In A Sweater Poorly Knit (mewithoutYou)

Sweet Baby James (James Taylor)

What A Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong)

If And When We Rise Again- Nerf Gun Ninjas (SM Cover)

So I hold my slanderous tongue
I shut up my empty-worded mouth
I need You, I need You

I deny my doubting heart
and wayward mind
I want You, I want You

And I know there's nothing else, nothing else but truth
Nothing else, nothing else, nothing else but truth
Nothing else, nothing else, nothing else but You

When I calm my busy hands
And I shut my lustful eyes
I feel You, I see You

You take and put away my fears
I break as You come near
And hold me, and hold me

And I know there's nothing else, nothing else but truth
Nothing else, nothing else, nothing else but truth
Nothing else, nothing else, nothing else but You

Anything Else?

Let the Sun and Moon together
Until they form but one bright sliver
Until our lives flow like a river
And water all the withered trees...

The River

Longing for Home

Recorded this for my wife for Valentine's Day 2012. 

09 On A Night Like This

10 Sing

Luke wrote that you often withdrew to lonely places to pray.
Well I’m going to take a page right out of your book.

Here I am, in a lonely place, looking to speak to my Father
But I don’t mean the loneliness of my past, that wretched gray shadow that stained my relationships and deluded my mind.
No, that very real monster is still at bay, hiding under the bed for another sad day.

No, this loneliness is one of desire, not depression, peace not anguish, and refilling rather than emptiness. 
God, I just need to be alone (but not from you)
I will explode or do something so very honest to my sinful nature
if I don’t take this time right now to escape the pressures of personality and of people.
I will only continue circling, circling, circling the drain until only the ring and residue remains.

I am still cheating on you with a million half loves. And I can’t stand my unfaithfulness,
and it causes me to want to take myself out of this game sometimes,
and sometimes I just don't realize that it isn’t a game at all
and that it's just merely immature bullshit to think so.

So I come
I come lonely and self-deprived to where only you can see me
Only in this new loneliness can I be free
Free to say what I want, do what I want, be who I know you expect me to be
And not the expectations of this group or that.

So Father I withdraw. I withdraw to you. 
Because I’m only now finding out that loneliness is the key to never being lonely again.

Because when I withdraw to lonely places, I find you.

Lonely Places

As I look up from my plate of fine china glistening like a newborn baby,
and take into account the array of strategically placed cutlery
ornately arranged adjacent to the gold-rimmed crystal cup,
I slowly and cautiously look to my left, stealing a glance born out of hesitation and curiosity,
and hope it's not mistaken for judgment.

A grizzled middle aged black man with a wiry beard, wry but joyful smile 
freckles like campsite constellations and eyes the color of Crater Lake.
I knew him as an out of work author who lived in New Orleans up until Katrina took nearly everything he had,
so he bundled everything else together and made it up to DC where we met 
and I learned of his troubles with alcohol and struggles with memory loss.  
We lock eyes and sheepishly revert our attention back to our own plates,
but not before sharing the briefest of collective preponderance. 

"What is he doing here?"

I fidget with the tiny fork, the one meant for salads or desserts
I can never remember which and I compose myself just long enough to gaze up again
And this time I look to my right.

Sitting at the table is a woman I faintly fairly recognize like a deja vu returning from a misty overcast memory morning.
I remember her sharing with me how her husband and father of two young children 
made it a point to tell her that "fatherhood was just not for him" 
before putting a shotgun barrel into his mouth and pulling the trigger
In their living room, of their low rent, eggshell walled, fluorescent lit apartment two years ago.
How's she's dedicated her life to her kids and she knows she's already scraping
her tired nubs of fingernails across the splintered wooden bottom of the financial barrel.
How the ends simply may not meet, if not this month, then the next,
and all she can do from following her husband's traumatic example is ignore
the bank's persistent phone calls about collectors and overdraft fees
and remind herself that she has to keep on keeping on
because the little ones are relying on her to come through.

My eye then catch the script-style placard hung purposefully on the wall so everyone in attendance at the table can see.
It say, "ALL IS YOURS" and as the three small words wash over me,
servants in cummerbunds and professional attire rush to fill our plates with fine food and drink
and aromas of spices and wine fill the space along with casual music
fulfilling the placard's prophesy.

The people around me murmur to themselves about how there's no way in heaven or hell
that they will be able to afford this extravagant dining experience.
And I smugly tell them that I'll take care of it. But I reach into my pocket, and there's nothing there.
I turn it inside out only to release a cartoon tiny white moth indicating that I too have nothing.

So all we can do is smile at one another with the blessed assurance
that someone far greater than any of us has prepared this place and provided it for us.


becomingamirror

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