RAIN (LYRICS) By BISHOP ALLEN

bed clothes, why am i in bed clothes?

watching out the window

watching what i don't know

on the fire escape now

hands they start to shake now

ready for the rail to break now

and i'm awake at last awake

cursing, rattling and cursing

go ahead and do your worst then

your worst that i can take

oh let the rain fall down

and wash this world away

oh let the sky be grey

cause if its ever gonna get any better

its gotta get worse for a day

morning, where am i this morning?

now its really pouring,

crawling up this shore

and i walk the neighborhood

and umbrella does no good

and i guess its in my blood

couldn't stop the flood

drowning, everything is drowning

go ahead and take the town

the town is yours to take

oh let the rain fall down

and wash this world away

oh let the sky be grey

cause if its ever gonna get any better

its gotta get worse for a day

calling, calling, falling, falling

grab on my guitar

and paddle with both my arms

headed where the voices are

i'll end up far so far away

oh let the rain fall down

and wash this world away

or let the sky be grey

cause if its ever gonna get any better

its gotta get worse for a day

its gotta get worse for a day

its gotta get worse for a day

its gotta get worse for a day

i know

its gotta get worse for a day

 

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RAIN

 

 

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LOVE & PAIN: THE INTOLERABLE COMPLIMENT

"Love can forbear, and Love can forgive...but Love can never be reconciled to an unlovely object...He can never therefore be reconciled to your sin, because sin in itself is incapable of being altered; but He may be reconciled to your person, because that may be restored."

 

- TRAHERNE, Centuries of Meditation, II, 30

 

 

The only thing that changes a character in a story is conflict: pain. It makes us restore ourselves, be our best selves.

 

 

"And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God ever sees us remade or see that our remaking is now hopeless." -C. S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)

 

 

So, since I know there isn't a one of us who isn't suffering right now, please, please remember that God is doing everything He can to restore you into a lovely object as free of sin as possible so that He, being perfect Love, can be reconciled to you.

 

In a sense, you are suffering BECAUSE HE LOVES YOU and wants to love you completely.

 

I know that's not what any of us WANT to hear, but it's what we NEED to hear and remember...

 

I have forgotten that. It slipped into my deep subconscious because it is easier to be an unlovely object than an object free of sin ready to be reconciled to Him, to Love. It's time I, we, know and believe the truth about suffering, about Love and pain, about the purpose of being sentient.

 

So we pray,

 

Lord, when we get weak, when we are unlovely objects, when we are full of sin, please do all that You can to restore us, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us, so we can finally be fully restored to You, to Love. Thank you Lord for loving us enough to take the time to restore us to You. Amen

 

 

"He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense." - C. S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)

 

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THE SENTIENT LIFE / THE PROBLEM OF PAIN

"Our design is a less formidable one: it is only to discover how, perceiving a suffering world, and being assured, on quite different grounds, that God is good, we are to conceive that goodness and that suffering without contradiction."

 

- C. S. Lewis (The Problem Of Pain)

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THE ONE AND ONLY LIFE ITSELF

"Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself...

"Perhaps this is not the 'best of all possible' universes, but the only possible one."

 

 

- C. S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)

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MIRACLES & FIXED LAWS: A STABLE WORLD

"That God can and does, on occasions, modify the behavior of matter and produce what we call miracles, is part of Christian faith; but the very conception of a common, and therefore stable, world, demands that these occasions should be extremely rare."

 

"So it is with the life of souls in a world: fixed laws, consequences unfolding by casual necessity, the whole natural order, are at once limits within which their common life is confined and also the sole condition under which any life is possible."

 

-C. S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)

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IS ALL PAIN EVIL?

Nature is constant. A neutral something to give us context, to differentiate ourselves from one another and everything else. It has its own identity of sorts and rules and laws that we can't manipulate. We follow Nature's laws so we can keep our freedom of choice and sense and awareness of self, which God gave us and wants for us. But this is also why Nature can cause us pain, because it isn't doing everything each one of us wants it to, like fire, tornados, storms, hurricanes, etc. But that's the only way we could keep freedom of choice, which is necessary for love to really be love. We need the choice to choose God over everything else, no matter what pain the constant context, Nature, can cause us.

 

"Hence, even in a perfect world, the necessity for those danger signals which pain-fibres in our nerves are are apparently designed to transmit. Does this mean an inevitable element of evil (in the form of pain) in any possible world? I think not: for while it may be true that the least sin is an incalculable evil, the evil of pain depends on degree, and pains below a certain intensity are not feared or resented at all."

 

Besides, how can Nature please 7 billion people all at once? And think what awful spoiled children God would've raised if He'd allowed that to be.

 

So if I want one thing and you want the exact opposite does that create evil? No.

 

"...this is very far from being an evil: on the contrary, it furnishes occasion for all those acts of courtesy, respect, and unselfishness by which love and good humor and modesty express themselves.

 

"But it certainly leaves the way to a great evil, that of competition and hostility."

 

So, we have a choice: to let NOT GETTING OUR WAY ALL THE TIME lead to acts of courtesy, respect, unselfishness and love and modesty, or to competition, hostility, and evil.

 

Not all pain is evil. It's hard to wrap our minds around, but it's true. Pain, ultimately, leads us to opportunity, the opportunity of the freedom to choose how we will respond to it.

 

And we have the constant of Nature and God to thank for that opportunity, to thank for our freedom of choice. To thank for not letting us be spoiled children, but children hopefully rooted to grow into courteous, respectful, unselfish, and loving human beings. And without that freedom we would be robots, not people, not His children. And I am unbelievably grateful I am a child of God and not a robot.

 

So which would you choose, a world where you couldn't get hurt and nature and God bent to your every whim, but you were a robot who couldn't love or feel or be in awe of God's glory, or be His child, with the freedom to choose Him and be loved by Him, even if that meant being able to feel pain?

 

- C. S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)

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NOT GUARANTEED

"With God all things are POSSIBLE."

 

-----> NOT GUARANTEED.

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THE GOOD OF SUFFERING

"WHAT IS GOOD IN ANY PAINFUL EXPERIENCE IS, FOR THE SUFFERER, HIS SUBMISSION TO THE WILL OF GOD, AND, FOR THE SPECTATORS, THE COMPASSION AROUSED AND THE ACTS OF MERCY TO WHICH IT LEADS."

- C. S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)

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SPEECHLESS

 

 

Is it poetry? Is it prose? Is it perfection? This young woman still leaves me in awe of her diction and syntax. Her voice. Her style...God left some serious fingerprints on this one when he formed her together out of His best clay.

 

And if she ever broke, which everyone has, the mosaic pieces that are left are somehow even better than His original design, and His light brings them to life. But then again, He surely planned it that way. Surely.

 

Truly exceptional, and I am truly still speechless...I want to write like Debby Ryan when I grow up.

 

Until then, please take the time to read the gift God gave her: MY MOSAIC

 

 

 

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LASTS & LOSSES

 

 

Last moments. Last thoughts...

 

 

The last day/time I was healthy.

The last time I played softball.

The last time I attended class in college.

The last night I slept in a dorm room with my best friends.

The last time I worked in the Training Room.

The last time I saw my hitting coach.

The last road trip I went on.

The last time I left Spokane or Portland.

The last time I saw my friends.

The last time my best friends were actually my best friends.

The last time I drove a car.

The last time I sat at a vista at 6,000 feet with just me and God.

The last date I went on with a guy.

The last time I slept in my own room.

The last time I ate out in a restaurant.

The last time I felt good at something, confident in my abilities.

The last time I could do anything on my own.

The last time I went to the movies.

The last time I lived on my "own".

The last time I felt independent.

The last time I felt free.

The last time I was pain free.

The last time I got a good night's sleep.

The last time I watched the sunrise.

The last time I watched the sunset.

The last time I stayed out past 5:30 pm.

The last episodes of all my favorite tv shows.

 

 

Last moments, experiences, thoughts...when you're healthy you don't think about them. When all is going well or even ok you don't think about them...I, however, am haunted by them, ceaselessly. They never leave me alone. Any one of them, they always find their way back to me, to my soul, to causing it to break, again. Especially tonight.

 

I have one episode of Chuck left. One of my favorite tv shows, and I am mourning it's ending, again. TV, it just--I know most people don't get it, but, it just...it just is so much better than life. At least it feels that way, to me.

 

It's been said by one of my favorite geniuses ever, Joss Whedon, that it's the greatest form of storytelling. If done correctly, which he knows how to do, I know he is right. Because their stories are being lived without all the stalling, while all I can/do is watch them live the stories I wish I were.

 

It's sad that TV is often such a better story than my life. But that at least makes sense of why I love getting lost in it, even if it leads to an emotional mess here and again: it tells stories how they were supposed to be written--how they were supposed to be lived. With a lot of exceptions of course. There really is a lot of crap on TV, but then again, every once in a while, maybe once a season, a show comes along that leaves you believing again, in life, in other people, in fighting for what's real and right and true, in love, in hope despite the amount of conflict or tragedy, and in stories--in God's story for me, for you, for all of us...

 

It's just at this time of night, when I'm reminded of what any kind of loss feels like, even the loss of a great tv show I've already seen and lost, which is often trivial to some, it sucks, and it becomes a whirlwind of all the pain I've already felt and will continue to feel until their is nothing left to lose. No lasts except for that last breath, that last goodbye to the ones and things and places you love...

 

Ever since Stills Disease, I feel like my sense of loss has been heightened, to a level that at times feels unbearable. And it often just takes something, as little to some, or most, like a tv show, to push me past my limits, to bring back the scars of loss and lasts I've been trying to heal for the last almost nine years. That dark gaping abyss inside begins to scream, begins to cry, begins to be too heavy in my chest, and I break, break down, break in, break open...

 

Loss....

 

Lasts....

 

How much more are there really going to be?

 

 

You won't even believe me when I tell you how much I miss grocery shopping, sitting in traffic, having a long day at work, having to study for a crazy scary final exam, having to make dinner, running errands, getting up early and having a routine, doing homework, going to class, getting dressed for a real normal day, doing chores, going on walks to stay fit, being social, going to church...

 

All the little things everyone thinks are big, troublesome, bothersome--all the things everyone complains about, I miss.

 

 

In college I came up with, out of necessity of being surrounded by young adults who complained about everything, especially the trivial things they didn't yet know were trivial, a phrase that has stuck with me, that more or less is always true, and it always finds it's way back to me at sad moments like this, when people think I'm crazy for missing the mundane exhausting stuff, while I think you're crazy for taking your abilities for granted. It goes like this:

 

If you have something to complain about, you HAVE SOMETHING.

 

Something I, and a lot of other people don't have. It isn't perfect, it isn't easy, but you still have something that we have lost. Never forget that. Please...

 

 

I'm tired of lasts, and yet I lie awake every night, just like tonight, waiting, guessing, preparing for the next one. Besides Chuck, what's it gonna be? Or which last moment will be the one that torments me all night, every night. There are too many lasts. There's too much loss. And yet there will be many many more...

 

Last moments...

 

Last thoughts...

 

The last sentence of this post...

 

 

Lord,

Please help us all get thought it all. Hold us and comfort us through every last, through every loss. Help us live better stories. Help us know the conflicts, the losses, and the lasts in our stories are all here to bring us closer to You. Help us learn to truly know and trust that every last and loss will only lead us closer to you. Thank You for always doing everything You can to bring us closer to you. May we not take anything for granted. May we always remember there is always someone who has lost and sad goodbye to what we are lucky enough to get to complain about. Amen Lord. Amen.

 

 

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FROM THIS VALLEY

"From This Valley" by The Civil Wars

 

Oh, the desert dreams of a river

that will run down to the sea

like my heart longs for an ocean

to wash down over me.

Oh, won't you take me from this valley

to that mountain high above?

I will pray, pray, pray

until I see your smiling face.

I will pray, pray, pray

to the one I love.

Oh, the outcast dreams of acceptance,

just to find pure love's embrace

like an orphan longs for his mother.

May you hold me in your grace.

Won't you take me from this valley

to that mountain high above?

I will pray, pray, pray

until I see your smiling face.

I will pray, pray, pray

to the one I love.

Oh, the caged bird dreams of a strong wind

that will flow 'neath her wings.

Like a voice longs for a melody,

oh, Jesus carry me.

Won't you take me from this valley

to that mountain high above?

I will pray, pray, pray

until I see your smiling face.

I will pray, pray, pray

to the one I love.

I will pray, pray, pray

until I see your smiling face.

I will pray, pray, pray

to the one I love.

This has always been one of my favorites of theirs. And I really needed their updated version that is currently streaming on iTunes tonight.

 

They are just so ridiculously and overwhelmingly talented. They give me hope for the next generation of music. God bless 'em.

 

And if Joy Williams doesn't make you smile, or love her graceful Disney princess hands, something is wrong with you.

 

I always love worshiping with them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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