Date: 1983
Thunder breaks the placid calm, etching the epics of divine passion on the surface of the day-to-day. I love the joy of expression and the imperturbable momentum of creative enterprise. It is a slow dull-witted pain of decay that I feel when I sit mesmerized at the television screen waiting for the next event in this endless line of programs & channels, images & ideas, lives and unlives. What is it beyond the conditioning that transfixes me there like the sailors and the Sirens that break them?
Give life! Again and again the song of songs inscribed on the peaks of mountains and the feet of infants, calls me back, reminding me that these pulsations of personal breath and blood are gifts to be treasured. Give me the cries of angels at the places where tired feet touch quicksand.
Comfort, in my frame of reference is a deadly disease, it is a contagious anemia of the soul that lingers too long beyond the languid summer life of lizards in the sun. I have been forming a seasonal reptilian crust that seems to become less removable with age. I am quickly coming to the conclusion that there is no happy medium between stress and laziness. Which is not to say that one’s alternative is to choose one or the other, both or moderation (which is only somebody’s watered down justification for existential malaise). No! There has to be more. The indicator of today’s wellbeing is the stress quotient. This is one-dimensional life analysis at its best.
What about servanthood, martyrdom, righteousness? Do we find our sense of fulfillment crystallize in the presence of these and company of like-nature. What of zeal, truth, sacrifice, and goodness? The work of a stone sculptor is arduous, stressful, and to those who quest for value, life-dominating. Driven men can be dangerous when others lie in their wake. But driven by what? “Zeal for Thy house will consume me…”
What does it mean to be faithful, obedient, serving? Is this to be done in moderation? “God, I can only go this far and no further.” Having a passion for God, will mean extravagant (costly) lives for those who dare. An artist’s passion for expression in his or her art can be an extension of this passion for God, and an incarnation of His passion for us. Art that penetrates, extends from a God who penetrates the darkness of our existence, the malaise of our regularity with His intimacy, His love, His creativeness, His concern, His passion, the unsearchable depths of His character.
Zeal… labor… recreation
Passion… perspiration… perspective
I yearn to emulate the crash of waves at the shores of divine connection. I live to cry the blood of God, deeper than aesthetics, older than steel.