Giving a Shout Out

I've just picked up a book, one of my Sunday school classes is doing a study through it. And it is amazing...and the author has a beautiful way of turning a phrase and painting a picture. The hand of God is also in it...in the timing of when it came to me...and how and what will happen next will hopefully give Him joy and glory.

Anyhow, I felt compelled to put it up on my blog so my fellow friends and readers would have a chance to be intrigued and perchance go grab the book themselves, read it and we could discuss it in depth....something I like to do... :)

Chasing Daylight
Erwin Raphael McManus

ISBN 10: 0785281134
ISBN 13: 9780785281139

I've only just read chapter one....but even his acknowledgments were awesome. Here is a quote from the acknowledgments, "some moments are so big you cannot seize them by yourself...." and later, "...words cannot do justice to the level of gratitude I feel toward God who created us. What a gift He has given us. He created us to live, not simply to believe. To follow Him is to experience, to explore, to discover." Isn't that awesome?!
But in chapter one McManus talks about moments and I was enthralled...and I loved it. I have a feeling this book will be one that will be profound and amazing and if I could I'd buy everyone a copy and we'd sit and read it together...over cookies, and coffee or coke...and let the warmth of life flow between us all...all the roads we each have been on would converge in that room and what a beautiful vista that would be...and how awesome the stories we would tell as we shared and grew...and read a book together.

Sigh. If wishes were fishes we'd all need fins to swim in the ocean that would suddenly brim....or something like that...

Be well my friends and write soon. :)

Pieces Out Of Place

Sculpture: Leonardo Nierman, "Form In the Wind"

Pieces Out of Place

a shoe lay in the road today

dead center to the dashed line

my car sailed right over it

keeping me on course,

to work,

my mind collided into

the black worn canvas and white speckledly tattered laces

abandoned in a place

it shouldn't have been, the former occupant

long since gone, shoe forgotten,

yet I am bruised by the impact

still caught up,

intertwined by the displacement

woven close by

another discrepancy looms

like childhood dreams

in an adult life

when fancies should have been

packed up, and relegated to the closet

where the old toys now retire

instead of dead center

on the road of life

now presenting a choice

to roll over it

and continue

or to take it up

make it part of the journey

daring to believe

the capacity exists for one more shoe

distillation in process

a patient excercise of time

questions outside of classrooms

rarely have single answers

valued at the judgements

right or wrong

yet the precedent is set

how do we choose

when the lesson seems

to center on choice itself

when the freedom

within us is simply that itself

daily it is done though

as inconsequetial as driving over a displaced shoe,

only when the need arises

and we become the one limping

do we hunger for the balance

of two shoes on our feet as we walk,

hunger for the protection

of a little rubber and some canvas

against the roads of life

and the length of the journeys

to be traversed

juxtaposition stands before us,

simply another fork in the road,

as it were,

yet sometimes there exists more matter

more depth than that

and I find myself

in pieces,

searching for the other parts

as I journey home

discovering which hues match

the sections of me already in place

and where the occurance of

contrast and light

most strike...

even myself---

discovery and rediscovery revealing

the dichotomy of me

a piece out of place

in a place that is the only peace I've known

tangibly

but that isn't my sole reality

and I hunger for more

contact with Truth

to be moved more fully

by what seemingly is

a piece out of place...

a shoe in the road

and a choice I must make

The Perfect Word

The Perfect Word....ever give it a thought? Well I have. For instance...the title of my blogland home...I gave it a great deal of thought, I went on a quest...it is no small thing to name something.

For instance Hubert Humphrey went down as saying, "In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be." But who really wants to take the words of a politician? (No offense intended to the honest ones that may exist....)

Names are important, there are books upon books filled with possible baby names...and names are debated amongst potential mothers and potential fathers...some people have names already picked out should they bear children and will freely tell you of them...others will only tell you after the child is born, for many reasons...chief among them once the child is named who would dare afront the parents by scoffing, or ribaldly sneering at the choice of names...once the name is there it becomes the audience's job to make it fit n'cest pas? However, I'm off target and am on a tangent rather...

Tangents can be pleasant, as I feel this whole blog to be...a tangent...or rather a commemoration of the funny realities of life...or at least, upon occassion, my life.

I went searching for this perfect word for my blogland home, something that would encapsulate the place, and my purposes for it...and I remember turning to Latin...but it didn't fit...wrong language for my hopes...so I went instead to Italian. But I've always loved words...loved how they can be the bridges of communication, the absolutions, the balms, the elixirs of joy, the boldness of a moment summarized...the expressions however varied of what we see and what we feel.

Franz Kafka was able to more fully capture how words can thrill me or fill me with dread and why sometimes I find it very important to find the right one or right ones...and how it is a process, not an instantaneous occurance though sometimes I'm blessed by such inspiration. Anyhow, here is what Kafka would say of names of words, "Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come."

So this blogland home and its naming was one of those moments for me...I searched for a way to summon and encapsulate my hopes for what it would be, a snapshot or a picture, a verbal pixellation, Rivelare, was the name, the word I found. Italian in origin, it means, and I apologize if my definition is sparse or slightly off to the native Italian speakers...all I can say in my defense is that on the computer and with a dictionary is where I found it, if you know the fullness of the meaning feel free to enlighten me. Again I am diverting...

E.M. Forester pointed out more succinctly that words have two functions, information and creation.

Rivelare...the informative definition, paraphrased would be: to reveal, uncover, make known, to show, to allow to be seen, to unfold. And in essence that it what I'd hope to create...a place where I take a risk, and share my thoughts, in an unguarded fashion...to allow myself and my random inspirations to be seen, my griefs, my joys, my whatevers...since by nature I am a very private and cautious person...this was a bold declaration--a motto...a carpe diem of pen and page and wit and words...and pictures...

Now if my internet could stay in a functional capacity and be what it should I'd be closer to achieving it and less likely to forget my brilliance, my ephipanies, my definitions or my words...

Perfection then becomes a process, a discovery and a rediscovery...like a poem or a painting that you need to drink from again and again, and still find at the end...a comfort, that it to fit, momentarily...it to be divine, to walk away and know it was right, not distilled by time or absence.