Lonely Moon

Another Mark Heard favorite.

Our world doesn’t offer hope, despite what they say. Without a God who is ever present, I think this would describe me. I am thankful that I am not an “orphan,” living “by the light of the lonely moon.”

LONELY MOON
by Mark Heard.

Was a child and a newcomer to the ways of the world
Eyes ablaze with the light of high noon
Just to love and to be loved was all he wanted
By the light of the lonely moon

They taught him to capture and tame wild pathos
Sold him distractions and made every day seem the same
Caught the Holy Ghost lurking in his cellar and threw Him out
Leaving just a lonely name

Soon they took everything that he lived for
So he asked them to please take his life too
They denied him existence but they let him live
In a lonely room

He would suckle at the bosom of Mother Earth
But his experience poisons that thought
He falls prey somehow
To the silence of the deep-space dark
Of this lonely blue rock

Now his path is lit only by the light of falling stars
The embers fall to scorch and cut his face
He wants to believe in his unbelief
In a lonely place

But they buried his conscience
Near to the grave of God
Sealed his soul up in a tomb of tears
And they scattered his ashes East of Eden someplace
On a lonely breeze

Was a child and a newcomer to the ways of the world
Eyes ablaze with the light of high noon
Just to love and to be loved was all he needed
By the light of the lonely moon
By the light of the lonely moon

Everyday Freight

Just listening to this song this morning. I find Mark Heard‘s songs so relevant to this season of my life.

These lines describe how I feel this morning.

“Ever try to carry water in a basket
Ever try to carry fire in your hand
Ever try to take on the weight of the everyday freight
Til you find that you’re too weak to stand”

from Mark Heard‘s song Rise from the Ruins from the album Dry Bones Dance

Ode to an Orphan

In commenting on the 20th century Malcolm Muggeridge said, “If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Heffner.” My premise is that Anna Nicole Smith was the epitome of an Orphan of God; living in a culture that has shaken it’s fist at an Almighty God. It’s tragic . . . I agree with Mike, from Mike’s Blog.

“Here is a woman who was filthy rich. Her net worth was somewhere around 400 million, yet she still couldn’t get away from the pain in her life. She turned to drugs, materialism, escapism, and other isms’s to find comfort for her wounded soul. Anna Nicole is a metaphor of the psyche of many in America today: we are desperately seeking to be loved and accepted yet frustrated when we discover that money, wealth and power aren’t enough.”

Anna Nicole had everything that we are being sold. There has got to be more!

I like Diana Butler Bass‘s comments from God’s Politics:
“But lack of respect does not create stable identity – as was obvious with Anna Nicole’s problems with illness, depression, and drugs. Both justice and peace proved elusive. In her final interview, she told the reporter that everyone she knew had “stolen a piece” of her. She died alone in a casino hotel, with her final taped conversation a tortured reflection of the confident sexual icon she attempted to be.”

It’s tragic and it reminds me of Mark Heard’ssong, “Orphans of God” which I quoted in my first post:

“But they have packaged our virtue in cellulose dreams
And sold us the remnants ’til our pockets are clean
‘Til our hopes fall ’round our feet
Like the dust and dead leaves
And we end up looking like what we believe”
from Mark Heard’s song Orphans of God

So, here’s to an “orphan” of our age who was born Vickie Lynn Hogan and died Anna Nicole Smith.

May the God Who is There save us from ourselves.

Believing in Yourself

From Permanent Things:

 

“Believe, amid whatever madness or moral failure, that your life and temperament have some object on earth. Believe that you have something to give the world which cannot otherwise be given.”

G. K. Chesterton, (“Philosophy of Browning,” Robert Browning)

To New Friends . . .

I am thankful for new friends. Here’s C.S. Lewis on the birth of friendship.

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one!’”

C. S. Lewis

I am thankful for the opportunity that we have had to enter into closer friendship.

And I like this one too, that friendship is on a par with philosophy or art, it’s what makes life worthwhile.

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”

C. S. Lewis

Thanks, Friends!

Go the Other Way

I wonder what Robert Frosts poem would have been like if there had been a sign like this?

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20

. . . it’s love writing this story

I come back to this song often. I was listening to it this evening in the car. It’s a nice word picture of the sovreign hand of God, through hurts and challenges. I believe what the song says, but I can’t always see it. O, why can’t I see the hand of love mixing the mortar and stacking the stones? I guess the mixing and stacking isn’t a pleasant process.

Show The Way
from the album Live Songs and Stories

You say you see no hope, you say you see no reason
We should dream that the world would ever change
You’re saying love is foolish to believe
‘Cause there’ll always be some crazy with an Army or a Knife
To wake you from your day dream, put the fear back in your life…

Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify
What’s stronger than hate, would they not arrange the stage
To look as if the hero came too late he’s almost in defeat
It’s looking like the Evil side will win, so on the Edge
Of every seat, from the moment that the whole thing begins

It is…

Love who mixed the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we’re alone
In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote the play…
For in this darkness love can show the way

So now the stage is set. Feel you own heart beating
In your chest. This life’s not over yet.
so we get up on our feet and do our best. We play against the
Fear. We play against the reasons not to try
We’re playing for the tears burning in the happy angel’s eyes

For it’s…

© David Wilcox, all rights reserved

Sand Paper Eyes

I love the word pictures in this song.

Today, I am particularly feeling “these sandpaper eyes and the way they rub the luster from what is seen.”

O, that I might see a glimpse of your glory!

“WORRY TOO MUCH”
by Mark Heard.

It’s the demolition derby
It’s the sport of the hunt
Proud tribe in full war-dance
It’s the slow smile that the bully gives the runt
It’s the force of inertia
It’s the lack of constraint
It’s the children out playing in the rock garden
All dolled-up in black hats and war paint

Sometimes it feels like bars of steel
I cannot bend with my hands
Oh-I worry too much
Somebody told me that I worry too much

It’s these sandpaper eyes
It’s the way they rub the lustre from what is seen
It’s the way we tell ourselves that all these things are normal
Till we can’t remember what we mean
It’s the flicker of our flames
It’s the friction born of living
It’s the way we beat a hot retreat
And heave our smoking guns into the river

Sometimes it feels like bars of steel
I cannot bend with my hands
Oh-I worry too much
Somebody told me that I worry too much

It’s the quick-step march of history
The vanity of nations
It’s the way there’ll be no muffled drums
To mark the passage of my generation
It’s the children of my children
It’s the lambs born in innocence
It’s wondering if the good I know
Will last to be seen by the eyes of the little ones

Sometimes it feels like bars of steel
I cannot bend with my hands
Oh-I worry too much
Somebody told me that I worry too much

My Baby is “Pro-Choice”?

I wonder what she (the Baby) will choose?

“What we need are more pro-choice women like this to undermine their own position to help change the world’s view on abortion.”

Thanks to Lee Strong at Chesterton and Friends.