日々の音色 (Hibi no neiro) by SOUR

Clay Hearts and Porcelain Words

I thought I’d add some variety by writing some poetry. Enjoy.

There is a wandering homonculi
A man made of dust and clay
His eyes burn red as he searches
For a woman with a fire inside

She is a chimera
A lady dressed in another’s clothes
With a serpent gaze and a feline grace
Who wears the mask of someone from before

Her doll eyes look down and to the left
As she shyly lies hidden in a field of grass
They glitter behind her painted face
Burning like cinders into the soul of the observed

Guided by starlight and flickering lamps
He watches where he steps
As he listens for a whisper from her lips
That calls “Come home to me”

Without so much as a breath
His breast lies still as death
His vacuum of a chest reverberates
With the echoes of each step

His feet march to the cadence
Of her beating heart
Pulsing with a sanguine aether
Beneath her porcelain frame

Fragments of a broken rib
Grind in his side
So he cakes it with mud
And trudges onward

Amidst a blanket of gold
He finds her glistening
With the sweat of a thousand dew drops
And he lies with her in a bed of daffodils

An ancient name and a word of love
Expose themselves to a sky of fireflies
And her milk white fingers
Leave chalk lines across his back

With heartfelt adulation
The daughter of Echidna
Whispers loving lies into the ears
Of the son of Ouroboros

Enfolded in his arms, she says goodbye
Crocodile tears fall from her glass eyes
Her strawberry lips char his raw umber cheeks
And he crumbles back to dust

As he floats on the breeze to a dark forest
At the foot of a cold mountain
She goes back to sleep
Crying out to another earthen lover

The God Box

A question I usually confront myself with when assessing my religious views is, “What is my God box?” What is a God box? A God box is an individual’s current image of God and everything that God is.  For instance, a simple example would be a God in a toga, who looks like Zeus and lounges on top of a cloud throwing lightning bolts. This God answers your prayers and controls every facet of the universe. Many of us have shared this God box before.  Another God box would be “God is Love”.  In this image, God is more than just a concrete being. He transcends reality and becomes a concept as well. Depending on how you say “God is Love”, this could be seen as a more mature God box. These two examples are what I meant by  ”God box”.

My God box is constantly under evaluation, constantly evolving. Currently I see God as many things: He is the omnipotent father of all things, He is the historical/spiritual Jesus, and It is a spiritual entity that is nebulous in nature and can only be described by what It is not. This could be referred to as the Trinity. My God box is meshed with the concepts and realities of Allah and Buddha, not because I extract what I like from each religion to make my own “cafeteria-style” religion, but because I see how they are the same.  I say He is Love, but I don’t say it like others usually do. My image of God is One who does not do what you ask of Him. He helps you, but not in the way you often want. His will is beyond our will, implemented on behalf of not only our own sakes but everything else’s.

The best way to describe it is the will of a doctor and the will of a patient. We ask the doctor to cure us of our ailments. He cuts us up, he tears things out, he gives us pills. We go through all this invasive treatment with promise of feeling better… and at the end of the day we still feel nauseous and dizzy. Our sutures burn with pain, our insides are roiling inside of us, and the adverse effects of the medication makes us feel even worse. “How does this make me feel better?” the patient asks. The patient and the doctor shared the same goal in curing an ailment, but there was a difference in wills. The patient’s will was to be comfortable. To FEEL better. The doctor’s was to actually fix the problem. The patient was looking for instant gratification while the doctor was addressing the immediate medical priority AND the long term health of the patient. The doctor’s will may not be immediately inherent, but when you stand back and look at what all is going on and also realize that he is not just diagnosing you but hundreds of others don’t you think that what the doctor provided the patient was ultimately more beneficial than what was asked for? Trying to keep myself from writing a novel of a blog, this is the best I can describe what I see God as right now. There’s so much more to God than what I can describe at any point in time.

That’s what determines the scope of my God box: my ability to intuit God. My God box only exists to break God into digestible, bite-size pieces. It’s like a television, which is only capable of showing you what is able to fit onto film. What you see on the screen implies so much more, but you are not able to experience it in its entirety. As time passes, my God box seems to grow bigger and bigger to accomodate for my rapidly expanding image of God, and with each passing evaluation He becomes harder to contain into a box. My God box becomes more strained as I stretch it out. So what is going to happen when it reaches it’s limit? Is it going to halt in it’s tracks? Or is it going to split at the seams and bottom out? Is it going to be too much for me and I’ll just give up on it all? The problem becomes more than just being able to find out what God is. It also becomes an issue of preparing myself to experience more of what He is. It becomes an issue of my integrity as a vessel for God.

And after all that is said and done, after we have established a God box…what does it matter? What was it’s purpose? All we did was construct an image of Him, we never found Him. Wasn’t the God box constructed to help us see God in His entirety? How does it do that by cutting it into pieces? How does it help us see the big picture when all it is capable of doing is showing us a small window into what God is? How can we know who God is by making up our own idea of Him? One thing we must be aware of when constructing this God box is that what we see in it IS NOT GOD. It is our projections that we place onto what we believe God is. What we see in the God box we are more than willing to name God Himself. As DeMello said in Awareness, “people fall into idolatry because they think that where God is concerned, the word is the thing.” We construct a description of who we think God is then we fall into the rut of worshipping that, forgetting that it was only a guess at who He is. DeMello wrote about how he was confronted by a world-renowned scripture scholar. “It never struck me that I had been an idol worshipper all my life! My idol was not made of wood or metal; it was a mental idol.” DeMello reminded his readers that those that had constructed their own mental idol were the more dangerous idol worshippers because “they used a very subtle substance, the mind to produce their God.”

Maybe I was never meant to contain God in a box. Maybe I wasn’t meant to contain Him within me, this body serving as a Temple. How could all of what God is be within me? Maybe I’ve been using the wrong word this whole time. I’m not a vessel, I’m a conduit. I am a channel through which He flows through. Right now, the God box seems irrelevant. My experience and my ideas of God right now have surpassed any words that I am capable of expressing right now.  Right now it doesn’t feel like I could fit what I’m feeling inside a box and I’m all the better for it.

Using His Name in Vain

Most people are aware of the second or third commandment (depending on which translation you use): “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.” It makes sense, right? Don’t say “OH MY GOD” or “God damn”. You are making a pointless or insincere oath. He wants you to put meaning into His name whenever you say it. Don’t use it so flippantly. At least that’s my take.

However, the word “vain” means more than just useless and ineffectual. Merriam-Webster’s fourth definition of “vain” is: 

4: having or showing undue or excessive pride in one’s appearance or achievements : conceited

That’s the definition I’m going to refer to today. One thing that bothers me is when I hear somebody make a reference to God every other sentence. To hear somebody attribute anything and everything that happens to them as either the work of God or the work of the Devil. To put in the token “First of all, I’d just like to thank Jesus Christ our Savior and God the Father,” in every acceptance speech I hear. I just feel like that’s the person saying “Look at me, guys. I’m a Christian. See how good of a Christian I am? I’ve made a reference to Him three times already in this conversation alone.” I just get the notion that when somebody does that, they are putting up a mask because they want to be seen as virtuous. They throw out all these context clues to imply that they are strong Christians. To me, that just turns His name into a buzz word. That’s the last thing I’d want to do.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that it’s not “cool” to be public with your faith. In fact, I want to promote that. I’m very open with my faith, and I would like others to feel as free as I am in sharing theirs. I just want people to stop and think before they say His name again. I don’t want it to become used so frequently that it becomes part of the background noise.

Think in terms of saying His name like you would say “I love you”. If I were to say “I love you” to my lover several times every time I met her, it would get old. There is almost no chance that I could possibly mean it with all my heart every time I said it if it was used so frequently. It would become more like a ritual to me, and the meaning would become diluted to the ears of my lover. It would be something she’d expect. She wouldn’t notice anymore if I had said it, but she would notice if I HADN’T said it. It would have become part of my identity to say “I love you”.  I don’t want the term “I love you” to be a part of who I am. I want it to be it’s own voice spoken through me. I want it to have a life of its own. I want her to notice every time I say “I love you”. 

That’s how I want God’s name to be used. It want it to be a treasure to say. I want it to resonate in the minds of others when I say it. I want His name to be an entity of its own, spoken through me. Don’t try to hide your faith, but don’t dilute it, either.

Touchstone 23: The Ways of Love

K. Bradford Brown, best known for founding the Kairos Foundation (aka Life Training Course), published a book of things he calls “touchstones”.  They are small insights, almost poems, that are simple at first glance, but are unbelievably deep. A group that I’m with at college sends one out in a newsletter every day for us to contemplate over. Usually I just glance over them, but the latest one, Touchstone 23, really got to me:

                    Love is
                         the way in
                           the way out
                              and 
                         the way through.

It got to me because it was telling me, “This is what love is.” Psh, like it could ever be that easy to define. But to have just this one small touchstone take up an entire page…there had to be more. It was broken down the way it was to emphasize each word. I looked at it, pondered it, and asked myself, “What is it saying to me?”  Well, lets undergo …a stream of consciousnessssssssss:

I think what it’s trying to say is that love is many things, and all those things are the same thing at the same time. Love is the way in…to your heart and the hearts of others. Love is the way out…of tough problems and issues. Problems concerning unhealthy relationships, deceased loved ones, and stigmas that come with both of those. 

Those first two options, when you start to integrate them instead of keeping them apart, make up the third option. You go IN one side and OUT the other. Isn’t that what you are doing when you go through something? Love is the way through. Use love to see through those that would otherwise be seen as unlovable. See through their faults. See the real person and learn how it is possible to love them. Use love to see through a lover. See past their mask. See through to the real person and learn how to love them more, or learn to love them truly for the first time. 

When passing through someone you are essentially, at one instance in time, occupying the same space as they are. You are the same. You are one, in a physical sense. What would it be like to see through them spiritually? Love can function as each option separately, but to find a more complete definition of what love is, look at it as all things at once.

Maybe I’m really getting into this Touchstone. Maybe I’m getting really deep with it. Or maybe the stress of nursing school and lack of sleep have finally gotten to me and affected my coherence. I’d like to imagine that it’s the former.

Either way, I think I may make this a regular thing. Blogging about a specific touchstone every once in a while could be good for me. It could stretch my mind in another direction, open my head to another way of thinking.

What Is Love?: 2008 Edition

Seeing as how it’s a passion of mine to define what love is, I don’t see why I shouldn’t make it a regular thing to write an annual journal/commemoration to my lifelong endeavor. It serves as a way of chronicling my progress, and also a good way of sorting out all the unprocessed info I’ve collected over the year.

So I held a conversation with myself today. An internal dialogue if you will. (Please don’t refer me to a doctor.) In this conversation I played myself and the devil’s advocate. Seeing as how it was all in my head, the concept was there but the pacing and grammar was shot to hell. Think of this more as a stream of consciousness, followed by a brief synopsis. 

Anywho, I asked myself what did I really know about love? I knew quite alot in theory, but what about practice? Yes, I could name quite a few facets of love. There is an erotic love and a romantic love. We know about those. For some of us, it’s all we know. There is a motherly love, a nurturing love. A tough love. A wanting love. An appreciation kind of love. A comradeship love. A friendship love. A rival love. Unrequited love. Unhealthy “love”. Read it back over again. Mull over each one. Feel each facet of love. Think of somebody in your life that expresses that kind of love with you. Don’t just skim it. You aren’t feeling what I’m feeling if you skim over it. Do you understand those loves? I could name them, I could point them out. I could grasp the feeling of each of them. But did I know them through experience? 

I’ve only ever had one lover, and that was in high school. Was it immature? Was it premature? Well, there’s still the possibility that, regardless of it being at such a young age, I was still feeling love and touching someone else with love. I was fully involved in the relationship. I gave my heart out openly and meant it every time I said “I love you”. The word “forever” held it’s weight in my heart, and the full intent was there, although the ability was never there. It was breathtaking, it was painful, it was energy consuming, it was life-giving. It made me stupid for her, but I left a wiser man. I think that was enough to call it love. It was imperfect, definitely (I was in high school, for crying out loud), but any caliber of love, if that was what was truly felt, still carries the same amount of meaning regardless of all the neuroses and illusion involved.

Why do I feel I know so much about love if I have barely felt any? Well maybe I had more than one lover. To the extent of what is culturally understood, only one. But considering all realms of love, I’ve had several. The greatest love I have ever felt thus far, although I will never marry her or even date her, comes from Amanda Nguy. That love is unconditional. It is unassuming. It is barely noticeable and all the greater for it. She gets annoyed with me, I get aggravated with her, she gets angry with me, and I get upset with her, but there is never any spite. There is never any concern that she’ll leave me or hold something against me. One minute she wants to punch me in the throat because I ate her cookies while she wasn’t looking, the next minute she offers me some. CS Lewis felt this with Joy Gresham. Henry VII felt this, from what I understand, with Anne of Cleves. It’s a love you don’t want to tarnish with romance. 

There is also Rachel. Obviously one sided. Obviously unhealthy. Obviously self-destructive. But only the obvious side. Was there love there? Yes. I loved her and she was loved. It may have been apparently unrequited, it may have been unwanted, but she kept on coming back. There were feelings there, though not romantic, that she shared with me. She hated to show she cared, but it made it more obvious the more she tried to hide it. Any feelings that she felt were definitely conditional, and sadly I was wanting to selflessly fulfill those conditions. It was less breathtaking, it was more painful, it took more energy, and gave me less life. I was stupid for her, but not stupid for loving her, and I left a wiser man.

And where am I for all this love? It is substantial enough for me to stand on, but holds no weight to the socially accepted definition of love. What is love? What is love to me? How do I express it? How do I express it in a way that the one I love receives it the way I meant for it to be received? I don’t want to offend her, I don’t want to smother her, I don’t want to bore her, but those seem to be the only way my love has been received thus far. Funny to say, but being a gentleman has a hand in my not finding romance. How much chivalry is too much chivalry? When does the etiquette turn to prudery, to dryness, to uneventfulness? It seems to be a double edged sword to me, because I end up being so caught up in doing the right thing and not offending her that I don’t take any chances. If you don’t take any chances, you will bear no fruit. That’s my dilemma.

Who is this “her”, by the way? I don’t know anymore. I’m afraid I’ve started to love an ideal. I think I’ve fallen in love with an archetype. I project this archetype onto others, and use them as a medium for my love. At least, that’s what I think I am doing. I wouldn’t know. It seems to be that every attempted relationship from four years ago to now has been nothing but unhealthy and unrequited, and so I’ve developed a surrogate. Maybe this is changing. Maybe it’s different with Bethany right now. Maybe I’m actually liking her for her and I’m being an idiot for keeping my distance. Maybe I’m too concerned with what she might think about me that I’m blowing things out of proportion and denying myself any chance at all. I can’t recall the last time I liked somebody and didn’t feel shitty every time I left that person. I can’t recall the last time I liked somebody and was happy to be around them. I think this is the closest to a healthy fondness I’ve ever had, but it’s something I’m not willing to commit to until I know if I’m liking her or this archetype. I really need to sit down and think about it. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe I need to stop thinking and do something. I’m still too hesitant.

Speaking of that, when I come away from each ended relationship, I carry the scars with it. There is a stigma there. Yes, I’m afraid of rejection. Yes, I’m hesitant because of it. Yes, I put up walls because of it. I’m almost positive my reluctance to commit to liking an archetype is another defense mechanism I’ve developed. Each time I try for another relationship, it takes more energy to get past the stigmas, to ignore the scars, to tear down the walls. “Get the fuck over it”. That’s the breakthrough I strive for each time. That’s the phrase I have to bring myself to realize. It’s so much harder to realize it each time, although the process should be more familiar to me with each passing attempt.

And the INTERNAL DIALOGUE! Man, when I really meet a girl I like, my mind goes blank. My head is racing, it’s full of thoughts, but I can’t think of anything to say. My mouth dries up, but inside my head there is a storm. Just like this journal. Ask me what is love, and I wouldn’t be able to tell you. But in my head there is so much to say. But it is a fleeting concept. By the time I get it into words, it is gone.

Now that I think about it, I don’t think I could provide a synopsis. I can’t cut this down into pieces and explain it step by step. I couldn’t squish the meaning down into a few sentences. To do that would be to distort it, to mutilate it. It was hard enough for me to scrape the insides of my mind for this meaning right here. And I’m not done…but for this year I am.

This year, love is to be determined.