It is the internal itch you cannot scratch,
It is the hunger inside you
It is the desire for all your dreams to hatch
It is the restlessness in moments before they do
It is the hope of all return
It is the reason why you are.
It is the place where passion churns
It is the fall before the scar.
It is the reach you extend so far, out of faith, in the dark.
It is for all these reasons
That you only feel,
That you know you have a purpose
That you know God is real.

I've Got a Feeling

Feeling a little disconnected with God
Feeling a little too connected with the clock.
Feeling Your presence tonight helped me forget
Feeling alone.

Feeling around in the dark until I find myself
Feeling something real.
Feeling the distance between the two is like the
Feeling of waking up afraid.

Feeling like I've got a
Feeling that there's something out there beyond
Feeling empty inside.
Feeling compelled to tell the truth while
Feeling the weight of a lie, makes it hard to feel  much of anything, yet
Feeling my way around the dark is the only way to recognize the
Feeling of Your light.

Hamster on a wheel

  Isn't it funny, that the human mind is never silent? It roams and skips across sea's, through tiny corridors of reality and imagination without stopping to rest; registering what our eyes perceive, analyzing the information, then using a system of output to create. When we lay down to sleep, our minds even then, are running wild. Dreams are the product of the adventure it embarks during its nightly crusade, and sometimes when God so chooses, they teach us something.

Amidst the Creator: 2

As I exhaled I said sorry
To Him.
My lashes flutter once
Before they close.
Uncertain but
At peace.

After ten minutes,
I opened those lashes like
One might draw back the
Curtain for one last look
at something they lost.

"What are they?"
"This is Me."
And for twenty minutes,
The Heavens were all that I could see.

Amidst the creator : 1

Sitting. Eyes closed and
Slightly smiling.
A breeze weaves in and
Out of my hairs, lifting and
Drifting them upon my head.

The tall grass around me
Along with the melancholy
Music of some awakened forest
In the distance.

A stillness drifts through the trees and
Blankets the land and thats when
I feel his presence.

And I surrender my breath's
To the beauty of this moment.

Seat 6

Their intestines fly up into their throats
Their cheeks are raised, their eyes are glazed,
Their scratching and tearing at their coats.
All white knuckled, sick, and gasping
With pupils like pin-heads, their asking.
Prayers float up, gaping bodies drop down
Through the clouds we shoot.
And their wings carry them both to heaven.

The screaming wind suffocates their sounds
But not enough. Not nearly enough
I can still hear the gurgled confessions of the man in seat 7
I, strapped loosley in seat 6
Never imagined the view out the window looking quite like this.

I turn to that sobbing man, stricken with fear
I grab his collar and press my lips to his ear,
"I promise I'll love you 'till the end is here."
So he clutches my face, and we marry our eyes,
And he pulls me close to him
Oh sweet demise!
I think to myself as I gaze in his wet blue reflections,
"This is the last i'll ever see of my imperfections..."

But a jolting jerk breaks our moment
Cold sharp metal slices open my head.
All I hear is that steady riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinggggggg
And my hairs are floating up now like childrens dreams.

Blood trickles like rivers and collects at my breast
The man in seat 7 grabs hold of me and mouths "CONFESS!"
I squeek and I sqwauk  but alas, I am drained of breath.
"Oh God, Oh God, make it stop. SHIT.SHIT. SHIT. Oh God, please no!"
Desperate are a sinners thoughts,
In the moments just before death.

Foundations

A few months ago I was informed by my mother of a mission trip that my family was planning to Tennessee, and a few months ago I was unaware of the wonders I have come to know so well since my arrival. This story, like any other is filled with a sense of inspiration and childlike happiness, a struggle and then an acceptance of the ending reward...but if you are reading my letters, know that this particular story is in fact not a story at all, and it is quite possibly the most moving. It is the real accountance of the two most beautiful and perhaps most important fibers in the human soul; meliority and christianity. Right now you may be asking 'what exactly is the meaning of meliority and where did it come from?' Meliority is stemmed from the Latin word [melior] which is understood in English as "better". Meliorism is the most unselfish belief that I have come across, aside from the belief in God, and what is more interesting is how I found it. It is "the belief that the world can be made better by human effort," and it is that fine doctrine that holds the utmost amount of faith in the human race, even when the world is cruel. The heart and soul of optimism and love are dependent upon it and faith in God, and these two notions are more real than the keys beneath my finger tips.
      Through the course of my 18 years on this earth, I have seen through the eyes of others what a wonderful place the world can be if God is only accepted into our hearts. I have watched on tv peoples lives succome to the great and almighty God just by the touch of their pastors hand on their persperating forehead. I have heard their stories, and watched their eyes drip like faucets onto empty floors because they have finally found whatever it is that makes them whole. Yet I never really understood. To me, these people weren't real, they were figments of some far away place that didn't exist outside my sphere of reality... maybe it was because I couldn't connect their new found wholeness to my broken pieces, my hollowed heart. I thought they were just pretending, and who knows maybe some were, but little did I know I would come to learn that it was I who had been pretending all along.
     We arrived in Tennessee on a Sunday and the humidity nearly knocked me off my feet a few steps outside the airport; I, living most of my life in west Texas was used to the dry, windy climate. Nonetheless, me, my family, and the rest of the Betenbough housing crew packed like sardines into a small white bus and drove to Williamsport, which is conveniently located about an hour outside of Nashville and headed to Narrow Gate Foundation. This particular stretch of land truly is a little piece of heaven carved into the foot hills of Tennessee; it is a glass of water in the dessert to which I can now happily say I have had the priviledge of drinking from. A few days after our arrival myself, my little brother and a few of the Narrow Gate members went on a hike to the 'High Point', a spectacle of a hill which overlooks the entire property just so I could really take in the beauty of the land, but as it turns out... as many things in life turn out... what I found was much more than just a beautiful view. I found on top of that hill, as so many young men at Narrow Gate do, a compassion and a respect for God like I have never known before. As Ken, Frank, Clayton, John Rae and myself shared our life stories, each more compelling than the last, a spark was lighted within me, and as seconds go by writing this letter, it grows bigger and brighter than the moment before. We were strangers walking up the hill, but I can say that without a doubt we were friends coming down. I have never in my life been so moved by the emotion's of others, but what I could see when I looked into their eyes, as if I peered through a window into thier souls, was love. A true, and pure, and personal, and passionate love for God. I left wishing that somehow I too could see this warm, radiating passion for the greater force in my own eyes. There was my first sip of living water, and to my surprise, I was thirstier than ever.
      Tuesday night, after the 'High Point' I lay in bed and continued to ask, when would I get what these four young men had? When would I get another taste of God? Then Wednesday came, and with it, a revelation.
      At around 11:00 p.m. I was walked into the countryside by a now good friend and vessel of the Lord named Adam, to which I am extremely thankful, and at 12:00 p.m. I came back alive. To be completely honest, it was like I was on drugs... you know, the kind that make you feel invincible and happy and energetic and free. And that is the best feeling in the world, the feeling of total and complete liberation, the knowing that the world is in reach, the beauty and awe that brings one to tears. It is wonderful, lasting and real. The best part is that it is real. A mere breeze had caressed my skin and I knew he was with me, and I think that he knew I wanted him to be. Under the stars and amidst the hundreds of fireflies, I felt the hand of God, and I am thinking now how badly, I cannot wait to touch it again.
     This trip was a mission, I was suppose to be just a helping hand that cleaned up some gardens and made the place a little prettier, yet I  leave living and renewed. I was suppose to change the "Narrow gators" lives, and now I am certain, that they have changed mine. I have watched through my own eyes how people like Bill and Stacy Spencer ( the founders of Narrow Gate) have made this world a better place to be in, how people like Ken, Frank, John Rae, Clayton, and Adam have been changed by faith and are reaching out to do the same for those around them. God has changed the outcome of so many lives through those people and words cannot begin to explain how grateful I, and so many others are, that they have chosen His path. In short, these people have made me realize that mankind is a wonderful, brilliant, and life changing species when coupled with God. At Narrow Gate, with the help of many, I started the life long journey of self discovery; I found that I am a meliorist, and a christian; I have faith in mankind and more importantly in God...and those two things are a wonderful foundation to any structure.

Bend in The Road

    A few days in and here I am again, sitting in front of the same computer, typing on the same keys, breathing the same air. But this time the words that appear on this otherwise empty space hold some light behind them. As if before they did not, as if before this letter they were hollow and dark and ending.
This is the end of that depressing, sad, life ending, soul dying world that I have walked around in for the past months; this is the bend in the road. Things do get better, we have to believe that when the world has turned its back on us and the colors fade to gray, things will get better. Life is merely a cycle. We are essentially surrounded by endless amounts of circles with time being the catalyst of it all. The cycle of life and death, of good and bad, of summer and winter, of love and hate. The patterns that are repeated in nature are the same as those repeated in our lives, our bodies, and everything in between. Circles.
    Life, in every sense of the word is just a cycle, and when we get through those moments of despair still alive and breathing, the reward is promising, beautiful and untouched.  The end of one chapter is only the beginning of the next because really, there is no end, because every end is a new beginning and the cycles go on forever.- ( read Self Reliance, Emerson) I am a believer in infinity and I am a believer in love, does this make me an idealist? Maybe. Does this mean ever-lasting love is fathomable? Maybe. But for the past few days my life really has been 'ideal' and for some reason I cannot and will not accept an end to this journey, so what can I do but believe in the moments that make it wonderful? Each day of happiness was worth a year of pain, and in this second I am lucky to have experienced them both, and wise enough to appreciate the events that led up to this profound joy.
    So this is the part where I tell you what exactly it is that has brought a smile to my face, what has changed everything so suddenly...well, it's simple. It's pure. And it's lasting... its love. And for the first time, its real.

A reason to believe

I have spent years going back and forth on the concept of religion.
With so many to choose from, how does one know for certain that their belief is truth?
There is a chance that we are all wrong, there is a chance that we simply turn to dust after our hearts have stopped beating; there is no after life; we are here and then one day we are not.
But what if there is? And how should we prepare for it?
These things I ponder in my sheets at night, when no one is around to listen to my thoughts... when I find myself alone inside my head.
A few days ago however I had a revelation, an epiphany some would call it.
This thought came into my mind at a time that I least expected it to; maybe it stemmed from desperation, or the cracks in my heart. Maybe it was God himself who sent it to me.
Either way, what I stumbled upon was something truly profound: a reason to believe.
Maybe I am not the first to find this out, but I found these reasonings myself, therefore I hold it sacred.

-
He rested his head on my lap as i ran my fingers through his hair. By now I have seen every freckel, every shadow of perfection and every wrinkle on his face.
We said nothing, but we were thinking the same thought. It hovered above us for hours that day, the simple understanding that what we had was gone, and that even together we were both alone.
We know the feeling of love, and what it was like to love one another so blindly... maybe that is why it was so hard to let go.
We were both afraid of falling, but there was nothing left to hold on too. With every hate filled word that exited our mouths and entered our souls we broke a little bit more inside, until one day, the peices were swept under the rug and made to collect follicles of dead skin and fibers in the air that no one really sees or cares about.
Yet it was in this defining moment, as i slid my fingers through his curls and felt the salty tears run down his face, that I found the evidence of Gods existance I had been searching so restlessly for.
Love.
The pure, wonderful and tangible notion of love, is enough for me to believe in a higher power.
Love is something metaphysical, something we cannot smell, or touch, or see. It is complex in every way, we do not choose who we "fall in love" with and who we do not.
But one day, when we least expect it, we meet a person that is different from every other person we have interacted with, and immense feelings overcome us, that we can not control, and can not explain, but we enjoy it nonetheless. Every single second of it.
Love is something mankind can not create, and certainly something no matter how hard we try, can not destroy.
It is not scientifically explainable, and holds no secret code we can write down and repeat, but we have all felt it at one point or another and know that it does in fact exist, with out a sliver of doubt we do believe in love.
Why do I hold this as proof that God exists?
Because I have to believe in something.
Because otherwise, everything I have done in this life, everything that you and I have worked for has been in vain.
I have to, in order to hold human life as sacred and important, believe that we were put on this earth for something else than to live and die.
Love my friends, is the proof that we are not alone.
Every good thing, every act of kindness, every shred of light in this dark world is all made possible because God has given us the single most wonderful thing in this entire world.
Love.
Though it strikes me as odd that I found this theory at a moment when love had collapsed in my life, when depression and heartbreak had overrun my thoughts and left me dead and alone, it helps to believe that maybe God knew I would find comfort in knowing he is with me.
That even through our darkest hours, we can find him.
We can know love.