One Flesh........

"There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man."

                                                                                                        Mark 7:15

"Dispite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage."

                                                                                           Billy Corgan 

  "In First Corinthians Paul tells wives to submit to their husbands" my friend says as he speaks over my other friends who are getting married, "but it's not what you think, it doesn't stop there!  The next verse down tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church.  And you know how much Christ loved the church?  He died for her and that is what husbands are called to do for their wives............"  He grinned and stumbled as he spoke on about husbands duties to their wives, the submission of the wife was the crux and he seemed to pick up momentum and confidence as he consulted his notes after getting over the controversial topic of "submitting wives."  My mind wondered to Jesus, the subject I guess of the hole talk, and I thought about his death.  This is what a man was called to do for his wife?  It seems there was always so much talk about Jesus' death but his life seems to gather only passing glances from his followers, didn't Jesus also live for the church (his metaphoric bride?).  How did he live for her?  We all know how he died for her but how did he live?  Later my friend who conducted the ceremony got up and gave a toast to the bride and her new husband.  He told the bride how much he loved her but he was really glad that she would never live with them again and that he was happy that her husband was taking over what ever responsibilities he himself felt for her.  But that he also loved her.  My brother told him he was full of shit when he walked off the stage.  He hardly responded to the challenge and I felt sorry for him.  Helplessness was written there, the look of "what else could I do?"  The question was in his eyes as he looked at me and then looked away.  I saw him, in that moment, dying every day for his wife and his helpless rage at not being able to live for her.  All the retaliation that was given him now was a passive aggressive speech.  There is nothing to live for any more, only things to die for and I felt that crown of thorns pressing down.  

Sometime after falling......

"Some days I'm bursting at the seams 

  With all my half remembered dreams

  And then it shoots me down again.

  I feel the dampness as it creeps 

  I hear you coughing in your sleep

  Beneath a broken window pane.

  Tomorrow, girl, I'll by you chips

  A lolly-pop to stain your lips

  And it will all be right as rain.

   -This an't no love thats guiding me-"

                                                            -David Grey

  I get caught up in being caught up, nothing new about that is there? "But knowledge does not vanquish mystery, or obscure it's distant lights." Annie Dillard writes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  Just a soft reminder, tickle at the base of my spine to step back and breath again.  My friend Scott says that if you aren't sleeping well it is a good indication that something isn't right in your life, the balance if off.  Well.......... It could be a bomby hot house, noises in the night, or restless dogs wondering around hacking up hair balls too, but I think generally Mr. Marksberry is correct in his analyses.  I have a knot in the base of my neck which tells me I have some stress and that stress starts with a mind that is filling up and over flowing with burdens not mine to carry.  Yet "knowledge does not vanquish mystery" and I wonder why I didn't see it coming and check my self.  All the warning lights were flashing weeks ago, the neon lights flashing through my brain cells "step back, step back"! Jesus lead a great example when he would slip away, tell no one, and disappear from his friends to find solitude, prayer, and silence. Are we that much greater to not need this as well?  I go sleepless nights of crazed drifting, morning hazes, reactionary actions, and unthought of conversations until I become so dissatisfied with my present state of mind that I collapse in frayed exhaustion. Then I look up. Where does hope come from? I have some urge for quantity and immediacy that is always at war with spirit and soul.  I become a wild eyed friend and a manic companion to any new acquaintance that happens to cross my path.  I want to sell the shop and not the trinket, squeeze the balloon before watching it rise.  I ask my self how many times must I be the "Prodigal Son" returning home, yet it doesn't matter really and I don't know.  It is just nice to get home again............ 

Gravity

"Is this what it's like, I thought then, and think now: a little blood here, a chomp there, and still we live, trampling the grass? Must everything whole be nibbled?"

                                                                                                                       -Annie Dillard

  On account of life and deeds, color and texture, sexuality and religion I am a tumble weed of both desire and constraint.  As one writer wrote about his life (and I paraphrase): "There I was, successful, famous, and rich only to find my self the next day raving mad!"  When desire takes her hand and holds me too close the scales shift to that side of life and off I go!  And when they shift to guilt and worry, sliding to far to constrain, I choke on a noose of my own making "Their freedom has now become their bondage." Brett said this week end.  I just finished two days with the delightful Mr. and Mrs. Townson.  I awoke in their "off the grid" house in the West Kootenia late last Saturday morning to wander up stairs with my guitar. "Dodging bullets in the sun, I hope that was the last one" Brett howls to a riff I start playing.  A new song is born as we pull secrets from the air about a man caught in something too big to handle.  The morning turns into afternoon and we hunt the scrap yard near the shop for a surface to paint on.  House paint gets dribbled and thrown, flexed and suspended before contact, a collaboration of wills and friendships. Brett and I paint together just for the hell of it, just to see if we can bend like reeds in the same wind.  These images are from those days. Just a grab at a time and a glance of a memory.  We talked exhausted into the night about our feelings on religion, that oh so delicate balance between relativity and cramped security: what parts of life are gravity and what parts are atoms and beyond!  Our basic conclusion, in case you are just dying to know and believe that at least one of us must be ingenious enough to figure it all out, is simply this: "somethings are basic truths, such as gravity, yet moral law can't be applied to life like say "gravity" is, it comes down to love and hate, "to hate evil and love good" yet we are easily fools for evil that is good and good that is evil.  This means it is a day to day walk in grace, mercy, love, and repentance but most of all love. Some how things are better that way.  And we are all crazed artist's with our hair flying, our desire flinging and our constraint held in the tensions of gravity.