maybe it's just 2 am, but this blows my mind:

“we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He Is.” 

why we will be like Him? because we'll actually see Him. praise His name forevermore. 

some notes regarding the cooking of pork

1. Father Capon deals not with the humble pork cutlet nor with its preparation in his otherwise magnificent book, Supper of the Lamb. This was revealed to me today, making me feel like I did the first time I realized that I could actually drink the entire Dr. Pepper can. There was, finally, a bottom to my pleasure. 

b.  Pork is wonderful barbecued. Or bbq'd. Or thrown onto a fire, smothered in a deep red sauce that smells like burnt wood and Jack Daniels. Perhaps the Lord didn't want Israel sacrificing pork because He knew it would be too much of a temptation for them not to actually let the pieces burn up on the alter. I doubt that was the actual reason, but I like it anyways. 

iii. If you ever barbecue pork, I recommend the following: Having well basted the meat in sauce, pepper, and salt, lay an apple (make sure it's a tart one - Pink Ladies work well) sideways on the cutting board, so that the stem is sideways. Cut through it, making circular rounds. You want them maybe 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. That way you give moisture to the pork without demanding too much of the poor apple. Cut these rounds in half, and nick out the harder core-esque bits. Drop those bad boys right on top of the pork whilst it chars. When you flip the pork the one time that will be necessary (any more and you're throwing away not only any possibility of being called a grill-master but also the juices the pork and apples try to hard to hoard against the flames) make sure that you put the apples back on top on the cooked side. 2 apples will top about 6 decently sized pieces of pork, or enough for 3 hungry bachelors. 

ad infinitum from berry

from jayber crow, again. 

The sermons, mostly, were preached on the same theme I had heard over and over at The Good Shepherd and Pigeonville: We must lay up treasures in Heaven and not be lured and seduced by this world’s pretty and tasty things that do not last but are like the flower that is cut down. The preachers were always young students from the seminary who wore, you might say, the mantle of power but not the mantle of knowledge. They wouldn’t stay long enough to know where they were, for one thing. Some were wise and some were foolish, but none, so far as Port William knew, was ever old. They seemed to have come from some Never-Never Land where the professionally devout were forever young. They were not going to school to learn where they were, let alone the pleasures and the pains of being there, or what ought to be said there. You couldn’t learn those things in a school. They went to school, apparently to learn to say over and over again, regardless of where they were, what had already been said too often. They learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works – although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself. 

What they didn’t see was that it is beautiful, and that some of the greatest beauties are the briefest. They had imagined the church, which is an organization, but not the world, which is an order and a mystery. To them, the church did not exist in the world where people earn their living and have their being, but rather in the world where they fear death and Hell, which is not much of a world. To them, the soul was something dark and musty, stuck away for later. In their brief passage through or over it, most of the young preachers knew Port William only as it theoretically was (“lost”) and as it theoretically might be (“saved”). And they wanted us all to do our part to spread the bad news to others who had not heard it – the Catholics, the Hindus, the Muslims, the Buddhists, and the others – or else they (and maybe we) would go to Hell. I did not believe it. They made me see how cut off I was. Even when I was sitting in the church, I was a man outside. 

In Port William, more than anyplace else I had been, this religion that scorned the beauty and goodness of this world was a puzzle to me. To begin with, I didn’t think anybody believed it. I still don’t think so. Those world-condemning sermons were preached to people who, on Sunday mornings, would be wearing their prettiest clothes. Even the old widows in their dark dresses would be pleasing to look at. By dressing up on the one day when most of them had leisure to do it, they signified their wish to present themselves to one another and to Heaven looking their best. The people who heard those sermons loved good crops, good gardens, good livestock and work animals and dogs; they loved flowers and the shade of tress, and laughter and music; some of them could make you a fair speech on the pleasures of a good drink of water or a patch of wild raspberries. While the wickedness of the flesh was preached from the pulpit, the young husbands and wives and the courting couples sat thigh to thigh, full of yearning and joy, and the old people thought of the beauty of the children. And when church was over they would go home to Heavenly dinners of fried chicken, it might be, and creamed new potatoes and creamed new peas and hot biscuits and butter and cherry pie and sweet milk and buttermilk. And the preacher and his family would always be invited to eat with somebody and they would always go, and the preacher, having just foresworn on behalf of everybody the joys of the flesh, would eat with unconsecrated relish. 

at length from berry

from jayber crow, by wendell berry

    Once I had imagined those things, there was no longer with me any question of what is called “belief.” It was not a “conversion” in the usual sense, as though I had been altogether out and now was altogether in. it was more as though I had been in a house and a storm had blow off the roof; I was more in the light than I had thought. And also, at night, of course, more in the dark. I had changed, and the sign of it was only that my own death now seemed to me by far the least important thing in my life. 

    What answer can human intelligence make to God’s love for the world? What answer, for that matter, can it make to our own love for the world? If a person loved the world – really loved it and forgave its wrongs and so might have his own wrongs forgiven – what would be next?

Count Hermann Keyserling once said truly that the greatest American superstition was belief in facts.

John Gunther

An optimist stays up to see the New Year in. A pessimist waits to make sure the old one leaves.

Bill Vaughan

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know.

 Ambrose Bierce

from the fall, directed by tarsem

repas frugal

by picasso. one of my favorite pieces of art from the modern period. absolutely love it. 

winter's blood

this is a quickly written work in progress. any suggestions are welcome. i just jotted it down this weekend and my brother Kanaan kind of liked it, so i figured it couldn't be all that bad. he's got some taste in such things. anyhow, as far as the last little triplet, i couldn't let it go by without giving props to Big Ty Antkowiak for telling me that Aslan is on the move while i shoveled snow early thursday morning. kinda made my day, and definitely made this poem. 

i am an undertaker, shoveling away the dead. 

our enemy, our lawless queen of ice and cold

is falling fast, and falling faster into the pit I dig. 

Her icy east wind cannot stop my work

our king has come, though he is not here yet, 

his breath melts the ice, his eyes warm the sun

i scrape away her minions' bones, i toss them 

under the saplings that eat them and grow strong. 

i stand ankle deep in my enemies' blood, 

and wonder if my hands will ever be warm again. 

the king will warm them when he comes, when he

drives away usurpers and warms us all again. 

i am a feeble man, i only shovel snow. weak in body, 

weak in mind, small in heart, and small in grace, 

yet such as i do contend with spirits, giants, 

drakes, and monsters and bury the Enemy Death. 

our King will come, has come, is now coming, 

and in His mouth a sword to strike down the evil one. 

these things i think when, while i shovel winter 

off the sidewalks, one of our giants picks me up,

and roars with joy that aslan is on the move.  

one of the greatest phrases i've ever read

soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells. 

from Robert Frost's poem Birches

the ocean

wrote this a few weeks ago. one of the big things i miss about home is the water. but that's not entirely what this poem is about. i tried to use the meter to convey some of the meaning, so if you get to the end of a line wondering why you want to keep talking that's why. it's also a little chiastic.

you know i always miss the ocean
on stormy days i miss its waves
and on the clear days too
cause three thousand miles are just
too many for my toes to trip
when we've just got a weekend.


i know the gut-punching sickness
that comes on darker nights
when i wake up and there you
aren't.
and how i've wished to weep
for now i know how it is to be alone


the slap of water in the sink,
any mirrored flash of light,
the frozen fountain in
-
the frozen square below
they all remind me of the ocean
and of the suns embrace


and loneliness loves to gnaw at my guts
its chewed all through my
heart
for you are gone so i'm not here;
pray God someday
that all of that will change


is this what earth feels like to heav'n
(now am i not absurd?)
but i say sometime in the sunlight
when on the highest crest of hills
when dancing with our life's true love
we long for what we do not know.

i'm the soul-less type

scribbled out. hardly edited. this is me raw, off the cuff, uncut. boom.


oh for a soul not brow-beaten
not dragged for miles behind a bandwagon,
a soul quiet and peace-full,
a soul that can weep at Mozart