Manger King

Who walked these streets where sinners lie broken and absorbed each curse and slander that was spoken?

Who ate and drank with silk-stocking thieves and wept with the widow as she bitterly grieved?

Who touched the untouchable, filled with disease and healed the eyes of the blind so his face they could see?

Who loved and lost and wrestled with doubt and anguished in sweat until blood came out?

Who was betrayed by a brother that he loved to the end and captured like a criminal, but committed no sin?

Who was beaten and tortured and put on display and mocked and spit on as they drug him away?

Who had nails drove through his hands and his feet and hung from a cross between two guilty thieves?

Who suffered and bled as his life slipped away and was placed in a cold dark tomb to stay?

Who descended into death and rose again in three days and walked the earth in victory from an empty grave?

Who ascended into power at the right hand of the father to begin, making all things new in him?

Who is coming again?

Who lifted our heads when darkness was all we could see and met us in flesh to set us free?

Who clothed us with righteousness and love so when the father looks upon us he sees his son?

Who is faithful and just to all who remain in the refuge of his holy name?

 

-VS

 

(Art= Swedish Painter: Marcus Larson 1825-1864)

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Embrace the human condition and choose to live within it rather than watching it from a distance. Be present and attentive and when someone is talking, listen. Don’t judge others based on your own limited perspective. This life is a collective. Every color and culture is beautiful as it is. Let the colors bleed together in this mosaic where we live. There is one race, one human species on this tiny earth. Each person with a history and heritage determined by birth. Every story needs heard. We’re all ghost writers in the book of time and space and fate. Will you use your pen for peace or stab holes through the pages in hate? Together we have more change to deliver than a government that keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. But the answer is not in the trigger, it’s in the pen. Make sure your pages aren’t empty when the story ends.

-Vagrant Saint

 

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” MLK

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” MLK

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” MLK

Citizens

We were young. Clean air in our lungs. Citizens of a purpose, a plan, a vision. The Spirit was poured over us and hovered above the earth. With every breath we took it filled us, and gave us worth. Power and comfort. Truth and love. Life and birth. Carefully sustained in the absence of pain, but still wild things. Free range, free will, unchained. Independence in a sovereign domain. We weren’t alone. The spirit of deception and accusation was in our midst, with clever curses on his lips. We tasted his kiss and experienced sin. In shame, we hid ourselves away, turning from our purpose we strayed into disdain. Cheap thrills and imitations unable to sustain the world that was put in place for us to exist. Now there are curses on our lips. Was the creator responsible for all of this? So we became our own gods and masters. Unleashing a torrent of brokenness and disaster. Kings and kingdoms. War and death will plague the earth until there’s nothing left. Lust and greed planted a seed that grew into a beast that feeds on the weak and in the midst of all of this grief…He speaks. He breathes peace. He gives dreams. In quiet places men begin to hear the voice of God calling them near. “Do not fear, for I am with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. There is truth and there is virtue. Follow me into my plan, my purpose, my promised land. From you will come another that will be both your king and your brother. He will lead you out of this hell you have uncovered. He will be your living hope. The word made flesh. In him you’ll find rest until all things return to me and the whole world will finally see the glory of the one true king!”

-Vagrant Saint

John 3:16-17

(Art= German Painter: Andreas Achenbach 1815-1910)

Peace Seeking Missile

As Christians, we believe that God manifested himself as our brother, born into this world through the person of Jesus Christ. Formed in the womb, fed and nurtured by a woman’s body. Delivered in the pain, beauty, anxiety, love and mess that is child birth. Traveling with young, new parents who were simply trying to survive. Narrowly escaping the clinches of a murderous tyrant. Exposed to the sorrow and joy of this wild and wicked world. Sickness and loss. Wind and rain. War and famine. Love and betrayal. Fear and death. Jesus, the embodiment of God’s nature and purpose for humanity. The true Word of God made flesh. The authority in heaven and on earth. The answer to the all of prophesies, dreams, fears, trials and errors of the ancient scriptures. We have received our revelation. We have been shown The Way. We have been shown our Resurrected King.

Why on earth are there so many “Christians” pledging their allegiance to some new manifestation of God that happens to look nothing like Jesus. A nationalist, militaristic, fear-fueled superpower ran by a maniacal billionaire. Peace by force. The literal antithesis of everything Jesus was about. Has God changed his mind on the whole Jesus thing? Called the whole plan of redemption through his radical loving-kindness thing off? Or have we created some kind of mutated offshoot of Christianity that has taken over the hearts and minds of so many well-intentioned people. Is our savior rejoicing as we grow our military superpower in his name? Are the triumphant horns blowing as we worship our wealth? Can we hear his mighty roar as we reduce our enemies to ash?

If ever there was a time to seek the path of our Merciful Savior, it is now. To seek the true nature of God as He has revealed to us in his son. To follow the countercultural way of Jesus. To pick up our crosses and not our guns. To feed the hungry, while those in power further oppress. To heal the sick, while those in power care only for themselves. To fear not, when those in power are building a kingdom of fear.

-Vagrant Saint

“Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness, and pride of power, and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear … Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now.”

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

(Art= Swedish Painter: Marcus Larson 1825-1864)

Psalms

Dawn breathed a fresh hue over the dark sky as the temperature dropped a couple of degrees in preparation for sunrise. Some days I wake with a heavy weight on my spirit, other days that weight is lifted, but this morning was different. Overwhelmingly grateful and surprisingly stable I rise from the table to examine this new angle. A ritualistic stray from my materialistic way. Into the mystic to stay. I’m planning my great escape. I’m not confined to this cave. The stone’s been rolled away. As needle meets vinyl and coffee fills cup, with eggs on iron my world wakes up. Fruit on table, in bed, and on vine. A sacred waste of time. As dew dries and birds harmonize, the sun loses its grip on the horizon and gets sucked up into the sky. This beautiful space is a slave to time. Existence like incense it’s gone in an instant:

Will your fragrance be psalms of worship or fumes from a war ship?

-Vagrant Saint

 

(Art= Swedish Painter: Marcus Larson 1825-1864)

 

On the Turning Away

On the turning away
From the pale and downtrodden
And the words they say
Which we won’t understand

“Don’t accept that what’s happening
Is just a case of others’ suffering
Or you’ll find that you’re joining in
The turning away”

It’s a sin that somehow
Light is changing to shadow
And casting it’s shroud
Over all we have known

Unaware how the ranks have grown
Driven on by a heart of stone
We could find that we’re all alone
In the dream of the proud

On the wings of the night
As the daytime is stirring
Where the speechless unite
In a silent accord

Using words you will find are strange
And mesmerized as they light the flame
Feel the new wind of change
On the wings of the night

No more turning away
From the weak and the weary
No more turning away
From the coldness inside

Just a world that we all must share
It’s not enough just to stand and stare
Is it only a dream that there’ll be
No more turning away?

-David Gilmour (Pink Floyd)

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and truth.  (1 John 3:16-18)

“Thank you for letting me borrow your jacket. It kept me warm in a cold place. Some people, no matter how much money they make, can’t get out of their own way.”

(Art= German Painter: Caspar David Friedrich 1774-1840)

Ash Wednesday

Thunder in the distance.

Thunder within us.

Burn the veil that blinds me.

Let ash fall all around me.

Loosen the ties that bind me.

Illuminate the shadows that hide me.

I’m on a blood trail.

I fired three arrows into the sky.

Where did they fall?

One in my third eye.

One in a wolf’s hide.

One in my pride.

I’m on a blood trail.

All colors and shapes unite.

Bring light to where they lie.

Send life before they die.

 

-Vagrant Saint (The spirit moves. Surrender to the giver.)

Wanderlust

With a gypsy soul the rebel rolls along the road that goes between sea and stone. Free to roam this land alone until he finds his home. The cold bones of winters tomb urged this heart to search for room. Room to run, to breathe, to move. Room and board where sea meets shore and waters roar to drown the sound of silence. Waves break with unrelenting violence to make way for peace. A cosmic sigh of relief. Reaching toward the sky with the trees he seeks release from the lie that forms a divide between he and birds and beasts.

He and you and me.

-Vagrant Saint

Age of Anxiety

What strange and desperate age is this? We who exploit our very existence to the eyes of all who gaze. What strange and desperate days. With our pocket gods and broken necks we consume and move. False relevance and artificial intelligence fuel our moods. Media masquerades crave constant attention, but silence breeds wisdom. Seclusion gives visions. Unplug from the system, at least for a couple of minutes. Listen, Everything is famous and instantaneous, nothing is dangerous and spontaneous. Consume until we’re brainless. Follow until we’re faithless. Awaiting the next facelift. Cosmetic injection to mask the neglect of vital organs on the other side of the transection. Are we blind to our self-inflicted transgression? Is there an antidote for this pestilent infection?

-Vagrant Saint

 

(Art= German Painter: Caspar David Friedrich 1774-1840)

 

World Walker

May my tongue be a brush and my language be paint. I will languish in anguish and angst ’til my way is made straight. I beg of thee, make me a vessel of verse, with wine for words, the arid pages will drink. My blood is ink. My flesh is paper. My mind a sparrow. My heart an anchor. My breath as burnt sage in these strange days. My life is but a vapor. My past a stranger. My future impending danger then rest. Suffocation then breath. Set my lantern aflame, offer refuge from rain and replace a stain with a stain. As I claw through the earth to grasp words that hold worth will these verses spit curses or give birth from the dirt?

-Vagrant Saint

 

(Art= German Painter: Caspar David Friedrich 1774-1840)