endless paperwriting

I can't seem to mesh with writing this paper...
and I'm typing truths that I would rather live out than write about
ah, but writing and living are pretty inextricably intertwined for me.
when i write it, i understand it...at least a little better
I am slow to be deep these days.
when will i start really living these things out?
when i finally believe in grace.

think they'd accept a term paper written in the form of abstract poetry and disconnected sentences?
ah, wait, that would be a blog, not a term paper. sigh.

"When I pray, I pour my nebulous self into the concrete forms of words, and it begins to make me real.
And so humankind has poured themselves into words since the beginning; and since the beginning God has met us there, in the middle ground, the land of words, pouring Himself into them so that we can catch some semblance of who He is. This is prayer: meeting God, communicating ourselves to Him, and above all, being overwhelmed by His communicating Himself to us, putting us in our beautiful place."

this is my favorite part of what i've hammered out so far
because it's the only part that wasn't hammered out--just flowed naturally.
Do you think it's true? Is this how you see prayer?

the paper's on prayer in the earliest Old Testament Scriptures--the Pentateuch and Job...
why is my mind half asleep, unable to leap in?
guilt? farness from prayer?

undeniably, constant distraction is a big part of the problem. you know, folks, it may be time for a media fast. no more blogreading or websurfing or rhapsody-surfing-and-listening. Do I really need to discover yet another band I like? Not as much as I need to be in a room empty of everything but my soul and the living God.
not at all, in fact.
God help me to kick the addictions; Godhelpme wake up to the comfortless motions i go through out of habit, turning to knothole-mailboxes long abandoned, still thinking I will find delight there. how long can I be so stupid?
Oh, a long, long time.
a lifetime if it weren't for Jesus...Jesus, take my hand. pull me up.

go here, go here!

http://www.wartoft.nu/software/seterra/

Download this program. It's what you've always dreamed of!
Okay, maybe it's just what I've always dreamed of.
I can finally be as geographically intelligent as I ought to be.
This was probably invented ten years ago. But we're together now, and that's all that matters.

okay, that was the whole reason for this post. It was a reflex to the joy of Seterra. Now I feel I must justify it with further content. I'm running on bookstore and geography adrenaline, have no depths to share at this particular moment.

music. Try Derek Webb, particularly "New Law" on the cd Mockingbird.

when I close my eyes I see...

I can't help it.
I have to post about The Weather Project.
I found out about it via other, wiser blogs (Spiro's, Kristina's)
and it swept me away. I saw one picture and dreamed about it that night. In the dream the installation was in Moscow and I was desperate to find it.

It is one of those things that makes me lose my breath because I didn't know these things were really possible and really going on, these constructions of otherworldly Experiences, glimpses of the wonder. Things I dream and look for even the palest facsimiles of, and suddenly...wham. There it is, a full-blown dreamworld. I can't help but ask why more of these things are not in existence, and why they are confined to the label of Contemporary Art when they do; can't they just be Wonders? I suppose to get the money to create such a thing, you have to be part of a Set of some kind....

why, oh why, oh why, are millions of dollars put up for hideous, standard-issue skyscrapers
instead of for more and more breathtaking Surprises? Oh, human race, where are our priorities??

Look at these... http://www.olafureliasson.net/exhib_proj.html
I am particularly drawn to "Mediated Motion."...
does anyone know of more people making experiencespheres?
Any simple poorfolk out there dreaming these into existence?
I had a dream of one once, to be lovingly planted in a dark shack on the side of a country highway in the south.

I think it's the Incarnational beauty that appeals to me-- like God in flesh, Jesus in hay, and like Christ in me, like the Holy Spirit Himself stooping to live in this shabby person. You enter the molding shanty and suddenly, unexpectedly, you find the closest thing to Home you've ever known.

And a p.s.: Thank you to Philadelphia's finest residents for a weekend that reminded me that God is a Person, Alive and now. Just by being people. I've been dissolving away; God used you to tell me I could materialize again.

Sun's gettin' shinery, to spotlight the finery...

spring, spring, spring.



when you walk the same roads every day for several months
you see the world turn.
you see the story of Seasons unfold,
and it amazes you how quickly it cycles.

suddenly that tree whose bare and curlicued silhouette I have admired since November
is dropping sweet-smelling pinkish petals.

today I think
that God invented this storycycle to show us something magical:
the remembering of what we thought was obvious.

"Oh!
The grass is green!"

"Oh!
The sky is blue!"

"Oh! The trees have leaves!"

Statements that are taken as classic examples of the ridiculously obvious...
become new emotional realizations,
and I am forced to laugh at myself
and to remember that the obvious
is not.
Obvious, that is.

The sensation is delicious, the warmth in the air and the suddenly-green patches of ground, and the purple-flowered trees.

So many "obvious" things He has to remind me of all the time
All the time.
And so the globe keeps turning
and I trip along
walking to work on the same two roads.