"...and freedom, oh freedom, well that's just some people talkin'..." (guess it originates with the Eagles? the song Desperado/u) hm.

"sometimes I fear, maybe I'm not chosen. You've hardened my heart like Pharaoh and that would explain why life is so hard for me..." (Prove Me Wrong, Caedmon's Call)

"Now I know us plain folks don't see all the story
And I know this peace and love's just coppin' out
And I guess these young boys dyin' in the ditches
Is just what bein' free is all about" (The Island, by Paul Brady?...I like Celtic Thunder's rendition)


orthodoxy takes discernment

This is Just to Say

I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold William Carlos Williams

I went back to read some journaling I had done for the Ukraine trip I went on this summer. I couldn't finish reading it, for it hurt me too much to do so. I spoke of "shiskas" and newly made friends named "Dima." I spoke of offering all to God and He not requiring all of what I offered. I spoke of not knowing what to do when back in the States. I didn't want to stop writing, for fear that the inaction would close the trip, finally and completely. I feel all of it again, even as I read it. The camp couselor's (Meisha's) last words were "and if we do not meet again on earth, it is in Heaven I shall see you next." But no. Why does the past haunt me? Not like, haunt me as if I had grave sins for which I must do penance, nor haunt me as a mistake I made would haunt me. But, grip me. Remind me that I had forgotten. That I have, not grown numb to God, but to the piece of His greatness that was Ukraine. That I have not let my Amerikanski self upset me more. Oh, I do. I do. I have changed since Ukraine, by the very grace of God. But Achoom and Sasha? And Dima and Julia...Galia, Yasha, Meisha, the ones that bring tears to my eyes because I remember faces...but not the names that were so very ingrained in me. I remember very little of the Russian. And the trip was a catalyst for what God is now doing in my life, I believe. But I remember so little and fear. My teammates. Surely they have moved on. It seems...I wish I could speak to them, a few or one. Perhaps I will. It is strange. I feel that this cannot become what it has become--an experience experienced and laid to rest. I do not know. I do not know.
May God be glorified.

thoughts not original with myself

-We sin because we are not happy with God

-Satan's aim is more than to make you slip only to rise again. He wants to make you sin that you will be more joyful in sin than God. Satan wants that you love sin unto death.

-if you want to combat sin, know the Bible

-We are validated by ourselves-why do we do this? We are not merely tempted to use every availiable avenue to promote ourselves...we give in.

-Does your life have an ever-increasing tendency to look like your Master?

"You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48)
What despair must grip our souls at these words! In this chapter, Jesus points out what the Law really looks like. It doesn't look like the Scribes and the Pharisees. It doesn't look like "Thou shalt not murder." It looks like perfection. It looks like Christ. (the Spirit of the Law, not the Letter of the Law) Perfection.

michael this is a work in progress..and I don't want to move it to a Word doc :P

On Change

I can keep the same language,
but can I keep the same heart?
For my words precede me,
the sinner not yet whole is
apt to call himself clean.

Yesterday I grinned like a mime
released from canvassing
sidewalks and stairwells.
In interest of time, I danced only
the rumba and square.
But today I am jobless and sinner unclean.

my loyalties lie
only God knows where
the words allow room to breathe.