We need to hear and heed this NOW more than EVER! Be kind. Be understanding. People are fragile, whether they show it or not. Learn to recognize the frightened child in everyone by listening rather than speaking. Just as you were when you were a child—afraid of failure—you will undoubtedly be tempted as an adult…
If words are a bubbling brook
above the geyser of our hearts,
they’re poised
to say something about
the nature of our spirituality—
a disjointed but shared reality—
seeking comfort
in the womb of bad religion.
A carcass with a pulse,
a miracle dipped in myrrh,
perfumed a Jewish beard
and consecrated a blameless soul…
This world is so unfriendly and unkind. How’s a teenager with Zeus’s ADHD, the rage of Achilles and the passion of Paris supposed to survive the suburban hostility of drive-by bullets of bullying and cliques of cruelty with privileged popularity without losing his mind? If you want to get to know me then…
Sometimes monsters
of our own making
show up relentlessly
until we look introspectively
at the mess we’ve made
when we’ve felt incarcerated
without the possibility of parole
as both our own judge and jury.
Everyone wants to know
life’s greatest mystery.
It’s simple:
read your history
and exchange your brokenness for beauty,
your porcelain mask for the Japanese art
of Kintsugi.
Those who live for the glamor and spotlight
drink drops of disco
that rages into the night.
Forget your westward expansion;
leave a fossil footprint of what’s right.
I felt like Icarus, whose hubris led him to fly too close to sun, which melted wax on his shoulders, causing feathers to unfasten, and thus his hope of freedom to come crashing down like one of Zeus’s lightning bolts.
True happiness is biblical, moral, pleasurable, historical, and necessary for Christian character.