COLORS

COLORS

Alluring Wyoming

On a Midsummer Evening

Before the Storm:

A Sun-kissed Bubbling Creek

April mist in Forest deep

The Icicle blue and ivory hue of Angel wings

Electric yellow of Sunbeam glow

Then Jadesheen, Juniper green

The Serene Terra cotta terrain

with Ashen sagebrush,

Cornhusk and Rye

 Some Desert dust against a Copper sky

Lava stone like a Whispy scone

The Cathedray gray of

this Tender night

Magenta mist of a Desert vista

The Aura of Ivy laurel

My Secret haven.

These are the names

Of Valspar Paint Colors

At Home Depot.

Little (Matthew) Shepard Boy

LITTLE SHEPARD BOY

Do you fear what I fear?

Said the little lamb to the Shepard boy

Listen to what I say

Stay out of those bars, Shepard boy

Listen to what I say

Don’t you hit on mean, redneck guys

Those with tattoos and a scruffy beard

Those with tattoos, and a scruffy beard

 

Said the little lamb to the Shepard boy

Do you see what I see?

Being hailed thoughout the Congress halls

Do you see what I see?

A law, a law, codifying sin

And creating a new protected class

And creating a new protected class

 

Note: I feel sorry for Matthew Shepard, who needed a father and not sex. Too bad that Congress in their misplaced compassion exploit his death in order to promote a dangerous hate-crimes bill. I wish our society would go after the real problems, lack of fathering,   instead of insuring people in their bondage and insulating them from any true freedom.

I Shouldn’t Have Asked This Question

Just suppose God wasn’t rich

Imagine if he never came to visit

Suppose he didn’t bring gifts

and never lifted anyone’s spirit,

and the Holy Ghost chose not to be close

Just suppose you never felt his touch

Imagine living with barely enough

What if  he ignored prayer and persuasion

and missed sharing special occasions

Would you still embrace the cross

With courage, face every loss?

Would you love him simply for life eternal

and long for his return?

Suppose seeing Christ were enough!

Suppose his life were enough!

What if he came to take everything from us?

To divinely exchange, and leave us with a promise

With a hope that never fails

one that propels us into the world

with one thing worth more than life

so much more than healing

or emotional well-being:

A mark, a scar, a Christ-brand

something like this

anything that proves we’re his.

I may be imagining this, who knows?

But just suppose

Note to my readers.

For those of you who read this blog, I may not be writing anything for a while because I am busy with family issues. If you want to know more, please contact me.

District 9 Analysis

I just returned from watching Peter Jackson’s film “District 9″ and here’s a perspective:

I see everything through a kaleidoscope with colored jewels forming crosses in various shapes and colors, and so it is with District 9. If find it both refreshing and alarming that filmmakers and script writers tend to go with their intuition, even spiritual prescience, more than do most spiritual leaders of the world.  Let me explain:

I believe that intuition is a faculty of the human spirit, just like conscience and communion. Because of our fallen humanity, or imperfection, people intuitively, as individuals and even on a national level, have an innate desire for a savior-hero. Thus the range of heroes from national epics down to folk-heroes.  District 9 is awash in this intuitive impulse within humankind, as are many modern superhero films. Spiritual leaders, conversely, often get stuck in the sentimental platitudes and prosaic formulas of religion.

There are several symbols or motifs which I saw in this film which had messianic undertones. First of all is the search for and discovery of the indispensible fluid needed for joining the command module to the mother ship. The recovery of the fluid took over twenty years. The vial containing the fluid was to be protected at all costs.

The second strong messianic symbol was in the name of the one who gathered the fluid, along with the help of his son. Christopher Johnson  is the alien hero the film. He leaves earth with a promise to return with help from his home planet in order to rescue his fellow aliens, derisively called prawns, and to restore the hero of the story to full humanity. 

Wikus (pronounced Vih-cus), the protagonist of the story, is infected by fluid from the vial and his arm becomes alien. The arm becomes a rare commodity. The government wants to use it to fire the alien weaponry, and a Nigerian mafia boss wants to eat it in a witchcraft ritual for the same purpose.  In a sense, Wikus suffers [vicar]iously because his arm is exposed to humanity.

Near the end of the film, a full long shot of the camera is on the side of a building painted with graffiti. The huge letters fill the background and spells the word “NAME” two times.

Finally, Wikus’ recovery as a human and his restoration to his wife has to be sacrificed for the race of aliens. Christopher has to use the fluid to power his ship’s return to his home planet for help rather than using it to save Wikus.

In summary: The fluid is what can save the aliens, like the blood of Christ saves humanity; Wikus’ [a vicar is a priest] arm is symbolic in that the arm and (the right  hand in particular) are universal symbols of military deliverance and divine salvation, and especially in that the arm is exposed.

The alien Christopher Johnson (Christopher means “Christ bearing”) prepares 28  years for the fluid which will save his people, much like the preparation time of Christ. He survives a beating where blood runs down his face. Finally he escapes and leaves the earth with a promise to return to save his people, as well as the restoration of the protaganist, an shadowy allusion to resurrection, in three years, compared to three days of Christ’s resurrection.

You may think this is all a stretch, but remember this fact: an overwhelming majority of people think there will be some kind of apocalyptic [hero-revealing] event in the near future, something not even the churches are talking about much now, at least not until they see this extraordinarily crafted film.

This film is rated R because it deals briefly with prostitution and drops f-bombs in strangly-accented clusters.

That’s how I see it!

Two Hawks, Circling

Today a pair of  hawks soared high above the heads of a bride and groom as they were taking their vows.

I turned to Job 39:26 and read, “Does the hawk fly by your wisdom, and spread its wings toward the south?”

It seemed that the hawk was a symbol for the wedding pair. There is something within each person that seeks to soar, to find that place where one experiences the height of intimacy with another person. By the ceremonial nature and beauty we put into the union of two lives, we show the value we place on that intimate sharing.

God put that within every human being — the longing for intimacy. In itself, it is a symbol, a shadow of the true, lasting, secure closeness which He has prepared for all of us. It started way back in the garden of Eden and will finally be fully expressed at the consummate marriage supper of the Lamb. Time and eternity both begin with a marriage. And so it is, that every mortal creature innately and intuitively seeks for the substance of that enigmatic truth and reality, and we seek it in one other person in marriage.

There our souls are almost magically intertwined and ecstatically linked, however fleeting, in the beauty of the spirit’s highest order of life, just like the hawk. It finds the funnel, the vortex of wind that carries it into the plane of floating bliss.

Oh, that we all capture the spirit of the hawk, and experience the divineness of intimacy, first in knowing another person, and ultimately in knowing God.

The Death Star

I have seen the Death Star,

wandered through the universe –

where I carelessly jettisoned my heart

So many failed attempts at reversing course,

but in my vagrancy I found

the cosmos to be spiral – nearly round

Always bringing my hollow capsule back 

to where it all began –

Somewhere between the flaming start

and the sputtering, gasping end

Lies my heart

 

Is it too large a thing to ask,

too colossal a task?

To Infinity it must seem infinitesimal

Yes, my heart is small, inconsequential

If you should see it – it looks like this:

It’s shaped like a fist, sorta

With chambers and aortas

And it’s leaving a thin trail

Of red and blue

Unless it’s all bled out

Out there all alone

Somewhere between the Death Star

and its Home

Where’s My GI Joe?

 

Where’s my GI Joe? My two-year old son’s first sentence. The almost-six-inch camouflage green, or white, or black-uniformed soldiers with hinged hips, elbows, and knees, always squeezed by Jonny’s baby-fat fingers. His little regiment of toy soldiers lived in crowded and merciless toddler-service in a shoebox quanson hut under little Jonny’s bed.

Gym 3:16

Love God with all your heart,

with all your guts, with all your sweat

and every muscle and pound you pile on

Brother Sir, Sister Ma’am

To me something is conspicuous by its absence. What is absent from the body of Christ today is the understanding and practice of the millenial truth that Christians are in almost every sense a family, and brothers and sisters in particular.

How long has it been since another believer has called me brother? Many moons, sir and ma’am. If anyone else who knows me and is a believer calls me sir, I swear I’m going to let loose with a tacky non-christian word