A Poem in Progress

I got to take a much-needed ROS this morning, and one of the takeaways was this poem. It's a condensation of a lot of my thoughts from the last month or so. I find that when I don't blog or write at lenghth in my journal for a period of time, the thoughts get more and more compacted in my brain, and finally explode in fragmented, poetic form.
This still needs quite a bit of work.

Their Currents Turn

That moment between time
A glimmer of a second
of existence of doubt
of suspension of disbelief.
The hard line of reality
Bends, Twists, Softens.

It was the best...  the worst...
Of was it at all?

10:58pm in the bathroom
in the dark to pee
before sleep the thought rises
like the return of a dream
from muddy water that
nothing is real.
The window; the toilet;
goosebumps.

Merrily merrily merrily merrily
I pinch myself and wake in pain
Staring into the confusion
Between night and day,
Unblind.

I am a bird alone on a roof
With seven thousand others
Singing to wake the world.

Blind captians lost at sea
What hope?
Still less for those who see
And seeing, dream.
The pain of the pinch to high.

O captain, uncaptained
Dream-life dreamer
In evening-shadow ship
What hope?

The mad unblind grope in darkness
Pinch-marked.
Some lulled or lynched
  To lose the name of Action
  Serial sleepers slayed with dreams instead
  Stoned seer, are you not entertained?
Some scream to wake the dead
  And how squirm the
  Seeing dreamers at their scream

But the screamers are mad, you know.
The screamers are all just mad.

Tradition

I fear that protestants in general and evangelicals in particular have lost something sacred in their rejection of the traditions of the Church. Tradition is a tool like any other. We haven't stopped using hammers because someone used a hammer as a murder weapon once. Throughout the Scripture God consistently instructs his people to remember, to set up memorials, to celebrate feasts... developing traditions to pass on the great stories of God and his redemptive history to the following generations. We fear that traditions will become as rote and meaningless to us as the words of the liturgy are to lukewarm Roman Catholics. But the words of our sermons are just as meaningless to lukewarm evangelicals. Let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. Traditions do not create lukewarm believers. Lukewarm believers render traditions meaningless. I want to be a husband (and eventually a father) who continues and creates meaningful spiritual traditions for my family. But I'm not sure we need to reinvent the wheel... Christians have been celebrating advent and lent for centuries.

I'm not sure how this thinking will bear out for me practically, but I felt the need to get it down "on paper."

Current Reading

You've heard the proverb "leaders are readers." I intend to be a leader. It is my hearts desire to change the world. My mission: To please God, fearing only Him, serving those he loves, and advancing his kingdom of light in a world of darkness. To that end I read.

Here's my current list (and yes, I am reading all six concurrently):
The Federalist and Anti-federalist Papers
Life Together by Bonhoeffer
The Republic by Plato
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by Maxwell
Getting Things DONE by David Allen
The Histories of Herodotus (nine books)

Just finished:

• The Constitution of the United States of America
• The Declaration of Independence
• The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership by Steven Sample.

Sample's book may be the best modern leadership text I have read.  For every book you  read, you choose not to read 1000 others. If you consider yourself a leader, exclude 1000 books for this one.