I've been dancing with this corpse for nineteen years...

Who will rescue me from this body, not the arms, the fingers still? yes,
they feel what they touch as well,
cut the cords.
Let the ancient Adam go.
I've been dancing with this corpse for nineteen years...

Exactly one year ago, I put up a note on Facebook that read thus:

(When I found myself struggling to find where I go to write my own note on this quirky Social Facade network, I was quite pleased.)

Hark! I have news!

1. Due to an ever-eager cyst that had squarely placed its lodgings on the back of my neck, I now have an open hole...in the back...of my neck. Caked in unsightliness, no links to pictures here. Ask --> receive, once I can locate my camera, I guess.

2. In honor of Anathallo's wondermous "Don't Kid Yourself, You Need A Physician" : I aim, at this time, to shave my head. It's summer. It's time.

So here it is, a proposal:

Would someone like to shave my head? At least wield some vicious clippers and trim to their heart's content? I will even lay my beard (source of my power?) upon the table.

It's time to start anew, I think.

It was the middle of what a good friend had coined as "The Bastard Summer," and it was certainly that for me.  I was working in a job that I struggled to grow in, that thankfully lead to fair pay but conquered whatever energy I had for each day.  And so last summer, like the one before it, was lacking in growth and in change.  Somehow, though I distinctly knew that I was to make The Mercy House my home church, I never attended all summer.  It was one of the darker times of my recent past, and this little note on Facebook was a moment of realization and clarity in a time that I defaulted to what was wrong instead of what was right.

I shouted saying,
"Brothers, hold my fading arms in the air, I am weak!"
They just faded there...

That is not to say that the entire summer was a waste--but perhaps to suggest that, overall, neither in body nor in heart nor in spirit was I in any kind of healthy place.

these are the layers of bandages, protection from the sting.
In this great lacking,
I've found a way.

And so, shortly after that Facebook note was written, my hair was shaved, and I started to slowly detatch from my summer skin.  To err will yield consequence, however, and the great black summer left several stains and scars upon my soul.  It took a great white winter to change my way of thinking (also known as: repent), to learn how to wash away the sludge I myself had poured out upon my self.

 And when I said,
"Who will shave my head, and on the might, reveal me in my skin?"
All the secrets of fitness:
all the fitness He requires is to feel your need for Him.