Lamar Howell's Weblog

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You are beautiful, O God

above all artistry or design

You are décor never before imagined, spendidly alone

You were – before anything else was known

outlasting every thing or being or ideal

More than real, more than alive

beyond any picture or symbol, color,

sound or sight.

You eclipse all light.

Undefined by any wavelength of any extreme

you blow away the spectrum.

You outweigh all gravity

bear up every weight

fill every micron of space

hold all in one place—

palming the universe.

Yet, you painstakingly

watch out for your own, you care,

Aware of our pitiable states and woes

You interpose, intervene

Weaving random strands of broken dreams

into seams of amazing art

You can thread through

the tiniest needle of the most feeble will,

to make new the shreds of lives frayed, hearts torn apart

But that’s not what makes you so loveable:

You wade through our stench

bear up under our crudeness

filter away our hypocrisies

dig through our clay and bedrock mule-headedness—

all with one intent:

to find your divine imprint,

your deposit of treasure,

your aroma of resurrected soul,

to refine, then hold

against your breast and breathe

‘This is mine, all mine.’

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You touch me with the tip of some celestial artist’s brush

The scent of something sweet sits  in the air

You hush me on my lips like wings when fiery angels rush

While tears pool at your feet and drench my hair

I’m dumbstruck like a concert fan who wants an autograph,

You strum my senses, I suppress a sob inside a laugh

Now I’m alone, with an eternity inside a breath

When, suddenly – you’re gone,

I’m left with just a yearning and a lesser fear of death.

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Revelation Four Revisited

I looked, and saw in heaven an open door

I heard a voice – I’d heard once before –

It sounded a piercing trumpet blast

saying “Come up here and learn

what will come to pass.”

Instantly I was in the Spirit

gazing at a throne and Him sitting on it.

More brilliant than a gemstone

of transparent quartz, called jasper

and carnelian, a flesh-tinted jewel with a wax luster.

A radiant emerald-like glow

arcked him like a rainbow

Twenty-four thrones surrounded him

and twenty-four elders sat upon them

in white garments from the neck down,

a gilded crown on each head

From that royal seat lightning flared

Thunder claps split the air.

Facing this throne in heaven

were lampstands, aflame –

Seven of them all told – named for

The seven-fold Spirit of God

Spread before this One was a sea, like glass,

and in the middle of the throne

and encompassing it

four creatures, fully alive,

replete from front to back with eyes

One like a lion, another like a calf

The third – regal – with the face of a man

The last like an eagle with full wingspan

Each of the four living beings

Had three pairs of massive wings

which hosted an army of eyes

They were seraphim, which took no respite

Respected neither day nor night

All the while they cry

“Holy, Most Holy, and Holier still

Is Jehovah Adonai.”

Once the living creatures had given tribute and acclaim

even pageantry to Him who sits in heaven

To the ever-living, enduring One,

The elders got up from their places

Collapsed, faces prone before him

Pressed to the crystalline floor

Before His unrivaled throne

and worshiped Him,

who alone exists in perpetuity, time without end

Then, hurling down their crowns at his feet, said

“You, Lord are solely deserving

of eulogies unending, homage unmatched

and supremacy unchallengeable

For you hand-crafted the entire universe, all this

And by your will and for your exquisite pleasure,

it exists.

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The Mockingbird will sing for countless hours

his stage a wire a pole a nest a tower

He tells the world all sounds he’s ever heard

And leaves the listener to fill with words

His acapella repertoire of power

He’s something of  a crier on a hill

His news is never noisy never shrill

He brings his audience a melody

From nature or man’s machinery

Its whistles, hums and jingles, warbling trills

He acts like they’re the sounds we’ve never known

But not for gossip not for show alone

He sings like they’re original creations

Like he’s the bard of aviary nation

His song continues when his strength is gone

He sings like it his job, until he stops

He sings when he is silent till he drops

He sings like it’s his part to tell his story

He sings until he stops for Lori

The Mockingbird, original, yet not.

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I  must spend half my free time looking for houses and property in North Carolina. I dream of the life I might have had if we had moved there in 2016. But, that life is a mirage, appearing now and again to a thirsty soul. I drink water, but the mirage remains. “Two roads converged in a yellow wood, and I looked down one as far as I could to where it disappeared in the undergrowth.”(Robert Frost). My eyes keep straining down that path, I wonder what friends and faces it would have brought. What satisfaction I might have had teaching again, being needed again, having my siblings near me again.

I want a piece of land. A place to wander. A crying spot. A place to reflect while I break small sticks into fragments. Dirt to filter through my fingers. My ‘Trip to Bountiful,’ so to speak. A place for hymn-singing, and humming with the accompaniment of insects buzzing.

A life without brothers and sisters around . . .  It breeds a loneliness that perhaps people with small families never feel. There are slots in the soul, carved out like paper doll spaces. Some boy shapes, some girl shapes. Empty spaces which emit a hollow cry now and again. A longing to connect to a natural relation, a blood line that is never broken. Sure, we’ve had disagreements and disappointments, failures and forgiveness. I know the chain of complex connections has been rerouted and re-welded time and again, but the chain still clanks and jingles out a familiar sound: I’m here.

It’s no accident I was born into a big family. You can say we didn’t have electricity or TV but our lives were meant to be, and destined to mix. In some ways I’m looking back toward a more hopeful past than I am for building a brighter future. A cloudy sunset looks better in some ways than a clear sunrise. Why, I don’t know. Seems I can choose my past but others are choosing my future. Getting old means being set aside. Memories swell and hopes shrink. I’m just being honest. Without God, there would be despair. But I can never despair. Despite all my mistakes, regrets, angry outbursts, tears, and repairs, I can still have hope. I pray I will mean something to many people, and a great deal to a few. More than anything, I want my life to have meant something to my saving God, Jesus the man I want to be like at the end of the day.

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I went to an “all-church prayer meeting” at the end of the year. We didn’t pray though. We didn’t have to, because we had prayer representatives. We listened and nodded. Representative pray-ers.

When I was in high school we had an all-white student council, even though around 10 percent of our population was black.  The students complained and we ended up having a black representative on the student council and a black cheerleader.

But it wasn’t an easy seat to obtain that seat. They had to hold a sit-down in the student commons before we would listen, but listen we did. Henceforth, we had black representatives and black girls on the cheerleading squad.

But when she cheered, the black students all cheered; the white students all cheered too.

So, if we have to have a prayer representative, let them lead us in our cheering. Don’t let them cheer alone.

Anytime we let a representative pray for us, we are not really praying. It is called “thinking” if we are only listening and assenting.

Let’s lift our voices and pray together to God. We represent our selves, bare our own hearts, shed our own tears if it comes to that.

We aren’t gathered to listen to one person pray. We are gathered for God to hear all of us praying. Then, no one will be self conscious.

Huddle up, and all — cheer!

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I find an increasing number of Christians today who say there is no eternal torment, only extinguishment. I told one friend that if he believes that, other false doctrines will follow. And they have.

The first false doctrine to follow that error is in the immortality of the soul. It’s true that the Bible doesn’t say explicitly that the soul is immortal, but it strongly implies it. In fact everything in the Bible implies that the soul will live on, for good or for ill. The unique creation of mankind as opposed to animals, the Fall and blood sacrifice, the resurrection of Christ, the fact that people need a savior, and it goes on.  Redemption and heaven would mean very little if there is nothing to be redeemed from and no heavenly reward.

If these heretics believe that there is no immortality until we are raised from the dead, then how are we spiritually alive now in the new birth? The body is what is going to put on immortality, not the soul.

Other doctrines that will follow will be of the justice of God (How can a good God send people to hell?) which begs the question: is God perfect? Is he just? Actually, sending people to hell is the just thing to do. It will give people what they want — autonomy and godlessness. It verifies free will.

If God is perfect, then he must have a perfect hatred of sin.

Hell is not for the amount of sin, but for the type of sin: the rejection of salvation for the reward of self-government.

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