a couple religious questions

What are the greatest injustices that currently exist in this world (both at home and abroad)?
How can we remedy those injustices?
Who are those in the greatest need (both at home and abroad)?
Who are those with the greatest power (both at home and abroad)?
How might the powerful empower those in need?
What are the cultural structures that are most oppressive and corrupt?
What are the most poisonous ideas in our culture that might infect our minds?
How can we cultivate holiness in our spirit?

To the Egotistical

The sin offends the sinner.

Deeper, Darker, Stronger, Wiser

I felt a flutter and called it love, a skip of the heart and named it amore.
She softened my calloused mind and pierced despair with good cheer.
I smiled and laughed and melted in her embrace, moved to tears even.
But I only called it love because I was told that’s what it was.

I thank my God for letting it pass, though I cried as I watched her go.
I still think on it in pain.
For though gladness is well desired and wisely enjoyed,
It is not in a smile or satisfied desire that love resides
but in the still, silent sobriety of joy which resurrects the dead, aligns the mind and ignites the spirit.

Even though her smile may spark a new flame, it can’t sustain.
I am wed to another by a deeper love; profound and dark, silent and strong, wise and mysterious.
The beauty of my Love is not in her pearly smile or penetrating eyes,
But this is her beauty: that her integrity is strong, built solidly upon the face of truth;
Upon such a foundation, I will establish my home.

Strength, Dignity and Hope

well, whether we choose to act upon our strength or not does not determine our strength, that determines our character. We, as human beings, always retain a potential strength capable of more than we imagine; a strength founded not in human glory but in an awareness of our dignity, that we represent something greater than ourselves. It is in that dignity that we find great joy, a joy that gives us hope and life.

Waiting

I am asleep awaiting to be awaken.
I am blind awaiting sight.
I am deaf awaiting sound.
I am numb awaiting touch.
I am weak awaiting strength.
I am dead awaiting resurrection.

Missio Dei

Close your eyes and gain vision.

Cultivate a self-controlled aggressiveness and non-violent militancy, an unconditional resilience, unto the humble passion of partnering with the Creator in a Living Creation – that this world might now be as it is not yet; that we would walk together in a psalm of brotherhood.

Within the brokenness of man, the divine light that was birthed on the first day will expand and exude from our humanity; for only through the humility of our spirit, understood in terms of a single-minded focus unto the principles that hold together the deepest chords of life, conjoined with a holy impregnation within our barren womb might we display the fullness of our dignity and give birth to a new creation.

There is a grandeur to our soul that is available today which will not be available even in paradise, so we await anxiously for the opportunity to discover brokenness and darkness that we might create wholeness and light – this is the Missio Dei, that we might join God in His divine drama to restore all of creation through creation, as He empowers his creation by becoming a part of creation itself and endowing his spirit unto us that we might, in turn, create, empower and restore.

The ever fleeting virtues of this age which we will not have with us in the next are the virtues of hope, courage, faith, forgiveness, charity and resilience; for these only exist in a world in need of new creation. We are a unique age of humanity which will not look the same as the next, but let us shine while we do live, let us create while we still breathe; unafraid of death, for we know that through death there is resurrection.

May we take the immensity of paradise in all its abstraction and practice it into reality. May we as humanity, flourish and achieve our dignity by connecting ourselves to the vine of the Holy Spirit, thereby being saturated with its virtue, setting our conscience at peace and thus protruding succulent fruit which emits a heavenly scent, giving tastes and hints of paradise wherever we go and with whomever we encounter, for it is between two people that the presence of God resides.

The Rustling Underneath

Beneath the surface my soul awaits,
The day my God’s Spirit awakes
A deep longing for an unknown dream;
Igniting a vision for things unseen.

From an armchair I sit and ruminate what’s right,
Preparing for the day I’m gonna stand up and fight,
From the darkness to light, from night into dawn,
Take my post, straighten up and strap my weapons on.

But Lord I need your voice, I need a push.
The motivation of vision and a burning bush;
To spark a word, which might spark a deed,
Which might find the hunger my hands can feed.

I feel the symptoms of this world but there’s more than pain,
I see the hatred between brothers, but it’s all a game.
Soldiers in the streets hating faces they don’t know,
Animosity escalating until the anger blows.

I feel soft, having been hidden behind the curtain,
Closed eyes and desensitized to the burdens
that cause the deeper hurtin, kick up the dirt ‘n
blind my eyes to the prejudice so certain in every home on my block.

Oh the bitter insanity that I know but don’t see,
In some ways blinded by my own Christianity
And paralyzed by my incessant vanity,
Studdering to walk in this opportunity
To create what we could be, a new humanity.

A dead man walking; no rest or peace,
Cursed to face west, back to the east.
But I pray, love’s rays raise from dawn one day
And seep into my skin and change my way.

Inspiration is the penetration of love’s concentration into my spirit’s cage,
But for me to speak words into this generation requires a wisdom conjoined with rage.
It requires a passion for a vision particular to this age.
One I don’t have due to the vanity in my mind backstage.

I feel like a soldier in the middle of a war,
Drunk and out of shape; forgetting what he’s fighting for.
But I hope, though fattened in wealth’s estate;
The education I’ve gotten will help improve the world’s fate.

My own brothers have left me in the trenches to die,
When they see me hurtin’ struggling to survive.
And I’m lost on enemy ground trying to find my way,
But whatever the cost, I’m bound to shine and say,
What’s on my mind, straight from the heart, come what may.

It’s a pretty face I know but there’s a rustling underneath,
Of paralysis and confusion, my soul a vast heath
A wasteland, but I do what I can with the God-given tools at hand,
So I stand and plan with a foundation of doubt
Not knowing if I’m ever going to figure this out.
But there’s no time to pout about childhood pain,
The curse of wealth and the game of shame,
Invoked by the jealous and prejudicial claim,
To justify killing the powerful, taking aim.
At the wealthiest kids without knowing their name,
Not caring who they are only from whence they came.

It’s hard for the wealthy to see,
You see, we can be lost to the world’s needs.
It’s easier for a camel to be through the eye of a needle
Than for a rich man to be free so heed all
This and help us be, I’m not looking for your sympathy,
I just need a guide in the midst of this life
To point me where the wars at, the appropriate strife,
To embolden my soul and empower the weak,
To begin to be the very change I want and seek.
But so long as I stay in this sheltered place,
I will never see my Lord’s shining face.
I’m more likely to find it, living on the streets
Then I am in the palaces of these wealthy elites.

I can only pray that I’m not as lost as I feel,
Puncturing the superficial and keeping it real.
I can only hope that this time of preparation
Is a time for me to set my foundation,
For the ensuing creation of a better nation,
Resisting temptation and walking in salvation.
And despite my frustration with this spiritual formation,
I got to keep my concentration on my education,
So that I can make it through to graduation, not for celebration,
But for the inauguration of my life’s vocation;
Bringing to this world a new realization,
Provoking conversation to settle our trepidation
Of who and what we don’t know through our discrimination
Based on association and racial affiliation,
But my orientation stems from my inclination
To be the personification of Christ’s love and creation.

But the vagueness and ambiguity
blinds my eyes so that I can’t see
What path to take, or what trail to tread.
All these thoughts running through my head.

You want to talk about God’s desire,
Well I’m patiently waiting for Jeremiah’s fire,
But I’m beginning to get a little tired of waiting,
Cause I can feel my soul slowly fading.

Some say I’m young, I say I’m too old,
To not know what I’m doing and just doing what I’m told.
Have I sold out? Has my heart grown cold,
Too busy worrying about whether I fit the mold.

There’s a mental block I face,
I’m a basket case, but I’ll chase the light
And I know that I’ll fight when the day comes
After St. John’s night, I’ll hear the war drums
In my chest, louder than the criticisms of all the rest,
And I will stand and speak, listenin’ to the weak,
From South East Asia to Mozambique.
The world is my stage and its people my aim,
And I will succeed so long as I don’t worry about the fame,
And remain focused on the soul beneath,
But until that day, there’s just this rustling underneath.

Philosophy

I feel like in many ways, philosophy has merely become the arguing of points not yet disarmed. The pursuit of the philosopher in academic journals and essays has seemed to cease to be the love of wisdom and more so the love of ideas, and any idea which has not yet been refuted; any new idea, is heralded as a triumph in the philosophical conversation, hence our language has become so much more convoluted and complex than it needs to be and the craving of wisdom in its pure, undefiled essence has been lost. Are we satisfied with the throwing around of ideas that are simply new? Are we content with mere thought experiments? We have limited the philosophical conversation to the highly academic, but what of the wisdom contained within vessels of other disciplines? Sometimes it is the job of the philosopher not to think up of the new idea but to translate a lay sentiment into a sophisticated one, provided that that sentiment is wise.

The wisdom of a child has no less merit than the wisdom of an old man. The wisdom of the philosopher has no more merit than the wisdom of a banker. The philosopher is not the fount of wisdom, but the one who ceaselessly must drink from that fount. We must seek wisdom wherever it is.

There is another component to this for the Christian.

“Precisely because we are Christians, philosophy must become for us nothing but the love of wisdom; God’s wisdom, however, is his logos – it is Christ; and thus we must love him in order to become true philosophers.”
- Petrarch (Letter to Giovanni Colonna)

Sin

Kind of a cool vid…

Sin from joe perez on Vimeo.

Fool that I am

I have been a fool. I have thought that to represent God well to others I needed to worry only about those times that they see me, hear me, etc…no, I represent God to others even in those times that they don’t have a clue what I am doing; for two reasons: 1. What I do in secret informs what I manifest and 2. There is a spiritual connectedness that I have with others at every moment of every day and with every thought that I have.

So forgive me, my friends. I have harmed you through my own incontinence. Fool that I am, I have sinned. Yet, redeemed by love, I hope to treat you better in the silent secrecy of my mind.