in search of the love-specific....

"i love you but i am not in love with you." that has to be one of the dumbest statements ever made out of a grasp for a convienient answer for an inconvienient question. it is a way of saying, i think you are great but i want more than great. i want the greatest. why not just say that? clarity is the best way to go when in a tight corner. that phrase has always annoyed me. i have never bought the tale that love is a thing you can put in compartments, that you can love in this way this person and in another way that other person. of course you have preferences,some momentary and some otherwise but i think that is like. intense like but still like. love is the great objective. it hovers above our in and out feelings, our passionate affairs, our attractions. like makes us selfish, more time with ...., more space in .......'s life, more, more, more. love makes us whole. it is the great oasis after a desert of the unfulfilment of arms that flap in and out of our lives. love is an end, like is a means ,to our own satisfaction. i have liked and liked all my life. i am only now learning to love.

and then there is the love-specific.

my val's day was a disaster. nothing went well. i just got caught up in useless fights and destructive anger. when i have days like this the remedy is a long bus ride. so i took one. i sat at the head of the bus, facing everyone else. it was there, defending myself in my own head, that i caught it. there was a girl and a boy to my left. she was wearing a veil, dressed conservatively, you could tell what religion she was. he was fair, looked like he was from the southern part of the country and talked like it too. they could not have been more different. except they were holding hands. they looked in that fine heat of romance. they looked like they were in love. now, this happens all the time. in youth we forget social,religious, tribal differences and fall in love. or intense like. but it was a beautiful thing to see. i know that a christian can quote the "unevenly yoked" scripture and a muslim can quote the Quran on how this is all a sin but i think God smiles down at this. for these two are defying religion and family and seperate inclinations to try and make an attraction work. it probably will not but they are closer to love than all our singles' seminars, play-it-safe, use 'wisdom' to decide, false sense of security decision making processes. they are advancing toward the love-specific. we are still stuck on safety and convienience.

on my way to work on another morning i saw a man and his daughter. he bought her a seat and showed her the city as the slow, red bus opened up to the early streets. she looked content to be in her father's presence and he looked happy to spend time with her. this man was poor. he did not look neat nor did he sound particularly intelligent. he was probably solving a thousand problems in his head. but he gave his full attention to this young mind forming and growing. he showed me another glimpse of the love-specific.

love is the great objective but its expression is the love-specific. for it is not a general zen state of love toward humanity but a love toward every man in your way, every person you encounter, every opportunity you have to make a life better or not worse. we fail at it but we grow in it. we catch it in glimpses but we are moving toward the whole picture.

so i am in search of the love-specific. today is my older, much older (hahaha), brother's brithday. there is hanging out to be done. they may or may not be booze. my younger sister is getting married on saturday. i think she is a marrying a g.....but i will think so of anyone who marries any of my sisters. i have not been as into it as i should. that stops now. all my anger, all my disappointment,all my thoughts of rage and revenge at people that have let me down is evaporating. for they were not born to please me but to live their own sacred lives. i love them best by allowing them enter their own fullness than in forcing them into mine. i am in search of the love-specific.

and so we come to the women..if i am totally honest the woman i really want does not exist. she is a figment of my mind. i created her. God has refused to follow suit. so i have to trust Him with the love-specific. on this road of truth and redemption lies mrs. white. i may know her, i may not,she may be part of my past or only part of the future, she may be reading this and thinking "what an idiot!" but she exists. and when we dance around and then into each others arms to hold and make all kinds of love in all kinds of colours, when we break ground and move past the feel of the thing and into the life of the thing, there will i, she,we have the closest shadow of that high communion with God. the love-specific.

so, i live.

my birthday song...

"Nuclear"


'This is where the summer ends
In a flash of pure destruction,
no one wins

Go nuclear.
Nuclear.

The violets in my eyelids goin' red
Sentimental geek
Shut up and go to sleep
The calm, the beach and the remains
Of the bathing suits and Porsches all in flames

Go nuclear.
Nuclear.

When I saw her and the Yankees lost to the Braves(or nigeria drew with mozambique,which is sort of a loss)
Sentimental geek
Shut up and go to sleep

(God) give me an answer (if you want to)"

words and music by ryan adams.
additions in brackets are mine. to make it specific.,

sex is holy?

"There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was
Hallelujah"
words and music by leonard cohen

we are all afflicted with the desire to pursue sexual intimacy. some of us will find it and some will find fulfilment in celibacy(though i can not figure out how that works or why..i will leave that to He who delights in contradictions but is the great harbinger of truth). c.s. lewis once noted that once sex was talked about too little and then too much, neither helping keep the act sacred or the doers of the deed free from guilt and doubt. it is a complex and personal thing and it defines so much of who we are and what we do. it is the hot topic of religious instruction and those that give up on doctrine do so, many times, simply because they can not reconcile the perpetual turn to their desire with keeping up with the "do not have sex" instruction. apostle paul, celibate and all, did us no favours by making sexual sin a stand out and the books generally spell out doom and gloom for those that indulge in the act; sex is holy within a context and outside that you are on dangerous ground.
the truth is that it happens quite a lot. even in the most religious settings. we have not been open enough to help each other or closed enough to protect each other or graceful enough to forgive and show redemption. there are a hundred things you can do around sex and call yourself clean. the thought is enough, jesus said, in a rare word about the sacred act. so i have had sex today once i thought about it..o brother!
and then there are those of us fractured by early sexual encounters, abuse, rape and all the things that may make us see the act as repulsive and redundant to pleasure of mind and body. those that live in shame of past acts and cry over every present act, caught in a cycle of meaningless encounters, for whom sex has become the verb; fucking and nothing else. i was too young myself. twelve, hungry for escape, eager for fake nirvana, not knowing what the thing meant, confused by the advances of older women and men who insisted they it was all about love. no it was not. and when one toook the wind from me and by chance it was a woman and not a man, my sexuality was formed in this way. what if it was a man? would i be gay now? how dare i say such things? how many boys out there have been raped by men and then turned to the alternative lifestyle. could i have been one of them? if the chance turned the other way? to these i have nothing but sadness and anger for the crime and prayers offered. for sex is too complicated to be forced on a child.
and some of us just liked to be touched. the act is expression, feeling, need. but in the lonely hours we feel there is more than an orgasm to the act. we know it can be a "haLLELUJAH" moment. that two people can so connect that their love can find a bed to express deep things in physical acts and loud noises that come from deep in the heart.
the next time i have sex i am going to cry. i am going to share a bed with someone i have already shared everything else with. my mind has always been: sex is holy? it will be. no more empty face and fallen dreams. it is not all there is to life but for that moment i want to let go of gravity and fly with the woman i love. i want, as mr. cohen said, to move with the holy dove. the next time i have sex it will be holy.
i hope it will be so for you too.
i pray so.
hallelujah.

on past state, present memory, future joy.

"Hallelujah"

Now I've heard there was a secret chord

That David played, and it pleased the Lord

But you don't really care for music, do you?

It goes like this

The fourth,

the fifth

The minor fall,

the major lift

The baffled king composing

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof

You saw her bathing on the roof

Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you

She tied you

To a kitchen chair

She broke your throne,

and she cut your hair

And from your lips she drew the

Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before

I know this room, I've walked this floor

I used to live alone before I knew you.

I've seen your flag on the marble arch

Love is not a victory march

It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah,

Hallelujah

Hallelujah,

Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know

What's really going on below

But now you never show it to me, do you?

And remember when I moved in you

The holy dove was moving too

And every breath we drew was

Hallelujah

Hallelujah,

Hallelujah

Hallelujah,

Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain

I don't even know the name

But if I did, well really, what's it to you?

There's a blaze of light

In every word

It doesn't matter which you heard

The holy or the broken

Hallelujah

Hallelujah,

Hallelujah

Hallelujah,

Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much

I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch

I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you

And even though

It all went wrong

I'll stand before the Lord of Song

With nothing on my tongue but

Hallelujah

Hallelujah,

Hallelujah

Hallelujah,

Hallelujah

Hallelujah,

Hallelujah

Hallelujah,

Hallelujah

Hallelujah,

Hallelujah

Hallelujah,

Hallelujah

Hallelujah,

Hallelujah

Hallelujah,

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

words and music (originally) by leonard cohen