I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what power we have to relieve the suffering in this world and I’ve come up with this: none.
I know – it’s deflating.
I won’t ever tell you that you can change the world or that you will change the course of history, but I can tell you about someone who can; who has.
We will never be perfect in our plans to bring peace. Our methods will never be airtight and our tactics will always have flaws. We will always, in this life, be human.
Our efforts are so often misguided because we believe the result rests on us. Never does God say, “If you disobey, my plan fails.”
The glory of the Gospel overwhelms our efforts to fix things – to redeem the world with our own two hands. Justice doesn’t make sense without the cross. There is no relief from suffering without Christ and no endurance through suffering without Christ.
In Christ, we are heirs to a throne and not a grave. He broke us free from the chains of darkness and bound us firmly to His love. This song by Kurt Scobie made me run through the mud tonight, willing myself to fix my eyes on my eternal inheritance. I actually don’t know if this is what Scobie intended, but this is what my heart heard.
As long as I am remembering Christ’s completed work on the cross, I am free to live with reckless abandon. There is nothing to lose and the greatest story to share. When Christ paid my ransom, set me free, and woke me up like the sunrise wakes the morning – what else would I ever do but live that others may know?
Derek: Ah, yes (eating the half-popped kernels at the bottom of our popcorn machine)! These have such a greatmarginal utility.
Me: (blank stare)
Derek: Oh, you don’t know what marginal utility is? It’s the best concept in economics. I love it. Seriously, it’s so cool! It’s basically all I remember from that class.
Me: (still blank stare) I want to believe that’s true, but the most I know about economy right now is that mine is not so hot.
Derek: (laughter) Well, okay. Utility is, like, the satisfaction someone has after consuming a certain amount of something. Usually, the more you consume, the more satisfaction you have. Marginal utility is… the satisfaction you get with each extra amount of consumption. Like, these kernels. The marginal utility is super high when I eat the first few – super beneficial and satisfying to me. Eventually, the marginal utility will go down because it’s no longer satsifying. (holding up a kernel)
Me: Uh-huh. Sounds interesting. I’ll probably write a blog about it.
I sent Derek a text that night because I forgot the word, but now that I have it, I’m intrigued on several levels. It’s strange to me that economy has something to say about measuring satisfaction and that measuring satisfaction has something to say about economy AND that there are technical terms to describe the relationship.
As I read Nancy Pearcey‘s book, “Saving Leonardo,” I’m on the hunt for ways we’ve separated things (through dualism) in our lives that were meant to be seen as a whole. Take life, for example.
Recently, an article came out from several medical ethicists who proposed that a newborn baby was really no different than a fetus – “morally irrelevant” and only a “potential person.” The article has since been taken down from the internet, but this is not the first brush modern culture has had with the “personhood debate.” In Pearcey’s book, she references Miranda Sawyer, an English journalist who identified as a pro-choice feminist… until she became pregnant and was faced with a dilemma. What would she call the thing growing inside her? She came to the conclusion that, “In the end, I have to agree that life begins at conception, but perhaps the fact of life isn’t what is important. It’s whether that life has grown enough to start becoming a person.” That is how she reconciled the two truths competing for her worldview – she didn’t. She was content to settle for piecemeal what was meant to be whole.
Pearcey writes,
“Ever since antiquity, of course, most cultures have assumed that a human being comprises both physical and spiritual elements – body and soul. What is novel in our day is that these two elements have been split apart and redefined in terms that are outright contradictory. As we will see, the human body is regarded as nothing but a complex mechanism, in accord with a modernist conception of science (the fact realm). By contrast, the human person is defined in terms of ungrounded choice and autonomy, in accord with a postmodernist conception of the self (the value realm). These two concepts interact in a deadly dualism to shape contemporary debates over abortion, euthanasia, sexuality, and the other life issues.” (Saving Leonardo p. 49)
Life was never meant to be divided into science and values; fact and fantasy; real truth and livable truth, but that’s what we’ve allowed our culture to do. Somewhere along the lines, I’ve let journalists and science books and professors of the “facts” create another stage on which to shine. See, this whole time we’ve been thinking that science is trying to steal the spotlight and what’s really happened is that secularism is basking in an entirely different, man-made stage with a different story.
The problem is this: there is only one story. There is only one reason why the first popcorn kernels mean a great marginal utility for Derek and it isn’t economics. Economics might explain some true trends, but that doesn’t give economics the power to write a new story. There is truth in science and there is truth in politics and there is truth in the worn pages of my C.S. Lewis library, but no truth contradicts itself because it is one story. God’s story.
Let LOVE fly like cRaZy
“We are to magnify Christ, not like a microscope magnifies things but like a telescope magnifies things. Microscopes make small things look big; but telescopes make seemingly small things look like they really are: Huge!” ~John Piper
There’s a popular song out right now by a band named “fun.” That’s right – the (.) is in their band name. It must be some kind of hipster thing to make the name of your band a whole sentence. I bet somewhere right now there is a new revised urban dictionary being written where one word sentences are all the rage.
I came across their song, “We Are Young” during one of my radio “seek” adventures. I haven’t yet programmed the presets in my car, so I just press the seek button until it lands on something interesting. NPR, classical, TobyMac, talk radio and Kelly Clarkson’s latest girl power anthem get equal airplay on my short commutes. When I landed on this song, I’ll admit I liked the beat (and the Queen-esque feel of the whole album). It’s hard not to if you have a sunroof and it’s 72 degrees in late February.
Then I listened to the underbelly of what all the hipsters are calling an “epic” sound:
Tonight
We are young
Let’s set this world on fire
We can burn brighter
Than the sun
Wow. My culture is making strong claims with this anthem and all the 35-year-old radio DJ had to say is, “Hey, gotta love this one. I just heard it last week and, man, I’ve got it on replay.”
I stopped bobbing my head and started asking questions. This is not some adolescent kid shaking his fist at the air – not some collegiate rabble-rouser stumbling in and out of bars spitting speculation. This is our Tower of Babel.
In Genesis 9, God told Noah to disperse after the flood – to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. The people decided it would be better to cluster together – to make a name for themselves by building a tower to the heavens and building a city around them for protection. John Piper (in his sermon “The Pride of Babel and the Praise of Christ”) preached that, at the Tower of Babel, “The two sins are the love of praise (so you crave to make a name for yourself) and the love of security (so you build a city and don’t take the risks of filling the earth).” With the flood still fresh in their memory, did the people really think they were powerful enough to reach heaven and strong enough to remain disobedient to the Lord?
Apparently, yes. The people decided they were both powerful and strong enough to complete the task and live prosperous in disobedience. They tried to outdo the God who had delivered them from sure death and preserved them for life.
As I listened to this band break “new ground” on the radio, I heard an old, familiar story. I heard a story where WE are the center, where WE decide our fate, where WE can build our own destiny, and where WE can make ourselves immortal. Call it “youth” or “foolish,” but don’t call it a joke.
I wonder if there were people in the days of the Tower of Babel who shut themselves in their homes, silently disapproving of the monstrous building project. I wonder if they thought it was a fleeting fad that would pass when the builders grew older.
Does my generation really believe we are powerful enough to set the world on fire?
Does my generation really believe that we are big enough to shine brighter than the sun?
Even taken metaphorically, these claims are concerning. Everyone can tap a toe to the anthem (about losing your troubles at the bar and promising to carry drunk friends home) that makes you think you are capable of anything – for no other reason than “we are young.” I’m not sure how the logic works out – something like this, perhaps?
-We are young.
-Young people have cultural authority (to set the world on fire).
-Authority governs earth/sun/moon.
-Young people can supersede sunshine.
Hm. Lots of holes, it seems. The stranger thing might be that the song weaves destruction in with delight. I’m pretty sure we all still think burning alive is one of the worst ways to die. So, they can’t be serious about setting the world on fire and burning brighter than the sun. Yet, they choose this clearly destructive imagery to represent the ultimate thrill – the greatest delight. The whole thing is about bumbling barroom mistakes, but the song repeatedly declares (like Charlie Sheen and Courtney Robertson) that it’s all canceled out because in the end, we’re “winning.” Even as we all light up in a burning ball of gas, the thrill of burning brighter than the sun is somehow worth it.
Left to our own devices and given the right amount of authority, I don’t doubt we’d light a match to the world – crazy as it sounds. I am so grateful we aren’t walking around with that kind of power. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the God of this generation as well. He is so gracious to call us to salvation in His Son, Jesus Christ, and rescue us from self-destruction.
.
Sorry to dump this on you all. My grandpa recently reminded me that I should stick to simple things on this blog. I can already tell you what he’ll say in response to this one, “Agh! I didn’t understand one word of it.” Well, maybe tomorrow I’ll write about how I forgot to close my sunroof overnight and drove on damp seats in the morning.
I simply want to encourage us all to think critically about what our culture claims about who we are and why we are here because it is shaping our generation (whether or not we’ve got our hands covering our eyes).
This past week, I was talking to a wise and wily tenth grade girl. Our discussion was about purpose and passion and knowing “what to do with our lives.” But, something very beautiful happened midstream.
She said something like, “You know, people get so caught up in life that they don’t see the sunrise.”
“YES!” I think my heart yelled almost as loud as my voice. “God wakes up the morning!”
I might have lost her at that point – as my words tumbled over the edge of my excitement – but I took the twinkle in her eyes as encouragement and kept tumbling.
Every moment of every day God breathes life into existence. When He said, “Sun” there was an instant, goldern orb with heat and light and beauty. When we say, “sun” there is just an understanding that hangs in the air between the sayer and the hearer – nothing more.
What POWER God possesses to wake up the morning – to flood the fields of Creation with a glowing light.
Yesterday morning, with these thoughts fresh on my heart, I woke up a little haggard. I rushed out to grab coffee for a friend I was supposed to meet and, on the way to meet her, spilled the coffee all over the floor of my car (just realized I should clean my floormats). I ended up with two half-spilled skinny lattes and a solitary car ride when our meeting canceled.
And all the while, God was waking up the morning. As I made my way out to my office, passing sleepy houses and spring-ready fields, I looked out at the warm glaze that covered the morning… and laughed.
My morning was not falling apart. My morning was every bit held together by the words of my Savior, speaking daylight into existence and speaking my eyes into seeing it. God’s gracious, life-giving words streamed from the sun-soaked morning and I turned my face to feel the full weight of it.
What a glorious thing for the Lord to wake the morning.
Who among you fears the LORD
and obeys the voice of his servant?
Let him who walks in darkness
and has no light
trust in the name of the LORD
and rely on his God.
Behold, all you who kindle a fire,
who equip yourselves with burning torches!
Walk by the light of your fire,
and by the torches that you have kindled!
This you have from my hand:
you shall lie down in torment.
(Isaiah 50:10-11 ESV)
I clear my throat, compose my scattered thoughts, and chase away distractions.
“A-hum.”
And I kindle my fire.
I often find myself in the dark caves of conversations, squirming in the uncomfortable corners of controversy and drawn to defend the knowledge I possess. I strike matches in haste and hope that my knowledge will light the way out of the darkness.
There are two ways to respond to the message Isaiah brings as a messenger of the Lord.
Fear the Lord, obey His Word, and trust Him even in darkness.
OR
Kindle the fire of my own intelligence, sealing my tormented fate.
This morning, I want to choose the former response. I want to fear the Lord, obey His Word, and trust Him even in darkness. I want to rely on the igniting fire of His Word and let my own flames die out. Though the caves be darker than the darkest night, I want to trust that His Word exposes the most concealed corners and guides a way out. Because no fire I can kindle will shed true light. My wisest thought is always foolishness to God. My most brilliant revelation, the lamest imitation of the only original.
If I truly want to let LOVE fly like cRaZy,
then I must bury myself in the Living Word.
If I am to live love at all, it must not be my own. It must not come from my own knowledge, sparking light I’ve contrived. If I am to live love, it must be always and only and completely from the Lord.
I stood there staring at the beaded bristles for probably five minutes.
I don’t think I’ve ever purchased a brush in my life and I hope I don’t have to return to the hairbrush aisle for a long time. But, as I was standing there, in the middle of my rare grocery run, I realized the weight of receiving.
Since returning from Honduras in June, I’ve tried to stay out of the giant aisles of excess in supermarkets. It was a mixture of solidarity with a country I loved and a complete necessity to spend nothing (unemployed for 6 months) that kept me a safe distance from materialism… or so I thought.
The real reason I rarely ventured inside Walmart or Target (or stores in general) might explain why I got a bit emotional when I shrugged into my sister’s rust colored cardigan today after work.
I’ve done a lot of receiving since June.
I’ve crashed on couches and crawled under comforters and cozied up in cardigans that are not mine. I’ve talked a lot about the a la orden philosophy – how God asks us to make every bit of our gifts, talents, and treasures available to Him in our service to others. What I haven’t really talked about is how many times I’ve been the recipient. For six months, I lived under my parents’ roof once again, but this time as an adult. I ate their food, used their washer/dryer, drove their cars, and kept on receiving. Never did I see a tally or hear what I owed, but I kept on receiving. I made almost every Christmas gift with my grandparents, using wood and tools and raiding the refrigerator. The conversations were even more delicious than the meals; and I kept on receiving.
Every day I look down at my outfits and realize how much I’ve received. Boots from my mom, sweater from my sister, coat and jeans from my dad… every day I wear blessings. Every day I receive.
Last week, right when I realized scruffy skater shoes from high school may not be “work appropriate,” my co-worker plopped a paper bag at my feet.
“See if you can find anything in there you like,” she said.
(wide eyes)
I couldn’t have picked a more work-appropriate pair of clogs if I tried. That afternoon, I wore a new striped sweater home from work and ran in a fancy Nike running shirt before going to my second job.
And I keep on receiving.
Generosity has a fine aroma in the house where I now live. From dinner conversations to the open cupboard, it’s hard to spit out thanks as fast as the gifts pile up. So many times, I don’t know how to say it – don’t know how to speak my thanksgiving for all the blessings I wear around. From the bed to the thick comforters, the sack lunches to the family meals, the seat in a familiar row at church to the books on loan…
and I keep on receiving
Truly, too much.
Last night, I got back from work and my brother had pizza ready to go into the oven. Later, my sister walked in the door with several things on hangers.
“I brought these for you. I thought you might need something new in the rotation.”
and I keep on receiving
Truly, too much.
I put on the beautiful, rust-colored cardigan today and almost wept. God is so good to care for us so completely… even down to couches and cardigans.
When a young man told his minister he felt called to spend his life as a missionary in China, his minister replied,
“Ah, my boy, as you grow older you will get wiser than that. Such an idea would do very well in the days when Christ Himself was on earth, but not now.”
Funny how we are encouraged to wise up and grow out of the calling on our lives. We may not all be called to China, but there is this tender stage in youth (before we are calloused to the idea of Hope) where we look out into the world and think crazy things are possible.
The universities know about this stage. Professors often push students to question the “wiser” world’s calloused assumptions, but fail to give any adequate answers for solutions. We are not the solution. If that were the case, failure would be certain. Try as it may, secularism cannot offer anything deep enough to meet the needs of the world. Naturalism, humanism, and pantheism (as discussed in Poplin’s book Finding Calcutta) all come to definitive and depressing ends, far short of an answer to the world’s deep pain.
Fear not, friends – for secularism is not what God had in mind for the reconciliation of Creation to Himself. Our wisdom is foolishness to Him. Our human efforts and toil amount to nothing, unless He wills. Our plans and schemes are rubbish unless He decides otherwise. Nothing crazy can/will happen outside of God’s will.
In fact, only inside God’s will do we find that the impossible is possible. Paul writes,
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
(Ephesians 3:14-21 ESV)
I heard my friend preach a sermon on this passage and he marveled at Paul praying that the people know the love of Christ that is impossible to know (…and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge…). He is praying an impossible prayer for the people in Ephesus. He then quickly follows with a reminder: God is capable of doing the impossible – beyond what we can think or imagine.
He asks us to do the impossible – know Him, love Him – and then He provides a way to make it possible: Himself. He is the only One who transcends the constraints of this earth, the limitations of the physical world. He is the only One capable of making impossible things possible.
“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.”
Acts 17:24-27, ESV
That young man who heard such discouraging words from his minister – his name was Hudson Taylor and he never got “wiser.” He was the founder of China Inland Mission and the catalyst in a new era of Protestant missions. He believed his calling was not one confined to “the days of Christ Himself,” but that proclaiming the saving message of the Gospel is exactly what it means to be Christ today. This is what it means to pray “Your Kingdom Come.”
So, go tell it on every mountain… and let us never be wiser.
Today blusters. The wind rushes the trees and picks up crunchy leaves from ground that should be covered in snow. Wednesday is my morning for study and I’m glad I’m sitting by a window. When the books press my brain and my journal scrawls make no sense, I just look out the window and breathe in the gray of this day.
I have rough days every once in awhile – days where it’s hard to smile and a labor to laugh. Last week, I had one of those days. A friend sent a text to see if I wanted to hang out and my response was, “Rough day. Sad. Need more Jesus.” She was sweet, even if I wasn’t making perfect sense.
Today is looking way less rough and way more beautiful, but I still need more Jesus. It’s so funny how I work hard to cheat myself out of joy. I fill up my day and scrunch all sorts of non-sense into spare minutes so that there is nothing left. I read and think and write and dance and laugh and sing and sound my barbaric yawp in the quiet community parks. …And I work hard to make more space for me and little space for Jesus.
By 9 am, I’ve sealed my fate: life abundant is aiming a little too high. There is just too much caroline going on to be distracted by Jesus.
Oh, man.
Jesus had something else in mind for my days. Something magnificent and unexplainable and bigger than minutes and bigger than the wind outside this window.
Jesus said he came to bring life and life abundant (John 10:10). The only way abundance is going to fit in my day is if I become less. The silly madness of it all is that my searching, loving, and longing for Jesus will mean the best and most JOY – not less. Though I pack my days (good and bad) with other things, only more Jesus can make my life overflow with a joy that seeps into the corners of my sadness and twirls in the spontaneity of surprises. Only more Jesus will make sense of my brokenness and the world’s failures. Only more Jesus will lift my spirit above catty gossip and exchange it for words of blessing. Only more Jesus.
I’m praying this will be a Romans 15:13 kind of day.
Romans 15:13 says, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy.”
A day FILLED with ALL joy and peace, trusting in the Lord, OVERFLOWING with hope by the power of the Holy.
God LOVES so completely, so PERFECTLY, so winsomely. The wind blows and shakes the trees and I think…
How could I not want more in response?
The wind whipped my face and wetness brushed my cheeks. I breathed hard, pushing through the generous bowl of soup I had for lunch. I could feel my braid stick to my neck under my stocking hat. My feet pounded the pavement, but my eyes drifted toward the sky.
Have you ever seen Dead Poets Society? It’s brilliant. It’s where I learned about the barbaric yawp.
And I suppose that is what started the guttural sound in mid-run today. It might have been what led me, with the train on my left and the university campus on my right, to then let out a “Yawp!”
I ran a few more steps and then tried it out again, but this time louder, “Yawwwwwp!”
I giggled and ran and then tried to eat the rain.
I don’t know if I’ll ever make sophisticated sense with my clothing style or my office banter, but I do know this: I don’t mind looking at the world like a child. I want to see wonder at the wind and delight in drops of rain. I want to stretch out my arms and “yawp!” because I am alive.
I haven’t posted anything for the past few days because I haven’t been using my computer… because I misplaced my cord. After the battery died a few nights ago, I shrugged, moved on, and thought, “Well, there’s that.” I knew it would turn up eventually. This is one of those times when I’m reminded I don’t fit in US culture anymore.
I know, I know. I’ve already hashed it out – knowledge is useless unless it results in obedient acts full of love. But, I literally have to remind myself of this every day, multiple times a day. It’s a discipline to recall those things I’m learning and then, instead of simply sharing my realizations,put them into practice. If I am learning to serve, then I must ask, “What can I do to serve right now?” instead of, “How can I explain what I’m learning about service right now?”
So, I’m learning what it means to see knowledge as responsibility – personal responsibility.
I’m also learning that catchy phrase from School House Rock, “knowledge is power,” holds true for our culture in a way that we often ignore.
Mary Poplin spent most of her life running after isms and throwing rocks at religion. After becoming a believer while a professor at Claremont in California, she decided to spend two months volunteering with Mother Theresa and the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. Her book, Finding Calcutta, explores how her journey shaped her young faith and impacted what she would understand a “Christian life” to look like. Let’s just say it looked a lot different than the Christianity she ran from for so long… and it had a lot to do with how our knowledge of God plays out in the everyday-ness of our lives. In grappling with her role as an educator, she writes about a realization she had on a plane ride one day,
“…Genesis 1:1-3 informs us that ‘in the beginning… the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.’ I saw distinctly the three moving as one – God, His Spirit and His Word. What a miracle that these three always agree! The Gospel of John reveals more about the Word that God spoke, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without Him was not anything made that was made… and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.’ Paul tells us in Hebrews that Jesus ‘is the exact imprint of God’s very being,‘ and in Colossians that ‘by him all things were created… and in him all things hold together.’ I asked myself, If these are true, then how could anything I taught not relate to God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus?”
Christianity is not knowledge on Sundays to make our Monday through Friday knowledge a little less painful. Following Christ is not about believing a nursery rhyme because believing real truth isjust too depressing.
Some of our generation’s atheist thinkers (who would philosophically trace back to David Hume), explain our fascination with religion in this dualistic way. Because we can’t deal with the reality that life has no meaning, we create meaning so we can sleep at night. We have what Francis Schaeffer called a two-story concept of truth.
VALUES
FACTS
We conveniently hold two competing worldviews in a dichotomy so that we can appease both the ‘scientific facts’ and the ‘subjective feelings’ warring within us. We can say, “The sun will come up” with sure, scientific conviction as much as we can be convinced that “no one really knows the meaning of life or if there is one.”
Pearcey takes Schaeffer’s two-story idea in her book Saving Leonardo and explores its implications throughout history – bringing us up to our jumbled, dichotomous understanding of truth today. She writes of one Cambridge philosopher, Peter Lipton, who has a Jewish background. In an interview, he once said, “I stand in my synagogue and pray to God and have an intense relationship with God, and yet I don’t believe in God.”
Stranger than his statement is that to question him is ‘intolerant’ and anti-intellectual. When did “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” start to say, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of Biblical wisdom” in Psalm 9:10? We are not so developed, my friends – not so progressive as we like to think. It used to be that the great theologians were naturally the great philosophers; that great pastors were naturally the great scholars; that great evangelists were naturally great orators. Why? Because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7)… and not just cute, Sunday school knowledge. All knowledge.
What Mary Poplin realized on that plane ride was that there is only one Truth. Sure, people believe different things – about science and philosophy and art and what happens to the worms who will one day eat our flesh. But, believing in something doesn’t make it true. There is only one Truth that makes sense of things on this earth and it starts with a holy fear of the Lord.
Our culture is parched. The people are desperate for this no-holds-barred message. Forget sugar-coated. Forget patty cake and beating around the bush. They want answers. The hard stuff. The rated R conversations with God.
Two Cathedrals clip from The West Wing (warning for language)
The world will not make sense until we understand that all knowledge must begin with a fear of the Lord. Until then, our generation is simply caught in the crossfire of heaven and hell with no defense, just like Brandon Flowers croons.
Our culture is CRYING OUT and hoping that something calls back. I think they’re even willing to wrestle it out, ready to tear down the stories of skyscrapers built to stand against religion, if it means there is something solid to stand on underneath.
We Don’t Eat by James Vincent McMorrow (lyrics here)
MUSINGS IN THE MIDST 