wind chimes

our words surround us

like some sweet-tasting secret that we have always known

but have since forgotten the taste of

like the sounds on the tips of our tongues,

we run after that which is inside of us, and a little bit ahead of us, always.

there are beautiful certainties that exist in this world of ours, outside of the realm of understanding- beautiful permanences in places that stand above and outside the grip of language, shape, and definition.

but you see,

in and around and between all of our clumsy inarticulations,

we are made to breathe, and in so doing, made to take in truth itself - to swallow a language that we can never speak on our own.

it is the never-ending song echoing in the caves of our hearts and running through the trees in our dreams. it makes it's melodies in our wind chimes; in our bedroom doors it marches on. it sends its song through old cans and tall grass. it fills our lungs in one moment, and in the next, runs from them in victorious laughter. in its old-age, it creaks around corners and in open places. it is a familiar friend to this place.

it remembers a time when we were not, though now is not that time.

it was and is and is to come.

and we are oh, so forgetful.

teach us to Breathe, and in so doing,

to take in that Great Mystery

which belongs to no man but is for every man.

*currently listening to Paper Route

*picture taken from here

Of Stained-Glass Windows

In birth, the light shows itself, violently.
In death, the light hides itself, kindly.
In life, we see but through a glass darkly.



Our eyes, like two tiny portholes, speak in whispers regarding our sea-roar surroundings. We try to raise our eye-voices, but we know not what to say; in silence, we wait,
counting raindrops as they freckle the glass.
We weigh and measure these Hints,
as if They will come and explain Themselves to us - explain from whence They came.

[We are those ships that feel the wind but cannot see from where It's come.
We turn, suddenly, expecting to find It staring back at us,
but there is nothing to be seen - not through eyes such as ours, anyhow,
grayed with disbelief as they are]

But when we are awakened by the Great Morning,
we find that we are instead stained-glass windows,
and so the Hints come creeping through each crack until our bones are wet
with the stained-glass-paintbrush display...

...And how welcome are these chromatic pilgrims,
wanderers on these cloudy seas!
Suddenly we find that we have known all along what to say,
and it was only at first that we did not know
the colors, the strokes, the language
with which to speak these things:

- Come in, you Red and Green!
and you, ocean-wet Aquamarine!
Come and fill our pale frames
with Your technicolor certainty,
'Cause our bodies ache,
and we are oh, so tired of
this bleak and blurry glass -

we raise our voices, paled by possibility -
and we do not stop our words from running from our tongues

until we hear ourselves say
that which we have always known,
until Your color runs over us

and what is in becomes Out, and Out, in,
and everything Is what It could have been.



*photo from here

covers and such

Hey Friends,

here are the two cover videos that we have done so far..just in case you were bored:

Prayers

O, Spirit!

All creation sings Your praise,
And the trees and mountains are Your musicians.
They bellow the answer to Your whispers-
The rocks cry out the promptings of Your being.

With Your earth-chest You heave massive sighs of hurricane breath
And fill our lungs with the witness of Who You Are.



O, Jesus!

We remember You best with arms outstretched:
open wide - offering all of You
open wide - welcoming all of us

Your words are like water to our desert-souls:
"Come ye empty-handed! You need not a thing-
I only want you, and you only need Me."



O, Father!

For what You've done, we are Yours forever
But when we forget, help us remember
How You meet us on the road to lift our faces from our shame
And kiss them with Your laughter.

Forgive us when we hurt You,
And please, never stop welcoming us back into Your arms.

An announcement of sorts.

Hello blog friends,

How are you? Good? Great.

I wanted to let you know about something that I/we find real, real exciting.

If you didn't know, I've been writing songs with a handful of my best friends under the name of Branches.
We are getting to the final stages of production on our debut EP, which should be finished around the first of September,

BUT..

until then, we're excited to share a sneak-peak of what we're working on via our Myspace page (which you can find here!)

If you don't hate it, add us as a friend, spread the word, sing along, and if you'll be around L.A. the first week of September, buy a ticket for our show with Tyrone wells here.


YES.

1, 2, 3..

everything will be ok.

jump off the top bunk, because your dad will catch you -

he built that bunk bed,
and he is the strongest dad in the world..

he can clap really loud and catch fish and put you on his shoulders
and everyone else's dad is dumb.

and now back to our regularly scheduled program.

nighttime is best.

in summer clothes, feet tiptoe the cool cement, remembering its cracks through cooling blisters. and oh, the last drip-drop-sounds of cars rolling home through almost-wet summer air..

wet - like a swimming pool spread out in said summer air, thrown loose like a blanket for all the neighbors to share; to lay down in the grass-green hills behind our eyes.

no fences, no curfews, no tuesday morning alarm clocks looming.

if you breathe slow enough, you can taste the yester-moment laughter and watermelon communion on your tongue,

so let's all breathe slow. enough. please.

wonderful black-sky, wet-grass, watermelon-sweet moment of minute memory, half-certain and most-welcome,

you are best.


*picture taken from here

The Necessity of Lament

I'm currently writing my senior paper on
"The Lyricist's Responsibility".
I'm looking at faith-based writers and how they handle the responsibility of the pen.

I've never thought much about prophets. Like many things in the Bible, they have always felt a bit like mythical creatures... Nessie, Unicorns, the world's best cup of coffee, the guy who wears camel fur and eats grasshoppers...it's all a little hard to personalize.

One of the books I am reading (The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann) is making me think of the poet as prophet for the first time.

He says that every significant human experience has its origins in Orientation- a Psalm 23 of the soul, where green grass and still waters drown out the distant darkness..Until something happens...
(insert Psalm 22)

Disorientation.

We move suddenly and violently from blissful ignorance to the awakening of devastation.

Both are necessary, yet both are incomplete as final resting points...

Where we are stuck in Orientation, it is the prophet's task to initiate lament.
Open eyes. Kick shins. Break windows. Break hearts.
Where we are stuck with the broken shins and glass and hearts of Disorientation, it is the prophet's task to introduce a new song - a song in which God's huge hands can hold every broken heart and things can still make sense; a song where right and wrong, dark and light, yes and no, The Healer and disease - can coexist in and around the same creation.

This is Reorientation - the marriage of Lament and Praise, and the charge and destination of every poet.

That's a big pen to be responsible for, and if Brueggemann is right, then I'm not ready.
I'm still learning how to color in the lines..

Typewriting

My parents got me a typewriter for Christmas,
and I've been staring at it since.
I've been watching it grow pale in the wet window light,
slowly bleeding out, running dry of its ribbon-ink-blood.



If this was a story fit for books,
I would write about green eggs and ham and how scared I am.
I'd write about nights I've spent with my eyes closed tighter than a thousand fists. Closed tighter than the grip I've maintained on my delusions, and how the lack of circulation to the knuckles of my heart have made the fingers inside my chest turn white and stiff.
I'd whisper to you nervously about how my tongue feels like a treasure map pointing to a terrible secret improperly buried behind my fist-heart.
I'd tell you that I keep my heart in a fist. because I'm scared. to see the words my fingers would put together if I let them loose. and how I'm scared to see the black and white truth my hands could make for my fist-eyes - a ravenous beast of ink and tree that reels at the chance to swallow any inconclusivity I may yet reserve in it's conclusive and concrete claws of print and punctuation.

I would not, could not in a box.
I would not, could not with a fox..

But when I run out of treasure-map-talk,
these are only the musings of a heart in waiting.




Really, I let the keys beat out the last drops of permanence against innocent white so that I can do what's next (this is what really goes on inside and outside):



I sit down to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write to write words that no one will see but that I need to feel my fingers say. I need to see my fingers like ten little men on the moon, leaving prints in the unknown white.

So I typed an inkless letter to know what my fingers would feel like after fighting with my words. I wanted to wrestle with it all, right down to the literal process of pushing down those concave plastic circles, so that despite all of my work, I'd have nothing to say. That regardless of the hours I've spent behind those anxious keys, all I'm left with are white pages.

And the words im scared of what i cant see. were never so hard to write.

And I've never breathed such a permanent black and white sigh of relief (period).