I walk to the post office on a rainy day.

Heart burdened by the loss of my brother, hands burdened with packages I return for my mom. As I turn onto Evergreen, I see a house and my inner voice beckons me to cross the street. Within feet now and the voice becomes imperative and demands that I do so. I oblige and walk on the other side of the street to see the house is adorned with a “beware of dog” sign. I am thankful for this insight but do not feel that the Holy Spirit was the source of this warning; perhaps moments passed where I remembered former trips to the post office with said sign. Nevertheless, I am in the post office soon enough.

Another exercise of patience as I make my way to the front of the line.

Music coming through one headphone as the artist speaks of a mighty Savior whom he is deeply in love with. I should get my player fixed. Soon I am at the front of the line and the man might as well be speaking another language because I am not fully present. My current state is further proof that there is no timetable for grief and I remind myself that I have now known of his fate for a little over a day. I return packages and receive my receipt and confirmation of delivery form as I continue on my journey. Am tempted to walk along freeway drive instead—the longer walk could prove therapeutic—but have no interest in feeling the chill against my neck prolong—so I retrace my steps. These steps that bring me parallel with the house adorned with a “beware of dog” sign.

My view has changed. I notice how the house, like another two doors down, is boarded up. The house in between may have been spared from the tornadoes of foreclosure but there is no guarantee that it is inhabited. But the house that represented a warning for me earlier is now a shell; the “beware of dog” sign and satellite dish, indicators of the house’s legacy. Then I heard the familiar voice say that I felt the way I did because I could not see the whole picture. My reaction, though genuine, is grounded in limited information. If only I knew the totality of my brother’s state, the fullness of joy he is ever present with, would my sorrow subside and my persuasion be furthered strengthened that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Sometimes imagination makes the space around a thing
more important than the thing itself.
It is a way of defining life more by what isn’t there
than by what is.

For instance, on a Sunday afternoon,
still clad in church clothes,
going around a curve a little too fast -
either still caught up with the holy spirit,
or just happy to be free. Car careening
slightly out of control, out of the corner of your eye -

you see an old fashioned mail box
and think it is a predator, a small cougar,
or oversized bobcat, ready to venture out
into the middle of the road, ready to confront
your car in one last showdown between man and nature.

Or for instance take a boy who has lost his mother.
How his life is shaped by her absence
how he has dreams that he can’t understand:
his ex-girl friend pregnant, sitting in the doctor’s
office, trying to get an abortion,
his dead mother holding her hand.
And what else can you do, if nightmares
try to devour your soul, but transform the feelings
that haunt you, into something beautiful:
a poem, a film, a piece of art.

What are these constructs but ways
to make demons pause;
small attempts to escape from an ever shrinking cage.

Or maybe imagination is a female, who feels
torn down and worthless, and finds
a smart black boy, who prays with her
instead of fucking her, and holds her hand
as she cries until she is salty as a sunflower
seed, and glistens like a diamond.
And he looks at her and realizes that she deserves
for him to grow up and become a man
just to earn the right to love her unconditionally.

Or maybe imagination is a man who has been praying
all his life, watched his reality sink into darkness;
lost his faith in God, chatted with demons and angels,
about whose side of the fence had better grass;
who cheated on the only girl who ever loved him,
who lost his best friend, who tried to kill
himself, at least three or four times,
who walked into the woods in the freezing cold,
just hoping to disappear,

who was found wandering
around a subdivision at 4:00 am just praying for miracles,
who survived those times and all the others,
and now lives a life of passion, faith, and love.

Imagination is not settling for what life gives you.
Of realizing that the wind blowing through the trees
the sunlight that feels a little hotter coming through the glass of your car,
the pounding headaches that are preludes to creativity,
the people who you touch and the people who touch you,
the light switches and the car keys,

the small desperate moments when you are talking
to someone that needs you
For motivation, for direction, for piece of mind,

your heart still split asunder,
over a murdered brother, found suspects, and revisted ghosts

And you try to tell him that you have nothing left to give
but how can you leave lonely a soul
who might be transformed by your presence?
So even though you are weeks past
Having tears left to shed

you look up and see a man who has made girls cry all of his life

who thought, that like a cigarette, it was a habit

that could be sworn off, left forgotten like an empty beer bottle

yet girls are still breaking down all around him
; now, because he listens to them instead of hurting them
and he is emotionally drained
trying to reconcile who he was and who he is
And that there is no difference between laughter and tears.

And even though he is a man, he recognizes
that she is a mirror of himself, that she helps juveniles
when she has nothing left to give and so he helps her
when he has nothing left to give, and imagination
takes nothing and nothing and transforms it
to the most honest and beautiful and real something
that didn’t exist until you realized

that everywhere and in everyone there is God all around you.

Sometimes words coming from the mic are rotten and decaying
they carry infections which tear down the spirit.
Being force fed rotting words give tummy aches
to spiritual beings that can only be cured
with words of love, and so you say I love you
over and over again until you finally do something about it
You say I love you until you learn how to forgive
until you capture the alchemy that changes forgiveness into a chainsaw
and you start cutting away the roots of your past
until hurt and disappointment haunts you no more
finally you can look around your life
and find everyone who has ever loved you,
supported you, cared about you, and tell them thank you
over and over again until your life is full of gratitude,
and suddenly you find yourself sitting in a church pew
crying without ceasing for 17 minutes, 7 years
worth of tears, and you keep crying until bitterness
floats away, and your tear ducts become wells
that wishes swim in and you find the power
to bless someone else's life. and now you can tap
into the chill coursing through your spine
harness the holy spirit moving within you
until you constantly speak only truth
and fill the world with Hesiod love
so when you encounter the hurts of other people
all you can do is shine God back at them,
and this how you make your words eternal
this is how you become powerful,
by increasing your capacity to love
and now you find yourself taking in fatherless children,
and the unclean, and the sick, and you wash feet, even the feet
of those who betray you, your greatest enemies,
and the backstabbers, and the negligent friend,
mother, brother, father, lover, sister, and you
wash their feet too, because you love them
in spite of themselves, and suddenly,
your needs are so far away
that you have letters in the middle east,
written to strangers just to make them feel less lonely,
and you give presents at baby showers
for pregnant teenage mothers, and pray for inmates
in prisons and help them get jobs when they are released
because this is what true love looks like
how words are able to mean anything
this is how you respond to people
who have negative things to say.

Sent. 11:28:06 PM: If you could be goddess over anything what would it be?

Received. 11:38:30 PM: Maybe goddess of love, or the hunt lol what makes u ask? U god of what?

Sent. 11:40:56 PM: What is so seductive about the hunt?

Received. 11:44:08 PM: Well particularly when its a woman. I love the idea of a beautiful woman conquering masculine power. Men love to be dominated in the presence of a powerful woman.

Sent. 11:47:06 PM: And you think you are this dominating woman?

Received. 11:57:48 PM: Lol well you asked a hypothetical. But I think I sometimes embody that persona - it is a difficult side of me. Do you always try to get to know new people with intense hypotheticals?

Sent. 12:12:02 AM: Sry. At a bday party. Lol no I don't but it was my question of the week and you gave a feisty answer. I would be the god of small things.

Received. 12:26:26 AM: Hmn I like that, tell me more.

Sent. 12:32:17 AM: I would be the god of paper bags that get caught in the wind, of the dream life of dragon flies, of subatomic crushes and particles, of leaves falling at midnight, of first meetings.

Sent. 12:42:58 AM: Of pebbles that are worth nothing but are pretty to look at, of chalk boards and stick figures.

Received. 12:50:51 AM: Hmn I like ur imagination

Received. 12:51:16 AM: My battery is low btw

Sent. 12:52:14 AM: Well then. Let's call it a good first impression :) agree?

Received. 2:02:35 AM: Lol I do believe I agree

Dearest Giacomo,

I love getting your letters from Argentina. I can almost taste the wine and language in your every line. I wish that our biggest decisions would always be between whether to visit glaciers or follow whales.

But these last two months have been crazy. For our city and for our country - and yes even I am quite different than when you left me.

First I will talk about art because that is always the love that binds us. I am happy to say that the Conduit Gallery has launched a comeback - you would be proud of Nancy these days. Their current show is one of the best I've seen in a while.

Also, I've been to openings at Light and Sie, Dunn and Brown, the new CADD gallery downtown, and the new Samuel Lynne Gallery. The CADD gallery has its moments, and half of Dunn and Brown was good. Light and Sie fell off from earlier this summer when they had the best art exhibit I've seen in Dallas in four years. But it is Samuel Lynne that deserves our attention.

As quick as we are to praise great men - we are equally quick to damn them - and Samuel Lynne promised to bring 21st century art to Dallas and spectacularly failed to deliver. Fortunately for us all, 21st century art has been here for quite some time.

I have been thinking a great deal about the act of writing lately, and will have my first "real" poetry workshops in early 2009 trying to inspire young people to love poetry. One will be at Brave Art and one might be at the Dallas Theatre Center. I managed to sell another painting last week - which for me these days is like hearing the echo of a distant prayer.

Alas, I haven't felt much like an artist recently. I haven't felt much like anything. My non-profit has been on hold for the last two and half months - and it tears me up inside. Yet I know that my job and ability to make money is important. I feel like I know twice as much about the world now! I have received my Texas life and health insurance license and my Series 7 license. This week I will hopefully earn my Series 66 license and will finally be able to start work as a registered investment advisor representative.

I am very excited about it, I think I will be able to help hundreds of people become financially secure - people who aren't rich but who are artists, teachers, non profit workers, small business owners - the type of people that make our country great.

Needless to say, I have been following this financial turmoil very closely. It is like every day you have to keep a scorecard just to keep track of who owns who. But throughout it all I have tremendous faith in our country and in American ingenuity. I firmly believe that innovation in clean energy and green technology is our path back to prosperity and that the rise or fall of our great country will be determined by how well we do in those areas.

Yet, I agree with you - I don't know when conservatism stopped being about the best of everything and started being about gutting moose and Joe-Six Pack. We went to a very elite and conservative school for 8 years - and I saw not one moose gut.

But then again we were always liberals and maybe we didn't understand that swallowing a six pack in one gulp is just as important fancy houses and exotic trips. That sometimes one must sacrifice deeply held beliefs, trample God and country, in order to save both hair and hide. Regardless of the election outcome, it is a bad time for intellectual conservatism (quite possibly an oxymoron).

I didn't receive your postcard from Uruguay yet -but I will anxiously look for it. I am at an odd place in regards to females - they are there but I don't think I am. Who would have thought that I would still be recovering from two years ago - but I am still trying to figure out the more mundane parts of my personality. But the big parts are firmly in place - my life is entirely about serving other people and praising my God. Why that can be so simple to me (yet so difficult for most!) but things like deciding whether or not to kiss a girl can be so hard is beyond me.

Dallas misses you. It is State Fair time and the world is abuzz about football on all levels. The days are perfect now in early October, not scorchingly hot anymore, very sunny, a light breeze - I was even struck to use the word "bucolic" yesterday.

My family is well, David is trying to decide about colleges and getting through his senior year. Mom probably won't be affected by the DISD layoffs (it is a huge mess, they came up 64 million dollars short in the budget this year and didn't realize this until September), Dad is still working nights at the pharmacy. Hopefully, I will be fully working and back to chasing my dreams by the time you return. If you do stay in Dallas - I can at least get you an interview at my job :)

I love you and miss you and think of you always. Keep having the journey of a lifetime in Argentina. Give my best to Laura.

Always,

Darryl

It is always dangerous to talk about love while staring into a girl's eyes.

The big brown vessels that are mirrors, that are tunnels, that are gavels rendering judgment.

You were a feminist who hated questions.

A traveler who loved the bed.

Maybe you are a fierce lover.

Maybe you bite and cry.

I hope you unravel like a ball of yarn.

I hope you slink that sexily.

I bet you have been broken. Hurt.

You want someone to love. I just want something real.

I want to fall in love with an angel and teach her about God.

I want to have my heart cry.

I want that joy and that uncertainty.

I want something even jazz can't bury.

I need more than cool Dallas nights.

I need more than her beauty. Her soft brown features.

I need more than what she can give me.

I need pain. I need that brokenness. That fragility.

That triumphant strength, that ecclesiastic exhale.

I need that faith, that judgment, that fire,

that loneliness, that mystery -

I need so much more than just a good fuck.

This girl once told me that sharks are like God.

She fears sharks but also reveres sharks - and hopes to feel that way about God.

She said that she wanted to be a shark - dangerous, powerful, and beautiful.

She said she wasn't sure about love. That she hates dating. That it is always a roller coaster, and there is never a connection.

She smoked a cigarette and had beautiful eyes.

She said that all she wants to do is get married. That she immediately judges a guy on whether there could be a long term connection.

She said that when she has a connection with a guy she will do anything for him.

But there are no guys like that in this country.

She said she had her flaws.

And I looked at her, stunned by her fragility - how lost she was, how vulnerable, how honest, and we were touching now. In that moment, she saw herself through my eyes and realized that she was no longer just shooting the bull. That somehow she had become deeply honest and vulnerable - and that she had gone too far, said too much.

She got up, went to the restroom, and got another beer.

She lit another cigarette and sat down next to me.

"Any revelations?" I asked.

"No" she said, "tonight I just want to keep things simple."

Last night I was drinking wine and playing Pictionary with some friends after a gallery opening and posed this question:

What issues do you care about?

That evening everyone had an answer, and I would suggest that if you are able to take a hard look at our society and not find anything that deeply wrenches your soul in the deep of night - then there is something seriously wrong with you.

However, it is never enough to just recognize the problem.

Right now we are living in a society where it is prime time for participation.

Or to put it another way, "the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few".

This quote taken from the 9th chapter of Matthew shows the people of God in a serious plight. They were lost, handicapped, confused and run down to the point that Jesus felt compassion towards them. They were sheep in need of a shepherd - they were a people who were hurting, who were struggling, who had unmet needs.

And as we look out into our communities today we see many unmet needs, many people who are not reaching their potential - people who are suffering - physically, mentally, and spiritually.

And yet, from a Christian perspective, these times of crisis are also times of opportunity. The "harvest", the chance to help people, the ability to live a meaningful life, a life that transcends merely taking care of yourself, is indeed plentiful.

The tragedy is that even thousands of years later - the laborers are still few.

For those who do labor - I offer these two thoughts.

First, do not neglect the power of prayer. It works and it is free.
Pray with anticipation. Pray to the Lord to bring in the harvest. Pray for other people. Put people on your prayer list.

I challenge all Christians who read this to make a prayer list of people, whether strangers, family, or friends and simply pray for whoever is on your list and see for yourself the grandeur of God.

There is nothing more powerful than prayer. It puts you in the presence of and in conversation with an all powerful and all loving Heavenly Father for whom all things are possible.

Secondly, go with authority.

The enemy is nothing to play with. There is a great passage in Acts where someone is trying to cast out a demon in the name of Jesus and his servant Paul.

The demon replies, "I know Jesus and I know Paul but who are you?"

Whatever need you are trying to meet, whatever harvest you are trying to gather, whomever you are trying to help - it is impossible for you to be successful without building sincere, authentic, and personal relationships.

Whether you need to build your relationship with God or build your relationship with the community you are trying to help - relationships are the foundation of authority.

Ultimately, it is our relationships with other people that enable us to do the most good. It fuels our ability to help, to harvest, and to love.

We live in a season where the harvest is plentiful.

We live in a time that needs us to go from spectators to active participants.

Now is the prime time for participation. Now is the time to dedicate our entire lives to improving the communities, the cities, and the world in which we live.

I pray that you can find a cause that keeps you up at night.

I pray that you can love your community with all your heart.

I pray that you can labor until you are able to transcend yourself and live a life of servitude and love.

Amen.

I was hanging out with a bunch of friends one evening, and we were all enjoying tasty mixed drinks.

At some point in the night we ran out of ice and realized that someone needed to leave the gathering to go downstairs and get more ice.

No one wanted to get the ice, so we decided to play the game "Nose Goes" where the last person who touches their nose had to perform the task in question, in this case to get ice.

I am sure many of Art Star's readers have played "nose goes" with their friends as a way to solve minor disputes.

The essence of "nose goes" is that by touching our nose we say "Here I am, send somebody else!"

When we were young, some of us heard the story about Jonah and the Whale.

It is a classic story, both dramatic and gripping, a prophet who is eaten by a whale, and lives inside the whale's belly for three days.

However, as children most of us missed the main point of Jonah.

The reason that Jonah was devoured by the whale was because he decided to play "Nose Goes" with God.

Jonah - like many of us - was a good man. He was a prophet, a man of God. Jonah despised wickedness and evil. In fact, he believed that you reap what you sow - and that the sinful will perish.

So, when God asked Jonah to go to a town full of wicked people in order to save them - Jonah said "Here I am Lord, send somebody else."

Sometimes we can become wrapped up in our righteousness. Sometimes we would rather see the wicked perish than to give them a chance to repent and receive the grace of God.

Also, many of us would rather run away than do what the Lord asks us to do. In fact, I would suggest that anytime we want to disobey God there is always an available ship. Resources never seem to be scarce when you want to do wrong.

So, Jonah fled from God in a ship and the Lord sent a storm after him. We can run but we can't hide from God. Even though Jonah was going opposite of where God wanted him to go - "the hound of heaven" found Jonah and sent a storm his way.

Now, everyone who is reading this isn't like Jonah. You might not ever try to play "Nose Goes" with God. However, we are all sailor's guiding our own ships.

The sailor's had to suffer a storm from God because of who they had let on their ship. In our age of tolerance, openness, and compassion - sometimes we let people get close to us without actually knowing who they are.

Then, we become victims of proximity of other people's storms.

Even without knowledge of D.N.A. the old folks used to say "who is their daddy, and who is their mama" because they knew that "the apple seldom falls far from the tree."

We all know the rest of the story - Jonah was thrown overboard, swallowed by a Whale, was spat up to the shore three days later, and went on to do what God asked him to do in the first place.

How much easier would our lives be if we just listened to God from the start?

As we continue doing good things in this world, let us pray that we never become too self-righteous to realize that repentance and grace is always better than punishment.

Let us pray that we have the discernment to know who we let into our ships and our inner circles so that we don't become victims of storms by proximity.

Let us pray that when God calls us, we won't try to run and hide, we won't try to play "nose goes" with God, but we will be able to say "Here I am Lord, use me."

Amen.

A wise man once said that

"success shouldn't be measured by the status you have attained, but by the distance between where you have started and where you are now."

"what the world needs now is sanity. Sanity is the ability to oscillate between soul and joy, between love and hate, between high wisdom and simple things...and the sanest thing we can do in this world right now is to love outright."

Dear God,

Whether you are religious or not, whatever your faith, dealing with the idea of God is something you have encountered in life.

I write from a Christian perspective informed by Baptist teachings and Catholic theology with a high awareness of the other world religions and of course a sprinkling of Reformation theology.

When I was a young boy I would go to my black Baptist church and sometimes would wonder at all the theatrics going on. People would scream, shout, clap, cry, hop, hoot, and holler - all in the name of this idea called Praise.

From my perspective the extreme display of emotions just did not seem necessary.

Was it not enough to pray earnestly? To clap loudly? To sing songs? To mean it on the inside?

Why all the moving around, why all the shouting, why the tears?

When I had just enter adulthood I met a girl who would become my girl friend at a church. Everything was going right in my life and it was easy to praise God. It was easy to pray. It was easy to go to church. It was easy to realize that I had much to be thankful for.

However, a year later life changed - illnesses were discovered, relationships broken, dear friends moved away, disappointments happened - the world seemed dark.

And it was hard to say hallelujah, then.

It was hard to praise, to thank God, to go to church, and to pray.

But there was something about being able to say "My Lord, My Lord" - there was so much revelation about feeling utterly abandoned and just groaning to the Lord, of digging deep down pass everything superficial and quite a few things that were real and finding a Thank You, Lord.

It was then that I found my shout - it was then that I found my tears. And I realized a simple truth to my childhood question - those who shout, cry, and carry on in church often don't do it for attention or because they feel like it is expected of them - they do it because they have something to shout about. They do it because they have had to dig down on dark and lonely nights and find a hallelujah.

But once you have praised him in the dark, it is so much easier to praise him in the light.

And just to remind the reader, I am talking about praise and not prayer (although in truth they are probably the same thing).

It is far easier to call out to God for help in a desperate situation (and by all means do!) then to praise him for being God when your relationships are falling apart, when you are on the brink of failure in school or at work, when you are depressed, when you are considering suicide, when you have halfway abandoned hope, when you are on the brink of unbelief - to then be able to say Thank You Jesus, I Love You, You Are Merciful, You Are Good, You Are Mighty, You Are Powerful, You are God, Hallelujah!

After still being able to find God in those contexts how can one not shout? How can one not cry? How can one not be thankful?

We are creatures who are built for praise - and there are many ways for praise to manifest itself in our lives - and ideally our entire life and being becomes one joyful praise song to the Lord.

However blessed is the praise that comes from dark corners, blessed is the praise that comes when life is dim, blessed are those who shout, blessed are those who cry, and blessed are those children who grow up wondering why.

To those with ears let them hear.

Amen.

I had an interesting conversation with a girl from San Francisco about whether the pursuit of perfection is good or bad.

She said that if you pursue perfection you can never be happy. She recommended pursuing excellence instead.

I argued that excellence consists of mastering what already exists and pursuing perfection consists of inventing things that don't exist.

Pefection is an ideal. And, as a gentlemen from Washington added, ideals can be appropriated.

I think that there is nothing wrong with not ever being satisfied. In fact I would argue that not being satisfied is a christian ideal. How can one be satisfied in this world that we live in? Still, I believe one can be happy and one can be content and one can live a life full of meaning.

But I just don't believe that it is possible unless one lives ones life in pursuit of an ideal and what better ideal than perfection which is merely another name for God.

Even if one can never actually become one's ideal, the process, the journey one takes in trying to get there will lead to a vigorous and full life, and will also take you higher than you can conceive of.

It will cause you to dream and then to pursue those dreams. It will cause you to create things that don't exist. Pursuing perfection is our attempt for our mind's to romp with God.

It is where all great art originates - right at the point where we abandon the emptiness of excellence and embrace the uncertainity of creation.