My vision hooked shut A blaring symphony of cells Look: separated, I have again summoned up this scintillating, antiquated carving knife its tip clicked off the stains of sins past now rusting its dull feathered edge its handle cracked like nerves thirsting It is this I use. It is always this I use to penetrate my chest look (don’t) : I force the knife which yields softly, which envelopes the blade like pig putty and blood Screaming I push again my... Read more
Thanks, Shell, for prodding me (ew) to “announce” that—as you know if you know my blog—I’ve changed its look. I did this because, as much as I liked the other blog template, I was always dissatisfied with the physical look of its print on the screen: it was, to my eyes, too small and light. I like this bigger, darker, more newpapery font; I find it easier on the eyes. It looks more like print. I also like the way it... Read more
It’s time for us to be brilliant now To break through battered clouds It’s time for us to be brilliant now To cast off tattered shrouds It’s time for us to be brilliant now God’s bored, he cannot wait It’s time for us to be brilliant now It’s Him; it’s us; it’s late. Read more
When I saw my wife for the first time, I leaned against a wall for support. She had just turned in my direction after stepping off the elevator at the far end of the otherwise unoccupied dorm floor hallway in which I was standing like the Scarecrow with dropsy. I was twenty years old, and drunk. It was 1979. I had come to San Francisco State University after a year and half spent working the graveyard shift at the Wrigley’s Gum Factory in... Read more
A 23-year-old Christian woman wrote to ask what I thought about her dating a non-Christian: It’s a problem plaguing my life [she wrote]. This man treats me like a queen. I just want to talk to him all the time and blah blah gush gush so forth. The problem is that he is not a Christian, and my family … well, they are, and they don’t like this relationship of mine one little bit. As far as they’re concerned, any non-Christian man... Read more
Ah, peace. How I want some. Luckily for me, I have all of it—so no worries for me, literally. Still and all that leaves no peace left for others, who are therefore stuck struggling with their lives—worrying about their hair, their diet, the quality of their moral character, the air pressure in their tires—whilst I, enjoying a relationship with God not unlike the ever-chatty one between Chip and Dale, do maintain about my very soul and person a benevolent, radiant calm that... Read more
I was surprised at how many people read my last post, which concerned how a book I co-authored was unexpectedly edited. I figured, who would care? But I got a fair number of emails about that post, and a fair number of those expressed, basically, this sentiment: “How can you so sanguinely let someone change your words?” Sanguinely! I just had it at Olive Garden! Too many capers! No, but that’s a fair question. And the answer is this: When you go... Read more
The very kind response I got to the excerpt I ran yesterday from “Being Christian,” the just-released book I co-authored with Steve Arterburn, moved me to want to run another (and more serious) excerpt from that book. So I found on my computer the finalized text of “Being Christian,” and began the business of cutting and pasting the excerpt from it that I thought I’d share. In clearing that text of its MS Word formatting goblins (which is of course accomplished by first pasting it... Read more
If you were a Christian retailer—that is, if you sold or had any commercial interest in Christian books, CD’s, DVD’s, and so on—you would faithfully (so to speak) read Christian Retailing magazine. And so recently you would have read there this review of Being Christian, the book authored by Famous Christian Personality Stephen Arterburn and me, which is just now out in stores: “Being Christian: Exploring Where You, God, and Life Connect, Arterburn’s latest offering, written with co-author John Shore (I’m OK – You’re Not ), pushes... Read more
The post you are looking for is Labor Day, Ghetto Life, and Me Almost Getting Killed. Truly sorry for the re-routey inconvenience. Read more
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