Candle Against the Wind

The name of this blog is called "Offscreen Space", which suggests an arm's length (at least, maybe even longer than that) in my literary endeavor and my true personhood. When the space is not within the screen, the onlooker is encouraged and sometimes forced to seek beyond and beneath the facets and discover what might not be readily apparent even after a diligent reading between the lines. I'd like to see an artist as a magician, but sometimes his act could bring about a pathological obsession.

Hiding in the "Offscreen Space", a magician never gets personal. But as demonstrated in my last post, sometimes I must be drunk on my own pride and my own words to commit some idiotic language overkills. So I am going to get personal again today and say that I am very sorry about what I said yesterday. Now I am not going to remove the post, so that you can savor its full bloody glory and see how goodness might be spoiled when Satan gets the better hold of a person.

Tonight my brother talked to me about politics, but I know his purpose was not really politics but to reach out to me. He did it out of love and I could feel it. And I looked at my kids and their cousins, everyone so happy and perfect in their own ways, so God-like, that I was reminded how God first conceived me and the way things should be. It is true that if there is no love, then there is no peace, and without peace, life is unlivable. If my passion is to contribute to a livable world for the generations to come, then I must not do things that undermine the integrity of a noble purpose. It is a lesson in the lost and found of love. My hero Wendell Berry must be having the same feeling when he wrote this poem of prayer "Candle Against the Wind":

I know that I have life
only insofar as I have love.

I have no love
except it come from Thee.

Help me, please, to carry
this candle against the wind.