A sinner-saint? A gutter-heir to grace?

Adoption? O Christ, what bloody love is this,
When I betray you daily with a kiss?
Yet you are not changed; your love
Like to yourself cannot be moved,
Again by grace, healed, I turn to you.
By grace I serve you & by grace I grow –
deliver me from weeds & worms,
And let me stretch & yearn for thy sweetshine,
nor forget thy shelter
In storm or dark October days.

Un-earned grace bewilders all the world—
A stumbling miracle, divergent from our debt.
As if the Sun did shine at night, His light burns strange
Unto our eyes & hearts.
Proud merits cast but short shadows in His Sun.
We are undone.
Richly stores of treasure I do keep
Seem poor & gray.
I weep.
My Lord,
Bewildered and amazed you find me here,
a wretch deserving death, judgement, fear.

Increase within me, Love –
expand the corners of my narrow heart to make a spacious plot
For thee to plant with all things good & green.
Seek the Son, o everything of mine,
loyalty, affections, & estate be granted to the king.
To him I pledge each acre of my soul,
& in his hands the harvest shall be whole.

A sinner-saint? A gutter-heir to grace? Indeed, i say,
thus is my state, and though strange it is the only way.
for grace forgotten bewilders even more,
and is unlikely as a rainbow without hue.
Protect my soul, Lord Christ, when in my mind I stray from you!

for morgan s. & aubrey c.

"And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God...and death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.

This is the second death."

death haunts you, as does the apathy & arrogance of men. You think that somewhere, somehow, there has to be somthing valuable to latch onto and love, but all their philosophies and stories end in nothingness or kitzche. "There HAS TO BE A POINT to life, and the beauty and suffering of each small heart. Otherwise its not right."
Oh, why are you weeping and breaking my heart!
By merely existing, you make my silence cowardice
yeti'm uncomfortable knowing the ending of the story
when you don't -
embarrassed, like i looked in mom's closet before Christmas & i know what we're getting.
How do I tell you without alienating you? It's better than we ever imagined.

Lord,
for tomorrow i ask
for humility and a tongue
frozen till your Spirit loosens it.
i have two ears and one mouth,
one mouth and a patched-up heart
one heart and nothing there whatsoever to glory in
except the presence of your Son.
Lord,
for tomorrow i ask:
let me remember

Eternal & right-here God i praise you - i asked for a mouse hole and you broke down the door!

Midnight

you've had these nights too,
burrowed down into unkindly wrinkled sheets
trying to forget that tomorrow
you will be a soldier again
in an invisible war.

i'm in the middle of one of those now
in combat with a fear
of the unknown future.
i don't want a soft song,
i don't need a loving word
i don't need a story and a glass
of warm milk:
i need a coming victory & an assurance of valor in combat.

I know I’m not alone. you've had these nights too,
hungering for violence & the rage of battle—
wishing there was just enough light to glimpse the whites of their eyes;
nights where you crave an external reality
as sincere & bloody as the one contained within you.

i’ve tried ignoring the bugles and counting sheep.
i’ve turned off the lights & torn down the red banners.
i’ve unbuckled my sword & propped my shield against the bed
but the battle goes on
& the pain goes on
& the fear of the unknown goes on and on and on

and right at the breaking point,
when all hope seems lost & I’m filled with deserter-longings;
at that deceptive crossroads
where Christianity intersects with insomnia
My commander speaks quietly
and reminds: it’s the invisible things that make soldiering worthwhile:
love & hope & the resurrection of the dead.

I hope you’ve had these nights too

Such small syllables of praise as i can, i will. (Cannibal Joe)

"So they cried with lovely voice and clear
and I wished with all my heart to hear
and commanded my friends to set me free...
Instead they bound me with more chains."

-Song of the Sirens, The Odyssey, XII, 185-196

For Gabrielle-the-Princess-head

You walked past the pillars
and the foyer brightened
even though you were wearing black.
you're just like that.
October's getting colder,
and it rained all day,
but even when your hands are cold,
i want to hold them.
you're just like that.
Everyone else sits around on Friday night
petulent,looking for thrills
or movies or somehthing.
so do you, but you're cheerful about it,
because...
...because you're just like that princess
in the fairytales
locked up in a tower
hemmed in by thorny trees
trapped...but singing so loud that the forest
echoes
with sweetness.
Don't worry baby. One day the right horse-backed boy will
ride down the trail
and hear your song.
then you can let down your princess hair and sing louder.
BUT UNTIL THEN
keep walking out of the dark October rain
and into my life
because
i need you
just like that.

I am trying to remember red to a painter blinded by cataracts:

Blanche: Oh, Grand-pére Claude! There are dozens and dozens of little red flowers spurting out of the cracks in the sidewalk – I’ve never seen these before! Please, a moment. I shall press one into my planner and find out its name when we get home. So! They are red!

Monet: (Laughing) Well, it is summer! But what kind of red, Blanche? Explain, explain...s'il te plait.

Blanche: Fresh red – very vigorous, monsieur. Little sidewalk weeds the color of straightforward glory. The flowers themselves are small & vulnerable, but…compelling.

Monet: Continue, child. You are doing well.

Blanche: (Thinking hard) Grand-pére, remember the way Danielle had as an infant? If I waved my hand out, he would seize my finger and not let go. This red is the curl of his fingers. Unexpectedly strong for a beauty so small. It has the little warrior grip of an infant – warm and moist and tight. It is a warm color. Baby Dani and this color both remind me—my heart pumps real blood. No tinge of amber or purple – the red life in these flowers is bold. Beauty transposed into human terms for human eyes.

The Betrayal Play: You'll be shocked at the Injustice of it all! Don't miss the drama!

--

PAIN IN AMERICA

--

i'm not quite sure why Amanda & I chose to burn this book, since i've never read it. But it was a wild october night and the fire was hungry.

A Christian is an impregnable person. He is a person that never can be conquered. Emmanuel became man to make the church and every Christian to be one with him. Christ's nature is out of danger of all that is hurtful. The sun shall not shine, the wind shall not blow, to the church's hurt. For the church's Head ruleth over all things and hath all things in subjection. Therefore let all the enemies consult together, this king and that power, there is a counsel in heaven which will disturb and dash all their counsels. Emmanuel in heaven laugheth them to scorn. And as Luther said, `Shall we weep and cry when God laugheth? -sibbes

WOE (for sanger)

"the expectancy and rose of the fair state"
ripped from the womb,
life, the very mould of form
blasted with an ecstacy of freedom
leaving
us
"of ladies most deject and wretched"
quite,
quite
down

take that, AYERS!

maybe its the sun through the window on my new blue shoes
maybe its the books on my desk or ignoring the news
it could be july, or the last piece of pie
or this ironman feeling like i'll never die
whatever it is, i'll give it to you
out there in... CO with so much to do;
i'll bet you're swell, and workin' like (ahem) -
but i miss you and want you to know:
I LOVE YOU MICHAELA!!!!

hehee

circus horses parade in plumes
attended by pink-suited grooms
peacocks serve the ladies drinks
as men play golf out on the links
leopards pad around the town
at the order of the Crown.
The dryad's are at their quilting club -
across the street there is a pub
filled with buffalos who've lost their wings
and owls who explain hard things.
Siamese cats are in the salon
complaining because the salmon's gone.
The moon jumped over my neighbor's cow
but i'll say goodbye with a chinese bow.

BRIGHT STAR

FIRST LOVE BURNS BRIGHTEST

A review of Jane Campion's recent film, Bright Star

by J. Cate Pilgrim

He'd come back to her changed. Korea had been...something. She could see it. He'd been a 19 year old in a fine uniform when the war started, but now he was twenty, a war hero with an empty left pant-leg to prove it. Walter Reed was taking care of him, he said. He didn't meet her gaze, but watched her eyes stray to the crutches and the one shoe on the floor. "You don't have to marry me, Francis. It's okay."
Her head jerks up, eyes blazing, and she grabs his shoulders.
"Don't have to? Shut up, Carl. I'm IN LOVE with you. I wanted to marry you, not your leg."

After watching Bright Star, I want to tell Jane Campion about my grandparents, and what they thought first love was all about. Campion obviously doen't understand its power. Her 2 hour biopic, Bright Star, struggles with the romance between poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his young neighbor Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). Although both the cinematography and acting are superb, the film itself is hollow. Keats and Brawne profess undying love for each other, and then proceed to do so again, and again, and again. Then Keats sails to Rome and dies of tuberculosis. At random (and frequent) points, both characters stare off into space and start reciting fragments of poetry. Often they are ankle deep in flowers. If Campion is trying to usher us into the presence of the lyric Muse, it feels pushy.

Keats, played by Whishaw, comes across as a fragile artist, whose poetic genius excuses his indolence, poverty, and friendship with odious scotsman Charle Brown (Paul Schneider). Cornish, Fanny's character, has more depth - she's an 1820's Juliet with a penchant for fashion who must battle the restrictions of an England that expected love to play second fiddle to marriage. Unfortunately, the restrictions win out. Fanny balks at all the wrong moments, allowing herself to be hustled from Keats' sickbed and maintaining perfect calm when he sails to Italy to die. In one scene, the dying Keats turns up raving feverishly under a bush in the back garden, calling for Fanny. She rushes to his sides and collapses next to him, screaming for her mother (Kerry Fox) to bring help. Their entire relationship is built on what they say to each other, not what they do for each other. Keats does not marry Fanny. Fanny does not go to Rome with Keats. Yet nothing formidable seems to prevent them; they are trapped in a weird coccoon of inaction. On film, this inactivity is weirdly synonomous with tedious boredom. When Keats' finally coughs himself into the next world, relief, not grief is the predominant emotion in the theater.

Is the Great Ideal of Romance us Philistines should aspire toward? Should we emulate the moody Keats, who travels to London but can't bring himself to visit Fanny because his love for her is such a burning thing? Or strive to be like Fanny, who fills her room with butterflies when Keats sends her a letter, and then slits her wrist when he doesn't? It all looks very pretty on screen, but living it would be so...impractical.


It's a biopic, you say, based on historical facts. Facts are facts and Campion had no choice. Wrong. In 1819 the real-life John Keats bared his soul to eighteen year old Fanny, won the sympathy of her widowed mother, and courted her with the vigor of a normal, red-blooded male. No fields of daffodils. No roomfuls of butterflies. Within two years they were engaged to be married. During this period he composed three of the most beautiful poetic works ever written: "Ode on a Grecian Urn" "Ode to a Nightingale" and "La Belle Dam Sans Merci." When Keats began coughing blood, and Fanny was forbidden from visiting him, she fought through and nursed him tenderly during his final months in England. Their love deepened, even as he was dying. As he waited for death in Rome, he never put down the oval marble she had given him. In the same manner, Fanny wore the ring Keats had given her all her life, even after she married a Mr. Lindon. Both of them were selfless, doing what was best for the other; both of them were in love. Actively.

Honestly, Campion shouldn't need the story of Carl and Francis Pilgrim in order to grasp the magnitude of first love. She just needs to go back and read what really happened between Fanny and Keats. Then she could've put in a scene where John says, "You needn't marry me, Fanny. I'm dying, and I'd understand." Then Fanny could grab his shoulders, eyes burning, and say, "Needn't? John Keats,I'm IN LOVE with you. I want to marry you, not your lungs."