1 Corinthians 3

1Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? 4For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere men?
5What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. 6I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. 7So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. 9For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building.

10By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. 11For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. 14If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. 15If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.

16Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? 17If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple.

18Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise. 19For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written: "He catches the wise in their craftiness"[a]; 20and again, "The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile."[b] 21So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, 22whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas[c] or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

terza rima

Stepping gently across the floor
it creaks, a dry and splintered sound
reflecting the dusty-smelling, silver boards
broken and opened, windows to the ground.
The walls are thinning like their yellow-painted planes,
and I know that, without feeling, no surface can be found.
Sunlight casting silhouettes through rippled window panes
onto foreign furniture I know to be my own,
bleaching out the color from the faded wooden frame
and thinning quilt, hand-pieced and ancient, sewn
by mother’s love. The scene in stillness lingered
in between, while outside, time had flown
softly by the window, as a kindly whispered word.

what's written on my arm

Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love,
for in you i trust.
Make me know the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.

a severe case of humanity

couldnt sleep last night to save my life. it doesnt help that my cough is getting worse. getting up at 7am isnt fun (thats why i wait until 7:40). anyway, ive been completely and thoroughly confused. but nevermind that. this is my prayer:

7Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
11If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,"
12even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
(psalm 139)

8Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love,
for in you I trust.
Make me know the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.
(psalm 143)

i pray for wisdom and guidance. Lord, dont let the eyes of my heart falter from you.

old friends with an ex-con

today i got a facebook msg from one of my friends. he's a boy i played with when we were both nine or ten. i was overjoyed to find him, we used to have so much fun together. i asked him what he had been up to...guess what his answer was.

jail.

yes thats right. jail. he was incarcerated for six months for something (i dont want to know, my poor little tyler) but let out a bit early...probably for good behavior. he says he's trying to get his life back on track. thats wonderful and i wish him all the luck in the world.

why do i not feel safe now? i have an ex-con for a facebook friend...hell, more than that, i'd love to get in touch with him and really find out what kind of person he's turned out to be. but i just wouldnt feel safe. this is really killing me. i care about him a lot, he's one of the two reasons i got facebook. i cared enough to look him up. i would love to get to know him and maybe even become real good friends again...but then, people change a lot from when they were nine.

he's twenty years old and he already went to jail. probably stole something, hit a guy, something like that. it's just that my stomach turns every time i think about it. i care about this guy, but i'm torn because now i'm also scared of him.

a summary of nights

I have to confront my demons. My demons are wicked, and I am afraid.

I need to talk to my mother, and perhaps my uncle.

I don’t know who I am. I really don’t. It’s starting to scare me. I'm losing grip of something I should be holding onto for dear life. It’s slipping. Slowly and surely it’s slipping through my fingers. I don’t know if I ever had it…but I’m quickly losing it. Sometimes I have to just sit down and shake myself. Shake clear my head and figure out what’s good and right in the world again…and realize that it feels good and that it’s the direction that I need to be heading. But when I'm in the midst of it all, I can't see a thing.
I was in tears last night. I've been in tears the past few nights. The conversation tonight was hard because it made me realize how much I don’t have. There are aspects to my singleness that I value, but none of them are valued over that wonderful feeling of knowing you’re loved…or at least thinking it. perhaps what I am saying here is that I would almost prefer the deception of loving to living without it. I think many fall into that. It feels close enough and it will do, so we go ahead and do it. Sort of like replacing love with sex I suppose. You replace the actual feelings with the actions and you get something that feels close enough and helps alleviate that horrible feeling of being unloved. That’s what I feel right now.
I’m sad. I'm sad and hurting and feeling as unloved as a person can feel. I feel alone and unwanted. I want more than anything to crawl into my mother’s arms and have her hold me and sing to me and tell me that I am worth loving. I won’t believe it, but it helps me to fall asleep, and then I can forget everything.
_______________________________________________

Morning light sheds clarity on blind, nightly struggles. I’m struggling with the same demons that I’ve always had trouble with. They’re just so hard to recognize at night. In the morning I can see how the grasses were trampled with the struggles and I follow them back to the path they pulled me from. First of all and above everything I need to trust God. I am feeling unloved because I am allowing everyone around me to define me. I need to look to the Lord for my worth, my value. I need to be content in who He is and not in who others think I am, or whether or not others are loving towards me. I need to ask Him for strength to get through the outward struggles I am facing. I need to step back and gain perspective, and not the perspective that says “this is all useless and such a short span of time that nothing matters and everything you do is worthless,” but the perspective that says “God is so much bigger than any of this, and He’s on my side and loves me no matter what happens. It will be for the best even if I cannot see it now.” I need to let go. I need to give Him the control I am so jealously guarding.

Seeing this struggle for what it really is helps…and then it doesn’t. Seeing it makes me realize that it is the same struggle I’ve been fighting forever and I still haven’t won. Does this bring me any closer to winning? Will I win? Ever? Will I ever be settled and content and stable in this path I am seeking? If I am, will I know? Hopefully…

Abba, help me to feel like your child.

it came up again. and they all started to say how their mothers and fathers were taught here. they lived in the same buildings, on the same halls, studied in the same classrooms. yet i am first generation. i have always been first generation. none of my family lived in my house before me. other families left their roots behind and i came in. ive never lived in one place longer than seven years. never. i never had the deep sense of history and stability that some have had. that feeling of roots and tendrils reaching deep into the soil. i never grew up and watched my house shrink around me. never ran my hands along the same wall i drew on as a child. all of my roots were left behind, buried deep under the new roots of new families.

one time i went to my father's old house. he grew up in upstate new york, on a little farm. and there he told me how his roots were strong here, they were dying, yes, but they had been strong. the area was still known as king's settlement. the road that ran through it was still called by that name, though none of the maps will tell you anything other than the route number. he showed me the creek he grew up playing in, and i wished that i had also grown up playing in it. i wished to feel the weight of my own history, built up, thick and heavy around me. it was thicker there than its ever been. im too used to the lightness of a few years, for i have scattered my years throughout the south. there is little weight when one leaves pieces of oneself under trees and in the corners of forgotten rooms. the nomadic life is one of lightness, and having been trained to this lightness, the nomad often feels out of place when the weight of their past falls upon them. so they move, leaving roots behind.

the cracks

'well,' he said
as he was leaving,
'blood
tells.'

but you remembered quickly
other times, other faces,
and i slipped between the good
intentions, breathlessly.

-robert creeley

not quite so bitter now
but quite irritable.
im sorry.
i dont feel like i have a reason to be stressed out right now
though i did just start studying for that exam tomorrow morning...
and i did go to the hospital
and im not going to see my family for a while
might have to have surgery
and right now all i want is my daddy to hold me
and my mother to talk to me
but its 3am and i cant call
no one's awake
and im not sleeping
i need someone with big, strong hands to gently work out these knots in my back
not tiny, pinching hands, though it helped a bit.
i dont think ive ever relaxed my back
ever.
why do i always feel like my hands are tied?
what is it thats tying them?
i just want to stretch and let go of the control
drop reins
and get pulled into the strength of the storm
and thunder
i am weary
let me rest
theres so much i need to do
so much
im hungry for God
and i havent made the time
like bending down to pick up a ball
and kicking out of your own reach again.
im frustrated
with myself...always with myself
i dont like myself
in fact i quite hate myself at the moment
and i hate everything that ive done or thought
and i dont know why you read this
to just listen to me rant
about how i hate things
or my pessimistic view of everything
or how horrible of a person i can be
look at me look at me
this is imperfection perfected.