Overture

The moonlit night, the holy Light;
Our fires reflect the stars.
The soldiers rest, their captain dressed.
The men won’t see my scars.

In full array, I stood to pray.
In pride I could not kneel.
I prayed for glory and heroes stories.
I put my faith in steel.

So I did not pray for victory.
I prayed that songs be sung.
I asked God for a vain glory,
And thus we were undone.

The druids hid behind the dark,
Through vile and wicked ways.
And I alone heard howl and bark;
The demon dogs that bay.

I stood and watched one hundred men.
I was Centurion.
I saw Hell open, swallow them,
And I was only one.

One hundred men, as close as kin
Tomorrow they’d know war.
One hundred lives that will not rise
Tomorrow, never more.

The sun rose red above my head,
And heavy on my heart.
No soldier wakes as morning breaks,
No battles here to start.

One hundred fathers’ lives.
One hundred sons’ or brothers’.
One hundred weeping wives,
One hundred widowed mothers.

Now I can kneel. There is no steel
Can save me from what’s come.
In Hell’s dark fire, as if a pyre,
I lost my own dear son.

The sages spell complete,
Those mages made retreat.
One final chant they make,
That I would have the fate
Of all the men that I lost.
The fate of those who paid my cost.

Could any of them know
The curse that they bestowed?
It did not bring me bitter death,
They could not take away my breath.
Those warlocks cursed me by my name,
And that they could not claim.

For every son of God I lost
I’m forced to pay a price.
A score of years—a modest cost—
For each upon my life.

The fate that I am given now
Is not to share their death.
My curse, though I cannot say how,
That I should have their breath.

For twenty years I am one man,
And twenty more per life.
For each I do that which I can
To earn him paradise.

This is not what you think.

This is what I think.
I think,
I am in love with a ghost.
The spirit of what wasn't.
She is not what I believed.
What I wanted to believe.
Oh, I wanted to, but she,
She is not.

Now this thing before me wears
your hair, your skin, your smell, your smile.
It is in the eyes that I see, my love has gone.

I gave you something that was mine to give,
but it was not yours to take.
Now my giving takes more.
I offer you this pound of flesh.
It is the choice meats;
The tender center.

Love, let us speak of Love a while.
May our clumsy words perfect.
May our Perfect Words perform.
May we lie in bed,
and in our lying, may we whisper truths.
May we lie in bed?
I have lied in many places, our bed is not exempt.
I have shown you many faces, all in my attempt
to earn the right to know.

May we know?
May we know what lies before us?
May we know. What lies before us!
What lies, indeed.
What truth and beauty, too.
May we know what lies behind?
May it be behind, ever close to the back of our mind.

Love, let us speak no more.
Let us only touch.
May we know too much.

do you think she knew?

How does the story go? She opened that box, and brought to earth every evil and painful thing. And left in the box was Hope, sorry and frail as She was. So she took Hope into her heart and there She found a home.

were the contents of that Box really so dissimilar? what if she'd left Hope in the box? she could have saved us from a greater pain than famine, fear, war, or hate. she could have saved us from Hope. but she didn't. i think the mistress of hindsight knew that Hope could kill. but she also knew that Hope might save us. she knew she couldn't release such a terrible and beautiful thing on the world, so she hid Her in her chest. and now we all will carry Her, broken as She is, until She saves us.

or kills us fucking dead.

on weight, the practical applications of a bucket, and alchemy

things i have learned tonight:

It's hard to steer a planet.

or a heart.

Albatrosses are fucking heavy. shoot one sometime, you'll see.

There are things you cannot avoid.

There are things you cannot keep.

Buckets do no good for a bullet wound, but sometimes it's all you get. at least it keeps the mess up off the floor.

There are things you will never understand, no matter how hard you try.

There are things you will understand perfectly, no matter how you wish it weren't so.

Intent is just a word.

There's alot of waiting to be done.

Things move very quickly. sometimes.

Lead will never turn to gold. but given time, it may go the other direction.

It doesn't matter which you carry, it gets goddamn heavy to have that kind of thing in your chest for very long. Or on your sleeve.
or anywhere, really. sometimes it's best to just put it away for a little while until you think you can carry it again.

There are worse fates. right?

I have alot to learn. and time enough to do it, i suppose.

Let me tell you something

Love is not the answer.
Love is not all you need.
Love is not a feeling.
Love is not something you will be ready for.

Love conquers nothing.

Love is a question.
Love is a beginning, not an end; never a means.
Love is a choice.
Love says, "I'm not ready. I'm not OK. I'm not perfect, but I want to learn to love you. Even if I fail today, tomorrow, and tomorrow again, I want to know you. I want you to know love."

Love wins.

Here there is enough

Our deepest pain is the child of our hope and our fear. We hold out hope that this life is not all there is. I'm not talking about life after death. I'm talking about life after hurt. Life after brokenness. Life after a broken family. Life after the death of a lover. Life within death. We hold onto our hope that this vale will be lifted, and we will find good in this life.

And there is fear. But our fear is not that we might find this life is truly ugly and bad. Our darkest fear is that our hope is misplaced. It is not evil that scares us. It is not pain. It's the absence of good. The futility of our hope. I can tell you I fear nothing because I have hope. If hope is lost, all is lost.


Here there is darkness.
Here there is fear.
Here there is doubt
Here there is pain.
Here there is hope.
Here there is trust.
Here there is faith.

Here there is love.

All we are is all we are

There are some areas of my life that have been bad for so long. Now I have good things happening and I don't trust it. I'm suspicious of beauty, happiness. I try to enjoy it--and I do--but sometimes I'm just waiting for someone to pull the rug out from under me. I'm gun shy.

In small doses, this probably isn't so bad. Keeps me from taking the good things for granted. Trouble is, this isn't small doses.

Really, I've always had plenty of self-doubt. It's served me well: I'm not often overconfident, always trying to improve, and I listen more than I talk.

I guess I'm just seeing that there are unhealthy sides to this, too.

I don't know if this ties in, but it's something else I want to talk about. This is my arbitrary segue.

Segue.

Why don't we believe in good? I was talking with some friends about what heaven means, what it means to advance the Kingdom. We can believe in God, but not Good.

We can believe in alot. There's no issue for some people in accepting a literal 6 day creation, a many-headed beast, a moon made of blood, stars falling out of the sky, and so on.

These are things I have trouble believing literally. Fantastic stories taken literally, philosophically justified and scientifically emasculated. We take these beautiful, colorful stories and imprison them in the monochrome bronze of fact.

I digress.
My point is this: so many people can take the most unbelievable things as literal fact but when it comes to taking Jesus at His word, we just won't swallow it.

He talks about making the world a better place. "Oh, come on. Are you serious? Look at this world. You really think it's going to get better?"
What if I do? I know it's a bad place. I've seen ugly, terrible things and I know I have a relatively good life.

But I've seen beautiful things. There's good here, too.

The Bible. Christian history. Human history. Our history has always been about creation, redemption, rebirth, rescue. Never escape. Never waiting for destruction so we (or God) can start over. God hasn't given up on us. We've given up on ourselves.

We sit in our ivory towers and lament the fall of man. We do nothing. At best we busy ourselves with some good deed, some token gesture of love. But we hold on to our defeatism: "Sure, we may do some good here, but this whole world is lost. We can only hope to touch a few."

And so we only touch a few.

Nietzsche wrote that "The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad."

I couldn't agree more.

But how can we undo this?