Stop the Music

* Jesus pray for me
* Saint Paul, pray for me
This is Saint Paul's #tbt

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief – 1 Timothy 1:15

[Dedicated to the Tony who I was, and the Tony I am now. To everyone out there now, this is dedicated to all you will become, leaving all that you were behind on the road to Damascus of your Becomings]

+-----Stop The Music (Of This World); Paul's Words to Timothy When Reflecting Upon The Arc Of His Life 

These are the words of one
who once delighted in righteousness
defiled, in the sound and rhythm
of sharp rocks pelting human skin,
and derived sheer delight in theaters
of mourning, modern Iliads
and Odysseys
played out in Jerusalem,
families of the slain as dramatic
actors in the Colosseum of his heart
filled with
delirious crowds blind with madness
and bleeding, false imprisonment:
I used to shine shackles
on the wrists of the screaming
Christians I hauled off,
just to see my reflection in them,
smiling.
I wrenched children by the hair from
maudlin mothers shoved face first
in dirt, forcefully dug my foot
in lower backs of their fathers,
the tip of my blade violently
lodged into napes if met
with resistance. I argued, then,
in synagogues
against my own salvation, proffering
evidence to disprove my Creator’s
existence, the mere belief in Him
was a crime punishable by death
I rigidly enforced to exuberant
applause, the rapt attention
I had when scoffing at the notion
of a Divine Son was conducive
to my inflated ego
(though it forever etched in my
heart different names of innocent,
echoes of the damned haunt
my dreams still). I was the pot raging
at its maker, oblivious to the Hammer,
and the Hands that lovingly spared it
from its deserved destruction.
But now I look back on all of this
with disdain. Piles of robes of
sycophants at my feet, I see clearly
now, from a sober angle,
how disgusting the naked human body
appears when in wicked revelry.
We all were an orgy of demons
frolicking before fires of Wrath,
then,
dancing to a beat of callousness
only lost souls know how to respond to.
I can see Stephen’s listless swollen eyes
of the past staring at me belly up,
clothes tattered, fully vulnerable,
submerged almost,
in pools of his own blood, the indelible
image of David’s stone in his temple,
he whispers to me before dying:
“Saul, stop the music.”



------- Acts 7:52-60; Acts 8:1-3
Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it. When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth. But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet, whose name was Saul. And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles. And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him. As for Saul, he made havock of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison.