Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Drinking New Wine, I Think Differently

I doubt this next poem expresses wisdom. It certainly offers passion. It also in its way is a metaphor for what happened to me. I assert that something like this saved my life, that I was offered spiritual drink and I took it at a critical moment. I knew I was dying. I did not know anything about spirit. I mean that quite directly and literally. I knew about church, nothing about spirit. Church without spirit is a dead thing. So I drank. I drank spiritual wine. Eventually years later, at the end before I got sober, I drank white wine from boxes, two or three a week. That's 10-15 liters a week.

What happened after drinking new wine in 1966, I began a lifelong unabashed quest for wisdom, sure that this yearning was God's gift to me, and it happened literally overnight. Sophia is my lover.

Drinking New Wine

I would take and drink new wine
even from the farthest goatskin bag,
to raise it above me and let the stream
of life spout out into free air, to mix
and mist a bit, flash in the sun
of my hope, the heat of my wild
and mutated life.

February 6, 2009 10:01 PM

*********************************

I truly do want to know how the four footeds and the winged people think. I have lived intimately with cats most of my adult life and much of my childhood too. I know they think, and sometimes what they think. Given sufficient motivation, some of them will plot too. Now I am watching birds. I am convinced that if you figure what interests them and also factor in the way their sensory systems work, you will begin to see sensible behavior out of them too, the logic of biology. Far deeper and older than our upstart rationality which creates disaster as often (more often perhaps) as success.

I Think Differently

I am pretty sure
I wouldn't want to roost there
on top of that pole
which goes to show me
I just don't think like eagles
or ospreys or storks.

This disappoints me.

February 7, 2009 8:38 PM

8 comments:

  1. Sigh, that's no lie, I too would like to hie up there in the sky... ;D (alrighty, enough rhyming already right?)

    Drink new wine, new knowledge, new life... surely an enviable quest.

    A quest that I profess to be on as well.

    SG

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  2. You know what....I was born in 1966.

    You know what else? I totally get that....I too drank new wine, after the old wine turned poison and stopped hiding all the good excuses.

    Or did the wine drink us? Sometimes I wonder, but not too hard :)

    xxxxxx

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  3. SG, I am happy for all the company I can get on the journey. I often feel more alone in this respect than anywhere else in my life. This is one very positive aspect to all these internet connections.

    Michelle, I heard it this way,

    The man takes the drink, the drink takes the man. Finally the drink takes the drink and the man drops out of the equation. Substitute woman for man and there is no change except that it happens in general a lot quicker.

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  4. Uum, who could deny the power of wine like that. I might almost be afraid to imbibe. I wonder what that means?

    It's hard to think any other way than how we do. We can imagine, but to think, that is something entirely different.

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  5. secret video

    Like a bird on the wire,
    Like a drunk in a midnight choir
    I have tried in my way to be free.
    Like a worm on a hook,
    Like a knight from some old fashioned book
    I have saved all my ribbons for thee.
    If i, if I have been unkind,
    I hope that you can just let it go by.
    If i, if I have been untrue
    I hope you know it was never to you.

    Like a baby, stillborn,
    Like a beast with his horn
    I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
    But I swear by this song
    And by all that I have done wrong
    I will make it all up to thee.
    I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
    He said to me, you must not ask for so much.
    And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
    She cried to me, hey, why not ask for more?

    Leonard Cohen
    Bird on a Wire

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  6. Love you Christopher. We should all get to hear that at least once a day :)

    xxx

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  7. Erin, see my next post. I noticed almost from the beginning that awe is a difficult thing. It is hard to stay in the flow of God when awe is such a natural part. The most natural response is to quickly turn and get away if you can. If you do, you are only expressing the natural human state. This might be a special case in the cosmos, or it might be natural to all beings burdened with self consciousness.

    GD, I find it amazing that you so often come up with truly good counterpoint. An ethereal musician of the spirit. I am happy you are here.

    Michelle, sweet woman, I agree with you. I love you back. I actually already and always love you. :)

    ReplyDelete

The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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