Paul Chambers

(God knows what: canon 30d)

(Line on the horizon: canon 30d)

sometimes you need an email from someone who has heard it all and loved you regardless…thank you pip

(every pathway, road… whatever you want to call it….   ends: canon 30d)

I don’t have a sister…

i, fuck wit that i am…. always wanted one….

if i could pick one divine human…. one, out of some heavenly hat…. Cary would win everyday and twice on sundays…. i love her (sorry beautiful, i know i didn’t ask if it was ok to say this)… and i haven’t seen you or spoken to you since the beer tent… but…..

this is blogging, praying, hoping, lamenting, whateverthefucking it is …. at it’s  bloody best

we are thrown into this life. we don’t get a choice to start. it just happens.
and the being thrown doesn’t stop. the future comes toward us with constancy.
and any semblance of control over what it brings with it, as we move forward into it,
is but illusion. our hands are never truly at the wheel. if they were, we would be G-d.

we are thrown, each of us on our trajectory. we are thrown separately. on our own…
but we are all thrown – none of us excluded. and so in one sense, we are thrown together.

sometimes we collide as the courses of our lives weave ever forward in the thrustpushthrow
that is this life. however much control we try to exert on the line we are tracing, to embrace in the colliding or to pull away onto another path, we can never know the intricate changes effected on this universe by the throwing we are undergoing, each and together.

we waste more time in this short precious life pretending we are in control than over most things… making plans, avoiding, weighing, devising. we do it all assuming that we will have a complete tomorrow, and a day after that.
i guess none of us ever realises how lucky we are until we lose what’s precious. and the rest of the time we’re thinking we know better. we’re throwing it away.

let me repeat that….

i guess none of us ever realises how lucky we are until we lose what’s precious. and the rest of the time we’re thinking we know better. we’re throwing it away.

Oh, and something that fucked me up today (outside my obvious loss) … Elvis was only 42 when he died…. i am very close to that… sadness is without doubt a doing word… it’s proactive….

(you are forever mine: canon 30D)

She put him out like the burnin’ end of a midnight cigarette
She broke his heart he spent his whole life tryin’ to forget
We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time
But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind

He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger
And finally drank away her memory
Life is short but this time it was bigger
Than the strength he had to get up off his knees
We found him with his face down in the pillow
With a note that said I’ll love her till I die
And when we buried him beneath the willow
The angels sang a whiskey lullaby

The rumors flew but nobody knew how much she blamed herself
For years and years she tried to hide the whiskey on her breath
She finally drank her pain away a little at a time
But she never could get drunk enough to get him off her mind

She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger
And finally drank away his memory
Life is short but this time it was bigger
Than the strength she had to get up off her knees
We found her with her face down in the pillow
Clinging to his picture for dear life
We laid her next to him beneath the willow
While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby

(Alison Krauss) 

(caustic chaos: canon 30D)

Abbey over at random thoughts for life inspired these ramblings a few days ago when she mentioned labyrinths… so i blame her for my early morning musings.

We are by nature ritual makers and there is something profound in that rite of passage that allows us to learn from and let go of the past. I am not talking here about some emotionally charged resolution that will be disregarded when normality once more reigns come early in a new year. Rather I am speaking of our duty to the soul. It is not just culture which is trying to balance religious obligation with secular freedom; there is a paradigm shift of the soul occurring where we wrestle with principles of inner reform. Intellectual ambivalence, cultural dismissiveness, and prioritization of our values have alienated us from the road less travelled. Modern Christianity has, unfortunately, provided us with a worldview that polarizes reason and faith, and so limiting (in Bunyan speak) the progress of pilgrims.

I meet too many spiritual refugees who have connected to something they believe to be true, yet know no longer know where to go to explore and develop that connection; people who, in the final analysis, are fearful that they may find themselves just beyond the love of God. So, is there a rhythm of worship, of living, that has roots, but is not too ‘churchy’ (here I include both the contemporary evangelical and established traditions), that reflects the human concerns of our time yet also lets heaven into our everyday world? Last week I watched the Channel 4 program ‘the future of christianity?’ and rather than causing me to question the seeming demise of faith n western europe it caused me to think that this year there are colossal moral questions for evangelical America (and all those who follow suite this side of the pond) who seem more pre-occupied with taking bibles into such places of evil as Iraq and Iran (according to the witless G.W. Bush – thank god he is no more) and ‘saving souls’ rather than embrace the brutal reality of public life in the world of socio-political and economic darkness. Yet for us to make holistically moral judgements for the betterment of the weak we may need to nurture connectors with that part of us which most of us dare not visit – the soul.

For the Christian community to be the salt and light Jesus hoped for there must be a return to the deeply stirring art of lament and meditation, whereby the experiences and reflections contained are generated by a stirring which is not of our making. Small fragile groups who have dared to exercise creativity and imagination in their pursuit of Christ may be of help with this. It seems an ancient tradition of ‘walking the Labyrinth’ is having somewhat of a revival. Its origins date back to earliest recorded times. Depictions of Labyrinths have been found engraved on Neolithic tombs, in Mycenaean palaces and in early Hopi culture in North America. Furthermore in the middle Ages, when Christians could not make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for fear of being caught in the crusades, they would walk the Labyrinth to symbolize the journey. The Labyrinth is an ancient spiritual tool that is being re-discovered for today’s post-modern culture. It is a cultivated sacred space where the cluttered noise of our lives can be quietened. Moreover it engages not just our thinking mind, but also our intuitive psyche. To enter the Labyrinth is to choose to walk a spiritual path that is a form of prayer. It is not a maze. It is unicursal – there is only one path – so there is no getting lost. The walk has three stages: First there is the walk to the centre, which is a time of releasing, of quietening the mind. Then there is the centre, which is a time to receive, a time to be still, pray and listen to God. The final stage is the walking out again and this is a time of retrieving. What did I hear God say, what insights, what hunches for the journey? The three stages of the walk mirror the ancient prayer model of purgation, illumination and union, concluding that the Labyrinths core aim is for pilgrims to be renewed and refreshed for the often arduous onward journey.

There, ramble over… need some strong coffee, it’s too damned early for my brain to be thinking like this

(canon20D)

“We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing”.

(Benjamin Franklin)

… and the truth is, we can never escape ourselves… never

(the ben we call big, london town: canon 30D)

A while back whilst in London Town I scribbled some thoughts into my note book about my life, in truth my inability to move forward. I sit here in the kitchen this morning and still can’t listen to my life, I can’t process, so the liberation of my heart is not likely to succeed. My friend Pip often talks of levels of conversation, of feelings – well these are my gutter feelings; this is my heart this morning. As I say I wrote them a while back but they remain with me and reflect my soul as it is today…

the need for wide open spaces

the courage to make difficult choices

the longing for inner rest and peace

no matter how forgotten or neglected, there is a child surely in me to believe in possibility; to pull the shade on the snow falling – that fragrance that envelopes the air, a certain passage of a song, an old photograph falling out from pages of a book, the sound of somebody’s voice in the hall that makes my heart leap and fills my eyes with tears. Who can say when or how it will be that something easters up out of the dimness to remind me of a time before I was born and after I will die?

A path unwinding into a deep wood; where the fuck is it?

I am burned out, weary from my choices; worn out by the consequences of my decisions. It is time to rest but there will be none.

Some things just can’t be fixed, only lived with.

Regret is no healer and time is too precious a gift to waste and the years teach much the days never knew.

in the end there is the silence – the kind that that is deafening

the silence that washes over everything, even the cellars of the sub-concious.

the tears of dreams can be real enough to wet the pillow and the passions of them fierce enough to make the flesh burn.

Moments of beauty, of redemption and love that are far beyond what we can imagine let alone live out chased me through the dark hours of last night – in truth it felt like i was a fox with a blood thirsty pack of bloody hounds on my tail. – ok I know, I’m prone to a little exaggeration! 

I needed some help for my soul. The film ‘Field of Dreams’ always takes me to the edge of myself – provokes me to search the most vulnearble, ignored parts of who i am…and last night it was a tonic worthy of the finest Bombay Sapphire.

I guess we are all fucked up in some way or another and are all just trying to figure out a way home to a place of belonging, restoration and peace. It’s over 20 years since I first watched and was profoundly moved by this work of art and it has lost none of its power to move and centre me…it’s a glimpse into possibility and the miracle of second chance. In short, a piece of cinema we all should see in our lifetime

My friend the Dr says this; ‘Field of dreams reminds us how it’s possible to make a mess of things, and then find yourself doing something for someone else.’ – maybe that’s the only way to find healing…

‘Singing the blues again on planet earth
Back to being human with a broken heart.
Last year we loved like gods.
This year we´re all at odds.’

(Joshua Kadison)

(stillness: canon 30D)

Bob Dylan once wrote that, ‘if today was not an endless highway, if tonight was not a crooked trail, if tomorrow wasn’t such a long time then lonesome would mean nothing to me at all.’ I remember a while back being surrounded by people, good people, and having some moments with a real prophet of the Almighty, yet I felt lonesome. Can’t really explain why – it wasn’t a depressing morose feeling, more a yearning for something not yet complete – maybe that was a good place to be, maybe.

A couple of years ago now, thanks to my dear friend Dr Higgins I got to know and spend a week on the road with Jim Wallis; we drank good wine, ate some wonderful suppers and shared precious moments with my Belfast family. When the Dr and I got home after our time on the road I was struck by the loneliness of ‘the journey’, even whilst we were surrounded by friends. I think it may be something to do with something Augustine said, that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God. And you know what, I think the trick, the quirky irony of the Almighty, is that we will never find that rest this side of some better place. I also think there’s goodness in the cruelty. If we do actually find what we’re looking for, then what do we really do with the rest of our day?

In some odd way I think I like the fact that the destination stays just out of reach, it keeps me moving forward rather than standing still and not searching anymore – but I admit it’s nice to sometimes hear the heartbeat of love slightly pounding – the echo of the eternal.

‘The wind is blowing down the silent river,
a shining road that leaves me all alone.
A life for you’s worth losing you forever.
Some day we’ll stand in God’s fair land, forever home.

I wish that life wasn’t always ending up this way,
with Heaven’s love at stake and hell to pay.
But you in God’s loving plan might be the missing part.
You must live.
So I give you to his heart.’

(Alison Krauss)

(where the river bends: Canon 30D)

I was locked up in a crazy place
They found me on the streets beggin’ for grace
I don’t remember but they say I lost my mind
She was in the garden after the rain in a white robe
We were dressed the same
She took my hand and said my eyes looked kind
Then she said that, 

“You must be the boy she sent me from the other side
Well, I’ve been waiting for the longest time
And you can tell her it’s been a crazy ride”

Tell her I think I’ve learned the lessons she sent me to learn
Tell her I think I know what I wanna be should I return
I wanna be blues, I wanna be greens
I wanna be flyin’ on dragonfly wings

Sittin’ on the banks where the river twists
Showin’ me the marks up and down her wrists
She told me there was sacred writing in the lines
She said the language was from a long time ago
And she could find out all she wants to know
If she could just decipher those sacred signs
She said that, 

“You must be the boy she sent me from the other side
Well, I’ve been waiting for the longest time
And you can tell her it’s been a crazy ride”

Tell her I think I’ve learned the lessons she sent me to learn
Tell her I think I know what I wanna be should I return
I wanna be blues, I wanna be greens
I wanna be flyin’ on dragonfly wings

I found her walkin’ in the northern fields
Said I had to leave cause they called me healed
I told her I could see my face in the mirror again
She said, “Should you ever see the Dragonfly Queen
Tell her I’ll be waitin’ for my wings
Tell her I’ll be waitin’ where the river bends“

(Joshua Kadison)

Sometimes it’s good to switch the lap-top off and search for the wide open spaces; for there are the random sounds, a bird singing, voices outside the windows, moments that capture a hint of a deeper melody…