Will Beauty Leave Us

Life and Love and Death and Eternity

are words for what we cannot express in words

Bob Dylan's Desire: Romance in Durango

On hearing of the impending death of a marvelous young woman--
 hilarious, brilliant, beautiful, kind, (-played basketball better than all your brothers)--
--the Best in every way, loved by all--Really-- By ALL!

...
the thought of my grandmother's passing arises, and i remember the song and lyrics that i pondered at that time.
Godspeed or Miracles, please.

" ...No llores mi querida Dios nos vigila

Soon the horse will take us to Durango
Agarrame mi vida Soon the desert will be gone Soon you will be dancing the fandango.

At the corrida we'll sit in the shade
And watch the young torero stand alone
We'll drink tequila where our grandfathers stayed When they rode with Villa into Torre6n.

Then the padre will recite the prayers of old
In the little church this side of town I will wear new boots and an earring of gold
You'll shine with diamonds in your wedding gown.


The way is long but the end is near
Already the fiesta has begun
The face of God will appear
With His serpent eyes of obsidian.

No llores mi querida Dios nos vigila
Soon the horse will take us to Durango
Agarrame mi vida Soon the desert will be gone
Soon you will be dancing the fandango.

Was that the thunder that I heard
My head is vibrating, I feel a sharp pain
Come sit by me don't say a word
Oh can it be that I am slain ?
..."

I suppose you mourn all children like you're mourning Caylee Anthony.

Shades of Mother Teresa and Princess Diana. There was a news story yesterday about all the sweet darling little helpless children dying in Somalia.
I know we are mourning them with the same fierceness
with which we mourn Caylee Anthony.

As we vilify Casey Anthony, (that it may never be forgot?) we are surely doing the same to those who tied Matthew Shepard to a fence and let him die, the tears frozen on his face?

scariest halloween costume ever

two deaths: HERE

mother teresa of calcutta

and don't even THINK of hurting a dog!

The

 NON-INTERFERENCE clause: MORE HERE

The Death of a British Soldier and Bomb-sniffing Dog: Theo and Tasker Cross the Rainbow Bridge

Video: After a sniper killed Lance Corporal Liam Tasker, his loyal springer spaniel dog dies hours later from a seisure.  Who can explain it?   This happened several weeks ago but it is too poignant not to share.



more story and video here:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/8374577/Dog-lovers-gather-for-repatriation-of-soldier-and-spaniel-from-Afghanistan.html

and here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/8357883/Expert-dog-handler-killed-in-Afghanistan-saved-countless-lives.html

The solemn return home, video here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12705718

Rainbow Bridge

and more HERE:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42016161/ns/health-pet_health/
and
story excerpt from bbc:  "Lance Corporal Liam Tasker, from Kirkcaldy in Fife, was shot dead while on patrol in Helmand province.

The ashes of the 26-year-old's dog Theo were flown home on the same plane.
L/Cpl Tasker, who was called a "rising star" by Army chiefs, was shot by Taliban snipers and Theo died of a seizure shortly after his master.
The soldier and his 22-month-old dog had made 14 finds in five months while on the frontline.
The pair's successes at uncovering so many explosives and weapons had resulted in their tour of Afghanistan being extended by a month.
Just three weeks ago, springer spaniel Theo was praised as a record breaking Army sniffer dog.
The body of L/Cpl Tasker and the ashes of Theo were flown to RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire at lunchtime, before a cortege passed through Wootton Bassett, the Wiltshire town which has built up a tradition of welcoming back fallen heroes."

Are You Ready to Die? (How to clean things up, live well, Be Present) An Exploration

If I die today, it will be because of a Broken Heart.
(I know You have heard of it—
You may have already experienced the actual fact
of Your Heart taking on the pain of Another)
There are many
who would have died of a broken heart
 had not The Wisdom behind the universe decided to
Allow them to continue
To bear the sadness during

The Winding Down.

What else is to be given?
What else can be shown?
What further witness can be given?

A giant Sign in the Sky?

If you were living the life you could--with no impediments--
what would your life look like?
What trail do you leave?
Who was better off in the hard places of life because of you (or does the random collection of flotsam and jetsom, the ever-increasing complexity of molecular adaptation called life, have no soul--?)
What about the children and the poor dying each day in suffering and loneliness?
Mother Teresa had aCclear Sight that she was unable to allow them to die alone*.

What is it we need to do?

This makes me need to
 put forth pen to paper
 the
Unified Theory of Life, Death, Love and Evolution. See you shortly...



*Is comforting the dead such an act of mercy?[Like a scene from tom hanks' Pacific, as the soldier holds an Okinawan Woman as she dies--


Sledge cradling a mortally wounded Okinawan woman in his arms and stroking her hair as she dies in part 9

looking for a sign?

My thought for the day: stop judging people.
(harder on an unconcious level than it sounds)

 or really,
making all sorts of judgements about interiors (See the Four Agreements)
 the "sweetest person" may be a terrible gossip or child molester.
 the "assumed wickedest" person may be kinder than You!
you have No Idea. quit worrying about it.
what POSSIBLE good can it do?
you think you can change someone by yelling at them, snarking about them, or getting others to hate them ?

I have seen the pain some folks are enduring due to others' judgements.
 dont't do it! i wonder that some can bear it.
Only humility makes injustice bearable.
(Imaging the judging of Mary by her neighbors, if Joseph wasn't there. Strike judging out of our to-do list!?)

Youth | Fiction | We Need To Talk About Yoof: Letters to the Grown-Ups

I think something may be happening to me. I no longer laugh at Magic FM for its old-timer cheese-ballads on a constant loop.  Actually, as it turns out, it’s quite a mellow driving experience, isn’t it? And now when I see a teenage couple canoodling in the park, the corners of my lips begin to twitch upwards into a sneer that mimics the current shape of my hairline. I read an article in the Economist yesterday about the perils of cyber-warfare and now I’m tapping gingerly at my beloved laptop as if it’s going to bite me.

I think, in short, that I may be getting old.

Coolio, in Gangsta’s Paradise, soundtrack to a film about out-of-control youth, Dangerous Minds, raps, “I’m twenty-three now; will I ever see twenty-four?” And twenty-four does, when I think about it, seem like the appropriate age at which we stop being ‘youthful’. The UN agrees with me on this, I know, though the World Bank is slightly more optimistic and says it’s twenty-five, but some commentators claim it’s as low as nineteen. So even by the most hopeful estimates, I don’t have long before I cease to be a ‘youth’, before I no longer have any right to stick up for the youth of today or decry the people who have a problem with the youth of today. I will probably never join the list of youths who get a column in a mainstream newspaper to discuss 'youth issues', by which I mean Peaches Geldof.



And this is a great worry to me, partly because I feel these public defenders of youth (there have been some. But they’re not as famous as Peaches, so I don’t remember their names) are too earnest, too reasonable, too eager to prove to the ‘adultfolk’ that ‘actually, we’re just like you.’ Sensible articles and letters suggesting that not everyone under twenty carries a butcher knife and sets fire to homeless people while Twittering are ignored, or at best, dismissed as naivety from well-off, articulate e'er-do-wells who don't really have a right speak for the generation as a whole. For impact's sake, I’d go for something a bit more polemical, like this;

Dear Sir,



That’s right. Write your fearful little articles complaining about us, the young. Sit back, and keep whining, impotent, as we devour you, one by one. You thought all of those internet/text acronyms were just lazy shorthand? Wrong. Coded messages, spread amongst the young people, hidden in contemporary music and on reality television, priming them for bloody revolution. All of those violent video games were just part of the training; all of our apparent idleness and isolation merely a form of meditation.

May the ROFLcopters bring their burning napalm and a dub-step re-sampled version of Ride of the Valkyries to your doorstep.

 Best, Jon Ware.


That was fun.  Who else was there?  Ah, yes...


Dear Sunday Times columnist covering the state of today’s youth and by proxy, the 2008 Kent train-station-pushing incident,

 You may think that nobody remembers your article about the lack of respect amongst young people towards adults nowadays, and the example you cited; that of the two men who shoved a middle-aged woman onto some rail tracks in Kent, because she told them to stop smoking. You weren’t alone in blaming the young; the Guardian called them ‘young men’ and so did the Telegraph. You called them ‘children’.


Ionel Rapisca, the man who actually did the pushing, was thirty-three. (Also, incidentally, after the woman fell onto the tracks, he jumped down and dragged her back onto the platform.) But that didn’t fit the narrative you wanted to, er, push, did it?


I don’t blame you. It’s far easier to pursue an agenda when you lie, as you will discover yourself when I reveal that Lee Harvey Oswald was, in fact, a Sunday Times columnist.

Best, Jon Ware.

And this is an open letter to Lee Siegel, who as you may or not may aware, used the New Yorker’s ’20 Under 40’ list last week as a springboard for his own article in the New York Observer, decrying- that’s right- the decline of contemporary fiction. His items of evidence are three in number; the rise of cutting-edge non-fiction, James Wood (that dastard!), and, least insane of all, the ’20 Under 40’ list. This is my counter-statement;



Dear Mr Siegel,

Totally with you, at the start.  Any list of ‘up-and-coming’ writers that people were disappointed Dave Eggers wasn’t in clearly has some problems. And the existence of extremely powerful, self-applauding literary cliques may not, as a general rule, benefit writers. But you then go on to argue that a symptom of fiction’s decline is that you haven’t seen a cheeky, rebellious ‘counterlist’ put up challenging the '20 Under 40’. That’s due to a lack of bravery, you claim, and a lack of creative ‘mischief’.


Now, if you like, I’ll make that counterlist for you, Mr Siegel. It could feature biographies of fiction novelists, parodies of the establishment figures in the New Yorker, or perhaps it could simply exaggerate the talents of the young writers I happen to know and admire.

But I’m not sure it would constitute a genuinely ambitious piece of ‘mischief’. More likely, it’d be a savvy attempt to develop a hip literary counterculture in-crowd. It could keep mocking the New Yorker and its circle of writers, like King Kong tossing faeces at Godzilla. It could become wildly popular (-with your support, obviously). But it would still be a self-applauding literary clique, and it would not herald the rebirth of fiction. Perhaps the reason “everyone’s complaining” about the New Yorker list but not creating their own ‘Salon des Refuses’ is that literati are becoming more interested in having their own opinions – and reading, or writing (!)- rather than creating rival gangs for schoolyard spats; more interested in playing games with literature, rather than with literary culture. It’s a nice thought.


Real mischief - real bacchanalic, creative mischief , if you’re looking for it - might be found in genuinely exciting literary pranksters (and good writers) like the media-baiting, Satanic-hoax-perpetuating Wu Ming collective in Italy, rather than in making arbitrary lists and watching them race. (And the death of fiction is not, self-evidently the same concept as the death of feuding organisations in fashionable literary culture, in Manhattan.)



Best, Jon Ware.



And there you have it. Self-righteous vitriol is best reserved for the young and angry, I think.  Soon I'll no longer be able to peddle it.  Use yours while you have the chance.

Best,

Jon Ware
Fiction Editor

The desires of your heart

A Christian man (a church elder and Bible teacher) joked that when he died, he wanted to “come back” (be reincarnated) as my pampered cat. Sadly, he passed away at the age of 85, but happily, he accepted the gift of eternal life in his Lord.

Several ironies have captured media attention recently. A big-budget film called The Bucket List (the things you want to do before kicking the bucket – dying) was released in 2008; author and professor Dr. Randy Pausch, famed for his Carnegie-Mellon University “Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” succumbed to cancer; and Dave Freeman, co-author of 100 Things to Do Before You Die, actually died in an accident in his home, not on the horns of a Pamplona bull. (Dave Freeman CNN obituary)

Some people make lists of things they’ve dreamed of doing before they die: riding an elephant, running with the bulls, bungee-jumping in New Zealand, climbing Kilimanjaro, swimming in an Icelandic thermal lake, riding every roller coaster in America, or touring the Holy Land.

Others measure their lives in monuments such as walking their daughter down the wedding aisle, meeting a financial goal, patenting an invention, earning a scholastic degree, expressing music, dance, or visual art, or winning a prestigious award. Someone once said, “My goal in life is to be as good a person as my dog already thinks I am.”

What’s on your “bucket list”? Have you made one? Making goals and keeping track of your progress in reaching them is actually a predictor of success. Just wishing and visualizing, but not acting strategically, won’t get your items checked off or that sense of satisfaction or reward when you reach accomplishment.

Your objectives, at least the priorities, will almost certainly change through the years of your life. The list you made 10 years ago will not be the same as the one you’ll make five years from now. But a list is the first step in your plan to reach the desires of your heart.

My bucket list includes:
1 Learn to speak French
2 Have my book published
3 Live and work a year in a foreign country
4 Play Chopin’s Fantaisie Impromptu at tempo
5 Learn to play drums and other percussion instruments
6 Discover every last ancestor on my family tree
7 Improve overall health by balanced living
8 Reach the bottom of the ever-growing to-be-read book stack

They’ll take application of tuition, budgeting, persistence, research, patience, and some risk-taking. They’ll take some phone calls, some first steps, some networking, some sacrifice. Probably a large sacrifice!

As Christians, we know that it’s not our goodness, performance, or ability to keep God’s laws that will make the difference at the judgment. It’s not even God’s grace plus our best efforts.

“This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, ‘It is through faith that a righteous person has life.’” Romans 1:17 NLT.

Faith in what? Faith in God’s ability – and desire – to fully love, fully forgive, and save eternally. Even our faith doesn’t come from internal fortitude. Faith itself is also the gift of God, as you’ll see in the verse below.

So what is the point of life-list-making in a Christian’s life, if it doesn’t get us to heaven? Glad you asked that! The apostle Peter made an all-purpose bucket list for use in this world:

"His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 1:3-8 NIV.

Notice that Peter’s bucket list is about BEING, not DOING, and that he said “make every effort… in increasing measure… effective… productive.” Sounds like a strategic plan to me!

Maybe we need more than one bucket list. There are lists for temporal accomplishments, the relationships we form along the way, and the eternal list (the one we can take with us, the treasure laid up in Jesus’ care).

What would you put on your list before Jesus comes? How about:
1 Positive and sunny
2 Sweet and humble
3 Ready with a soft answer
4 Encouraging and ever-thankful
5 Affectionate and compassionate
6 Patient and understanding
7 Forgiving and merciful
8 Seeking grace with every step
9 Honorable and upright
10 Discerning but not judgmental

This last list, not really a bucket list, but maybe a kingdom list, will have eternal consequences, but not only for the list-maker. Everyone on the planet will be blessed in some measure. You can’t really check items off this list, but they are worthy of pursuit!

The kingdom list of Peter’s, or the one you develop, will be about a state of being, which is what the psalmist is talking about: “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.” Psalm 37:4-6 NIV.

It’s not about God providing a nice home, a great job, healing from disease, or a spouse if you pray hard enough or show enough faith. This verse is about the desires of your heart for commitment, trust, justice, and righteousness. These desires are about WHOSE you are, not WHAT you do. They are echoes of God’s desires for us.

So sharpen that pencil and apply it to paper. Make your bucket list, make your kingdom list, and maybe even a list that bridges both. Make a plan to accomplish your items. Live with purpose and forward direction. Don’t think so much about kicking the bucket, as “livin’ the life” with gusto. Do it Sans plus attendre, "without further waiting."

Promises kept

He comes alongside us when we go through hard times. 2 Corinthians 1:4 MSG

My mother was born with asthma, which developed into emphysema by age 10. At 22, she was given a year to live, but like King Hezekiah, pleaded with God to let her live to raise her children to Christian maturity. By God’s grace, she lived to age 55. She was an artist, musician, gardener, poet, genealogist, and even represented herself to an Internal Revenue commission and won her case.

But as the years passed, she pled with God to heal her or let her die, to ease her constant struggle for breath and strength. On her last night, I read Bible verses to her as I held her hand and watched the monitors record her declining heartbeat and respiration. Those hours were the most precious and intimate of my life, and I’m certain that the next voice she hears after mine will be Jesus’ voice, saying, “Wake up, little girl!”

God’s promises are for you, though we may not understand the specific or temporal application. Read 2 Corinthians 1:4-5 MSG: He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us. We have plenty of hard times that come from following the Messiah, but no more so than the good times of his healing comfort—we get a full measure of that, too.

These verses clinch my faith in God’s ultimate faithfulness and victory over present circumstances: Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. In him, this is what we preach and pray, the great Amen, God’s Yes and our Yes together, gloriously evident. God affirms us, making us a sure thing in Christ, putting his Yes within us. By his Spirit he has stamped us with his eternal pledge—a sure beginning of what he is destined to complete. 2 Corinthians 1:20-22 MSG

Read that again! God’s promises are Yes, pledged with Jesus’ blood and guaranteed by the Holy Spirit. God has certified by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three witnesses, that His promises are sure and will be completed. Maybe not in my sight or lifetime (and there’s the rub), but I trust that He has accomplished His purpose already, and I await the resolution.