The Shore

The surge hits the beach and erases
All the footprints, castles, and faces
Made there despite the nature
Of nothing to last forever

We save what we can by leaving
And tell ourselves, still deceiving
These memories will simply last and last
But the past slips away into the further past

Saltwater, seaweed, and sand
Cast adrift at the touch of your hand
When nothing remains as it did before
Look for me on a different shore

Actions/Consequences

consequences mentioned
but always unexpected
it seems
you can follow your heart
and your dreams
to stupid and dangerous places
never erasing the sycophantic smiles
on the faces of those deemed closest
just when you think
you're lowest
they leave you
what purpose did you serve but laughs
what have you to learn
everything. you have have everything to learn
you speak with all the knowledge
of a caged bird
there is a world all around you
a sky above you
Only God can judge you?
He will. 
that should scare you
your carelessness can kill you 

The Break

the break is building
the fault underlying the basis
we pretend with faces to the air
we can't feel the ground shaking
we just fake it
the break is building
we will all be broken
our actions insufficient
as only words are spoken

The Value In Life

This post starts in my Philosophical Ethics class, where myself and four other people were attempting to come up with a non-religious argument against suicide in all instances.

I could not think of one argument that would apply to all cases.

We were presented with the story of an elderly couple who had severe health problems and mutually decided to end their lives. This started me thinking.....at what point does life cease to have value?

Where does one find their value in life, anyway? The truth is, it is found in different places for different people. Even during the course of one lifetime, a person might find their value in different things. It might be that they value themselves as a friend, a mother, a lover, a sibling, etc..

All of these things might even occur simultaneously. Parting of finding balance in life is learning how to find value in its different aspects.

I think that this is one reason that persons who get out of the military sometimes struggle. Here is a large part of your life, one in which your value is largely defined. Losing that part of your life means losing that value.

Value must be something that we feel at the present. When people lose their sense of value, their sense of self suffers. Most of the time this is an unconscious thought. We do not often think of our value to others during our daily life.

It is also difficult to think of the idea of value when one does not feel appreciated. A mother has unmeasurable value to her children, but when they are young they cannot express this. Her value as a mother is reflected in how she is supported by those around her, especially by a co-parent or her own family.

I will touch on this lightly, as I am saving this for another post, but this idea has repercussions for Christian life. Him who we are supposed to be emulating found value as a servant. He literally humbled Himself unto death.

Think of this; if Jesus was born sinless, He had no death to fear. "For the wages of sin is death." Had He not humbled Himself, he could have lived forever as a king on earth. There are an untold number of applications for this humility that are being ignored by American Christianity.

So what is the conclusion? That no matter the circumstance of your life, your age, gender, social, economic, or health status, your life has value. That value does not lie in what you can get out of life or how well you can live your life, but in what you have to offer to those around you. Maybe this means suffering indignities, but there it is.

Your life has value. Embrace it.