Singing Hymns in the Rain

     I had the opportunity to share another song I wrote at church this morning. Look for me at about the 50 minute mark. 

Singing Hymns in the Rain

Come thou fount of every blessing
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love.

How firm a foundation
Great is thy faithfulness
My life must be Christ’s broken bread
Take my life and let it be
Love divine, all loves excelling
When I survey the wondrous cross
Lead on, O King Eternal
Blessed be the tie that binds.

O to grace how great a debtor
daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here’s my heart, o take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.

I want to sing the hymns I learned
when I was still a younger man.
I want to sing them faithfully
without the doubts that crowd me now.
So here I am with a song to sing.
Here I am with a melody.
Here I am with my fragile voice
singing hymns in the rain.  

Are You Afraid, Carter?

    Look at me here – a half century, plus a bit more, a half century of living among the subterraneans at the edge of the naked city where it smells of marijuana, the neighbors play their music too loud and their dogs bark all night. These mechanics, hairdressers, and taxi drivers. These field-hands, deli-shop owners, and veterinary assistants.

    And look at the news: another protracted war in Europe with sprawling death count. Look at the news: another endless, pointless war in the Middle East.

    “Knock it off, Carter. You lost your idealism years ago.”

    Hear it? That is, despite the sneering belligerence, the voice of trembling fear and no peace. No peace.

    Look at me here, a half century of September reminders – falling leaves and fading memories – a half century of resignations, recriminations, failures, and false starts. I don’t want to live in the past, but I don’t understand the present and I cannot see the future. How do I disrupt the disorder? How do I deescalate the situation without matching their rhetoric? Without meeting violence with violence?

    “Work out your own salvation,” the voice says, “with fear and trembling. Are you afraid, Carter? Are you afraid? You know you should be.”

    It’s true. I am.

    “And why do you fear?”

    Because the secret things belong to God and who can understand his own errors?

Philippians 2:12

A Song of Ascent

    Look at me. I’m not so much.
    Not haughty, not proud.
    Not setting my sights above my stars.

    Except when I do.

    Then it’s all the small vandalism vanities
    hidden from the greater public
    behind the mask of an absurd person
    and my outsized ego banging
    on the walls of my little life.

    Let me be quiet and go away.
    He must increase.

Psalm 131

Words to My Friend

    My friend, my soul, I was younger and older still, yet I would be true. I would be pure.

    I might have been strong but…

    Even if nothing goes wrong, my friend, you’ll suffer. One day or more of suffering. It is the way – sorrow and night with a sense of inferiority in all my actions and a sense of insecurity as the result of my words.

    So, I’m talking of my soul now, my friend, with private language, of my memory and all my goals and goods. Still with the doubts I do not know.

    Be strong and show no weakness.
    Speak less and be more positive.

    Trust me; I’m not here to supplant you. As if so poor a soul could restore a faith to jubilant psalm...

    I’m sure that I live feeling secure, happier still. A consecrated life. Confident, happy, healthy right?

    No, my friend, I am not.

    But take my offered, beating heart. God will move.

I Have Noticed and I Have Seen

    When wisdom has become the least of these (after a long period of low demand), heart and knowledge. Clean. Free. Clear. But nothing’s yours. And nothing is mine. Discretion and understanding have become a menace. Simple observation is not encouraged.

    What about us? Here where we live and breathe. Where we buy our groceries and go to church.

    We must be unoppresed – free to lift ourselves from every yoke. My head without, my soul still hungry. Goodness and all the day’s security. Dark-dwelling in the house of the Lord. The hungry, cast out. The naked, thrown down. I notice my own flesh too.

    When will we see the word as written?

    We are teachers without questions. We are leaders without strategy. A nation with a soul for greed, for power. We are investigators without a clue. We are travelers without a map. These are all variations of the same story. News without media. Politicians without honor. Is this the family you’ve always wanted?

    Do whatever you need to do, but keep in mind that I am not a theologian, not professionally. Neither am I a doctor, a priest, or psychologist. But I have seen the finger writing on the wall.

Preadvised and Disremembered: A Memoir and Confession

     I was doting on old associations, old friends and ex-wives, thinking that I had not advanced among my peers. Neither first in any domain nor new thought. I was too long preadvised toward the same old gospel with the same old averages and I went into the gateway for a bad cause. I went about the city established and forgot the boy. Night came with alcohol and I disremembered all I had ever been.

    I went on living and laid down with old excuses. Living and laid down with the devil of mysteries. The Devil king of Babylon praised the gods of gold while I was practicing with stones and no doubt. I read too much of the vain and learned writers, candid writers. I was Hercules in Egypt. I was Horus among the Romans. Lost.

    The labels warning about the health risks standing in front of divinity were there for anyone to see. The hazards associated with the consumption of too much gin. Worn threadbare. Operating machinery after drinking. Head first. But I went on undeterred. If I should disobey orders and ask for Cancer, at least I would know that it wasn’t consumption.

    Later, when accused of imbalance, with every kingdom in desolation, every city, every house eliminated, bacteria and dysbiosis, inflammation under the influence, and the oxidative stress of pagan free radicals I would come to question the warnings ignored.

    Body specific. And Divinity recedes into memory. Focusing on what I had missed. The esophagus eliminated. The liver removed. No doctrine. Dabbling in doubt for nearly fifty years. The boy I was was lost; the father I became, agnostic. But my mouth, still confessing Christian. All social aspect and interaction. Invited to summer places, he followed on without argument for modern errors. Always preaching the same thing: He that believeth…

    It doesn’t have to be philosophical question. It doesn’t have to be the power of God. I’m just looking for the open door in this land of murder, bloodshed, and the uproar of fire. A thousand years of hope untapped. A broken heart crossed out.

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 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.

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…”

A Daily Resistance – January 29, 2026

    Explain yourself. What do you think you’re doing here? Pitiful literary pretensions. With your stupid short stories, your insipid poetry, your pathetic attempts at hymnody…

    I don’t know. I don’t know.

    Why are you writing? Why are you writing this? Any of this? It doesn’t matter anyway. No one reads any of your shit. You’re nobody. Nothing.

    Because each day has enough worry of its own, and…

    What is it you expect to accomplish?

    I am stretched across time and space. Without words, I am lost. Breathe in. Write out.

    Do you think you’re helping? You’re hopeless, aren’t you?

    Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.

    But you don’t really mean it, do you?

    So he will kill me. I have no hope. It is the same, isn’t it?

    Poser. Miserable puke. It’s nothing but pretense and posturing. With your pathetic faith and your performative suffering.

Matthew 6:34 Job 13:15 (in different versions)

Sunday and a Child's Message

 

    Today's writing should be read as a follow up, companion to yesterday's: I Can Hear it in the Wind 

Sunday and a Child’s Message

    Sunday – and the morning rises cold. Sunlight streaming, warmth retreating. More light than heat in the east this morning. But I am up. Awake and cold.

    Sunday – another day, another week, in the longest of years. Would this be a day of safety and security? Or, given our recent history, a dreadful day of struggle for survival? An age of cruelty and we wonder what we are becoming. Unsociable. Unwanted. Unwelcome.

    What would be revealed today? My sickness. My wounds. Nothing unexpected.

    Sunday – half empty faith with too much knowledge and too little experience
    Sunday – half empty faith with too little knowledge and too many experiences.

    And here it is: I know nothing with certitude. I know nothing with a knowingness.

    No more words of boasting. No more bounding bold claims. I needed to worship and to write. And to listen to whispered words.

    Sunday – in the pew. A child’s message is slipped into my hand. A child’s message written in block letters and blue marker:

    Be Kind.
    Be Courageous.
    Be Curious.
    Love, L.

    Sunday – things change and change again. But never in a straight line.

I Can Hear it in the Wind

     Saturday – I want to walk, get up, get out, get moving. Do something. Go. But it’s cold with the snow and the wind over the frozen ravine cuts into me. I’ll go as far as the top of the hill, maybe a little more. You can see the highway from there. Call it just over a mile. Enough move the blood.

    It’s been a year, maybe a little more, of war and smoke filled streets. Blood. Evacuation order without notice, without warning. Eviction orders and arrests without warrants. Fire on the hillside, in the neighborhood of beige and gray houses. God and silver and precious oil – wood, and hay, and stubble – let it burn. They all will burn. And the fire will reveal what it’s all worth.

    I can hear it in the wind: What is this new-found fascination with truth? With fact? The cold war is here. Freezing. There’s no time for careful deceptions – for photoshopped photos, AI manipulations, or hand-forged letters. Get out. Get gone. The ICEman cometh. This is the way. This now. You thought you could change the world? Get out. Get lost. One day you’ll understand the long-term value of verbal abuse.

    Pull the coat a little closer. Walk a little faster. It’s colder than I thought.

Here I Am – The Story of Me

    I am again worn out, ground down tired. A jigsawed puzzle missing pieces. Neverlast. First time, last time blind. Struck from behind by unseen hands. A humble opening of deliberation and doctrinal concern.

    I am once more hardly born, escaping, yet expecting to be remembered. Drifting first to myth then vulgarity. Off by a mile or more of deathbed prophecy. But put the story in context. Tell them who I am. Tell them I belong here.

    Here I am – confessing into the dark - the story of me. Though not remotely viable. Complicated and asking for help. More than ornamental. Less than helpful. Striking at confrontation. Reveling in the little and revealing little more. You can’t ask for more than that. I just don’t have it.

Oh Me! Oh Life! With Slight Modification

Now shall we consider the sunflower – as our template?
Oh me! Oh life! Foolishly. Optimally. Question and answer
on the head of the hum, and how?

Years ago, shortly before the broken union,
quiet desperation and well-deserved breakdowns
no purpose. no life. no solution.

But

Bright sunflowers pointing to American poets
writing among the miraculous.
Humbler than the industrial revolution.

Oh me! Oh life! With slight modification.

I Am

I am a faded cardboard sign – illegible in the rain.
I am a sailor lost at sea.
I am blue raspberry marketing – unreal.
I am a forgone conclusion,
    a smile in the dark, an unfinished melody.
I am the memory of a dying dog.
I am a hesitation mark.
I am standing in the rain again,
    the looming threat of war, mushrooms on a fallen log.
I am an unfamiliar dog in the neighbor’s yard.
I am an owl in the sanctuary.
I am unlike myself, as far as I can remember,
    but I am becoming true.
I am an abandoned car at the side of the road.
I am rabbit trail digressions into nonsense,
    an absurdist defeatism.
I am stomach pains and vertigo in an airport terminal.
I am a halfhearted Baphomet.
I am slowing down, full stop.
I am not especially well written,
    clumsy but earnest.
I am helpless and I don’t know what to do
    except to say that there’s nothing I can do.

Resurrection Comes Slowly

 There was little good in that Good Friday four years ago. Everything changes. Everything is always changing. That was the day that everything changed. That was the day that my now ex wife moved out. 

I’d planned to go to work as normal in the morning. I thought I could be gone while she left, that I could focus on work and not think about it. But I’d forgotten or failed to notice (a lot slipped by me in those days) that we had that day off. So I couldn’t avoid it. I decided instead to take my camera to a nearby wildlife preserve and to spend the day taking pictures of wild flowers and wild beasts. 

I almost offered to help her load the rental truck instead of going to the park. Not because I was eager to see her gone, but because I was desperate for her to stay. Make of that what you will; I don’t understand it. 

But the wildlife preserve was a waste. I don’t know why I bothered to bring my camera. There was no art in me. No life. No clarity of thought or vision. No sight. If there were blooms, I don’t remember them. If there were birds, I didn’t hear them. I was oblivious. Senseless. 

All I remember is that it was grey, and overcast, and cold that day Or I was. I was grey, and overcast, and cold. 

I hiked around the park for several hours. I took no photos. I ate lunch in Des Moines but I don’t remember what I ate. I wasted time for as long as I could and then I came home to an empty house. She was gone. The kids were gone. The pets were gone. (We had agreed that she would take the dog and leave the cat with me- but she lied and took both.)

I don’t remember that Saturday at all. I was in a grave of my own. 

Sunday came. Easter. Resurrection Sunday. I walked to church, struggling to pull myself together. But as soon as we sang the first hallelujah, it all fell apart. I fled the sanctuary in tears. 

Four years later, I’m alive and happy again but I remember the hurt. I remember the desperation. Even the risen Christ told his followers not to cling to him - did it hurt too much?- and retained the scars of his execution. 

I am alive and happy again but resurrection comes slowly and often times the wounds are still visible. 

A Familiar Ache

My reoccurring, on again-off again, ache is returned today to trouble me. A familiar ache, I feel it in my head. I feel it in my nervous stomach. 

The pressure of the air, the wind in my face, the noise of trains, and lawnmower engines, and barking dogs, and ambulance sirens. Every step another thud of the hammer. Every step another spike through the eye. 

But I’m not crying for the way things are - as bad as they are. If there are tears they are for the never was and the might have beens. I’m hurting now, but it will pass. Some Tylenol, some water, some rest. Till then I keep moving.  

Somewhere, elsewhere in one of those capital capitals, one of those centers of power and wealth and influence, someone is brokering another deal, trading information, buying and selling the world. What little it means to me. They can buy and sell it all and they still won’t have me. 

Home is where I want to be. 

My head hurts and my stomach rolls, but I am cheered by dandelions and purple flowers that I cannot identify. I am on my way home. 

Reflections on Forgiveness Sunday

 

The echoes of paradise still ring 
memories of a place I've never been
from the garden they were thrown
still trying to find my way back home again, again, again. 

You went missing years and years ago
and where you've gone I could never know
I've seen your face a thousand times
but never in the New York Times, oh no, oh no, oh no. 

The mountains loomed so large out there
when I was breathing in the desert air
I would call to apologize
and to forgive your lies but you don't care, don't care, don't care.

I'm happier than I was before
since she walked through my front door
but here's a great mystery 
that the shape of you is still in me, oh, oh, oh. 

She is sleeping now so whisper
but when she wakes I will kiss her
in the noon and twilight times 
I will sing in broken rhymes for her, for her, for her. 

I wrote this song as I was delivering packages yesterday afternoon - on Forgiveness Sunday (also known as Cheesefare Sunday in the Orthodox Church) - the last Sunday before lent. 

Say Good Morning While It Is Still Morning

 This little song began as another short ditty for my D&D bard character to sing, but as I carried the mail out and about this week, I greatly expanded it into something like a full song. 

Say good morning while it is still morning

Say it and be true
Then good morrow, now say good morrow
I'll share this blessing with you

I remember I used to go skipping
When I was a little boy
Now I'm grown up and grown older
I think I've forgotten that joy

There once was a kitten named Callie
Who came but she could not stay
She sat with me for a little while
Then she went far away

My daughter's gone over the ocean
My daughter's gone over the sea
She's been away such a long time
I think she's forgotten 'bout me

Sometimes we sing in the morning
Sometimes we sing at night
Sometimes we sing when we're lonely
And only the song feels right

If I were the King of Forever
Lord of time and space
I would give up that position and power
Just to see your sweet face

There's a verse in this song for my daughter
There's a verse here for a dead cat
I wrote a verse for my son as well
But I don't know where he's at

Say good morning while it is still morning
Say it and be true
Then good morrow, say good morrow
I'll share this blessing with you

Just Give It Time (A Song for September)

 September has been, in recent years, a difficult month for me. And September this year is keeping to the pattern. It’s been full of stress and pain. So I wrote a song about it.