I am pleased to announce that my short story Power was released this week in Issue 25 of the Ginosko Literary Journal. (For those of you who may be more inclined to listen to the story, I’ve also prepared an audio recording that you can stream or download.) This is a story about honesty, vulnerability and authenticity–qualities lacking in so much of the content that bombards us today. The images we encounter are cultivated with […]
I have come to an important realization I think. And it’s not to say that I didn’t sort of know this already, but there’s a difference in knowing something and really knowing it. We’ve all seen these dichotomies: the zone defense or man-to-man, materialism or spiritualism, unrestrained capitalism or comprehensive socialism, cardio or strength training, STEM or liberal arts, the Right or the Left… And we all have at least one or two thoughts on […]
Once I asked Hafiz what it was like to be God and Hafiz told me one night when he should have been sleeping he asked himself the very same question and when he imagined what it was like to be God he discovered God was imagining what it was like to be Hafiz. A psychic tremor occurred in the air of his breath like when you know your mother is calling right before the phone […]
Hafiz with a pick axe. A coil of rope laid over his shoulder. This is a rare sight. He’s standing in a flood of holographic daylight which doesn’t cast any shadows whatsoever because somehow in my living room the light of three majestic stars has intersected, and I swear we only ever had one star in the area capable of this when I was growing up. Behind him a few angels are stretching out in […]
I’ll keep the post here short since I’m providing a link to a short article I wrote in response to the election for a newsletter named “The Embrace,” which is circulated by the publisher of A Course of Love. I do think it is hard to understand the overall implications of what is happening in this election, and the world at large, and my sense is there is a great deal here that is not […]
Our pain is bound up in our memories. We don’t see what’s in front of us, we just see strange reenactments of our past. It’s not really our past even, just the things we concluded from our past. Our conclusions travel with us wherever we go. This is what Jesus calls learning. It’s our loyalty to all the stuff we made up. We keep these little statues woven to the inside of our coats to remind […]
It’s that time again here in the US. I’m increasingly confronted by discussions of politics. They’re coming into the home, the office, the car. Through the heating system, the mail slot, and the grocery bags. And why not? We’re saturated by it right now. The incredible hype of the hero and the villain, the opportunity and the impasse, the failures and the victories. The righteous, the confused, the willing, and the maligned. The pasts, the […]
“There are these moments, Hafiz, when it feels like Life called a thirty-second time-out or something. Do you know what I mean? Like when you’re getting ready for work, and you’re five minutes too early. Or you show up to the store, but it’s not open for another couple minutes. What are you going to do with five empty minutes?” Hafiz and I were drift-hopping through the moon’s first arboretum like tired helium balloons caught in […]
There are things we say sometimes to make a point– sweeping recapitulations of history, or statements of what is so in this world– and when we invoke them we do so as if they are self-evident. Obvious to those who would see. It is easy to forget how deeply we occupy our own lives and perspectives, and we can lose sight of the fact that what seems unmistakable to us is but the flowering of […]
Why am I carrying this barbed piece of steel around with me? Because it hurt when it was dropped into my open palms? And now I want to repay the favor should the world present me with such an opportunity? There’s no such thing as even-steven in this world, but there is holiness. There are rivers wide as ball fields that dredge bald tires and old box springs off the bottom and carry them off to the […]
Embracing Forever 