the unravelled self

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i had prayed once for broken feet, for it was too easy to tread the Way, but He put thorn into my side and breathed upon it Beauty and withdrew His hand and made the ancient sign. Two fingers, two fingers, a circle and a void, eyes grown uneven and a face too much like mine.

i discoursed with that icon, the rounded Pentecost table of broken Body and poured Blood that the holy people in their sackcloth finery held to lips as fire tongues crested brows, and i asked them what was the secret of the beautiful but they only pointed--three of them up, three to the side.

i stand on the edge of the pier Mumford in ears and camera in hand water breaks over crag rocks like that old ancient word of the Voice of the many waters cresting over my crown--christening chrismation-- and my voice against Voice the cry without circle, without beginning, without world, without end.

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Meet Preston

Preston is a twenty-something once-upon-a-time conservative Southern Baptist from Texas who learned to read saints, cross himself, and move across the world to China, England, and Scotland. Since, he's been theologically conservative, oft politically liberal, but radically pro-life, a believer in sacraments and sacramentality, a sort-of Christian feminist, an idealist pacifist who also understands the need for civil defense ... and a handful of everything else in-between. He thinks of himself now as a haphazard and patchwork Bapto-Anglican, though he is becoming confirmed in the Anglican tradition. This blog is his repository of working this whole faith thing out day by day, bird by bird. His first book, Tables in the Wilderness, a memoir of God found, lost, and found again, is due out autumn 2014 with Zondervan.