I need help, God, I need your help.

Fuck, my mind is on fire, my heart aches.

I feel disconnected and broken. I feel hurt, and I’m asking for you to reach out to me. I can’t think straight, my breathing is racing, and my heart is bleeding within me.

I feel disconnected, and abandoned, like those near me have passed into a beyond I can’t go to. Tell me why these things happen, as my heart bleeds chaos into the universe.

You never have asked a greater thing of me, and I’m feeling forsaken.

The Trinity and the Encountered and thus Encountering Life

The inner life of the trinity as love can be recognized by us as love only through our participation in that life as it already is and draws us into it. To know the inner life of the Trinity requires that we participate already in the kenotic and self disclosing Other seeking love of the Trinity. There is no epistemology apart from participation. To believe otherwise is blasphemy. Only love understands itself, and only love can disclose itself, and it shall only disclose itself to love when speaking in the epistemological framework. Love is the truest reality that has been revealed to humanity, and it is inescapable. To be a Christian one must believe in and be shaped by their understanding of Absolute Love. In concrete reality love will overpower even non-love, but it will only do so by conforming non love into love through a Taboric experience, through a transfiguration that in the self disclosure draws non love into encounter and thus opens its eyes. Love is always the apriori, and it will always necessarily apprehend and invite the situation before releasing itself and its disclosure into the encounter with the Other. -Eli

Sunrise Girl

Sunrise girl, passing from one morning to another, a morning caught in his arms, only to leave the impression of beauty before fading into another memory in another recollection, preempting the emptiness to be left behind. The void though is a fond one, an emptiness that is a transfigurative one, leaving a light behind it, even if only for a moment. It is a light that leaves longing on the lips. Sunrise girl you enlighten the world, but leave it in shadow when you leave, the day you leave behind is the longing of twilight.

 

You bring the morning sun, you lay out the clouds and scatter them to the four winds that they might carry them in the shapes of dreams and revelations, and they carry your impression, approved by your charming whisper, carried into the early twilight before the breaking of dawn

 

You bring the day, but you bring it at the expense of twilight, of lasting ignorance, and in shedding light on something less than alive, you yourself have brought its own death before it. Your light is a terror to those who are asleep, those who would have remained if not for your touch

 

With every sunrise that you bring, you bring your own death keeper of dreams. You disseminate them among the weary, and in instilling hope into the weakened, betray your own hopelessness as you bring dreams out of shadow. With the evanescing shade comes reality like a putrid corpse in the form of sunrise before the perceptions of an unwitting night.

 

Haunted by the memory of sleepless nights, by broken hearts left in the recollection of your tears, the guilt you run from sunrise after sunrise, enlightening and illumination after illumination makes your countenance darker and darker. Feeling the pain just as equally as they do, knowing the subtle sense of loss that comes as the day brings commonality back into perception. As your dawn casts them into even deeper shadows.

 

Mortality blurs in your memory and you become cold, as the mirror shows you less and less of yourself, and more and more of a citadel, a fortress to protect a bleeding heart enshrined on a throne of tears, the weakness of which causes such great strength, inverted, perverted, true. The cold icy sting of your eyes, protects your weakened gasps, as you stand tall you rasp for rattling breaths in your dissatisfied and weary lungs, a mighty fortress with weakened and empty halls, derelict and void. A silent citadel seemingly forsaken, yet blooming with life.

 

Sunrise girl looks into herself and sees death, yet her touch blooms with life. She looks at the effects of her own impartations of light and wonders whether she has scorched the earth beneath her, but she cannot judge for in seeing her path she is blinded to what it truly looks like, mindless of what truly exists beyond her perceptions.

 

Sunrise girl, bathed in light, touched in darkness, look into this mirror, meeting my eyes we assume it’s just another sunrise, another fleeting escape another sense of loss, another moment in another set of arms. It’s not. The eternal sunrise begins tonight, it ends now. We’re the same, the coin’s sides are the illusion, it’s just like us to make our own luck. It’s just like us to make our own way, but we know that already.

 

You call me out into the light, you dance your dance in another direction, but as children of the mind, we can bear to do no other. Two sides of the same thing, one perceives light, the other darkness and both are right, it’s twilight after all.

 

Your eyes meet mine, and I see a mirror, you see a mirror, we look into this moment and perceive an event that makes us tremble. We’re not like this, not anymore. Sunsets and shades of dusk are not our beginnings, not anymore. Cloudfall and storms, we welcome them, but they welcome us no more.

 

This event, it shakes and shapes us. You’re afraid, sunrise girl, afraid that sunrise might go on into everlasting day, into everlasting light, into an Eden you can’t anticipate.

 

Go into that Eden, and don’t knock at the edges of the River Styx anymore.

Faith Hope and Love in Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic and personal light

Our holy night is defiled in this way, that we are broken by our own inadequate selfishness. Our erotic sentiment originally caught in the ever kenotic self-mutual union of eros and agape has become an introverted and destructive selfishness, destroying everything in its path for the sake of the idea of gratification. Thick thoughts, thicker hopes, and fears coming to the front as sacred cloud music plays over the air between my headphones and my ears. I’m just another thought away from another moment, and I hold to hope. Though Zion is broken, and pain is our reality, the reality of pain becomes a form of presence in itself because we recognize the creation of presence in the midst of absence. Guide me as I close my eyes and walk this dark path, breathing solely in the rest of the dark night, this endless night of purgation, let me say with St. Thomas Moore, let my purgatory be in this life. Love me. I know You do. Holy Mother, be my guidance in the dark night of despair, lead me to the feet of your Son through your fervent and gracious intercession. I will find peace in this darkness, hope in this despair, presence in this absence, and through the endless interlude of presence and absence, guide me in this respiration. Let these interludes become to me as breathing and both giving and reception be unto me unitive parts of the same movement, cleanse my mind of my inadequate conceptualizations, and let this theology be from this heart of worship unto you O sacred Holy One. I receive your love as the primary foundation of my ability to love you, and ask that your love would shape this child’s heart, and that as I bring the little candle of my heart into the darkness that is all around, let this little candle absorb all this darkness and offer it up to you. Throw onto me the pain and guilt of the whole world, for in doing so, with your grace in bearing it, I shall offer up to thee most gracious and holy Suffering Christ, a world transformed by our communion in this suffering. Let the love which you have poured out in my heart bear these burdens as a holy calling, set me apart for this. I ask your strength that I may not waver, and that I may trust in you with patience, hope and love. This kenotic movement with which you have loved the Father and the world, let me be conformed to u-topic image that takes form in the immediate moment constantly rising to greet me, and let this kenotic movement shape me. Let this self-emptying lead me into the koinonia that is the foundation of community with the entire world in your perfect love and unity in which you restore order and agape to all reality in your gracious love. I believe in Absolute Love, even if all else fails. I hold to thee, and holding fast, I will breathe deeply both presence and absence as the ebb and flow of faith and hope, which for the kenotic sake of each other travel perichoretically in consciousness, submitting to each other and to Love mutually. Thus ever expressing themselves anew in the immediate moment. Let faith and hope attain to perichoresis united by that Love which empowers them to become the trinitarian union of eschatological.global consciousness in the present through to the future. just some thoughts.

theological reflections at 3;29 AM

well, i was thinking about neo-orthodoxy and found the Christomonism disturbing, thus in setting up my own doctrine of God have decided that the Trinitarian approach is best as has been seen in recent theology, but i will ground my theological programme on the concrete revelations of Christ and the Spirit as the basis and foundation for the critique of and subsequent establishment follow through of the doctrine of God, just a thought.

slip across the streams of our pitter patter romance, drip, like rain across a letter box and carry on and on.

 

Windows, there, in the distance carry endless weight, the gravity of it all, suddenly shatters at the horizon break forth with new light another endless dawn

 

forever,

 

forever…

 

what is it about that word, that shapes us into more than mere mortals?

 

Lights, meander, searching in the depths of our hand in hand abyss, following after the footsteps just one step ahead in darkness, follow me into the dark, and I’ll show you where we are going, we will meet again, in the place where there is no darkness.

 

He says it, in hope. The other, hears it in blessed assurance, held with mighty contempt. And I, I say it, thinking upon the thoughts that grace these words. He gives a smart look at the two minutes hate, and it is only a flash of the eyes, something intelligent that catches between them, but, it’s broken in the end.

 

There is no strength to the human spirit, they say. They’re all dumb animals, and alone here I write these letters into this type writer with the flippers of a sea ox.

 

telling, that it is, it’s telling, revealing, smelling of death, destruction, there is a bit of hell in this heaven. There’s still a marriage happening here, and who would speak, when all graves forever hold their peace?

 

Dead men’s bones afterall tell no tales, or so we thought, then forensics blessed our televisions, and we were made aware that afterall, there are tales to be told in these bones.

 

It’s slipping now, the sudden urge, the endless plight, writing lifting herself from me like a rising wind that I cannot press down, though i wish to keep her, she will pass away

 

Anexamenos, worships, hisGOD! Anexamenos worships his god.

 

Oh, they ridicule, btu they have no right, either they will kill us all, or they should leave us alone. What has Athens to do with Jerusalem!? The Academy with the church!?

 

What has your hand to do with mine? or your eyes with my heart? Will you ever hold me again? Does it even matter in the end? Maybe I should light another cigarette and sit, and wait.

 

Will your soft, cold hands ever touch this face again? what have I done for you? nothing.

 

That’s the sad truth, si that there is nothing in me that can call to you, nothing in me that can ask anything of you. You blessed me, used me, broke me, and here I am, still unwittingly yours from moment to moment, still chained to this infernal emotional basket case that is my mind. But were I chained to any other basket case, i may as well have a picnic. For that is what one does with baskets, is it not?

 

Oh, here we are again, the end of the world, well, the end of the page at any rate, and thus concludes this brief foray into our mind’s eye, slip past me again, and let me hear the rain drops, as she sings, that bitter song.

 

It tastes like camphor, and violets, and violence. Like glory, and riches and blessing. And in the end it is vapor, evanescent on my chest.

just a thought

i will live, and if I do not, then i shall be dead, and shall have no cause for concern any longer

Numb

I’m feeling like I have returned to the terrible place of darkness, that insoluble shadow in which my heart chokes, in whihc my light has become the latern for bloodshed, and the deepest remains of light in me have gone.

 

My hands are covered in the blood and minds of martyrs, made by my own hand, brought underneath the great throne of my own judgment through my own workings.

 

Pitiless, endless chasm of hate, I became these things when I lost sight. I have hidden my light so deeply within me that I do not know where to find it. I have lost my way so thoroughly that I cannot begin to find myself.

 

And what am I doing? Having a moment with my conscience, that blasted thing that proves my own disunity with myself and with others, for were I a man of stronger devotion, I would leave the matter altogether and just go love. For that would be the Christian thing to do, instead I recite the Grand Inquisitor, straining against my inclination for the sake of my own heresies.I am not the man who founded a heresy and discovered it was orthdoxy.

 

I am the man who ran to orthdoxy, made  a mockery of it, of her, and of Him, and in the process debased with blood the very altars i thought to worship at. I have desecrated the very holy place i sought to carve out for Him, and in doing so feel myself beyond pardon. But there is the hook of vanity. Were I unable to forgive myself, he would no sooner let me condemn myself, for my vanity.

 

I thought myself a man going in the right direction, but beauty came to seek me out, and I found I was the most unlovely of all. Wretched and pitiful, I thought I would be the man who worshipped with a pure heart, instead I have made war, have discouraged myself in the throes of empty struggle and have given myself to the pursuit of vapor.

 

I have fallen to these empty works of the perishing world, these effervescent indulgences that have swayed my heart from truth. And I want to hate Him sometimes. Him in all his righteousness, but I can’t, not anymore.

 

I saw what he did, with his suffocating bleeding body, with his broken heart and great burden, and I remember, that He has been raised, and in doing so has initiated that holy harmony wihc we await. In Him, all things are being set to rights, even me. Even all my sins, all my injustices are being set to rights, and I choose Him. I choose to the best of my little depraved ability to serve this One, who with his gasping breaths asks for our forgiveness. I choose this one, who is more than a hero, more than a martyr, more than a revolutionary.

 

I dedicate myself to the darkest of moments, to the deepest of living hells, to the endless seas of torment that are following this bloodied man across the world. I choose to dedicate myself to this weeping savior, who seeing what we are has chosen not to destroy us, but to forgive us.

 

Forgive me, for my deviations, for my explanations, for my irreverence and blasphemy. My blasphemy has been to surrender my own freedom to that unthinking purpose, and I thought I did it in service of you, but I did nothing in your name. I lied to myself, to think that I could walk away from You, in your name. Forgive this blasphemy, I ask in earnest.

 

I have seen where I have been, have bloodied my hands in the feeble attempts to grasp the razor blades that are the contours of your will, there is only safety within, to be on the fringes is to choose life, which is death. So, here we are, and I will not make a commitment out of emotional self pity or vain imagination at perfection, I merely ask that in your grace and mercy you would have the grace to draw me out of this mess and into your purging fire.

 

I look at where I have come from, and realized that even this is not right, for anyone who sets his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the kingdom. Hopefully I have not even set my hand to the plow, for I have looked back all too often, and in spite of your grace chosen to go another way.

 

Somehow, I reduced You into something safe, something bearable, something less than what You are, so i could be safe, and not have to face You. I hated You. At least, I wanted to. maybe I did.

 

I wanted to be another, to be in another place, another life, and the only question that made sense was why me?

 

I didn’t expect to find you here so soon, so welcoming, so embracing. I don’t know where my hope went, but I’m asking you to help me find it again.

 

We all turned out so broken, so empty, so full of hurt, all of us, not one escaped. I look back, and think, wow, we have all been abandoned, left for dead, broken in various ways, and have been shamed. We were all children, and we all suffered as children, some less than others, but we all suffered, and how can our suffering be atoned for?

 

We depart from this table, from the community of our buried lives, from the places in which we suspended our hopes, we depart from this place in which our lives were walked away from, and we embraced becoming that thing which the pain makes us. I cannot speak for them, though I wish I could.

 

So, I depart from it. From letting the pain conform me to its own image. I cannot bear this broken heart alone, but I am trying to confide in you.

 

We were young once, but have since tasted the thing which we desired most, and it has brought our destruction with it. We are beautiful, and still young, still untested by the rigors of endless torment, though we have known pain.

 

Our eyes belie the simplicity of our empty hearts, we try to smile and glow. But we cannot.

 

Though she has passed through a thousand hands and will pass into a thousand more, she will never be satisfied. The ebauty she has in front of the camera, is just as wounded off screen, and it’s all in her eyes. Those eyes have known pain.

 

His eyes, I cannot speak for, but I can speak for myself.

 

I speak as one who has in these years since our youth been brought through many places, many names, many impressions. I have been savior and saved, and I have been tormentor, I know my eyes, they lie. They have known life, and have known death, and in these hands a beating heart still holds a promise, a whisper of redemption. And if the sun is truly rising, then tell me a story.

 

If there is love in these hands, let’s build for a kingdom, so that we can see inbreakings of heaven on earth. And if we are all utterly hopeless, then let me be tormented, and take from me this dire knowledge that destroys me.

 

I know that there is redemption here, I only do not know what form it takes. Other than to proceed in the path of our father Benedict, and in silence love the people.

The Legend of Troy

What is she? A legend. Truth itself beholden in these eyes as searing fire.

Were she to be held accountable for that fey life which is her own, she would as readily burn in the deepest depths of hell

Her eyes, otherworldly, joyful and innocent embraced the world, and in that embrace managed to dash warships against the rocks, swords against each other, men’s hearts against themselves

Her life a ransom for the opening of a new box, a Pandora all her own, simply in the quiver of a lip, in the hint of a smile, in her scent carried for miles on a passing breeze

Sunset and sun bleached bones cannot contain the reality of her, she is denser, her eyes like emerald fires embrace with velvet draped steel, that comforts all the same.

She sings with all of nature, and there is an eternal procession that accompanies her rhythms, she dances within the very space of her standing still, motionless she is all the motion necessary, and every wild hair caught in the wind passing across her smiling face is a reminder of the beauty of that which is untamed.

She drifts between this reality and another, between this life and the place where the everything becomes the every when. She reminds me of time, and space, of the interaction between us, it’s electric, even in silence.

She has ascended to view the battlements and her face is set like a stone against the pursuing captors, and humble foolish Paris does not recognize when Achilles comes. She sets her eyes like fire upon those who would try to catch her.

Diana is her guardian and Artemis her sister.

She is not to be tamed, not to be subdued by mere tokens, her eyes have known bloodshed, insanity and war, it will take something different, something more. What it is, I do not pretend to know.

She has courage, and watches as they dash themselves against the stones and turn themselves upon each other in frantic orgiastic violence. What were she to do should their fates befall her visage?

How were she to return again, without a second Troy to burn?

Untitled unscientific prescript on meditations in streams of consciousness.

I’m feeling pretty challenged right now. I mean, nothing is seriously going wrong in my life, and I’m really ok. I just feel like I’m not sure what to do with myself.

 

I mean, people say that I’m on the right track, that I’m ok, that I’ll be fine. I don’t know what to make of that. I know i have a tendency to beat myself up unnecessarily, and I want to work on it. I’m not sure where to begin though. I just saw Good Will Hunting for the first time tonight. I had seen clips before, but I really related to Matt Damon’s character in a few ways. I just, I don’t see myself as a super genius, but I do feel i connected with the character. I feel that I have some of the same insecurities, and some of the same types of reactions to situations.

 

I wish that I had a counselor like Robin Williams’ character Sean. Or, the counselor in Vanilla Sky. I wish I had guidance sometimes, I know that this is not exactly your business, but whatever. 

 

I feel like a wreck, like a mess of sin and impiety, like Truth has slipped out my window and pragmatism is the sweet scintillating death that seeks to ensnare my thoughts. Not is it true, but what does it do? That’s dangerous. Christ is Truth, and He is here, now, and I suppose that in relation to Truth I can not have lost Truth, but i feel dangerously close and aware of the inner workings of how far i really am from where i want to be.

 

Maybe I just want attention. Maybe I’m an asshole because no one will stand up to challenge me. Maybe I’m a prick because I feel i really am smarter than you. Maybe I’m just really insecure and shy and wish i knew how to deal with it since now i woke up one day and people like me.

 

Maybe I wish i was still the quiet kid in the corner, sneaking his lunch into the library to get away from the world and into books. Maybe I wish you’d all go away so that I could just think alone, without feeling like I’m on trial for an opinion in every arena.

 

I feel happy, but tired. And I’m slightly sick, my throat hurts a bit, I can’t remember the last time i was sick since high school. I don’t get sick much.

 

I think that at the end of it all, i just hope that I am doing this right, though i don’t feel that I am. I feel like I’ve broken hearts and shattered lives, like I’ve set fires to my loved ones and watched them burn as i walk away. 

 

Maybe I was just afraid of having someone be in love with me. Maybe she wasn’t the right one. Maybe i have no fucking clue what i’m doing, so i just wing it and hope for the best. Maybe i’m really being guided by God and His saints, and just don’t know it.

 

I don’t know.

 

Streams of consciousness pour out of my fingers, onto this keyboard and into your eyes, and maybe you should stop reading. Maybe you care. Thanks if you do.

 

I feel like I’m in love with the wrong person. I feel like i love myself too much. I feel like i love others too little. I feel like I’m in need of salvation. I feel like i really really really want to go to confession. I want to be Catholic. I’m afraid of being Catholic.

 

I feel like i’m happy where i am, i feel like I’m secure and able to live out a happy life as a non Catholic Christian. I’m not a protestant, i am a Christian.

 

Today, I am unsure of what the universe means, today I feel like God is right over my right shoulder, comforting me. Today i feel like my heart might be getting into the right place.

 

I obsess over my flaws, and I obsess over my good traits. I wish I was smarter still, I wish that my memory would lend itself to me in greater measure. I am embarrassed that I dropped a class. I’m even more embarrassed that I don’t know what to do with myself as far as the future goes. I feel like a  cloudy mist has descended on my path, and while I feel ok, i’m still doubting. I’m not sure what this means for me. i’m trying to take the leap of faith, and if i succeed, I will be ok.

 

I’m not trying to be happy, btu I am and that’s my problem. Fuck happiness. Maybe I should go live out my theory that happiness is not the ideal of the human state and go find out what it is.

 

I think I’ll do that.

 

laters.

 

eli

Today I feel like calling it quits.

 

I can’t stand this anymore. I had a great morning with Bobby and Blake, but I can’t bring myself to do an ounce of work. I dread the way my semester is turning out, and I feel weary and overburdened. I am trying to be good and cast my cares on God, just let HIm be who He is. But somehow i feel cut off no matter what i do.

 

I want to be free of this agonizing internal dialogue that only makes me less secure.

 

I focus on the good. I await the coming salvation. I am trying to hold on. With thieves knocking at my windows and ballistas toppling my towers, there is no salvation in Jerusalem.

 

There is no reason to sing the songs of Zion, for there is no salvation here, i have strung up my harp, and cast aside my lute, broken my instruments and burned all my music. I am covered in sack cloth, ashes and the remains of what was once a joyful song.

 

I have left these in ruins, as the fires spread and consumed my dearest dreams, and here I am, isolated. alone. words cannot describe the ineffable pain that consumes every second of waking.

 

I look to You, will you rescue me today?

Memories of Penultimate Autumn

Follow these footsteps, follow the sounds of this union

my eyes met yours

cold fingers traced the contours of our lives

this interaction,

words fall into place, laid down like cold tiles

fitting into this our dance

a liturgy composed in rituals, a broken smile graces a broken mirror

cold now, as these pills spread across this floor

tell my mother, tell her that these are the signs

watch me mother, as I grasp this bead, holding onto it for dear life,

speaks to me, this bead, speaks to me this prayer,

these weeping eyes grasp at you mother,

grasp at your outstretched hand, and hold onto your blessed comfort

take me into your hands, for you have never let another down,

your blessed devotion holds me, and I know that you have never let me fall

your prayers have held me mother, never have I been left unaided

so I ask, hear me, and look unto me kindly

into this endless night, I find rest, as snow lightly falls on my upturned cheeks,

looking for stars tonight, there’s only snow, there’s cold tonight,

my eyes like the day burn at both ends

This is what it means to be alive,

in our lives, we burn in brightness,

draw me out of this into life, into that life that is most truly lived, in the shadow of that skull

outside, this assembly, outside those moments and mementos, outside space and holy places, outside

outside

in this outside, we find the sights, so let me burn

let me stand in burning, like a raging fire

let me burn…

watch me alight with fire, holocaust that does not consume

torrid, yet whole

hold fast, and watch closely

this is the end again, and the penultimate is destroyed in the process

given to me,

Mother, tell me your sweetest blessings and draw me unto you

Wandering Garden

Ephemeral in this valley,

weeping, the lotus brings forth child,

she spins her dreams into fields of endless lilies

Meditations as she hangs, philosophy as she breathes her last

this is endless

Respite eluding weary traveller again and again

a mirage on the horizon, time and again

just another endless expanse of desertion

dreams never shouted as loudly

life never was won over this quickly

stars rend their garments and explode into a cacophony of sorrow

the mountain casts adonis flowers into the waiting sky

red and poignant, ever full of grace

blessed fruit of a waiting womb

by the power of a word

tempting to cause stumbling again

 

 

Your life was more alive

your breath was well breathed,

you smelled the smells of children,

you tasted laughter on the winds

blessed respite eludes now,

outside, outside, outside

carrying this

it weighs

they are waiting,

hanging seamless,

slow spinning,

 

 

 

tell why her voice sounds like the allure of oceans

tell why her fingers, so delicate are like razors

tell what she means,

tell rescinding repetitions,

tell echoes to carry forth new speech

tell snow to burn

tell Father Sun to freeze

 

 

wine, imbibe it.

drink the merry drink.

forfeit misconception.

know who this is.

decline doubt

interpret this with caution

follow the lead

and lead the follower

as stars rend their garments

 

 

the women weep an iron curtain,

the children bleed responsibility into my opened eyes

fire stretches forth on every side,

bleeding chaos drinks full today

broken hands reach for broken cisterns,

there is no water there anymore

 

 

know.

tell.

interaction in eidetic interface.

forget. remember. forget.

war is peace.

freedom is slavery.

the object of persecution is persecution.

this is madness.

This is Madness.

This is Madness.

 

 

together, forget.

ephemeral again.

Can I just get this off my chest?

 

I dunno, going to the monastery this break really really fucked with me, head and body, mind and spirit. I feel like i’ve had a few too many screwdrivers and none of it was worth the drinking.

 

But I also feel like I got drunk on something substantial, and am inebriated with longing to return to the simple and unburdened life of the monastic way. Forsaking all things, and living a life in service to God and the world through prayer.

 

It was a challenging experience and I’m not sure I was able to really appreciate it fully because of the emotional baggage I carried with me there that i needed to sort through before i could find any semblance of rest. I haven’t slept well since that first night there. I did all my crying on the way over there, and was just exhausted by the end of the first night.

 

I feel like a shell of a person some nights, and i feel as if since i returned i’ve been living half aware and half exhausted, and fully guilty.

 

I don’t feel like I’m at all present in or even really observing my life. I feel as if all my energy is going towards incessant worrying and all i can do is sit back and wait until my whole world comes crashing down around me. I am honestly afraid, i’m afraid of what I’ll do with myself. Afraid of what she means to me. Afraid of what I mean to myself. Afraid that I’m falling too comfortably into orthodoxy and receding into mother church for the comforts of her ability to supply those answers which I need without being brave enough to seek them on my own. Afraid that I’m not devoted enough to Mary, and simultanesouly afraid I’m too devoted.

 

I’m afraid i’m too flirtatious, but not manly enough. I’m afraid that i am a shell of what it means to be a man even though i love it when she touches my beard.

 

I am restless and in awe at my own ability to choose failure and defeat when sometimes i’ve so clearly reached after success and managed to grasp it. I feel i have fallen in some inexplicable way and become disoriented in the midst of my sudden lucidity about myself and the world.

 

I’m not at all sure what to do with myself, and my once glorious intents have fallen to the wayside as I consider what i mean, and what my existence means.

 

I’m afraid to reach out and just be, i’m afraid to move on, afraid to hold on. I don’t know what the hell to do and i’m everywhere surrounded by fears, and undergoing the sufferings of love, those tender sufferings that wound most truly.

 

My eyes are swollen with restlessness, and my mind is awake in ever increasing streams of inaccessible consciousness.

 

What am I?

 

Who am I?

 

I am not sure how i would even begin to address these questions, or make satisfactory expiation for the blood they require in seeking an answer.

 

I am not as adventurous as I once thought myself to be, and feel as if I carry this unpronounceable weight of duty and devotion.

 

And I feel the part of the unloved child in the midst of all this. This is not a plea for attention, just the reality of me. I feel as if whether i am present or absent makes no difference to most. I feel like I am unlovely and awkward, the boy who wants to be beautiful, the man who longs to be told he is special to someone, somewhere.

 

My relationship with my mom has fallen into a deadening ritual of hellos and goodbyes that are interspersed with short polite withdrawn conversations. She can feel the change in me, i feel it in myself, and I am not aware of if there is a way to make peace. I am questioning my draw towards orthodoxy and wondering if it is out of childish fear, or out of an acknowledgement of truth in fullness that is drawing me.

 

I feel my own death impending, looming, but simultaneously endlessly distant.

 

I hate being the accomplished student. I feel as if I’m nothing else. I wish that Eli was more than just a paper writer, more than a name on the lips of the inquisitive or the disgusted. I wish Eli was the name on the lips of a lover, of a friend calling to check up on me, a name in the back of a mind, at the heart of a pleasant memory. I feel like everywhere i go i leave death and tragedy in my wake, and where it’s not there yet, it will be.

 

I feel overcommitted and under-appreciated, overtaxed and underpaid, mostly aloof even though I long so badly to be connected.

 

As I sit here I make a plea to have a simple life, i wish i could walk away from all of this, say fuck the world and go back to the monastery, back to the simple life.

 

I wish that was my calling. I’m tired of feeling like i’m part of something bigger than myself. I get this feeling like i’m being moved towards something tangible, solid, practical, all-encompassing and “destined” for me. But I hate that feeling sometimes.

 

It’s a wonderful excitement that helps me taste adventure, but I hate feeling this inevitable pull towards something I’d rather walk away from. I would rather just be empty, free of all commitments, devotions, positions, titles.

 

I hate this uncertainty.

 

I wish I was the whispered blessing on a lover’s lips, instead i’m the bane of a middle aged republican history teacher. 

 

I am not what I once was, i’m not an artist anymore. I’m barely a theologian. It all feels like pretend, and I don’t know where the fuck i lost myself, but I feel like i’m barely present here and now.

 

I am hurt and frustrated by unspeakable things that I wish I could take back, change, undo, avoid involvement in, and just never have been a part of. I wish that I could dump all the exteriors and retreat into a life of private faith, just the simple piety of a man trying to live a life as best he can for himself and maybe a family. Farm life in Ireland or something, just raw, and connected to the earth.
For more that I try to be a man, i feel like academics strip that from me. I want simplicity, but the academic circles force me into the realm of speculation on language and definitions, i just want to eat a steak with my hands.

 

Fuck me….

 

I don’t know what i want i’m uncertain on almost every level and feel wretched and terribly lost.

 

I feel like a little boy who doesn’t know how to begin to address coming out of his mother’s skirt and into the world at large.

 

I may be a pillar of boldness on the surface, but my shyness lurks underneath, and I feel the implications of my reservations, of the dignities that I hold onto.

 

I try to let them go, but I feel as if when i do they might be misinterpreted as romantic endeavors. I’m not trying to start anything with anyone. These dignities, these wants, these reservations and self restrictions, these ascetic choices that aren’t beneficial to anyone, these empty formalities that are further away from self actualized manhood than anything else. But I feel as if i look a certain way to the world.

 

I am not trying to fill some sort of empty gap with mockeries and jesting, I wish I had a connection. I wish i could bear my whole heart, and that someone would care enough to listen, to open up too.

 

I’ve hurt too many people along the way, ridiculed too many innocents, broken too many hearts, and confounded too many hopes and aspirations. I am the dark mirror which reflects back only the past, only broken hearts and weeping faces, bleeding eyes and broken places.

 

I am wandering the world in silence and I feel as if I need to scream. No night has ever been this dark, and for some reason though I feel this is one of the darkest nights of my life, I feel simultaneously that this is not the worst i’ve faced though it certainly feels like it in an indirect way. See, I don’t have a manifest panic,it’s more like a resignation to the darkness, that just treats the darkness as a trite formality.

 

i don’t know why that is, because I feel totally abandoned, and maybe this is me being able to meet God in the situation, maybe it’s just numbness, 

 

I can’t be sure.

 

So I wait, and wrestle with these questions in my mind, and let them sweep over me in over growing concentric circles of consciousness.

 

I guess that is all I really have to say, not a pretty poem, or a well crafted internal monologue, just a blurt, with a feeling of emptiness still not sated in the end.

Wounds of Christ

Holy Father, defender of the weak, redeemer and intercessor for the poor, be our shield in the day of battle.

Lord Jesus, mighty one, by the mystery of your great passion, be our crucified God, reminding us of your great suffering.

Holy Spirit, confessor of our intercession and our defense in the day of need, plead with us for the redemption of all things.

Hail Holy Trinity, by your great and ineffable love, teach us also to love.

Have mercy upon me, and upon the whole world.

Holy One, give me wisdom in the face of my trials, that I may lead myself and those around me with your great and everlasting guidance.

Eternal Father this your church, lead your people by your great and merciful love extended to us and to the whole world.

Holy Spirit, affirm the celebration of life and keep us from the snares of destruction, lead us not into the path of blood thirst and oppression, but keep our ways from the path of destruction

Most Merciful God, entreat us to suffer with you, and teach this child to lift up your sacred heart as the foundation of all my doings.

May your sacred heart be my guide, and by your holy wounds, teach me to pray.

May your hands that blessed the little children, nailed to the cross remind me to bless others, who are all your children. May I see in your crucified hands the greatest of mercy, and feel the warmth of your sacred embrace as you lead me to my brethren in mercy. Concerning the wounds oh holy Jesus, teach me to see them as my own, and may my hands bleed with your great and sorrowful passion for the sake of the whole world.

May your crown of thorns remind me to think upon the higher things, to be intentional about pursuing the good of others, and to meditate upon your holy sufferings. May my mind be fixed on your cross, and upon your resurrection, may your great and holy purpose be at the forefront of my mind, even as I remember your cross, and may my eyes look to your wounds for strength.

Wound in the side of Christ, teach me to weep for redemption, teach me to weep for the reconciliation of all things, wash me with this cleansing flow, and let me also become a fount of mercy and grace, a wellspring of your life as others come into contact with me, may they be refreshed by your living waters. Teach me to establish justice in seeking the life of the age to come, and to daily renew my hopes by your great and dolorous passion.

Back of Christ, bearing my sins, the immeasurable weight that is our world’s fallenness, teach me to pray. Holy Christ, with your back torn open by the iniquities of man, teach me obedience, as you yourself suffered as a servant unto the father, so let it be with me as well. Holy Christ, with your aching wounds bleeding for my redemption, and the redemption of all life, thank you for that healing which you bring.

Feet of Christ, teach me to carry the message of peace and support myself upon your holy cross, from which you have ruled the world. Holy Christ, who in your crucifixion made public spectacle of the powers and rulers of this world, teach me to walk in your ways, and against the empire. Feet of Christ, lead me into the path of solidarity, and open my heart by walking in your light. Teach me to love my brother as wholeheartedly as I have loved you, and draw me closer to your everlasting life in this age and in the age to come. Blessed feet, teach me to carry the message of peace, and to make reconciliation a reality, teach me to unite myself with those suffering, and to recognize my own sufferings as well. Blessed feet of Christ, lead me to the feet of Our Lord, where the crucified God stands as both judge and savior of the whole world.

Holy Christ, by your wounds, and the mystery of your sorrowful passion, have mercy upon me and on the whole world.

Holy Christ, by your wounds, and the mystery of your sorrowful passion, have mercy upon me and on the whole world.

Holy Christ

Rest, peace is in my soul.
Blessed Christ, thank you for your rest.

Lord and Christ, thank you for your glorious passion.

My Lord and my God, thank you blessed Christ, for the wounds by which I am healed.

Father, thank you for your Son’s glorious resurrection.

Blessed Spirit, thank you for your intercession in behalf of your saints.

Holy Trinity interceding in my behalf, thank you for your glorious affirmation of myself and of the whole world.

Holy Christ, by your glorious passion, have mercy upon me, and upon the whole world.

Remind us of your proclamation and help us to establish your reconciliation.

Holy Christ, Son of The Father, teach us to Love, as you have loved us.

Teach us to keep before our thoughts the mystery of your great and dolorous passion.

May your justice and redemption be the meditation of my heart.

And may You call to me with instruction, guiding me by your holy light,

Open my eyes to an awareness of your great and holy resurrection here and now,

Show me your way, and open my heart and mind to your sufferings,

Draw me into your wounds, that I may bear them with you

Teach my heart to weep as yours does

Holy Christ, may your tears be mine as well, and by your wounds have mercy upon us all, sinners.

Blight

It’s not over… it is never over. We carry our experiences with us, they continue to shape us and dwell with us, we do not make experiences they make us. So, I carry you with me in this bleeding heart, and I carry your words, your kindness, your love with my broken soul.

 

Holiness, intimate sorrow is the repetition of my holiness. I pray for liberation, I pray that God would just fucking come down and do something, but it’s not happening. So I’m going to be honest. I want things to go back to the way they once were at times, but that is not my decision.

 

My empty halls are carved with bitter rains and I pray for blindness, I ask to be overlooked, to be forgotten I don’t want these burdens. I don’t want these injuries, but I have to remain here. I have no choice, I have this choice, I am making this decision. It hurts more than anything I have ever known, but I am making this choice and I refuse to make any other.

 

You and I walk separate paths, and my heart breaks, as the road less traveled is taken by neither and yet both.

 

I can’t tell you what I’ve done, except that my heart weeps bitter tears.

 

They lie, I weep, I lie they slander. I am not empty. I am not strong. I am not here. I am not there.

 

I have nothing to stand on, I don’t know where I’m going, I have no direction towards this. I merely know that this is what must be accomplished.

 

I really don’t even know what I am truly trying to say. Forgive me for a lack of clarity. I didn’t mean to lack the words to say what I feel i need to.

 

I’m not quite sure what to do with this, all I know is that I must do something, my heart is breaking and my trials are simply multiplied in upon themselves.

 

Rebellion, tell me that this is so typical.

 

The pain in your eyes confirms my trespass, and yet I can do no other, so while I ask you to forgive me, I cannot ask that there be no sin in this act.

 

My life is turned against yours and never did I wish this.

 

I can ask you to say nothing.

 

That’s all.

 

Just another fruitless attempt to tell you that I love you.