Author Archives: thegreatknock

I'm weary and wary of compacting life into a plain, white text box. Fit a human life on an index card? I think not.

The Song in My Head, My Ears and My Lungs

There’s darkness in my skin
My cover’s wearing thin
I believe
I’d love to start again
Go back to Innocent
And never leave

Don’t give up now
A break in the clouds
We could be found

There’s nothing wrong with me
It’s just that I believe things could get better
And there’s nothing wrong with Love
I think it’s just enough
To believe

Don’t give up now
A break in the clouds
We could be found

Rescue is coming!

And there’s nothing wrong with you
And nothing left to do
But believe something bigger
And there’s nothing wrong with Love
I know it’s just enough
To believe

Don’t give up now
Break in the clouds
We will be found

Rescue is coming!  …coming now!

This evening I feel desperate for rescue.  Not the simple rescue from circumstance, nor that from the flesh (though heaven knows I am ever in need of that!), but the rescue in which I shall lift my eyes and see my Redeemer come.  No lesser glory than Him of lightning eyes will do. 

Ah, come, O mighty King, come in strength and power upon your warhorse, come!  Burn the night sky away, roll it up like a scroll stabbed through by the sword from Your mouth–for what is the sky but a Word You spoke long ago and sang that it should echo and resound again for numbered millennia?  And what again am I but a man whose whole being is to be satisfied in You?  No weaker delight than Your presence will please. 

O my soul, I will be filled with love and delight for the Lord, so that the sweetest of all honeys is loathsome to me!  Bitter is any other pleasure tonight; You are my pleasure, Jesus, supreme in valor and confidence and wisdom and power and patience and meekness and generosity and love and freedom and happiness and strength and joy and laughter and ferocity and wrath and life and authority and bravery and knowledge and sovereignty and touch and song and worship and goodness and peace and silence…

Supreme in silence, perfect in silence.

O my soul, be silent before Your Maker, Master, Friend, Husband, Teacher…

X-Friends

It’s probably just a simple ploy to try to mimic myspace, but now xanga is offering us the opportunity to choose “friends.”  It’s not enough simply to subscribe to the people you know–now you have to be “friends.”

I’m not sure I’m ready for this kind of commitment (grin).

I must say, though, I am hopeful that xanga will not delve toward myspace philosophies in other ways.  If it even gradually begins shifting toward a collection of sites on which people paste sexually provocative photos of themselves for all to see (as myspace accounts, sadly, have the reputation of doing), then I shall abandon it altogether.  And so, my new xanga-friends, if at some point I become strangely silent on here, do not be terribly surprised that I have forsaken the online journal universe…only please revert back to the archaic “emailing” method of commerce and communication (smile).   For I will miss you.

p.s. “The North Avenue Irregulars” was quite entertaining (grin).  Anyone up for “Rear Window” tomorrow night?  Give me a shout…

Not By a Hair

That’s right, it’s about one in the morning and I’m sitting here researching sexually transmitted diseases.  It’s been my evening’s occupation, with generous allowance of breaks to catch a bit of Sweet Sixteen action (Duke went down, which should make all the Ritterbush family glad…sorry, Jon Graent).   But now the games have finished, the buzzers sounded and players retired for the night. 

What must that be like?  Such fantastic energy expended in forty-five minutes of hard running and leaping and flying and rolling!  To play hard, sweat much, slide and tumble and throw and scream upon a court with thousands of eyes upon it all, and then after, to shuffle into the shadows of the locker room…where silence moves in like a fog expanding down the vacant avenues of a quiet town, clawing like a cat round windowsills and streetcorners.  You are spent.  You are alone.

I wonder what Adam Morrison is thinking right now.  The national leading scorer for the season, he and his Gonzaga Bulldogs had an advantage of seventeen points against the Bruins of UCLA until the final minute, when UCLA delivered a few quick and surprising (even to themselves, I think) strokes to win the game.  Is Morrison now sitting somewhere restless in the dark?  Is he trapped in memories of shots and passes and free throws missed?  Does he know why he lost?  Can he remember, in such moments, what winning feels like?

His team lost because they did not run the race in such a way as to win the prize.  I watched in the final minutes as they played to win but did not play to conquer–I suppose we all know the difference.  They scrambled around, attempting to kill time on the clock and making half-hearted attempts at scoring as their shot-clocks wound down.  Slowly UCLA crept closer.

This will seem a strange shift, but it makes perfect sense at one-thirty in the morning (smile): this scenario reminds me of one scene from a novel called Watership Down.  An excellent story about a collection of rabbits (okay, don’t laugh–it’s good), with several sweet little spiritual metaphors in its pages, but at one point some good rabbits are fleeing from bad ones.  As they run, one fast bad bunny runs up and keeps pace with them, taunting them and saying nasty things.  Some of the younger good bunnies are tempted to turn and fight him, but one wise older rabbit remarks that this is exactly what the wicked bunny wants–for this would give his evil companions time to catch up. 

All this to say: run hard, Christian, run hard.  Run in such a way as to win the prize, pour it all out here on this field of earth.  Do not allow the Enemy to distract you or turn your focus from the race; fix your eyes on the Author and run the Story He has written to its glorious finale!  Explode, charge, ignite, leap, fly, race, grasp and gain–O, be strong!  Run like one with the Law on his heels.  Run like a captive who’s been broken out of prison, run with the memory of the cold iron bars and run with the rapture of the blue sky above you.

Win the prize.
The prize is won and waiting.

You All Know the Ending

This is a song I wrote sitting in ye olde dorm room at Bryan
College.  The guitar portion came first, and I sang my mind to
it.  I’m to play it for a friend’s school project sometime soon, but
strangely I find it matches my heart at the moment…do old feelings
really revisit us?

you all know the ending

you all know where this began

so why are you just

sitting

in the middle

wondering where I Am?

you don’t know you’re running

you just know you’re running fast

but when will you stop

dreaming

all the little

Daydreams of your past?

for only I know the plans that I have for you

your vision comes clear when seen through the Rood

but you fall away

as you turn

your

gaze

your own ways

when will you look and see I Am good?

you know all the answers

but your words are all too small

so when will you stop

speaking

and just listen

hear My whispered call

all of the expectations you’ve made for things

trade for assurance I gave in My blood

there’s freedom for feet to dance

when the day

turns

grey

and lonely

when will you live knowing I Am good?

you all know the ending

you all know where this began

so why are you just

sitting

in the middle

wondering where I Am?

13 Ways of Looking at a Springtime Dogwood

Walking around downtown the other evening and at my apartment the past
few days, I noticed a peculiar aroma following me everywhere I
went.  It smelled almost like the pungent scent of stale (ahem)
urine–I know, not a pleasant thought, but I couldn’t shake it so I
began to wonder if some critter had wee-weed on my jacket when I wasn’t
looking.  I sniffed everywhere on my person before realising that
the slightly distasteful fragrance was in fact the smell of dogwood
blossoms!  Dogwoods have sprung out everywhere with their ghostly
white flowers, and while they are very pretty they do not smell so nice
at a distance.

Well, in honour on the new season and its herald dogwoods, I thought
I’d share with you this poem from the days of my old college creative
writing class.  Enjoy (smile)…

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a (Springtime) Dogwood

Written
in appreciation of the dogwood blossoms, with much humble honour to e.
e. cummings, William Carlos Williams, William Faulkner, Wordsworth,
Spenser, and such others as might find glimpses of themselves within
these lines…

I

A cloud descended
upon

the hardened stalk.

II

Blossoms white stretch forth

And yet no fruit produce.

III

Dust

Outburst

Grin

Window

Orphan

Ordinary

Dust

IV

Denied the sunlight of the higher boughs,

Yet do your petals shine with
glory faint…

The blue between your leaves,
like flecks of paint,

Does seem to force your limber
arms to bow.

V

At night the ghostly dogwood rises to become

the misty halo of meaning

within my darkest heart

VI

A gentle rustle

provokes the man

to lift his face

and
watch the swaying sound

with his blind eyes

VII

The young boy perched his hat anew,
kicked his feet at the whole world, spat and wiped his mouth on a
ragged sleeve, and leaned again against the trunk of the old dogwood.

VIII

Each blossom feels another yet none is the source of another’s

Life

IX

Spindly thing–

You crowd beneath my shoulder

You say my great green threats are empty–

Well, before you step on giants’ toes

You better learn respect.

X

Like a barber staring down

Upon an old white crown

An aged mop

Atop

A green blanket

XI

The cat cried aloud
as unwilling people passed by,

unnoticing, uncaring, unfeeling

and the claws dug deeper

growing with growing fear

into the limb five feet above

the
root of Jesse’s dogwood tree.

XII

I want to climb that one he says

You cant climb that one I says

Why not he says

Its too small I says

Lets walk farther I says

Which way he says

Any way I says

We cant he says

We dont have time he says

I nods

I and he touch the dogwood

XIII

The hungriest blossom feels the warmest Star.

 

The Power of Perspective…?

These pictures of of an English sidewalk artist who gives a
three-dimensional appearance to his artwork.  When viewed from a
specific angle, you can see how they appear to grow out of the sidewalk
(smile).  It reminds me of an old painting by Hans Holbeim the
Younger which had a long white smear along its base–when the canvas
was bent and turned to the side, the white blur actually showed itself
to be a painting of a human skull (“Holbein” means “hollow bone,” so it
may have been his way of signing the artwork).  Anyway, thought
you all might enjoy…

I prefer Pepsi to Coke, but I won’t hold that against the Limey (smile).

Anyone else wondering if he’s getting paid for these little commercials of his?  Coke…Rembrandt art supplies…

This reminds me of an illustration Frank gave in a sermon once, about how we are all like toy ships…do you all remember it?

So in this one it seems as if the little man is standing atop a giant
globe, but below we see how the sidewalk painting is actually nearly
forty feet in length…

From this point of view, it seems much more a grotesque blob.  The
power of perspective, huh?  I suppose the same is true
spiritually–when we lose the vision of the Cross, everything becomes
grotesque.  This can happen even with spiritual things
themselves!  Our view of grace, for example…if it becomes
somehow distorted so that we suspect we earned any part of it, it
becomes a monster and a wicked philosophy.   We could then
begin to exclude certain folks from it, as if they were less worthy
than ourselves.  May God grant that we have the mind and attitude
of Christ, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our
faith!…