Author Archives: thegreatknock

Reject typicality.

The world has not yet seen all that you are capable of.  Humbly inform them.  Be no more a mystery.

Do everything with as much excellence as you can muster.

Invest your time and energy in those activities or bits of knowledge which are reproductive – that is, which you can pass along to others.  Be a consumer-reproducer.

Feel passion for many things.  Do no stifle any pure ones.

Be unreasonable about your passions; divine gifts and purposes are not often reasonable.

Enjoy the sharp, sporadic memories as if they were a momentary Now – the smells, the songs which carry you Elsewhere.  Memory is its own Continent.

Allow your passions to carry you into difficult and hard labours; they will surely carry you through them as well.  Difficult work fuels a passion.  Learn this by practise.

Do not be satisfied by lectures, sermons, commentaries, critical essays, or translations – these are all veils between you and the Source.  Know them, but do not be satisfied by them.

Make excuses out of everyday situations, meetings, or happenings for learning something new.

You do not need to master all areas of knowledge, but you must master the most important ones.  A God-driven passion will show you which these are.

I love thunder.
It doesn’t frighten me.
It feels rather like it puts me in my place, and I’m glad to be so put.

An old college friend of mine updated the blogosphere today about how she is joining a group of people in her town to start a “new church” of “ordinary people committed to living out the Mission of God in community and for the community.”

First, I have to wonder at the term “new church.”  I’ll leave it simply in quotation marks, and let you ponder the significance (and possible error) of this phrase.

But then I began to comtemplate the nature of community.  I must confess that I have not the sweet feelings toward this term “community” which so many seem to hold.  Community can be as corrupt as its individual members.  Community can be dishonest, just as any man can deceive himself.  Community can be less than a warm, fuzzy place.  Community can be more than a hard, rough-edged place.  Community can lack authority, lack accountability, lack merit.  Most of all, community is not a magic word.

Sometimes I curse the camera–
For how it lies to me–
With claims that moments can be held–
In happy permanency

This is a new song I wrote over the weekend, to play at a concert at the barking Legs Theater. If you’d like to listen to the song, click on this post’s title and it’ll take you to where you can hear it (smile). If I were computer-savvy, I’m sure I could have posted it here somehow…

Faces

Have you seen the face of Suffering
A common face, ordinary, plain
Yet somehow familiar to the human race

Moving through the crowd Humanity
He stops one man walking dully by
All the other faces turn away and smile
Careless of their brother, they move on awhile

But as faces come and faces go
Turn around a moment, ask him what he knows
Make him tell you why it must be so
There has to be a reason—hold onto him, don’t let go till he tells you so…

Have you seen the face of perfect Peace
Disfigured face, brutalised and maimed
Difficult to look on, lovely all the same

His beauty spoils the following:
Loneliness, Despair, and heavy Shame
But like a treasure hidden—hidden in a field of pain
The guilty go on looking, desperate for his face

And as faces come and faces go
Turn around a moment, ask him what he knows
Make him tell you why it must be so
There has to be a reason—hold onto him, don’t let go till he tells you so…

He’ll tell you that you have to see him to believe
That his face of Suffering is the face of Peace
Only eyes open wide see the Loveliness inside
But you have to be near—so near—for the Beauty to appear
Through the painful tears…

So as faces come and faces go
Turn around a moment, ask him what he knows
Make him tell you why it must be so
There has to be a reason—hold onto him—

And as faces come and faces go
Turn around a moment, ask him what he knows
And he’ll tell you why it must be so
He has to give a reason to hold onto him and not let go…he won’t let you go…