconds on each side and then cooking it for 2 minutes on each side in the oven. After I finished cooking the steak I placed it under aluminum foil to continue cooking on a plate.

I used the skimmings left in the hot pan as a base with some butter to caramelize onions. After they turned a good color (due to the left over meat and my well seasoned cast iron this was very dark). I used a Cabernet Sauvignon that had been lying around the house to about 1/16 inch up the skillet and let it reduce for two minutes. After the reduction I poured about a half cup of beef stock into the skillet. Once again I was trying to keep it simple and let the basic ingredients speak for themselves. I had always heard that the stock was necessary to relax the tannins in the wine. After having reduced for a few minutes I poured the reduction into a bowl.

By this time the steak was done sitting, I placed it on a plate, added a small dollop of butter, and used a few spoonfuls of reduction and poured a glass of wine. Before sitting down I couldn't help but to taste my reduction. I liked it, it had fruity overtones but was balanced by the stock. My steak, however, was overdone, it was on the well side of medium, I generally shoot for a medium-rare. I will have to adjust cooking time for the thinner steaks that I generally buy, however, the steak was still delicious for medium-well.

There were a few things I will change in the future when cooking this way. I thought far enough ahead to wrap my smoke detector with a plastic grocery bag. Next time I will open all my windows and doors before cooking so I can better attend to my meat, I assume my neighbors thought my apartment was on fire. As soon as the steak hit the iron skillet the smoke just poured into the sky. I will also adjust my cooking time accordingly for a thinner steak.

I will be moving to a Fillet next, which I know, is not seared the same way. I get it don't hassle me, however, the reduction will be made the same way using a different wine and less beef stock. I might just let you know how it went.

Randomly Highway 61

2009-03-24T15:51:00.002-05:00

There is a lot to see if you go to Clarksdale Mississippi, there is a lot to see if you travel Highway 61 North, the thing is you have to look for it. What I have found is that you need to go to the places the tourists don't go, and in those places I find gems. For me a good place to eat is a gem. I have posted one of my favorite places to eat on 61 Highway, just North of Clarksdale outside of Lyon. This Shady Nook is called "The Shady Nook"

I know what you're saying, Clarksdale is the blues capital of the world (yes I said the world, Memphis just happens to be a larger city therefore it likes to claim things like world capital but I have my opinion) Clarksdale has a crossroads where Legba has been spotted and more Juke Joints than you could ever want. If you want some bbq, Lebanese, there are great places, I will have posts about them, just don't forget the Shady Nook.

I generally find that the locals in small town Mississippi eat at these small restaurant/ gas stations. There is a great place for a sausage biscuit in Coldwater, wonderful egg rolls in Crowder, and here, bbq, bbq known by the locals.

I have met folk from all up and down the delta while eating a delicious plate lunch. You get the basics 1 meat 2 vegetables a coke and desert all for 6.99. I became a fan one random visit when I was hungry and the food smelled too good to pass up. I ended eating some of the best banana pudding ever to grace the orifice on my face.

This place is chock full of the local population and the local population from Cleveland to Tunica. During my most recent visit I spent some time with the local Constable, and while retelling my Banana pudding story to the cook made a friend.

I encourage you to never pass up your chance to eat at the local gas station... if you really want to get the flavor of the city, of course you could just be a tourist all your life.

Need Some Tires?

2009-03-05T16:18:00.003-06:00

There was point for some sadness today, I was going to take pictures of the old North Panola Hospital in Sardis Mississippi, but there was some business going on there so I decided I would another day, to find out that part of it has been converted to the justice court, you can actually see it behind the photo beneath this text.

I never paid any attention to what the above site was. After reading the sign I couldn't help but take the picture. The proprietors were walking back to their building when I took the picture so I didn't want to spend a lot of time explaining why I was taking a picture of their structure. For any of y'all who didn't get it, this is a tire place. Looking at the sign spray painted on I wondered if they ever closed.

Guess they do.

The above building is right across the county line in Lafayette County Mississippi, I don't think there is a city associated to this area, they call it Como on the address books, I can tell you, this is not Como. I hadn't been out this way in a long time

What can I say, I like pictures of dilapidated buildings. You are going to get a lot of them.

The other pic from Yesterfday

2009-03-04T18:40:00.002-06:00

I didn't post this picture yesterday because I didn't have a photo editor and I didn't want to post the feller's tag numbers.

I snapped this picture really quick at a stopsign between main streets in Senatobia Mississippi. I say between main streets because Main street jumps in Senatobia. I was worried I wouldn't have enough time to get the shot off but my camera takes quickly.

I can't help but wonder what the the owner is trying to say... We all decorate our vehicals somehow, I have a vanity tag on the front of my car that says "Blues," other people think bumper stickers look good. These get me though, generally the owner is representing a pair of testicles. sometimes the hanging scrotum looks even more like a scrotum. What is the point here? Is the owner of the truck trying to tell us he is a pervert?

Things I saw... Today

2009-03-03T20:43:00.006-06:00

Now that I have been given a camera as a gift... by a beautiful woman, I can fulfil my dream and take pictures of things I see while driving that are cool or rediculous. I see a lot of neat things and wish I could experience them with others this is my chance.

This cemetery is in Longtown Mississippi. Longtown does not have its own post office so all mail comes through Sarah Mississippi. This cemetery struck me because most of the town seemed to either be cemetery or farm land. I would have liked the chance to walk through the cemetery but I am already pretty macabre don't need to look more like it.

I can't help but wonder though, this town is a divit in the map. I wonder if this town has gotten smaller or if everyone in the area just gets burried here.

I thought this was the best shot and wanted it to be on top but I don't think that far ahead when I am uploading. See that rise... I wonder if it is natural or created... I wonder how far back this cemetery goes... I will ahve to look one day.

Ditty Bout a Girl

2008-09-28T12:50:00.002-05:00

I wanted to write a poem

Cause I care so damn much

Describing your eyes and lips

Longing for your touch

Talking about why I care

And how great you are

Thinking bout all your attributes

And how you must’ve fallen like a star

I try and relate you to the cosmos

The sky and sunsets and shit

But the words I have don’t describe

The feelings and all of it

I can only stare blankly

And listen to your words

And in the silence smile at you

And pray for what to say…

When it is my turn

Pictures of Mississippi

2008-07-29T22:32:00.006-05:00

Now that my camera has a phone I am able to take some random pics as I drive through Northwest Mississippi. I have two that I would like to show you. Remember all I have to go off is the camera on my phone so the artistic level may be low, but you might see some interesting things.

I titled this "The Meat People." If you don't understand why this stuck out to me think back to your childhood days (guys) when farts were still funny. This is at a grocery store in Grenada Mississippi. Grenada is a decent place to stop in if you are traveling from Memphis to Jackson or Vice Versa, it is 200 miles from Memphis to Jackson and Grenada is almost the middle, the actual middle is a place called Duck Hill, actually duck hill is a few miles off the road but right off interstate there is a gas station called Midway, it has a small deli, and you will catch a lot of local folk sitting and eating at the right time of the day.

But back to Grenada, there are plenty of fast food restaurants, and there is a decent Barbeque place called Jake and Rips.

I call this pic "This Old House." We are now Northwest of Grenada, a good deal Northwest, in Tunica County. This is real Tunica, not the part you see at the casino's. Harrah has never been here. This is old Tunica, off White Oak Rd, off Highway 4. If you are on 61 going south take a left on highway 4, for less than a quarter mile and take the next left (I believe and you will be on White Oak. Keep moving North and this house will be in the middle of nowhere on the right. I don't recomend going unless you have some reason to be in that area, remember this is Old Tunica, there is no security here, you will be surrounded by cotton fields, trailers, and a lot of nothing. In the Delta you can still dissappear and never be found.

Though if you choose to travel along highway 4 from 61 to interstate you will pass a BP gas station on the left, it will be your last chance to stop for 20-30 miles until you get to Senatobia. If you happen to be going through this part of Tunica at night and are traveling toward Memphis, it is best to stay on HWY 61 North, if you really want interstate look for 69/304.

I am not going to say a lot about this pic, lets just say it is for purification.

Something to say

2008-07-19T15:25:00.001-05:00

I was lying on the floor considering my life… and I laughed. Thinking back to the winding road walked, I couldn’t help it. I spend a lot of time walking the line between life and death, searching for something… not sure what, just something. On more than one occasion I have felt the heavy black robe on my shoulders, the cold face of death masking my reflection, sometimes hoping to God that it was just a mask and worried that the true mask I wore was the face I show my friends when I walk out of my house.

I have presided over a half dozen weddings, but only one funeral, but in that time over 100 deaths. It is easy when my life surrounds so much death to feel like my Bible is a scythe and my smile is hidden behind the bones of the Ghost of Christmas Future. Commonly I feel like I sit outside of life watching the living, and I sit outside of death watching the dying. Can’t help but think the words, “Love is not a victory march but a cold and a broken hallelujah.”

I don’t know if I would say I had ever lost hope of the good things, but I know I have never lost sight of the bad. Weeks have begun to roll by, so have many lives, and I can’t help but mourn for the bit of life that I let slip by in my own fears. For the longest time the only way to hold back the onslaught of grief was to dance. There is something naturally healing when two human being hold one another and converse without words. It makes it easier to remember that the blood in my veins is warm knowing that I have not faded into the background of existence.

But there came a time when dancing didn’t work anymore. Well, maybe it wasn’t that dancing didn’t work, it was just that my heart had become to heavy to lift for the time it takes to ask. Though I guess my imagery of the road isn’t complete unless I mention the mountains. I can’t walk straight up a mountain, I walk from side to side in that direction, and I suppose descent is the same. It is manageable if I go back in forth and avoid falling off the mountain.

And the ideas of the prophets fill the corners of my waking mind. Looking back the prophets spoke of the better times, begging that if those who hear would return to those times better times would return. Reminding me ever to have faith in God because God has always been faithful. I do remember a time, my happiest time. There was a time when life was ascent only, with small descents but mostly ascent.

Those were great times but I also can’t help remember the conversations I have had with others in the valley. To put it more succinctly the love I felt from those in the valley. When I am forced to play the serpent, or the psychopomp I am met by those other tribes wondering in the valleys, and we all become one because we have to.

This is purely a rant, I don’t know where it was going, all I know is that as I laid on the floor, I laughed, and it was good.

Something I saw

2008-06-10T16:11:00.002-05:00

I am adding a picture of something I saw in a gas station outside of Thyatyra Mississippi

enjoy.

Cars and Feelings

2008-03-13T23:41:00.000-05:00

My car was broken into tonight, outside of a Methodist Church in Memphis, I was outside a Methodist church because we dance there on Thursday nights, so I was up for a fun evening when someone, totally unrelated to us came in asking if we saw anyone in the parking lot because someone busted out his window. I thought then I would check mine, and wow did they do an A-1 job. there was no window left, you could tell they put a hole through then cleared it out with a bar or something. My plastic bags held almost all the way to Southaven on the interstate, I was proud of them.

So I process my feelings when it comes to this. I feel annoyed. I feel annoyed because I will have to deal with this tomarrow. I will have to miss work to deal with it, and I have only been there two weeks so I really haven’t even got any vacation time to use, I will just not get payed. The other thing that gets me is, I really like my job, I look forward to going, but my car in intrical to my job, I drove five hundred miles last week.

I am surprised I don’t feel violated. I mean they entered my space without permision it seems like some violation should go witht that, well maybe that is why I looked for any reason to stick around longer with my friends, knowing that I was comming home alone and had a long ass trip with a loud window, alone. Maybe there is some violation in that.

The funny thing is they didn’t even steal anything. I think that actually pisses me off, dammit if you are going to put me through this at least steal my Al Green CD, or my Bill Withers. Sure I love those CD’s but then I would have felt like, well at least they got something.
The other feeling is relieved, I work out of my car and have information in there that would be a pain to put back together, it was all there.

Then there is Irony. A year ago in Memphis I lived in a bad part of town, in Jackson it wasn’t a great part of town, now I moved to a decent place and get broken into when I travel into the place I love, Memphis.

I think then, that is the main frustration, now I will always be worried that my car is going to get broken into, regardless of the fact I have been dealing with cars for 13 years and this is the first time, even when I lived in bad parts of Memphis. I am frustrated that anytime my car is outside when I am at a juke or at the old church dancing I will be worried, it will take the joy from dancing... so how do I keep the bastards from robbing me of that joy? Maybe that is why I am still in shock.

My Memphis

2008-03-04T21:55:00.003-06:00

I was listening to Mark Cohn's song, "Walking in Memphis," and I became sad. At first the saddness made no sense, then I heard another song, Rufus Wainwright's "Hallelujah." I would sit in Jackson Mississippi and think of the Cohn song over and over again and become sad. But why now? why am I sad that I am in Memphis. Well first, I have to tell myself that I am not sad, per se, the problem is that the people I love live in different places. After a weekend of dancing I felt great, excited it was wonderful, it was like the old days, but the problem with the old days is that... the days between then and now meant something too.

So the words, "Love is not a victory dance it's a cold and broken Hallelujah," sting. I remember the words best from the lips of a friend, I heard her sing it on a recording but every now and again I would pull a little bit out of her while we were together. I am glad to be in Memphis, I am glad to be home, but home has always been where I hung my hat. I never had friends like those that sat with me on the stoop, and stood with me at the crossroads. It was odd, over the weekend I think I would even feel a little guilty having a good time without my friends from the Bellhaven Stoop, the plaque which currently hangs by my Minister Bond and Diploma. I suppose that I have to have it both ways, happy and sad together, dancing...

Home for the Holidays

2007-12-23T12:53:00.000-06:00

I received a card from my parents the other day, part of it said that even though this is the first Christmas I spend on my own, not to spend it alone. I struggle with Christmas. My denomination doesn’t treat it as a holy day, nor does my family. It is a family holiday, a chance for us to gather together. My first Christmas away from West Virginia I expected years ago would be different. The days I assumed I would spend that time in Memphis, the days where I hoped to call it home are now gone. I have traveled further south, to a different place, to a different home. In a place where I often feel alone, I rest in the cognitive assurance that I am not alone.

I remember looking for apartments in Jackson Mississippi. The first I walked into seemed to me to be a tomb. I fled that place as the day flees from the night. The second was different. I walked in, and smiled and knew this would be the place I call home. Three weeks after moving in, I met my neighbors, then I understood why this place felt right. It wasn’t long before we were all friends. It wasn’t long before we had come up with out own traditions, and our own weekly observances. It wasn’t long after that they became family.

I have always had a family in West Virginia, my first family, those who are akin to me by blood. I love them dearly, but it wasn’t until I found family else were that I understood my connection to them. This year I am away from my family of origin. I was sitting in church today, the last Sunday before Christmas, and I saw many people I didn’t know, I saw those who had come home. There was a slide on the powerpoint that said, “Home for the holidays.” Two songs in I fled that place.

God has blessed me with the ability to find family in any place. It wasn’t a month before one began to form here. That also carries with it a curse. It is a curse that all nomads feel. We create homes for ourselves, we create families, we build important relationships, then when the time is right we are torn from those relationships and are off to build more.

This year I won’t watch my niece open presents; I won’t see my nephew’s first Christmas. I won’t eat my mother’s fudge, or my grandmother’s turkey. There is a forlorn nature to which I sojourn through this world. Jesus said that he had no place to rest his head. I understand Jesus. I gravitate to Gethsemane, to the grief, for I don’t understand how he could build those friendships knowing they would be ripped away, that in the end they would fall. I suppose that is why resurrection is so important to me, and heaven. Because at some point my sojourn will end and I will come to my final home.

Advent, another season I grew up without, looks toward the second coming. What season looks forward to today? Looking forward to a great community in heaven is fine and dandy, but what about the community here?

Home for the Holidays… Currently home is where I hang my hats (for I have many). Knowing then that professing faith means that I have a God that always walks with me helps. Because these days I sit alone waiting for the season to end, and in these days I feel kinship with Jesus Christ, wondering how he dealt with his final Passover. Knowing that dawn come to all who lie awake I wait. In Advent… for the Triumphal Return. Until that day, I surround myself with those in whom I see the divine, and I walk. Sojourning through this land, knowing that I do because I have been called to. …for the son of man has no place to rest his head.

On being a Patriot

2007-11-12T00:31:00.000-06:00

Last Tuesday night I had an interesting and informative conversation with a Vietnam Vet. He was standing on the corner, on the opposite end of the crossroads on which I live in Mississippi. He told me his name is Angel. I was talking to the Vet because it was cold and my neighbor, a very good hearted woman, wanted to take him a blanket but didn’t want to walk over alone (it seems her rottweiler wasn’t good enough). In truth I believe he was quite mad. He has PTSD, and has lived on the streets most of his life since his return from Vietnam. All I could think in hindsight was, fallen angel.

The next day I was leading a Bible study in the nursing home at the local VA. I lead one every Wednesday, because that’s what chaplains do. I was speaking on an interesting passage in Genesis about killing. The Bible study is always full, most of the people who come are WWII Vets. I reflected shortly after on my own patriotism.

My freshman year of High School I refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I got a lot of bad responses to that from the teaching staff of my school. I thought of them as judgmental, as idolaters, as fascists. Go figure, forcing me to stand and calling it freedom. In rebellion I blew my nose on an American Flag. The response of most of my peers has faded, and I don’t think much on the response of my teacher, or the vice principal who called my mother in for a conference that day. Oddly enough I don’t think much on my mother’s response. The response that lives forever in my memory was my grandfathers. My grandfather served during the Korean Conflict. He didn’t use many words, and to be honest I don’t remember them… it was the look in his eyes…

As I write this we are nearing the end of Veterans Day 2007. Today I serve as a chaplain for the local VA, every day I hear stories of WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. I have had the honor to stand in the room with Tuskegee Airmen, WWII Airborne (the folk who jumped out of plains behind the enemy lines), Vietnam Vets who swear that if they had known what they were in for they would have fled to Canada, and Iraq/Afghanistan Vets (men younger than me) trying to put their lives back together. I however, am a civilian.

I was listening to a General speak today, and I also watched a movie about war. As I sit here, a world away from the conflict, from the car bombs, the bullets, and the death on a mass scale I consider the few years of eligibility I have to join what I hear every day referred to as “the service.” Don’t worry, I doubt that I will, but I wonder… what do those chaplains offer? What do they say when they talk to their fellow soldiers about losing their buddies and just making it out alive.

I also have to consider that I am a bohemian in thought. Let me explain for two days ago I didn’t know what that word means. I consider myself in some ways an artist, a singer, a poet. My friends are artists, singers, and poets. Last night I went to see La Boheme, and earlier that day watched (for the first time on screen Rent. I also have to admit that for the most part I am a pacifist. Yet I think… what would I have done as a pacifist if my number had come up in earlier conflicts?

When did I become a patriot? It’s not even that I believe in our current conflict or the man making decisions. It’s not that I have all the sudden become a supporter of this war. However, I must say that I do believe there are things worth fighting for, dying for, and in some cases… killing for. In the end all I know is that I cannot make the same mistakes objectors made after Vietnam and that I can support the men and women who fight. It is not my place to spit on a soldier, to call him or her names, or to judge them. Maybe it’s better that I am a civilian; I will never understand them… but I can stand with them here, and I can honor them, from home.

God bless you, and goodnight.

To Whom It May Concern

2007-10-18T01:38:00.000-05:00

To Whom It May Concern:

People don’t often think of me as an introvert. I guess because from the very beginning I was assertive, well maybe aggressive. My first boss couldn’t stand me, and could stand me even less when I told him I was going into business for myself. He was like a father to me, being rejected by him… in many ways wrecked my life. That isn’t to say I would want to work for my old boss again, but there were some good times.

Then there was that incident with that woman… I can’t remember her name right now. I can’t tell you how many people thought I was the shit because I approached her the way I did. They thought it was even better that I “tricked” her. I think that is a very judgmental and one-sided way of looking at things. I let her know the truth, the truth that my boss didn’t want to let her know, look I think information should be free, we shouldn’t hoard information, even when it is expensive. I think the prices we pay now are ridiculous, but then I am always called the bad guy.

I don’t get it sometimes. All I want to do is help, it isn’t like my enlightenment isn’t important, shoot if it weren’t for me then no one would really enjoy life. I would be surrounded by thoughtless automations with a fear of fruit. Ooh if you eat of this fruit you will die… like that’s fair. He pulled that shit with me and I stood up and said HELL NO!!! Who needs wings anyway?
And because of these things people think I am an extrovert. Look, I am the first one to tell you that I know I need a few friends around, I don’t like to be alone, but then at the same time, approaching people has always been hard for me. My brothers Mike and Gabe, they always knew how to approach and not feel awkward. It is that, so awkward for me.

I walked into Wal-Mart the other day and there was a greater. I could tell I made him uncomfortable, but then I can’t stand that outgoing bullshit, especially when it’s fake. I think I liked the ones in Memphis better; there at least the greater didn’t put on this facade like he gave a shit when he really didn’t. Down here everyone wants to look polite, regardless of their true feelings. See that’s what I am all about, true feelings.

I figure that if everyone was just honest with one another, then this world would be a much nicer place. If you don’t care say you don’t care, if you don’t like someone say you don’t like them, and for fuck’s sake, if you need to hit someone hit them.

Case in point, I was in church the other day, this fool up front telling me how to live. I chuckle at that every time I hear it, then of course he blames me for it. Actually I think that bastard blamed me for everyone who doesn’t like him, at least that is what I think he was saying. Oh, it’s my fault that the pastor lusts after the deacon’s wife, it’s my fault that the youth minister likes porn, and oh yes, it’s my fault your 16 year old daughter is pregnant.

I am not always whispering in people’s ears. Generally I don’t have to people make these decisions all on there own, regardless of me. In truth the last time I really even approached anyone it didn’t work. Sure the first one did. Most people don’t even listen to me. Generally people just want to blame me for their problems. All I want is a few friends: to drink with, to dine with, to sleep with. Anything I do is just to make friends. I’m like anyone else, lonely and scared to death of rejection.

Sincerely
Legba

The Rosary

2007-09-27T00:28:00.000-05:00

Hail Mary full of Grace
The Lord is with you
Blessed are you among women
Blessed is the fruit of your womb Jesus…

The rosary sat coldly in his hands though he ground the beads like they were sand. Try to keep the image; it’s all he can do; try to picture the Holy Mother… to know at least someone is praying for him…

…Its funny, I have been doing it so long I don’t know anymore if it even matters, anymore… I know it used to…

It was a cold day, but warm. I know that doesn’t make any sense it just was. There was a dry rain, and I hit bottom. Let me tell you, bottom is an interesting place to be, all I can see is what is below me, and there is nothing below me. Bottom, so low in fact, I could no longer hear the conversations of the people above me. Of course every now and again someone would get close to me, but never as low as me. Bottom’s are funny though, it isn’t like I was drinking, I hadn’t pissed anyone off, I hadn’t lost my job and by no means had I hurt anyone… not even myself. Often at bottoms people have suicidal idealizations, I had none, I knew what was before me either way, hell… no, capitol H Hell. Not in death but in life, and then in death because of the waste my life had become. And it would make sense if I was addicted to drugs or alcohol if I had just lost someone important, if I was so depressed I wanted to die… of course I was just so depressed I didn’t think I could be lucky enough to die… then one way or another get stuck with eternal life.

Hail Mary Mother of God
Pray for us sinners
Now, and at the hour of our death…

I guess I am not at my death, but now… will the holy Mother come to me, and even if she could… would it matter, I hear there are some things that can’t be forgiven… A contract is often one of those things, especially when Hell has the best lawyers. I know what you’re thinking, “This nut job sold his soul to the devil.”

Let me correct you, “This nut, Job, sold his soul to the devil.” Okay so I am not necessarily the one in the book, at least not the one the book is written about, but Goethe liked me enough to put me there… Okay maybe I am not that one either. Who am I then that this Faustian deal weighs on my soul? It wasn’t a long contract; you know there wasn’t even any fine print

I, state your name, blaspheme the Spirit
Signed,

Well, you know…

There were witnesses too, what was her name… hell I don’t remember anymore; maybe I can find the document. Of course I lost it years ago…
He really hasn’t bothered me since I signed either, he got a kick out of it, I didn’t tell him I wanted anything, in all honesty, I was just sick of being fooled, so I just signed… “Easiest soul I ever knew,” he said to me as he walked away. Mephistopheles has a good sense of humor, he threw me a rosary, I am not even Catholic. Years ago I thought about converting but you know… never got around to it… was too busy… hitting bottom.

Is there grace once one signs his soul away? Sometimes I wonder why I couldn’t just be like one of those folk I see every day who sign a wee bit more away every day. If they died right now it might take some purgatory to burn that shit out, but in a few years… hell… I might have a roommate, at least in Hell.

Should I continue with this rosary, I never really took to the doctrine of Mary… I mean it’s all right, just not my thing.

Grace… Damnation… Peace… how is it I feel like I deserve all these things at the same time… maybe I will be lucky and I will find out the Evangelicals were wrong, and the Catholics, and… well most everyone, and there is annihilation of the soul. I think that is what I want anyway… for annihilation I get peace…

Well… it’s time to go. Time to sleep, perchance to dream…if I am lucky, an empty dream… where my soul is already annihilated.
Mary looked down from heaven… Mephistopheles looked up from Hell… both willing to fight for a soul. Then there was Jesus… he smiled… because he knew something more.

... and a time for dancing

2007-09-24T00:39:00.000-05:00

There’s a time for mourning and a time for dancing

No one who watches really knows… it’s not something that can be seen; it is only something that works in the experience. It’s neither good nor bad, neither dark nor light, but the language spoken on the floor of the smoke filled jukes. A movement of the arm, a shift of the weight, a lead, a follow… these things someone may see but it is something beyond that no one can see… it is the connection, oh I am sure you think you see it, but you don’t. It’s not just the hands, the placement of the feet, and the flaws of the turn.

Part of it is the sweat; the fact vision is impaired because of the salt in the eyes from the brow. To feel her, pressed against… breast against… arms in contact… and the music it drives on… and on... and on…

Look, it’s not about sex, and it’s not “not” about sex. It’s not about love, and at the same time it is. Hell, it often isn’t even about “like”… regardless of the feeling. It’s when there’s nowhere to go, no place to be, when the words just aren’t enough to express thought. It isn’t about technique, or how well a turn is lead… it’s about the conversation that only a soul can hear, a conversation that only the soul can see.

The sweat intermingles, and increases. Hormones… Pheromones… Sometimes it seems like guitars never stop, sometimes is seems like they stop too soon, and haven’t driven hard enough. Then again, to close the eyes, to hold her tight, to be guided, not by my own intuition, or even decision. To be guided only by the song. It’s the way music feels, what two people have say at the same time. Sometimes it’s about agreeing, and sometimes it’s about conflict, and sometimes it is anger. Bodies pressing against one another while the music articulates a heartbeat that can only be understood on the floor. There is no apology for moving; there is no discussion of appropriateness because nothing’s appropriate. But it’s not sex, no matter what anyone tells you, what is it they say? “It’s the blues,” and it’s time for dancing.

Death on-call

2007-09-05T23:20:00.000-05:00

It was like thunder in the darkness, or an incessant ringing, it wouldn’t stop. The ringing that takes place in his head, it never stops. Sometimes, even when it does stop, it doesn’t stop. Nights are no longer sleepless, and my hip has always got that damn vibration. The clock says 3:32… damn… even if it is short my nights sleep is shot. Where did I put my glasses, where is that fucking light, where is the pager?

I can barely rouse myself from the edge of the bed, it is now 3:37, I still haven’t called back… I wonder if the nurses would think it funny, me sitting in my underwear, no shirt my stomach hanging over, my hair tossed to shreds, and my demeanor… pissed. Whey is this so complicated, and why do I want to say damn over and over again. Oop, it is going off again… same number… better call back.

“Hi this is the oncall chaplain returning a page.” I say with a hint of annoyance.

“We have a death,” she said coldly, and pronouncing the th with an f sound.

“Who is this?,” I say partially out of befuddlement, partially to be a smart ass.

“This is the ER, the patient is a 12 year old boy,” she went on to give me his name and all the pertinent information. This kid had so much internal bleeding that nothing could stabilize him, he was so torn up there was nothing left to die. So I put on my cloak, I grabbed my sickle, hooded my face… and walked out of the room to the ER, hopefully no one would notice the skeletal face, the bony hands… or me… What is it we say to these families, what is it I say to this family. The same one that comes in over and over again. Mom is going to cry out obnoxious things about God, Dad won’t even be around and little brother… he is six and taking care of the 3 month old.

“Does the family know yet?” I ask.

“No”

“You know I can’t say anything right?”

“Yes, we just figured you could be there for the family,” she said plainly, I couldn’t catch a hint of sarcasm, I was hoping for one. In my mind I say thanks for telling me how to do my Goddamn job, now you do yours and tell the fucking family, but instead I asked her when the doctor would be in. “I don’t know,” she said and walked off. I should sit my ass down and just wait for her to come back, show her and the doctor. Tie my hands will they… What would Jesus do? Aren’t ministers supposed to be nice? Fuck it… God is the one who put me here, guess he’ll work it out.

“Hi, I am one of the chaplain’s that works at the hospital and…”

“MY BABY WHAT HAPPENED TO MY BABY???”

“Ma’am I really don’t know,” I lied I know exactly what happened, a 12 year old took a bullet in the stomach because your boyfriend pissed off the local GD. An older man goes to comfort the woman that is obviously the mother, she looks to me to be in her late 20’s, but I have never been good with age. “Can someone fill me in on what is going on?” figured I would gather some info.

The older man comforting the mother spoke up, “I’m the grandfather,” I nod with acknowledgement, “I know what your thinking…” no he doesn’t, “your thinking another nigger family done fucked up got the boy shot because his momma runnin round with some gud damned gangster.” All the sudden a tear begins to run down his cheek. “Its my fault, he found my gun,” pointing over to the six year old. He called me out, he was right, all I saw was another nigger family that dun fucked up. Somewhere in their chaos life was all about me, such narcissism “See we was fittin to move out the neighborhood next week, and I moved it to pack it away…” he couldn’t finish…

“I’m sorry…” I say… and finally I mean it. They knew before the doctor came in… I often wonder if God damned my soul long ago… each night I look through my white eyes… I wonder if God damns my soul. I didn’t sleep that night… Grandfather and I had a long talk… beyond my prejudice, beyond his self blame, we came to trust each other. That’s the thing, if the Grandfather can be strong they will make it, but Granddad has a long way to go, of course so do I. About 5:00 AM I apologized to the Grandfather, this time for my judgments… I told him why I apologized…

“Your innocent to me son…” he said to me, “at least you can listen.” I walked back to the oncall room after everything had been dealt with. “Dealt with,” that is an interesting way to put it. A 12 year old died, straight A student, his brother scared for life, his Grandfather, a Vietnam Vet, twice decorated stands accused in his own court of law… I put my sickle down, I unhood my face, and remove the black cloak to find a human underneath. Sometimes I am shocked to find the human… sometimes I am shocked to know that if I cut myself I bleed, and some pains can even stab through my cold heart. Its okay two hours later my relief comes in and I go home, might as well see if the cafeteria is open. And there it is, my hip vibrates again.

I make the call… I grab my cloak and my sickle, this time to the ICU, 60 year old man coding, they don’t know if he is going to make it… family is erratic, crazy white man saying he is going to burn the hospital down. Probably trailer trash, probably dangerous. Dammit God when do I get to sleep. Then I hear the answer and I laugh to myself…

“Get over yourself, you’re a chaplain not an actor so avoid the drama,” I knew God could be sarcastic and I knew he had a sense of humor, and I knew he was right. I do tend to focus on drama. I can’t see for shit, but then at least I can listen.

The Faustian Deal as an Archetype: Individuation by the Process of Integration of the Shadow

2007-09-03T21:49:00.000-05:00

This paper serves as a reflection only; I am beginning to organize thoughts in my head around the concept of integration of the shadow. If one is not aware of the terminology in reference to the shadow please read my previous reflection on an introduction to the shadow.

I will explore the archetype of the Faustian deal. This concept is of interest to me because of how often I have see the concept relived through popular media. Basically a Faustian deal refers very specifically to a deal that is made between humanity and some form of a malevolent Trickster for wisdom, wealth, power, etc… The terminology comes from the story of Dr. Faustus. Though he was a historical character, there isn’t much that can be said of assurance as to how he lived.

The two main authors penning the story of Faust are Johannes Goethe and Thomas Marlow. The two stories focus on completely different themes, and seem to even have different points. This reflection will mainly focus on Goethe’s Faust. It will then trace the movement of Faustian deals in modern media; I will begin with Star Wars, in relation to turning to the dark side, Ghost Rider, and Spawn. The latter two are comic book characters.

I had always been interested in this idea, early on because there is no Biblical ground for it, but more recently as I consider morality and ethics in a world that is not black and white. I began to notice themes in the media when I was very young. It started by watching movies where these deals were taking place, one that comes to mind is the George Burns movie, Oh God you Devil. I was later introduced to Todd McFarland’s Spawn, and when I was in college I read a Star Wars comic book series called Dark Jedi, where Luke “goes over” to the dark side, his reasoning, to defeat a Sith Lord.

While working as a hospital chaplain I began to read the works of CG Jung, and learned of the concept of the archetype, and his take on fantasy and dream interpretation. At that point I began noticing recurring characters in television and books. There is always a protagonist, always an antagonist. Often there is a Trickster, a Hero, a Mother, a Father, and then there was the ever-present Shadow.

This reflection is part of my journey. I can’t help but wonder, why does our culture tell the story of Dr. Faustus over and over again… what inherent need does it meet? Lets begin by tracing this need in Star Wars.

Star Wars
In the beginning Darth Vader is to be understood as an evil force bent solely on controlling the universe through terror. One important question is, is that the case? In the original movies Vader’s character development is interesting, if one were to open their mind they would see by “Return of the Jedi,” that Darth Vader no longer represents what he was proposed to be. What is Vader’s goal after finding Luke, his son? His goals are to first overthrow the Emperor, and then rule the universe with Luke as father and son. Vader believes that with Luke at his side, if he embraces the Sith side of his personality they will be strong enough to overthrow the Emperor.

It was always interesting to me that in their universe this epic battle is based off a Prophesy, “the one who will restore balance to the force.” In the beginning of a New Hope Obi Wan believes this is through Luke but with the addition of the prequel’s we find that this thought fell originally with Vader himself. In the end of “Return of the Jedi,” who is it that destroys the Emperor, it is not Luke who refuses to embrace his hate, but his father who acting out of hatred for the Emperor and love and concern for his son that destroys Palpatine.

The prequel movies build Anikan to be a new hope himself, but with deep confliction. He never learns to temper his rage but seems only to try and repress it, this is first completely evident in the second movie when he destroys the sand people at the death of his mother. He never learned to deal with grief, so by the third movie when he has found that his beloved would die he partakes in a Faustian deal, why? For love. We find that Vader has more depth than could be imagined from his original appearance.

Any true Star Wars fan will also have moved beyond the canonical series of movies and moved into the literature. In the canonical literature there is a comic book series that is very important to this discussion, “Dark Jedi.” In this series we find that the Emperor is not really dead but has been biding his time. We find that as the ability to use the force grows it destroys the body, thus the reason he became so deformed fighting in the third episode. How will a Jedi deal with this? Qui-gon Jin and Obi-wan found a way to deal with it through death, the Emperor through cloning. We find the he has grown beyond the bounds of his own skin and lives again through a clone.

Once Luke figures this out he understands his father all the better. He is forced to ask the question, is it possible to beat true evil through some perceived purity. He even begins to realize that he must embrace the dark side of the force; this realization comes to him as he takes a knee and refers to Palpatine as, “my master.”

Todd McFarland’s Spawn
We find the Faustian deal more upfront in the comic book series Spawn. A mercenary, one that has done many bad things, is on his deathbed and is given one more chance to be with his love by Malbolsha the devil. He is given five years then is expected to lead the armies of Hell. Malbolsha tricks him, and he awakens to find that he is deformed and five years has past. Wanda his love has moved passed him and married his best friend, they have a child, though oddly enough we find that the child is probably Spawn’s.

Spawn awakens to find a choice lay before him, whom will he follow? Not choosing is not an option by refusing to choose he chooses “Evil,” by choosing “Good,” he loses all hope of finding his love once more.

God must battle the devil; this seems to be the rule. Throughout history, through stories and through Literature we find the archetype of the “Divine Battle,” a battle that must be fought, it is interesting to me that in the case of Faust (Goethe), Star Wars, Spawn, and Ghost Rider God uses a, “demonic” force to win.

Ghost Rider
Ghost Rider is an earlier form of the Spawn storyline, tricked my Mephistopheles to sell his soul and live in servitude, his father does not die of cancer. There is always a trick when it comes to a Faustian deal though, in this case his father later dies in a wreck. Ghost Rider is forced to walk the world alone, belonging to the Devil. Later he learns to control his powers and fights against the devil himself. The character in touching his shadow is strengthened to deal with darkness.

Faust
I will spend my time with Faust as understood by Goethe, and remain most in the first book. Goethe’s first book is a love story. There are many character but I see three as major archetypes, not exactly as something different, but as stages.

Mephisto: in the prologue in a conversation with God he calls himself the Devil, later in the book he is called other things but desires most the name, Mephisto, or Mephistopheles. He is representative of the trickster, the one who is given the task of upsetting the balance. It seems that Goethe takes a queue from the book of Job. In a conversation with God a deal is struck, a deal, or one might even say a bet, in which Faust is set up as the deciding factor. Faust’s faithfulness is not decided by his morality but by his intellect, Mephistopheles engages Faust in the intellect. He stands as a liberal in a conservative world, offering Faust the opportunity to change his stance on life to something more progressive. Put simply he offers Faust a life where he can move away from helping those around him as a doctor but enjoying life, finding something that will finally entertain him.

Margaret: If Mephisto represents to me extreme liberalism she then is blind orthodoxy. Margaret takes issue not only with Faust not adhering to a creed but his association to Mephisto. She actually tells Faust that she loves him except when she is around Mephisto, then she hates him. There is a wonderful scene where She and a friend of hers are gossiping about a woman who is pregnant out of wedlock.

In the end her way of thinking is too inconsistent with the life she has begun to live since she met Faust. Though she is redeemed at the end of her life, she is put to death for the drowning of her illegitimate child. The child belongs to Faust.

***Take into account I have simplified the story and have simplified the characters. The characters are deep and on their own represent something deeper and fuller than my inadequate descriptions. Also take into account I am making these descriptions to emphasize a point, and this is the vision I have taken from the book, not necessarily the one intended by the author.***

Faust: Standing between what was and what could be Faust is forced to look upon both worlds. Though he did not enter in hastily he still entered into a pact with the Devil. There was something found wanting in his life, something he needed. Every day as a doctor he acted kindly to the underprivileged, working often pro-bono. The world that surrounded him revered him, for not only did he work for the poor, he taught wisely and raised those beneath him. But there was something missing something Faust was not able to do with the cards that had been dealt to him that is where Mephisto steps in.

Mephisto gave him youth, helped him find love, taught him regret, and at some point made concrete a morality that was slipping away. It was in the guilt over Margaret’s death that Faust is reminded one must live a certain way. Something that he had forgotten before Mephisto, and while walking with Mephisto. It was Mephisto that gave him the opportunity to learn more, to attempt to exhaust knowledge, all knowledge under heaven and earth.
Mephisto, then in the second book gave him an army. He sent him to help a king and in that time worked with the king. At his death he tricked Mephistopheles. In a final act of kindness, not only is he sure he can’t know everything, he puts himself in a situation where he convinces the devil to work to better mankind.

Goethe paints Faust as a picture of wisdom, though he may not be innocent as a dove, he is sly as a serpent. Faust understands that answers are not simple, like Margaret thought, but through Mephisto he understands some answers aren’t worth it.

This story has been told over and over again. Why is humanity so dead set on selling its soul to the devil? We live in a culture that uses phrases like, “Lesser of two evils,” and asks questions like, “do the ends justify the means.”

Edgar Allen Poe wrote a story called “Never Bet the Devil Your Head.” He describes it as his one “moral,” tale. In the story Poe does not stand between Progression and Orthodoxy, between perceived good and evil but accepts the dichotomy. In accepting that dichotomy no matter how tongue in cheek, he rejects his shadow, a shadow he faced in the rest of his writing. Poe recommended we never bet the Devil our head, but we never learn, why is that?
Maybe we have to bet the devil our head. Maybe we have to sell our soul to the devil to survive. I know what your saying so let me say this, I don’t think it literally, but in a figurative sense, we have to balance the force, not dichotomize it. I don’t think this ignores morality, nor does it ignore the wisdom of understanding good and evil. If we walk into a room with a set dichotomy someone isn’t going to fit. We can pretend that all people are Republican’s or Democrats, Liberals or conservatives, Believers or Unbelievers, Good or Evil, but at some point, someone will walk in to this room who doesn’t fit.

Our culture tends to ignore the shadow, thinking that if we don’t look at the darkness within ourselves it isn’t there. The thing is when we look into our own darkness often we find that we have damned things that themselves are not dark. It is as if we look at all people who oppose violence as weak, and the people that are willing to fight as killers. Not all solders kill babies, and not all pacifists are doing it because it is the right thing to do. But if we can label people who don’t think like us as evil, then we are good, we don’t need to reconsider life or to think about new things because we have arrived, and we can stop the car. I am a fan of life as a journey, where the hell we go isn’t as important as how the hell we get there… or vice versa, where the heaven we go isn’t as important as how the heaven we get there. Death… a place to rest? A new adventure? I don’t know but I can’t journey if I don’t have any road.

Can we look into our own darkness without being swallowed by it? And if we are swallowed are we stuck for good, is it as clear as “never bet the devil your head,” or can Darth Vader still make the right choice, even after making all the wrong ones.

Folks, there is power in the dark side of the force, and psychosis lives there too. We can ignore him, or maybe it is time to sit and have a discussion with Mephistopheles. Maybe it is time to learn what he knows. Morality is action. We are moral if we function within our bounds of ethics. Things… things are not moral, even actions.

The Bible says in Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. (KJV)” I don’t always know what this means, I know it isn’t referring to tornado’s and I know it doesn’t mean God isn’t good. But I know that in Genesis 1:3-4 for there to be light there has to be darkness. All the characters of these stories worked with their shadow side, integrating those things in it necessary for life and for higher consciousness, and were able to reject the things that were not moral… so what is hidden in your shadow that will bring you to higher conscious… and what there will kill you?

Reflection on Goodbye

2007-08-17T10:45:00.000-05:00

I have considered goodbye. What else is there to do when one is leaving but to consider goodbye? It is often hard for me to know how to say goodbye, it is often hard for me to know how to know what is important to say, what is important to make known. I often see people die, I see their families and I hear the stories they tell. It is not uncommon, when asked, for a family to talk about the life of the deceased and the death they deserved, many of whom will either say in a peaceful death, "It is good the suffering is over," and in a tragic death, "She didn’t deserve this." I wonder if ever they really know what one deserves and what one does not, lest I consider goodbye.

In the days I didn’t know how to say goodbye I would plan "speeches", these long drawn out things more like monologues, what was important was summing up the entire life experiences of my friend and I so that I can have the appropriate closure and move on. It was a carefully planned procedure, at first I planned it for the last possible moment, the time when goodbye is imminent and if I would wait one moment longer goodbye would be missed. Living a life without equal sharing of feeling I had to make sure that this was known, that my feeling were known.
In my head it was pictured so cleanly, All my friends lined up in a row, one by one I would say something to each of them for the others to hear, one by one I would honor them, and I would organize by importance in my life. There was an epithet for each person, a statement of who they are, and their importance to me. Not only were my friends there but those people I respected but didn’t like, with them there was always a firm handshake. Then there was the girl that never knew how I cared for her. In one moment we would live a lifetime… together… in love.

Well these things never happened. I suppose that the mental process itself is important because I need to know what people mean to me, I need to know how they have blessed me and honored me. The thing I learned about this was more that my fantasy of goodbye was filled with narcissism. All people gathering in honor of me, my mind conceptualized that this meeting as the time when time stops. As I would leave and begin to grow and change without them, they would seem to no longer exist to me, only as a remembrance, a memory of my past, a part of me, created to serve my needs. That was the backdrop of goodbye for me, a chance to bring notoriety to myself through the self-flagellation of grief.

Later goodbye changed for me. Don’t get me wrong it was still grand, still narcissistic, it was just… different. I went with the narcissism and realized goodbye was something for me even more than it is for others. Yes they need closure but in my mind I realized that I fantasized all this because I needed closure. So then I consider my basic human need when it comes to relationships… closure, acknowledgement of change. It is still narcissistic, it still puts me at the center of the world but in truth… at least I got honest about it. Hugs were important, words, memories, and most of all to let them know how they have blessed me.

It has been interesting for me to learn that not all people need this form of closure and closure comes in many ways. My last two paradigms flowed out of a low self-esteem. Maybe my esteem has changed little but at least I see it. So what then is goodbye to me now?

I started preparing this time the same as usual, I began to think of gatherings, call them parties if you will. As I gathered with one group of friends I noticed, the party was not the point, the speeches I had prepared were unimportant something had changed. Maybe its growing older, maybe its growing healthier but I didn’t need the speech for me, and in this time I have learned that others do need that speech. I also noticed that it isn’t necessarily kind to inflict my narcissism on others through my speech. Sometimes all I needed was a hug, sometimes a handshake, and for many… just one more dance, knowing that next time we dance something will be different… it must be. And sometimes, I didn’t need to say or do anything, the life I had lived with this person, the experiences we shared said more than any speech I could write.
Even more so the relationship wasn’t culminating. In some ways it would continue to grow, and in other ways it would stop, yet there was this sense of culmination. I danced with a friend last night… The dance had ever bit of soul, every bit of the blues, and every bit of emotion I felt for my friend. We moved sometimes together sometimes apart, but I remember finishing the dance and saying to myself, "That was goodbye, and no word or speech could ever say it better." Goodbye was not in the words said, the hands shaken, the hugs given, but only in the life lived.

So as I go on from here, I think there will be times where I create a speech, but I might start calling it a conversation, and allowing for other input. There might be a statement of feeling and meanings, and there might not be. Sometimes just a dance… a smile… and even a hug… who knows I might even someday get the kiss I have always been waiting for.

Mood Indigo

2007-08-14T14:57:00.000-05:00

I think I realized why I like to set my alarm 30 minuites before I would even consider waking up. I like that time in the morning, that time when I am half asleep half awake. It is neat, like dream, fantasy, and reality are all one. It is that time when I get a second chance to fix errors that in reality have no fix, it is that time when those who have said goodbye are still there... when my dreams are most potent, and the world is in the palm of my hand.

There was a chance once, well, less than a chance... not even a chance... to stair into a set of eyes gone, to relive a moment and choose something different. Like a time dancing in my room at 2:00 AM, the song Mood Indigo had just finished. She was about to tell me she needed to leave... maybe just maybe... maybe what made sense would widdle away or maybe something would happen. I remember her saying "I think I need to go." My heart never fell, never dropped I knew she would have to go, I knew it would end this way... too few things ever change that much.

"It's your call," was my responce. What is different than usual, I wasn't speaking from fear, she knew how I felt, the problem was that I knew how she felt... half interested... maybe I was just filler... incase of emergency break glass. In thinking about my response I don't think saying anything different would have changed anything, it would simply have just been a little more honest. But in this time early in the morning I remember the time and I realize it wasn't out of fear that I ran from the right phrase, it was from ignorance... I said the first thing that occurred to me.

It was a safe comment, my hope was to hear, "Maybe just a little bit longer." That wasn't what I heard. There was no goodnight kiss, no real hug... I walked her to her car and she left.

But as I meditate on the event the phrase that would have made the most sense, the phrase that would have at least acknowledged my feelings, "I want you to stay." I know what your thinking, but your wrong, it isn't about sex, it isn't about the hollowness of, "making out," it was simply staving off the inevitable for one more moment and for once speaking my desires aloud. To look for a few moments with a set of eyes that would never be the same. She would probably have still left, it would probably have been all the same except, it would have been a wee bit more honest.

I think about the deathbeads I stand beside. I remember one night a woman watched her husband die, she held his hand, I was privlaged to stand in the room with them, I was able to stand in sight of their love. More than 50 years they had been together, now he leaves. She wept at his bedside, and it made me ask, who will weep at mine. Don't misread me, I didn't expect it to be this woman... at least I hadn't expected it for a long time... sometimes my life is like a revolving door of what never happened...

But when I get out of bed, the morning shower washes it all away... the dreams, the fantasy, I put on my tie, my nametage, I grab my coat and step into life. It isn't sad, at least my life isn't sad, I am sad because I am in the process of goodbye, I stay often in Mood Indigo, but you know, I live... to hold and to be held, to dream of and be dreamt of, to love and be loved, to be angry and recieve others anger, these and many other things like them are to live... there is more, sometimes there is less, but always there is life.

So as you read this raise your glass and say with me
"LaChiam"

The Journey

2007-06-30T04:20:00.000-05:00

It was an odd day, the day that I died. I don’t think that it is worth getting into the details of the event, they weren’t very meaningful, at least not to me. Not in the long run. I think it is also worthless to talk about lights and tunnels and things, not because I didn’t see them, it just… wasn’t important to me.

See get this, I was lying there… I was in the hospital, I remember having to argue with my wife about what I wanted, there were a few things that were obvious that she already knew. She knew my flair for the dramatic and my desire to utilize what many have called, meaningless gestures, partially because I believe and also for the dramatics.

Its funny, I didn’t have to argue with her about getting a priest, a specific priest. Yes I know, I am not Catholic… but he was a friend, and he used to sneak me communion during Mass. It was funny I remember once over a beer I told him I wanted him to give me last rites, he figured that he’d go first so we just toasted our glasses and he said all right. I won’t tell the diocese if you won’t. I still remember him praying the rosary for me. It was neat, maybe the cross between Morphine and Dopamine… but I saw Mary there… She was behind my youngest son, there was a tear in her eye, and a smile on her face… her face was so warm and inviting, I wonder if everyone knows how warm and inviting her face is. Sure I know it is crazy for a protestant to talk about visions of Mary but hey… it’s what I do.

The room was strangely warm, I thought I would be cold… I wasn’t, I don’t know what was warming the room up… maybe love… maybe frustration… You know there was a chaplain there. I had hoped there would be one, this was a Southern Baptist fellow… I think I was conscious about two hours, he was there the entire time. At one point he sat with me and talked, just he and I, I had to smile, he was so young, and his eyes an odd mix of warm and cold. Like he was full of emotion, but fuller of a desire to only let it squeak out. He was a good guy, I don’t remember his name, he was in training, I told him a little about my training, I told him how I wanted to die… I opened the door for him.

"It seems like your ready," he said to me in a haunting voice. I always wondered if I would have that conversation with someone. The truth is, I was tired, I suppose a little young but still, I have two kids and a wife I love very much… The oldest is married, I won’t get to see my grandchild this side of the shadowlands, but I know he is coming, I know it’s a boy, they don’t believe me, think I am a damned old mystic. I will get a chance to speak with him before he goes, I will send a message, I wonder if they will get it.

Now the youngest, he is the most like me, he is in seminary, followed in my footsteps, I can’t believe it. I argued with him about it, talked about the hours, about pain, about the tears I had shed, about living paycheck to paycheck, God’s forced faith, knowing that he will provide because otherwise we starve. I knew I had lost the argument when I saw a gleam in his eyes… later a vision… I made the arguments of his grandfather, but my heart welled with pride. I know he doesn’t know about the pain that is coming, but I know he can take it. I feel that I can stand before God and feel redeemed because of my children… because through all the mistakes I made… they will change the world, maybe that is just the father in me… but God is a father too.
I will never see him wed… be he will. Its funny when Mary left his side she was replaced with the shape of a different woman, olive skinned… seemed cute… holding his arm. I don’t think he was open to the vision fully but I saw him shiver, then scratch his arm where she was touching him… he would meet her soon, maybe two years out, but soon.

The oldest… successful bastard, he is like his mother. I never thought I would spawn his kind. The popular kind, the sporty kind, but he was a little different. Sure I had to adjust his attitude as a kid but he seems to have gone a different direction. He seems to have… grown. He will be a good father, I can’t believe the woman he married. Every day I wonder how he got her… She is so kind, I think she is the reason he went back to church. My vision of him is interesting… a rose… he will be a leader someday… a leader in the church… not like my young son… but a lay leader… an elder...

My wife, she is funny. She has two silver dollars in her purse… because I asked for her to carry them, to pay the boatman. When I die I want them over my eyes. She will hand one to each son; they will cover my eyes. She is okay with that, but she wasn’t okay with me dying… at least not at first. I keep telling her I won’t make it, she keeps talking about miracles. I keep telling her I don’t want those miracles. I am not afraid of death, or at least wasn’t until that damn chaplain asked me a question.

"Yeah I’m ready," I heard myself say. "How about you, you ready?" I know the expectation of the chaplain, I know what the staff thinks he should do, I smile at him. I can’t help it, I tell him stories about CPE: About the years I spent as a chaplain and as a preacher, the years as a husband and a father, the years alone… in transit… wondering if I would ever find a home. I saw a tear in his eye… That bastard, he knew what I needed, and I think I knew what he needed. I needed to talk… he needed to hear… yes I was ready… it was right

"You are Catholic?" I always laugh when people ask me this question.
"No sir, never got around to conversion," my priest friend laughed.
"I think you understand what Catholic means better than most…" my Priest said.

My new Southern Baptist friend didn’t understand that comment, so the father, it feels odd to call my friend father, explained about the big church. This chaplain is just a kid, we both know he isn’t going to listen too well, but I like him. He is me… I am him…

My niece and nephew are there, and a man who became like a brother to me later… my sister-in-law’s brother. A good guy… I was glad he was there. I look forward to seeing my brother again. I wonder where he is…

All the sudden there is pain… God awful pain… So I do the only appropriate thing… I start to curse… the nurse gives me more morphine immediately I get loopy, it’s almost time… I glaze my eyes with the look of goodbye, I try to speak but I am too tired, I can raise 1 finger, I wave… the circle around me joins hands. Mary was back, Jesus was there, and Grandma, that is where I saw you first… My brother standing next to his wife… I hadn’t seen that in years… I can’t exactly remember why… oh now I remember. I don’t think she knows he is there…. Mom… Dad… smiling, holding hands. I really appreciate that theology about "believers but not knowers."

They are gone and I get up… blue lab coat… chaplain coat… I am in the hospital… "Code 1 to ICU 3" I rush to the code and find out it wasn’t a code… the chart says, "do not resuscitate." The family is standing around the body; Mary is here, Jesus is here… Mom, Dad… why are you here… Anna… Adam… why is my family here? I look down on the table, me… all the sudden I am looking up from the table… and I am filled with breath.

Grandma, that is when you handed me my chaplain coat… my sons placed the silver dollars over my eyes. I put my coat on… I walked through a corridor… another chaplain next to me… he wore black… pretty macabre for a chaplain… oh, he is "that" chaplain… I walk to a river… there is a boat, and a man with a lantern. "Charon?" I said. He smiled at me and held out his hand, I reached into the pocket of my lab coat, lets see… papers… more papers… census’… there they are. I hand over two silver dollars to Charon. He smiles.

The journey is short… peaceful, and oddly enough seemed like forever… I was a little nervous… now judgement it coming, now I stand before God… now the decision… Elysium or Tartarus… All the sudden no fear… I should be afraid, I am not… I got off the boat onto a dock… I walk through a door… I am in the hospital again… but it is a dream I had many years earlier… I walk into employee orientation… I state my name to the man behind the main desk… the bookkeeper opens a large book… this was just like a dream… he smiles… "St. Peter?" I ask. This is no longer the dream. I begin to walk and turn to ask a question, "can I check on my family?" he showed me a monitor. There was crying… even the chaplain… but it was okay… Mary was there… so was my Dad… and Mom… I looked to the right; Grandma was with me… she had never left me. Uncle Bud on her right… smiles… all smiles… The journey, I plot my course.

The Shadow: A Layman's Introduction

2007-06-29T02:07:00.000-05:00

(I am not an analyst, you might read my stuff and think I have no idea what I am talking about, that is fine… I might just agree with you. I have recently come into the writing of CG Jung and am beginning to walk a road of understanding this requires the collection of my thoughts and dialogue therein. Please, let me know what you think)

Another of Jung’s core archetypes is the Shadow. The Shadow appears in our dreams and also in our fantasies as different things. The shadow itself is the part of the human psyche that we often don’t want to acknowledge. Often times parts of ourselves our relegated to shadow because of some strict moral judgement, and sometimes because of the way we fit into cultural norms.
For example, let’s talk about pride. Pride finds itself in the top 7 of the deadly sins list and for centuries has been the negative focal point of sermons and philosophical expressions. To view pride as a negative thing is rather black and white. I would say there are two sides to pride. There is the negative side, which I like to call Vanity, then there is the positive side, which can be understood as a positive self esteem. There are such phrases as, "pride in our work," "pride in our job," and "pride in the life we live." These things are important… we cannot live a life without pride it doesn’t work, but we take a word like pride and define it in a way that makes all pride seem bad.

Other examples might be in words like, religion, doctrine, and sexuality. All these things have negative connotations and often those connotations are exaggerated for the purpose of getting ones way or winning an argument. These things if not expressed find themselves in the shadow.
Of course it doesn’t have to be that dramatic. We often live unbalanced lives, there are very spiritual individuals out there who are accountants but never act on their spirituality because they are accountants not some form of minister. When something like this happens one might commit him/herself to work in such a drastic sense the spiritual aspect of the psyche is not experienced, the psyche will try to balance this, sometimes through dreams sometimes through fantasies, and there are other ways. Watch the imagery, a Catholic man dreams of a rose blooming from between the keys of his computer… the psyche might be saying something… something like, "Express me!"

I am typing all this to say, the Shadow is not necessarily bad or wrong, nor is it evil. When dealing with the shadow it is often necessary to cast no moral judgement until it is better understood. In dreams the shadow might appear anywhere from an elusive woman to a demon king, all depending on how ready we are to hear what the psyche has to say.
Does this mean we take the shadow in fullness and bend toward its will? Of course not, we have the ability to make choices in relation to, how we act and even what we believe. If one has been living a life of low self esteem and self deprivation he/she may figure that out and arrogate oneself falsely trying to compensate, because, well in all honesty a bit of an Ass. This might just be a case of letting the shadow run the show, remember when dealing with the inner self, the ego can and often must make moral decisions on what action is taken.

The same with Sexuality, Western Culture tends to dichotomize sex. It is either all evil or all good. Often sex is encouraged to be left in the bedroom and never mentioned, or something that is to be toyed with until one figures out his own way to make it work. That statement represents to polar views. Sex in itself is neutral, it is what we do with sex that places it in the moral realm. Human beings are sexual creatures, why do I say that, because all other animals are, and there seems to be this strong desire, whether it be bingeing or in sexual anorexia. An individual who deems sex, if not in voice but still in action, as evil or something to be feared might have very erotic dreams or fantasies that often seem out of control. Those who binge in the realm of sexuality might have dreams and fantasies expressing the opposite, maybe a nun or a priest, either way something will appear in the shadow.

In both cases one will need to connect to that aspect that has been relegated to the shadow as to gain psychic wholeness.

The Slasher Flick as the Male's Expression of the Anima

2007-06-28T06:02:00.000-05:00

Have you considered the "Dead Teenager Movies." I rented Final Destination 3 the other day and they had an extra on the DVD that talked about the "Dead Teenager Movies." To make it simple these are slasher flicks where teenagers die in large numbers, various examples: Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the Thirteenth, and Halloween. There are many others, but you get the picture.

The move often centers on two main characters, the slasher and the heroine. I suppose it might be a hero but often the movie brings a woman to the forefront. In the beginning of the movie we often find this woman taking a stance on sexual improprieties, and in some ways appearing chaste. The funny thing is that it isn’t necessarily their choice it just happens to work that way, they are never unattractive and often picked because they are attractive, but not the "Hot ditzy chick." This woman/girl is girl next door pretty, the one you take home to mom. She is also strong willed and able to defend herself and even often conquer the antagonist of the film.
Take also into account that most of the people who come to these movies are male teenagers. Why is it that a male wants to come and watch a woman who will undoubtedly have the chance to score but will not, and also at some point will be bound, either by rope or in a cage of sorts conquer.

I have an idea. One of Jung’s most popular archetypes was the Anima/Animus. The Anima is (for men) the female aspect of the soul, and the Animus (for woman) being the male aspect. Theoretically all people have both parts of the soul represented by archetypes and through life will try to express appropriately both sides. When one side is not expressed appropriately the collective unconscious will try, often through dreams, but also through fantasies to allow this aspect of the self to be expressed.

As one comes to a slasher flick males get the opportunity to express many different aspects of these relationships. First the male understands his own feminine sexuality (not to be confused with homo-erroticism) and at the same time sees expressed some form of ultimate woman, one who is "touring the facilities and picking up slack (listen the cake song, short skirt long jacket). This woman is perfect; she is feminine, attractive, and tough. At some point in the movie she will be bound, expressing the males desire to bind his own anima, and then she will be loosed, and the male will figure out that embracing the anima is not embracing weakness but strength.
To conclude, I think these movies represent something that has shifted to the periphery in our culture, something that needs re-connected with. We have been given this false version of masculinity that has no room for a natural femininity. This need, suppressed but the consciousness, is then expressed in by those who make the movies, and by those who passively watch them.

However, it is important to note that passive experience of the anima in a movie is not equivalent to appropriate expression through the conscious mind.

Let me know what you think.

Haven't posted in a while

2007-06-13T15:19:00.000-05:00

Haven't posted in a while, sorry between my Myspace and Facebook accounts and the fact I have to use the public library I don't get to post much. I am currently working on an article that I hope to post, it will be about the archetyple of the Faustian deal in relation to integration of the shadow.

You're like a bear man!!!

2007-05-25T12:00:00.000-05:00

Went to the casino's last night, not to play the slots but to see a concert. The Big Bad Voodoo Daddy were playing. When the song "You me and the bottle," came on and I started dancing I thought back to college. It was BBVD and the movie swingers that lead me to wanting to learn to dance. Shoot that goes back to freshman year at college, what did we call it, "The ultimate guy movie." It was a great show got a phone pic (really blury) pic with the lead singer. Got a few signatures on my ticket. They commented on my dancing and I told them about watching the dance scene in Swingers and then wanting to learn to dance. The dude just smiled and nodded, letting me know he rememebered the movie.

It was a dream to dance to BBVD live... after the dance we Lindy bombed (Ramdomly started dancing to a funk band) the Casino. We were dancing between slot machines, it was great.

Mother's Day

2007-05-18T14:16:00.000-05:00

Who needs the attention at the death or dying of a loved one?

My pager went off at 10:30 PM, I wasn’t looking forward to going on a call but they really wanted me in the ER. I left the oncall room, put on my chaplain’s lab coat, and began to walk. As I got to the ER I got the info from the nurse. 19 year old girl coughing up blood, three hours earlier she felt decent, the day before she had been released from a clinic saying she was "Okay." She died the day after mothers day (this is very important), it was 12:30 a dark Monday morning. She left 3 sisters, a mother, and a daughter 3 years old. I can make no judgement as to whether she was a good mother I just knew her baby knew who she was, sometimes that speaks enough for me. Regardless it is none of my business, at least not anymore, if she was a good mother.

See I witnessed the death of three mothers that day (when working a 24 hour shift a day goes from 7 AM to 7 AM Monday morning) it was one hell of a mothers day. I called my mom to tell her I love her, she said, "You must have heard the same sermon I did." My reply was, simply, "probably." It didn’t matter that I hadn’t been to church that day, God speaks regardless.
Have you ever tried to connect with a 3-year-old. I am a pediatric chaplain (at least currently) it is my job to know how. If I can just get her eye early in the night, make a face, do the stupid removing the thumb trick. I did all those things. I remember at one point of the night she was being overlooked, please don’t judge the family you weren’t there and sometimes when emotions get high even the best lose direction, she came to me and held my hand. Her mom had been in the ER under constant work for two hours now, maybe more… I squatted down to look her in the eye… she said something about her mommy and pointed to the crisis room… I don’t understand 3-year-old eese. She just walked toward me, leaned on me so I hugged her.
I am not a huggy person… I get it from my father, but this girl needed attention. I picked her up and she put her arms around my neck. I generally don’t opt to hold children, this was a exception. While I was holding this baby her mother was called. I shut my eyes and imagined the magnanimity of growing up with no mother, knowing that your mother died on mothers day… but then I looked at my watch 12:15 AM. Mothers day was over.

On a death call whom do I give attention to? The family was in shock they were in mourning and they were taking care of each other. I did my chaplain duties, I took them in to see their fallen kin, I walked them back and forth from the chapel, I made sure paper work was taken care of, I listened, hell, I got water for those who needed it, these things were easy. My heart broke for a three-year-old girl who lost her mom…

I am just arrogant enough to tell this story because it is a neat story about me. I can’t help that… Another chaplain said he pictured this as a statue with the inscription, "The chaplain comforts the dying mothers child." That feeds my ego, at least on one level. It also makes sense of tragedy… at least on my side. The family still has to make their own sense… but I will never forget the child saying, "Mommy," and pointing to the crisis room.

Somewhere in the midst of shit there is grace. Somewhere in the midst of Hell there is hope. Somewhere in death there is life… Sometimes I ask why I am the one who has to stand there in the middle. Maybe because I am just arrogant enough to do it… maybe because it is the only way I am humbled… maybe because when I don’t have the strength to control life, God does.

A year ago I was afraid to walk into the ER during crisis… I am not sure when the fear dissipated… maybe God increased… not necessarily in my whole life but this one aspect. Fuck… I don’t know anymore. I was talking to a chaplain who has walked this a lot longer than me, I asked him, "What is wrong with us that we choose to do this?" I think about that every time people ask me how I work as a chaplain at a pediatric hospital. "Some folk are just wired that way I guess…" or at least that is what I tell them, and even sometimes that is what I tell myself.

See it isn’t hard, at least not the way you think. I looked at my shoes the other day. My work shoes, they were new a year ago this week. Now they are old, but more comfortable than ever. I got a shoeshine in the airport… made em look real nice. A week before that I looked at them while attending to the death of a 15 year old girl. Her dad asked me, "Why would God take my baby."

I thought about that in the airport when I put my feet up on the foot rests and said to the shine guy, "They been through a lot man, whatever you can do I would appreciate." I ended up tippin the guy three bucks for a four dollar shine, I wish I could have tipped him more.

What I said to her dad and what I thought were two different things. What I said was, "I don’t know." What I thought was, "Because she got hit by a car." I know its cold a bit macabre, but it makes sense to me. I looked at my shoes while standing on a blood stained floor. The airport shoeshine guy made em look nice a week later, but some blood never gets washed away.
Maybe the significance, you know the reason I am talking about death and shoes, is that my work shoes are also my dancing shoes. Ecclesiastes tells us, "There is a time to mourn and a time to dance." Tradition be damned… I gotta make sense of this life somehow.

Anyway I don’t reckon I will ever have any statues built for me… and most of these families will never remember my name… but I am called to stand in the place between shit and grace. My blue coat is often like the shroud of death. Its okay sometimes, because I know someday I will cross the river Styx… I just hope someone remembers the two coins to pay the boatman.

We've been talkin bout Jackson ever since the fire went out

2007-05-16T10:40:00.000-05:00

This in the news:

Dirty to Deep South

Memphis, TN: Justin McCreary is expected to announce today that in late August he will be moving to Jackson Mississippi. Jackson houses the GE Mongomery Memorial VA hospital. The hospital has a second year CPE program still in infancy. Justin's decision came through much prayer and consideration. When asked to comment on the move Justin said, "Get out of my face you stupid reporter." We can expect a word from Justin in the next few days concerning the move and some of his experiences as a pediatric chaplain in Memphis.

Down to the Crossroads

2007-04-24T14:30:00.000-05:00

(All these pics were taken by my buddy Amanda (Bob)

These pictures are from a recent trip a few friends and I had taken to Clarksdale Mississippi for a blues festival (actually the annual "Juke Joint" Festival). Clarksdale was an interesting town, I like to think of it as the current home of the blues, I know I stay in Memphis and in theory I should claim it, but c'mon Beale is a sell out. There is a lot of music history in this small town. If you ever get the chance you should stop through on the weekend and check out some of the Juke Joints.

I know it just looks dark but that is the crossroads of 61 and 49 there is a myth that says Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil here. That isn't Robert or the Devil lurking in the darkness though it was me, and I was an hour late, it was 1:00 AM I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees

I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees

Asked the Lord above, have mercy now, save poor Bob if you please

-Robert Johnson, Crossroad Blues

This is us dancing at a juke joint in Clarksdale MS at the Juke Joint festival two weeks ago. I think it is a neet pic, the slim guy in grey is me.

This is the group of us with Mr. Tator. Mr Tator recorded with Jimbo Mathus and has been described as the last "true" streat corner performer. I felt lucky to get this pic.

This is Ground Zero, Morgan Freeman's club in Clarksdale. It was allright but reminded me more of a honkytonk. It is sort of commercial, I liked the small juke joints better.

I just liked this picture of me.

Searching for Experience

2007-04-18T07:29:00.000-05:00

This morning I was driving to work meditating on Johnny Cash/U2's song the Wanderer. I don't know if the song is meant to be overarchingly religious or if they simply use religious imagry. But even if it is not itself religious the imagry says a lot about the modern conception of religion in America, even if some of the comentators are right and he is talking about cold war Russia. Lets look at this one section.

I went out there
In search of experience
To taste and to touch
And to feel as much
As a man can Before he repents

This section is spoken (even differently that most of Cash' stuff is like it is spoken. This section underscores the carnality of human desire. On a top layer he is talking about food in the line, "to taste and to touch." I think we can relate this interpersonally as well, not only with sex, but also with desire. The singer leaves and wanders searching seeking to find as many experiences as he can, maybe to "get them under his belt," before he decides to change, before he repents.

I often wonder (wander) myself looking for experience, looking for life, a way to understand it in its fullness, its joys and pains, its happiness and suffering. And often catch myself thinking, "I can do this now, but when I am older and more settled I will have to think differently." What have we done to our religion that says, all fun must come before repentence, all fun must come as a youth so that in old age we can live more uprightly. I wonder if Jesus would want Christianity the way we understand it in the west. A Christianity where one spends all his time trying to stay pure, well maybe, but maybe Jesus would tell us we don't really understand purity.
See, I don't want to, "sin that grace may abound," but I also don't want to use my religion as an excuse to make my lack of experience and regret okay. CS Lewis contended we ourselves don't understand what being a Christian is. He seemed to think we have turned the word into a synonym for good, "Wow, that guy must be a Christian he is so nice." The culture has identified ethics and whatnot that align with concepts of right and wrong, good and bad, and many people choose to call those ethics Christian. They are similar ethics to that of the prechristian philosophers like Socraties, Plato, and Pathagoras. I would never say a Christian should ignore morality, and I would never say morality isn't normative, but I would say that in trying to keep othres from sin we have also crucified our freedom in Christ. For those of you who know me this harkens back to my philosophy of the use of language, but I think of this much more broadly, when I ask the question, not necissarily who is my brother, but who is my weaker brother. some of my weaker brothers are weaker so they can be manipulative and get their way. One author called it the "proffesional weaker brother."

Experience something today, taste, touch, feeling... even if you have already repented. These don't have to be bad things.

Confliction and Contemplation

2007-04-13T09:03:00.000-05:00

A year as a Hospital Chaplain Resident has taught me a lot about... well... me. In this time I have done a lot of inner exploration and discovery. I had the experience to open my mind to different authors and look at different way people understand the psyche. The other day I was listening to the U2/Johnny Cash song "The Wanderer" and the words hit me hard. If you have never heard it, i am sure you can find it at you tube but the imagry is amazing. What strikes me so much about the song are the dichotemies.

I went drifting Through the capitals of tin
Where men can't walk
Or freely talk
And sons turn their fathers in
I stopped outside a church house
Where the citizens like to sit
They say they want the kingdom
But they don't want God in it

I can't say I know the meanings I just know the confliction, I was watching Reba Yesterday and they broke in with some breaking news thing, it was about this Imus guy. I didn't care and didn't think it should have been breaking news. I read what he said and it appalled me. But does that mean he should be fired. "Where man can't walk, or freely talk."

I think about the direction separation of church and state has gone, I am a fan, believe me, you can't be a true Campbelite without it, but I wonder if there is overkill instead of balance. It tests our freedoms the most when we have to defend people we diametrically oppose. Evelyn Beatrice Hall said Voltaire said, "I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Not a direct Voltaire quote but maybe a reflection of his thoughts.

The world is conflicted.

This is the phrase that gets me the most in the song:

I went out walking
With a bible and a gun
The word of God lay heavy on my heart
I was sure I was the one

No comment necissary

But the inner conflict of the world is a reflection of my own inner conflict, my own incongruities. Are any of ya'll incongruent?

This is sort of what my inconcruencies look like.

If you pay any attention to any of my later posts this is a modification of a zen garden of mine that stays pretty constant. The sun that was setting is now bleeding over the water. The raft I am sitting on is now in more conflict with the shadow to the right and light is now shining in the darkness. Light is now battling what Jung called the shadow. The shadow basically is that part of the self that we don't want anyone to see the thing we hide, often even subjectivly from ourselves. Often the shadow is the thing we hate most in others. When I look at people and wonder why in the world they might act or say something stupid, I contemplate what is going on within myself. I wonder what is this in me. Do I do this thing, or do I supress this thing because I like to do it. Does my mentality present an emortional binge and purge? It is like saying, "You can't do that it is wrong," but in truth feeling jealous because in the end they can do it and I wish I could too. facing the shadow is difficult, light must shine in the darkness, and the darkness must overcome it.

I am not so sure about this one, it is just the one I was thinking about. The lines oppose one another, why? I don't know they just do. There is a certain macabre to it. A balance, an annoying balance. Something as much above as it is below. Something just as low as it is high. Opposition... Frustration... like no matter how high one can go there is more burried more within that battles against the self, more that opposes the hights with which one can travel.

For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to
do—this I keep on doing.

So as I travel higher I go lower, I find that in the end my nature is currupt, maybe. Maybe yours isn't but there is a firmament around my true self, my real self... that corrupts me. But I do not stop looking nor do I flee from the things within myself, though it is easier to look to the issues of others and ignore them in me. Both of my gardens represent a battle with my shadow.

I know what your asking, "isn't this too much information?" My responce would be, "probably not, I think you are pretty screwed up yourself."

So how do I arrange this in my mind?

All I can do is just keep looking, because the darkness... well, it just can't stand the light.

Yeah I left with nothing Nothing but the thought of you I went wandering

Inner Peace

2007-04-07T02:41:00.000-05:00

I have begun utilizing the Zen Garden as a relaxation technique. I actually have two miniature zen (or Rock) gardens. One represents an overarching theme, and the other a more "in the moment" picture of life.

This first garden is the current representation of my psyche. It is very personal but speaks to me of change and growth. There are two rivers feeding into one. One river is very familiar to me, the other is one that I do not know, a new trait, a new aspect of the self. Maybe growth from transition.
This next garden represents an overall theme that doesn't change from day to day but is morely seasonal. The sun is setting over the ocean. There is a raft on the ocean watching the sunset. The white rock is the raft. The dark rock by the white rock is a recent addition. I can only explain it as a Jungian archetype. It is part of the shadow. In this case there is an aspect of the self that is becomming more prevelant that maybe I don't have to fear. The dark stone at the center is the sun cooling off in water awaiting the next days rising. I remember the description of the sun setting in water in Bislama (a Pijin dialect in Vanuatu) "Sun he drown"
So that is the current walk through my less than conscious self, stay tuned for more.

Just a feeling

2007-03-30T11:51:00.000-05:00

I usually am not one to post the lyrics to a song, but this is how I feel at the moment, I think I am just tired. However, I do love the imagry of this song. I remember two months ago when a friend of mine died this was one of the songs that played eternally in my soul. My only version of this song is in the album, the actual LP, there is just something special when I hear things like this on LP. I remember years ago when this song was introduced to me as a child. It was the only tape we had in the car, and anytime my mother would drive me anywhere over and over again we listed to this short album. It brings back memories for me of simple times, trips to camp, and sleeping in the car when someone else would drive. The entire album is amazing if you ever get the chance to hear it I recomend it. So anyway, maybe you are like me and don't need to hear the song, knowing the lyircs and tune are always enough for me, I can sing them forever in my mind.

So from the album "So Far" I present to you Crosby Stills Nash and Young, "Helplessy Hoping."

Helplessly hoping her harlequin hovers nearsby
Awaiting a word
Gasping at glimpses of gentle true spirit he runs wishing he could fly
only to trip at the sound of good-bye

Wordlessly watching he waits by the window and wonders at the empty place inside

Heartlessly helping himself to her bad dreams he worries
did he hear a good-bye or even
Hello

They are 1 person
They are too alone
They are 3 together
They are for each other

Stand by the stairway you'll see something certain to tell you
confusion has its cost
Love isn't lying its loose in a lady who lingers saying she is lost
And choking on hello

They are 1 person
They are too alone
They are 3 together
They are for each other

2 differrent movies, 1 plot, one happy camper

2007-03-18T21:26:00.000-05:00

(Halt, movie spoilers)

Okay so you read my title, I am sure it drew you in, your thinking, what are these two movies? Well the first, I ended up seeing because "The 300" was sold out, was "Wild Hogs." After the movie all I could say was Wunderbar!!!! Four men stand against fifty bikers to reclaim their honor, it is on the field of batter their true selves.

The second movie I went to see on a Saturday afternoon, cause it was sold out friday, was "The 300." Leaving the the theater I was clapping my hands saying "bella bella," I mean what else is there 300 men stand against millions, and Esther's Husband, on the field of battle where they reclaim their honor (or something), but the true gift was that on the field of battle they found their true selves.

Both movies not only inspire those in the movies themselves to do greater things IE... a large Spartan Army, and the Town of Madirid standing against the Del Fuegos, but they inspire all the watchers to do the same as. One uses Comedy the other blood, and blood, and did I mention blood.

I give both movies a thumbs up, you know what that means, two thumbs... standing at attention ready to look the world in the eye and say, "sure we're just a set of thumbs but we're gonna kick your ass."

A few things I like

2007-03-07T08:35:00.000-06:00

In no particular order but numbered for your convenience

1. Hot Oatmeal on a Cold day
2. New Castle after it has just started getting warm
3. Finally beating Freeza in DBZ Buddakai
4. Christian Imagry
5. Esoteric things, with a history (for example, I collect records)
6. A fast and perfect lindy swingout with a good follow
7. Bach played from an LP while I journal and drink coffee early in the morning
8. Female Jazz/Blues Singers
9. My balcony, my pipe, slow Jazz, and a warm breeze
10. A Hug from someone who cares and someone I care about
11. Cheese Fries from Huey's (on Madison)
12. Midtown (is Memphis)
13. Pizza and wine while watching Gilmore Girls
14. Classical Guitar
15. Liturgical Singing
16 on the list, 1 in my heart... Grandma's Front Porch Swing, especially after a morning of work with Grandad.

This was just something I thought of this morning.

The Creek pronounced crick

2007-03-01T10:21:00.000-06:00

One of the other major memories of aquatic bodies is the creek, pronounced crick. I understand the creed differently than the river, let me explain. As a child many of my happiest memories came from the time I spent at my grandmother and grandfather’s house a few miles down Peter’s Run Road in Tridelphia West Virginia. I remember I would always anticipate the drive and even break down the various sections of the drive. It was close to a thirty-minute drive but my strongest feelings associate to the last five minutes.

From the main road we would turn left onto Peters Run Road. For three miles we would follow a creek on the right. As I would drive I would see the hill and vegetation on the left, and a series of bridges on the right. We would pass "Ye Ol’ Country Church" on the left then a hill with a series of steps for drainage (this road was prone to mudslides). As we pulled toward my grandfather’s bridge I would begin to get a deep anticipation. The bridge was small and some would say it was a little nerve racking to drive over yet it was a strong bridge.

I remember as a child putting my hands in the creek and feeling the cool water run across them. Many Creeks in West Virginia had turned orange from the coal mines, my grandfather’s was not one of them. We were never allowed to walk in them barefoot because people had the tendency to throw bottles from their cars into the Creek. I didn’t need to walk barefoot, Sometimes I would enjoy just standing on the bridge and looking down.

In the summers on some Saturday morning’s my father and I would go and drop a minnow trap. Grandfather’s Creek fueled my ability to go fishing. The minnows would swim in the trap and not be able to swim out. As I got older friends and I would go to this place and drop the trap ourselves, sometimes we would just use a sane, at that age we were old enough just to go into the creek in our shoes, unless we could get a hold of some waders. I remember feeling the cold water rush against the waders… it was calming.

The drive filled me with anticipation. It was a different anticipation from descending into the river. The later was an anticipation of rebellion, and the joy that comes with freedom and the ability to keep from being chained. Grandfather’s house was utopia. At my grandparents house I had no desire to break the rules, actually I was filled with a desire for just the opposite. At my grandparent’s house I wanted to act well (this is not to say my brother and I didn’t get into our own stuff there). I would never sneak down to the creek when I wasn’t allowed, and I didn’t get into things I wasn’t supposed to. I was trying to be anything, I just had no desire to have my grandparents view me unfavorably.

As I got older I would help my grandfather tend to his yard and sometimes his garden. After a morning of hard work I would join them for lunch and then we would sit on the front porch, Grandma and I in the swing, Granddad on a wicker rocking chair. I once preached a sermon called, "A Glass of Iced Tea and a Front Porch Swing." To me this picture was heaven. I had no where to run to, and nothing to run from, I was safe behind the Creek, suckling at the bosom of the hills around us.

It was a different kind of freedom from the river. The river involved chaos, crossing the Creek involved peace. Cosmologically the Creek is at the opposite end of the river. The river was a place to descend into, a place where chaos ensued and we allowed ourselves to be swept into chaos, the Creek though it was calm like the words of the song, "Ripple in still water, where there is not pebble tossed, no wind to blow." The ripple in these waters came from the hand of God himself, an angel that came and stirred the water once a day.

We looked out across the big Pine, across the river to the road where cars and trucks would go to and fro busy with life. We would watch life from the outside I liken it to Lazarus looking at the rich man. He could see, but he was not there.

Memories fill my mind of the old horse swing that hung under the pine, in the summers. I remember the snow on the hill in front of and behind, being driven out on a snow day from school, Granddad getting out his old runner sled, and then letting loose. From the hill we would leave with a "swoosh," toward the Creek, we would see how close we could get, yet we could never make it in. That was fine though, the winter was not a good time to feel the cool water of the Creek.

Across the Creek we were free, but it was a different freedom. The deer would be down in the winter by the dozens, the turkey in the summer by the hundreds. The garden, full of green beans and corn in the summer, in the winter the snow like a blanket allowing the land to sleep. Across the Creek was hope, the anticipation of the drive reminding me of what is to come. Across the Creek… maybe I could say heaven, but it seems more like Eden. A body reborn, casting off the fallen nature, resurrection in its best form.

I woke up dead this morning

2007-02-21T08:18:00.000-06:00

I woke up dead this morning
Not another drop to drink
I woke up dead this morning
The wine and beer extinct
I woke up dead this morning
The angel waved goodbye
I woke up dead this morning
From hanging my head to cry
I woke up dead this morning
Where’d the time all go
I woke up dead this morning
So many things I’d never know
I woke up dead this morning
The remnants of a hug
I woke up dead this morning
I left the song unsung
I woke up dead this morning
My sickle left at home
I woke up dead this morning
I can’t believe he’s gone
I woke up dead this morning
I couldn’t take the fight
I woke up dead this morning
Because you didn’t wake up last night

By Justin
In memory of Waide Messer, a chaplain, a friend... We didn't just pass in the night.

Down to the River to pray

2007-02-19T15:08:00.000-06:00

I have been reading "Memories Dreams and Reflections," basically Jung’s autobiography. Reading through it has been interesting even just into the second chapter. Reading the memories and dreams that were important to Jung are astounding. He talks about smelling for the first time, seeing the Alps in the distance for the first time, and seeing the stars for the first time. He discussed his awareness of the world around him and his understanding of it, even down to 3 years old.

If I were to think along these lines I would have to talk about growing up on the Ohio River. I don’t know if any of you ever grew up around water, there is something interesting growing up near water. Even though highly polluted the water from the Ohio is what I would drink, after a lot of filtering, and as a young child I was not allowed near the river itself, because of the undertow. I was told as a child that the direction of the water under the surface did not have to match the direction on the surface, that currents ran through the river all different directions, not just south. I imagined a river within a river flowing a different direction, I imagined fish passing each other going different directions, but just swimming, though I could imagine some animals talking, I have never much imagined fish that way, they were just fish.

I image that is partially because I don’t hunt but I do fish. I couldn’t kill a squirrel, a deer, or a black bear, I could imagine them with a voice but fish, they had no voice. That isn’t to say I kept any of them I caught them in the ol Ohio and nothing that came out of the Ohio was safe to eat. I think that is part of the majesty of the river, so powerful so dangerous with its undertows and poisons. I wasn’t allowed near the river as a child, so it isn’t strange that every day in the summers I was there.

You see, the river was cut into a valley, we had to descend to the river. I remember as a child my first time fishing, or at least as I remember was at the Dam. The Dam was itself a monster, maybe not a monster but a harness. Like the bridle of a horse the dam controlled the direction of the river. I have imagined canoeing from my house to my friend’s house in St. Mary’s. I think it would be a fun trip and I would have to survive the local dams along the way. It was an hour and a half drive how long of a canoe would it be? Maybe someday I will.

I think the most astounding thing about the dam was the echo. I recall my brother and I learning our voice hearing for the first time our own echo. The question came, "Dad, who’s yelling back." Dad explained the echo. I always looked forward to the dam because of the echo.
Descending toward the river was always a positive thing to me. Being close to the river and going through what I needed to just to be close. The river in one sense was my father and mother, in one way it was a river. To descend toward the dam I had to be sure footed (as my zodiac says I am) because the dike that had been built was walled by rocks some limestone some granite, some that were sharp some that were smooth, but all that were dangerous. It would be easy to slip and fall, rolling down the bank, but worst of all, spilling my tackle box. I have fallen many times but have never spilled my tackle box.

My old gang hung out by the river, every day we went down to pray. To which God’s I cannot be sure, but we did pray. With every drag from a cigarette every word we couldn’t say in front of our parents, we were baptized by the river. It was that baptism that symbolized freedom for me maybe even us. We named our places, they were like temples to us, temples with simple names: the hill, the rope, the rock bar, the beach, the dam, the rope swing, these were the places we would "hang" these were the places we would worship. For what is worship to a child truly but that chance to be, even if in farce, an adult?

That isn’t to say some had more dominion than others did, I was not the head of this priesthood, but a simple worshiper at the temple. Justice was like the river, swift and harsh. Not entirely physically but emotionally. It was at the river we learned to reduce one another to tears with words, it was at the river that we sacrificed our own scapegoats. We all played each roll; we each took a place as high priest, worshipper, or scapegoat. We had our own code, it was never written, but it was thorough and clear.

At our homes we lived under our parents, at the river we were free. My feeling climbing out was always different it was sadder, it was lower. Yet I was a surefooted Capricorn, and I could always survive away from my temple, away from the holy mother, the great river.

"Playing the Whore"

2007-01-31T13:57:00.000-06:00

Playing the whore in Ezekiel

I have never read through Ezekiel, so I thought I would. I have come through to chapter 24 and it has been interesting. Over and over again Israel and Judah are accused of "playing the whore." I had to think about this phrase. The NRSV says whore the NIV says prostitute, but I am assuming whatever term they are using is the derogatory one. What then does it mean to "play the whore?"

At first I thought this would be a letter about sexual behavior between… well everybody, but that is only a part, and oddly enough doesn’t seem like the biggest part.
First off God is punishing partially because of his own reputation, his daughters should have been reared in his law and should know it, this doesn’t seem to be the case.

13But the house of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness. They did not walk in my statutes but rejected my rules, by which, if a person does them, he shall live; and my Sabbaths they greatly profaned.
"Then I said I would pour out my wrath upon them in the wilderness, to make a full end of them. 14But I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, in whose sight I had brought them out. –Ezekiel 20: 13-14

This is a statement relates to his people in the wilderness God wants them to remember their stories, remember their history.

I like chapter 22 it seems like at the core of treating God right is treating each other well. Being honorable to God is being honorable to his creation. (this is not to discount the idolatry) There is a nice little sentence here and many throughout the beginning of the book about how we are supposed to treat aliens in the land. Extorting them is a major issue. What is the extortion talked about here, it is a sin called usury, and Ezekiel will talk about it later. Dealing with aliens in the land is a very important theme throughout the prophets, see Amos as well. The Israelites were originally aliens in a strange land, not only was Abraham asked to go somewhere new, but Israel existed as a people group in Egypt as aliens. Ezekiel places this as one of their great sins, mistreating immigrants. How do we treat our immigrants? I like that this passage doesn’t make the distinction between legal and illegal. What do we say about them?

6"Behold, the princes of Israel in you, every one according to his power, have been bent on shedding blood. 7Father and mother are treated with contempt in you; the sojourner suffers extortion in your midst; the fatherless and the widow are wronged in you. 8You have despised my holy things and profaned my Sabbaths. 9There are men in you who slander to shed blood, and people in you who eat on the mountains; they commit lewdness in your midst. 10In you men uncover their fathers' nakedness; in you they violate women who are unclean in their menstrual impurity. 11One commits abomination with his neighbor's wife; another lewdly defiles his daughter-in-law; another in you violates his sister, his father's daughter. 12In you they take bribes to shed blood; you take interest and profit and make gain of your neighbors by extortion; but me you have forgotten, declares the Lord GOD. –Ezekiel 22:6-12

Mistreatment of our elders. Mother and father treated with contempt. I wonder the extent of this. They were commanded in the decalogue to honor Mom and Dad. We live in a world where the elderly are shifted to nursing homes and ignored, not by everybody but it is something that cannot be ignored. Talk to your local DHS get the low down on the local nursing homes, go to nursing homes and find out when people are visited. This commandment is not just for children but it is for anyone with parents. We learn to treat our parents as we saw them treat theirs.
Shedding blood. People are being paid to do it, people are being dishonest so they can do it. I live in a city that has the second highest rate of violent crime in a country that wants to increase its military so it can send more troops to die. God seems a little unclear about the shedding of blood in some places, you know the commanding of the Israelites to slaughter entire villages in Joshua and the Judges. God seemed pretty clear though at mandating when fighting was necessary. But maybe I shouldn’t put this passage to war I should just put it on one on one treatment of each other.

Ritual prostitution, sex as worship, finally we have gotten to some sex. The sex Ezekiel brings up is used for direct worship of other God’s. However, this isn’t all of what it means to "play the whore" it seems like the other piece on sexuality seems to be inappropriate relationships within the family system, and more specifically the step family system Ezekiel never talks about sex before marriage, divorce and remarriage, or even visiting prostitutes. I know these things get covered later in the New Testament but it is funny to me, playing the whore doesn’t have to do with as much sexual sin as it could.

The next piece is my favorite when it comes to high interest rates and whom we apply them to. This time it isn’t just to the immigrant society but to their own people. I wonder if they got 3 or 4 high interest credit card offers in the mail, of course they start low but then get much higher shortly after. Ezekiel seems to be very clear on this, using interesting to make prophet is wrong. I think I might send that to my creditors.

So what is "Playing the Whore?"

Mistreating the immigrant population
Mistreating parents
Murder, unlawful shedding of blood (in some places the clergy are critiqued for this)
Inappropriate sex, meaning, relatives, neighbors, and ritual prostitutes.
Usury, the art of making profit from others misfortune.

What I find interesting about this list is that these are things that most cultures would find unethical. It goes back to chapter 20, God is paying attention to his reputation because his children are even committing sins that the other cultures take issue with, not to say they don’t do. The thing is Ezekiel expects priests to be priests they are held to (and rightly so) a higher level. But everyone else is expected to be people, it isn’t like they aren’t allowed to mess up, they can mess up, that is why they have the law, but these sins are the ones God expects everyone who is human to understand. You don’t mistreat people because they are immigrants, you don’t mistreat the elders, you don’t murder, you don’t sleep with whomever you want, and you don’t make money off of other people’s misery. It seems then that God is saying, "You, of all people should know better."

It is interesting to my personal self and my country to this list. We don’t have shrine prostitution anymore, but there are many other ways to be idolatrous. How do we as a country treat our immigrants, parents, each other in relation to life, sexually, and financially? Are we good to one another, fair and upright in all our dealings, honest? I just don’t know. I don’t think that we should read Ezekiel’s message and translate the doom to our nation, but I think we should read his message and get at the heart of God, what does he really want? Hell I don’t always know, but I know there are some things that aren’t negotiable. This list is a good start. And what is funny is that it isn’t like it is a strict list. These things seem common sense to me, we treat people like humans. Do we even do that?

Recipe for a good birthday

2007-01-23T09:42:00.000-06:00

It's simple

One of those things

2007-01-17T17:57:00.000-06:00

You ever have that friend who lets you know in advance that his or her birthday is comming up. Like a month in advance they start just radomly placing it in conversation and then as it gets closer and closer they are shameless about it and just start telling you they accept gift cards and personal checks.

Well I am that friend

I was born in Wheeling West Virginia at 2:10 AM (eastern standard) on January the 18th in 1979, and I accept gift cards and personal checks.

God Bless

Justin

2007-01-14T07:30:00.000-06:00

You wanted it, now you got it... pic's of me dancing. Enjoy.

Its about time

2006-12-30T15:23:00.000-06:00

I have come to a very important decsion in my life and I think the blogging community needs to know about. It is theological, philisophical, and an all around good decsion. I have chosen a theme song.

I know, you have been waiting for years for me to make a final decision. I thought long and hard about this for years. I have gone over many different songs many different bands, but it took forever for that one to arise and beat out all the other songs. You ready for it?

You sure?

This gonna blow your mind. To me this song is not just a good description of me but also a ministry statement.

Well no sense in making you wait longer.

Justin Timberlake: Sexy Back

Wine, Women, and wisdom?

2006-12-18T16:43:00.000-06:00

I had a weekend, they come at the end of every week. It was neither good nor bad it was somewhere in the middle. Actually, I made it bad. All the baddness came from my choices and my fears. And I left me rather sour for Monday morning. Chaplain, what do you do when you don't feel like it. When there is frustration with God, how do I bring his presence.

The position of minister is bigger than me. It is beyond what I can understand or know or even be. It is an ordained job where the divine presents itself in flesh to those in pain.

There was a three year old getting brain surgery this morning, so at least for that time, my weekend didn't matter. It was as if God was standing before me saying, "When your done with self pitty I have something for you to do." I felt I did fine, but I wonder what I could have done if I lessened my self...

Holidays?

2006-11-24T10:01:00.000-06:00

I remember an episode of MASH where the whole camp is looking forward to a Christmas celebration. The kids from the local orphanage are on their way and everyone is happy. Then tragety hits. One of their patients begins to drop blood pressure. All through the 25th they fight to keep him alive even though they know he won't make it in the long run, they know he is going to die. Over and over again they shock him, put him through CPR, why when they know it is pointless? Because he is a father and they don't want the kids to lose Christmas.

They finally lose him at 11:45 PM. The death certificate will still read TOD 11:45 12/25. What do they do? they push the minute hand on the clock 15 minutes ahead and fill out the death certificate.

I know this is fiction but it was what went through my mind this morning as I sat at a an emergency code. The man had been coding since 5:30 it was now 7:45. Thy stabalize him he is good for some time then he codes again, over and over. Why? Why not just let him die? The family is on the way. Six children comming from more than an hour away.

It is also the day after thanksgiving. What does this do to the holiday, what does this bode well for in giving thanks. At least it wasn't yesterday, no that would be horrible, because yesterday the wife was sitting in the Critical Care Wating Room, she slept there all night in her clothes. Hospitals don't close on Thanksgiving. I am on call the day after thanksgiving, why? because I want to go home for Christmas. Of course that is what I said about Labor Day.

What happens to family dynamics with death around the holidays? I was thinking about that as I stood in the room with the family this morning, and I thought of that episode of MASH, and I thought about the family racing to get here and the doctors and nurses working like mad to keep him alive. All I could do was stand there, a harbinger of death, and once it happened a reminder.

Happy Thanksgiving

Story:

2006-11-16T13:56:00.000-06:00

I know I haven't posted forever and today I posted like three times, get over it there is a story I want to tell.

As a sophomore in college I hated children. Ok maybe hate is a strong word, I just didn't understand them, I had never really worked on being a child myself, I spent my childhood trying to be an adult. I saw two options if I was going to be a minister, Preacher or Youth Minister. I chose Preacher because I hated teenagers, ok yes I know it is a strong word I am fallen get over it, even more than children. I also didn't want to go home for a week from Arkansas to West Virginia, it didn't seem to make sense, so I signed up very late to this campeign to Fortworth Texas.

I didn't know what this Campaign was about I just knew that my buddy Charlie was going so I signed up for that Christain Jubilee. I found out after I paid in full, we were teaching inner city children about God all week. I was not happy about this but hid my distain to the team members, but not to my friends. I complained all over the place. I complained also to God, "Lord you got to do something with this because I can't." Sometimes I wish God had not listened.

Well there was this girl named Hillary. I liked her I don't think she really ever returned that, but it was ok I was in her wedding a few years later, wonderful event still one of my best memories of college. She had taken me to WalMart to get the things I needed the day before, see I didn't have a car. At Walmart we came accross the balls, they were probably a foot in diameter and she seemed taken with them so I put it in my cart and bought the ball. I informed her that we needed to try the ball out so we went to a local park and kicked it around for a while. As the sun set we sat below a jungle jim, looked sort of like thunderdome, Hillary, the Ball and me. As the sun is setting I am considering making a move, and the playground floods with children. I don't know where the hell they came from but they were all over the place. It had been empty and quiet all that time before.

Yet, the children avoided us like the plague, Hillary had made a comment about that. Well, okay there was one little girl who sheepishly came over and said through a staggard tone, "Can I play with your ball." Sure I said. thirty seconds later thunderdome is covered with children and we are in the center. At the end of the night I found that girl and asked her if she wanted the ball, she did. God was listening. At that point I didn't worry about the comming week.

Since that time I have taught children in different countries, and all over this one. I spent two years as an innercity Children's minister and now I am a Pediatric Chaplain. God was truly listening, sometimes I wish he would forget and make me a maitenence man. I should have added something to that prayer, "God do something with THIS COMMING WEEK," but then would he have blessed me this far? I don't know if I will work with children the rest of my life, but I know right now I am, and it is because God put me here.

Some morning at my hospital I look at the diagnosis of the patient I am walking in to talk to and I don't know what to say. Broken bones, broken families, broken promises, broken people. What can I say, most of the time I don't know. But if I am really on those mornings before I walk in I say, "God I got nothin, you need to do something." I remember thunderdome and I knock on the door.

check out this guy

2006-11-16T13:11:00.000-06:00

What do you think? This is from the halloween party I went to, I was an Episcopal priest