The Heavenly Man

I have been reading a book called Heavenly Man, about/by a leader in the underground house churches in China named Brother Yun. It is making me search my life in a way perhaps no book has. I am humbled and rebuked by the unfamiliarity of his God--my God. The way he knows Him is so distant and foreign to me. I am bursting with excitement to find, to pursue this God, to Know Him in such a way, though I am brought low to see in perspective how I have been starving, thinking I knew what it was to have faith, to rely on Him and to see the ways I have been pursuing other gods. His faith rebukes me, scares me, and Gives me a taste of freedom and Life that I am thirsting to get more of. I want to know the reality of the God he knows but I also see now more than ever I think, how it would mean such a new way of life, I can tell it is freedom beyond what I can imagine but I wonder how possible such a faith, such a relationship, such a reality even is within this society, where it is so easy to be a christian and hard and incredibly hard to be a disciple of Christ.
Still, I want to know God as Brother Yun does; as my life blood and sustainer in all things; as a God present and all powerful in each moment; present in daily abundance, contradicting the limits of this world and over coming its hopeless poverty in any situation. The God who works daily miracles in abundance for His people, no matter the boundaries.
I want to be broken and transformed by Brother Yun's story. I need to pursue This God no matter how much it tears down my life as I know it. I have faith that God will be faithful to his promises of fuller life and abundance in his time as I pursue Him.

I recommend this book to everyone as a testament to the living God in ways most of us in the western world can't imagine. Our eyes have been blinded to His power and the reality of His promises.

abstract reality

I identify with this painting (weeping willow by Monet) right now, or at least, I want to identify with it. its abstract yet vivid reality seems to be more like a real beauty than any I can seem to grasp around me as of late. There is a blending of pain and peace and dark and light in the color; it reminds me simultaneously of weeping brokenness and the lifted weight and calm that follows.
Whatever it is, it's in the family of abstract, like a dream I realize I'm in but which, no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to get a hold of its reality or wake myself from.
This is how I feel of the way of life that's surrounding me, reality as defined by society at large. I have been realizing how different God's society, His nation, His way of life and economy that comes with it, really is. I am beginning to see with new eyes, with a new heart, the kingdoms of this world in contrast to God's new life and the life that this world says is available just doesn't feel real. It doesn't feel like life. It feels like layers between people and real life; like a thick coating. I am seeing the lies that have so proliferated through this world that made us believe certain inevitabilities, certain evils functioning that is because it's "just the way things are." The difference of the two kingdoms (of this world and God's) comes to mind like that of a elaborate fat clown suit vs. the naked skinny man underneath; I feel as though I've been being fed cake and being told this is as nutritious as it gets. The more I have tried to come into the presence of God lately the more vivid the layering and coating over my life, me way of thinking and functioning has become.
I newly realize that God is not just trying to make people better; He is not just trying to change the nations of this world, but rather his nation is an completely different/new way; new way of thinking, new way of functioning and relating and defining. Many of us grasp that jesUSAves isn't entirely a healthy understand, but I am realizing that to be God's people, God's kingdom, is so much more otherly, sanctified (set apart for one thing).
His is a economy set apart from that which we've grown up knowing. He is the king who is creator and sustainer of all things. He gave food to his nation from the sky daily and to teach them who created food and who they could rely on he made whatever was stored for the next day rot. He is the God that feed thousands of people with only a little breed and fish; the God who tells us 'do not worry about your life. I feed and clothe and sustain the birds and grass and you are more valuable to me than they.' He is The God who who raises from the dead and promises to give good gifts and protect those who follow Him. In Him all things are possible and true freedom is found.
How can there be any lack of abundance and all that we need with this God who creates every morsel of food?
The more I try to pursue these realities of who God is in my life the more I see this to completely transform how I view economy and the way society functions, and this is only the tip of the iceberg of all of the scripture pointing toward a whole new politics and new economy of the kingdom of God ('blessed are the poor,' 'the last will be first and the first will be last,' 'give to everyone who asks you,' 'lend to your enemies without expecting anything back,' 'do not repay evil with evil,' etc, etc).
If God is who he says He is...
I want to know God in this way; I want to break through the layers to a life I can't even imagine yet through the lies of this world. I thirst, I ache.

The Cinematic Orchestra - To Build a Home

Mmm... stirring. It really is, so I just wanted to share. Thank you, Slater, For introducing us. Away, I delve and comatose.

relevant similarities

I wrote the Post "the above line... "about the title of this blog around the same time my older brother Brandon wrote the following post on his blog dear autumn--or at least, it was right after I posted mine that I encountered his, half way around the world. He said in greater brevity, and perhaps accuracy, largely what I was getting at, without ever having read mine or us talking about the matter. I thought the timing and context of each of our lives as relevant to the other was certainly a noteworthy example of what we were both saying. Enjoy.

writing (and, i believe, all art) is the translation of experience (broadly defined) from one form into another. in order to write you first have to understand how you understand. then you have to decide how to translate what you understand and what to translate it into. but you must also be aware that whatever you have translated you have done only for yourself, and if anyone else seems to connect with it, it is very lucky. for this reason everything i have ever written has been something I've wanted very badly to read. - Brandon Thompson

involuntary mulling: going back to go forward.

Let it be said and understood in the heaviest sense of these words (while avoiding the often ignorant-outsider-condition of perceiving the weight of words required in attempting to communicate in a moment Life altering experiences which took place over a span of time as exaggerated) that, since last I wrote prose here, I've painfully and peacefully and wrenchingly experienced death and Life beyond me; beyond what I thought I ever wanted, beyond my imagination, and beyond every ounce of self within me. And I am Grateful; although it has broken me and my world and, by the grace of God, transformed me by the renewing of this mind.

Having been at a loss for words for some time now, aside from poetry--abstract, fragmentary and vague-- which, Interestingly enough, I never wrote before, I feel a need to explore a different sort of abstract, fragmentary and vague expression. Mulling over and a laying out of sorts of my translations past and other's expressions I have been a translation of. In short, I mean to post what's on my mind as I am mulling and contemplating, pieces of thought and inspiration in a sort of free-write streamofconscience manner; less inhibited by my fears and criticisms while still being intentional.
I am God gathering the pieces to put something new and old together; a work in progress; a translation being translated, and this is my attempt to translate what's going on inside me.

End The University As We Know It (first post in a series concerning needed creative rethinking ideological structures in our society)

End the University as We Know It - Mark C. Taylor - New York Times

please forgive me

why are things this way?
in all this excess I can't access
to feel
real
on the eve of your twelfth year
which
unbeknownst to we
you've worked half of it for me
to give all I have and can't feel
because it's all you can do
to continue to breathe and feed
your six-month-old beautiful hope
from a drunkards seed

now thinning now crying
now I discontentedly whine
bored with my pillows and walls
the earnings of my success
are a hate crime
rightful by law
so how is that my call?

How many lives make up my aesthetic numb ignorance?
what good is this and that and those
over there and these I can't see
are the wall paper and seat
where I sit and don't know exist
I'll choose what will be
and breathe
in my little reality
the best I can do is drink coffee and wine
while I contemplate my life's woes and tragedies
failing to pinpoint a time when I was sure of anything
or what I am breathing

the malfunctioning AC
has train wrecked my dreaming
and awoken me enough to glimpse
the life you've lived at the expense
of my material cinema sleep
is in that moment more real
than wherever I've been can ever be

and In my understanding I am too ashamed to weep
or ask forgive me
considering the easy justice of suicidal sleep
feeling the weighty judgment of naive privilege
in the moment I think I wouldn't wish this luxury on anyone
and ponder a "vow of poverty"
now this one thing I know
that in your pain-- poetically by my hand--
you and your family
are happier than I will ever be.

now leave me be.