Rhaps365 Day 20: Similitudes

Zinia Similitudes: 
PineCone, Cedar Shingle Roof, Gold-Fish, Parrot.
#Rhapsody365 Day 20

Rhap365 Day 19: Trash Tree Praise

Rhap365 Day 18: Faders, Part 1

#Rhapsody365 

Day 18.

Not much commentary to today cause I am on the run.  I took these pics a day ago.  The gardeners tore out the patch today.  Shucks.  Just as it was getting interesting. 

Rhap365, Day 17: Creepers

#Rhapsody365 Day 17, Creepers

Okay, so this image is not very Rhapsidorious. But it is kind of cool, and dark and creepy, and filled with a homage to miracle. Anyone else out there blown away by spiders and their webs?


I found this web outside my house. I could not see the web, but I could see the little ball of spider, just floating in space. I turns out that the spider fastened his (or her) web to a tree above, and the ground below, then build the web in between two vertical strands. It would have been pretty much impossible to anchor the web horizontally.


As for the photo. I have found that I can light a web if I hit is with hard light from the side. It does not work nearly so well direct. I took some pictures without the me, then stood behind the web and gave it a full load of manual flash. I am blown out, but the web is just about right. It takes that much light to make them visible in the dry daylight.


I hope to have more. There is a reason that Holloween features spiders. This is their grand showtime.

Odd other thought. Today I thought about how each little spider is a repository of specific genetic information - little bundle of carefully choreographed parts and DNA, and that little bundle must somehow be kept alive, in some form through winter, through drought, thru rain and flood. Beyond that, I don't think spiders spin webs year around. So this elaborate trap must somehow bring in enough hall to keep that little bundle of DNA, active - till it replicates and spins out new little bundles of spider DNA. Or something like that.

Rhaps365 Day 16: Those Infernal Bars

Road to Slocum, Part 3
those infernal bars.

‪#‎Rhapsody365‬ Day 16

I am not much a fan of the stars and bars... but if there ever was a place for them, it would be on the grave of a man who watched his older siblings fight that war on southern soil. (that is a guess, based on his birth year.)

What most engaged me about this place was its hiddenness. The road to the Slocum Cemetery is a two rut gravel path, perhaps a half mile off the major highway, which itself is pretty much a road for combines and pickups. The Slocum Cemetery flanked what appeared to be a sorghum field. Beyond that, I was taken by the fact that there were so many Slocum's. Makes sense.

--

I will enjoy God while waiting on the day for wars, right - wrong or some bizarre admixture - are vanquished from the earth.

Rhaps 365, Day 15: Road to Slocum, part 2

#Lettheimagesspeak

#Rhaposody365  Day 15

Slocum Cemetery, Cross County, ARkansas.

All images, September 3, 2015

Not sure what town this was near.  It was off a farming highway.  The road in the final picture is the road to the cemetery.

Rhap365 Day 14: Shred

#Arkansas365 Day 14

I will enjoy God, as empires crumble.


All images Slocum Cemetery, Cross County, ARkansas.  Images September 3, 2015

Rhap365: Day 13: Filled

#Rhapsody365 Day 13: Filled

Image 9/12/2015 Harrison, ARkansas Balloon Festival.

--


The other day I mentioned that before I started Rhapsody365, I had considered making it EnjoyingGod365. Now it looks like I may be making it a strong inner theme.

What does it mean to enjoy God?

The phrase itself is not my own. It has a rich tradition in Christian thought, and is pulled most directly from this maxim, found in the Westminster Greater Catechism. (a document with which I have some profound differences, but not here.) It reads.

What is the Chief end of Man?

The Chief end of Man is to know God, and enjoy him forever.

The fact that that idea was penned by Christ followers of the Puritan hue may surprise some. (Some have characterized the Puritans as pleasure-hating sexually repressed prudes…but a survey of several of their spokesmen, Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet shows that we have mightily mischaracterized the Puritans.)

So What does it mean to Enjoy God?

It means we find our deepest pleasure while dwelling in his presence and savoring his gifts, including the life he has given us.

I see the enjoyment of God realized in these three, possibly four major ways.

1) We enjoy God because of who He is. (We are enamored of His being.)

2) We enjoy God because He has made the world and everything in it. 

3) We enjoy God because of the love he has lavished on us…(We enjoy him for what he does for us in our inner person.

and finally (to whom it will apply)

4) We enjoy God because He dwells in us, and fills us with genuine joy.

(There is a caveat to what I am saying -- for discussion later on, namely… that Enjoyment of God is prefaced by knowing that God is, and by being in communion him, apart from which our enjoyment of his being is greatly limited.)

--

One of the reason I questioned whether I should do an “Enjoying God 365, is that I wondered if I could really flesh out all of these ideas, driven by photography. At least three of these chategories are so outside the world of the visible, that I thought I might give a lopsided presentation of “Enjoying God.” By focusing on the world (and the joys to be found in it) we give only a partial sense of what it means to enjoy God.

So, while my images and art will necessarily give greater weight to point 2, I hope to address all the forms of enjoying God over these next months.

2-B continued.

Rhap365 Day 12: Down with the Boogie

Day 12

I will enjoy God by getting down with the boogie.

--

As is, I had promised to post a video of myself dancing should my FB page – Rhapsody365 secure 500 likes.  She is now poised at 498 likes.  So consider this a preemptive strike.

----

Enjoying God

Okay, I admit, the wording “I will enjoy God, while getting down with the boogie” sounds odd.  (And I pray God forgive my tendency seek attention while acting the fool.)  But one of my core beliefs is that life, most fully lived, is done in the presence of God, and more.  It is lived with a deep conscious enjoyment of God, not only as we enjoy his gifts (like music, dance, and friends), but as we are given the privilege of enjoying his very presence within.

When I first started churning the idea for a new 365, I considered calling it “Enjoying God 365”    I later turned to Rhapsody365, with the idea that I did not want to pigeonhole myself thematically.   I wondered too, if that theme might sound unduly pretentious.  (or what, if I lived in such a way that my enjoyment of God was muted.)  Who knows.  I may have made a mistake in changing the name.

Why.

Every moment CAN be, about enjoying God.

--

Over the next week I plan to explore what it means to enjoy God, both by savoring his gifts, and through the due consideration of His being.  Until then I leave you with one of my very favorite Bible passages:

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘FOR IN HIM, WE live, and MOVE, and have our being.’  As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.

Rhap365 Day 11: Hole

I suspect other creative types will understand the frustration - perhaps even the embarrassment -- that comes with looking at our earlier creations and finding them deeply wanting. My sense is that the written form of my poem "911- Hole in the World" fares pretty well, but my video version, recorded 10 years after 2001, now feels unduly contrived. I was trying to create an emotion, but it feels like acting. I wonder if singers sometimes feel like that when the emotions that fueled their original song are long gone.


What I can tell you is that the events surrounding September 11 triggered a creative avalanche in my soul. I think I penned over a dozen poems in the month following. I would like to find such an outpouring again, but not at the expense. Deep trauma seems, in my life, to be part of the creative process, at least as pertains to poems.

Has anyone else experienced a correlation between misery, dysfunction, or chaos -- and the creative process?

__


911 - Hole in the World



Hole / Sept. ii (created Sept 12/13-2001)

A totally inadequate poem

From the Journals of the Kirk-- "Why do I take pictures 1985" :
So, here we have it. I want to share with you a world. I want to tell you that the world is at once an unapproachable glory, the outlands of heaven in our midst. I want to tell you that the world is alive with ongoing miracle and that the trees are like hard seaweed on the bottom of the Numa Sea . (Where did that come from?) I want too, to tell you that the thing is broken, the world has veered, and the code has been rewritten. I want you to sell your car or house, Finally, I want them to tear down the World Trade Centers… or better yet, convert them into apartments for the poor, or if not that, build some huge barn between them and make them into the front spires of a very grand cathedral.




I’ll admit,
this thought isn’t safe
or a thing I say too loud (but hear me out.)
I have seen them with a foreign eye
like turrets on a godless-church,
silvereen, and soaring high
But missing the cathedral --
Testimonies to the arrogance of man
against every rule of nature,
TALL with vertigo and force,
streaming upward like
welded boxcars --
Two silver fists
in the face of God:

Like spikes in a rotted apple.

But today, I weep
and if you will, let me
with imagination
bleed.
Bleed for pagans
and believers,
the bearded business men, the
brokers and the broken,
the silent mimes and firemen,
sisters, daughters, mothers, fathers, and
these ever-feuding sons of Abraham --
Indeed,
Father Abraham
has many sons --
those who walk in faith and seek
a city
made by God;
But don't we weep to see
Faith twisted into obscene forms.
---


Today,
I see with different eyes,
and I repent .. for wearing monocles.
Could it be
that a THING might be
MORE
than any ONE thing
at once?
Today, I see what were
twin trumpets,
Blasting out a tune to
to the majesty of man.
I see
two trees
mightier than redwoods,
brushing stars
and brushed
in lemon light
like a sky-house hotel
for Leprechauns.
I see
mighty rivers decked
in vivid commerce;
Old-world villages
replete with jugglers and silk –
boats on ropes whizzing up the ditches
laden with exotic wares from foreign lands
like some grand-market
tipped upward.
I see twin
Towers, like thin lanes of light,
Bars of gold, beacons on the rim --
shining out a tale of
industry and might
and incomprehensible blessing --
leading a parade.

I see within,
and on each floor
(stacked above each other like coins)
a little town from Arkansas
complete
with hatted men
and football teams,
the smiling bells (now wearing jeans)
and the bee-hive ladies yakking
at the hair salon.

I see faith in the 24the century.

Indeed,
We saw a universe
with fifty-thousand centers
anchored in a common block.
We heard the twine of beating hearts
like a ten-thousand drums, and then
the lull,
and now, the tortured
patter of the few,
And we felt within ourselves
the stuff of horror.
Veins, and brains
and towers like slit arteries
collapsing into bloody dust
before our eyes.
..
They say, on the radio today
that this is a different country.
And we believe it.
We will never feel the same.
We are all new Yorkers, wearing black.

***

Once there were two towers
Tall as titans
Full of grace
She wore the moon within her hair,
He wore the sun upon his face,
and they walked in the garden
with I-AM
without shame.

Then some devil of a serpent
slashed the air,
One tower fell, and then…





>

‪#‎Rhapsody365‬ Day 11

Rhap365 Day 10: Vincent's Golden Dream

Some years ago I read that gold for Van Gogh, represented the life and presence of God.

I cannot now find anything that verifies this idea, but I did find this:

‘Van Gogh’s use of yellow is considered to derive from the sun, and appears to be related to an ambivalence to his father, as expressed in sun worship, while the complementary colours red and green were correlated with his bisexuality and castration anxiety.’

( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693787/ )

Hmm.

To be honest, I doubt we could ever know WHY Vincent used yellow (unless he said so specifically)... but for years now I have made yellow my color of presence.

I see yellow, and I see the pleasure and presence of God in the world, much like a weak spot in the skin of heaven.

So what do you see when you see Yellow?





Rhapsody365 Day 10.  Wild Sunflowers of an unknown variety.  All images 9/6/15  Stillwater, OK

Rhap365 Day 9: Descent of the Giant Pizza Box

Today I will enjoy God, as I watch the world disintegrate, and praise Him for the immutability of his being.

--

These are not the kind of images that generally grace "Verse Posters" - but then, verse posters don't generally reference those things which engender deeper praise.

As this project unfolds, I hope to pay attention to a lesson, and an acrostic I learned in Junior High at the hands of Pastor Bob Kelter.

Dr. Kelter sought to teach us the attributes of God, and used the following letters, all placed in a pyramid, to help us remember specific qualities of God.

The letters were:

S
HL
E
OOO
IT
(Which I pronounce as ShaLeeOOOOit)

The "I" stood for "Immutable.

Do any of my five followers wish to guess the meaning of the other letters?

Does anyone care to hazard what immutable means?

‪#‎Rhapsodody365‬ Day 9 Prue, Oklahoma images 9/6/15

Rhap365 Day 8: Semi Permeable Membrane

Toys: Can't take'm with you.

The Grave is a semi-permeable membrane.  It weeds out cars and trucks.

Prue, Oklahoma. 9/6/15

#Rhapsody365 Day 8  #thegraveisnorespector  #semipereablemembrane

(I feel kinda bad saying I traveled to Oklahoma this weekend, not because of the travel, but for the all the old friends to whom I didn't say "Hi."   We were on a mission to see a daughter who was down from Denver, so we skipped you.)

Rhap365 Day 7: word/WORD

I hate to do this to you twice in a row, but I am still on the road without good computer access.  So I bunt, with a poem from yesteryear, even as I am building a poem within.   Yesterday's post spoke of the problem of speaking in general and with people, this one shows why vertical communication (between God and man) might be hard.


2006

Any word I use is an attempt
to dress some larger concept down
into a parcel I can hold ...

But You do not need ships, or pre-packaged symbols to hold your thoughts.

You do not struggle to affirm what you mean,
even to Yourself.

You precede all things
and You could not begin to search for words
to convey what You mean, when You KNOW everything You mean,

and can only mean less of it, by telling it to us.


NO--

Searching happens in Your wake, when and where You grant it.
And these words that tumble from our mouths
must be like trinkets, given to the sightless dumb.

I say “tree”
and see a jagged outline from a photograph I took last week ...
You say “tree” (for me)
and see every tree
with every twig, at every stage of growth
holding every bird
or syrup molecule ---
bent into every stair-rail or piano
that ever is, or was, or will be
as they exist, inside of every eye---
or reconstituted into termites of the world ...
(or something like that)

So, God ...
Do You need words to talk? Or think?
Can You hold a conversation?
(Not so much with us, but with Yourself,
when You commune among Yourselves)
in blessed Trinity.
in perfect unity.

No disagreement, no misunderstanding,
nothing to learn about Yourself,
or grow into(?)

When You speak to us,
do you translate down
into Hebrew, French, or cow?

From What?

Do you teach whales to speak?
Are you fluent in all languages at once?
Are Your words so big
that they would split our heads;
or is every tree or man or word or germ,
something like a thought from your mind?

And, How is it that the Holy Spirit groans?

I know that You are not the World
nor the son of a World
that it should take a world
to hold You.
But does it take a world for You to speak
the language of Your heart?

--

In the beginning was the WORD
And the WORD was with God
And the WORD was God

And the WORD was made flesh

And dwelt among us.

-

Dear Lord ...

You know that I am puzzled;

You know I am not well;

You know I bruise my mind on the language of Hell ...

But teach me as You speak
to hear Your WORD.

And may Your perfect Words
to my imperfect ears
fill my mind with worlds
I never could have imagined


.
.
#Rhapsody365  #Kirkwork

Rhap365 Day 6: Bottleneck

So here's the story.  I am on the road and without ability to post pictures.  I would post new writing, but have limited computer access.  I am now building a poem within.  Its current title is a "A Multi-hued Silence."   As an idea, I wish to chronicle the many reasons I sit staring at my wife, unable to say much of anything when she desperately yearns for communication.   (One reason, is that I am speaking with her faster in my head than my tongue is want to speak.   And so, today I cheat.  While I work on that poem, here is one from yesteryear that chases the problem of communication from a different angle.


Bottleneck

2000?

(A meditation on the difficulty of communication)


We are like that sci-fi guy speeding through galactic sky
In a ship shaped like a phone booth,
All phone booth-sized upon the hull,
But bigger than a house within.


Indeed,
We are all like grand-inflated ticks … arms
Waving tiny from our grand inner-selves
We are Macy-Day clowns the size of icebergs,
Jammed into our skin like a Jack,
And there, up in the distant sky
A bitsy-valve of a mouth like a distant dime.


They say
the tongue is a fire,
a rudder on a ship,
and Oh, …..the things that slip,
but you should hear
the things
It doesn't say.
If we could flip our innards out,
WHAT a mighty-megalopolis we'd see …


You hold inside your unseen head
A map of a thousand streets
In a dozen different towns,
You are
a trillion trivial pursuits
A hundred books, a billion dreams,
You hold ten-thousand faces in your head
No face within my face has ever seen.


For all the records in the store,
many multi--millions more, never found in print.
For all the paintings on the wall,
A planet spinning like an eye-ball bank,
With Optic tubes and vacuum brains
Ever draining and detaining the outside world.


INDEED, we are
The geriatric planet
Active inner selves … clamped shut like the Dead Sea,
Hanging on a rope
Our passions,
Dammed, by inability
and stroke.
Or …. (Even better image.)

Six billion souls
In a mammoth prison - call it the Walmart-Hilton,
each person in a private cell
all decked in shag and stereo,
wall to wall computer,
Smell-a-vison, Panavision, taste-a-meal, Terra-feel,
Streaming video, thermostats, and dials,
Memorex,
EGO-REX,
AND
A tin cup for banging on the walls.

.
.


#Rhapsody365  #Kirkwork

Rhap365 Day 5: This Quiet Moment

A lot more may yet happen in this day, but I may be preoccupied.
#Rhapsody365

Rhap365 Day4: Menopause

So, part of my goal for Rhapsody365 is to give greater attention to words. It would be unrealistic to create a poem a day (or Would it?) but one started to form as I was driving in. But by the time I started to write, half the words evaporated.

--


September is the menopause of the world
Hot flash and fertility in one elaborate dance
Today she is tepid
Tomorrow ablaze, followed by the frost.

September is
The swelling of the bones, under cracking flesh
Green gives way to copper dust and gold
Cells flake away revealing sculpture

She bemoans her skin
Round belly and descending breasts.

I try to tell her that
As fades the body, so blooms the soul

But sometimes, she prefers the body.

__

#Rhapsody365
Sunflower picture from a field near Lonoke, ARkansas 9/3/15

Rhap365 Day 3: Glory in the Wrong Space

#Rhapsody365  Day3




9/2/13 Dave Ward Drive, Church Row, Conway AR.

I don't always take pictures through my windshield while driving with wires, but when I do, it is because there is present download of glory, and I cannot help myself.

Rhap365 Day 2: Beheld

Back Bend

.


#Rhapsody365 Day2  "Beheld"

Today I will enjoy God, by standing in the middle of the former air, taking in seldom seen details.

Folks who know me, know that I spend my days at the Arkansas State Capitol.
Over the last several years I've observed at least half a dozen major renovation projects - This one given to replacing old, smoky and broken glass that arches over the Legislative-stair wing.

As is, I am standing on what would be open air,  but is for now,  an extension of the fourth floor spanning cavernous space.   Which brings me to today's meditation.

I find it odd, when looking around our grand building, how much attention is given to the detailing of spaces that few people see.  It  is possible to look up and see this particular molding from the ground, but when you get right down to it, much of our building's glory is hidden from the casual eye.

Who knows --  there are probably some places in our capitol, that if you consider the cost behind the craftsmanship and divided it against the number of people who have actually seen those spaces, you might find each second of sensation cost a hundred dollars.  Or something like that.

In fact, I once heard a story of a workmen given the task of repairing broken roof tiles... on the back side of a turret, that only those who climbed on the roof the building would ever see.  And yet he did meticulous work, carefully matching his replacement tiles with the tiles on the visible side.

Someone asked him why he worked so hard to created quality in a hidden space.

His answer:

God sees.

Rhap365 Day 1: Subtitle

 BONES IN MY SOUL

aka: For Him/By Him

(A meditation on the meaning of the World and everything in it)

Or --

as aided by this 16th-century styled subtitle:

A

trepidate on talon,

Each eye-gate with awe, the weight of His glory,

Fertility,

HA!

God’s sorrow takes on tears

through an Icon of flesh,

Would the founder of flounder now fillet a fish?

Or putting on the skin

get bit

by a flea of His design?

Great Balls of Fire

lume overhead, and tread the Nocturne Sea:

Furnaces where atoms burn in scalding angel light

And with a din like seraphim,

Wings beating to the rhythm of

The Celeste bagpipe band.

Have you heard that record Play?

I’ve been fortunate to see it spin:

Grooves cut in Kodachrome.

on vinyl, black as night.

Maybe someday

We will set a stylus to the heavens

And read it like a CD whirling color.

Until Then

I imagine Vivaldi

Sung from the throat of whales:

Humpbacks humping, hound dogs howling, willows wailing, 

tubas trilling, black-holes blasting, atoms reeling ...

Could we ever have imagined

what is real?




.

#Rhapsody365
Day 1

Soft Roll Out: Fade

Rhapsody 365, Day 0: Soft Roll Out/Fade


It seems kind of strange to start out a project with things winding down, but I find such freshness in whither, that I can only rejoice as my bones get brittle.


#Rhapsody365
#Zinnia

Announcing Rhapsody 365

Dear Friends, in a few days I intend to start a new creative project, entitled Rhapsody 365. You can follow that project here, on the Mighty Works Blog, on the Rhapsody 365 FB page,  and perhaps even Twitter. (in the form of a link.)

Over the last decades I have given myself to a handful of creative projects. I find I need the form as part of personal discipline, and as a way to coral creative energies that sometimes gush – but to no particular end. I know that the one year I joined with others in the Arkansas 365, I was able to produce more and better work than I would have in a decade of loose looking.



rhap·so·dy



1: an effusively enthusiastic or ecstatic expression of feeling.
"rhapsodies of praise"

2: (in ancient Greece) an epic poem, or part of it, of a suitable length for recitation at one time.
--

3: archaic : a miscellaneous collection

4: a musical composition of irregular form having an improvisatory character



What is different about this project?

Words are the new pictures.

It may take a thousand of them, but I hope to make Rhapsody 365 as much about the words as the photos. I know how to take pictures, I know far less about using words, that is what makes it both fresh and dangerous.

New Thematic territory

If you have followed my photography, you know I live-in and love natural world. I agree with Dr Georg Washing Carver who said: “ I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.” My goal, then and now is to keep my tuner firmly set, and use my photography as a form of praise.

In 2001, when I obtained my first digital camera, I started something called The Mighty Works Project. First editions came in the form of a daily email. I sent it to my 20 friends, and my mother sent to her hundreds. The early MWP was as much about blessing my mom as anything else.

While I have never shied away from praising God in a public forum, I have tried to be mindful of people who may find that language strange. I am deeply aware that my friends come from many backgrounds, and bold religious expression doesn’t always play well. So I have worked the tone of moderation. I have used been general, rather than deeply personal or specific when using the language of religious devotion. With Rhapsody 365, I grant myself full permission to play less safe, and pursue any number of themes with less “moderation.” I figure my friends wince at the antics of religious fundamentalists will still be good for the ride, but be prepared for more forthright Holy Ghost ardor. I hope to delve into some poet-apologetics, and journal a more personal walk with God.

Beyond that, I hope to mine old journal writings and poems, and bring a whole new body of “odd thought” to the surface.

New Time framework.

I know 365 sounds a lot like a year, and Lord willing I will put out a post a day. But only if that doesn’t get in the way of my first duties to home, work, and life. So… if this 365 takes three years… so be it. I need the structure, but not the prison.

If you are not apart of the Rhapsody 365 Facebook page (Formerly the Mighty Works Project) please consider “liking”

The God of Heaven Thunders

The God of heaven thunders,

Whose voice in cadent echoes

Resounds above the waters,

And all the world sings, 

"Glory, glory, glory!"

The desert writhes in tempest,

Wind whips the trees to fury, 

The lightning splits the forest 

And flame diffuses 

Glory, glory, glory! 

3 The mighty God eternal

Is to the throne ascended,

And we who are God's people,

Within these walls cry,

"Glory, glory, glory!"

(from the Hymn, the God of Heaven, by Michael Perry.

All pics, July 9th, near Bigelow ARkansas. All from my car

(c) by Kirk Jordan

Rose of Sharon?

Any folks out there good for a positive plant ID? A friend offered that this is a Rose of Sharon bush (or flower) Which is fine by me... but then I look up Rose of Sharon on Google and see a whole bunch of flowers that do not look anything like this. I see this... and a much simpler form, that seems to be a different flower altogether.

What I do know is that this lovely bush started as a stick we dropped in the ground half a dozen years ago. (And I mean a stick... No roots or anything.) It has pretty much flowered every year... but this year with plenty of rain and cooler temps, it just exploded and is draped in blooms.