BigJolly says…..

I was sent to this far away land

half a boy half a man,

to fight a war we still don’t understand,

that took the lives of many a man.

Take me home, my heart is yearning to go home.

Blow out the candle that’s burning in the window.

Tell my mother not to worry I am safe now,

in His holy arms.

And we returned from the mess they made

no confetti, no parade.

We returned to take the blame

and all that’s left is a wall of names.

Take me home, my heart is yearning to go home.

Blow out the candle that’s burning in the window.

Tell my mother not to worry I am safe now,

in His holy arms.

So put my name on that granite wall,

remember me when your country calls.

Remember those you leave behind.

Is there a war that saves mankind?

So take me home, my heart is yearning to go home.

Blow out the candle that’s burning in the window.

Tell my mother not to worry I am safe now,

in His holy arms.

——————————

I post this every year. Clicking on the words downloads the video. Some may say that it is a protest song, perhaps it is for some. But I’ve yet to find a song or poem that expresses it better, to me.

Wilson singing Kris Kristofferson’s Sunday Morning Coming Down, just relaxing in the knowledge that God is merciful. Even for me. I was beginning the process of preparing for next Sunday’s class, reading Psalm 139, switched over to Eugene Peterson’s The Message. Man, that ol’ Catholic priest nailed this paraphrase.

God, investigate my life;
get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you;
even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say
before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you’re there,
then up ahead and you’re there, too—
your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
I can’t take it all in!

Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?
to be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you’re there!
If I go underground, you’re there!
If I flew on morning’s wings
to the far western horizon,
You’d find me in a minute—
you’re already there waiting!
Then I said to myself,
“Oh, he even sees me in the dark!
At night I’m immersed in the light!”
It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to you;
night and day, darkness and light,
they’re all the same to you.

Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow
from conception to birth;
all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
before I’d even lived one day.

Your thoughts—how rare, how beautiful!
God, I’ll never comprehend them!
I couldn’t even begin to count them—
any more than I could count the sand of the sea.
Oh, let me rise in the morning and live always with you!
And please, God, do away with wickedness for good!
And you murderers—out of here!—
all the men and women who belittle you, God,
infatuated with cheap god-imitations.
See how I hate those who hate you, God,
see how I loathe all this godless arrogance;
I hate it with pure, unadulterated hatred.
Your enemies are my enemies!

Investigate my life, O God,
find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
get a clear picture of what I’m about;
See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong—
then guide me on the road to eternal life.

Wow. All the fancy preachers in the world can’ touch that. May I be worthy to discuss it.

I still gotta say it was a good Friday. Oops. Not religious Good Friday. Just a “good” Friday!

Although to be perfectly honest, it didn’t start out quite that way. At 5:30 this morning, I’m getting ready to saddle up on the Marauder and I sense something a bit askew with my right foot. You know that feeling when you step and it just doesn’t feel right? Yep, that was me. Seems little dog (senile pound mutt) has decided to, um, deposit something in the garage (okay, so trailers do have garages I guess). And no, it isn’t a welcome deposit, as winning the Lottery would be. Nope, this is one of those in the dark, squishy feelings. You know what I mean. Little dog, its about time you met euthanasia. Arrgh.

Okay, so I recover and head to the plantation. Over it, done with it. Not a bad day at the plantation, all in all. Not much happening, fired up the company grill and seared a couple of poultry breasts. Topped with Grub Rub purchased at the big Canton market. Also finished up the new flag mount pictured earlier.

Flag mount. Yeah. So, after leaving the plantation, I’m fueling up the Marauder and get a call from the plantation, never a good thing, right? Turns out the flag mount didn’t work as well as anticipated and the question on the phone was, hey, um, boss, did you like, um, lose a flag? So’s I look over and yup, no flag. Back to the plantation for a repair, luckily Danny boy found the flag complete with pole and half a mount on the highway. Fixed it up and rode on as they say.

Now the fun starts. Decided to crash the Shakeyfest, otherwise known as a get together of bloggers from headshaker.com. Great time. Got to meet, in person, The Dude (and Mrs. Dude), Hamous, Smacktle, Jimb, Sargevining, Elizabeth, Neocon, Nancy Drew, Emperor Bacchus, EmmeKelley (and son), Daniel James and once again, Southerntragedy. What a fun time, no one even blasted me! How’s about that? Great bunch of folks, enjoyed crashing the party.

Is it really Saturday? Late.

plantation today. Used a little time to create a page recalling my Patriot Guard rides. Even got a couple of videos up and running, that took a bit of doing. I think it turned out pretty good, me being the Bigjolly and all. Link on the header above or click here.

Made it to visitation last night even though I really didn’t want to go. Sometimes you have to force yourself to do things you don’ want to do. We had an uneven number, so Pop had to go with someone else and I went by myself. Just as well, he was irritating me about RSu. My visit wasn’t home so it was a short night.

Wasn’t quite as cold riding the Marauder in this morning. I’ve been kinda zombied out the last couple of days, not sure exactly why. As I was riding, it felt like I was in one of those old movie sets where they sit the actor on a stationary motorcycle and film him looking at a movie screen, complete with fans blowing wind over them. Weird. Just not all here right now.

Interesting stuff going on in the blogsphere today about Sen. Dan Patrick. I’m not surprised so many are attacking him on the whole but am somewhat curious as to why so many over at LST are. Just because Dan did what he said he was going to do on his first day instead of kowtowing to the old guard. Good to see he’s still Dan.

Speaking of the blogosphere, there is a fairly interesting group over at Headshaker. Not a family friendly sight, so be warned, the language can get rough and the sexual innuendo can be pretty graphic (I’m convinced that some men never grow out of that pre-pubescent stage of life). Okay, enough of the warning, you are on your own. The thing is, these guys/gals actually discuss real issues and have real differences of opinions, not the typical everyone piling on stuff. They had a great thread about oil prices a couple of days ago, and one about Wal Mart before that. I enjoy lurking there. The proprietor of the blog seems as confused about religion as I can be from time to time.

Okay, there has to be something to do around here. Late.

no scheduled funerals in Texas for American soldiers. Very good news indeed. After 2 funerals in 3 days and 3 funerals in 6 days in the Houston area alone, it is encouraging to see a blank calendar.

Got home well after the sun went down last night and was chilled to the bone. Man, once the darkness sets in the temps really drop quickly. When I made it to the house, SU had dinner prepared and a couple of old friends were there. We had a nice evening, it was really good to see them. RSu is now the pastor of a small church near Dayton and seems truly happy. SU is going to do women’s retreat there in March and I’ll get to do the music. Cool.

JM is going to make his way to the trailer on Thursday to show me his new guitar and amp. I took my Carvin Custom in for a little work last week. Picked it up Friday and it is just as awesome as it used to be. Carvin is about the best value I’ve found in electrics, hard to beat the price/performance. As is the norm for me, mine is butt ugly and goes well with Big Ugly, my beat up 1991 black Taylor 615. I think being ugly adds to the tone.

Rode the Marauder in to work again, although I couldn’t get out of bed when the alarm went off this morning. Slept an extra hour. Light week at work so not a problem.

keep hope alive. Hard to believe that the President of the United States actually said that we were not winning in Iraq. Talk about undermining the troops. He might as well let Cindy Sheehan sleep in the Lincoln bedroom. Can’t get much worse.

Went to Katie’s last night to listen to the open mic acoustic show. Disappointing. Bunch of yahoo’s trying to play electric style on acoustic guitars. They need to check out Anderson Fair on Thursday nights to find out how to do this type of show. All I got out of the deal was stinky clothes - I hate the smell of stale cigarette smoke, especially in this kind of weather.

I was reading Fr. Stephen the other day talking about icons finding him. I don’t know about that but yesterday at lunch this guy found me as I was eating my Whataburger. I picked up the Lumix, leaned out the window and took his picture.

that Jesus calls us to.

Our mission as a Church is the reconciliation of the world. We will continue to feed the hungry, house the homeless, educate children, heal the sick, minister to those in prison, and speak good news to those who have only heard the world’s bad news. That is the work to which Jesus calls us, and that is the work we shall continue - with a priority of peace and justice work framed by the Millennium Development Goals. May God bless that which seeks to unite and build up and heal this broken world.

Every time I read this stuff from a “learned” person, I cringe! Read the Bible people. Please. If you need help, try reading Matthew 26:6-13, Mark 14:3-9 or John 12:1-8. Your mission is fully, wholly, all encompassing - focus on Christ!

In the early 90’s, I was in sales and Austin was a part of my territory. As such, I was able to frequent the clubs on 6th St fairly regularly and soon found that it was music heaven. One night, I was sitting in Joe’s Generic listening to 3 old black dudes jam. Dude walks in with a guitar in his hand, they acknowledge him and let him sit in with them. Said his name was Jimmie Vaughan. As in brother of Stevie Ray. What a night. Jimmie doesn’t get the recognition that his brother has gotten but the boy can flat out play the guitar. That is one of my cherished memories, although this many years later, the sound has most likely combined with a thousand others to produce a symphony.

I reminisced about that night as I sat in Katie’s tonight listening to Mark May and his band. Like I said earlier, one of the best guitarists in Houston. Unbelievable talent. And no cover, no crowd. Houston isn’t much of a music town but then again, the blues have fallen out of favor. Were this another era, I think that perhaps Mark could have been a bigger name in the business. As it is, he’s still pretty young and has many years left to hone his craft, which is what real blues is about anyway. He still has a penchant for adding where less would be more but that is very much a learned skill. His technique is not in question and he has found a good tone. His sidekick is a very good player in his own right but is young and hasn’t quite found the blues. Methinks his hero must be Steve Vai or perhaps Yngwe, both of the fast fingers. Nice tone though, playing through a Naylor combo, looked like a 4-8 setup. Interesting. And nice.

Off to bed now, with dreams of blues hopping through my head. Awesome.

^11:1 Now Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he stopped, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” ^11:2 So he said to them, “When you pray, say:

Father, may your name be honored; may your kingdom come.

^11:3 Give us each day our daily bread,

^11:4 and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And do not lead us into temptation.”

As I have meditated on the subject of prayer this week, the passage in Luke keeps coming to mind. I’ve never much thought about canned prayers until my research into the Orthodox Church led me to read many of the prayers they use. Again, raised as I was, it doesn’t make much sense to me - how can a canned prayer be heard? After all, in Matthew 6:7, Jesus tells us not to “babble repetitiously like the Gentiles, because they think that by their many words they will be heard.”, which, to me, is what it feels like (repetitious) to recite prayer such as the Trisagion Prayers.

OTOH, is it not repetitious to say before each meal, Father, thank you for providing this food? I think so. Perhaps I am learning that there is a place for tradition in my own spiritual life. At the same time, I must be careful that I don’t fall into the trap of forgetting who Christ is and what He has given me through His sacrifice. For surely He did not come to free men from men only to have them bound up again by Tradition.

turned my study of the Orthodox Church into a more general quest for depth in my own spirituality. As I read and study the history of the church, I feel the need to read more, sort of working my way through a maze - a turn here, a turn there, a dead end here, an outlet there. And oftentimes I find myself at the same place I was earlier. Yes, very much like a maze.

One of the more interesting things was reading the history of Icons, their symbolism, the arguments for and against. John of Damascus argued and for the most part won the argument for Icons in the early 700’s, although there would still be a period of about a hundred years before the issue was settled in the Orthodox Church. As a good Southern Baptist boy, it is strange to me that these symbols could assist a person’s faith but they surely must given the conflicts regarding them. And I like his argument about being able to represent Jesus in a material way since God chose to become flesh and dwell among us. Interesting. And I like the “principle of clarity set forth in Canon 82 of the Trullan Council (692) which declares that Christian art, in the light of the Incarnation, should eschew obscure symbolism and pursue instead the unambiguous clarity of representing the person or incident itself.” (from Icons as Christian Art by Robert M. Yule) In other words, don’t picture Jesus as a lamb, picture Him as a man. I like that.

Father Stephen has an interesting blurb on “givenness” and I enjoyed thinking about it. I wouldn’t necessarily agree with his take on the Reformation being a constant change but understand his point. One of my thoughts is to wonder why they think that they are emulating the “early church” but their model is one that started in the 3rd or 4th century and not the first. The first century church was nothing at all (at least in my estimation) like the third century - so why stop there? Why not go all the way back? Jesus came to free us but by the third century the church had incorporated many of the same rules that the Pharisees and Sadducees forced upon their flocks. I don’t understand why we would willingly accept these bindings.

So, that’s where I am today. Skipped visitation last night, just didn’t want to go again. And I’ll skip church tonight, JM’s coming over to play around on the guitars. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I picked up Koontz’s latest Odd Thomas novel, Brother Odd. Odd is living in a monastery, so that fit in a weird sorta way. Late.