A Thought

This I suppose to be the blessed Trinity that we read of in the Holy Scriptures. The Father is the deity subsisting in the prime, unoriginated and most absolute manner, or the deity in its direct existence. The Son is the deity generated by God's understanding, or having and idea of Himself and subsisting in that idea. The Holy Ghost is the deity subsisting in act, or the divine essence flowing out and breathed forth in God's infinite love to and delight in Himself. And I believe the whole Divine essence does truly and distinctly subsist both in the Divine idea and Divine love, and that each of them are properly distinct persons.

J. Edwards

For Your Eyes' Pleasure

Dizzy

Sometimes, the only thing I want to do is overturn every table I can find while shouting repeatedly, "What am I doing?!"

Heart of Darkness

This is the text from the first movement of James Syler's Symphony No. 1, "Blue". You can find the rest of the text here.

I. Impending Blue

“Mistah Kurtz – he dead.”

Libera me, Domine             (Deliver me, O Lord)
Libera nos, Domine             (Deliver us, O Lord)

When night descends on a turning world
I hear the distant beat
of impending blue.

I sit staring, nervously
stirring coffee into a still point
waiting as one makes way for another.

I close my eyes, slowly
knowing what to expect
a quiet terror approaching out of time.

I inhale you, you consuming color
as you roll over me
a march of impending blue.

What keeps you from turning back?
Or blue from turning black?

Libera me, Domine             (Deliver me, O Lord)
Libera nos, Domine             (Deliver us, O Lord)

Sipping hot black coffee
on a night of blue pursuit
a stone cold sober
of the cruelest kind

I Pretend Middle Schoolers are Predictable

I'm a little idealistic with my timings I think. I hated middle school when I was in it; I wonder what it's like to teach it?

Then Something Miraculous Happened

"Once we had no delight in God, and Christ was just a vague historical figure. What we enjoyed was food and friendships and productivity and investments and vacations and hobbies and games and reading and shopping and sex and sports and art and TV and travel…but not God. He was an idea—even a good one—and a topic for discussion; but he was not a treasure of delight.

          Then something miraculous happened. It was like the opening of the eyes of the blind during the golden dawn. First the stunned silence before the unspeakable beauty of holiness. Then a shock and terror that we had actually loved the darkness. Then the settling stillness of joy that this is the soul’s end. The quest Is over. We would give anything if we might be granted to live in the presence of this glory forever and ever.

          And then, faith—the confidence that Christ has made a way for me, a sinner, to live in his glorious fellowship forever, the confidence that if I come to God through Christ, he will give me the desire of my heart to share his holiness and behold his glory.

But before the confidence comes the craving. Before decision comes delight. Before trust comes the discovery of treasure….

          Saving faith is the cry of a new creature in Christ. And the newness of the new creature is that it has a new taste. What was once distasteful or bland is now craved. Christ himself has become a Treasure Chest of holy joy. The tree of faith grows only in the heart that craves the supreme gift that Christ died to give: not health, not wealth, not prestige, but God!"

~John Piper, Desiring God

Still

The chilly November wind bit him as he stood at the edge of the lake, staring across at nothing, at everything, waiting. Speechless was his mouth, and quiet was his soul for this brief eternity of a moment. He wished he could stop thinking in paradoxes, but that was how he felt. One big fat contradiction. Hypocrite. The wind rushed by. He pulled his coat a little tighter.

Around him the seasons were changing. The leaves were turning and falling, round and round in a seemingly endless, cacophonous dance. Their last expression of life before their death. He turned his eyes up to the sky, filling them with the chilly gray of the cloud-sheet above him, wrapping himself in it. The gray sank into his bones, sending a chill down his spine. It was a nice feeling. He pulled his coat a little tighter.

And then it wafted across his nose, in the wake of the incessant wind. His eyes faded quickly, sealing him with the color of the sky. The smell was brief; it probably was not even real. But it was enough, the wispy trail of a memory that was too heavy to bear with confidence. He turned on his heel as if pushed around by the wind as it does to the dancing leaf. Forget it. He pulled his coat a little tighter.

His legs moved up the uneven sidewalk, stirring the leaves to dance around them, the tired ones crunching underneath his shoes. The wind continued to nip around him like a small dog that hungered for dinner, and he pretended to ignore its quietly adamant wining, continuing up the sidewalk. The ground was hard underneath his feet and pushed back through his shoes and into his femur, springing him forward. At least it was still warm inside of his coat. He pulled it a little tighter.

He was not alone, but he was the only one moving, besides the leaves. The people around him were still, frozen in the November air, parting the wind as it blew round and round them. The faces could have been anybody's, and they were just as gray as the sky above him, and just as hard as the ground beneath him, pushing back through his shoes and into his femur, springing him forward. He longed for the soft warmth of his home, but for now he was caught in a subtle trick of God, a moment hung up in the metronome of time. He pulled his coat a little tighter.

*zip*

Woops. There went October.

Anyway, I scored a short film. What fun! Needless to say, the director/photographer is ridiculously talented. And my good friend I got to sing is phenomenal. And I found my thesis, in this kind of work. I hope you enjoy.