The church building was not old enough to be on the historic registry, but old enough that two or three generations had passed through its pews. It had seen better days but was by no means falling apart. The sanctuary was always well-kept and efficiently cleaned by the church secretary at least once a week, and the classrooms—though sparsely furnished—were miraculously well-ordered for being inhabited by children under ten for at least two hours every Sunday. Even the “youth room” for adolescents with its outdated video game consoles and heaps of board games with missing pieces had a certain homey cleanliness.               Every Sunday, without fail, the pastor would come in after the choir sang exactly two hymns and the church bulletin was read verbatim. He would open his Bible to a passage from the New Testament and read through his outline, always ending with an inspirational quote, a poem, or an illustrative anecdote. There would be a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, the choir

For all your life you have been told You can never pay for what you owe So you struggle and strive, work yourself to the bone Trying to pay back a debt not your own For Love does not ask for remuneration And Yahweh never wanted any kind of payment For the fullness of Love that He’s given to you, And He never claimed you owed Him any fruit He said you would show yourself for who you are By bearing the fruit that abides in your Heart, But He never asked you to prove your own worth And He never said you were under a curse ‘Twas religion who taught you and told you these lies That you had to make up for your previous life And prove that you had any reason for being By building up monuments to your new King Go and save all the nations! religion did cry, By putting them in bondage, adding to our lie, Like the Pharisees seeking out one proselyte And making him two times the son of the night Build up the Kingdom! religion commanded Using yo

Tonight,                                                                                                              I had someone ask me if the pain were any less Now that it’s been six months since the loss, The biggest transition so far of my life, And I realized for the first time That this pain will always be this deep part of me, It will never be any shallower— Though perhaps it may seem so as I grow bigger— It will always be there It is a pain inherent with growth and motion and changing, Not one based on misunderstandings that can be cleared up with a little communication, Not one based on certain actions that will resolve once these actions are changed, And yet, somehow it is also lessened now, Not in depth and intensity, But in the number of days it centers my life, In the frequency of agonies, In the comparable size of itself to my whole being, For this pain is just a small part of me, A sign of my own maturity And my ability to o

Once upon a time, once and for all, and before time itself was The Great Puzzle Maker, His fame renowned throughout the worlds by His ability to create puzzling mysteries able to hide the greatest treasures ever known in plain sight. The mystique of His trade buried deep in the complexities of design yet beautifully simple in execution and form hidden from all except those with the singularity of eyes. It was the Great Puzzle Maker’s greatest desire to build the most intricate of all puzzles, one that would defy all explanation--a puzzle that was deeply intricate, uniquely inseparable, and inescapably dependent upon not only the fullness of the design, but also each individual piece. Ego, the Great Puzzle Maker, wished that each piece have a choice. In doing so, He could create the opportunity for each piece to share the treasure inside and discover the boundless treasures of the other pieces and of the puzzle and also use the treasure for themselves. Ego’s intention was for each piec