Writing About God.com

Ad Infinitum

If only you could sort through
All the ideas in your head,
You tell yourself,
You would figure it all out
And arrive at the grand conclusion,
The answer,
The answer to all those relentless questions.

Yet every idea you explore
Gives birth to a myriad more.

Dandelion seeds in the wind.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Prayers

Prayers recite us.

~ Text & photograph by Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Something Eternal

I can easily see the second hand move
But no matter how long I stare
The minute hand seems stationary,
The hour hand frozen.

In the mirror
I am the same as yesterday,
Yet the photograph is surprising.
I have aged.

Yes, I see wind-blown clouds changing shapes,
Time-lapsed flowers unfolding,
Water that comes to a boil,
Still,
There is something eternal inside,
Surprised at the passing of time.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Saved

Go ahead and pray,
Pray for things both selfish and unselfish.
If you are blessed,
Many of the things you pray for will not come.

In this way shall you be saved.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Why One And Not The Other?

Easier to understand when we were animals,
Savages,
Without the grace of modern civilization,
Without protection,
Easier to understand the random hand of fate,
Pulling one down,
Pushing another up.
But now,
When so many millions are safe,
When so many millions are not,
I have yet to discover,
Why one and not the other?

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

An Angel's Plight

I cannot tell you the nature of my birth.
My countenance is but a mirror,
Reflecting your imagination,
Without human substance.

To say I am born of God
Is less than Adam’s rib,
Without lineage.

In my mind there is only being.

There was no infancy,
No cradling,
No mother’s soft cooing.

I am filled with envy
And my desire is insatiable,
The desire for love,
Love that must be earned by good works,
By intercession.

So I listen and I am called
And I answer as best I can,
Only able to influence,
Not change,
The course of any human event.

I hunger for that connection,
That bond with a grieving heart,
A heart so wounded that at last I am called,
Yet so often abandoned after healing has begun,
After joy has returned,
After the Earthly distractions come flooding back,
Severing the connection,
Casting me out once again,
Lonely winged messenger that I am.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

If I Could Choose

Yeah,
Heaven may be swell,
For a while,
But what do you do with all you’ve experienced,
All you’ve learned?
Do you just sit around with family and friends,
Drinking wine at sunset,
Forever?

If I could choose my soul’s progression,
My soul’s destiny,
I would take all that I know,
All that I am
And be the seed of a new world.

Imagine being the initiating spirit,
The infusing spirit of a new existence,
For better or for worse,
The spirit that inspires,
The spirit that destroys,
Or something in-between,
Something complex,
Something that grows beyond its beginnings,
Something that evolves,
Kind of like planet Earth,
Which makes me wonder
Just what kind of erratic genius gave birth to this world?

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Imagine

If you are not living the life you imagined,
Imagine the life you are living.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

We Suffer

At this level of incarnation
I suppose our suffering has purpose.
I have learned much from suffering,
Lessons I apparently could not have learned
Had my life been free from suffering,
Had my life been easy.
Lessons I apparently could not have learned
From joy.

Yet how can I condone suffering?
How can I countenance its merciless, random aim?
How can I find reason in the suffering of children?
In the suffering caused by villainy?
In the suffering caused by the collapse of civilization,
When whole countries suffer
From the corruption of a single man?

We are spurred to action and reform by suffering,
The best of us dreaming of a world
Where the last remnants of suffering are accidental
And soon extinguished.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

In Return

Oh how you scoff at religion,
At those who embrace a merciful God,
Who have faith in the promise of heaven.

You list the sins of the righteous,
The historic holy wars,
The blindness of orthodox doctrine,
The wolves in priests’ clothing,
The sainted certainty that employs violence,
That justifies violence,
Violence against body, mind and spirit.

Your debate weighs on the sins of the religious,
As if the evil that humans do
Is an inevitable consequence of faith.

I have an aged friend,
Raised in a small town,
Believing gratitude to God is the way to give thanks,
Thanks for the blessing of another day of life.
If I convinced her of your reasoning,
If I could take all her antiquated beliefs away,
All the naïve notions of religion going back generations,
What would I give her in return?

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Recently Born

So new,
So young,
So ignorant of devious motives,
So free from self-imposed orthodoxies.

So new,
So young.

We race to fill our recently born
With our individual truths,
Our tribal truths,
Our instructions and conclusions,
As if we had no need of change.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

When The Lights Go Out

Every evening
When the lights go out,
When the streets are dark,
When everything you own is drained of color,
When you are ready for sleep
In the black invisibility of your room,
Now you know
How far you’ve come,
How far you have to go.

Now you know
The only thing you truly own.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Rules

To achieve an enlightened state of bliss,
How must I position my body?
Shall I sit cross-legged?
Or should I stand?
Should I close my eyes to temporal distractions?
Or should my eyes be open
So that I may learn to transcend all visual stimuli?
Should I join my hands in prayer,
Or perhaps raise a single hand
With fingers positioned to indicate some kind of divinity?

What is the best time of day, month or year
To engage in spiritual disengagement?
Should I face the rising sun
From the solitude of a verdant garden,
Or surrender my ego in a candlelit meditation hall?
Are there special words
Or spiritually empowered sounds I must make?
Must I focus on a specific kind of attainment
Or abandon all egocentric aspirations?

How long should I spend in meditation?
Or should I disregard such structures as time and space?
What should I do?
What should I not do?

Are there really rules about this kind of spiritual quest?
And what did the rule makers do before the rules were made?
When did they decide that everyday life was not enough,
And why?

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

You Have The Gift

You have the gift
And the challenge,
The challenge to know you have the gift,
The challenge to accept the gift,
To live it.

While we are so busy complaining,
Blessings fall upon us like rain.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Absolution

Who is the fortunate soul
Who has not fallen
At one time or another
During this life?

How many of us have sinned
Without detection,
Yet repented without admonition?

How many suffer the consequences of sin
Beneath the guise of anonymity?

Who can say how long such punishment will last?

One might suppose death and its dominions
Washes away Earthly sin,
Yet even death does not erase memory.

The echoes of our imperfect lives reverberate
In histories large and small,
Yet all unruly children are in the heart of God still,
Where only honest and sustained contrition will bring absolution,
The only kind of absolution that really matters.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Fog

So thick tonight,
It muffles the sound of this city,
Makes this place feel small,
Reduced to a single note
That calls like a meditation bell,
Calls me to let it all go,
To forgive,
Even myself.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Growing Younger

After this one particular life,
After this body,
Ceases,
I will carry what wisdom I have
Into another life,
But next time,
Born old and wise,
I will grow younger,
Stronger,
Coupling energy with experience,
Knowing that each day brings me closer
To the moment of conception,
Until,
At last,
I return to bliss.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

All The Way

We fight against the breakdown,
Trying to hold on to all we believe,
Fighting,
Fighting,
And most of us fight right up to the end,
Defending,
Defending,
And the ones who do,
Breakdown,
Fall so low,
So low,
It takes a long time to reassemble
The ideas,
The beliefs,
The dreams.

Some of us fall so low,
So low,
We break through the last idea,
No bottom,
Falling,
Falling,
Past falling,
All the way,
And are saved.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

There Is Wildness Here

There is wildness here,
Raw and raging
Beneath this exterior,
Pulsing.

There are visions here
Of soaring over lifetimes of leaf-filled trees
And rust-colored hills,
Over yellow fields,
Over oceans.

There is forgetting here
Of the small things people say,
The small things people do.

There is a last angry echo
Of the unheard voice,
The deeper self,
The truer self,
The wilder self
That wearies of all man-made things.

There is a silence here
That grows and infuses,
Like the melancholy tint
Of an old photograph,
An old photograph you walk around in,
Examining with wonder the frozen, yet flowing
Moments of a life.

There is a wildness here
That rises like an immense stone,
Floating impossibly
In the pure blue sky
Of a secret spring.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

After I Died

I am walking on a long, outstretched path,
Somewhere I’ve never been
Yet familiar somehow,
Past verdant bushes and trees,
New life sprouting, flashing from every direction,
Bushels of multicolored leaves,
Rainbows of sudden spring flowers,
Glistening gold and green painted hillsides,
Walking without destination
Yet toward something, large.

A promise?
A transformation?

I am walking alone
In the cool crisp air of morning,
Or is it evening?
No sense of time.
A yellow sparrow flutters down
A few steps ahead,
Deliberately attracting my attention,
Then hopping along with me,
Keeping a safe distance,
Leading me from her nesting place
Until we’ve traveled far enough away,
Then she is gone.

I am walking without destination
But something significant is happening.
I am changing in some undefinable way,
Transforming into something long wished,
A childhood dream.

Then,
Suddenly,
Without thought,
I rise and take flight.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Something

Weary singer of unsung songs
Moving in deep, undulating waves
Of subconscious longing for flight,
I plunge upwards into soar and glide,
Infused with the grace of birds,
Like the happy release of death
When very old.

So worn
And wishing for the play of wind
On flight feathers,
I let go and fall
Into something
Beyond these words.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Measure and Weigh

True Blue Gurus

True blue gurus
Tell me who I should be
With such certainty:
Honest, honorable and wise,
Trusting in providence,
Patient with injustice,
Content with my haphazard existence.

Yes, yes,
It is a blessing to be alive,
But endless, underpaid labor
Leaving little opportunity for imagination
Does not engender exuberance.

True blue gurus
Tell me there are no real obstacles,
That mind is the matter,
But here in the world outside my mind
Things can go terribly wrong.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Do Not Know

In My Dark Hours

In my dark hours,
Deserted,
Miserable,
Without hope of redemption,
In a world grown cold and colorless,
In the depth of my most personal failures,
I hear a soft voice,
Speaking calm words
With tenderness and tenacity,
Slipping through the black curtain
Of my defeat,
Pulling me back to life
From the perilous ledge
Of despair.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Reminder

After We Die

Prayers

How long do prayers persist?
How often must they be repeated?
What are minutes and hours,
What is the length of a day to a prayer,
Or to God?

Does God tally prayers,
Weighing some against others?
Or is such somber accounting left to angels and saints?
Are prayers judged by earnestness?
Do they ascend by urgency?

It is worry in me that encourages prayer,
Worry and love,
Love and fear,
Knowing that in this world
Science and happenstance will not be denied.

Even if God were no more than disinterested science,
Unyielding to desires both noble and base,
I would not have my heart grow so cold
As to abandon what is so easily accomplished.

You may not believe your prayers are heard,
But if they open your ears to the longings of your heart,
If they inspire reformation and action,
If they awaken the desire to be honest in all things,
If they cast light on the path ahead,
They are not wasted.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Angels Pray

The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

He said this.
He said so many things,
Some lost in translation,
Others so direct,
So immediate
We fail to understand.

We are lost in hypothesis,
Wandering through the desert of the theoretical,
Dying of thirst,
Finding no relief in the idea of water,
No comfort from the concept,
When all along
The cool, clean water is before us,
But we do not drink.
We refuse to replace the idea with the immediate.
We will not drink.

We imagine a place,
A heaven,
A hell,
A limbo,
Where all our speculations are resolved.
We imagine that the real world,
The eternal world,
The awakened life
Is in some other existence,
Some other plane of being.

The angels pray for us,
Pray that we will awaken,
That we will realize
The kingdom of heaven is at hand,
Heaven and hell and everything in-between,
Here,
Now.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Remembering

How old you want to be
May depend
On how much you want to remember.

Some enjoy the bliss of erasing unhappy memories
As the years
Go
By.

Not me.

Events and circumstances
Pester me,
Suddenly appearing from the fog of the past,
In the middle of the day
While sitting in a café eating a deviled egg sandwich
On rye.

Suddenly,
There it is,
The afternoon I slapped my elderly father across the face,
His glasses skidding across the kitchen floor.

Now,
Old failures and sins line up to be revisited,
Reminding me of how much more I could have achieved,
How much kinder I should have been.

Oh yes, too many unpleasant memories,
Too vivid,
Too detailed,
Telling me I’ve lived long enough,
Long enough to appreciate death and its cleansing power,
Ready now to be reborn,
Ready for the slate wiped clean.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Ants

Ants,
These busy, busy ants,
Called upon this hot summer day
To march from there to here to somewhere else,
Called upon by Mother Earth to live,
To be busy,
So busy this hot summer day.

They do not ask why.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved