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Month: August 2006

Christianity/Spirituality

Unlikely Gospel Artists

Posted on August 30, 2006 by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Here’s a CBC Radio clip worth its salt…and light. Pastor Jonathan Gonyou does a whirlwind tour of unlikely gospel tunes and unlikely-er gospel recor...

Beauty/Christianity/Spirituality

On Being a Conduit

Posted on August 29, 2006 by stephen t berg / 1 Comment

He heals the broken-hearted, and binds up their wounds.He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names. (Psalm 147) You would imagine...

Beauty/Peace

Repetitious Love

Posted on August 28, 2006 by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

O give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his steadfast love endures forever; who alone does great wonders, for his steadfast love endures forever… (Psalm 1...

Beauty

Holy-day

Posted on August 25, 2006 by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Holiday…from the Old English, holy+day: To come to see with every cell, and to feel through your eyes, what is before you, what you are part of, and what ...

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Over the coming months, I’ll be slowly retiring Grow Mercy. This Easter marks 20 years and some 1500 posts. (And here, a deep bow to you, for reading and/or responding.) I’ll not, however, be retiring the impulse behind Grow Mercy, but will be shifting, exploring, following a hybridized urge, and a genre to suit. For me, what these decades have increasingly revealed is how writing is a spiritual path. Now, for whatever time and energy remains for me, I’ll be tilting more toward The Ragged Psalmist, still inchoate, but the handle feels like it fits. I do hope you’ll subscribe.

Why — The Ragged Psalmist?

Because some stubborn ember, still warm, compels me to write some cobbled songs — praise and lament, cries and sighs — and sound them back to the sacred Mystery.

To throw a wrench into a world geared up for business; to resist the moneychangers in their corporate temples — because poetry is political, and light is its administrative wing.

Because old lies and old words screw us over and must be remade to tell the truth; because our glossary of mockery needs burial, and the lexicon that’s left needs anointing.

To strive to honour the life of a sparrow; attend the spell of a dead star — whose light we still see; to feel, down to the bone, the quantum foam, we all flail in.

To thicken compassion and thin out aggression; to oppose injustice and hate in a way that excludes no one, not even the hater.

To let failure, discouragement, suffering and perishing have their say, without any spoon of bromide; to let joy, delight, and beauty come as they may.

To penetrate darkness and delusion — and so discover all this love in us.

Because mindfulness and mercy need constant oxygen.

Because in the time that’s left I want to tattoo the implications of our “forgiving victim” on the body suit of my heart.

Because reality points to unity — and we must hurry to catch up.

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