"The Rule of God"
"The Identity of Jesus Christ"
"The Fellowship of the Spirit"
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Cabe
Photographic reflections upon the doctrinal theology of James Wm. McClendon, Jr. by Cabe M.
"The Rule of God"
"The Identity of Jesus Christ"
"The Fellowship of the Spirit"
"The Rule of God" "The Identity of Jesus Christ" "The Fellowship of the Spirit"
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Kristen
Finding Voice
I wake. My eyes slowly open for what seems like the first time. Overwhelmed by colors,shapes, sizes; I blink hard. I look around slowly. I see faces. I see corners, bright lights,doorways. My breathing feels heavy and hard. After moments I notice that I have no movement of my hands, of my feet. I try to move, but I cannot. I glance down to see my wrists pressing against the tightly bound ribbon. I pull, but there is no movement. I go to open my mouth to speak, but my lips, as my legs and arms, are bound; there is tape across my face. Panic sets in and subsides. I relax into the bondage. Why fight?
Why fight?? Why fight?!!!!!! WHY FIGHT???!!!
I pull hard. Really hard. on everything. I feel the skin on my wrists break. The chair beneath me moves--this feels good. I pull harder. Again, and again, and again. And again and again and AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND---------
Silence. Stillness. My shocked and terrified eyes stare disbelieving at what they had assumed was not possible--my hand has been freed. My hand!! MY HAND!!!! Quiet. Fear. Excitement fear, excitement fear.
My fingers run over the ribbon. The ribbon that incapacitated my hand, the ribbon that continues to bind the remainder of my appendages. Slowly my finger tips become aware of their power.
My mouth. MY MOUTH!!! My hand flies to my face. My body pulsates. My finger skims the outline of the sticky plastic silencer. In a moment of madness my hand strips the tape from my mouth. Breath. Breath. Sound. Make sound. Whimper. Quiet cry. Laughter. VOICE!!! Put it back put it back PUT IT BACK!! My hand flies to my face and smacks the tape back to its original placement. Silence phew silence. Oppression. Safe, safe, quiet oppression. Safe oppression. Yes, safe. Oppression.
Oh, but I must know. I must!! I must!!! Just once more. Please please please.
Hand flying to face tape ripping off mouth widening scream releasing
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA hand returning to face returning tape silencing mouth silencing scream obliterating voice obliterating voice obliterating voice.
I wake. My eyes slowly open for what seems like the first time. Overwhelmed by colors,shapes, sizes; I blink hard. I look around slowly. I see faces. I see corners, bright lights,doorways. My breathing feels heavy and hard. After moments I notice that I have no movement of my hands, of my feet. I try to move, but I cannot. I glance down to see my wrists pressing against the tightly bound ribbon. I pull, but there is no movement. I go to open my mouth to speak, but my lips, as my legs and arms, are bound; there is tape across my face. Panic sets in and subsides. I relax into the bondage. Why fight?
Why fight?? Why fight?!!!!!! WHY FIGHT???!!!
I pull hard. Really hard. on everything. I feel the skin on my wrists break. The chair beneath me moves--this feels good. I pull harder. Again, and again, and again. And again and again and AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND---------
Silence. Stillness. My shocked and terrified eyes stare disbelieving at what they had assumed was not possible--my hand has been freed. My hand!! MY HAND!!!! Quiet. Fear. Excitement fear, excitement fear.
My fingers run over the ribbon. The ribbon that incapacitated my hand, the ribbon that continues to bind the remainder of my appendages. Slowly my finger tips become aware of their power.
My mouth. MY MOUTH!!! My hand flies to my face. My body pulsates. My finger skims the outline of the sticky plastic silencer. In a moment of madness my hand strips the tape from my mouth. Breath. Breath. Sound. Make sound. Whimper. Quiet cry. Laughter. VOICE!!! Put it back put it back PUT IT BACK!! My hand flies to my face and smacks the tape back to its original placement. Silence phew silence. Oppression. Safe, safe, quiet oppression. Safe oppression. Yes, safe. Oppression.
Oh, but I must know. I must!! I must!!! Just once more. Please please please.
Hand flying to face tape ripping off mouth widening scream releasing
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA hand returning to face returning tape silencing mouth silencing scream obliterating voice obliterating voice obliterating voice.
Kae
THE SWEATER
The purpose of contrasting these two sweaters and two pairs of socks is not to demonstrate a qualitative difference; it will be obvious that the ready made garments are qualitatively more refined, more consistent in nature and size, we might even say more perfect. No, the contrast is better seen in the difference in character. Sentimentalizing aside, it is clear that there is a difference in the character of the hand made pieces. It is almost as if the hand-knit items bear a personality all their own. How can it be that the ethereal nature of human care and intent crosses over to be come evident in an inanimate object?
This becomes immediately evident when such an object is presented as a gift, in lieu of its matching ready-made partner. Imagine opening a birthday gift holding a pair of socks. Nice enough, especially if they are made of Smart Wool™. Now imagine being given a pair of brightly colored striped hand knit socks, made for your feet alone... The joy of the gift of this reaction was my pleasure to receive when I gave a friend a pair I had just finished knitting as a going-away present along with the scripture: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bear good news.”
“The aim of the artist ought to be to bring into the world objects which do not already exist there...objects which are especially worthy of love.”
William Gass
The purpose of contrasting these two sweaters and two pairs of socks is not to demonstrate a qualitative difference; it will be obvious that the ready made garments are qualitatively more refined, more consistent in nature and size, we might even say more perfect. No, the contrast is better seen in the difference in character. Sentimentalizing aside, it is clear that there is a difference in the character of the hand made pieces. It is almost as if the hand-knit items bear a personality all their own. How can it be that the ethereal nature of human care and intent crosses over to be come evident in an inanimate object?
This becomes immediately evident when such an object is presented as a gift, in lieu of its matching ready-made partner. Imagine opening a birthday gift holding a pair of socks. Nice enough, especially if they are made of Smart Wool™. Now imagine being given a pair of brightly colored striped hand knit socks, made for your feet alone... The joy of the gift of this reaction was my pleasure to receive when I gave a friend a pair I had just finished knitting as a going-away present along with the scripture: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bear good news.”
May we never underestimate the un-named in that which we give and receive
Phil
Fruit of the Spirit Series by Phil N.
'love', 'longsuffering', 'faithfulness',
'joy', 'gentleness', 'meekness',
'peace', 'goodness', 'temperance'
(india ink on paper, copyright: phil nellis, 2008, used by permission)
Monday, August 18, 2008
Daniel
PRESENTATION ORDER:
Song: “The Power of Pentecost” –Traditional Song
“What’s that feelin’ that I feel?
It’s Pentecost, Pentecost.
Can’t explain it but I know it’s real—
The power of Pentecost.”
Poem 1:
I was born into flames.
Pentecostal syncopation, no doubt,
Can be sourced as the root of all my
Rhythmic woes. “So it goes.”
And now I am so distantly removed from the
Three-hour Sunday Nights. “God showed up,”
And we got so carried away, the preacher,
He didn’t have nothin’ to say—too busy spinnin’
Like a top, I suppose. When a man’a’God
Moves like that—only the Lord knows.
Two things I know, beyond the doubts
That cloud my mind. I have seen and
I have felt what it means to be alive.
You think you know what I mean
When I say, “God showed up.”
But I can see it in your face.
There is something that can only be known when
Charismatic, boisterous song descends
To weeping, praying, seeking…God.
And going to the place where silence waits…
Pregnant with possibility…
The immaculate conception democratized
Through the playing of Babel in rewind,
’Cause you’ve never woven songs of this kind—
The unencumbered, intertwining, melodic phrases;
Bending lines—that stretch across the space
To make a unity so diverse, you find yourself
Trembling. Embodied.
Song: “Comfort Ye” –from Handel’s Messiah
“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Saith your God, Saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem and cry unto her that her warfare, her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, that her iniquity is pardoned.”
Poem 2:
Throughout my childhood, I would have explained
That the work of the Spirit was of
Power to proclaim—
Now I barely note a single day when
I fail to ponder the power plays
Inherent in terms like, “Spirit filled,”
“Sanctified,” and “Fire Baptized.”
As a boy, I didn’t know
what it meant to pray in groans that
words cannot express. But
I did know things no boy should have to know.
The weight of souls and
The silence that grows from
The fear of what could happen in my own bed.
It was here that I learned what was meant when it was said,
“I will send to you a comforter.”
Here, in the place where the darkness bleeds,
Language leaks into silence
That speaks.
Music beyond words that can
Fill the soul.
(Darkness) –Song: Sacred Harp Singers- Cold Mountain Soundtrack. Start at 1:49.
Poem 3:
Language goes beyond the banality of shaping together lips and teeth and tongue.
Even lovers long to express more than is afforded by the vocabulary of kissing.
It takes technique to structure strokes and scratches straight upon a page.
Be it by pen injected with India ink made from plastics produced in Peru and
Assembled in Alabama, or the digitized hum of a chipset converting keystrokes to
The binary equivalent of an eye exam.
Now which is better? …Zero or One?...Now A or B?
And this just trips the lever on the linguistic layer machine.
Much may be said of sign, signified, symbol, and referent,
Object, phoneme, morpheme (I may need a morphine), participles,
Pronouns, predicate adjectives, tenses and creoles,
Pidgins, jargon, syntax, composition, flow, and cohesion—All
Pieces of a puzzle that allows us proclaim:
“I love you”
“Bless your heart”
“Could you pass the mayonnaise? Mmhmm, the big jar. Thank you, precious”
Sometimes I sit speechless,
Like when my Pawpaw makes some audacious claim,
To which my Nana replies—she doesn’t bat an eye—
“You ain’t gonna!”
And when he says back,
“I are too, Dunnit,”
…I have no idea what he just said.
And it’s only then, in the moments when language fails to
Body forth the complex chaos that structures into speech, do we
Truly relish the beauty of God’s Spirit, inviting us to play
In the mysterious communion pouring forth, One-in-Three.
Song: “Heaven Above” –original song by author
“We were meant to live some kind of life.
We were meant to bear all of the heartache.
We were meant to love—we were meant to grow…
Heaven above, heaven below.
Kingdom of God reign in us.
Take off these clothes that hide all these scars,
Give us new robes made of love.”
Song: “The Power of Pentecost” –Traditional Song
“What’s that feelin’ that I feel?
It’s Pentecost, Pentecost.
Can’t explain it but I know it’s real—
The power of Pentecost.”
Poem 1:
I was born into flames.
Pentecostal syncopation, no doubt,
Can be sourced as the root of all my
Rhythmic woes. “So it goes.”
And now I am so distantly removed from the
Three-hour Sunday Nights. “God showed up,”
And we got so carried away, the preacher,
He didn’t have nothin’ to say—too busy spinnin’
Like a top, I suppose. When a man’a’God
Moves like that—only the Lord knows.
Two things I know, beyond the doubts
That cloud my mind. I have seen and
I have felt what it means to be alive.
You think you know what I mean
When I say, “God showed up.”
But I can see it in your face.
There is something that can only be known when
Charismatic, boisterous song descends
To weeping, praying, seeking…God.
And going to the place where silence waits…
Pregnant with possibility…
The immaculate conception democratized
Through the playing of Babel in rewind,
’Cause you’ve never woven songs of this kind—
The unencumbered, intertwining, melodic phrases;
Bending lines—that stretch across the space
To make a unity so diverse, you find yourself
Trembling. Embodied.
Song: “Comfort Ye” –from Handel’s Messiah
“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Saith your God, Saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem and cry unto her that her warfare, her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, that her iniquity is pardoned.”
Poem 2:
Throughout my childhood, I would have explained
That the work of the Spirit was of
Power to proclaim—
Now I barely note a single day when
I fail to ponder the power plays
Inherent in terms like, “Spirit filled,”
“Sanctified,” and “Fire Baptized.”
As a boy, I didn’t know
what it meant to pray in groans that
words cannot express. But
I did know things no boy should have to know.
The weight of souls and
The silence that grows from
The fear of what could happen in my own bed.
It was here that I learned what was meant when it was said,
“I will send to you a comforter.”
Here, in the place where the darkness bleeds,
Language leaks into silence
That speaks.
Music beyond words that can
Fill the soul.
(Darkness) –Song: Sacred Harp Singers- Cold Mountain Soundtrack. Start at 1:49.
Poem 3:
Language goes beyond the banality of shaping together lips and teeth and tongue.
Even lovers long to express more than is afforded by the vocabulary of kissing.
It takes technique to structure strokes and scratches straight upon a page.
Be it by pen injected with India ink made from plastics produced in Peru and
Assembled in Alabama, or the digitized hum of a chipset converting keystrokes to
The binary equivalent of an eye exam.
Now which is better? …Zero or One?...Now A or B?
And this just trips the lever on the linguistic layer machine.
Much may be said of sign, signified, symbol, and referent,
Object, phoneme, morpheme (I may need a morphine), participles,
Pronouns, predicate adjectives, tenses and creoles,
Pidgins, jargon, syntax, composition, flow, and cohesion—All
Pieces of a puzzle that allows us proclaim:
“I love you”
“Bless your heart”
“Could you pass the mayonnaise? Mmhmm, the big jar. Thank you, precious”
Sometimes I sit speechless,
Like when my Pawpaw makes some audacious claim,
To which my Nana replies—she doesn’t bat an eye—
“You ain’t gonna!”
And when he says back,
“I are too, Dunnit,”
…I have no idea what he just said.
And it’s only then, in the moments when language fails to
Body forth the complex chaos that structures into speech, do we
Truly relish the beauty of God’s Spirit, inviting us to play
In the mysterious communion pouring forth, One-in-Three.
Song: “Heaven Above” –original song by author
“We were meant to live some kind of life.
We were meant to bear all of the heartache.
We were meant to love—we were meant to grow…
Heaven above, heaven below.
Kingdom of God reign in us.
Take off these clothes that hide all these scars,
Give us new robes made of love.”
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Vangie
'Photograph Graveside' by Vangie R.
'Funnel' by Vangie R.
'Benediction of the Artistic Impulse' by Vangie R.
There is a slight brown like singed eyebrows declaring that sunshine occurred.
A slight change in elevation over Grandma Dudie’s body.
What remains…
In her ark.chest.coffin
The full height of myself between the corpse and the surface
The earth pushed up and made a slight crack in the corner of the marble
Beloved Wife and Mother
Esther M. Roswall
1918 1982
The Salvation Army crest sits between the years looking like a sun spreading her skirt out into a curtsy with an obnoxious crown
That old Victorian symbol standing between Esther’s birth and death where her life should be…
The shadows once belonging to her daughter and granddaughter float ethereally to the right as to not disturb the Sun in her pompous glory
Yet darkening grandpa’s bloodiron gravemarker
Mauritz W. Roswall
U.S. Army
World War II
July 13, 1911 June 19, 1995
Exact dates with a simple cross raised between
Stark. Metallic. Cold.
Ingeting.
Floating above the soft cheek the heavy hand,
Returning into adomah
Powerless to comfort, empowered to shush….
'Funnel' by Vangie R.
What great push edged Agda off of the great appendage of Northern Europe: The sterile soil yielding only bland potatoes nudging her to risk crossing the sea från
Sverige to Chicago, to Minnesota to the
logging/fishing outpost trying to be a city called Seattle
Ever the outsider
Marrying Gus nee coalmines now a halibutman
Leaving the ministry
birthing 5
Losing golden curled Ruthie
Losing Sverige
Gaining America?
Your baby girl
Nursed you
Until…
Esther overcoming the darkness with voice, trumpet, accordion, guitar
American yet trapped between
Mama’s passing, you were finally able to live into your vocation of ministry
Mauritz duly impressed, loving you until
Condemning you to a separate, arctic bed
Serve him, everything must be snäll as he gives
your love rations to the church secretary
Little Lulu
“little adult”
Your best friend
your baby girl
Its poured into
Her
muted…
Carol with horn and piano and choir and horned rimmed cat eye glasses
Enduring the robotic sterility of what makes Sweden famous
No sibling, alone, move from place to place to place
Seattle, Olympia, Portland, Coos Bay, Eureka
Will your only friend be Mama?
What you want to be when you grow up is the same as your Mama and mormor…
Given up to marry a hick logger
Move to a trailer park and
daddy puts his hat on and leaves
Manic Depressive
Rage carries on hidden behind flimsy walls
A comfort found….
Evangeline brings good news to take your pain away.
Gritted teeth and a slap, followed by tight maternal embrace and dubbed
“a fragile little flower”
I am your little comfort
Forever Exodus, getting the hell out of Forks
Thirsting for something else than these generations
of starved women feeding on their young
Mothering their mother
Babying their husband
Drains from above into …
And I
have
no…
'Benediction of the Artistic Impulse' by Vangie R.
A gift descending
A tongue
Of fire
Resting as a hand of blessing
May gasoline like oil pour inconveniently
Over you
And light the match
Explode into fire
May your skin melt off like Hiroshima
This cursèd blessing will swallow us into something…
This glorious agony!
Because we know that you’ve gotta lose your life to gain it.
Student Presentations
Hello Everyone!
Thanks for turning in your papers. I'm grading them right now!
I will be putting up on the blog the art work that people have sent me. If you don't want me to put up your work, please let me know!!
Cheerio!
Chelle
Thanks for turning in your papers. I'm grading them right now!
I will be putting up on the blog the art work that people have sent me. If you don't want me to put up your work, please let me know!!
Cheerio!
Chelle
Friday, August 8, 2008
Papers
There seems to be a number of questions coming my way about papers. You can email me papers until Monday morning, or hand deliver them to Mars Hill by today. (You can also snail-mail them into Mars Hill by today, but I won't get them for awhile.)
Let me know if there are any other questions.
Peace,
Chelle
Let me know if there are any other questions.
Peace,
Chelle
Friday, August 1, 2008
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