Lamar Howell's Weblog

I’m just saying that I don’t make mistakes

I don’t have faults or do blunders,

No bad habits or compulsive desires

No neuroses or idiosyncrases,

obsessions, fixations.

What I do though

is sin.

I sin because it is natural

and normal, just like it is for you.

We sin because we are sinners bent on sinning.

But provision for our sins was supernatural,

and our Savior was far above normal.

Let’s stop saying we’re just weak,

only human — the ‘Oops’ Factor.

Jesus didn’t die for our carelessness,

our oversights,

our emotional baggage,

our issues, our stuff.

He died for the sins of many,

and moreover, the many sins of the many,

and actually, all the sins of all.

He didn’t die to make us better;

He died because we can not be better.

There she stood,

short and dumpy

with her waist-long black tresses.

She always sat in front of the round mirror of the dresser

and wound her jet-black hair mysteriously around her head,

held there by a half-dozen aluminum wave-clamps.

I remember the day I  broke that familiar mirror

by throwing a pan of snap beans at my brother.

She never punished me for my rage,

except for the look of disappointment in her eyes.

Those brown eyes, sparkling

as they reflected a glint from the light

hitting her front teeth,

two of which were set in a border of gold

like two tiny picture frames around square ivory treasures.

She always came into the living room at night

wearing her calf-length flower-print cotton dresses

holding her Bible with both hands,

pressed securely against her rounded pouch.

She wore rows in her wrinkled telling brow,

each one a skin-carved diary of labored years.

We always made room in our line by the hearth

as she stood there to warm herself and sigh.

She worked hard for love of her brood,

and labored on till her legs slightly bowed out

below the knees when she walked,

and her kneecaps were calloused over

from the floor boards by her bed

where she knelt and prayed.

Her back was bowed slightly from reaching down at work

to pull spindles of yarn up onto the spinning machines.

One day, it was at that very mill that her heart bowed till it broke.

I just remembered, there’s a huge broken mirror in my garage

I need to clean up before I get cut.

There’s a small piece of mirror wedged in my heart too, and when I look at it

I see Mama.

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4310969/Jesus_Christ_verbs_etc

I come to Vrindivan

not to live, but to die.

My head is shaved,

my jewelry sold for rice

and a white sarape.

I am one of ten thousand widows here.

They say those who die in Vrindivan will not return

to live again and suffer.

I want this deliverance

Next to rice

it is my greatest desire.

I remember my old life in the village

I had my home and a husband

my mango tree

Ponds, all full of fish.

I had everything

Now, I am forgotten

But I have my dignity

I am worth a hundred of my relatives

I am happiness itself

Happiness is my other name.

O Lord, help me

Hare, Hare Krishna

What am I to do?

I must love you my God more than sin, more than secret lies, more than false relationships. Launch a probe into this mystery cloud of nebulous humanity that is me, neutralizing every signal of carnal energy emitting from the force of ego. Change my time-warped insides and make space for you. I open this dark lost ship to your search party. I’m sending out a beacon in this prayer, a homing signal to Abba, my God and friend.

. . . boarded, somewhere in the asteroid belt.

The bus stopped near the train station in Warsaw, Poland. As I struggled to carry my toddler son and an umbrella stroller while navigating through the exiting crowd, someone behind me slipped my wallet from my pocket. My credit cards, license, cash– all gone.   We went into the train station with only a US quarter to our name. I had to go to the restroom but had no money to use the sink to wash my hands.  I was breathing in trust, breathing out hope.  As I was leaving the bathroom I saw a metal bucket on the floor, catching drips from a leak in an overhead pipe. I stopped to stick my hands under the transparent living flow–falling in freeze-frames from heaven–and looked up just in time to see the Holy Spirit do that slo-mo swan-dive.

No one I know was born today, none met their fate. No war started nor any treaty signed. No one sworn into an office or invented or created a thing–that I know of.

But today marks a place in time and in my personal history where I stopped. To listen to God. To contemplate the highest good and deepest truth, the purest speech from the most assured source–and weakly ask for change, to be awakened to it all, or to any worthy part, a kernel to plant in my heart. A stirring, a blowing, a brush of His finger across the brow of my soul.

I wish I could be real, for once, completely and irreversibly bare and naked and childlike–and totally longing before my God. Christ was stripped, poured out, abandoned for me, but . . . for my pitiable safe, cool response?

Save me! If I were crucified beside him, would I then feel, and understand? If all I could say is “remember me,” could I say it with a crushed heart? Why, my dearest God, can’t I?

Sometimes I dont have energy. Im too tired to put in apostrophesandsometimespushthespacebar.

I feel like a deflated balloon, pflupflupfwtruuuulllllpluhoop. Augh, I must put the lid back on the jars i opened, push my shoes up under the bed, change from my Sunday khakis into my summer shorts. I’m too tired to eat a chip, so I let it turn to mush on my tongue. Maybe it’s not me, it’s the heat. It’s 104 in Texas today. What’s 4 more than 100? Phhffft! I can take it. When it gets so hot, you’re conscious of every move, every turn of the head, every labored breath.  The grass is dying here. I remember a phenomenon called rain? The heavenly stuff that can form beads on my car and glasses. No wind, no air, it’s a vacuum here. My Kia is sunburnt and peeling, the grass turns a strange aqua color before dying, the irrigation system spurts and gasps, afraid to expose their sprinkler heads. They used to go ‘chk-chk-chk-chk-chk-chk-ckk-fdrrrrr-fdrrrrrr-fdrrrrrrr-chk-chk-chk. Now they just go flp-fl-f.