lets keep our promises

my favorite Danish guy used to say that you’re never more unlike God than when you fail to keep your promises because the whole bible is about God keeping his. to which i say, “good point, Preb”. also, i am compelled to make the painfully obvious observation that i am often quite unlike God. the romantic in me is inclined to exalt my humanity for the beauty of its imperfections, but i am reminded by my friend, St. Paul, that God is glorified even more in my imperfections. good thing. Gloria Deo.

anyway, christopher’s search for an old house moved me to write a song about growing old and being in love. i’m posting a link to the words
here. you can tell me how you like them if you want, and i would like that, but i’m really just posting them because i like them, and i hope they make you feel good inside.

oh, and starbucks made me a shift supervisor. i guess word must have gotten ’round about how awesome my cappucinos are.

Sufjan sings to me about Christmas these days.

i thought about just reposting this old blog, but i didn’t because i am new every day, and so my blogs should be new, but i like that old one. also, i wrote this top to bottom and never looked back. that’s gotta be worth something, right?

johnnie

update: everyone: jason huynh has posted a video from my high school Creed junior follies cover band covering “What If”. go listen to it. oh, and if you’re wondering (because you’ve only met me in the last four years), yes… i was dead serious when i did this. if you listened to bands like Twothirtyeight, The Get Up Kids, or At the Drive In when you were a junior in high school, congratulations. I listened to Creed and probably thought you were a pansy.

stop criticizing sunsets, boy…

…it makes you sound like a fool.

shadows, truth, and a bit of heresy

I am sitting on a bench beside the river in late afternoon (yes, really – i own a laptop), and i am impressed to write about the shadows here. The angles of the sun and earth have so stretched these tree-shadows across the sidewalk that they are dilated, and the wind in the leaves makes them appear almost watery. Even in comparison to the river they are watery, and the wind makes them dance on the sidewalk in a way that is reminiscent of light hitting the bottom of a swimming pool, except this is exactly the opposite?

I am thinking of a frequently recurring idea in Franz Wright’s poetry, which is that he walked in eternity before his birth, and that he has recently been made ready to walk in it again at his death. He recalls the peace of the “beforelife”, explains that he does not fear eternity since he has been there before, and how he does not fear death since it is more like unto birth than to anything else, so he has been there before as well. We, the orthodox and the prodigal children of orthodoxy alike, have a difficult time loving this idea for its theological accuracy (or lack thereof). But how blind we are if we miss the truth expressed in the beauty of the idea. Wright longs for the peace of eternity; he finds peace in the knowledge of eternity that he has already; in his death, he is innocent like a child. Yet none of these statements capture the idea, or come even close. They are merely approximations of the anguish, despair, hope, and joy that Wright has touched in his readers, connecting with us and turning our hearts to the eternal, if not also our minds.

Have we lost our souls because we tried to define the word soul? (and do i here speak nonsense, or poetry?)

Or for another example: am i a heretic to find beauty in the idea that: upon my death and until the resurrection, if i exist only as a thought in the mind of God, it will be a far more real existence than the one i have embodied thus far? that this tear between Himself and myself which he is sewing (has sewn) back together will someday culminate with my entire existence being contained within the mind of God? (contained, but in infinity, paradoxically – as opposed to now?) i have no reason to believe such a thing, unless beauty be a reason – of which i am unsure (though i think reason may be a beauty), and i do not believe it to be factual. but, i believe that it is beautiful.

and probably it is in the marriage of the beauty of the non-fact, and the fact of the non-beauty that the truth resides. (verily and amen?)

The Captain

Ora pro nobis pecatoribus

the time that i wake up each day begins with a 4. it ends with a 30, but that’s irrelevant because any time that starts with a 4, be it 4:00 or 4:59, is incredibly early. then i go to work where i make a killer cappucino. i didn’t even like cappucinos before. you should let me make you one. (note: i sleep in tomorrow. i wake up at a 6 time.)

am i being or becoming or being-in-becoming? must i act like what i am? or rather, can i possibly act like what i am not? or if i cannot, perhaps i can act unlike what i am becoming? questions of we the free, who are slaves. praise God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) that this house will not last. I am singing for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. i am singing myself to sleep. i am singing myself to [a]wake.

i am planning a sojourn. (nested: one within one) pray for me, and pray like this: that i would learn to die, and that i would bury myself in the sand, and that when i come back from the desert, i would hardly be left, and yet much more alive [yet not i]. and if you would, pray also like this: in the name of Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father, One God forever and ever, Amen.

i am learning love for the sancta maria. not the second stanza of the ave maria, but rather the mother of Jesus. i doubt that she prays for me (especially since i never ask her to), but she has lifted my thoughts above the base things of this world, and for that I praise God for His blessing upon her.

expecting great things,
Johnnie