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Archive - January, 2011

monday muddlings: fire in the lungs

January 17, 2011 in monday fiction with 0 Comments

It’s another fiction Monday, focusing on poetry. I have been invited to present poetry at the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor’s Writer’s Festival in February, based on a few snippets of work I have completed in the past, so I’m now taking some time to draft a few new pieces to accompany my presentation. Here is another poem in progress, a new one this turn.

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the second formica friday

January 14, 2011 in formica friday with 0 Comments

I don’t have much for you today. I didn’t post yesterday, though I wanted too. There is much going on: much wonder and beauty going on. It’s like I have awaken to a reality that does not need expression but simply being. I need to be quiet right now, but will return next week for sure. The weekend shall be a good time to catch up on all the academic things, but will also give plenty of time to leave Sunday as a true day of rest and the other days as some times to get ahead of my blogs. For now, for this Friday, I am leaving you with this singular tidbit, for it has been enough for me. In fact, today it nearly knocked me off my feet.

When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not worry about how or what you are to speak in your defense, or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say. (Luke 12:11-12 NASB)

running to stand still, part one

January 12, 2011 in bits of theological ramblings, reflections with 5 Comments

I had reached a point of complete emptiness and sense of abandonment. I didn’t doubt God, but I completely doubted my ability to hear Him.

It was a cloudy Sunday morning in October 2009. I had gotten in my car around seven and had been driving around Waco for the past forty minutes praying, through a mixture of angry words spilled aloud and tears, asking God too many questions to even try and piece together in hindsight. I wanted so many answers but didn’t think I was even able to hear His reply if He was giving me any.

At 7:45, I found myself in the parking lot of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, sitting my car in the midst of the greatest crisis of Faith I have perhaps ever had in my life: was everything I had been doing completely wrong, had I followed my own voice and just told myself that it had been His? Continue Reading…

remedial praying

January 11, 2011 in bits of theological ramblings, oneword2011, reflections with 3 Comments

“Dear God, thank You for this food, and this day, and all that you made. Amen.”

When I was younger, that prayer was my golden standard for dinner table spirituality. When either of my parents suggested that I bless the food, it was the first to be loaded in my arsenal, ready to go. Evening prayer featured a similar, without a reference to food, replication. Sometimes I forgot that it was evening prayer and ended up praying for food anyway. My parents were usually kind enough not to point that out.