Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Genesis

"I will"
I said
and you laughed

I reminded you
when you lied
(and stole, and cheated)

I repeated it
when we fought
and you walked away

My words
are yours
to have and hold

not because you're beautiful
but because they're mine

I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.
~Genesis 28:15b

That promise, that hope, that faithfulness that God promised to Jacob when nothing seemed to be working out or making much sense...that is the theme of Genesis. Beginning in the Garden God has been working all things toward completion, and He will not stop until He has kept every last one of His promises.

God promised Abraham and Sarah, and they laughed.
Jacob stole his way into the promise, lied to his father, and cheated his brother. Jacob wrestled with God himself then demanded a blessing.

But no matter what happens (or happened) to merit His rejection, His promise is trustworthy because of who He is and because He is the one who made it.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

ramblings of a rusty writer

I haven't written in a while. Well, I have written, but it was more to fill space than anything. I guess I'm just in one of those funks where it's not only hard to find the time to write, but when I do sit down, nothing comes. The following are 3 things that "flowed", for the most part unedited. They're not very good, and they're not intended to be. They are merely my efforts to get myself going again - a jump start, if you will. Please don't judge me (or my writing) based on what you see here. Judge merely my effort to get myself back to doing something I love.

Writer's Block
Searching, pulling, reaching (fishing)
hoping to find something
anything
that reminds me of yester(day)(month)(year)

fingers tracing, pointing (cold)
wishing to grasp
an idea
(not even a masterpiece)

sighs falling from my mouth to the floor
with a thud
longing to be light again
to be full again

sighs that can't seem to find the words.




The Poet
She sits, uninspired
twirling a pen
between her cold fingers

The baby squirms on the floor
reaching for a toy,
finding satisfaction with a sock

There's a fly in the window
*tap tap tap*
trying to find an opening

She cracks the window
the fly escapes (the baby cries)
"Looks like snow"

She scoops up the child
turns out the light
and walks through the dark room

"I hope something inspires me tomorrow."




Confessions of an English Major (and double writing minor)
I was almost a math major. I really don't like Brit Lit. My "ideal evening" does not include settling in with a good book. I still claim that Crime and Punishment is my favorite book even though I haven't read it since that one time in high school. I love poetry, but only from certain eras and certain authors, otherwise I just don't get it. I've never read The Canterbury Tales, even though I took an entire course on Chaucer in college. I rarely ever proofread. I haven't written down most of my "good" ideas because I don't have a long enough attention span to complete them. I have a number of plays in my head that no one will ever know about or see. I don't think I'm a very good writer and I'm very rarely pleased with my work. I hate journaling. I've lost most of the hard copies of everything I wrote before and during college and I never saved my grad school writings, so they perished with my hard drive. I notice every time someone says "I'm doing good" (in case you're not uptight about it like I am, you're not doing good, you're doing well). I like poetic language, so poems or prose that have lines like "her sticky lips pressed / together" irk me (this is also why I don't like country music). I'm really bad at grammar. I studied Old English which, although beautiful, has proven to be completely useless. I don't have the patience to endure most novels. I'm still not completely sure of all of the symbolism and motifs in The Heart of Darkness. I never read The Scarlet Letter because I had the Cliff's Notes for it. In college I claimed that my spiritual gift was B.S. I don't like editing. I'd rather watch the movie than read the book.