hows your quiet time?

[or "QT" as we used to call it in InterVarsity and other similar groups of Bible-loving people.]

"well, as my dad would say, 'it's piss-poor.'"

"What?"

"it's piss-poor."

"That's not good."

This was my conversation with someone who has a bit of a stake in how my QT is going.

Of course, the truth is, everyone i come in contact with has some stake in the quality and frequency of my time spent with God. It just hides better from some than others.

So i need to spend more time listening and seeking the character of Christ. Not just in singing Sufjan songs, like the one i downloaded from iTunes, "Seven Swans", which started his concert set at BAM. The one where the chorus is a long and thrilling repetition of the refrain, "He is the Lord."

But that's not enough. It's what i've been mustering lately, and i am glad that at the crux of it all is the knowledge that i've chosen to serve the God who does not require that his children perform perfectly--who accepts the work of Christ and our devotion to Him as perfection. A mystery i don't always trust.

But the less time and mental energy i spend devoted to looking at Him, considering His words, practicing His disciplines, well, the less flexible and ready am i to choose the narrow way when choices come.

I suppose I used to believe that i was aiming for a time and state in which my life was clear and arrived, and i could live thence forward in wisdom and confident peace.

I realize now that the life i really want is one in which i am never arrived (in this space and time), but in which i am continually seeking greater and more particularly articulated riches. This means i am continually seeking to dig out what is hiding in the closets of my soul, the wounds, the evil received and the evil done.

This means i have ever-increasing grace to extend others as i perceive ever finer distinctions in my own limitations and what it means to live in love and pursue holiness and wisdom.

My problem, somewhat evident here, is my tendency to wax philosophic and idealist with little mind to more solid meat words. Happily, i have usually been surrounded by(or at least near one or two) thoughtful & smart believers who are not shy to wrinkle their nose at me and say, "i'm not sure i agree with you," (in their more polite moments).

I have made quite a few bold promises to the Maker of Heaven and Earth. It will no doubt take at least this lifetime to see them fulfilled, and i can only hope that he will provide me the courage and faithfulness and strength to see them come to pass. Otherwise all is lost!

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Part II:

Here is the text of an interesting few pages i found in the back of my current notes-book. This is specifically not my journal, but it occasionally gets used as such when my journal is elsewhere. This was an exercise in free-writing, but i love the images that came out...

Last night-a vivid busy dream

Where i cease to write i begin to stall or even rot. It's the rhythms that reign and strike and shout they rattle out where the shivers shake. when nothing stops or stumps or strangles beneath rain from wispy tangles. {?} fingers of the closet dark shadowed eyes of starlit walk along a shore or in the ally crying smiling whirling sally sally

We require this-we cannot live without this work, this energy this companionship from past to future heaven clouds fish fog to clear energetic whee!
Here and there & here & there so when we come in & go out to the

I feel out of my zone, out of a sphere of creativity, of freedom, of hope, of clarity, of no fear. No fear. There is a land i want to move to.

I want to move to No Fear.
I want to pull up in my RV and plant it.
Let it put down roots and never go again.
I'll put a corn stalk in the fuel tank and flowers under the hood.
I'll pour mortar into the wheels and stuff the ashtrays with strawberry plants.

I dreamed of being a tiny creature living in a garden of lush green and flowers. When i wrote my story i tried to tell the truth but the other reality came in and up and out somewhere crying in my minds mucus like a flu that had to shiver away to carnivorous caves of snails and jazz bands where the trumpet eats its prey and the drummer claws its way to the surface.

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["yep. never needed drugs, that one."]