In the Cloud of a Living God

    Begin in the valley and the street
    among advertising agents and
    slick political pietists
    Liars. All of them.

    Songs of peace are
    shouted down by calls to war -
    war arrows over red hot coals.

    That’s where I live
    in the ephemeral world.
    Cursed. Wretched.

    I am a tourist here

    In the cloud of a living God
    on a mountain of fire
    where certainty flees
    into the silence of light.

    Where are we
    and what is this?
    Vivid here and
    trembling there.

    Part pilgrim,
    part stammering
    stumbling disciple

    Who am I?
    And what am I
    becoming?

A Dispensationalist Shepherded Tone

 

    “My brothers, my sisters these are the prophesied days. The end is near...”

    The superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. Start low, rising higher.

    “Look to Israel regathered. God’s time clock. The infallible sign. Only a breath away...”

    Continually rising. Higher, higher, ever higher, never higher.

    “The rapture is imminent. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe today. Two thousand years. Maybe today...”

    Ever increasing intensity. Perpetually sustained anxiety.

    “You’ve seen the signs – You have heard of wars and rumors of wars – Russia is on the move. China is assembling an army of millions. Germany will invade. Nation against nation. Kingdom against kingdom. Famines and earthquakes in divers places. Plagues and pestilence and devastating disease...”

    Reaching for resolution. Reaching. Reaching. Rising. Reaching.

    “Mussolini is the Antichrist. Kissinger is the Antichrist. Gorbachev is the Antichrist. Saddam is the Antichrist...”

    Rising. Rising. Still Rising.

    “The future is now. It’s later than it’s ever been. The signs have been fulfilled in our our lifetime. This generation. Now. The dawn is rising…”

    Imminent but never here.

A Daily Resistance - February 9, 2026

    Take these unresolved fragments: 

     I’m writing – but who’s reading? Singing, but who’s listening? And will it be remembered?

    Have you seen the news today? Have you heard the reports of an estimated 200,000 women, pregnant with Iranian infants, children – bayoneted, suffering tormented, demented attacks, buried alive with gouged out eyes? Stripped and kidnapped of political power. Deplorable American worship. Naming it thus was always justified.

    Is it vanity to want to be remembered? To make a mark? To leave a legacy?
    Is it vanity to want to be recognized? To matter?

    An uncontrolled psychosis far from normality – still too close to the moon. Beneath the shadow of this failed republic. The violent fragments of American cities explode and fling themselves into the fire.

    In a hundred years who will remember my name?
    In fifty – who will care?

    Have you seen the news? Autospeak machines that speak of wars and secret empires. Speak of a superior race and the toxic price of infrastructure.

    I am lost in the smoke and haze. I am swallowed up and lost in the chaos of our times. Swallowed up and devoured along with the great mass of women, children, and men. All consumed. All forgotten.

    Trumpet radio announcement vile screeds. Shackling perversity to God’s own firepower Repudiate his racism or stand with him condemned. Stick out your chest and raise your chin. We see you. We know.

    Still – I am writing.
    Still – I am singing.

Our Earth We Now Lament To See

 

    I found this hymn by Charles Wesley in our methodist hymnal (#449) today. I came home after church and quickly recorded my own little version of it. Wesley's words, my melody. 

    Our earth we now lament to see
    with floods of wickedness overflowed,
    with violence, wrong, and cruelty,
    one wide-extended field of blood,
    where men like fiends each other tear
    in all the hellish rage of war.

    As listed on Abaddon's side,
    they mangle their own flesh, and slay; 
    Tophet is moved, and opens wide
    its mouth for its enormous prey;
    and myriads sink beneath the grave,
    and plunge into the flaming wave. 

    O might the universal Friend
    this havoc of his creatures see!
    Bid our unnatural discord end,
    declare us reconciled in thee!
    Write kindness on our inward parts
    and chase the murderer from our hearts!

    Who now against each other rise,
    the nations of the earth constrain
    to follow after peace, and prize
    the blessings of thy righteous reign,
    the joys of unity to prove,
    the paradise of perfect love!
    

I Contain Multitudes – I Am Legion

     Here it is – Like Whitman, I contain multitudes. I am Legion.

    “That’s not funny, Carter. I’ve always said you were Satanic.

    Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give me my influences. Give me my heroes. Le t me name them:

    Archibald MacLeish – librarian poet
    Madeline L’Engle – universalist author, Christian author
    Burroughs – both Edgar Rice and William
    William Booth – the only General I would follow

    Howard Zinn – historian
    Marc Chagall – dreamer, poet, painter, fool

    “You’re a fool, Carter. Everything you say only confirms it the more…”

    Gustavo Gutiérrez – Dominican liberationist
        and
    Roger Corman – the king of cult

    “You go too far.”

    Give me scream queens. Give me Elvira,
    Give me Neil Young and Nick Cave.
    Give me Camus and Kierkegaard
    Give me the blessed Saint Francis and Sister Death

    “Stop. Stop. You’re only embarrassing yourself with this… contortion. This confession.”

    Kropotkin. Cash. Dylan.
    Brian Wilson. John Coltrane and John Yoder (though, I acknowledge the danger)
    Umberto Eco, and Echo and the Bunnymen

    “I don’t even know these names. No one cares.”

    Poe, and King, and Dick
    Sartre, Beauvoir, Silverstein
    Give me Black Francis screaming into the void

    “You need to stop. This is unhealthy.”

    Give me Martin Luther King Junior

    “He was an adulterer”

    I know, but give me Tillich.

    “Pornographer.”

    I know, but give me…

    “No. I will give you nothing.”

    Give me Jesus.

    “Jesus! The Blasphemy you breathe…”