Silence the Feeling

There is nothing so lonely
As knowing
That I cannot love you

You think you have a nightmare
But you do not know
Can never know
The storm

There is nothing so lovely
As knowing
That I love you

The Desolate Places

The desolate places
dry without thirst
water without fire
the empty places
consuming all
all but desire

The desolate places
search the world
and you shall find none
so desolate as my soul

Live ineffably gives birth
moment consumes moment
until all that is left are

The desolate places
No love but no rejection
No peace but no pain
No rest but no fear

The dry languid consequence of soul

Yellow

This is a beautiful song. My daughter has been trying to get me interested in it, and tonight was the first time I actually sat down and listened to it. Great stuff!

Yellow, by Coldplay

Look at the stars
Look how they shine for you
And everything you do
Yeah, they were all yellow

I came along
I wrote a song for you
And all the things you do
And it was called "Yellow"

So then I took my turn
Oh what a thing to have done
And it was all "Yellow"

Your skin
Oh yeah, your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
And you know,
You know I love you so
You know I love you so

I swam across
I jumped across for you
Oh what a thing to do
'Cause you were all "Yellow"

I drew a line
I drew a line for you
Oh what a thing to do
And it was all "Yellow"

Your skin
Oh yeah your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
And you know
For you I'd bleed myself dry
For you I'd bleed myself dry

It's true, look how they shine for you
Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine for
Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine for you
Look how they shine

Look at the stars
Look how they shine for you
And all the things that you do

Sticks and Stones, Luv...

I wasn't meaning to become so philosophical when I posted this little blurb:

I'll just tell you now
'cause I dont think you know
The things you tried to kill
I found a way to grow
I'll just tell you now
You may have made your mark
But I'm still here today
Knowing who you are
I'll just tell you now

I wasn't meaning to become philosophical, but someone unfortunately asked me "who is killing"?

That question has an easy answer and a hard answer.

The easy answer is to tell yourself that you are the only one who has the power to destroy your own life. It is so common and so easy to tell someone that only they can control their mood, that they only they can give themselves a bad day, that how we meet something (whether face on, accepting it, or whether as a victim) is 100% in our own hands. But that philosophical notion does not take into account the reality of the fact that being demoralized by others can actually and truly be demoralizing. It takes a great deal of personal struggle to rise up above demoralization.

Part of that is learning, teaching yourself, to not allow demoralizing influences to demoralize you. But it is truly easier said than done. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me" sounds all good and well, but generally it isn't true. More harm is done by words than any other way. Words inflame passions, they cause misunderstandings, and often these passions and misunderstandings lead to even worse problems. Wordless demoralization can be even more intense than demoralization by words. The phrase actions speak louder than words, is a notion to be reckoned with.

How often does a look demoralize someone even more than mere words? Or how often can silence demoralize someone? The silence, for example, you find if someone refuses to ever speak to you again?

The "hard" answer would be to accuse someone, or to point out someone's faults as if they were deliberately and intentionally causing you personal harm. This is both hard because it has the tone of accusation associated with it, and hard because you don't really want to mention the fact that someone is demoralizing you, whether it is intentional or unintentional on their part.

I find that, philosophically, neither the hard nor the easy approach give any solution. All a person who feels they have been victimized (such as I feel) can do is say that they forgive. It is difficult in many ways to forgive someone who doesn't recognize any fault with respect to you. Would the Christian thing to do be to confront them with their faults, even if it stirs up more trouble and hardship in everyone's life, when you've got peace about it all yourself, and don't want to put yourself through that turmoil all over again?

It would be cease to be useful if I stirred up dust again, especially now that the dust has settled.

Another "easy answer" is to blame the devil, the deceiver, the divider, the one who stirs up trouble and alienation between people. I find that approach equally unsatisfactory, since the devil needs some help. He really can do nothing without us.

So, I am left with asking myself: is it I who have helped the devil make progress in your lives, separating you from one another, and from God, from me, by giving you such wonderful reasons to hate me?

If you go up to someone out of the blue and say "I forgive you" does it not imply you are accusing them of some offense? And if you go up to someone out of the blue and say "forgive me" does it imply that you are acknowledging in yourself of some secret offense you've committed in your heart against them? Is not an obvious answer to each of these questions, "what for?"

Personal relationships are truly confounding, confusing, troubling, and plagued with misunderstandings. I can sometimes understand why a person would chose to live as a recluse in a cave, cut off from all others. But then there would be no opportunity for forgiveness, understanding, love, would there?

I wish I could say to everyone: I love you, and I forgive you, and I bear no ill-will against you, and I do not accuse you of ever intentionally harming me, and I too, do not feel any sense of wishing to harm you in my heart or soul. Anything you have heard to the contrary is a falsehood. I encourage you to confront the falsehoods, to seek peace, and love and understanding. Everything else in life is a waste of time and energy. Everything else in life will lead you to destruction.

As for me, the thing that someone, something, some power, or some entity tried to stamp out, to kill, to destroy, has become for me life, and peace, and love, and a path into the future. I am sorry if this bothers you in any way.

somehow

somehow I am free

I could not have guessed
I could not have predicted this

I am enchanted with beauty
everywhere

the sights and sounds of beauty

intensity

light and color
shape and outline
darkness and light
intensity of form and perception

I am in love with beauty
and nothing else matters
but somehow
like never before
and never expected

I am free

I still love you
every one

but I am not bound by you
all your sorrows and your sins
are tears on my cheek
running down my beard

but I will walk on
and I will keep loving
pain or no pain

thankful for moments of bliss along the way

I'm sick of Orthodox Christianity, and I just figured out why...

... well, now that I have your attention.

Yeah, really.

And no, it doesn't have anything to do with "all the inner turmoil" I've experienced this year.

Yeah, well, I know this doesn't sound "all that pious" of me. Enjoying the scandal? Might as well find out why. Keep reading.

Tonight I landed upon this article here which has the interesting title More Teens Becoming 'Fake' Christians. Rather catchy, eh? While reading this article, I realized what it is that has been bothering me for some time - the whole year really - ever since I met the first truly authentic Orthodox Christian I had encountered in a very long time. I say authentic Orthodox Christian, when she wasn't even actually an Orthodox Christian at the time, because she was/is a truly authentic person. And nobody is really buying into authenticity these days. Except for the teens. And that's why they are leaving the Church.

I'll tell you the full-meal-deal. Thing is, when I said "I'm sick of Orthodox Christianity" I didn't mean our religious faith, really I didn't mean I was sick of our religion itself. What I'm sick of is the way we have decided as an Orthodox culture to practice our faith. That's what I'm sick of, and I'll tell you why.

Authenticity. I remember when I was a young person, I got lucky. I just happened upon a Christian Church where "the youth were on fire." Have any of you ever encountered that in your protestant Christian days? What it meant at the time was that the teens of the Church were sick and tired of their parents and grandparents being stuffy old pew-stuffers who just sat there to please themselves each Sunday by looking nice and sharing their painted-on faces with one another and their Amen's and God-Bless-Yous. What these teenagers started doing was reading the scriptures, getting involved in charitable activities, and discussing REAL topics, from REAL life from a Christian point of view.

Why are we Orthodox so self-absorbed? We've got the marvelous example of the saints and the things they've done, but all we do is sit on our comfy couches, drinking our comfy micro-brews, singing our apostolic songs, that are so true and so wonderful because they are so ancient, and never internalizing anything, never taking action in our own lives to follow in the footsteps of those Godly beacons of faith, or even to actually do the wonderful things we love quoting to one another on our facebook walls. We are stuff old pew-stuffers who love to say our Amens and God-Bless-Yous in the original Greek (or Slavonic), and we call THAT authenticity.

Now, I know I'll be accused of being sanctimonious here, of making myself out to be better than everyone else, and all that. Ok, I admit all this doesn't sound so good. I can tell you that I'm just as rotten as all those I'm supposedly accusing, and I am, but I'm not accusing anyone here anyway. I'm just pointing some things out. It is easy to get sick of mediocrity - in ourselves and in Church leaders that don't challenge us to make progress in our lives.

But the next time you ask yourself why so many of the youth are leaving the Church maybe you should consider this. Most teenagers start asking questions. They start probing all the things they've been taught their whole lives, and challenging those things. They aren't doing this out of rebellion. They are doing it out of an ordinary sense of need for authenticity. Most young people start asking themselves such questions in their teen years, and it lasts well into early adulthood - sometimes their whole lives. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. If all they learn in Church is about how Godly Saint Blagalucious was beheaded and had his right hand chopped off for the sake of God in 1542, are they going to remember that or the words to their favorite pop song? You guess.

We need instruction that is relevant to our own lives, that's all I'm saying. We need to be engaged by the reality and authenticity that is inherent in our liturgical tradition, and not something that wears a mask of indifference to the world around us. I'm sick of phonies, and you know what? So are the youth.

Gah!

That's crazy.

I just spent an hour modifying my Fly In The Holy Oil page ONLY because I wanted to have titles to my posts!!!! Gah!

Now I can't remember what I wanted to post any more.

forgetting