getting burned

i'd really love for this blog to be a space where i sit at my keyboard and spin fantastic webs of light. i'd love for my words to jump off the page and rattle around in some fellow's brain until they bust a hole in his ventromedial prefrontal cortex, short-circuiting his laissez-faire let-it-be morality, shaking him from his apathy, making him high with the possibility of some greater purpose. but i'm neither prophet nor poet. i'm the anti-dillard--i fill space with preposterous commentary, not meaningful echoes of the sublime. truth is a dreamy-eyed hermit who visits me in secret; she rummages through my cupboards, raids the fridge, and occasionally i catch sight of her coat as she runs through the backyard grass and into the trees. yes, these posts are mostly about grammar, sports, and cooking, but perhaps one day i'll stumble upon her yellow plastic hood bobbing in the rain. until then, i'll be that guy with a holeless brain.

(this itsy-bitsy paragraph was loosely inspired by two burned fingers, a few months of richard dahlstrom's preaching, the blue road, and the book of hebrews...i'd say more about that, but i only have one and a half hands to type.)

andrew david. "imagine these yahoos in christmas sweaters--are we sure we want to go caroling?" shekinah, saskatchewan.

our daily bread

i suck at devoting time to bible study. its such a big book that it seems a little like reading anna karenina* on steroids. if you're reading in bed, you constantly have to devise new ways of propping the book open -- it's tough. like the norton anthology of fill-in-the-blank literature, its not something you do for fun. i should, but i don't.

i want fiction.

i want poetic prose.

i want metaphors and suspense.

i love reading books that allude to biblical stories or that manage to convey biblical truth so subtley that our postmodern world passes right by the reference. as the kings of convenience say, this 'love comes like--surprise!--ice on the water' (my punctuation and out of context insertion, not theirs). that is, i'm often moved by these allusions, but i half think it's because they're unexpected, like blessings which i did not seek.

so, as pastor richard might say, that leaves me sucking slop at the mouth of the columbia. sure, i get some fine h2o here and there, but i also have to contend with chemicals, household waste, and 1,152 miles of unknown nastiness.

i think that moms have a 6th sense about these kinds of things, so mine shoved me toward the source. she sent me a free subscription to our daily bread, a poor, time-crunched, mainline protestant's version of the book of common prayer. so, like a dutifully bored and thirsty son, i've been using these daily devotionals. each entry includes a verse, a half-page of commentary that alternates between cheese and insight, and--drumroll please, here comes the real reason for this blog entry--a closing poem.

a few nights ago i was pleasantly pondering the application of paul's command to 'live peacably with all men,' perhaps i was even praying, when i came across the abcb rhyme scheme of the final four lines. maybe the devil was in that rhyme, because i was suddenly ripped from the realm of the spiritual into the charcoal sky of the literary gre. there i was thinking, 'what kind of stanza uses an abcb rhyme scheme?'

a ballad.

amen.

so, read your bibles little lasses and laddies and whatever you do, beware of the literature gre. it will warp your every perception, sidetrack your studies, and make your blog messy. remember, friends don't let friends gre.


andrew david 'a new kind of accomodation' puerto vallarta, mexico.

*from my perspective, tolstoy is 0/2. i disliked the death of ivan ilyich and i doubt i'm going to finish anna k.