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janganbiekun

@janganbiekun

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The Tapestry

I have dubbed myself a prophet of cycles in recent times because I have happened upon the comings and goings of fortune and misfortune, yin and yang; how misfortune brings fortune, and how fortune leads misfortune by hand like a child.

How can I not admire the dark in the times of my life? How they run from top to bottom, casting shadows — no, highlights — on the valleys and the journeys, making the light even more beautiful with the shining of its darkness.

It is because of this that I think of childbirth: how every beautiful achievement in my life was preceded by labour and contractions of pain; the murder of my peace for the birth of life.

I want you to know that for every time I have rejoiced, I have first laboured in mourning. And when I have mourned, laughter has followed at the rising of the sun.

This is how the dark in my life has added colour to me.

It has promised me the coming of light.

Art by Danny Booth @dannyboothartist by @janganbiekun

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2 months ago

I have enjoyed being alive you know.

This life, this mine, is mine, is mine.
The assembly of a bespoke bike - its incongruent combinations, generic appearance - so fascinating, so deeply personal.

You will find many just like it, but none, none exactly like it. Nearly everything in this place, I built with my own desires, mine own decisions, my own talent and mine own failings.

It is mine.

It is the gift of the universe to me, and I am enjoying this stuff. It hurts. It gets better. It gets worse than I imagined, but I am letting it all happen to me - the beauty and the terror.

This year I have been a prophet of cycles - of destruction and rebirth. Can you see it? The magic is in there.

Live. by @janganbiekun

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2 months ago

Do you ever have time
to think?
To think your own thoughts and not the noise from the fucking media, not what your mama said, not what your father said and definitely not that thing from the brilliant article in the sun.

Do you know how to have your own thoughts, how to interpose ideas with the turning of your mind and the leaning of your heart?

Do you take idea to heart, to know what you feel, to discover what you believe? by @janganbiekun

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3 months ago

I learnt I had taught my heart to sing of pain,
as though hurt were the only song worth singing. Is it not treachery to be silent against the chorus of life, to forget thanksgiving in the present?

What could be more beautiful than the gift all living strive to keep — life.

What could be more glorious than…now. by @janganbiekun

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4 months ago

These days, the knife of my suffering is dulled by the certainty of joy to come; my joy, she promises to come again.

I am the one between joy and sorrow - the lover of moon and sun, each knocking in succession.

Sunshine may hide behind clouds today and tonight offer only a thin slice of the moon. I will take the joy the day offers and what sorrow comes with night will find me grieving anxiously for the joy to come.

Nothing has stayed that I have held on to.

The path is the in between and glory is the journey there. by @janganbiekun

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5 months ago

The test of staying still comes when winds rend mountains, during earthquakes and fires - when cataclysms upend all sensibility. The test comes when clarity is dulled by destruction, when destruction enthrones the murderous taste of fear at the top of the oesophagus.

The hardest thing to do in the face of calamity is to be still.

Who has the temerity to stay still when home is ash, dreams are smoke, pain takes breath and the eyes are flooded with grief?

But to hear the still small voice of wisdom, you must speak the language of stillness; you must steady your heart in your cave or drown in the noise of the world.

God is not in the noise.

Did you still your heart before proclaiming that heaven is silent?

1 Kings 19:11-13 by @janganbiekun

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6 months ago

I imagine resilience is the quality of persistent resistance.

Resistance to force, pressure, indictment, judgment, pain, tiredness. Resistance to everything.

I have lived resilience and it has never left me. Resilience has taught me to bear my weights: iron, guilt, polyurethane, pain, rubber, and the suffering of others. I have resisted internal indictment, external evaluation – fair or unfair.

But like the cycle of insight to knowledge, knowledge to understanding and understanding to wisdom, what have I done with the insight of resilience? I have merely hurt and been hurt, caused and borne needless pain. I have wondered if resilience became an addiction of testing just how much I can take, how much more I edge breaking without giving up. I have always loved the story of the phoenix rising from the ashes, the power of breaking and rebuilding muscle. I have always loved to rise again.

What is understanding to the insight of resilience? Is it strategy? Understanding how much strength is given to each endeavour, how much pain is enough coin to share for each desire, where to stop when the scales tip in favour of pain, where to pause when the scales rise against gain.

I wonder if wisdom is understanding where resilience needs to rest. by @janganbiekun

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7 months ago

If to love, or to be loved, was the question
a wise fool may say, “to love”
and another may say “to be loved”
But one needs to be told stories of the repulsive hands of those that love you that you do not care for - how their grasping fingers reach out for you in the desperate dark, searching for something back, a fragment, an idea, anything to say there’s something there.
What’s worse than the anger and frustration when you scramble for something and come up with nothing like the pupil who’s checked his carry-on five times over for their home work. It’s not there.

Tell the other of the futility of pouring your soul into a basket that asks for more and gives little back. How can your love be accepted where you’re not loved? Where your acts of love are acts of violence because every entreaty of care is a threat asking for what does not exist - requited love.

Tell both of them that they come up empty. And when they finish their fools’ adventure, tell them to go home - where they love, where they are loved, where peace holds their hand.

Outside home is hell. by @janganbiekun

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8 months ago

30 years strong and beautiful.
25 years aware, yet sometimes, I am tabula rasa - I remember nothing.

Sometimes, my thoughts are too loud, too hard, too much. I want to think nothing. So I hide.

Sometimes I am brave enough and I stare down my thoughts as I find my place as a man, lover, son, brother, friend, lawyer, poet, blessing and child of God.

It is no small task to find yourself. It is even harder to find yourself less than perfect for the roles you need to play. I can tell you how hard it is to come home to your own selfishness, your own hypocrisy. I can tell you how hard it is to find the maturity, the shamelessness, to sit with your imperfections, to accept them and yourself, to take it upon yourself to heal your land.

Surprisingly, my biggest find of the decade is my imperfection. Surprising, because I cannot now imagine how I dared imagine myself; emotional, reactive, reclusive, suspicious, hypocritical, avoidant…perfect?

It has been 30 years since I drew breath in my lungs and here I find myself grateful, for breath, for lovers, for friends, for family, for faults, for failures, and for my imperfection. They all mean I’m alive and there’s work to do. They all mean I still get to grow in wisdom, stature, and in favor before God and man.

I suspect the best and the worst are yet to come. I say, bring them all on.

Get me lit! by @janganbiekun

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2 years ago

do you know what it is? to be thirsty? your tongue sticking to your dry palate, pushing down swallows of dusty air? do you know what it is, to be parched? parched for parchment to spill your sorrows, to reach down into your belly and bring back song to wet the arid pathways of your throat? to will your being to sing, and for all your desire, what escapes your lips, is empty air?

and you breathe in again, acknowledging defeat, that the universe has decided against the play of your song. and you wonder, did I do enough or was I cavalier in the way i gave myself to the universe, in the way i showed it itself in me? did i do enough?

do you know what it is to lose your song?

#iphonography by @janganbiekun

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2 years ago

They said the Lord said in an embrace: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.”

I have waited and delayed and the wind and the earthquake and the fire have torn through me, they have shattered me but I am still waiting for the still small voice.

I am afraid that heaven is silent and it has been for so long and I am afraid I will not recognize the voice of my shepherd when he tells me where to go.

Day and night, I wait at the edge of my broken breath, waiting to hear what he will say to me, how he will repair me, that I may write the vision plain on tablets and I will run when I read it and I know it is slow in coming but I will wait because he said it will surely come, it will not delay.

I believe him.

#Embrace #35mm by @janganbiekun

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3 years ago

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” - Jeremiah 17:8.

Your word is the truth of life and your voice is the fulfillment of it.

How could I, I who survives on the strength of your word, who thrives on the green of it, remove myself from your law?

Here, where my feet grow like cedars of Lebanon. Here, in your faithfulness, where your word is truth, where your love is life?

How could I seek to depart from the tabernacle that is my refuge and my fortress, my present help in trouble?

Yes, blessed is the man who delights in the Law of the Lord, who meditates on His law day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding its fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither, and who prospers in all he does.

#Nirvana by @janganbiekun

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3 years ago