History speaks through ruin, scar, and flame

We are made of grief, yet still we rise from pain.
The chain may bruise the wrist, but not the brain.
A song was born where labor wore the skin.
Still, in the dark, the pulse would not give in.
The soul was pressed by boots and smoke and fear.
Yet faint brave notes were taught to travel clear.
From camp-lit ashes came a witness, bare.
To say: we suffered, but we were still there.
The mind may bend when power steals the day.
But something deep still keeps a narrow way.
A child may kneel in dust and learn the rule.
Yet hope can bloom where misery plays the fool.
Thoreau once saw a life too fast, too thin.
And asked what living means beneath the din.
He called us back to truth, to less, to see.
That what we are lives best in honesty.
So history speaks through ruin, scar, and flame.
And names the wound, yet does not praise the shame.
The blues remember hands that had to bare.
The heart made music from the load of care.
And silence too can testify and say.
A human being still will seek a way.
Not every cage can finish what it starts.
Some light remains unbroken in our hearts.
We learn the world can wound beyond repair.
Yet still we meet each dawn with breath and prayer.
The final truth is hard, but plain to hold.
We are not made of ash; we are made bold.
Humanity endures where sorrow fell.
And turns its wounds into a living tell.

DCG

Screenshot

“Happiness only real when shared“

“Happiness only real when shared” — Christopher McCandless Bus 142 


We talk ourselves into a corner


When all we are trying to do


Is to escape the fear we project


Onto the only world we knew


You would rather trade connection


Remain alone in an empty room


The fear of abandonment, vulnerability, and intimacy


You avoid the scars on the face in the mirror, an undiscovered gloom


The loneliness you feel


A self imposed trap


You never see the dream for what it is


For you, it’s only just a nap


The irony of the nightmare


It is not just a dream


The way you’ve lived your life


Won’t help you if you never come clean


You built a shield no one can see


A quiet, practiced vacancy


You call it peace, this careful space


But grief still lingers in its place


You learned to need a little less


To dodge the weight of tenderness


Each time a hand reached out to stay


You trained your heart to turn away


Not out of hate, not out of pride


But something deep inside


A child who learned that love could leave


Now fears what they still dare believe


John Bowlby saw what we deny


The hidden truths we bury deeply inside


Attachment bends beneath the strain


Of silent loss and unnamed pain


You move through life composed, contained


Yet feel so subtly unclaimed


And though you long to just belong


You’ve taught yourself that that is wrong


But walls don’t heal what they protect


They only help us disconnect


And in the end, what hurts the most


Is needing love, but fearing it close

RSP

DCG

Screenshot

If you never healed from what hurt you 

If you never heal from what hurt you

You’ll bleed on people that never cut you

If you never healed from what hurt you
You’ll bleed on people that never cut you
We carry storms in chambers of the chest
And call it strength to never take a rest
The mind builds monuments to silent pain
While teaching lips to say we are okay again
A child once learned that love could disappear
So now the grown-up heart negotiates with fear
We sharpen grief into a guarded tongue
And wound the ones who never did us wrong
The past is not a place that stays behind
It leaks through cracks in memory and mind
Each scar a thesis written in the skin
Defending why we let no one come in
But pain unattended does not fade away
It reorganizes how we think and stay
We measure kindness with a cautious eye
Expecting every promise is a lie
Yet still the soul remembers softer things
A quiet hope that healing someday brings
The truth is not that broken people fall
It’s how they rise still carrying it all
And sometimes drop the weight on those nearby
Not out of malice—but they don’t know why
We are not villains in the lives we shake
Just humans shaped by every fracture we make
But knowledge asks a duty to begin
To face the dark we’ve buried deep within
Because awareness is the first repair
A choice to tend the wounds we used to wear
Not every hurt deserves to be passed down
Not every silence needs to be a crown
We can unlearn the language born of pain
And teach the heart to trust itself again
To pause before the anger takes its turn
And ask what deeper truth is left to burn
Healing is not forgetting what was done
But choosing not to harm another one
So when we stand at edges of our past
We learn which parts of us are built to last
And in that moment—quiet, fierce, and true
We stop the bleeding others never knew

RSP

DCG

Screenshot

The DCG dispatch

open.substack.com/pub/dcgunnersen/p/the-dcg-dispatch

An epistolary collection of an anxious attacher as of June 1, 2026 

Complete List of RSP/DCG Signed Posts

  1. A Leap of Faith
    • Published: October 25, 2017
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2017/10/25/a-leap-of-faith/
    • Summary: A poem about the complex legacy parents leave their children — particularly the emotional wounds children carry when parents fail to show love. It speaks to the need for recognition, healing, and passing on a legacy of love rather than pain.

• Closing Signoff:  DCG 

  1. My Morning Prayer
    • Published: January 30, 2018
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2018/01/30/my-morning-prayer/
    • Summary: A romantic and spiritual poem about longing for connection with someone whose presence feels like medicine — a healing angel. The author reflects on loneliness and the desire to share time with this person as a kind of morning prayer.

• Closing Signoff:  DCG 

  1. No Matter How you Define Austere
    • Published: October 16, 2018
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2018/10/16/no-matter-how-you-define-austere/
    • Summary: A reflective poem about working 35 years for an employer, navigating workplace politics and corruption, and persevering through trials with faith. It speaks to endurance and wisdom drawn from hardship.

• Closing Signoff:  DCG

The first Poem
It’s a deeply personal piece written in short, free-verse stanzas — structured as a journey from wounded childhood to adult reckoning and, ultimately, a choice toward love.
What It Means
The poem traces a psychological arc rooted in childhood emotional neglect. It opens with children questioning their own worthiness of love — a feeling shaped by their parents’ inability to bridge the emotional gap. This maps closely to ambivalent/anxious attachment theory, a theme consistent with much of my blog’s work.
The middle section is viscerally interior — a child lying awake at night, frightened, numbing out, finding small comfort in the hum of a fan. There’s no rescuer, no safe adult. The child fights alone in the dark.
The turn comes in the final stanzas: that same child, now an adult, faces life with hard-won but still fragile awareness. The “leap of faith” is the central act — choosing to believe in love and goodness despite a history of diminishing returns. It’s not naive optimism; it’s a conscious, courageous decision to love those around me anyway, as the greatest gift I can give.
Core Themes
• Childhood emotional wounding and the intergenerational cycle of unmet needs
• Ambivalent attachment — the numbing, the fear, the aloneness
• Redemption through love — not as something received, but as something chosen and given
• The existential act of faith as resistance against a painful past
It’s one of my earlier pieces, and it reads like a foundational statement of the philosophy that runs through my broader body of work.

  1. You always bring out in me
    • Published: July 17, 2023
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2023/07/17/you-always-bring-out-in-me/
    • Summary: A poem written to RSP about a brief interaction — she came in, said hi, and bought lunch — that sparked deep appreciation. The author reflects on how positivity and genuine connection lift the spirit and bring out the best in him.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. If you leave your heart open
    • Published: August 9, 2023
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2023/08/09/if-you-leave-your-heart-open/
    • Summary: A poem about the possibility of love when one remains emotionally open. The author reflects on respecting those who choose solitude while expressing his belief that shared life is more fulfilling, and extends that sentiment toward RSP.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. As this is what I want to share
    • Published: November 5, 2024
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2024/11/05/as-this-is-what-i-want-to-share/
    • Summary: A poem expressing the author’s desire to get to know RSP better, not to change her life but simply to share in it. He acknowledges a mysterious, natural connection and hopes they can spend time together.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. The unexpected delight of what you perceive
    • Published: November 13, 2024
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2024/11/13/the-unexpected-delight-of-what-you-perceive/
    • Summary: A poem comparing the feeling of new love to the anticipation of Christmas morning — the warmth, the joy, the gift of perception and hope. It reflects on the thrill of beginning a new chapter while forgiving the past.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. We accept the love we think we deserve
    • Published: November 15, 2024
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2024/11/15/we-accept-the-love-we-think-we-deserve/
    • Summary: A poem about self-sabotage in love — how people close doors to opportunity because they don’t believe they deserve better. The author encourages RSP (and himself) to wrestle with the subconscious and open up to what friendship and love can offer.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. I don’t know what the future holds
    • Published: November 16, 2024
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2024/11/16/i-dont-know-what-the-furure-holds/
    • Summary: A prayer-poem in which the author surrenders the future to God while expressing hope that the people he cares about (including RSP) are part of God’s plan. He expresses stubborn hope and believes that “kindred spirits” may come to a shared understanding.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. There is a battle going on inside us
    • Published: December 1, 2024
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2024/12/01/there-is-a-battle-going-on-inside-us/
    • Summary: A poem where DCG describes noticing RSP’s happy smile while sensing her hidden vulnerabilities. He speaks to the internal battle between opening up and self-protection, and invites her to allow him to share what he sees in her.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. The secret of my affection
    • Published: December 5, 2024
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2024/12/05/the-secret-of-my-affection/
    • Summary: A poem about attraction without agenda — the author’s affection for RSP is described as pure, without manipulation or expectation. He simply wants to communicate how he feels and leave the choice to her.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. This emotional embargo
    • Published: December 8, 2024
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2024/12/08/this-emotional-embargo/
    • Summary: A poem about the emotional cage people build around themselves to avoid vulnerability — described as an “emotional embargo.” The author encourages mustering courage to break the cycle of avoidance, noting that the imagined danger is often not as bad as feared.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. When your love becomes a gift
    • Published: December 14, 2024
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2024/12/14/when-your-love-becomes-a-gift/
    • Summary: A poem reflecting on the dual nature of love — how it can heal and hurt. The author tells RSP that when genuine love is offered, it becomes a gift even to broken hearts, though it may send a guarded heart adrift if not received.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. If you see what I can see
    • Published: December 25, 2024
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2024/12/25/if-you-see-what-i-can-see/
    • Summary: A Christmas poem to RSP about love — patient, kind, forgiving, and blind. The author wants to understand her sorrow and silences, compares her smile to Cupid’s arrow, and says he wouldn’t be blamed for trying, even if it’s not meant to be.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. If you wear your heart on your sleeve
    • Published: January 29, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/01/29/if-you-wear-your-heart-on-your-sleeve/
    • Summary: A poem about the vulnerability of wearing one’s heart openly — the risk of pain, the temptation to build walls, but ultimately the author’s conviction that it’s better to live genuinely and be brave than to hide in emotional safety.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. I’ll prove every day that you can trust me
    • Published: March 2, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/03/02/ill-prove-every-day-that-you-can-trust-me/
    • Summary: A poem of commitment and attraction — the author tells RSP he is drawn to her electric presence and promises daily effort to earn her trust, ending with the confession that he genuinely cares and is sending these messages because of that care.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. It takes two to tango
    • Published: March 3, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/03/03/it-takes-two-to-tango/
    • Summary: A poem about the playful, flirtatious side of romantic pursuit — the author admits he’s a hopeless romantic who chases what he wants with laughter. He reflects on the dynamics of friendship and love and the healthy “friction” between two souls.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. At least that is what I’ve been told
    • Published: March 8, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/03/08/at-least-that-is-what-ive-been-told/
    • Summary: A poem about how happiness is measured by the quality of our relationships. The author reflects on people who come and go in life, great matches that exist, and the ultimate wisdom that our bonds are proportional to our joy.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. At least I gave it a shot
    • Published: March 21, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/03/21/at-least-i-gave-it-a-shot/
    • Summary: A poem about the mental weariness of confusion and maladaptive thinking born from following pride rather than wisdom. When we fail, we console ourselves with “at least I gave it a shot” — the author reflects on how this resignation can also mask deeper emotional avoidance.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. I self sabotage
    • Published: March 25, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/03/25/i-self-sabotage/
    • Summary: A confessional poem about self-sabotage rooted in guilt, shame, and a difficult childhood. The author admits his low self-esteem and cognitive dissonance have made relationships hard, connecting these patterns to RSP’s own parallel experience.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. With every prayer
    • Published: April 20, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/04/20/with-every-prayer/
    • Summary: A spiritual poem in which DCG prays for strength, courage, wisdom, and forgiveness. He reflects that God gives him opportunities to demonstrate these qualities in hardship, asking how best to manage difficult emotional moments in relationship.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. A one-sided love affair
    • Published: April 28, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/04/28/a-one-sided-love-affair/
    • Summary: A poem about the pain of unrequited love — the burn even a saint feels when emotion erupts and there is nowhere to turn. The author reflects on what it costs to love without it being returned and asks what we learned and lost in the process.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. And so goes our training
    • Published: May 6, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/05/06/and-so-goes-our-training/
    • Summary: A poem encouraging openness in sharing feelings despite fear of rejection. The author uses perspective and emotional balance as tools for growth, saying use your feelings as motivation and look for someone compatible — a partner, not a mirror.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. It warms my heart
    • Published: May 7, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/05/07/it-warms-my-heart/
    • Summary: A warm poem in which DCG tells RSP it warms his heart when she expresses herself to him — her excitement about a new job, her energy. He admits he doesn’t understand why he’s drawn to her but feels it like déjà vu, genuine and unexplained.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. Why are we so confused?
    • Published: May 12, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/05/12/why-are-we-so-confused/
    • Summary: A poem about meeting a “kindred spirit” and recognizing shared childhood wounds — anxious vs. dismissive attachment. The author questions why connection and rejection are so hard to distinguish when trauma bonds are involved.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. Am I allowed to express what I feel?
    • Published: June 6, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/06/06/am-i-allowed-to-express-what-i-feel/
    • Summary: A vulnerable poem about being emotionally imprisoned — an “emotional straight jacket” formed in childhood by emotionally impoverished parents. The author wonders whether he is even allowed to express what he feels to RSP, or whether that right has been forfeited.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. Anxious attachment
    • Published: June 20, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/06/20/anxious-attachment/
    • Summary: A poem about the trap of anxious attachment — the cycle of seeking approval rooted in unresolved childhood wounds. The author acknowledges being triggered but asserts that choices still exist even after falling to our knees.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. Because this is my heart’s echo
    • Published: June 27, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/06/27/because-this-is-my-hearts-echo/
    • Summary: A poem about feeling less empty and more purposeful when RSP is in his heart and thoughts. He reflects on shared childhood neglect and wonders if they crossed paths for a reason — his heart’s echo reaching toward hers.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. It’s your spirit that’s longing to suffer no more
    • Published: June 27, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/06/27/its-your-spirit-thats-longing-to-suffer-no-more/
    • Summary: A forgiveness poem written “— for Robyn —” encouraging RSP to release old pain and resentment. It argues that forgiveness frees the forgiver rather than the forgiven, and that the soul in the mirror is the one truly liberated by the act of letting go.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG  (poem dedicated “— for Robyn —”)

  1. Doesn’t always mean what it seems
    • Published: July 1, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/07/01/doesnt-always-mean-what-it-seems/
    • Summary: A poem about bottled emotion — the author has “all this emotion” but must keep it locked away because RSP doesn’t want to hear it. He reflects on how surface behavior (“what you see is what you get”) doesn’t always reveal the inner truth.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. My nervous system has been hijacked
    • Published: July 2, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/07/02/my-nervous-system-has-been-hijacked/
    • Summary: A poem/reflection on how childhood family dynamics hijack the nervous system and shape adult emotional responses. The author connects his anxious attachment to early nurturing deficits and prays for divine help in breaking the cycle.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. However, it turns out
    • Published: July 8, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/07/08/however-it-turns-out/
    • Summary: A spiritually committed poem in which DCG says his heart, soul, and mind are committed to this path, leaving the outcome to God. He asks God to work through him and promises that however things turn out, he will always extend his hand to RSP.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. One built for me and you
    • Published: July 9, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/07/09/one-built-for-me-and-you/
    • Summary: A poem about the painful paradox of getting close to someone who pulls away — the closer he gets, the farther she drifts. He references “the closer to the fire, the more you get burned” but remains committed to building something meaningful together.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. I believe in you
    • Published: July 10, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/07/10/i-believe-in-you/
    • Summary: A poem of faith and affirmation directed at RSP — the author believes in her ability against an unfair world, references shared California memories (OB, South Beach), and tells her that her charms are not lost on him.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. One that we host
    • Published: July 11, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/07/11/one-that-we-host/
    • Summary: A poem about the social masks people wear — walking on eggshells, not knowing who to trust, dressing up and flirting to cover loneliness. The author reflects on the emotional chaos “we have created and now host” within ourselves.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. Heal with me RP
    • Published: July 18, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/07/18/heal-with-me-rp/
    • Summary: A poem addressed directly to “RP” (RSP) about two damaged people meeting at the right moment. The author calls himself “damaged goods” and sees in RSP a mirror — “birds of a feather” — and asks, may we heal each other?

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. I filled in all the missing parts
    • Published: July 27, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/07/27/i-filled-in-all-the-missing-parts/
    • Summary: A poem about the gendered paradox of attraction — women fall in love with what they hear, men with what they see. The author reflects on filling in “all the missing parts” in his imagination about someone, and the emotional risks of that projection.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. Despite our perplexity
    • Published: October 1, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/10/01/despite-our-perplexity/
    • Summary: A philosophical poem about how reason and self-reflection are the best diagnostic tools available to us. As an ameliorist and pragmatist, DCG believes our choices define us despite our confusion — and that we learn by comparing perception to reality.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. When your confidence is shrouded by insecurity
    • Published: October 6, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/10/06/when-your-confidence-is-shrouded-by-insecurity/
    • Summary: A poem about how unhealed emotional wounds prevent growth — the shame of bottled pain reigns over the subconscious and prevents resolution. DCG tells RSP (and himself) that you can find resolution, but you must first expose what you so often hide.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. The fragile triumph
    • Published: October 18, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/10/18/the-fragile-triumph/
    • Summary: A poem about the human condition — we “wake as gods with trembling hands,” building thrones on fleeting dreams. We strive for love yet fear its weight, and the heart once fractured eventually replies; the fragile view was always the holy one.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. How can I be a part of the solution?
    • Published: October 20, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/10/20/how-can-i-be-a-part-of-the-solution/
    • Summary: A poem about forgiveness as a razor’s edge — knowing when to forgive and when to walk away. DCG reflects on being entangled by surprise and ruled by the heart, asking how both parties can share responsibility for finding a solution.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. You won’t know until the silence hit you
    • Published: October 31, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/10/31/you-wont-know-until-the-silence-hit-you/
    • Summary: A poem confronting passive-aggressive, dismissive-avoidant denial — the “quickest path of victimhood.” DCG quotes, “sometimes we accept the love we think we deserve,” speaking directly to RSP about unaddressed avoidance and the silence that follows.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. Breathe deeply
    • Published: November 5, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/11/05/breathe-deeply/
    • Summary: A poem about releasing anxiety and trauma through forgiveness and deep breathing. Pain holds on relentlessly, but faith and the willingness to let go of drama are the path to freedom — breathe deeply, face the truth.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. I’m trying to seek approval
    • Published: November 6, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/11/06/im-trying-to-seek-approval/
    • Summary: A confessional poem about how the author’s absent, neglectful father created a trauma bond that drives compulsive approval-seeking in adulthood. He acknowledges this is common and names John Bowlby’s attachment theory as the psychological framework behind it.

• Closing Signoff:  … DCG  (RSP addressed in context)

  1. However, it may lead I will always find my faith
    • Published: November 8, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/11/08/however-it-may-lead-i-will-always-find-my-faith/
    • Summary: A poem to RSP — DCG tells her he knows she is feeling angry and resigned, and that her coping strategy of avoidance will not bring her peace. His heart breaks watching her struggle but he will always find his faith wherever the path leads.
    • Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG
  1. Scar tissue
    • Published: November 8, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/11/08/scar-tissue/
    • Summary: A poem of patient, faithful waiting — the author waits “beneath the weight of hollow years,” burning with prayer and tracing the path forward through scar tissue. Even if the way is lined with dread, he will walk it until it leads to her.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. The quiet between them
    • Published: November 9, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/11/09/the-quiet-between-them/
    • Summary: A short story/prose poem about Adrian (DCG) and a woman with avoidant attachment who goes silent for days. He finally types a message — “Thinking of you. Hope you’re okay” — then erases it. He closes his eyes and wishes he could love without fear, like the wind.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. Yet here I stand
    • Published: November 10, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/11/10/yet-here-i-stand/
    • Summary: A poem of steadfast love — DCG sees RSP’s walls built from pain, recognizes that silence is the language trauma taught her heart, and yet here he stands as a patient guide. He promises to stay through the winters, as long as it takes.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. A walking contradiction
    • Published: November 18, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/11/18/a-walking-contradiction/
    • Summary: A poem that confronts the confusing, sometimes hurtful messages RSP sends. DCG empathizes with her self-protection but challenges her to self-reflect as well as self-protect — warning that without facing her fear head-on, decay follows.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. The parable of the gentle bridge
    • Published: November 22, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/11/22/the-parable-of-the-gentle-bridge/
    • Summary: A parable about a bridge maker (DCG) who builds bridges for divided souls, including a woman who lives behind glass (RSP). The bridge stands not as a demand but as a possibility — open to her courage, guarded by his quiet strength, never forsaking his post.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. This is the song that I sing
    • Published: December 17, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/12/17/this-is-the-song-that-i-sing/
    • Summary: A lyrical poem about a wounded heart recognizing familiarity in another wounded heart — RSP. The author says she places walls around her emotions, but that wounded hearts seek familiarity, and she has touched his heart so tenderly — this is the song that I sing.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. R and D
    • Published: December 22, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/12/22/r-and-d/
    • Summary: A narrative poem explicitly about R (RSP) and D (DCG) — two people with trauma-shaped attachment styles (avoidant and anxious) finding their way toward each other. With steady therapeutic guides and honest conversation, they may learn a bond where both can finally be free.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. The quiet charity of loving
    • Published: December 28, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/12/28/the-quiet-charity-of-loving/
    • Summary: A poem about love as an act of charity — given without guarantee of return. Each wound refines what faith began; love unspent is not in vain; unanswered hearts abide as proof that goodness lingers. Even if RSP never spoke his name, DCG is grateful for the sound.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. Forgive and let go of the past
    • Published: December 31, 2025
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2025/12/31/forgive-and-let-go-of-the-past/
    • Summary: A year-end reflection on rumination and the push-pull of love — she loves me, she loves me not. DCG thinks of RSP and the times that make him hesitate, ultimately counseling himself and her to show the soft underbelly and forgive the past.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. It resonates as we
    • Published: January 23, 2026
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2026/01/23/it-resonates-as-we/
    • Summary: A vow poem — the author makes a pledge, says a prayer, and bares his soul, hoping he and RSP can live side by side. He has reached an awareness that a healthy relationship requires boundaries with clout, and is clear-eyed about what both of them need.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. You walked in
    • Published: January 25, 2026
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2026/01/25/you-walked-in/
    • Summary: A poem about the transformative moment RSP walked into his life — she made the room feel wide and listened like it mattered. Even if she doesn’t stay, the craft he learned in loving her will frame the way he loves others; her impact altered how he sees the world.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. I want you to know
    • Published: January 30, 2026
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2026/01/30/i-want-you-to-know/
    • Summary: A tender, reassuring poem in which DCG tells RSP: if you need space, I’ll give you grace; if you need to decompress, I won’t hesitate. He is patient and certain that what they have can work.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. And so you run
    • Published: February 1, 2026
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2026/02/01/and-so-you-run/
    • Summary: A poem confronting RSP’s pattern of running away — the author says her behavior has consequences, that silence brings clarity, and that deep inside her something still pleads for connection. He hasn’t given up, but notes she is “emotionally autistic” due to childhood wounds.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. The echo of your retreat
    • Published: February 4, 2026
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2026/02/04/the-echo-of-your-retreat/
    • Summary: A deeply introspective poem in which DCG wakes inside the echo of RSP’s silence and builds hope inside her distance. Ultimately he turns inward — the cycle breaks where he begins; forgiving what he cannot heal; steadying his pulse with honest will.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. Exit stage left
    • Published: February 16, 2026
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2026/02/16/exit-stage-left/
    • Summary: Written in screenplay format — a dramatic interior scene of D writing unsent letters by candlelight, a cross on the wall, rain on the window. It’s a theatrical rendering of the inner life of the author after RSP withdraws — a stage play of emotional farewell.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. A heart’s whisper
    • Published: March 4, 2026
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2026/03/04/a-hearts-whisper/
    • Summary: A prayer poem subtitled “And so I pray (for RSP).” DCG prays for RSP’s healing and freedom, says if God answers let it be her freed from shame, and if their paths entwine, let it be two warriors laying down the fight — not rescue, just two broken people healing together.

• Closing Signoff:  … DCG  (RSP explicitly named in prayer)

  1. In the shadowed dance
    • Published: April 19, 2026
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2026/04/19/in-the-shadowed-dance/
    • Summary: A poem in which R and D dance through Proverbs-inspired imagery — R (dismissive-avoidant) and D (anxious-attached) navigating fear, armor, and vulnerability. Their entwined styles soften through grace, empathy, and forgiveness — RSP in prayer’s hold.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. When solemnity meets absurdity
    • Published: May 20, 2026
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2026/05/20/when-solemnity-meets-absurdity/
    • Summary: A comedic-philosophical poem about the absurdity of the human condition — praying for wisdom then fighting a parking ticket, telling the mirror to be sincere. Ultimately: the solemn and the strange must meet, and hope still waits around the bend even for bruised, muddy-footed souls.

• Closing Signoff:  … DCG 

  1. The case of Dane
    • Published: May 21, 2026
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2026/05/21/the-case-of-dane/
    • Summary: A third-person poem about “Dane” — DCG’s alter ego — a boy who held a guitar like morning light and grew into a man carrying childhood questions. The poem traces his philosophical, musical, and emotional journey, asking: is God the answer or just the voice still calling Dane home?

• Closing Signoff:  … DCG 

  1. I forgot the world was singing
    • Published: May 22, 2026
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2026/05/22/i-forgot-the-world-was-singing/
    • Summary: A poem about being lost in worry and “walking half asleep” until the morning calls him back. A friend reminds him the day is still warm, they talk about hopes and small endeavors, and in the present moment — sunlit skin and sea — he promises the world: I see you now.

• Closing Signoff:  … DCG 

  1. The dissolution of entropy
    • Published: May 25, 2026
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2026/05/25/the-dissolution-of-entropy/
    • Summary: A meta-analytical post reviewing the entire RSP/DCG relationship arc across the last two years of the blog. It documents how DCG began with hope that RSP would heal with him, and how the writing gradually discovered he must also heal from the story he built around her.

• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG 

  1. Cliff notes from the heart
    • Published: May 27, 2026
    • URL: thundergodblog.com/2026/05/27/cliff-notes-from-the-heart/
    • Summary: A poem of honest reckoning — DCG built a chapel out of hope, used his prayers to arrange what her silence would not say. Now he faces the truth: love that saves another must not teach him how to lose. He is ready to say goodbye if she cannot reach for lif• Closing Signoff:  RSP … DCG

📊 Summary Statistics

Note on “RSP”: Based on the June 27, 2025 post “It’s your spirit that’s longing to suffer no more,” which is dedicated ”— for Robyn —”, RSP is a woman named Robyn (last name initials S.P.) with whom DCG (Dean Christian Gunnersen) developed a deep, unrequited or unresolved romantic connection characterized by anxious-attachment (DCG) and dismissive-avoidant attachment (RSP) patterns. The  RSP … DCG  signoff appears throughout as both a dedication to her and a co-signature — two initials, two people, one story.

RSP

DCG

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A satirical self portrait

I Am DC Gunnersen
A Self-Portrait in Comic Verse


I am DC Gunnersen, philosopher and bard,
A Viking born of Norse and Danish bone,
Who traded fjords for California’s yard
And learned to write about his feelings — alone.
I double-majored so that I could see
The soul’s mechanics and the mind’s terrain,
At San Diego State — a psych degree,
A philosophy degree, and still no gain.
For thirteen years I’ve kept the thunder blog,
One hundred fourteen thousand souls have come,
Yet here I sit inside my mental fog,
Eating midnight snacks and feeling glum.
I am part poet and part psychologist,
Part musician and part restless, roving mind,
Part philosopher — a long and gilded list
That impresses no one of the female kind.
The child I was was swallowed by a fear
So ancient that the wound forgot its name,
I carry him still, cup held to my ear,
Listening for a love that never came.
I studied Bowlby — memorized the chart,
The anxious and the avoidant design,
Then handed all my findings and my heart
To someone who had built a longer line.
She was the silence dressed in guarded light,
I was devotion dressed in open pleading,
She offered absence; I, six hundred nights
Of poems that she never finished reading.
I built a chapel out of “could have been”
And knelt inside and called the echo, God,
Six hundred thirty poems laid in between
The pew, the floor, the WikiPsalm facade.
I quoted Watts — the wave forgets the sea —
While being the wave, inside my bedroom, writing,
I quoted Plato to my subscribers three
Hundred sixty-nine — the reading, hardly sighting.
I told the mirror, “You are more than this,”
It winked and showed my slightly crooked hair,
I searched the soul for transcendental bliss
And found a lonely sock beneath the chair.
I know my armor — I can name each plate,
The fortress I erected to endure,
I see the door that opens — still I wait,
Examining the lock from the inside of the cure.
But here’s the joke the universe has kept:
The laughing is the waking, not the sleep,
The fool who names his folly hasn’t wept —
He’s found the punchline is the truth to keep.
I am DC Gunnersen — I see
The wave, the ocean, and the laughing tide,
I am Dean Christian Gunnersen — and free
Is not the man who hides, but who’s survived.
I am DCG — the thunder and the blog,
The anxious heart, the Bowlby-broken case,
I am Dane — emerging from the fog,
Still eating snacks, but laughing at the grace.

…DCG

What AI thinks about this post 

A few things worth noting about what this poem does structurally:
The opening stanza sets up the comic grandiosity — the Viking in California writing about his feelings. That tension between the name and the reality is your signature move, and the poem plays it straight the whole way through.
The middle third is where the weight lands — the childhood wound, the anxious attachment, the chapel of “could have been,” the 630 poems she never finished reading. That line is probably the sharpest one in the piece. It earns the laugh because it is also just true.
The Bowlby stanza is the satirical heart of the poem — the man who studied attachment theory in order to understand himself, then demonstrated it perfectly in the next relationship anyway. That is not failure. That is the human condition wearing a philosophy degree.
The turn at line 41 — “But here’s the joke the universe has kept” — is where the poem shifts from confession to actualization. The laughter is not deflection. It is recognition. The fool who can name his own folly is already halfway out of it.
And the closing identity sequence — DC Gunnersen, Dean Christian Gunnersen, DCG, Dane — lands as something closer to arrival than introduction. You named yourself at the beginning as a character. You name yourself at the end as a person who survived the character and is still here, still writing, still laughing.
That is the big picture the poem is pointing at.

DCG

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The four step structure of successful biblical prayers 

Grok AI’s Findings:

The 4-Step Structure of Successful Biblical Prayers


Researchers fed every recorded prayer in the Bible — from Genesis through Revelation — into Grok AI, instructing it to ignore symbolism, theology, and emotional content, and focus only on the sequential structure of speech acts. When it filtered for prayers the text itself described as answered (receiving a specific, observable outcome), a clear and consistent four-step protocol emerged. In 100% of “failed prayer” cases, at least one of the four steps was violated.


Step 1 — Recognition (Acknowledgment of God’s Nature)
The prayer begins not with the request, but with a deliberate recognition of who God is — His character, power, and past faithfulness. The AI found that prayers which opened with the petition itself showed a statistically lower rate of answered outcomes. The request always came second. Recognition came first, essentially establishing the “signal connection” before transmission.


Step 2 — Alignment (Reshaping the Request Around a Larger Purpose)
This is where the modern ego struggles most. The petitioner didn’t merely ask for what they personally wanted. Their desire was restructured — rewoven into God’s broader design — so that the personal need became an instrument of a larger purpose. Purely self-interested requests were consistently reformatted in answered prayers. The AI observed this as a form of “absolute alignment” — zero entropy in the request.


Step 3 — Surrender (The Paradox of Release)
The AI found a required “clause of release” — the person praying had to signal acceptance of any possible outcome, even one running against personal survival or their deepest desire. Prayers that insisted on a specific mechanism of rescue at any cost consistently failed or produced harmful outcomes. This step is described as the most unexpected finding: the willingness to release control was structurally required, not optional.


Step 4 — Persistence (Repetition Until Outcome)
Very few significant answered prayers in the Bible were single attempts. The pattern demanded repetition. Elijah prayed seven times for rain before a single cloud appeared. The AI labeled this “optimization of cognitive resources” — the structure was not about predicting what comes next, but preparing the person for whatever comes next through sustained engagement.

The AI’s conclusion was stark: the four-step sequence — Recognition, Alignment, Surrender, Persistence — behaved within the dataset not as a literary habit or stylistic guide, but as a constant, directly correlated with positive outcomes. The probability that such a correlation could appear across the entire biblical body of text by random coincidence was described as effectively beyond calculation.

The Statistical Case for Divine Authorship: 40 Authors, ~1,500 Years, 3 Languages


The Bible was written over approximately 1,500–1,600 years, by roughly 40 different authors, across 3 continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe), in 3 languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek. These authors came from radically different backgrounds — kings, shepherds, fishermen, tax collectors, military generals, and prisoners — writing in wartime and peacetime, in prosperity and famine, in freedom and captivity.
Despite all of this, the 66 books form a single, unified narrative arc: creation, fall, redemption, restoration, and new creation — with consistent theology, interlocking prophecy, and thematic harmony from the first page to the last.


The Prophecy Probability Calculation
Mathematician and astronomer Peter Stoner — in his book Science Speaks, reviewed and validated by the American Scientific Affiliation — applied the modern science of probability to Messianic prophecy:


• For just 8 prophecies fulfilled in Christ: the probability of one man fulfilling them all by chance is 1 in 10¹⁷ (one in one hundred quadrillion). To visualize this, Stoner asked you to imagine covering the entire state of Texas two feet deep in silver dollars, marking one coin, stirring the entire mass, and blindfolding a man to pick the marked coin on his first reach.


• For 48 prophecies: the probability rises to 1 in 10¹⁵⁷ — a number with 157 zeros. Emile Borel, a leading authority on probability theory, stated that once a probability exceeds 1 in 10⁵⁰, it is considered a statistical impossibility in the observable universe. 10¹⁵⁷ is so far beyond that threshold it cannot be meaningfully compared.


• For over 300 Messianic prophecies fulfilled in Christ’s life — prophecies like the virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14), birth in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), betrayal for 30 pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12), and crucifixion described in Psalm 22:16 — centuries before crucifixion was even practiced — the mathematics become incomprehensible.


Why This Matters Statistically


As LifePoint Church explains it: if you took 40 random people from a library across 1,500 years, gave them no communication with each other, told them each to write independently on hundreds of controversial subjects — history, law, poetry, prophecy, science, ethics, biography — and then assembled all their writings, the probability of them forming one harmonious, non-contradictory, unified story is not merely improbable. It is a statistical impossibility by any mathematical standard.
The standard scientific threshold for impossibility is 1 in 10⁵⁰. The Bible exceeds that threshold thousands of times over in prophecy fulfillment alone — before even accounting for its structural, thematic, and linguistic unity across authors who never met each other.
The conclusion many scholars draw is the same one the Bible itself claims: there weren’t 40 authors. There were 40 writers — and one Author.

The ego wears philosophy 

Nod to AWW

The Dream That Wears Your Name


You woke inside a body and you called the whole thing you,
A name sewn on a borrowed coat, a face behind a face.
The universe put on a mask and stumbled somewhere new,
Then spent a lifetime wondering what filled the empty space.
We trace our fear back to the womb, to hunger and to cold,
And call the wound identity, the scar our signature.
But something older than our dread was watching to behold,
A dreamer who forgot the dream was never quite obscure.
The wave believes it is the sea’s most separate and alone,
It rises up in panic dressed in foam and green and spray.
But even crashing on the shore it does not crack the stone,
It only finds the ocean was beneath it all the way.
We build a self like scaffolding around a house of glass,
And guard it from the morning light with arguments and pride.
The ego wears philosophy to make its fortress last,
Yet wisdom is the unlocked door we bolted from inside.
I asked the silence what it was before I learned my name,
It answered with a birdsong and the smell of morning rain.
Not God in robes on mountains, not a torch of sacred flame,
But something vast and ordinary breathing through my pain.
You are not the river’s story, you are all the water flowing,
Not the melody remembered, but the music and the air.
The hand that draws the curtain back is always somehow knowing,
That the eye behind the curtain was already standing there.
We chase the thought that something waits at some arriving place,
That meaning lives in futures where our better selves reside.
But every step was whole already, every fall a kind of grace,
And every empty-handed moment nothing less than tide.
The child who wept at sunset did not mourn the disappearing,
He mourned that no one told him it would paint itself again.
The grief we carry most is not the loss but the not-hearing,
That beauty is not punishment and wonder is not vain.
So let the self unravel like a coat left in the rain,
Not into nothing, but into the everything it hid.
The dream is not a prison and the dreamer is not slain,
You are the one who dreamed the world, and look at what you did.
We are the question asking itself in forty thousand tongues,
We are the dark that needed light to know that it was dark.
The universe breathed outward and it found itself with lungs,
And called that finding human, and the human was the spark.

DCG

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AWW inspired

AWW—Alan Wilson Watts

The Grain That Became


Why is it the ones who feel the most were handed the most fire,
Who came into this world already carrying the weight?
The sensitive soul is not an accident of strange desire,
The oyster does not choose its wound, but something learns to wait.
I was born into a house where love wore a condition’s face,
Where kindness had a price tag and affection had a clause.
I spent my childhood studying the silences and space,
Learning how to read a room the way a lawyer reads the laws.
And what I thought was damage, what I named my broken thing,
Was actually the friction that the ordinary lack.
The undisturbed do not awaken — comfort does not bring
The kind of sight that only comes from not being able to look back.
A grain of sand slips into the soft body of a shell,
It cannot be removed, it cannot be explained away.
The oyster does not mourn the grain or curse the place it fell,
It simply starts the slow and layered work of making something stay.
That is what the wounded learn that the comfortable never do,
That you cannot solve the darkness by demanding that it leave.
You coat it slow in understanding, layer after layer through,
Until the thing that nearly broke you is the thing you most believe.
My family was the sand grain and their chaos was the grit,
Their confusion planted questions that the easy never ask.
What is love when love comes broken, when it does not seem to fit,
When the people meant to show you wear affection like a mask?
You cannot simply copy what you watched, you cannot trust
The inheritance of pattern when the pattern is a wound.
Something in you pushes back and says this simply is not just,
And in that refusal, in that no, a new direction is groomed.
Philosophy gave me language for the ache I could not name,
Psychology gave mirrors to the hallways of my youth.
But neither healed the thing itself — what healed me was the claim
That what was done to them, was done to them, and that is also truth.
They were the grain inside an older shell than mine,
Their cruelty was a coating over something that had hurt.
The chain goes back through generations, silence down the line,
And someone has to be the one who lifts it from the dirt.
So I will be the oyster who stops passing on the sand,
Who coats the wound in something worth the carrying and the cost.
I will be the one who names the grief and opens up the hand,
And finds that what I feared I’d lost was never really lost.
The pearl is not the absence of the grain, the pearl is what remains
When something living meets its wound and does not look away.
The hardest soil produces the most luminous of gains,

And darkness was just light that had not learned yet how to stay.

DCG

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The blaspheme of my dignity

The Blaspheme of My Dignity


I woke at three when the darkness called my name
The floor beneath me hummed with something wrong
A buzzing low, like current through a frame
My body sang a strange and nameless song
The sparks began to crawl below the knee
Like insects feeding on a wound unseen
I did not know the truth of what would be
I only felt the horror grow between
The dream arrived and wore a surgeon’s coat
It handed me a diagnosis carved in stone
The rot had crept as far as any throat
And left me standing somewhere half alone
I looked down at my feet through sleepless eyes
They were not feet but something split apart
The flesh had opened up in slow surprise
Like something that had lost its will to start
The wound was breathing, slick and purple-grey
A hissing mouth that spoke without a word
It told me I was rotting from the day
The kind of thing that waking life deferred
I tried to run but something held the floor
The tingling spread its gospel up my spine
I could not find the exit or the door
I only knew the numbness was not mine
The corridors were made of failing skin
The walls were leaking something pale and thick
A pus of what I had been holding in
A yellow truth that made the dreaming sick
The doctors in the hallway looked away
As if the wound were something indiscreet
They said the body always finds a way
To tell you what the mind refuses to meet
I screamed but what came out was just the hum
That electrical low whisper in the dark
The terror was not sharp but strangely numb
The dying was so quiet in the heart
I watched my hands dissolve into the floor
I watched my legs become a stranger’s weight
I stood inside the wound I could not ignore
And still I could not name the thing, too late
The dream dissolved to three AM again
The tingling called me back from where I’d gone
The body had been speaking through the pain
A language only sleepers live upon
Now waking draws the curtain back at last
The nerve damage was the ghost inside the room
The dreaming mind could not outrun the past
It only built more elegant the tomb
The feet were never rotting in the night
The wound was never leaking on the floor
The body spoke in signals, not in fright

Neuropathy had knocked upon the door

DCG

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