i awake to the thundering of the sky,
flashes of light that shimmer in the sky,
and the sound of rain pouring down.

on rainy days it's hard to see and feel
that the sun shines above the skies,
behind the dreary darkness.
It's hard to remember that the rain feeds the earth
and helps things grow.

Most of my life I avoided the sadness that
I feel on stormy days, but today underneath
the sadness I can also feel a sense of excitement
for the storm to wash away the wreckage of my life
to help my heart's soil be renewed.

mystery abounds
when I embrace love

the sad little boy lost in himself
who was so afraid to love is now
growing into a man, and soon will
welcome a little boy or girl into the world

I am lost for words for love filling my heart
with gratitude for some power greater than me
that helped me to stay alive when I was doing
everything possible to end my life

If you are where I was,
lost in the darkness of my own mind,
please don't give up hope.
If someone like me can discover love and hope
with each day than you can too.  

Life is a great mystery to be experienced,
so we can share it with others.

the wind greets me gently
and i embrace its touch

my heart sings as I ride
into the unknown path

1.  Cultivate the garden of your soul
2.  Clear away the weeds by being honest
3. Stop playing God
4.  Ask for help, and find a community where you can be vulnerable.
5.  Find a safe space to grow, and where you can give and receive help.

I am sitting in front of a small coffee shop
listening to the birds chirp and smelling the rise
of cigarette smoke infiltrating my nostrils from
a barrista's hand.

random thoughts rise like smoke from my mind
as I sit and settle into myself and just take in
a everyday of this new city I arrived at last Wednesday.

The life of the urban jungle of D.C. seems far removed from
this sleepy quiet neighborhood.  No sirens every 30 minutes or sounds of construction in the distance.  

All this reflecting takes me further back and makes me muse about how I got from being an angry punk kid to now a 34 year old, who just bought a home with his wife and expecting a new baby.  I am grateful for everything that's been given to me, and especially for the ability to be grateful.

Maybe I don't really need to figure out how, but just here and now fully open to the present.

new breath
awakening from death

new life
embracing the now

"In the beginning was the Word..."

The voice of the Creator
awakened the universe into being,
a Word spoken out of nothing that
echoes in eternity.

A sound that collapses time and place
and brings forth the Word to echo
infinitely through all the ages.

The Word chose to dwell among us
in the form of a vulnerable human being,
who was flesh and blood like me.

You and I share the imago dei, and
like the Word made flesh can yearn
for unity with the Creator.

The Word echoes in our flesh,
and reverberates through our hearts.

We encounter the Word knocking at our door,
when we welcome the stranger.  

May the sound of love echo through my soul into yours.
May these words speak life into mine and to yours till
the sound vibrates into a we.  

No longer separate and alone, but home.

time is an infinite stream of possibilities
may this blessing flow to you across time through love
I pray for you, the me of my past who struggled and
lost your way in depression.

May this blessing find you across time to you, from me the you of the future, to the 26 year old that I was in a moment in time,
where I was lost.

May you find your way out of despair and hopelessness, and
may you find the courage to set the radio outside of the filled
bathtub.  I know suicide seems the only way out, but you have
so much to live for. I am you of the future, as I speak to you of my past.  

May my love and hope travel across time to help you find joy in that little moment, where you turned on the radio to make sure power was flowing before you electrocuted yourself.  But in that tiny moment, reggae music blasted through the speakers bringing a spark of joy and rhythm into a dark moment, where you could not distinguish from the true and false.

May you find the wisdom to know that your pain will not last forever and all wounds heal with time, even heartbreaks.  I know, because I am in this very present moment the future self of you.  I know that your present feels bleak and each day feels more painful and pointless than the day before.  It feels like the whole world is against you and people who are supposed to love you only judge you and ridicule you.  Somehow it feels like who you are is not enough and you are sick and tired of feeling this way.

May my love and hope travel across time.  Love is infinite and collapses the space that separates us.  May my blessing find you
through this dark moment and many to come, so you may know
and experience joys, sadness, and full specturum of emotions
with an open heart.  You will someday embrace pain as one of your greatest teachers, because it has lead you to the other great teacher of life, love.  May you have the courage to really live, so you may face death, another great teacher.  May you live and die with love, and not with fear and hatred in your heart.

May this blessing travel across time in that infinite place in your heart, where hope will rise out of the heavy despair that is pulling you down to depths of pain that goes deeper and deeper.  Somehow, pain upon pain becomes comforting, and you begin to be trapped in yourself.  All you can see is this moment.

May my prayer and blessing find you and guide you to a future you cannot imagine in your present, but you would not want to miss.  Thank you, I love you.  I'm sorry for ways I failed you.  Please forgive me.  

May this blessing of hope and love find you across time and space to bring you home, so you and I can live in that infinite space of love in our hearts, where we are connected to life flowing through and in us.  May you find your way to me, to the now that is always being created.

my heart filled
with gratitude

I am overflowing
with Love

Life seemed so
dreadfully pointless

And now everything
comes alive

still here
on this cushion
when all my thoughts
tell me to run

as my mind tightens
I breathe more deeply
my shoulders drop
and my breath, body, and mind
slowly fall into rhythm

being still and connecting to a God
I do not understand,
but love with my heart
feels so difficult,
and yet sometime it feels as
natural as eating pie with ice cream.

I long to be engulfed
by your warm embrace

Breathe your breath into me
let my heart beat in time
to *yours

I cried out in the darkness
in a hopeless sate of mind and body.

I asked You for help,
some power greater than me,
because my way brought me to
the doors of death.

I had yet to experience You,
but I had hope that others were experiencing
a life free from self-hate and fear.

I  grateful I am free more each day
from the prison of my self.

I embrace the Divine Light
and it is soft and warm.

eyes so tired
sinking into oblivion
searching to find
*love

I wish I arrived at humility out of love,
minutes often I arrive at its doors
through the pain of humiliation.

My self righteous anger brought me
to this moment of the beauty of humility
as I cradle my bruised hand after punching a wall.

I am a human being that makes mistakes,
and the beauty of a spiritual life happens
through progress not perfection.

I am growing little by little,
and slowly breaking the cycle of violence
passed from my father, passed to him by his father...

I cannot spiritually grow alone and without help.
The beauty of humility is that I am not alone, and
I am neither the worst or the best.  I am human.

i awake to
rhythm of your breath
like the ocean ebbing and flowing

i am grateful I can awake to you,
the one I love. the one I promised
among friends and help of Divine assistance
to be faithful and loving as long as I shall live

my soul melts into the ocean
and becomes one.

I am not a machine with a full tank of gas
I am a human being with limits, and food is not just fuel.
I need nourishment of all sorts to be fully alive.

Sometimes all I see are empty eyes in this urban jungle
that I call home, even though my heart belongs in Appalachia.
I am a mountain boy away from my true home.

I long to feel the morning fog roll in,
and hear the songs of the cicadas.
I love seeing fireflies in the summer time,
and the feel of a summer rain coolin' my skin.

I am not a machine,
a thing to be valued merely based on
production and function.

I have value, because I have life coursing through me,
and I sing the song of the Creator in my soul.

"I don't know" was the most
honest answer I ever gave,
when asked why I sought oblivion in a bottle.

Today I know why, I have a "God sized hole" in me,
which makes me thirsty to fill it with anything or anyone.
But that hole can only be filled by a loving Power,
a God of my own understanding.

I am not sure what God's will for me is sometimes,
but it sure isn't drinking myself to death in a basement.

I don't know if I really helped someone today,
but all I could do was share my experience
and i feel a little more free and connected.

This great unknowing is taking root
and making room for me to grow.

the tides swell
and hearts quell

my body shakes in anticipation
of profund ecstasy of liberation
and not the emptiness of libations

the bright moon light keeps the revelers out
thirsting for soemthing they cannot name
in a drunken fanatic frenzy they shout
claiming a new change in life when they remain the same

the ocean waves crash
and so do my thoughts
an uncontrollable maelstrom that spreads like a rash
only to find peace in the still silence I've always sought

Finally I am home and I bask in the light of the full moon

I too was a reveled once howling at the moon
but now instead I drink in the spirit of life
I might have spoke too soon
because my heart still feels stife

Love*
I humbly bow to you
and promise to follow
your quiet whispers
to my heart

Where you lead
I will follow

i love you even when you are stressed,
when your lips purse into a pout

i love you even when you are sick,
and your body aches

i promise to make you tomato soup
and give you back massages

most of all,
I will remind you I love you
no matter how scared you are

I will keep reminding you
I love you with my being,
words and actions

O Beloved,
may my soul
trust in you.

May I walk through fear
with knowing that
You love me

Divine Prescnce, thank you for the gift of today.
My weary eyes see how much each moment is
filled with grace.  I am grateful that my friends
help me see how I have been holding onto fears
and resentments, to the point that life felt like
a burden.

I offer up myself to You.  Help me to be useful to You
and those that are still suffering.  Thank you for taking
away my fears and helping me see my part in the resentments
I held.  

I feel lighter and little more free today, so I offer this poem
of praise and gratitude.  Thank you for helping me glimpse
the reality of each moment being as a free gift offered out of love.  May I share this precious gift with others.  Amen.

an easy choice
but sometimes
so **** hard
to make

Who needs sleep,
when crazy thoughts
cozy up to me?

loss, grief, pain,
shame, and guilt
are warm faithful bedfellows

are we dead on arrival from birth?

our lives feel like such a burden even
as we receive life's great joys.

am I the only one that feels this way?

the light of the sun shines even when
my own perception creates clouds to
cover the light.

am I truly free or forever pulled back into a slow surrender of indifference?

my apathy has been breaking away, but sometimes it returns to cover me
in darkness.

will love set me free?

little gestures of Your love
carry me through the day

O Beloved,
may my life be an offering to You.

May my actions and thoughts be a prayer,
and may You pray in me.

Open the channels of my heart a little bit more
each day so I may experience You in a new way.

Help me to walk through fear with Your help,
and to reach out and help someone who is still
lost in fear as I was.

May my breath be an offering to You,
a prayer of gratitude for life flowing in me.

when it rains, are the heavens crying?
sometimes I think the land itself cries
for all the torturous ways in which
we destroy it.

I wish I could converse with the trees
and learn from their experience,
the wisdom of being rooted to a place.

rain drops fall to wash away ***** city streets:
blood, *****, spit, trash, and lingering pain
all wash down to the sewers.

all water return to the great ocean
and we, even urban dwellers,
return to the earth.

don't cry sky, we're all returning home.

being back home
is a bit strange

I'm a grown *** man
with my own child
on the way
But my father has a way
of making me feel like a
little boy

grateful I can see love
in his questions and concern
when in the past I only saw control

grateful for my momma's cookin'
and how it keeps on comin'

in the stillness
my restless mind
is cradled by
*Silence

some days even when
everything in my life is in a crescendo
a part of me feels numb

a small part of me is numb to all the love,
all the joys, all the sadness, all emotions
all I feel is this numbness that comes out of
"a deep emptiness"

I know I cannot fill this vast emptiness,
so I cry out to a something greater than myself,
eventhough I don't have a clue what that might be

I embrace my numbness and accept that
life cannot be lived in extreme highs and lows
I want to embrace stability and not reject it as boredom

But some days I just want crawl into bed and not wake up
I feel so numb, and I have to remind myself that
"feelings aren't facts."

So I get out of bed and go through the motions
hoping against hope that someday my "deep emptiness"
is filled with an abiding love that will fill me to wholeness

life is so good
yet I long for
*chaotic extremes

words of a restless soul
flow from gift of desperation
reaching out to infinite God
separated by space and time
united by all embracing *love

my body rejects milk
I wish it rejected
your lies

corrosion of the soul
happens slowly but surely
by crushing grind of monotony.

each day society tells me my
value is based on my function and production,
and little by little I am crushed by failing expectations
that are not my own.

my soul slowly corrodes into nothing, but
out of the vast emptiness, life emerges again.
I yearn to be free, and this time I bear my
wounds with honesty and dignity. I am
unashamed about my soul being free to be me.

I have value period, not based on function or production,
but simply because I have a spark of life within me.
a divine spark that gives brith to new life
within me each day, each moment.

dear little one
today me and your momma
heard your heart beats for the first time
164 beats per minute pulsating to pump
life into you.

I have yet to see your face, but I want you to know
I love you.  My heart beats to the rhythm of life like yours.
Thank you for coming into my life.

I awake from a dream of love,
a love that exists between
you and me.

The love born of daily commitment,
a tender word even when our muscles
ache and our hearts are heavy.

Our love is born from slumber,
a long forgotten time when we
walked in paradise connected to all of creation.

A love born out of suffering and shared experiences,
a love that grows from each day waking up to gaze
into each other's eyes.

I am grateful that our love is more than a dream: an echo of our subconscious memories
from our long forgotten past.

Our love is a reality
here and now.

the breeze whispers
sweet love songs
and lifts my soul.

utter futility of self righteous anger
wraps it's dark cloud around me.
my brain becomes foggy, and my
perception becomes distorted.

love feels like hate, and pain feels like freedom.
my fear leads to anger, which leads to a split
second choice where my fists punch a concrete
wall.

my hand explodes with pain that spreads to my arms
and then to my whole body.  the pain numbs my inner
pain and discomfort.  I want to be a spiritual person, but
sometimes I'm just a frail human being afraid to feel hurt,
so I numb myself with pain.  Utter insanity to try to escape
suffering by self-harm, but that's what happens sometimes.

I am left facing the wall cradling my hand.  I am left with a feeling of utter futility.  My own powerlessness over my
self destructive behavior leaves me humbeled and willing to ask for help.  God, help me let go. Help me not harm myself and others.  Help me feel emotional discomfort without resorting to
punching walls.  Help me be free.

O Beloved.
Wound me with tenderness
as I embrace Your living flame of love.

Burn away my fears and self-pity
that holds me back from being
consumed by the flames of Your love.

Ignite the hearth of my own heart,
so I may share Your living flame
with tenderness to spread the flame of divine life.

Melt away my insecurities and dishonesty, so
I can stand before You as a living flame burning
wildly to embrace everything as a gift from You.

everything                   illuminate
is                                   the
a gift                            darkness
freely                  ­         of my
given                            soul