Love of a jealous kind, 10.

9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

LORD, why is this?! I trembling cried.
Will You pursue Your own to death?

[

thank You for laboring with me in love.

so meticulous, so kind
to make me Yours.

]

Tis in this way, the LORD replied,
I answer prayer for grace and strength.
These inward trials I now employ,
From self, and pride, to set you free;
And break your schemes of earthly joys,
Til you should find your all in Me.

On 9/11 and PTSD

A major legacy of 9/11, for me in the past seven (!) years of living in New York City, is survivor stories. A resilient community, formed from a crucible of crisis.

Just like the legacy of my own little exilic hell at City College of New York, morbidly drawn to Holocaust Studies, to survivor lit.

Survivors.
Tell me your secrets, and you will tell me my story.
Tell me your sorrow, and I will tell you my hope.

Where did it come from, your will to live, that lunatic hope?

How did you make it, against all odds? 

And WHAT. is this joy, this foreign lightness,

that surprised you when it showed up to stay?

What treasure did your tragedy bestow?

Surely, if you can survive, you can learn to live. One can hope.

*** 

Anniversary grief of any kind is a curious thing. Hard.

to any suffering friends, i pray that in these days,

in the cycle of seasons, in the recurrence and repetition,

welcome or not:

in these days, may you return not only to your hurt,

but to your Help.

your ever-present Help.

oh my friend, you are not alone.

let not your pain crush your heart.

i know you want a map of the wilderness, the mutilated world,

but traveling friends and His guiding presence,

that's all we are given.

oh, and and perishable bread for today
(but enough for a Sabbath)
and promises...

friend, we can hold hands.

i don't know how, but i do know now,

it will be okay soon.

***

at first, the stories are about surviving trauma.

then,
then, they are about surviving Post-Trauma.

the latter is the more difficult task, I think.

the former, your body does for you, on total out-of-body auto-pilot.

***

and then, you have to get back into your skin, saggy and ill-fitting and scraped now.

when it comes to Post-Trauma, you are warring against your self, and against your seemingly self-annihilating mind. you are fighting for the present, and for your right to stay there.

Living in the day-to-day, after you have met the extremes––dull. Dull, dim, dark.

Dull like your pain. Dull unlike your flashbacks.

But, oh God, those flashbacks, they are searing. Blinding.
Shocking. stunning. Unlike real-time, which is dull like paralysis.
They demand that you attend to your pain.

They say, heal. Arise. Go. onward.
They say, you are forgiven. What? is that what I really need?



Survivor stories are travelogues of traveling friends. Witnesses who have gone before. Who have found themselves ejected from the life they once knew, in a blur, and then have wandered the wilderness. Some make it out.

Thank you friends, for sharing your stories. The moment you start telling your story, you have survived the prison of your secrecy. When you were unknowable and alone after being dehumanized, it was such extremely narrow confinement.

oh, it is NOT good for man to be alone.

Thank you for your will to live.

Where others had stayed in slavery
When others had perished in the wilderness...

 Each of us cries with thankful heart, "Lord why was I a guest?"

What is there to say, but Thank You.

***

At first it is terribly dark and cold and grey. They try to fumble their way back to a lost world. lost life. lost garden. Safety was back there. Simple was back there. Plans were back there.

But it is lost. Life can only be ahead. They float on through.

Sometimes they fight.
All the rhythms that were once parasympathetic, all that was for granted, now you must fight for it.

Now you must gasp for air.

Now you must fight for joy.

Now you must wrestle in worship.

Now you must fight to live.

Don't run from the tension.






And suddenly, light. The tears have filled all the secret silent spaces, and they are refracting all the debris of your life from the tunnel's end, into a kaleidoscope.

Life is bursting into full color.

The sun has risen.

A new day has dawned.

It is Easter.

Just like He promised. I will find you. I have never forsaken you.
I descended to the dead. On the third day, I ascended into heaven.
I am seated at the right hand of our Father, where I am your strong and perfect plea.
I came that you might have life––and have it abundantly.
If you are faithless, I will remain faithful.
I will bring you safely home.

We sing a new song:

Oh, if it had not been for the Lord, we would have been swallowed in the sea.
We were so near to death. If it had not been for the Lord, let Israel now say.
You have led us well. You have saved us and safekept us.

Do you know, you can do more than survive?

You can live again.

remembering maya angelou

for a midwest-bred and Harlem-rehomed woman who read and day-drank and hoped and prayed and wrote her way to freedom in a wide open world, who refused to speak for six years and declared about it "there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you":

i know
as you knew
how a clipped wing
could sing
a dirge for dead

dreams
let freedom ring.

sister bird
with bosom sore
you're caged no more
your struggle's done
but you'll sing on
that holy trill
hope's ghostly chill

the sky,

at last,

your home.

sister bird
Love has come
through wasted fears
in desert years

Love's come through

for us.


in grateful hotdiggety memory of Maya Angelou, whose wings surely fit her well.
with hope that she now sings to the Lord a new song.

---

there's a darkness upon you that's flooded in light . . . it flies by day and it flies by night and I'm frightened by those that don't see it there was a dream and one day I could see it like a bird in a cage I broke in and demanded that somebody free it // The Avett Brothers

Happy 61st Anniversary to Gram & Paw!

:o) & (o:

celebrating them here with words from my bro Jonathan's proposal poem from this weekend:

this is an invitation to interdependence,

as two become one and all Glory goes to the Son.

praise due, not to us but to the Lamb who cried, "it is done!"

– because of love.

not an only-for-this-season love,

or a he-bought-this-for-me type love,

not a we’re-both-from-the-barrio,

or here’s-the-prenup type of love,

but an excessive affection that sees

future, present and retrospective.

patient, kind, protective, common and elective,

ever-pushing and pursuing,

ever drawing the same conclusion:

that He is the ultimate bridegroom

who died for me, and for you.

and though He couldn’t bend his knee

because of the nails in His feet,

he dropped His head and proposed –

will you marry me?

and today in this way

miss pan, i humbly do the same:

will you marry me?

and with MJ & MJ's very different weekend

remembering that we are still all a part of the same story,

the same invitation to celebrate to feast to be one with the One.

i believe in happily ever after.

Realtalk.

Many friends have given me WAY too much credit for my short stay in the slums of Sabah. Not that it wasn't glorious... just the glory's not mine.

Let me assure anyone tempted toward such praise with an open admission:

I definitely did not outstay the novelty.

My camera compositions are as subjective as my reporting is selective.

I capture what is newsworthy, new to me.

But a lot of it is familiar too.

For example, I wrote about walking these planks...

but there were also these boardwalks,

and these.

This school,

but also this classroom,

and this one.

In any case, shanty as they may appear from outside,

many of the houses were quite amenable!

with gas stoves...

electric wiring, wall art (including freakin precious moments),

and overhead lights...

floors, ceilings, and safe hydration...

more-than-full meals...

couches, fans...

in the upper left you can see part of the TV's surround sound system!

there and here, i have more than enough.
learning to live with less,
to live simply, so that others may simply live...
so that i might truly Live.
excess is not abundance--
LORD, help me to see true worth.

Tell Me A Story / Dan Taylor

We are created to be creatures who live in story and understand story.

The Significance of Stoires:

How Stories Shape People:

Transferring Values through Story:

Story in the Bible:

How Stories and Faith Relate:

Three years ago today.

Lord, You never let go of me.

E: theres no bridge michael! no freaking bridge. isaiah 43.
mahkoZ (2:57:28 PM): what are you defining as "bridge"
E: theres no way to the other side in sight
E: theres nothing i can do or build
E: no. effing. bridge.
mahkoZ (2:59:18 PM): yeah..
mahkoZ (2:59:49 PM): you'll see it though, when you get to the other side
E: ???! or
E: IF i get to the other side
mahkoZ (3:00:18 PM): you're gonna get there esther
E: with my faith intact??
mahkoZ (3:00:43 PM): that i do not know
mahkoZ (3:00:54 PM): but based on your history, and the myriad of things you've endured
mahkoZ (3:01:08 PM): i would definitely put all my chips on you making it through
mahkoZ (3:01:13 PM): with your faith solidified
E: my faith is wimpy and i am so afraid
mahkoZ (3:01:45 PM): i think you know God better than a lot of people do..
E: i think i believe God less than a lot of people do..!
mahkoZ (3:08:28 PM): well.. at any rate, God knows esther infinitely well
mahkoZ (3:08:50 PM): God will deliver you
mahkoZ (3:10:42 PM): listen, king jehoshaphat and all who live in judah and jerusalem! this is what the lord says to you: 'do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. for the battle is not yours, but GOD's..'
E: but thats why im afraid
mahkoZ (3:21:22 PM): yeah.. i understand
mahkoZ (3:21:29 PM): well.. i shall pray for you esther. but i need to let you know that you encourage me
mahkoZ (3:22:51 PM): i see in your life, a story of struggle, and fear, and redemption, and faith, and child-like love
mahkoZ (3:24:05 PM): and it makes my heart want to praise God more fully and more realistically

God, let it be true of me, keep writing me into Your story!

If Grace Is an Ocean...

There lives a sea turtle who had lost his sea.

How he reached the desert sands or when, no one knows for certain.  It would almost seem the sprawling arid wasteland were home and always had been. A tortoise I shall be, resolved he. And so he belonged to the wilderness.

I like this picture a lot.

Once upon a time the sea turtle knew his lostness.  Back then he would stop each passerby and ask for the way home. But in these parts no one knew the way.  They had never seen the ocean, was it really real?  The desert, they convinced him, was the only sure place there ever had been or ever would be.

And so the waters drained from his dreams, until he was thirsty but knew it not.

Mother's Day

Thank you.

Altar of love.

A sonnet written for James Heup, November 2006.

How to Read Bread, 2.

Happy birthday, Gram!!

阿媽 was my earliest example of piety. The imprints are deep in my memory. Every morning I could count on seeing her strain her eyes over her Chinese Bible, with Hiragana notes pencilled in here and there. Every night she stooped her ailing back to kneel on her arthritic knees by her bedside to pray, before おやすみなさい！

What is it that draws her again and again day after day to the well? Unless it's thirst for water, it makes no sense to me. I have not the discipline. Lord, show me my thirst, and let me drink deeply.

No, the Bible isn't a book of rules, or a book of heroes. The Bible is most of all a Story. It's an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It's a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne—everything—to rescue the one he loves. It's like the most wonderful of fairy tales that have come true in real life! 

You see the best thing about this Story is—it’s true.

I stumbled upon The Jesus Storybook Bible the other day and could finished it cover to cover in a single sitting, with laughter and tears. What?! I felt so silly for buying a *picture* book for myself and sillier for giggling out loud alone and silliest for being moved to tears but I couldn't put it down. It was compelling and alive in a way that I pray the (adult? real? unabridged? lol) Bible will be to me some soon day. I felt like I was hearing the Story for the first time so clearly. Growing up, the book was to me an anthology of many stories, or a manual to consult only occasionally.

He would be called “The Word” because he himself would be God’s Message. God’s Message translated into our own language. Everything God wanted to say to the whole world—in a Person.

God, help me to read the Bible as one Story. To thirst and hunger and hang on every word that proceeds from You. And on You, Jesus, the Word enfleshed. Thank You for Grandma and for another year of faithfulness, hers and Yours. And for children's books. Could it all be true?? The Grand Fairy Tale? O God if it's true, sign me up, and give me faith like a child!