inspiration for my lulaby

Oh Lord, don’t keep me up all night
Side by side with the moon
With its desolate eyes
Miles from the sunrise
The darkness inviting a tune
The Insomniac’s Lullaby

A siren is playing its song in the distance
The melody rattles the old window frame
Gradually, angels reveal their existence
And there’s nothing and no one to blame

Oh Lord, don’t keep me up all night
Side by side with the moon
Alone in the bed
The season ahead
Is winter that lasts until June
The Insomniac’s Lullaby

Sleep

They say all roads lead to a river
Then one day
The river comes up to your door
How will the builder of bridges deliver us all
To the faraway shore

Oh Lord, don’t keep me up all night
With questions I can’t understand
While I wrestle my fears
The sound in my ears
Is the music that’s sweeping the land
The Insomniac’s Lullaby

Sleep

Soft as a rose
The light from the East
As if all is forgiven
And wolves become sheep
We are who we are
Or we’re not
But at least
We’ll eventually all fall asleep
Eventually all fall asleep

Prayers and quotes for remembering Thomas Merton

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them” 

― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” 

― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island 

“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.” 
― Thomas Merton

“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.” 
― Thomas Merton

“The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.” 
― Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain

“If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men--you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while. If you write for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted that you will wish that you were dead.” 
― Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation

“For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.”

Not worth a lick of Salt

That is what this blog is.

I don't really like that this blog is private and I don't know if anyone reads it. if i want a journal, I should keep a journal. which I have and use. but I don't know why i have and use this blog. it's seems selfish to have a blog like this right now.

that's all i've got.

I wish...

people could solve my problems. sometimes.

I wish I could solve other people's problems. sometimes.

I am thankful I can't. Because I am confident HE can. and I know He is the answer to all problems.

it sounds so corny and obvious. even to me and I'm the one typing this. but I need to hear these words. to fight them out. to pound them in. to study them. to meditate on the simplicity.

I try to avoid the obvious simple things. it's my defence against being the same as other people. but it's all in my head. I can be, think and study anything I want. I am justified by grace alone, and grace comes from God alone.

Praise be to God.

boys a're weiwd

i think i've written a post with that title before but the facts still remain. Boys are weeeeird. Never mind. It's too complicated to explain. As usual.

...

It's hard to see yourself under the glare of guilt and shame.
that is how I have been feeling and seeing myself today.

I came around the corner to the chapel of my heart and saw myself worshiping an idol. I was kneeling on the hard dirty floor facing away from the alter and it took me a minute to figure out what was happening. The posture was easily recognizable but three things were wrong: the room was dark when it normally is illuminated by grace, my body was facing the darkest corner instead of joining into communion, and my heart beat was an irregular rhythm and pattern. I could feel the tumult of unrest and pain hit me like a wall as I reached out to brush the matted hair of my own image off the shoulder of the kneeling me. And as I touched her, me, I wanted to scream. She, I was barely alive. Starving and cold as the clay on the bottom of a creek.

But life reflected onto us from the alter behind us. And even from the moment I saw her, me. the life was joining us together. I would have been truly dead if I couldn't see her. If myself had entered the room unaware of her, me, I would have heard the strange whisperings in the dark corner and my own body would have shriveled into the skeletal creature with hands out stretched clawing at the sand that had seemed to be the one thing. But the light of the alter reached my eyes before I could see anything else in the room and that momentary blindness, that glint of the eye, gave me a moment of peace in which I could see. and that glimpse, of the worst of me, stretched out, grasping in terror, with her eyes, my eyes rolling back in her head, my head. That image, contrasted so starkly against the soft light, that I couldn't look at her for long before I was compelled to turn away,  my back to the dark horrid corner and my face to the clean air around the lit end of the room. It was all so terrible. It was all so horrid.

To look at that light and know what was sitting behind me. To know I was there. I was. She was.

That is what is making me sick these days. Not the sorrow of serving or missing the idol, but the disgust and horror of having served. That aspect of who I am is there. Now perfectly redeemed but the working out is hard. And I need to let the Light overwhelm and stain backwards over the darkness.

The light of the alter bends. tat is why you can tell it isn't normal light. somehow there can't be shadows in this Light. It's hard to notice at first because we don't look for shadows very often, they are the negative version of the object. But the Light I saw could reach around me and flood between the black corner and my sorrowful form. Gradually reaching into every crack and crease of the broken form collapsed on the floor behind me. Until she too, me also, both of us were soaked through. Drenched completely. Powerfully submerged.

Undeniable salvation.

I hate it.

FOMO and being left out are two of  the worst things that plague me. I hate both of them because they are lies and false but I still feel them. And I hate feeling things I don't believe in or agree with. I hate when my heart over rules my head.

I don't want to be a person who leaves others out. I don't want them to feel excluded. I want to be a bringer together. I want to live in such a way that I find people who feel left out and draw them in and out of themselves.

I like coffee shops and hospitality. I like talking to and meeting new people. I like praying for people. I love being a hub.