[kerouac_turn]

You guys can call me jack.

Tonight I cried in a wal-mart parking lot, to the sound of a speed bump's victory. And I don't believe in rewards anymore.

Tired and indifferent, I stumbled into a Taco Bell, made my order, and smiled over the nostalgia created by a soft drink. After thanking an empty counter for preparing my food, I retreated to an uncomfortable booth and waited. For God to listen to me ask Him for a blessing on my crunch wrap supreme again. But before I could lift my eyes to the serpent Moses raised, a lone lady with an eternal perm and a kind smile handed me a beef taco. "Would you like this? I ordered too much than I could eat." I smiled and graciously accepted it, not trying to hide my surprise.

Could a beef taco turn me around? We'll see.

So I asked for a blessing, and ate. I got through with my crunch wrap supreme and ate the beef taco that came with my combo. Then, oh and then! I opened that last beef taco. I found it was a supreme taco. That only made me happier for some reason. Maybe God gave me a beef taco today with some tomatoes on it, instead of just lettuce. I wanted to thank that lady again, but she and her husband walked out without a second glance, unknowing that they may have saved my faith. Maybe I can still fight tomorrow.

Why did Christ weep? Why is Krishna blue? Why is Buddha gone? Why is Mohammad dead? I hope that wondering isn't beyond my reach, and that the truth will prove me right in the noonday sun.

I will believe in Christ. Now someone tell me why.

kerouac

[kerouac_turn]

If all is what we make it, what are we?

A girl goes to class with me who sits in the same spot everyday with the same expression. She walks in with the same silent declaration, the same desparing glances. She doesn't hesitate to catch our attention with her high riding shorts and clinging blouses. But I don't look at her for that. I look at her for her eyes.
I've seen her with her sorority sisters. They joke and giggle while they eat their salads sprinkled with Italian dressing. She's obviously the mute monarch, exercising her reign in the most lackluster fashion. She must be a senior, I think.
But the way she seems to carry her unshed tears everywhere with her. How her green eyes seem like they belong to an elderly woman who survived the Holocaust. Not a college student in her early 20's. And I've prayed for her. I've begged on her behalf. For something to break. Something to loose her from this covenant she's made with her fate. And everyday she walks in, I look at her eyes to see if anything's changed. I don't know what I'm looking for. I'll know when I see it.

Can I enjoy my youth while I have it? Will I regret my unlived life? I just want to know that I spent every dime. That everyone had two loaves and three fish to take home.

To fulfill what is lacking in His afflictions.

kerouac

[kerouac_turn]

a future beloved whispered divine words in my ear. She played the Holy Spirit, because I was too scared to look beyond what was in my face. I heard what was needed. An enemy's position discoverd, I'll fight to believe that I can survive belief, survive faith, simply because I feel his breath down my neck and how it reeks of rage.

dark nights of the soul are always harder when there's no one to talk to. I don't believe in fate, so hope's my only companion. Would you talk with me?

[FTS]

G'day Jack.

Do you play guitar?

Peace

[kerouac_turn]

Yeah, for about five years. Have an acoustic Alavarez (RD-20?). You?

[FTS]

Oh cool. What sort of music are you into playing/listening to?

I've got an Ibanez AS73
an Ibanez RG270
a Garrison acoustic/electric
and an Ibanez EDB500

I you want, you can check out some of my music via the links in my sig.

How'd you find out about CGR?

[Katze]

Hey, Jack. Since my blog is right next to yours, I thought I'd stop by and say hello.

--Katze

[Kiss the Son]

Mine's next to yours, too. I'll be stopping in to see what's up every once in a while. I'll see you around.

[kerouac_turn]

Thanks fellas. Nice to meet you.

Kepa - What kind of music? It's hard to say. When I hear something, I know if I like it or not, but I can't really narrow my interests to specific genres. Lately, I've been listening to some screamo, emo, and alot of indie stuff. MuteMath, Emery, Damien Rice, Iron and Wine, to name a few.

Last night I tore my girlfriend apart with words. I watched my hopes for personal integrity distenegrate as I voiced my despair over myself. I tore her apart. I felt her last hopes bled through the phone line. I felt her try to understand. And with every choked attempt I made to relate myself, I felt the bars fall over me, like a wave of subway smoke plunging down my lungs. I made another sign to Him with my lips. I really want that path, the one where I understand why fairytales are half-truths. And why I'll never be what I was made for. But escapes went out with the jokes, and I go through the motions. Funny. The same motions that were made to deliver become the instruments by which we decorate and polish and accessorize our coffins.

But I woke up this morning and read my Bible. I did it. Because I don't want that coffin. I don't.

[PontiusPirate]

I quite like your writing style.
I also quite like Kerouac.
What other writers interest you?

Love.
Chelsea.

[kerouac_turn]

The kind that say what they were made to say.

Ayn Rand, C.S. Lewis, Henry Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr., Shakespeare, Voltaire, Dante Alighieri, John Milton, John Bunyan, John Piper to name a few of the favorites.

What kind of writers interest you?

[kerouac_turn]

Love, like all subjective things, is dangerous. But it is through the danger that what is truly valuable is discovered. In this sense, marriage is a miracle.

Love can take the form of whoever holds it. The threat that comes with subjectivity leaves the possibility of manipulation, confusion, violation, and simple hurt. Love can grip like a cruel foreman, incessantly beating and shoving poor souls into a state of bitter withdrawal. Love can be a prison cell, closing in and binding down; sending its inhabitants into a deep starvation of the soul. Love can lose itself, and transform our relationships into everything we never intended them to be. Love, unchallenged or unquestioned, can destroy an individual. C.S. Lewis relates how love is a garden in need of pruning, in his book The Four Loves:

It is no disparagement to a garden to say that it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fruit trees, nor roll and cut its own lawns. A garden is a good thing, but that is not the sort of goodness it has. It will remain a garden, as distinct from a wilderness, only if someone does all these things -to it. The very fact that it needs constant weeding and pruning bears witness to its glory. It teems with life. It glows with color and smells like heaven and puts forward at every hour of a summer day beauties which man could never have created, and could not even, on his own resources, have imagined.

Love, we find, can also be an instrument of building up, of carving and shaping. Its use can be an art. An individual can take up love, and allow his/her life to become the subject matter of a vast landscape of selfless brush strokes. One could dive into the sacrifice that comes with allowing another a higher (the highest?) place of respect and value, even above oneself. Though faced with the opportunity to fully indulge oneself, a person could choose to attend to the whims, the anxieties, the dreams of another. This sacrificial commitment of the will holds within itself an element that can aid in explaining the nature of marriage and the necessity, or lack thereof, of external elements (like religion) in its progress or even existence.

Does the mutual tie made between two souls require the blessing of religion? Is marriage conceived in the womb of the church/synagogue/mosque/temple? To fully answer this question (and the questions that this discussion can create), one would be forced to pursue a more in-depth analysis of religion: what it is without human hands soiling it, how it could affect its practitioners when applied with its original intent, outside the biases of predetermined interpretation. Such an analysis will not be made here for two reasons: it cannot and should not be made in order to make an adequate conclusion (for our purposes).

It is clear that the natural union we call marriage is made by both (to borrow Christian terms) the elect and the reprobate daily. In our country, civil unions are granted to practitioner and irreligious alike. Marriage is often established without even a dash of religion in the mix, if not in our country then elsewhere. Aside from simply observing marriages untouched by religion, the foundational and logical premise of these committed unions does not require or even allude to traditional religion. I’m certain that an atheist can undergo the entire process of matrimony without once bringing to mind the necessity of a Supreme Being’s sanction. Religion, though certainly a factor for some, is not a marital necessity by any means. Rather, marriage, in theory, can be simply the glorious union of otherwise opposing forces: two selves. This beautiful collision results in a feat that borders on the supernatural – perhaps enough to make one believe in miracles.

Maybe instead of religion being the only reason for marriage, marriage (the union between man and God and its reflection in our world between man and woman) is truly expressed and pursued in religion.

Jack

[kerouac_turn]

Every time I drive by a pasture, I have the impulse, the need, the thirst, to quietly park my car on the side of the road, walk to the middle of the pasture, and lie down. Not for a few minutes. Not an hour. For a week. Just to lay there and feel the earth breathe. And see if God would still whisper to me, just once.

Every day, we cross another crossroads, heading farther down to what we will be.

[kerouac_turn]

Sometimes, I feel sorrow for every girl that passes by. I feel like the only adult in existence staring into a planet-sized orphanage. Every soul that brushes past me is another silent drowning. Into what some know not. Into what some know. Perhaps you've heard the song lyric by the band mewithoutYou, "If I could become the servant of all, no lower place to fall. If I could be your servant." My desire is similar. To be the lover of all the desperately alone girls that cross my daily path. To be able to say to each one, "You, you are truly loved." To let each one know, "Breathe freely, you will not die alone."

And, yes, I know that sounds a bit creepy. I'm not thinking along those lines. Believe me, I'm not. I just hurt for those that have none to hurt for them. Each feeling what they will never tell anyone. Ever. Each accepting in quiet resignation their suppossed inescapable fate. Maybe I see in each of their eyes a piece of me. A piece of the constant weeping, groaning of creation, as we eagerly await the Savior.

Marinatha, Christ. Marinatha.

Sometimes, I feel less like me, and more like someone I'm not. And, in that instant, I desire to be where there are no reflections and no need to terrorize ourselves, but to always look outwards, where freedom is truly won: independence from ourselves.

[Mattlock]

I love your User Name.