Riga

Well, we got back to riga from daugavpils, it was awesome. I was dealing hard with some stuff. So I prayed the bible hardcore sunday night. Man praise the Lord, join our army-we go to battle! So I went out walking down maskavas street meeting people, praying over streets, the city, fighting the devil. Also trying to think of new stencils, there are some ok ones here, but we need good grafitti here.

Thoughts as of late

Well several things have been on my mind. Things particularly that keep me up at night in a good way. I am preparing for times ahead, I am really looking forward to being on the streets with the Blue Island team. I want to share some of that. I have been working on the south side of Chicago with the Blue Island ministry for two or three years, I can't remember which. I was away from them for last summer as I was in Ukraine, but one thing it taught me was the importance of community, and my RESPONSIBILITY to them. Not only to them but to the world, maybe I'm an idealist in that sense, but I embrace it, I recongnize that I understand that as a Christian, I am responsible for the world, winning the world. Its about world conquest, and I am not remissed to say that not only to I believe in it, I believe it to be possible! So I've been thinking as of late how much I want to be a part of the blue island community, and the people's lives moreso. For example their is a person thats been in my thoughts, whos parents have been stuck with some drug charges, and I know it hurts him (becuase the family is no longer together). Being there twice a week I sometimes can't do as much, how I long for the processes of new life to be evidenced in them! How much I desire to be a catalyst! I desire the thickest of the fight! I want to be there so I can go on the offensive and do some of the stuff I've been doing up here on the north side with human trafficking and the poor down there, where I am part of their lives. I've been trying to do some major prayer and life changes. Praying for radical holiness, some times I hear the birds singing almost to the sweetest, but I haven't surrendered. Zut. Some major warfare's going down here and I am ready to go on the offensive. Love love love.

Also after that I am going to latvia as an intern, which I am excited about as well. Me and my chum, Jon Gugala, are preparing to be misers so that monetarialy we can bless with our disattachment. Also we've been dialoguing about approaches, which I am foreign to.

Lately in the university I attend, all have been predisposed to sitting on the ground and smelling the flowers. I've been climbing trees, and having long talks about poverty, so wonderful!

One last thing, I remember a dialogue me and my friend had about death. That as we were being students of philosophy together, and studying theories of death as the understanding of the other and the self. That we only know death insofar as we can relate to the other person as similar to us. But that is all so wrong. We discussed how the bravest philosophies of death will never have as much meaning as it does for St. Augustine when his friend dies, who he declares as half of his own soul, and that they were knit together in the holy spirit. I've been thinking of how philosophy becomes radically destructured in meaning comparitively to poetry and the experiential, that we cannot quantify death in philosophical systems. But only from the breathing heart.

Write it on your banners, get it on your knees,
Victory!

sorry if you wanted to read this, it will be in Icelandic.

Sorry, I've just got something that is striking and it doens't make sense in English.

"Ekki er heldur kyrrt eða dautt í innyflum jarðarinnar, því þar geisar jafnan geigvænlegasta og aflmesta höfuðskepnan, en það er eldurinn, sem á stundum brýst upp úr undirdjúpunum og klýfur sundur fjöll og jökla, en bráðnað grjót og jarðtegundir fljóta eins og árstraumur, og eyða hvurju sem fyrir verður. Eitthvað er líka að, þegar jarðskjálftarnir fara eins og hryllingur yfir hinn ofurstóra líkama jarðarinnar; þá hrynja húsin og björgin klofna, og stundum koma eyjar upp úr sjónum, þar sem áður var hyldýpi, ellegar stórhéröð hrapa til grunna, og ekkert er eftir nema vatn, þar sem áður voru byggðir manna....Tökum til dæmis þyngdina. Í fyrstunni kemur hún oss fyrir sjónir eins og almennt lögmál fyrir hlutina hér á jörðu; við nákvæmari ígrundun sjá menn, að hún er aðdráttarkraftur allra skapaðra hluta sín á milli; enn fremur, að hún er sá aflfjötur, sem tengir saman alheiminn, og loksins birtist hún oss sem sá guðlegur vilji, er viðheldur hnattakerfum heimsins í sínu fagra og undrunarverða sambandi. Hér höfum við hafið oss smátt og smátt frá einni skoðun til annarrar háleitari, og komum þar eins og annars staðar til þeirrar ályktunar, að upphaf allra hluta sé guð."

oftener times and such

I have found myself going back to a story on and on. A friend of mine recently got saved, and it happened in the context of him getting shot at in a drive-by. You tell him there's no war afoot! His context is the one I'm looking at, and winning his world so that they can win the broader world for Jesus. That's what is about, not individual conversions, but global conquest. Winning the world. Striking.

Hmm Hmm yes yes yes.

The world for God! The world for God!
There’s nothing else will meet the hunger of my soul.
I see forsaken children, I see the tears that fall
From women’s eyes once merry, now never laugh at all;
I see the sins and sorrows of those who sit in darkness;
I see in lands far distant, the hungry and oppressed.
But behold! On a hill, Calvary! Calvary!

The world for God! The world for God!
I give my heart! I’ll do my part!
The world for God! The world for God!
I give my heart! I’ll do my part!

The world for God! The world for God!
I call to arms the soldiers of the blood and fire:
Go with the Holy Bible. Its words are peace and life
To multitudes who struggle with crime and want and strife.
Go with your songs of mercy, show Christ in loving kindness,
Make known the sufferings of the cross, the sacrifice of God.
For behold! On a hill, Calvary! Calvary!

The world for God! The world for God!
For this, dear Lord, give to my soul consuming fire.
Give fire that makes men heroes, turns weakness into might,
The fire that gives the courage to suffer for the fight,
The fire that changes fearing to Pentecostal daring,
The fire that makes me willing for Christ to live or die;
For behold! On a hill, Calvary! Calvary!

SOMEBODY please tell me!

Does anyone know anywhere I can find, or can anyone tell me about Railtonian Poverty? George Scott Railton's ideas on poverty and embracing it? It would be greatly appreciated.

here comes and here goes.

I have recently been mulling over much in the last days. I went to be with a friend in Michigan, one who I hadn't seen in about a year. We somehow go to the subject of community. I had recently been to a new monastic community. Something disturbed me however there, was that it was community for community's sake, and it made me recall my personal hero, Railton:

"We refuse to settle down into places of worship such as might be agreeable to our people and their families, but insist upon the open-air stand and the place of amusement, where there may be little comfort, but where the most good may be done. We refuse to allow our Officers to stay very long in any one place, lest they or the people should sink into the relationship of pastor and flock, and look to their mutual enjoyment and advantage rather than to the Salvation of others. The whole Army is kept in its course by the direction of one controlling will… We refuse utterly to allow of any authoritative assembly, committee, church meeting, or any other representative or popular gathering, except purely for the purpose of auditing finance and accepting and confirming and arranging for the execution of plans which have been tried and proved most calculated to promote the common object. We are not and will not be made a sect. We are an Army of Soldiers of Christ, organized as perfectly as we have been able to accomplish, seeking no Church status, avoiding as we would the plague every denominational rut, in order perpetually to reach more and more of those who lie outside every Church boundary. Owing to our adherence to this military system, we are losing almost every year Officers who, having lost their first love, begin to hanker after the ‘rights,’ ‘privileges,’ ‘comforts,’ ‘teaching,’ or ‘respectability’ of the Churches. "

I'm not thinking about the bit about not becoming a denomination, but that the sole purpose of community in the salvation army way was a beautiful necessity for the salvation of others. The community when the salvation of soceity and others are not its central focus becomes nothing. So let us go for them, and go for the worst.