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I'm young, but I feel old. I have potential, but I'm resistant to seeing it realized. I want to care more than I do, but I fear the pain of great love. Time is going by faster, I see progress, but wish I could savor it more. I admire, with little time to assess the quality of my emulation. To be less would be nice. To be simple seems unrealistic. What is the purpose of learning more if courtesy only asks us to meet people where they are? I want to write weird things, but don't want to reassure those who read my blog. My wife has become more to me. She has modeled and escorted me into good things I don't think I could have enjoyed without her. A new day is rising and I want to protect it more than I want to enjoy it. I'm detained, and its a bad habit. The future is sketched, yet unpainted. This is an epic year. Foundation. I still like cashmere, and perhaps will build on it. Christ is it, and that can not be ignored forever. Thinking is selfish, when you do to much of it. Ruminating on spectacular truth is like a walk in a garden full treasures. Those in the house wish we would come in and bring a rose for their vase. I have often thought,"what a waste" but not anymore. Their is time for the garden, but it is better to bring beauty to the ones you love.

Hope For The Hottie

May the Church be so drunk on love and high on hope, so wonder intoxicated that she cannot be circumstantially intimidated. May she acquire a trust to stand before Caesar and say, rape me, shoot me, stab me, kill me, for we cannot deny the love that has overthrown our greatest shame, emptiness, loneliness, and fears. May we say, “Light your flames governor, take this cocoon and set this butterfly free into the vast bouquet of a garden you can’t see, dill weed...”

Homesick

I’m feeling homesick today for my beloved apex. I have had many conversations of late where I was able to shared great stories of Fathers love, and power through the Church. Most of these stories involve the apex community. I wonder what Greg is doing right now? How I wish Gene and I were sipping in some jazz at the Bellagio. Where is my Sean Critchfield, my Heidi, what jokes would Tommy tell me if he were here. I miss the Wizard. Ahh the passion and pursuit. I run into my long lost family here and there, I wonder when we part why have they become long lost family? I love you and miss you, will I do anything about the missing you part. I don’t know, I get tired a lot when I get home and daydream of when I never came home tired from church.

Cynic

Friends have shared with me more than once that I come across cynical when I speak about matters of the Church and the Christian journey. I have often left those dialogs pondering, “am I a cynic?” I usually am surprised by these comments, as I have always perceived myself to be psychotically optimistic. I believe it is quintessential to peer into the improprieties of the churches heart of which our collective blood flows in and out of simply because in Christ’s order of things confession has always been the prerequisite to redemption, and redemption the prerequisite to gratitude, and gratitude the prerequisite to joy, and joy the prerequisite to contagious proclamation, and contagious proclamation the prerequisite to introspection within our listeners, and introspection the prerequisite to discovery, and discovery the prerequisite to rebirth, and rebirth the prerequisite to living loved, and living loved the prerequisite to sharing love. And I suppose the greatest ambition of my ransomed life is for those who so desperately need love to finally taste love, and be so healed that they organically extend that love to others, not sit safely and ambivalently by in happy town.

Forgiveness is the doorway to love

Its not that the world can't love me, because it can. It just can't love me enough. There are perforations in my heart to great to fill. I am a desert that no loves rain can saturate, and no ocean can mud. I'm a bottomless well that the water of life keeps falling through. My heart is a tattered torn wine skin that needs to be replaced entirely. How will it be replaced? By letting the people and the things that made these holes, off the hook. Only then will love find harbor again, only then will I catch the rain.

When I look at the world

When you look at the world what is it that you see? People find all kinds of things that bring them to their knees. I see an expression so clear and so true that changes the atmosphere when you walk into the room. So, I try to be like you, try to feel it like you do, but without you it's no use, I can't see what you see when I look at the world, when the night is someone else's and you're tryin' to get some sleep, when your thoughts are too expensive to ever wanna keep, when there's all kinds of chaos and everyone is walking lame, you don't even blink now, do you? Don't even look away so, I try to be like you, try to feel it like you do, but without you it's no use I can't see what you see when I look at the world. I can't wait any longer, I can't wait till I'm stronger, can't wait any longer to see what you see when I look at the world. I'm in the waiting room I can't see for the smoke I think of you and your holy book when the rest of us choke tell me, tell me what do you see? Tell me, tell me what's wrong with me?

A Midsummer Night

I went for a walk before sunset to ruminate on dreams and calm the turmoil of my many responsibilities. I delighted at watching children playing in the park and savored the flowers and lush foliage green from summer’s kiss. As the Earth rotated away from our solar star I enjoyed the warmth of glimmering street lamps and manicured yards lit ever brilliantly in choreographed arrangements of light. The sent of dusk was in the air as sprinklers trickled drops of water on freshly cut lawns. I paused on a wet sidewalk for a moment as a young lady exited her driveway that happened to notice my shirt denoting my old alma mater. With a single question we embarked on a mysteriously parallel reminiscence of our lives from past to present. It is wonderful when Father allows you the privilege of being involved in a random encounter which you enter into innocently, and depart a little more in love with the walk you are on.

Love

"Being a Christian is not about being right," a friend told me once, "its about giving your life away..." When Christ says "no one takes my life from me, but I lay it down at my own accord." We must realize that a statement such as this, and Christ's invitation to do likewise will never make sense to us until we have entered into an affection that truly heals our intrinsic compulsion to look out for ourselves. Our dreams, our plans, our image, our reputation, our need to cope with our guilt, our shame, our loneliness, our fears, our revenge, even our need for safety, legacy, significance, or a remarkable ministry. When I finally realize the meaning of Christ's words "greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." Only then can I finally recognize how trivial and even selfish my best intended ambitions can be. For the cross is simply God saying in horrific wonder "I'd rather die and be with you, than right, without you."

The Road Less Traveled

What I have learned of Christian labor is this:
Father can have our obedience without our affection, but he can not have our affection without our obedience. Religion is our masquerade of a love affair with God, without the love affair. Christ invites us to exchange the illusion of love for Father and brother, for the reality of it. And that in itself is our salvation, anything else is just a job.

Exploring the Heart of God

“Love, the final frontier. These are the voyages of my adventuresome enterprises. My life long mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Harsh

In my twenties I wanted to be on fire, dangerous, unpredictable, and wild.
In my thirties I realize such antics are scary, harsh, and make others feel unsafe, which ultimately stultifies intimacy. Although we may marvel at its majesty, we still run from tornadoes.

Family & Friends

My beloved Lori and Logan have been traveling this week and I miss them dearly. I am less when we are apart. I have had the privilege of getting together with some wonderful friends while they have been away. I had dinner with Gene and his adorable wife Lisa, I sat under stars late into the evening sipping bubbles from a seer as Gene and I gallivanted through the wonders of love and its implications. “He has a smile that could launch a ship,” I thought to myself as we parted company. Kenny Parker is a gentle man, I have never really known, but always wanted to. We have had the joy of sitting for hours this week as we have embarked on creating a rendition of the good news through a phantasmagoria of endearing images. Kenny is an ordained artist who should be feared, his talent is not of this world, it is wicked what art can evoke in a soul. Without key or permission he can breach my well protected heart, and wreak havoc as he wishes. That’s not fare, and I thank God he’s on Love’s side.

Off To Mars

My brain is swimming in a pool of dopamine, and it is wonderful until it becomes catastrophic. Pray me a safe landing.

Incommunicable

There is a universe in my heart held hostage by the insufficiency of words.

Combustable

Love is a forest fire that ignites everything it touches.

Growing in Love

Our hearts will adapt to the complexities to which they are exposed.