childlike faith

i saw this video about 4 years ago for the first time. it's always been one of my favorites, just because of it's ability to conjure up emotion. it only recently dawned on me what the video might be trying to convey. maybe it's inviting us to have childlike faith and hope in the midst of a dark world surrounded by all sorts of senseless pain. i ask myself do i have what the little boy at the end has, the faith to love life, others, and god so fully i would dance in the face of death for them.

Prayer of An Anonymous Confederate Soldier

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve, I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey…

I asked for health, that I might do greater things, I was given infirmity, that I might do better things…

I asked for riches, that I might be happy, I was given poverty, that I might be wise…

I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men, I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God…

I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life, I was given life, that I might enjoy all things…

I got nothing that I asked for - but everything that I had hoped for, almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.

I am, among all men, most richly blessed.

new album art for kindness

back of the album




front of the album

photos by chris fenter

geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear in the ancient faith: what we need is here. and we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. what we need is here.

i felt a kinship with him. it was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of my faith. like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them, and then they leap. i'll be honest about it. it is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. doubt is useful for a while. we must all pass through the garden of gethsemane. if christ played with doubt, so must we. if christ spent a anguished night in prayer, if he burst out from the cross, "my god, my god, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are permitted to doubt. but we must move on. to choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

martel

edward estlin

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near: your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

- e.e. cummings

london