Practice Resurrection

today is Ash Wednesday in kansas city and you are being invited to be a part of a quiet community of people who, with ashes on their heads, give themselves to a process of exploration and creation during Lent.

forty days in the wilderness,
not for the wilderness
but for the burst of wildflowers
that carpets deserts and heals lepers

the idea behind the project is that you, me, and everyone else will work over the season of Lent to write, paint, compose, draw, sing, bake, play, sculpt, record, build and otherwise create around the theme : Practice Resurrection : and on or soon after Easter, we will gather in a yet-to-be-determined location to explode with Lenten energy on an Easter canvas.

a few premises:
you can write
you can paint
you can sing
you can play
because God is good and resurrection is real. if we're doing these things, then the whole act of being human disintegrates in nothingness and void. further:
the world does not know resurrection because its eyes are closed and christians have too often been content to let the situation stay that way.

so this is an opportunity, along with all your friends, to tear open the eyes of the world and learn what it means to jump into a pot of paint and thrash around for awhile, trusting that that may be the best possible use of your Lent.

pass this on, invite everyone, make some stuff and let's begin to learn the resurrection that is pressing in from the underside of lawns, the flip side of the night, the inside of tombs.

moving on...

Hey, everybody.

I've been having some issues with Blogger. I can't do things the way I want to do them, as far as indentation and all that. So I'm continuing this blog at

nomorerevolutions.tumblr.com

I hope you all will keep following and reading. Thanks.

I have done one braver thing
Then all the Worthies did,
And yet a braver thence doth spring,
which is, to keepe that hid.

from John Donne's "The undertaking"

an owl watches all this.

in this moment when life calms
and peace is here
the way an owl is suddenly noticed
and then is everything,
a shade of loneliness colors the rocks.
and there is a low place in the ground
where two friends could sit, backs against a tree.

if I am about to die, are they poor enough to die with me?

If the spirit is a pair of feet,
give your people the bare ones
if our hands make our living,
give them carpal tunnel, or stumps.
If dams make the desert wet,
break down their projects
if votes make the powerful
cause your people to be hated.
If its guns and swords that make us rich,
then melt their bullets and blades.
In a place with things to see
make them blind fools
and if tv makes us who we are
smash their screens and cause power outage.
In the kitchen with an unused stove
drop a dining table through the roof, like a meteor.

And, O Father on high who came low
to one like this suffering, stubborn fool,
I am dying, ex-piring, in a clean white hospital
too contagious for company
and my pain runs across the plains
like half-dead antelope
frantic in meaning nothing.
Build your people into this sad life
make them fired bricks
to build a wall to hold my pain
like an offering bowl
like a cup.

my solitude.

Lord, you have ruined evil
you have loved
before. Before.
And we are in love
with the tv
with love. With love.
With something that stinks
reeks like love
it reeks. It stinks.

In pieces go all our loves
to prostitutes and whores
who we do not know come sticky morningtime
when the sheets are pulled up off'
the corners of the bed.
And the walls are a chalky white
and i can't convince myself I'm me
but its my eyes that are red.

Lord, you make the morning
you rise with the sun,
you will. You will.
Your skill is subtle
to cut into damage
with sword. The sword!
And i am just myself
looking and waiting,
another. For us.

To gather all our loves into
a broken body, a spilled-out blood.
blood soaked into the dirt at the cross
is the sponge for what i've spilled.
is glue between lives.
and my solitude is no loss
when it is of one piece
with the God who died.

travelling companion

drawing birds onto their shoulders
writing stories on each other's backs
etching trains into the stone floor
and pushing each other down scratched tracks

its been the loss of everything common
they've nothing between them but distance and steam
losing what's lost all over again,
setting out paper boats to find the ink sea

twisting grass into, out of braids
its been in the mountains, the plains, the clear air.
its picking up stones to see how they weigh
putting plucked crowns on heads that aren't there.

writing around the clouds with sea-ink black
and grass-blade pens from under the sky
hell finds an outline in the scribbled tracks
but there's a pregnant lady sitting high
on a bench in the passenger car
rolling down the line.