The Gospel According to Charles Bukowski.

I've often wondered at something.

We are meant to follow Christ, but so often the scripture quoted to us is from Paul. And so much of the bible is words taken from other men to delineate to us what Christ meant. Not something that I have a problem with. How else are we supposed to unpack the words of Jesus if not through writing, reading and discussion?

But why is the conversation closed?

Why is the bible the only "God Breathed" word around.

If a former murderer of Christians help us understand the Gospel, why can't they all? Why can't the drunk, and the fiction author, and the rapper, and the poet? I feel like the Word is still around, and still speaking through whomever it pleases.

I got off the elevator and the sun hit me just right, and I felt hope and love, knowing that sometimes you read the truth from the most humble of places, and that God uses us all for his will. No matter what we think of Him. Because no matter what we think of Him, He sees His son, and try as we might, we are still all created with a little bit of Him inside of us. A bit of Him that sees the world for what it is and still wants to make it a better place.

"and after we burn the nation, we replace it with what?"

"would you say that the American Revolution failed, that the French Revolution failed, that the Russian Revolution failed?"

"not entirely. but they sure fell short."

"it was a try."

"how many men must we kill to move forward one inch?"

"how many men are killed by not moving at all?"

"sometimes I feel like I'm talking with Plato."

"you are: Plato with a Jewish beard."

it gets quiet then and the problem hangs between us. meanwhile, the skidrows are filled with the disenchanted and the discarded; the poor die in charity wards among a shortage of doctors; the jails are so filled with the disordered and the lost that there are not enough bunks and the prisoners must sleep on the floors. to get on relief is an act of mercy that may not last and the madhouses are stuffed wall to wall because of a society that uses people like chess pawns...

it's damned pleasant to be an intellectual or a writer and to observe the niceties as long as your OWN ass is not in the wringer. that's ONE thing that's wrong with intellectuals and writers - they don't feel a hell of a lot except their own comfort and their own pain. which is normal but shitty.

-Charles Bukowski