Tuesday 30 May 2006

geishas

The mystery, the beauty, the serenity through striving to be a moving work of art. These visual messages imprint themselves upon my soul and I am undone. A passing flame of glory in the cherry blossom is the Japanese art written into the person of a woman called to be geisha. What truth in a glimpse of beauty personified yet personhood betrayed I cannot find the answer, not yet.

Tuesday 23 May 2006

royal abandonment

The muses vacated the house, leaving no note of either "Back Soon" or ""Forever, Amen." Mother Kirk is perhaps to blame, causing chaos with her need for my understanding. Knocking at my door for days turned into years with a truth for all men about themselves--it's all in a book.

The species created by God in two genders to keep His garden can't decide who's going to be in charge of the ploughing. If not strictly a matter of authority, we reason, perhaps it's about individual tasks. Who is built to hold the plough, and who is qualified, by very nature, to care for the oxen back at the barn? One camp of men envision an orderly society arranged as masters and servants, from the delicate bonds of marriage to the top plank of the clergy. The other camp decide they need perfected fairness between man and woman...Christ and church?

Thursday 4 May 2006

the necessity of divorce

Going from Judaism to Christianity, going from aetheism to Christianity, going from Christianity to Christ. It takes a while, these life changes. Who's doing the changing? Can it be man, oneself? Is it God? Where the choice ends and the control begins is the souly tug of war.

Tuesday 2 May 2006

But thou wilt sinne and grief destroy;
That so the broken bones may joy,
And tune together in a well-set song,
Full of his praises,
Who dead men raises.
Fractures well cur'd make us more strong.
~George Herbert

Fractures well cured make us more strong. To measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around, is the path to self-knowledge, says O'Connor. How is it that suffering is something we consider bad, yet is good for us, to make us strong?

Suffering cannot be of benefit only in driving out the evil from our body and soul, for Christ suffered who did no wrong and was made thereby worthy of glory. We want sin and grief destroyed so that we may have joy and the broken instrument may sing again. Written on our frame is the fact that the seed must die before it can be raised. The seed of every thought, the seedling feelings, the strength gone to seed must all die, every day, every other day, in strings of moments threaded throughout a year, to be raised a tougher body, a deeper feeling, a truer thought, and then we will know that what we knew before was only a shard of self.