IN ANOTHER LAND: LINEAR NOTES

today there was no bomb scare - just the reality that something exploded long before we knew it and now we are living in the fallout. all of us, crippled and mutated from the radiation of that moment in the garden but from the outward appearance we look normal at least to each other. the earth is a dying planet man a dying race. there are strange things moving in the sky at night. some people hope that it is help from other planets but i fear that it's evil let loose, vaporizing and streaking across the universe.

i have been having dreams at night. i dreamed i was driving down the boulevard my car putting out a black cloud which covered the sky behind me and turned the moon to blood. i saw a young boy hitch-hiking, pulled over and let him in. don't you know it's dangerous to trust strangers i asked. he just smiled and said

"the garden the planet the land of the son past present and future the triolgy's done each life has three parts till three become one eternity stretches for aeons to come"

and then he disappeared. i looked all around but couldn't find him. then a great bright light was everywhere and i couldn't see at all but i heard weeping and laughter, weeping and laughter. then i woke up. i don't know what it means but I'm sure ut means something.

turner cane over from england to see me and we were stopped at a red light. this lady ran into the back of us and smashed into a third car and then drove off. hit and run. now they say i'll be responsible because i was last in line. tag, i'm it. that's life under the law. my back and neck still hurt a bit but it looks like i'll be all right. turner is o.k. too.

(Pause)


funny sad place we've turned this world into. the courts free killers on technicalities to rape and kill again. people are starving to death yet we burn and bury food or sell it to foreign enemies because the economy would fluctuate if we fed our own poor. we worry about saving porpoises and whales but don't think about the abortions going on in every major city around us. we argue about pornography and its effects on society and then let people watch television which is probably the second most corrosive wedge to befall families besides incest. or parental alcoholism. or regilion without love. and not in that order. go ahead and laugh. if you're not a liberal by the time your're twenty - you haven't got a heart and if you're not a conservative by the time you're forty - you haven't got a brain. am i ahead of my time, over my head, out of my depth, or just out of my mind? caveat emptor?

preachers are allowed to say all kind of wild things on television which you can hardly find in the Bible and on and on they talk about money and how we need to give to the poor and how if we will first send the money to them, they will locate the poor in question and fairly distribute the money for us but in the meantime to give generously because they need a few extra million for a gospel satellite so they can broadcast their sermons to other countries which don't speak english and into houses which don't have television sets. some people i meet are ashamed to be americans because of vietnam and nixon and that grassy knoll in dallas when they ought to be ashamed that we spend billions of dollars on the space program and completely overlook hungry school children and people sleeping on streets who need food, clothing, medicine, and large amounts of love. is this up to the government or is this up to the church? what church?

we've got a fat nation of people with nice clothes and tidy souls who wouldn't know quite what to say if such an unemployed, unwashed street-person wandered into God's house and asked for some help and some food. these nice people in polyester don't talk much about God except to each other and seem kind of embarrassed to believe more publicly in Christ and so they keep it a secret, when it seems like everybody else is proud of what they are. homosexuals talk openly about their beliefs, urban dissidents and intellectual terrorists speak loudy about their convictions at every college campus, beer bash, or dinner party, and women with short hair talk in sisterly anger, now that children with long hair have failed to establish brotherly love. only a few generations ago women started dressing openly like men and now it seems like men are starting to dress like women; with bronze blush, an earring, shoes with tall heels, and children are starting to dress like adults. whatever happened to innonence and time? time for childhood. time for love. time for sex. maybe we're running out of time. now earthquakes and new disease quicken hearts full of fear in diverse places. students talk of world unity. some say bring the wall down. i say bring all walls down. not just the ones built by totalitarian governments, but more importantly, the walls between us; in the churches, in the home, and in the streets.

politicians talk of ideologies and take it to the bank. i say there is no us against them, just a brotherhood divided by untruths. stop talking about communism/socialism versus democracy/capitalism. there is only one enemy. he rules from an invisible principality and only the light can displace his darkness. alas, armageddon doth approach. ineluctably, one world rises and oil is the coin of the realm. babylon is here with attendant sex, drugs and illusion to blind the body, soul and spirit; pornucopia-pharmekia the disease and religion of our age. the world seems to be crumbling, and choking, and yet people are eating and drinking and living unnaturally as though there is no right and wrong - and as though their lives will never end.

(End of Pause)


some people say there is no God; others say that we are all god. sometimes i look out over the city late at night and all the lights look like diamonds and rubies on a black jewellers cloth set in straight little rows and sprinkled on the hillsides - and i wonder how we have fallen so far. and then i look up at the sky with its far superior jewels. i look up and i find myself smiling. and waiting.

With love to Paul, Peter, John, Matthew, J. the B., David, Solomon, and Isaiah. Also to Marty "A Mighty Fortress" Luther; Johnny "Amazing Grace" Newton, abuser and emancipator of slaves; and Billy Booth who got down to basics at street level and stood on the Solid Rock without apology or vinyl.


Also to the boys in the band: G.K. Chesterson, C.S. Lewis, Malcom Muggerige, Francis Schaeffer, George Patterson, and Steve Turner.

Love also to Gene, Geoff, Albert, Denny, Captain Mikey, and to L.A. Robb, Pomeroy, Bova, JaCa and especially to Charles, Kristy, Nancy, Marge and Joe. Neither forgetting Tiffany, Bohnsack, and Belaer nor Arnold and Woodhouse, Richard Blaine, Sigrid Jane, and David Pain, and above all and forever YHWH.

With Special love for Randy Stonehill and Keith Green, Malcolm and Alwyn, Sue Perlman, Scott Ross, Larry Black, Clapton, Watts, McCartney, Robert Zimmerman. And to Cliff Richard, Hope Valentine, Eve and Dawn, Heartbreak, and Pain, and to a girl more precious than jewels if she so chooses to become, and to Fehrion, wherever you are.

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