sounds like gospel

TodayFM is playing one of those all-day-commerical-free-A-thru-Z-greatest-hits-playlists for the bank holiday. wall-to-wall sing-a-long pleasure.
this old favourite pleased me. muchly.

Now I'm relieved to hear
That you've been to some far out places
It's hard to carry on
When you feel all alone

The wisdom that I seek
Has been found in the strangest spaces
Feels a lot like love
That I feel for you

Drawn by the undertow
My life is out of control
I believe this wave will bear my weight
So let it flow

Oh sit down oh sit down oh sit down
Sit down next to me
Sit down, down, down, down, down
In sympathy

Swing from high to deep
Extremes, of sweet and sour
Hope that God exists
I hope, I pray

Now I've swung back down again
It's worse than it was before
If I hadn't seen such riches
I could live with being poor
Oh sit down oh sit down oh sit down
Sit down next to me
Sit down, down, down, down, down
In sympathy

Those who feel the breath of sadness:
Sit down next to me
Those who find they're touched by madness:
Sit down next to me
Those who find themselves ridiculous:
Sit down next to me
In Love, in fear, in hate, in tears

Down
Down

Oh sit down
Sit down next to me
Sit down, down, down, down, down
In sympathy

Down.

- James, 1989, rough trade

that's what it's probably all about in the end i guess...

LB

"terror is easier to face than confusion", he said

i've been reading the analysis of dick cheney's speech to the AEI last week. wondering at the horror of the torture committed in afghanistan, abu ghraib and guantanamo. at the attempts to justify it, deny it.

and feeling powerless despair. we call it inhumane. but it was humans who did it. authourised it. legal-eased it. and there seems nothing but silence with which to respond. wordless in the face of images indicting us with just how far we humans will go to prove our might, our power, our authority, our triumph over the will of another. and as we rob the other of their dignity, strip it, beat it, break it, we lose our own...

i think of my infant nephew and feel the conflict of welcoming him into this world. for there is goodness and beauty but there is so much else besides. so many whose lives are marked by sadness, pain, suffering, horror. for whom this place is hell. i see the images of naked men, hooded, taunted by dogs, leashed, bound, and i think of this tiny boy starting out on his journey and wonder at what he will make of this world. wondering at what his life will be for... and if we can only tell him and his sister that we are present to a kingdom of beauty if we look the other way....

i think of the persisting scandal in the british parliament threatening to topple a government and i think of the abuse of so many at the hands of the irish church, of mass rape and mutilation of girls in Africa, which ilke enhanced interrogation appears to threaten no one. i can't help but wonder that the expenses scandal is but distraction. and matters more to people because it came out of their pocket but does not affect their conscience. it's perhaps not ethic that drives us but (love of) money. ethic should not be found on a sliding scale but this seems disproportionately scandalous... perhaps we choose our outrage by what we are willing to face. by what we are willing to pay attention to.

and in truth i fear all this is little more than a distraction from other things more personal that are pressing in unexpectedly and rubbing at wounds i thought i'd moved past. i feel the all too familiar claustrophobia setting in and i've been struggling not to resort to counting the hours 'til i can run. retreat to safer soil and be away from the triggers currently setting off tiny explosions of grief. it's not funny how the total degradation of strangers never cuts quite as sharp as the mere slights of others against us. even the words and actions we choose to see as slights, whether intended as such or not. and usually not.

but it feels upsetting to feel oneself regressing and in need of retreat. especially when surrounded by lovely, beautiful people. and then grace comes in and i don't know what to do with it either. feeling close to the brink, with it all caught up in my chest, trying to mask the twist of feelings keeping me from breathing easy...

i got to be at tuesday group last night. the unexpected chance to see mo and lynn's soft smiles was balm. we sat and read tobit chapters 3 and 4. tobit and sarah both pray to YHWH to have their lives taken from them, believing it better to be dead than bear the insults of others. both pushed to the brink by scorn and shame. and like them, i pray. in tears. because sometimes tears are the best prayers we have next to silence. i pray perhaps not for death, but for release from shame and anger and hurt.

when i touch the tiny wooden cross at my throat, i think, this is what we do... and i am no different than the rest...

LB

Give Up Yer Aul Sins

i was wanting to load something to mark moving back to dublin.

This series, including the original Oscar-nominated short, from Brown Bag Films, is based upon the 1960s recordings of young Dublin children telling Bible stories in a classroom to their schoolteacher. more at youtube.

when all possible outcome seems dark

last night at tuesday group we talked through brueggemann's reading of jeremiah's prayer in Jer32:16-25

it was conversation filled with struggle and doubt, the tension of contradiction and many more questions than answers over what "Jeremiah has YHWH say"...
we talked of the sins of the father being wrought on the child, and our varying struggles to understand or conceive of divine intervention. balanced by the knowledge that to live by the sword means almost inevitably one will die by it. and that even if one generation does not, the next one will reap what has been sown. you don't need to believe in an interventionist G-D to believe in that...

when we pray, we are not meant to systematic theologians, we are meant to be human...

some of the discussion was a wrestling within on what to do as individuals who are part of a national or even international us. i found the themes difficult in light of all the talk of torture... and i thought, not for the first time this week, of Jeremiah Wright's controversial sermon post 9/11... and wondered with the others what it is we are called to be... how do we intervene? what is my responsibility?

someone cited australian activist and writer, dave andrews, who after many years of trying to change others, came to the conclusion that ultimately his job was to change himself and be a witness. someone talked of us being G-D's hands, G-D's light in the world. another spoke of us willing ressurrection with life and compassion. to step out beyond ourselves... if the Bible tells stories of how G-D listens to those who are on the edge, who suffer, then that is our job too...

blessed are you who are care-full for you will find yourselves cared for... and each of us must choose if we want to be doing the caring for, or walk on by...

::

andrew sullivan quoted neil gaiman - i lay awake with a heavy heart.

::

The memos refer to other classified documents -- including an "Effectiveness Memo" and an "IG Report," which explain how "the use of enhanced techniques in the interrogations of KSM, Zubaydah and others . . . has yielded critical information." Why didn't Obama officials release this information as well? Because they know that if the public could see the details of the techniques side by side with evidence that the program saved American lives, the vast majority would support continuing it.

Marc A. Thiessen, The Washington Post

Tuesday, April 21, 2009
(highlights, my own.)

i lay awake hoping that isn't true.

::

yep. i hope not. <-- i fell asleep watching this.

i still believe G-D is the impossible happening...

LB

the woman next door

via an incredibly eloquent dorothee soelle quote from sarah,

and via the daily dish. sullivan got choked up over Miss Boyle, (who, physically, reminds me so much of the Scottish women i was surrounded by in my youth), and i'm unashamed to say, so did i.

here's to the unseen and unexpected. which is a theme i'm increasingly interested in, especially in a gender and queer context - seeing the assumed normative deconstructed as it is subverted by those kept to the edges because they don't quite fit our expectations.

my dear brother-by-choice, Chris, said, "If The Wire were a bible passage it would be this:" seems fitting here too...

God chose what is weak in the world to make the strong feel ashamed. And God chose what is insignificant in the world, what is despised, what is nothing, in order to destroy what is something, so that no one may boast in God's presence. (1Cor 28-29)

LB