i am full of stoke right now

So that's how it goes, i haven't been up to doin' this in a while. let me do this in two parts. i have a friend, let's say he's my brother, he's got two sides, virtue and vice. this one is gonna be virtue. the one later today is going to be vice. and what i mean by that is this: the shit has really hit the fan but you can't cover your mind and eyes in shit, if you do you will invarriably think like crap, you will see like crap, and you will live like crap. so for this one, this post, it is the sunlight.

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i get a call from my friend G. a few days ago and a few words he said have hung around my neck like thick incense. "i am full of stoke." i love it. i haven't heard words like this for years. you gotta remember we are broken men and women living in broken times. we rarely see miracles and when we do they are small and we are far away in the back of the crowd. But this time, these past few weeks my friend G. seems to have made his way closer to the front lines. it took giving up everything he's got but he made it up there to the front. and it just so happens that the miracle the One was doing on this particular day was making fire. and a tiny coal from that holy fire fell into my friends heart.

it has been sometime since one of my circle has even warmed themselves. we are either off on flameless treks or praying for fire, our wishlist words bouncing off the cealing. what my little crew knows intimately is the One gives when It is ready - and It is right. we may starve ourselves but that doesn't necessarily mean we will be fed. even when you are doin' right it doesn't really mean a damn thing, you gotta be there, up near the front, when the One is makin' fire. and this time G. was.

so i get a phone call, i don't answer for some painful reason, i get a messge. i listen to said message and all i can hear is a ramble of fire soaked words. there isn't meaning in most of it, G. might have actually been speaking in tongues, i truly don't remember. what i do recall is that through all this lava laced gibericious was the interpretation i received - the only words i heard wear "I am full of stoke." Never, Never, have i felt fire from heaven through a voicemail. but i knew at that point inside G.'s heart was the fire of the One.

now i know i am a bastard, but before a bastard i am a mate and mates don't get jealous over what gifts are given to their mates. i couldn't have been more blessed by any other words at that moment. "I am full of stoke" you could smell the rich, pungent, beautiful, smell comin' off G. - and that through the phone! i know if i was there with him i would have been struck stupid by the glory of the heavenly garland about him.

so why the hell is this so important? well first it is important for G. i know his heart, at least as well as a brother can, and i know it has been winter there for a long time, a little coal, a little fire goes a helluva long way for him. secondly, i got to be near it, now i won't say get because sharing isn't requried - now i know he's a sharing sort because that's how mates are - but there can not be force. you force thigns like this and the fire can die. it's about doing what's right, and through this ease i got at least a little warmer. and a little warmer for me is like the lion and the lamb.

so here's to being full of stoke. here's to mirth! here's to kings being born in mangers, here's to gifts of gold, incense and mirh, here's to a miracle of fire which comes by way a miracle of blood, for all not some.