Stars

Well, I fear its been too long when I can’t remember my password to login here.  I wonder if anyone even views my blog anymore. I apologize profusely for my lack of posts. I have about 10 posts on my other computer which I never could remember to put up…until now. ^_^.

I went on a midnight run tonight.

The sky was brilliant, strewn with stars forming an infinite expanse. They were never-ending. Surrounding, engulfing, peacefully screaming of His wonder. But I hardly noticed. Their beauty was lost on my soul, as the dirt covered them up and hid them from my dull eyes and heavy heart. I ran with my music blaring, my mind anywhere, just moving my legs and trying to cope.

And then, I looked up. I looked up to see a star shoot across the sky. And suddenly, it was as if everything was okay, the pressure was gone, and I was left standing still wondering where I’d been this whole time. It was like a giant eraser trying to clean the smudges off of my soul, like a hand brushing the dust from my eyes. Like my Father reminding He is Love. It was gone in an instant, but as it streaked across the sky, it screamed through my heart. And so, I stared at the night, and I got lost.

The stars were so many. So far. Each one as large as our sun. And He created every single one with His hands. It is unspeakable, impossible to put into words. That He, who formed the heavens, would love me. That He would live with me forever. Nothing I or anyone can say could ever even begin to come close to praising Him as He is. But when I saw the stars, I remembered.

We are so small. We are insignificant, ants on the face of itself dwarfed by the numberless. And yet, Christ showed His love for us, even us, in that while we were yet sinners, He would die for us.

Things get hard, they stay hard, it seems like nothing will ever be better ever again. You hear songs and words that move others, but feel nothing yourself. You try, but your tries never seem enough. But drop everything, and step outside tonight. Look up. Maybe you’ll get lost, too.  Maybe you’ll remember. Maybe you’ll feel His peace beyond knowing.

It will be okay. We will begin not to lose anymore, we will stop falling. We are moving. We are walking among the stars.

We lock our souls in cages…

A shameless plug for Switchoot’s single “Mess of Me” off their impending new album, Hello Hurricane. It hits the stores November 10, but the pre-order is out today: www.switchfoot.com ^_^.

And speaking of Switchfoot, I played my first live song today at a local coffee shop…Dare You to Move >.>.

The Pursuit

Please excuse the lateness of this post. . .

 

Do you think that maybe we weren’t meant to live with our throats wide open? Do you ever wonder what it means to move, to live, to breathe? To love, to think, to remember? Wonder why we satisfy ourselves with calling our futile pursuits of happiness, freedom?

Its moving forward, its crashing, tearing, leaving a wake of tears and sleepy lives that have forgotten how stay awake in our midst. As we consume it, it consumes us. Something has been lost. Something has been forgotten. Something new and ugly graces our definition of the eternal pursuit.

Its biting us, feeding the belief that something made by man can satisfy the yearnings for something bigger, the belief that the problem will be solved if only, if only. Its a searching for an answer that will always elude. A search focused inside the confines of a painted horizon; a horizon where the sun sets, but has a way of never again rising when once gone. Its the gripping desire to win: to hold more in our palms.

And the box will stay bright and clean for a time, fresh with a new coat of green paint. And after time has its way, that room will be left for newer red walls, which will be soon replaced with brighter blue walls: in the end, though, the colors will not seem so inviting. And the hunt will redouble under the hope that baubles will save. The money, the cars, the phones, the computerized love of a generation that has forgotten what it means to struggle for more. So many dreams, hopes, thoughts, loves are built on foundations of sand, as over and over we try to find happiness in the very things that bring us the unhappiness we run from. We stumble blindly, gladly, through the steel forest of beautiful trees, so enticing, so shiny. They offer sweet apples, then grip with their tearing fingers and whisper to hungry ears of treasures that turn to dust. And yet no one will see through it all. That their hopes in gold will tarnish. They stuff their briefcases, blare their stereos, buy something else to add to the list of things that define them. They live and die in their tall cities built on hills, dying monuments to a forgotten age where money and technology existed to better, to serve, to enable.

Do all the people really believe in so little? Their dreams are always tinted with green, forever engulfed in a clutching at a wind that always blows but never stays. Why does love have to be followed by ‘of money’? Where are the questions, the sparks, the willing to dare? Have we forgotten? Forgotten that maybe hearts are broken and love is missing, falling prey to the forever searching for another, newer answer?

There is so much more than reaching for what will never satisfy. There is a life that believes in more than dollars, and places in ourselves that are much larger than our prisons built of our own hands. Outside our mercedes jails, along the faded streets of our souls, there is a better Hope. Someplace on this earth, away from the sights and sounds of a colorless world that lives only to feed its insatiable graspings, the air is still pure, and each breath is a new reason to live.

 Why the downcast eyes? Somewhere, life is more.

Maybe.

Well, its 2 am. Fueled by Owl City and fingers itching to write, I hope something coherent will spill forth.

I keep trying to win. I keep trying to fight, trying to be a nice little boy, when all I want to do is scream. But the lines and squares spin so fast. They create a picture of life that I keep trying to slow down, but that baffles me at every turn. Its so easy to sit watching my own castles crash down, and not look through the dust to see if anyone else is nearby. I keep trying to save myself, to analyze hope, to figure out what I’m doing wrong. I tell myself that its my fault, and that I could leave if I wanted to. But deep down, I think I know its not true. Yes, I must continue to perservere, never giving up, always daring myself to move. But I began to wonder. Wonder if there was a better way.

I worked a job today, with a guy from my church, moving steam presses out of a laundromat (not sure how I got in on that one…). As I was working, I looked out the window and noticed a girl. She was an employee at a tattoo parlor next door, on a smoke break. This is not about whether tattoos are right or wrong, I’m not getting into that here. I just remember wondering to myself what her story was. How she came to be working at a dump of a tattoo parlor. Whether she had a tragic past, a happy past. Whether she would laugh or cry if I asked her if she wanted hope. I watched her, so young, good-looking, and before a life that could be so much. I know nothing about her. Maybe she had problems, maybe not; maybe she was losing, maybe she thought she had it all figured out. Something about her just clicked, and made me start to think about myself. How often I seem to forget that the planet is not inhabited by one person. I want to help people, showing love as much as possible in the short time of this small world, but I can’t seem to get past the fact that I’m not perfect either, and that I fail so often.

But I began to wonder when something named trust came calling, echoing through the dead corridors and whispering through the crumbled houses of me. Reminding me that the reason one falls is so he remembers how the ground felt. That maybe, just maybe, if I stepped outside myself, if I looked at the night sky and saw a canopy that covers many alongside me, maybe I would remember that God still redeems. And maybe if I looked around, peeked out through the plastic confines, I would find that in losing, one finds. The voices say I’m nothing, and that nobody remembers, but maybe if I look out instead of in, and toward instead of away, I’d find that the sun reaches into the shadows, too. Amid the dying buildings, the streets, the phones, people live. The stories are what matter.

Something tells me that all the silent chaos is something I can’t solve, and maybe never will. But something also tells me that maybe if I put myself entirely into His hands and stopped forever trying to climb out of the hole on my own strength, and began to look to the so many others that have nothing left, who feel the chains of so many of the pains in this life, I’d find that this was the way after all.

Maybe…just maybe.

Four Blank Walls

A short something I wrote a while back, late at night (undoubtedly the most productive time for writing).

 

She walked slowly down the gravel path, it was time to decide. Her mind racing, head spinning: everything perfectly still and chaos at the same time. Her silence was one that screamed, one that would never quiet, yet never played a sound outside of her soul. The stillness was shouting with all its might, but it became quieter every time the sound refused to add color to the void. Something held her by her scars, forcing her to embrace the silence of no hope. Telling her there was nothing left to remember. The dark had wrapped a cloak around her soul, and wanted her never to sing again, but she wished she could remember, could see, could breathe. She used to try to sing, faltering at every note, but realizing that the melody was heard and that her voice held a glimmering hope. And the words once would spill from her pen, softly falling from a pale hand, staining the page but giving her some solace in the hope for a lighter world. But now all her words disappeared as they formed, crumbling into the ashes of roses, and the brave song had faded away with everything else. The stars could slow her down, but she had forgotten how to look up: the wound was wide open, in plain sight, bleeding, always bleeding. And yet somehow no one ever saw it. The past, the life before it all, called for her, but it was a light quickly receding, a small corner of her losing battle; to live again seemed impossible, and watching herself die was all that was left. She used to want to be alive, but now she seemed equally incapable of being either alive or dead. Always a new try at winning, always a new way to lose.

A sweetness pervades her lips as she tastes the sky, but it doesn’t register with her mind. Will the feeling ever return, the clouds ever catch her up, the freedom of dancing to unheard music ever remind her of her beautiful life waiting. Will the stars ever rain the light of hope again? The path stopped moving as she sank to the grass and stared at the night. It was black, utterly black, but her being was even darker. She huddled in the corner of her prison, the day losing to four blank walls painted with a white that was really just another shade of black. But her face, covered by her hands, failed to realize the door was open, and had been broken open long ago by Someone who had once seen the same chains on His arms. She did not how to leave; she had lost herself somewhere on that dark highway, and she didn’t know where to look find herself again.

But as she sank for the last time, and her bright blue stars reached for the ground, the prison walls disappeared. And Someone who knew something of scars reached for her arms…