Tag: Christ

Gene Holes

On By jareddiehl88In ADDICTION, California, CHRSTIAN LIVING, CHURCH, Community, CultureLeave a comment

I did say I was taking a break..or so it seems? I can’t get away from writing sometimes. I have been in a season of writing a lot of things down and teaching a bit. Poetry for me really started a few months before I had a mental breakdown back in 2007. Summer was a weekly effort to write something with my friend Kyle and a bunch of other all-night people in Kansas City 🙂 Those were some days..

8 years later here we all are. Kyle is married and I am still writing poetry. A lot of times I hit this wall with creative things. How much do I talk about my deep-seated fears and secrets while trying to make it make sense. This is everyone’s issue but pursuing your story and how God works in your pain..that is a never-ending quest that we are on. This reflection goes to present struggles with how easy it can be to not face yourself and face God. We want to slip away. And my jeans really do have a hole in them, so I am sad about that. That is an inside joke for my friends here in Cali..but genes do matter. When we move forward in life we do realize how much our environment shapes us and also how genetic proclivities can also do the same.

Skinny love on the empty penny

Jean holes again, gene holes again,

Gap in his brain made us all insane,

Been deeper since he left,

Upstairs boxes for the taking,

Munchies for the bowls we built

Around you, for the walls we built

Around you—video ideas for the sunrise,

Up with Your films in my head—

I was on the edge, I was a forest lover,

I was a midnight kind of fruit—

I am a plowing man, I am a brakes

Man, love has moved much to fast now,

Brakes are fixed and these eyes are not—

Vision is a puffed up dream for the same

Sermon on repeat, I am what I am not,

I am the west coast, I am the faded left

Handed kind of dreamer—I am here, I am

Not going to run away—

4am was the used to, everlasting was the

Song that was sang softly, into the dark

Breakfast for dinner, dinner in the middle

Of winter, colder air today for finally cold

Is gone,

Holes in these jeans, holes in these genes

I am slipping, its repeating, backwards into

A younger age, few more days with a few more

Waves, twenties to be over, roaring to turn to

Empty—

Now I build, now I continue, for the city is soon

To come to undo this thing called numb—

Don’t slip away into a place called running—

Suitcase those feelings, pack them away,

Face the life that you have today

Henri Nouwen Quotes

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One of my favorite writers of all time. This is on fellowship.

“Community, then, cannot grow out of loneliness, but comes when the person who begins to recognize his or her belovedness greets the belovedness of the other. The God alive in me greets the God resident in you.”-from Turn My Mourning Into Dancing by Henri Nouwen

Change

On By jareddiehl88In ADDICTION, California, CHRSTIAN LIVING, CHURCH, Community, CultureLeave a comment

Up against the tides of change

The endless rearrange for all of my days—

Eyes on the light, on the day when it gets

Set right—blood moons for the onlookers

But where is the real danger?

Shaking cities with bodily entrance and in

It we long to depart,

This tent is up for rent,

Paying what I cannot owe

By this grace we must try to grow

For free is just the invitation—

Fallen souls who used to be young

And naïve and without reprieve—

Now we can barely believe in a good

God instead He hangs over the flames,

He stands in distance while our lives

Live with resistance—

I am hardened daily by the scorching

Winds that burn beneath me—

Life is harder when people see all

Of you, but where would I be if it wasn’t

For community?

I delight in the path,

I run from the wrath you have

Hallowed out, with death being swallowed

In a tepid shout—

I cannot agree just yet with what I

Live by for in me is still an endless

Disease—

But I will press forward in this

Tent you ask of me to display,

For sorrow, for pain, for death,

For all the world to see

Emerald

On By jareddiehl88In Book Reviews, California, CHRSTIAN LIVING, CHURCH, Community, CultureLeave a comment

Labor day means I should rest but I am working away at a ton of things written over the years and because my computer broke back in March I’ve been all over the place in bits and pieces organizing thoughts. I have three big categories: poetry, theology and film. My own personal journaling is in their too..anyhow what I am going to post will get inserted into older dates but until then..

Ah the sunrise

To my surprise I am

Enlightened by its light–

For yellow has chosen me,

Red has followed me,

Green has come around me

An Emerald sound, a mercy

Cloud above me, its to hard to

Say how lovely You are, yet what

I have seen I never want to see anything

Ever again! Come up here and I will show

Me, I will show You, I will have supper with

You, for it shall be last those who are now

Are first,

Its childhood stays with me,

Scared on the top stairwell

Stirring down there

Living scared,

Living scarred

And trying to hard

To escape the present

And to live present–

Here I am, send me

I am unusually kind to

The way you rewind my

Mistakes as if they never

Happened, as if I could never

Ask for more mercy–

Emerald please, all around

Me

Teenager

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Older Poem from a couple years ago..

To all the teens that have passed through Kansas City and to all the
teens that skate in my neighborhood, this is for you. The song
‘Teenage Wasteland” by The Who ring real loud. For I don’t want to be
one that wastes that time I have been given and I don’t want to see a
generation wasted away either. Here’s my reflection.
Teenager
Teenage wasteland cries out from
The ground, there are souls all
Around, their skateboards
Hit the ground, their dreams
Hit the clouds, their memories
Are real loud

The teen and the American dream
Hit me in the chest and take me
To the best places

Hope they need, can they succeed,
Kickflipped they live, hardflipped
Over and over by a world that
Forgets living forever, skaters
Jaded, jeans ripped, sun stripped
With the beach in the purview,
With dreams in the rear view,
Goths and punks, smoke
Smelling of skunks, dried
And tried they are, tired of
Corporate lies, the machine
Doesn’t faze them, the world
Does haze them

For misunderstood they walk
For parenthood is the chalk
That chases and draws the
Dead bodies in the cement
Does it ever occur that these
Kids are the future? The change,
The groove, the point to prove
Or have I lived to long in my
Own waste of time and gadgets
And endless sunsets of days
Gone by, have I been to busy
To see the skaters and the haters
That walk by me daily, hopped
Up on their ipods, hopped up
On drugs, have I become just
As needed as them—in need of
The wasteland to end and life
To begin
To the teens of America
Help me understand these
Gaps I live in

Ever Changing Terrain

On By jareddiehl88In ADDICTION, California, CHRSTIAN LIVING, CHURCH, Community, Culture, CULTUREPOP, DAILY LIFE, Discussions, Eternity, FAMILYLeave a comment

Down with the roaches

Now I have all these approaches

Lowly on a colt

Lightning in the bolt, I am full of the cult

I sipped it for years—

Are we sick with wondering

Or are we just wandering?

Hopeless romantic,

Feeling pedantic,

The rules have changed

The terrain has shifted

No longer does man choose love or

Choose good or choose anything anymore?

Lovers of self, lovers up on the shelf,

Saving mercy for a rainy day,

A storm to come,

Our love is on numb,

This pain is growing

The gadgets are losing their grip

Its an endless maze of what is next—

Bigger, faster but worse and worse it

Gets—cycles of regret, adulthood is

An ever evolving force–

Its remorse, but really it is not

Its regret but really its apathy

Its pleasure, its endless pleasure

But to what measure? To what end?

To where now can we comprehend?

Its evil all around, its a lie to believe anything else

Its still a choice, I choose heaven, not Hell

Father’s Day Thoughts

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From my Facebook page:

Sometimes I wonder if pain from parents in our child hood has a dynamic connection to who we are in Christ and where we are going in God. It can be a form of warfare from the enemy. But the key is to honor and be a peacemaker in our relationships. I do believe in generational curses/sin but the way in which the curse gets broken is in one word: change. Change and do what it takes to not follow any form of brokenness that has been passed down to you. All of this starts with gratitude and honor for where you are at today and how much Father’s are apart of our journey.

Some comments from my FB page:

Business Card

On By jareddiehl88In ADDICTION, California, CHRSTIAN LIVING, CHURCH, Community, Culture, CULTUREPOP, DAILY LIFELeave a comment

It’s a Sunset boulevard kind of hard

The one with the fancy business card

Apostle it should say for this Prophet

To pay to stay—I am wild now in a newer

Kind of way, bus stops daily in this city called

A cavity, called a dearth of ideas and an earth

Of repairs needed—I hoist up this pride for

Lord Stanley to take it from me, nothing in

This life ever seems free—free fall for the

Past days of sunset getaways, to much

Sand to sift through now but I am lost

Never for the wrong reasons, it was once

With the many seasons but better is getting

Bigger for this heart is expanding for You—

Happy is a disease that eats away at us,

Fast cars and tight clothes, the more skin

The more sin to peel back, naked and ashamed

In that garden rain, sin was plain to paste, to

Private to post—where are you now?

I am hiding on Sunset boulevard

I am passing out my starry business

Card—Apostle is me for have I not seen

The Lord? He is risen, He is in heaven but

Is He living in me? Hard is overrated, rather

Impossible is the future—how to love better

Than the past warfare seasons—we have not seen

Anything yet

The best storms are the one’s You create,

Love like an umbrella, better than Coachella is

A sound to come, a new Song to sing, but deep

Is where we got to go, deep into that uncomfortable

Are the blind at our feasts? Or are we to blind to see?

Facebook Discussions: Living As Lights

On By jareddiehl88In CHRSTIAN LIVING, CHURCH, Community, Discussions, EternityLeave a comment

Phil. 2:14- 16 “Do everything without grumbling or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky.” Here is what I think this verse means. When you are having true community with others and focusing on Christ together not only does not complaining benefit others( also what we call comiserating) BUT now in the place of gratitude with others YOU and WE all now fulfill being lights to a dark and perverse world.

The unceasing accusation( and rightfully so sometimes) from non Christians is that Christians are hypocrites, or that essentially if you guys are supposed to love like Jesus how come I don’t see that when I am around you..you guys just grumble and complain like the rest of us!’

When we follow through with following Christ by honoring authority and doing our jobs with excellence and being faithful to being on time and showing that we care( because of Jesus!) then that in it of itself becomes our greatest witness. So, it is love but love now is reflected in the practical sphere of influence that we have in the “warped and crooked” world. This is an awesome invitation to be like Jesus!