There is a Lover -- His name is Jesus

Hope

Call me crazy. I just don't want it anymore. The superficial highs of life; the moola, popularity, prince charming... I've tasted something better. Only, now it's confused with a thousand cries of my own selfish sin. I listen with my ear to the doorway hoping for the faintest sounds of change, of life in a wasteland of grasping the wind. Addictions run rampant, infecting generation to generation. Pain flows like water. Anger replaces tears. Violence takes the place of love. I'm not better than this.
But, I've tasted something better.
Something that goes beyond the reach of my ability. Hope, I'm sure, is not going to be found in you or in me -- Hope is going to be found in Faith, which is going to be found in Grace. Grace will reside with Love -- and God is Love. Not Valentine's hearts. AGAPE. God's Love -- the only real Love. Jesus knew what real Love meant. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote : "Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness".
Can we pray for that? That and more -- we can know that God will answer our prayers, so that we may finally pray as Jesus did "Not what I will, but what YOU will."
I'm hoping for the greatest transformation... God shape my heart... open the doors wide enough for Your will.

In dreams that cannot remember, in awakening before the sun;
A still soft voice hovers over the quiet dark horizon.
The prayer. To see through the eyes of the LORD,
the people of everyday.
An answer, hangs like breath in the air.
A gentle reminder, that today is a new day.
Pure chaos -- grueling conversation;
marked distincly by empty resignation.
Every word will not go un-heard,
every sound gathers 'round, to the cry for life.
Lord, is this right?
How does one see through the eyes of God?
To be sure, no one can. But to try, and fail,
and know that one voice is enough to shatter
flesh so frail.

Let my praise be real...

"Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe" ~Hebrews 12:28

I am not Catholic. Though, I have recited the Apostles' Creed: "I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy *catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen". I know very little about the doctrines of Catholicism (I know very little about most things). I know that statues creep me out, Holy water is a bit too mysterious for me to understand, and Transubstantiation has divided many people over the centuries. I also know, that amidst crise of "Ave Maria!", of quotes from the Pope, and of general confusion on my part as to what I should and should not say in the service of a Catholic church... there is very much left to think about. A golden lampstand hanging above the head of the priest with a flame burning suspended by the Cross (symbolizing, if I am correct, the presence of God with us: Emmanuel), stained glass windows lined the walls some drawing pictures of the life of Jesus, others the lives of Saints. But more than anything... I'll take away the picture of an old man knealing before the cross and bowing his head asking God's forgiveness. Let it be real. Lord Jesus, let my prayers not be liturgical jargon spit back unto You, costing me nothing save a scant breath (but, if they be liturgical and in complete harmony with Scripture) let me pray and seek and ask and recite with the passion of a heart set ablaze with the intensity of grace in the face of deserved judgement! Ave Christus! What can I say? Father, let me not judge the hearts of others... but clean my heart! Let my praise, amidst my pining flesh, be real.

"pining in the trenches of a retching world"

Today feels so much like yesterday and the day before; but time would have it that there is a marked distinction between the days. Today is the beginning of a new year.
"A new year!" I think "now I shall be able to move past those old struggles of last year." Resolutions and clean calendars don't make for much existential change in my heart, or extensive change whatsoever. Yet the thought of newness resonates within my soul. The very idea of renewal, of redemption, of a NEW day... my soul lies pining in the trenches of this retching world, languishing until the day of redemption. Even after the Apple drops, the excitement of a presumed new day is over, as it has become all to familiar in word and thought and deed.
A year ago as I walked along Calcutta streets, past beggars and businessmen, temples and shrines, death and life; I couldn't rid myself of the child-like exuberance of a new place. The smells and sounds and sights were all so different that I thought, surely, I was new... but to no avail. I still hated change, was still frustrated by overbearing people, thought selfishly before helping others. It was not a new year in the sense that I was longing for.
Here is what my heart pines for, the disasters of my soul (the landslides of emotions, the destruction of joy in a tumultuous tidal wave in my mind... natural disasters) the earth shares these same pains. As Paul said in Romans:

"For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express."
[Romans 8:20-26]