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river

How to Get to the River

It’s negative eight degrees outside my window. Inside my window a handful of houseplants lean toward the light, despite the frigid temperatures on the other side of the glass. There are oak trees growing in the houseplants, oak trees almost six inches tall, sprouted from acorns buried by squirrels last summer when the houseplants were…

garden

How to Return to the Garden

In the beginning was a garden. Whether we consult religious myths or natural sciences, we can trace the roots of our species to complex ecosystems of biological life pouring forth in generative relationships within the web of existence. Humans, like all other life-forms, once participated in these ecosystems according to the constraints of their environments;…

unbelief

Don’t Help My Unbelief

I want you to know that unbelief in God is not a sin. I want you to know that atheism is not a bad word.

summer-august

Summer’s End (August)

Since I left God the Father I have fallen in love with the earth that has always been my home. Allowing myself to feel this way about the reality around me has done more for the God-shaped hole in my heart than my Father in Heaven ever did. But…

summer-july

Summer’s End (July)

Today I feel the ache of summer’s mortality, as July blazes out in a crescendo of sun and heat and humidity and I can feel in my skin that suddenly more summer is behind us than in front of us. The gift of awareness comes with the awareness of death and this gift is harder…

now-now

i make the river sing

This is now, now. This is a new year. These are the first words of a new year. Time is meaningless, and so is existence, but I am ensnared in both, god in skin trapped in meaningless time and meaningless existence and craving meaning I make it myself. don’t you see? the craving of meaning…

img

Why Won’t God Fucking Do Something?

It’s an amazing, intricate, world full of suffering and death. It’s not enough. But it’s all we have.

text

How Firm a Foundation?

If I had been able to really believe, none of this would have happened. If I had ever been able to experience the God they spoke of in the way they spoke of Him, I probably would have been satisfied. If I had heard the still small voice of the Divine without also hearing the…

nothing

Always Has Been

last night i had a dream / vision wherein I briefly escaped this time/space-bound reality and saw the gods and us and everything floating in galaxies + grids. “come out here and dance with us,” the gods beckoned. I looked, and behold, under everything, gods dancing on dark waters, an eternal empty stage, a void,…

text

The Grace of Insignificance

recently a few folks have emailed me to tell me that they perceive me as sad, lost, hurting, or broken because of how i have been playing with language around ideas of god, faith, and existence. this always catches me by surprise, because i am happy + at peace, more than I’ve been in a…

text

When Ego and Idol

finally are shattered

god

God Did Not Speak to Me

God did not speak to me. I spoke and my voice was divine, though I was unaware that all the “god” i seek is not something, someone, an entity bearing being somewhere beyond the universe. god has only always been everything, and I keep forgetting.

porch

a love letter to my friends (in late spring this year)

you should have been here by now. for six months i have been staring out this window at the naked trees, watching the snow fall and melt and waiting to share spring with you i was going to buy $100 worth of asparagus and tomatoes and sweet potatoes and bratwursts and salmon and pineapple. then…

hand

Jesus Dies on the Cross

It’s Good Friday and I’m standing barefoot in my driveway with a sledge hammer and a fistful of nails. Scattered around me on the ground are broken pieces of an old church pew, a shattered portrait of Jesus, the small leather Bible I read every single day many lifetimes ago (when I was a good Christian).

relentless

I Will Cease My Relentless Deconstruction

I will cease my relentless deconstruction when I have excavated deep enough to find something solid upon which I can begin to build again. So far I have found only foundations that turn to sand when I rest the weight of my full being against them. I would be a fool to build on sand.…