messy spectacles

Yuletide Musings

2006-12-25T23:33:00.000-06:00

I came home a bit early to avoid the holiday rush and sat down to a typical night of channel-surfing, when what to my wondering eyes did appear but a listing in the on-screen guide for "Yule Log." So now I'm sitting here, blogging, basking in the light of a six-hour showing of a fireplace, captured in full high-definition glory. Call me crazy, but it's warm... homey... lovely...

I had a most blessed Christmas weekend. Dad got the news last week that his PSA is down to 7 (from 27 two months ago), and somehow this change for the better translated into a repreive from the typical holiday dysfunction. Nary an argument was heard as all the preparations were made, the presents were wrapped, the grandkids appeased. Quite marvelous.

Generally speaking, I am not a Christmas person - wait - make that "I am not an Xmas person." The lights, the inflatables, the endless remakes of "The Little Drummer Boy" by Mariah Carey and Kanye West and their ilk all make me want to find a cave. In years past, I've been left alone with Over the Rhine's "Darkest Night of the Year" -- the only Christmas album I've found remotely palatable. This winter, however, they've followed it up with "Snow Angels," an album of original songs that manages to be deeply spiritual and melancholy and intimate all at the same time. Thanks Karin and Linford - Much love. I also happened upon a double album of Christmas favorites by indie fave Sufjan Stevens and was absolutely blown away. The instrumentation and arrangements are gorgeous and he pulls out classics like "I Saw Three Ships" and "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" that I haven't heard in years. I highly recommend you pick them up.

But for now, that "To Go" piece of grandma's cherry pie is calling to me from the fridge. I think I'll scoop some vanilla and bask in the Hi-Def glow of Channel 1500. Great love and joy to all who still stop in to this little corner of Internetland now and again. May you be richly blessed.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Too Soon, and Yet, About Damned Time!

2006-12-21T13:48:00.000-06:00

It's snowing in Minnesota. Yup, that's right -- first snowfall of the year on December 21. I don't know if it's a record, but grey was sure getting old.

Not that I'm a fan of winter - I prefer my weather a firm sixty-two and partly cloudy, thank you very much...

Still, I'm tempted to hit the balcony and catch a few flakes on my tongue, just for old times' sake...

I can't help but be enchanted...

Voices from the Past

2006-10-26T11:19:00.000-05:00

So I've been trying to decide about getting another tattoo. For years, I've wanted the celtic design that appears on the cover of Jeff Johnson's 1984 CD Icons, but in the innumerable moves I've made over the past five-ish years, I seem to have lost the album art. Bummer.

Last night, this prompted a massive Internet search for the cover art, to no avail. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised since the disc has been out-of-print for at least fifteen years, but I was still saddened. Until I got the bright idea to look for a copy of the CD itself. All I've had for years is the booklet, so that would be good on a number of levels. I started thinking back, trying to remember the songs, and several were still backed up in my cognitive hard drive. Wild!

I thought back to the end of my junior high years, when I was first coming to terms with my decidedly artsy nature - amazed that I survived seventh and eighth grades - listening to this collection of songs that was God-centered yet bore no resemblance to the typical bubble-gum, Jesus-y, Amy-Grant pop that dominated the Christian music scene. As I remember, it was the last track that stuck in my head, that I would listen to over and over again, sitting in the tan bucket seat of our conversion van and weeping in gratitude.

It was called "Windemere," Johnson's setting of a poem by John Keble that was written at the British lake of the same name:

Looking through the window
out upon the lake
Windemere is trying to sleep
but continues to awake.
High above the village,
standing on a hill,
an angel sings a psalmody
that interrups the still.

The song seeps through the cracks and gaps
of the weathered window-frame
and fills the room with praises
of an even older Name.
Through the walls that form this room,
I'm taken to that hill,
face-to-face with Someone
that my memory marvels still...

I could never hear these sounds,
I could never see,
I could never feel this breeze
until you blew on me.
I could never love, really,
I could never fear.
I would have never, ever thought
that I'd be standing here.

Thou who has given me eyes to see
and love this sight so fair,
give me a heart to find Thee out
and read Thee everywhere.

Standing in my dining room, looking through the slats of cheap apartment vertical blinds, I welled up again. This time, though, I was as grateful for everything since ninth grade as I was then for everything before. This crazy thing called life truly is a journey - a blessed one - and I find myself at thirty-five praying the same prayer I prayed at sixteen:

Give me a heart to find Thee out and read Thee everywhere.

Pendulum Swings: The Jared Chronicles, Part 2

2006-07-17T09:12:00.000-05:00

This morning, I'm standing outside of work, desperately wracking my brain for new tricks and manipulations to convince Jared to come inside, into the nice cool air conditioning, but no dice. He's talking, dead-set on having my full attention until his van arrives to take him off to work. Little does he know I haven't heard a word he's said. I'm trying to figure out how I can keep him happy and still get my paperwork done on time. Suddenly, something he says snaps me out of it:

"My friend Shawn died."

"Really? What happened?"

"Oh, he was sleeping, and then he got sick, and then he died."

What do you say to that?

"That's sad."

"Yuh. I went to his funeral."

"That's good."

"Yuh. I put my hand on his coffin. Like this." Jared reaches out and pats the hood of my car gently, then lets his hand rest.

"I care about him. He's my friend," Jared says solemnly, staring through the blue steel.

I'm struck by his gesture, by his use of the present tense. My eyes drop to the pavement, looking down at the driveway to avoid being blinded by tenderness. Jeremy's dog Bud is lying panting on the sidewalk. Subject change.

"Big Kris got a puppy."

"Really?"

"Yeah! He looks just like Bud, only little and yellow."

Jared scrunches up his face in irritation. "Not yellow. Bud's a chocolate lab."

"I know... Big Kris got a yellow lab."

"Bud's a chocolate lab. But he can't have chocolate chip cookies. They're poison to him. Only me. Only I get cookies. Not Bud."

He says this with every ounce of profundity with which he just spoke of Shawn. I can't help but bust out laughing. I guess wisdom comes in many forms.

In his recent poem, "How to Be a Poet," Wendell Berry writes:

There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

I think I know what he means...

The Karma of Care: Strange Places

2006-06-25T23:57:00.000-05:00

Lately, I've been feeling like a human Care Engine. My June flew by with days spent attending to dad and nights at work. Dad is, to borrow an adjective from an unfortunate context, a "flaming" extrovert. Asking him to sit alone at mom's condo all day is akin to asking George W. Bush to pull off a convincing Hamlet. It's just not in his nature.

So for much of the last week or two, I've been chauffer and companion and gofer. Making thirty-odd trips a day between kitchen and recliner for iced tea, SunChips, insulin, or anti-androgen pills. Driving to Abbot for an IV infusion in the chemotherapy room (and that's a whole 'nother post), to Office Max for mailing labels, to SuperTarget for summer sausage. You'd be surprised how tiring it can get. I used to stay up for an hour or so after the boys went to bed at work, but now I crash like a bandicoot.

To top it off, my job has been frustrating. The Down Syndrome guys I care for have been unusually needy, and due to short staffing, I've been working four nights a week instead of my usual three. Those fantasies of not having to work are back with a vengeance, but along with them come the Practicality Gnomes to remind me of medical insurance and the perils of student loan payments.

Those damned Practicality Gnomes are a total buzzkill.

Then the other night I was at work, and one of my clients (we'll call him Jared) was supposed to be in bed a half hour earlier. I opted not to make an issue of it since he had the next day off work. I just packed up, undressed, and went to bed as usual.

Long about 11:30, I hear some motion. Sure enough, here comes Jared out of his room. I know it won't do any good to crack down and tell him to go to bed, so I try to lead by example and fake sleep. Jared turns on the hall light and I hear him creeping over to me, whispering my name. I don't respond. I sense him looming over me, bracing myself for whatever joke he wants to play, and instead I feel his blunt fingers gently tucking the blanket beneath my shoulder.

A few seconds later I'm still not hearing footsteps, so I crack my eyelids to see what's going on. Jared's at the armrest of the couch, where I've tossed my clothes. He picks up my pants and quietly folds them into neat thirds, setting them pocket-up on an empty stretch of bookshelf. He lifts my button-up shirt and hangs it over his arm about three different ways, trying to keep it from wrinkling. I'm about to laugh at his good-hearted frustration when he starts buttoning up the shirt. My chuckle catches in my throat as he gets to his knees, smooths the cotton flat on the beige carpet, and folds it carefully, Banana Republic style. He finds a place next to the pants for it to spend the night in wrinkle-free peace, sets it down, and pats it into place.

He turns back to me, and I quickly shutter my eyes. I smell rapsberry Jell-O on his breath and feel his whiskers scratching my eyebrows as he plants a quick kiss on my forehead.

"G'night, Jeffy" he whispers.

Tears come to my sleep-faking eyes as the hall light cuts out and Jared's door utters a creak made louder and longer by his effort to be quiet.

"G'night, Jared" I reply to the blackness in gratitude.

Care is a two-way street. Sometimes it comes back to you in the ways and places you least expect it.

The Shape of Things

2006-06-25T23:49:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I've been quiet for a while. Here's what's happening.

My dad's prostate cancer is back. Only it's not in his no-longer present prostate, it's in his spine. The presenting issue is that one vertebra had malignant growth to the point where he lost control of his legs. This is how we found out. However, there is "involvement" on three other vertebrae. So I've been on that journey.

As far as blogging is concerned, it's been a mixed bag. I can't tell you how many times I've thought, "I could SO blog about this," but it hasn't felt right. Not that I don't want to share, because there have been any number of sacred moments, but because I was/am afraid of turning this blog into a cancer diary. Bleh.

I'm only now starting to feel ready to juggle - to seek some balance here. Cancer-related entries will happen, be sure, but I've got other things to say and be heard on mixed in. The problem is, they're all trapped in my skull, percolating away in a big churning mess - a mess I can finally get to. So look for me to be back more regularly.

That is, if anyone's still bothering to check this... :-)

Correspondence Overheard

2006-06-10T23:33:00.000-05:00

Dear Tree,
I wish you had eyes so you could see green.
Love, Boy.

Dear Boy,
I wish you had roots so you could feel green.
Love, Tree.

Jeff's "Dream Car of the Future"

2006-05-18T14:38:00.000-05:00

OK, picture this: Mini Cooper Convertible, either...

hydrogen powered

-or-

gas/electric hybrid, E-85 capable.

It's quick, it's earth-friendly, and it's STILL dead sexy... Any thoughts?

What's yours?

P.S. No Hummers, please...

Recycling Goes Too Far.

2006-05-09T23:13:00.000-05:00

You know Jared, the Subway dude? The guy who lost all that weight by eating nothing but roughage on a bun and for this became an instant celebrity, making cameos in every new Subway commercial for what seemed like a decade? Yeah, that dude.

Clearly, I have been SO over Jared for a while. But tonight at work, the guys were watching the local weather when a blast from the past hit ground zero. They're running THAT Subway commercial again. The one that screams "EIGHTIES!!" with every frame, from the Debbie Gibson hair to the Paula Abdul rooftop video setting (from "Opposites Attract," the one with the cartoon cat that raps) to the row of backup mimes holding hero sandwiches and that 3D grid horizon thing that filled the lower third of every album cover released between '82 and '85.

Wait -- MIMES? That's not even 80s, that's just scary. Who the hell decided to put MIMES in a fast food commercial??? If they're supposed to be some surreal, dadaist riff on Ronald McDonald, you way overshot, people.

What marketing genius brought this turkey back? Have Blimpie and Quizno's and Jimmy John's driven you to these desperate straits? Oh, Subway, how you have fallen.

I'm all for environmentalism -- hybrid cars, green fuels, all that crap -- but some things are truly and permanently disposable. What's left of the ozone layer can handle the fumes from a few more feet of celluloid. Send Jared -- he's good enough at burning calories.

P.S. I apologize for the rapid shift in tone from the previous post. I promise it will happen again.

Sabbath Gleanings

2006-05-06T15:11:00.000-05:00

Last night, as I was watching the weather forecast, I decided today would be a School-Sabbath. I would not so much as practice the presence of papers, finals, essay revisions. I would take care of the other neglected elements of my life and just be. Until the sun sets.

I sleep in til eleven and get dressed, stepping out onto the back porch for some light. The sun's fingers are tickling the birds, setting them atwitter with glee. Eunice is next door hanging out her unmentionables for those same fingers of warmth to caress into dryness. I notice a squirrel, trotting confidently along the telephone wire high above the alley. He must have climbed on from the tree that overhangs our garage. Unfortunately, no other trees intersect with the wires, and he scurries down the length of the alley, stopping every few seconds, room to go forward but not enough to turn around. Ah, well, I think, he'll eventually find a tree or figure a way to go down the telephone pole.

I move to the front stoop, waiting for a flutter of wings that never comes. A female mallard (whom I've dubbed Daisy) appeared several weeks ago and laid her eggs beneath the evergreen shrub that sits by our front door. Always before, she's run for it when I come around the corner. Either she's grown accustomed to me or some biological imperative won't let her leave her eggs at this crucial juncture. I greet her as always, but she just looks up at me with one side-mounted eye.

I glance down at the black ants marching around the sidewalk. One of them carries a larger beetle over its head, the beetle's legs churning the air as if to say (with a thick British accent), "But I'm not dead yet!" I laugh out loud at the way Monty Python interrupts my Discovery Channel mindset.

Our front yard testifies to the rhythms of life. To my right, amid a scattered field of dandelions, sits the remnant of the massive elm that blew down last fall, stump cut too short to even sit on. On the left, the sapling Lisa planted to replace it stands strong and young and beautiful, wearing a garland of tulips like some sixteen-year-old southern belle at her Coming Out party back when the phrase "coming out" carried much lighter baggage.

I've been that squirrel, scurrying down a path that looked great at the front end only to find it leading further than I ever wanted to go. I've been that beetle, dragged and carried ominously toward some unpleasant fate. Heck, I've even been the ant, hijacking the course of others and trying to bear them to a place of my choosing. Hopefully, those seasons are over.

Now I want to be like Daisy, waiting patiently in spite of things that scare me or tire me out, waiting through stiff legs and cramped wings, waiting through rain and wind and sunshine, waiting for new things to come to life. New communities, new adventures, new graces, new joys.

Summer's coming. Bring it on!

Encounter with "Greatness"...

2006-04-25T10:48:00.000-05:00

So on the first day of the Festival, I was crossing the street to rejoin my NWC cohorts when a man stopped me.

"You don't happen to know your way around this place, do you?"

"Nope. Sorry." I glanced down at his name badge and read "Scott Cairns."

Ever since Judy introduced me to his work, Scott Cairns has been one of my favorite poets -- I used four of his poems in our large group prayer times at this year's Good Friday retreat.

"Mr. Cairns!" I gushed, "What a pleasure to meet you!" He looked down at my nametag.

"Jeff!" he said in what seemed to be an equally appreciative tone, "Nice to meet you, too!" I must have looked confused, because he said "You have a website or something, don't you?" I managed to stammer, "yes, a blog..." I must confess, I have no idea what he said after that point, beyond that it was somehow complimentary.

Scott Cairns has read my blog!

I immediately rushed to rejoin my mates and tell the story. Manders said, "well, that would make my year." Thus began what H. Jane started referring to as my "nonsexual crush" on Scott Cairns.

In all fairness, I wasn't the only one. By the end of the weekend, Susan was referring to him as her "new boyfriend."

The sessions and readings of his I went to only confirmed my impression of the man as a remarkably intelligent, witty, and thoughtfully Christ-centered artist. Mr. Cairns, if you happen to read this, thank you again for your generosity in words, time, and artistry. Hopefully, we'll meet again in the future.

For those of you whose curiousity has been peaked (in line with my intentions for this post), check out this interview with Mars Hill.

God, Too, Uses Boxcutters

2006-04-20T20:00:00.000-05:00

Well, here I am, y'all, in sunny Grand Rapids, MI at Calvin College's Festival of Faith and Writing. It should be called "Feast" for all the chewing I've done in only two sessions. I had a somewhat embarrassing epiphany in the first. Phillip Gulley is a Quaker pastor who writes fiction and essays that are homespun and charming and delightfully real. I hadn't heard of him before today, but I went on the recommendation of a friend.

It was great. He read from a forthcoming collection of essays and then opened the floor to questions. I felt like the kid on the short bus as people made pithy and insightful queries about his characters and settings and, in short, had clearly read his stuff. I, on the other hand, kept dwelling on a comment he'd made about Quaker services -- a few hymns, a brief sermon, and then thirty minutes of silence. It resonated so deeply with my spiritual direction experiences and the heart of Abbey Way, so I popped my hand up.

"Mr. Gulley, I come from an evangelical, conservative, very cognitive-based tradition and I'm finding the older I get, the more contemplative my personal spirituality is becoming. I'm wondering if and how the rhythms of silence in your spiritual tradition inform your writing process?"

He looked me dead in the eye for a long second, and said "That's a really good question. I don't think I've ever been asked that before. To answer, silence is absolutely indispensable to my writing. Most of my ideas come either on my quiet morning walk or in Meetings."

Now, if you've read this blog for any length of time, you'll know one of my favorite rants is against the "western" compartmentalization of life. I HATE this concept of church is a place you go and set of routines you perform on Sunday, the sense in which we become different people depending on our environment.

So imagine my shock when his answer prompted me to think, "Wait. Maybe God is leading me to Abbey Way in part to help me be a better writer." It was like a solar flare in my skull. The more I looked into the light, the more I started to think, "Well, duh... If He's calling you to write and calling you to Abbey Way, they've got to be connected." I was chagrinned to think that here I am, Mr. Holistic, and God still has so many of my boxes to slash open, walls to tear down before my life is an open, spacious, and ordered sanctuary for His holiness.

Who knows? Maybe more will even be shattered this Festival weekend. Stay tuned to find out.

Let the renovation continue. Amen.

A quick quote for the world...

2006-04-18T09:38:00.000-05:00

"We are all wounded inside in some way or other. We all carry unhappiness within us for some reason or other. Which is why we need a little gentleness and healing from one another. Healing in words, and healing beyond words. Like gestures. Warm gestures. Like friendship, which will always be a mystery. Like a smile, which someone described as the shortest distance between two people.

Yes, the highest things are beyond words.

That is probably why all art aspires to the condition of wordlessness. When literature works on you, it does so in silence, in your dreams, in your wordless moments. Good words enter you and become moods, become the quiet fabric of your being. Like music, like painting, literature too wants to transcend its primary condition and become something highter. Art wants to move into silence, into the emotional and spiritual conditions of the world. Statues become melodies, melodies become yearnings, yearnings become actions."
- Ben Okri, "Beyond Words", A Way of Being Free

Neurotica (Part One)

2006-03-19T12:57:00.000-06:00

So as I was driving to work on Friday night, I realized I should probably eat something (appetite loss is a side-effect of my ADD meds). The route to work takes me up highway 65, so the options are pretty much open. This is the conversation that actually took place in my head:

SelfA: McDonald's?

SelfB: Nah -- you had McDonald's for breakfast. It'd be like you were making a documentary or something...

SelfA: Yeah. Burger King?

SelfB: Yesterday.

SelfA: Right. Besides, their supersize has paper cups. Chipotle?

SelfB: You're meeting Josh for lunch there tomorrow.

SelfA: Oh, yeah. Arby's?

SelfB: They think they're too upscale -- and they're expensive enough to prove it.

SelfA: Jimmy Johns?

SelfB: Nope. You need hot food. OK, Seriously... what do you feel like eating?

SelfA: Burger. Definitely a burger.

SelfB: Wendy's?

SelfA: Yeah, but again, they have paper cups for the supersize... McDonald's plastic is so much easier...

SelfB: Do you realize how pathetic it is that you're more concerned with cup materials than you are with food?

I went to Wendy's. Not that I cared. Not that I even tasted it, really, I just couldn't handle the thought that something so trivial was the core of my culinary decision-making. What's up with that?

The Mystery of Openness

2006-03-12T12:04:00.000-06:00

OK, Gloria -- I know, I promised to blog last night and now it's Sunday. Better late than never. :-) Wow, this is odd. My blogmuscles have atrophied. I feel like I'm coming out of a coma or something... Anyway...

Yesterday, I was blessed to watch Cole and Ella while their parents were off talking and praying. Cole is six and Ella is three, and they are both about thirty kinds of great. In the morning, we went to the park. We played on the swings and the jungle gym (sidenote: How did jungle gyms get so much cooler than they were when I was a kid? All kinds of tunnels and suspension bridges and plastic mock-climbing walls? How great is that?). Another family showed up, and before I knew it, Cole was clambering up to their oldest boy perched on top of the tunnel. I overheard him say, "Hi, my name is Cole. Do you want to be friends?"

I laughed out loud. But no sooner did my laughter stop than I noticed that familiar pressure in my eye sockets. I flashed back to Junior High, when a question like that would've promptly landed me face down in the nearest garbage can.

Please, God, I whispered, don't let him lose that.

Telling the story last night, I had to pause and think about my present relational modus operandi. How more often than not, when I meet someone I want to get closer to, the feeling prompts an immediate and daunting cost-benefit analysis. Do I have the time for this relationship? Do I have the energy for the work of getting to know somebody new? The accountant in the back corner of my brain whips out his old-school adding machine and digs into abstract calculations that would make an IRS auditor blush.

Jan talks often about open-handedness. About coming into a situation willing to let it be what it is, to hold what's there without an agenda or expectation. I'm starting to realize my own open-handedness feels too often like empty-handedness. There's a big difference.

So I'm picturing Cole's six-year-old heart, perched wide open on a tube of bright blue polystyrene, and the tears are back.

Please, God, help me find that again.

Ah, Jeff... How You Do Ramble On...

2006-01-07T20:33:00.000-06:00

I'm driving home from a solo dinner at Chipotle, past the ganstas hanging out on the corner of the strip mall, which seems an odd place for gangstas to be hanging out, listening to the Inuit singing through my car radio. So many cultures, so many voices... The southwestern food sloshing contentedly in my stomach, the hip-hop vernacular laughing on the sidewalk, the strange Arctic syllables that make it no farther than my windshield.

I was reading Gilead as I ate, wishing I had a highlighter from time to time. The narrator speaks of young skeptics:

And they want me to defend religion, and they want me to give them "proofs." I just won't do it. It only confirms them in their skepticism. Because nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.

Why the crap don't I bring a highlighter? It made me think of "the Book of Daniel" again. I watched about 45 minutes of it last night, and frankly don't have a lot to say. Their Jesus was more schlocky than anything, with an overgrown beard and pouffy robes that made him look more like a linebacker than the Son of God. I appreciated that he had a sense of humor, telling Daniel he'd been "reading too many Episcopalian self-help books." (In The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco theorizes that Jesus never laughed because he knew how much evil Christians would commit in His name. I don't buy that, but it's thought-provoking.) But the figure in "The Book of Daniel" didn't come off as Jesus as much as he came off as Daniel's concept of Jesus or maybe the writer's concept of Jesus.

My primary impression was that the show just wasn't very good. A clear shot at "Desperate Housewives" meets "Joan of Arcadia" with a dash of "Six Feet Under" thrown in for good measure. Nothing to see here. Sadly, that may be the ultimate guarantee of the show's success. I really don't care.

"Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense." Really? That's the kind of quote that turns my brain into a cow's stomach - pushing the thought back and forth to be chewed like cud at least four times before I can finally digest it. My immediate response is ironically defensive, "Well, there go half the writings of C.S. Lewis..." But then I think of ideas that have come up again and again at church lately, the thought that "the gates of hell will not prevail" puts the church in an offensive light, anything but hunkering down passively and waiting for Gabriel's trumpet. NBC's Jesus had so little impact on me precisely because of his passivity - I couldn't relate to a Jesus that didn't take the initiative, that served as a sort of spiritual Howard Cosell, offering presence but no passion, commentary, but no call.

Now that I think about it, Lewis wasn't writing entirely from response. He consistently paints Christianity as broader and wider and deeper and richer and infinitely more compelling than any of the world's philosophies. He wasn't writing with his shoulders out to block modernist ideology, he was throwing a hail-mary deep into and beyond enemy territory. (Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Jeff just used a football metaphor. Write it down, cuz it ain't likely to happen again.)

I can't help but believe that God has the defense covered, that if we were living lives that passionately and proactively brought the Kingdom into the world, His Life - His ideas, His emotions, His Presence, His purposes - would shine such that skepticism-as-faith would be revealed as shadows and dust. So maybe Robinson's narrator is right... I don't know. All I know is that the idea that I, the eighty-eight pound spiritual, physical, and intellectual weakling, am needed to defend the omnipotent one seems laughable. On the contrary, I need His defense to even take a step toward the life He's calling me to.

But I've rambled long enough. I want to read more of this book before bedtime - I'm sure there are more landmines like this waiting to be tripped. If you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them. I'm still trying to wrap my head around all this, and I'm sure I will be for the rest of my natural life. Blessings on all y'all out there in blogland. Be present to His Presence.

Matters of Perspective

2006-01-05T08:11:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I had a lunch date at Chipotle (mmm... Chipotle...). I backed out of my garage into the alley, and as I turned to look forward, I noticed a big ol' snowplow cruising past the end of the alley in the distance. I had a Tim Allen "huh, huh" moment because of the massive machine, but something about it bothered me. Lo and behold, I got to the end of the alley to pull into the street, and what to my wondering eyes did appear but the plow -- a mini front-end loader designed for clearing sidewalks. I had that strange moment of vertigo as my perception shifted and clicked, like when you finally see the sailboat in those "magic eye" pictures that were all over the malls in the late 90s. It was just this teeny little plow. The impression was no longer one of raw power, but of simple work. I had to laugh.

A couple of days before, I noticed a blurb on IMDB about this American Family Association that's boycotting NBC's "The Book of Daniel" because it features an episcopal priest who talks to Jesus. The problem? He is also "addicted to painkillers, has an alcoholic wife, a drug-dealing daughter and a gay son." I rolled my eyes and thought to myself "Frickin' Christians..." I mean, seriously, how many ministers -- how many CHRISTIANS are addicted to substances or work or (gasp) ministry? Are wrestling with broken relationships? Have no clue how to effectively fight for their kids? Aren't these precisely the kind of people Jesus WANTS to talk to? Don't get me wrong - I have a healthy amount of skepticism about any "Christian-themed" progam that makes it to network TV (ask Judy how resistant I still am to Joan of Arcadia...). But it seems to me that even if the show is completely theologically whack'd and WAY off base, we should celebrate, because at least it can leverage dialogue about the things of God. I walked away from the article preparing a blog-style smackdown rant calling down lightning on the latter-day Pharisees of the AFA.

Then I came across Jan's post. She surprised me yet again, quoting Semisonic's tune "Closing Time" (I love that song!). Reading those words again, singing them in my head with Jan and her story of late in my mind, tears came to my eyes. This super-fun song that could so easily be written off as an ode to the drunken one-night stand shifted. The spelling of the chorus changed in my mind to "I know Who I want to take me home." Not the usual, jeff-drama, life-sucks-God-let-it-end sort of take me home, but a take-the-driver's-seat, whatever-road-You-choose-no-matter-how-winding kind of take me home. It became an anthem of dependence.

Notice the difference in perspective?

Timbur's post from a while ago has stuck with me, ringing in my mind. I read the papers, channel surf to FOX news for a few minutes, and my stomach turns at being stuck with the label "Christian" in this culture. But I also feel like it would be giving ground to call myself something else, though since DC Talk, I've kinda liked "Jesus Freak." So here's my solution. I'm taking a page from the consumer culture and coining the word "Xian." I don't think I would ever call a person an Xian, but organizations and behaviours definitely qualify. Xians take the Christ out of Christian. They are more concerned with prohibitions than with possibilities, more focused on politics than people, more vested in safety than salvation.

And no sooner do I type that than I notice the Xian in me. Ugh.

But I want to be a Christian. I want to follow a God who's not safe, but is good. I want to practice risky obedience. I want to be able to see Kingdom significance in everything, to say with Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The world is full of the grandeur of God."

So to my inner Xian, I hope you wither and die. To Jesus, take me home. On the way, give me more and more Kingdom perspective. And may my wee little plow clear a bit of the way for others.

Community Musings

2006-01-03T09:48:00.000-06:00

Yes, I'm back in blogland -- with a vengeance. Expect a few posts today. Maybe I'll even get a head start on Jamie's record from last year.

In the meantime, check out Bart Campolo's Manifesto on their new community in Cincinnati for some food for thought...

Reflection on a Snow Day

2005-11-30T01:27:00.000-06:00

I had a doctor's appointment this morning at 7:40. Nobody panic - it was a rather routine checkup on my ADD meds, but it had been rescheduled once already (at the doctor's request), and I wanted to be sure I made it on time. You see, the clinic is in St. Louis Park off of Highway 100, legendary in the metro area as a traffic nightmare.

So I planned ahead. Mapquest said the trip was just under 17 miles - 23 minutes in normal traffic. To be safe, I left the house just after 6am and brought homework to do if (thinking when) I got there early.

I reached the clinic at 9:15.

It was surreal. I'm trapped in the car, nowhere to go, going nowhere, thinking things like "Dante' couldn't have imagined..." and "Find a happy place..." and "Its SUCH a God-thing that I don't own a gun..." At the end of the first hour, I switched the iPod to like really mellow, calm, happy music. By the second, the calm was punctuated by fits of hysteria - that heady blend that you can never safely label as either laughter or tears, it's just convulsive and involuntary. I could not believe people pulling out of line behind me into the merge lane just to leap ahead seven cars or so.

I'm fairly sure I cycled through the five stages of grief at least four times between 394 and Excelsior Blvd. - Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance - only they became like this maddening spiral. I could only accept for so long before my brain rebelled and refused to believe this was actually happening. In hindsight, I wish I'd had the presence of mind to be more present to God in the traffic. Instead I cursed under my breath, punched the sunroof, and pictured Ghandi in my passenger seat giving other drivers the finger on my behalf.

When I got to the Mental Health Floor and announced (at 9:20) that I was checking in for my 7:40 appointment, the receptionist looked at me as if I was clearly on something and informed me that the next available time slot was on January 12.

I calmly explained to her that I hadn't seen the doctor since August, I had made a good-faith effort to get to my appointment on time, and I was perfectly willing to camp out in the lobby all stinking day on the off-chance that the good doctor could find time to squeeze me in. I'm fairly sure I delivered this in a polite and reasonable tone. I know I said it about 15 decibels lower than my ordinary speaking voice. After all, this is the Mental Health Floor - if I behave too unreasonably, bad things could happen.

Long story short -- I only had to wait about 15 minutes, the doctor diagnosed me with some mild clinical depression, and sent me home with my monthly batch of brain candy. I was able to get to class on time, and listen to the guest speaker drone on about life in the "real-world" environment of the technical writer, trying to communicate the dynamics of a corporate structure. Been there, done that. Why do you think I got my sorry ass back into school? {shudder} My afternoon was dominated by a much-needed nap.

Then, just after I got to work tonight, my cell phone rang. A close friend called to ask for prayer. He talked, I listened. He was honest, vulnerable, trusting. I prayed for him with my whole heart and the small, stumbling, insufficient words that poured from it. And God heard the whole kit and kaboodle. Funny, but those ten minutes on the phone - present to God and a person I love and feeling them present to me - redeemed the whole day. For a few minutes, at least, I felt like I got it right.

Postcard from a Runaway Life.

2005-11-20T13:01:00.000-06:00

So, yeah -- clearly it's been a while since I blogged. All I can say is eighteen credits of English is taking its toll. I can't say I wasn't warned. C'est la vie.

Just because I've been blogsilent, though, doesn't mean I've been blogabsent. Our virtual baby shower for little miss Talia Grace has been delightful and charming, and I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with a suitable offering of my own. This dilemma is, of course, complicated by the fact that Blogspot doesn't seem to like uploading pictures from a Mac. As usual, insistence on something better than the status quo has its drawbacks (insert wry smile here).

Yesterday, I rearranged my room and discovered I have space for one more of the little black shelves I use (and table touchlamps). This is a blessing, since I display my Everyman's Library collection on them, and stock is beginning to outstrip capacity. So I took off for Target, home of the wrought-aluminum shelf and cracked-glass touchlamp, planning to drop thirty-odd bucks in the interest of aesthetic harmony.

I don't care for the new Roseville SuperTarget. I'm thrilled it's finally open, but I miss the old Store One. I could've made a beeline for the exact spot on those old, friendly shelves where they had what I wanted. Instead, I wandered around for half an hour, trying to make sense of the new layout amid the distraction of droves of people comparing tinsel styles while surrepetitiously humming "Jingle Bells."

Jingle Bells? On November 19? For this, I was woefully unprepared. I expected turkeys and horns-of-plenty, not reindeer-shaped fireplace tools and red foil bags of roasted chestnuts. Maybe even a corner of the store that featured nearly-bare shelves of candy corn and flame-retardant superhero capes. What happened?

I was lost. I couldn't find anything I was looking for, and maybe they no longer carry the stuff. I passed an aisle of wrapping paper and heard a disembodied baritone "fa-la-la-la-la"ing, and the next thing I knew I was striding through the parking lot, making a beeline for my car.

I think the gifts we choose say as much about the giver as the recipient. Maybe I'm just a narcissist in denial, but even with the people whose passions I can't understand, I look for gifts that speak to something we share, gifts that I can get excited about, too, gifts that might deepen the connection between us.

So Talia, my dear, if it were in my power, I would give you time. Time to wear pajamas with feet as long as possible. Time to be silly and messy. Time to remember well, to toss dry leaves at your brother and sister before you even think about making a Christmas list. Time to laugh at how crazy adults are. Time to notice how lucky you got in the Great Parental Lottery. Time to dive headfirst into worship and not worry about what's for lunch. Time to delight in all the gratuitous gifts of God.

And if my desire - my prayer for you - should be answered, I'm not ashamed to hope that God spreads it around a little.

Nutbars-R-US

2005-10-21T00:32:00.000-05:00

I am officially convinced that Wednesdays are Mental Illness Night at OfficeMax.

Seriously.

Last week, I went in to pick up these funky disposable fountain pens that Dr. Jones turned me on to (there's just something about that tactile scratchy non-ballpoint feeling, you know?). Walking toward the pen aisle, I noticed a middle-aged woman trying on notebooks. Literally. It seemed she was looking for one that would balance perfectly on top of her head. Yes, this actually happened.

So last night, I went to pick up a notebook (what happened to narrow ruled, people?), and got the double whammy. First, there was a couple walking through the store loudly discussing an upcoming lawsuit. I mean, confidential details overheard from four aisles away. Yes, this is socially awkward, but clearly not insane. What got me is that they spent at least ten minutes arguing over whether the legal documents should be printed on cream letterhead with roses or plain, simple lavender. Legal documents. Wow.

Then, I got to the checkout and was stuck behind this woman who was very upset that they didn't have the right ink cartridge. The cashier offered to help and asked what she was looking for. She pulled out one of those wallet cards that comes with your printer. "See? You DO NOT HAVE these!!!"

"OH! Yeah, we do! That's actually one of HP's most common models -- they're right here!"

"No, that has the same number, but it's not the same!"

"Well, ma'am, your printer is three years old. HP has changed their packaging twice since then."

"WHAT??? They can't do that!!! How are we supposed to find the right refill when the pictures don't look the same???"

Uh, by the number.

Wednesdays. OfficeMax Roseville. Mental Illness Night starting at around 7pm. Check it out if you have the time.

Maybe it's not right for me to be so amused, but these seem like trivial brokennesses, like hitches in a person's stride as they walk along the road rather than awkward limps or broken legs. I was talking with a high-school English teacher today, and she told me that she was called to the conference room yesterday to discuss a student. All the boy's other teachers were present along with the guidance counselor. The mother arrived about 10 minutes late. She informed the staff that she suspected her son was smoking pot, and she was very concerned. She asked the teachers if they'd seen any warning signs or indicators that the boy was baked, stoned, high, wasted, toked, messed up, gone, or in other altered states during classes. They all just kind of looked at each other and shrugged. "Not really," they answered, "but we'll be on the lookout." Then the guidance counselor, trying to be as helpful and supportive as possible, asked Mrs. X why she thought her son might be using. Without missing a beat, she replied:

"My stash has been short three weeks running."

Why is there so much brokenness in the world, and why is it so easy for us to ignore our own? I'm feeling really good right now -- all my homework was done by 5pm, and I got to spend the night mixing a new batch of cologne, doing my QBOR (that's Quarterly Bookshelf Organization Routine) and actually reading fiction for fun. I'm on top of my game. Yet, I'm not. The messy places are just in shadow, out of sight, out of mind.

Lord, now that the stress levels are down, now that there's room to breathe -- Thank You! But don't let me forget how utterly dead and hopeless even the upswings would be if I couldn't depend on You. Remind me to use this time to invite you deeper into the broken places and renovate at will. Come, Holy Spirit, and fill in the cracks. Let my rest be that of stillness and not stasis.

Thy kingdom come. Deo Gratias.

News Flash

2005-10-19T06:37:00.000-05:00

After a few weeks of construction (Power out, restart, power out, restart, ah chuck it...), CoraclesWakeRadio is back online. Currently playing music new to me in the past year -- enjoy!

Better Late than... well, you know.

2005-10-16T20:58:00.000-05:00

Well, in defiance of my profile as an "early adopter," I am only now getting around to doing the "survey thing." I can't make any promises, but I hope it was worth the wait.

Five things I want to do before I die:
1) Live in another country for at least a year. OK, I actually want to live in more than one country for at least a year -- Iceland, Scotland, Slovakia... the list keeps getting longer.
2) Publish
3) Read at least 2500 more books.
4) Own a house that has a nice kitchen (with an island and double oven) and a walk-in closet that I can convert to a chapel.
5) Become a whole lot more like Jesus.

Five things I can do:
1) laugh
2) see beauty
3) cook
4) put words together
5) cry

Five things I can't do:
1) be patient with Microsoft Windows.
2) conceal my feelings.
3) settle for bullshit answers.
4) keep my hair.
5) math.

Five little-known facts about me:
1) I used to have a pet snake. An Argentine Boa named Lucy. I miss her.
2) I was once the proud owner of a 1988 Yugo.
3) I need lots of alone time.
4) I've had dinner with a Bond girl.
5) I occasionally wear pajamas as if they were regular clothes.

Five (living) people I'd want to have with me if stranded on a desert island:
1) Bono - OK, so I'd be depriving the world -- shoot me. Good heart, great music, plus a mind that would produce some great conversations.
2) Janeane Garofalo - cute, sassy, an appropriate companion for my more bitter moments of tropical exile.
3) Billy Collins - witty, imaginative, could help me see the situation in unusual and delightful ways.
4) Anne Lamott - ditto on the witty, earnest, self-aware, and a bit neurotic. Imagine she and Janeane chatting it up...
5) Brian Greene - I've never really had time to learn string theory, not to mention basic physics in general, so his presence would be instructive.

Five (dead) people I'd want to have with me if stranded on a desert island (provided they weren't dead and all...)
1) Audrey Hepburn - Most beautiful woman EVER. Great accent, too. From what I've read she'd also be inclined to pitch in with huts and latrines.
2) Vincent VanGogh - Another one who could see beauty in unusual ways. Crazy is good on a desert island. And he'd always be up for lending an ear...
3) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - An appetite for fun, plus I'll bet ya anything he'd be coming up with Bamboo Concertos in short order.
4) Martin Buber - Someone to talk deep with. I have a few questions to follow up on both I and Thou and Good and Evil and we'd have nothing but time.
5) Flannery O'Connor - Wicked-sharp sense of humor, great perspective, deep faith, and imagine how she'd push everyone else's buttons... never a dull moment with Flannery around.

Five people I want to see do this next:
Anyone (if such a person exists) that hasn't done it already.

There ya go. Hope you all are blessed and enriched by the experience.

More blogging now -- Quad One is over. Come back soon.

All About the Music, Baby!

2005-10-08T01:51:00.000-05:00

All right, so last Saturday I was hanging out with timbur and p carlson and chattin about life and scifi and... music. Remembering the sheer, unadulterated Velveetafest that was the 80s.

Then I caught up on Ashley's blog, where she links to a search for the top 100 songs of the year you graduated (enter the year in the search field here). The list came up and... whoa-ho-hoooaaa, Nelly.

To my immense chagrin, I can sing at least four bars of 88/100 of them. That's actually kind of sad. Especially since these perennial classics include:

1. Look Away, Chicago
3. Every Rose Has Its Thorn, Poison
9. Baby, I Love Your Way/Freebird, Will To Power
11. Right Here Waiting, Richard Marx
13. Lost In Your Eyes, Debbie Gibson
15. Heaven, Warrant
23. I'll Be There For You, Bon Jovi
32. Eternal Flame, The Bangles
34. When I See You Smile, Bad English
37. When I'm With You, Sheriff
75. Shower Me With Your Love, Surface

The sheer volume of schmalz packed into a mere 365 days beggars the imagination. Add to this the fact that New Kids on the Block held no less than four slots. They tied with another band, but the New Kids only had 1 out of 4 in the top 30, and these dudes had all four. Any guesses? Awww, c'mon... wait... you've got it...

Milli Vanilli.

And you wonder why people wonder about me.

Oh, and yes, Virginia, the "Get to Know Me" post will be coming tomorrow.

An Open Letter to the NWC Homecoming Committee

2005-10-01T12:46:00.000-05:00

To whom it may concern:

I am a current student of Northwestern College who commutes from off-campus. In order to pay for school, rent, gas, insurance, ramen noodles, EasyMac, and water, I also work full-time. This particular homecoming weekend, I am working a total of 24 hours, so my time is something of a premium. Today, I had to photocopy a reserve text in the library and ran to campus at my earliest convenience. Leaving the library, to my intense dismay, I ran into the homecoming parade. It took me no less than 50 minutes to leave campus from my parking spot in front of the library.

Having so much time on my hands, I had the opportunity to formulate a few thoughts for your consideration:

1) A parade? The concept has a certain quaint charm, I'll admit, but Northwestern is neither Texas A&M nor Lake Wobegon. What, if I may be so bold as to ask, is the point? Last I checked, our football team is not what one would term a bright star in the universe of collegiate athletics. As Northwestern is, primarily, an academic community, can we not retain for ourselves a few shreds of dignity?

2) Further planning and recruitment may be required. A single fire engine, squadcar, convertible, and 2 SUVs with soap-stained windows and streamer-clad trailers does not constitute a "parade." I mean, come on people, even Courtney Love can manage better than that...

3) If you MUST have a "parade," would it be too much to ask to route the thing through the P.E. Center turnabout for the brunt of their vaudevillean shenanigans to allow a window of free-flowing traffic for those of us who happen to be about legitimate academic business? Such a route would also extend the amount of time allotted to the precious offspring of our alumni. After all, on a straight-line route, the number of tooth-rotting, obesity-promoting tokens of our collegiate esteem cannot even approach the potential quantity that could be offered by burying the P.E. Center walkup in Tootsie Rolls and Smarties.

Still, one could not have asked for a more lovely afternoon to be unexpectedly trapped in the purgatory of freeway traffic on a road that is not even legally considered a street.

Thank you for your service, and I wish you great(er) success in years to come.

Blessings,

Jeff Ostrom

P.S. I'm not bitter.

Diary of a Crazed Caucasian Caregiver

2005-09-27T08:35:00.000-05:00

OK, faithful blogfollowers, remember the underwear incident? For those of you who weren't here then or just need a refresher, click here.

Well, everything comes back around. Dear, sweet Tom is at it again. Our Fear Factor Challenge this week? Blankets. Nasty blankets. The kind of blankets that once had a lovely graphic design on them that is now indistinguishable for wear. Oh, yeah -- not to mention the layered pattern of those brown-ringed stains you refuse to try and identify for fear of succeeding.

It's not so bad - only two out of the eight blankets he has on his bed are practically rotting where they lay.

No big deal, right?

He's got six more, right?

Wrong.

Last night, my boss brought them out to the dumpster. No more than fifteen minutes later, they were back on the bed. So she put them in a bag, emptied the dumpster, put the blankets on the bottom, and loaded it back up. Problem solved.

This morning, I awake to find them both back on the bed. It's amazing. The boy is just not that limber, but he is dedicated, I'll give him that. I'm tempted to cut them into pieces and drop a chunk in every dumpster along Highway 65 between here and home. Just try and fix THAT, Tom!

Why, Oh, Why, are we all so bad with change? Especially when it's change for the better? Why do we get so attatched to the familiar and the comfortable things in our lives even when they're just gross? Maybe it's the word "change"... maybe we hear "different" as "unknown and new and scary"... "Metamorphosis" works for me until I remember Kafka, who pretty much blew that one out of the metaphor pool. I like "transformation" better, but just try and get Tom to enter into that one. Yet, that kind of transformation, that sort of change, is precisely what most of us say we crave... We pray with the psalmist, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me," but are we willing to release the blankets that have warmed us and kept us "safe"? To trade them for nakedness before Him? To depend solely on Him to clothe us and provide the trappings of whatever comforts we need? For me, all too often, the answer is "Uhhhmmmm...."

Lord, show me - show us - the filthiness of our rags, the worthlessness of clinging to anything but You. Lord, I believe. Help Thou my unbelief. Help me find my "Yes"es close at hand.

So let it be. Deo Gratias.

Rock (extended entry)

2005-09-25T13:20:00.000-05:00

That word pretty much sums up the last few weeks. Last monday, I met for prayer with some dear ones, and (naturally) the topic of the tensions came up. Jan said "you need a hammock." My mind was blown with the concept that instead of me holding the tensions, feeling as though I might snap, there might be a possibility of letting the tensions hold me -- bear me up in support and rest.

Then I went to work. I couldn't sleep and wound up watching Inside the Actor's Studio. The guest was Angelina Jolie, and while she's always seemed a bit dark and broken to me, she's hot. Really hot. So I wound up watching, and had a moment of illumination. James Lipton was asking her about her tattoos, specifically that he'd heard about the image of an open window on her back. She laughed and said "Yeah, but not anymore." When pressed for an explanation, she said, " I got that at a time in my life when I felt everything was closing in on me, like my life was about to implode, so I needed a window handy to climb out of. Now I live my life outside the window, so I closed it." And her smile wasn't dark or wounded, but real and full. It made me think.

This Friday, I went to see U2 with three of my best friends and had a thoroughgoing blast! The Star-Trib reviewer referred to Bono as "The Pope of Rock", and I think that fits. I have so much respect for the man and the band that I almost live in a precarious fear of it being shattered. Ken heard on the radio that all four members of the band were outside the Target Center, shaking hands and signing stuff for an hour and a half or so before the show. The biggest band in the world rubbing elbows with the fans? Wow.

The music was great, but the moments that stick with me most were the human ones. A young woman was down front with a sign that read "Bono, I lost 75 pounds to dance with you." He took the sign and held it up to the cameras, shaking his head in awe. Then he reached down and pulled her up on stage, dancing with her through "Elevation." He didn't HAVE to do that. And he didn't make a big deal about the weight thing or anything -- he just treated her like a person. He actually seemed honored to have her onstage.

At another moment, a parent held up a kid who couldn't have been more than nine or ten (never mind the ramifications of bringing a kid to a rock concert - I'm not going to argue that one. If it was U2 and I had a kid and I could afford it, I would have). Bono reached down and locked fingers with the kid, looking right into his eyes as he sang (if I remember right) "Where the Streets Have No Name." That is a lucky kid. I wonder if his life will be any different?

The word of the night was CoeXisT. The "C" was the crescent of Islam, the X was the Star of David, and the T was the cross. Bono named Muslims, Jews, and Christians as sons of Abraham, and he was right. He did not say that all three religions were right, or valid. He did not tout universalism. He simply appealed to our common heritage and called on us to see each other as human. He didn't say it in so many words, but he reminded us of the fingerprints of God on all humanity.

The concert made me wonder more about the open windows, about how to live outside them, honoring God and myself and others, resting in a hammock He wove. I had a nagging sensation that something's been wrong inside for a while. At first I pushed it away, writing it off to stress, but then I started to pay attention more and more and began to actively wonder. Church this morning only served to confirm the realization that's been stalking me for a while.

Thus, the other sense of the word "rock": my head. I realized that, since school started, I've been practicing the presence of homework. Practicing the presence of the tensions, and not the One who resolves them. I am so sorry. I'm sorry for all the friends to whom I haven't been myself. I'm sorry for the opportunities I've let slide. I'm sorry for insisting on carrying all this and shutting out the only Hands that are strong enough. I give up. This is a lesson I never seem to master, but for the moment at least, I'm dropping the fear and the performance and the stress and the sorrow. I still have homework to do, but I'm trying to go to it prayerfully, listening. I hope I'm not the only thick skull here in blogland, but even if I am, I'm just grateful that God's patient enough to crack it.

I wish all of you the hammock of His goodness and the rest of His grace.

Deo Gratias.

A Ten-Minute Laughter Massage

2005-09-19T23:08:00.000-05:00

A great professor is a wonderful thing. New to my schedule this year is Dr. Keith "Double-Shot" Jones. Okay, I don't actually USE the nickname, it's just my late-night, ham-handed way of telling you that I have two classes with him -- Shakespeare and Literature of Humor.

Beyond the fact that I'm pretty much going to get along with any prof who assigns The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, we've had some good chats.

So when I got to work tonight and found an email from Dr. Jones containing this link, I found myself collapsing with laughter -- a laughter that was more therapeutic for me than 14 consecutive hours of sleep. Take the tour, but be warned - you may never look at mackerel the same way again.

Something's Gotta Give...

2005-09-12T01:23:00.000-05:00

It is 1:21am, and I am just settling in to my last piece of homework for the night. My body is letting me know, in no uncertain terms, that I am not 19 anymore.

Earlier, on my way home from a class discussion group, I was seized by the desire to quit. Now, I'm something of a career quitter, but at that moment in the car, I've never wanted to quit so badly in my life. Quit school, quit my job, quit church, quit relationships and, like Hotblack Desiato in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, "spend a year dead for tax reasons."

Heather's referral to this blog as a resource on holding the tensions is a huge compliment, but what do you do when the tensions have you feeling like the waistband on a twenty-year-old pair of boxers -- all stretched out?

Once, just once, for the sake of variety if nothing else, I wish God would call me to something possible. Manageable, even.

Fortunately, He loves me too much.

When everything you're doing is needful, maybe it's not so much someTHING that has to give, but SomeONE. And He does. I actually have energy for homework right now, and I KNOW that ain't about me. Impossibility breeds dependence, and dependence is a funny sort of freedom.

A few years ago, I was meditating and listening to worship music when a Vineyard song came on that repeated the line "Every good and perfect gift comes from You." I remember weeping in gratitude. Our God gives and gives and gives so much... so often... so freely.

Blessed be the Name of the Lord! Deo Gratias. Amen.

A Digital Dilemma

2005-09-07T22:24:00.000-05:00

Tonight, as I was killing a little time, I deliberately opted for non-required reading - in other words, having nothing to do with class. I grabbed a book of essays by a "technophile" (a label I can identify with) and came across the following words:

I'd like to think that computers are neutral, a tool like any other, a hammer that can build a house or smash a skull. But there is something in the system itself, in the formal logic of programs and data, that recreates the world in its own image. Like the rock-and-roll culture, it forms an irresistible horizontal country that obliterates the long, slow, old cultures of place and custom, law and social life. We think we are creating the system for our own purposes. We believe we are making it in our own image. We call the microprocessor the "brain"; we say the machine has "memory." But the computer is not really like us. It is a projection of a very slim part of ourselves: that portion devoted to logic, order, rule, and clarity. It is as if we took the game of chess and declared it the highest order of human existence.

The fact that Ellen Ullman, the author of this passage, is a computer programmer by virtue of something not unlike a religious vocation added extra weight to these words. Something unfamiliar rose up in me: a resistance to technology. Great. Just what I needed: another tension.

I am tremendously grateful for the blog. Thanks to this whacky universe we call cyberspace, part of me gets to be in Slovakia with Matt and Diane. This crazy-busy college student inhabiting my flesh gets to hear from people he loves but rarely gets to see. Like Bruce, who scribbles out his missionary heart in the middle of a culture that sees itself as beyond the need for such people. What utter crap. If I'm honest, I have to admit I see a mission field half the time I look in the mirror.

Yet, as great as this is and as many doors as it opens, blogworld is just no substitute for so many things: The warmth of Gloria's smile as she waves at me across the sanctuary. Christi's motherly presence on my left in pre-service prayer. Judy's depth of insight that mixes with her wit in ways that call forth astounded laughter. The sense of deep care and centered purpose that Jan wears like a mantle. Heather's obvious delight in the minds and souls of the students God's given her to shepherd. The fierceness of Tim's embrace as we say goodbye after two hours of deep, authentic life-sharing at Dunn Brothers on a Wednesday night.

Tensions. I guess there are always more waiting to be entered into. Sometimes I feel painfully stretched like a guitar string. But what I'm wondering tonight is if the ultimate resolution to those tensions is the Person of Love... if the tensions exist solely to provide God an instrument on which to play the melody of His all-surpassing goodness...

Eh... another incomplete metaphor to add to my collection. Regardless, I felt like I needed to share all this tonight, and to make explicit the following reality: Whether our connection is live and in person or mainly digital, I love you all beyond the power of words to capture, and am so blessed to lift you before God in thanksgiving.

Soli Deo Gloria. Fiat Lux (for those who've asked, it's Latin for "let there be light")!

On the Complexity of God and Coordinating Conjunctions

2005-09-04T15:35:00.000-05:00

Allright. I know, it's been too long, but I've been readjusting to a life spent keeping balls in the air. I should be there soon, but in the meantime what I lack in frequency I will likely make up in volume.

Getting back to school has been glorious and hard. I have the honor to be in H. Jane's theory class, and that has been stretching. In fact, this semester is all-English all the time. As a result, something I've noticed happening last year is somehow stronger this semester: the sense of everything being connected. My classes inform each other in a way that can't be planned, since the profs are hardly in collusion with one another, and I feel like I'm not big enough to grasp the whole. I get that old sense of spiritual vertigo as I mentally "zoom out" when those connections happen and I feel like I get higher and see more every time. Yet I can't quite grasp it...

I hear Brennan Manning in my head saying, over and over, "God is always greater." I am so mindful of God-over-all in a way I can't remember experiencing before as He keeps busting through boxes. I'm not nearly (and will never be) a universalist, but I have less taste than ever for an exclusive, country-club, no-heathens-allowed kind of Christianity. My brain's a bit fried, so I'll quote an article by Gene Edward Veith, Jr. that we read in theory class:

It must dawn on anyone who seriously studies worldview, whether as reader or writer, that the Christian worldview is, in fact, bigger, broader, and more comprehensive than any of the humanly devised weltanschauungs. The non-Christian worldviews, to give them credit, are more than erroneous philosophies. They usually contain at least a grain of truth. The problem is that human philosophies tend to be partial, while the full truth as God reveals it is complex and comprehensive. It has been said that human reason works with "either/or." Christianity works with "both/and." Human reason would say that Jesus Christ must be either God or a man. Christian revelation says that He is both God and man. Human beings are both images of God and miserable sinners.

That starts to get there for me. I have the sense that God is all over the word "and." If I am truly seeking to see more of who He is, to be more like Him, then I need to be more about "and" than I am about "but" or "not."

Years ago, I heard a song by Waterdeep that has that word as its title. Something in me wept in identification every time I heard that song. It came back to me again at the end of communion today, when the cross connected the lyrics to my life once again. It's now officially joined the ranks of my personal theme songs.

I am haunted by my love for comparison,
a fascination with a single common theme
and I am hounded by the fear I might be losing it
slipping from reality into a dream.
And when my mind is muddled by the way it seems to work,
I start looking for just one connecting force
someone to assure me that we didn't lose the war today
and that the battle's General's still riding on His horse.

And in the mornings when I wake, I often come to You with dreams
little bits of plot that I can't comprehend
Sometimes I can keep my eyes unclosed for long enough
To see the blowing of a distant, steady wind
And the distance doesn't take too long for You to cover it
And when You reach me You just blow these things apart.
You clear the cloud that's gathered round the crisis of my soul
And whisper to my suffocating heart.

And is the juice in the joints of the motion of life.
And is the love that is between God and His beautiful wife
And has two hands and two feet and a long, ugly side
And rose three days after He was crucified.

So You're the force of gravity that I feel pulling at my feet
You're the pure light at the center of the sun.
It's Your Ghost that fills the atmosphere with what we need to breathe
Everything I've ever wondered, You're the One.
Well, both my hands are stained with blood, both my lips are stained with tears
from when I kissed the widow of the Man I killed.
You're asking me to swallow Your forgiveness here today
You say the bond required for my pardon's been fulfilled,

And is the juice in the joints of the motion of life.
And is the love that is between God and His beautiful wife
And has two hands and two feet and a long, ugly side
And rose three days after He was crucified.
And is the juice in the joints of the motion of life.
And is the love that is between God and His beautiful wife
And has two hands and two feet and a long, lovely side
And rose three days after He was crucified.

Hallelujah. Deo Gratias. Amen.

Holy Ghost in the Machine, Part Deux.

2005-08-24T00:05:00.000-05:00

I had just finished my last post, and it was time to go see my best friend Ken (we've been best friends for over 20 years). He let me know tonight that he's officially taking the last U2 ticket I have available.

On the way there, U2's song "Vertigo" came on. I spent the first half still dwelling on my upside-down life and the last blog entry when I was arrested by these words, just at the end (caps mine).

Hello, hello... I'm at a place called Vertigo
Lights go down and all I know
Is You give me something...
Your love is teaching me how....
Your love is teaching me how...
How to kneel...
Kneel...

So so SO true. So as I go to kneel before bed, in honor of God's collusion with the biggest band in the world, I hereby declare tomorrow to be "U2 day" at Coracle's Wake Radio!

Deo Gratias!

Oh, Inverted World

2005-08-23T16:52:00.000-05:00

I finished my last summer school class - Intro to Desktop Publishing - and it was a bit of an exercise in frustration. I got so busted. I dork around for fun on professional-grade Adobe products, so I thought this was going to be cake. Think again, sucker... The software we used was just different enough from what I'm used to to feel backward and uncomfortable - sensations I'm not used to here on Planet Geek. I felt as if I was working upside-down, locked in a pair of those late-80s gravity boots. I quickly stressed, and turned into an absolute whiney little b*tch... I feel so bad for my prof. My classmates will be in Tech Writing with me starting Thursday, so I'll have a chance to redeem myself, but I'll probably never have/see this prof again, so I feel bad to have been such a punk. Ah, well.

The stress and regret sent me into a bit of a funk, until today I saw a bumper sticker that said: "Where are we going? And what am I doing in this handbasket?" I busted out laughing - it felt like such a good fit, like (once again) God's sense of humor dumped cold water on my face and restored some perspective.

I start school tomorrow morning and have no clue how to feel about it. I guess I'll just roll...

Like many of us in blogland, many of my thoughts and prayers are with Jan and her dad. Yesterday's post struck me with inversion - thus my ripping off the Shins for the title of this blog. Jan, who has sat with so many in such similar circumstances, now sits for her dad and herself. The prayer-giver needs prayer. And don't we all.

I thank God that in so many ways His Kingdom is inverted - that ultimate victory came through apparent defeat, that the most unloveable are valued most highly, that LIFE is only ever acheived through death... and I'm trying to learn to be well when things are upside-down...

Fiat Lux....

My Own Little Boat...

2005-08-18T15:38:00.000-05:00

Hey, all. I know it's been a while, but Jeffy's been busy.

A few weeks ago, I was calmly minding my own business and checking blogs when I saw Christy's coracle post. That image -- Reepicheep in his coracle, drinking the sweet water of the Utter East -- hit the waters of my soul like Louie Anderson doing a cannonball. I let it in and waited for the waters to settle.

Then Judy followed up, talking about the rich imagery of risky obedience connected to that same Welsh invention. It caught my attention. I broke out my Esther DeWaal books and reread the sections that dealt with coracles. I let those words and images stew, but I still felt like there was something missing... Some of the ingredients were getting left out.

So, I googled it. I read the wikipedia entry and discovered that coracles are so light because they're usually animal hide (skins) stretched over a wooden framework. Doesn't sound particularly seaworthy, but they're easy for one person to carry. No rough portages here. I clicked over to images, and I found pictures of solitary people floating calmly, a photo of a group carrying their coracles from one canal to another, an image of five or six children clustered in their coracles and splashing one another with their oars. I found a society of welshmen that make their own coracles to preserve the tradition as the craft are vanishing from the rivers and moors. The story that caught me most was one of lower-class fishermen, too poor to afford anything but a coracle. They would fish in pairs, stringing a net between the two boats until they had something of a catch. At that point, they'd pull on the nets, drawing the tiny boats together so they could haul in the catch and share it between them.

What a lovely picture of the dance between solitude and community! I sat back and reflected on my life - on the places the winds have taken me, on the way I can now see that (no matter how choppy the waters) I was where I needed to be. I felt like my bones were a wooden framework on which my skin has been stretched to provide a perfect little vehicle for my soul to travel. Alone with God or together with others, floating in a quiet marsh or so far out to sea I don't remember the sight of land, this coracle has served me well.

Thus was born my mad scientist project. I've been thinking about something like this for years, and I finally felt like this was an appropriate framework for it. So I broke out my check card, fired up Dreamweaver, and created my own website. I'd like to invite you all to check out Coracle's Wake. I know it looks pretty shabby at the moment, but I made it from scratch and with love. I promise it will get better.

I'm learning. These waters are new to me, but they taste of sweetness and growth and a hint of fatigue. My email is changing, too. Be gentle, but even if you're not, you are very welcome.

Deo Gratias

A Passel of Random Updates

2005-08-13T20:13:00.000-05:00

1) The library page is reformatted per jjB's idea -- brilliant. It's now searchable and browseable all on one page, so that's good. It will, however, take some time to load -- particularly over dial-up. If you want to check it out (pretty please, as a favor to me?), click HERE.

2) The co-worker scheduled to come in for me this morning pulled a no-show, so I'm hitting the wall after an 18.5 hour shift with the boys. I'm really not sure I'm cut out for parenthood.

3) My little "MAD SCIENTIST" project is coming along nicely... More to come on that score.

4) The newsreader thing is still cool and has nothing to do with the fact that I've not been commenting much lately. That's all about time and brainfry.

5) Medically speaking, I'm all good.

6) Chow Yun-Fat is THE MAN.

More topically coherent stuff this coming week... And I promise they will be almost entirely geek-free.

Really.

Geek In Need of Advice...

2005-08-12T00:45:00.000-05:00

OK. I don't know how many of you have spent any time at "The Original JeffSite," (see right bar) or if you've gotten to the library if you have. I'm not happy with them pages. They're overwhelming. Unfortunately, I don't have the capacities yet to get all my books into a web-searchable database -- that. would. rule.

My software is also somewhat limited in its output capacities. So say you're looking to borrow a book from me. You decide to go to my website to see what I have/if I have what you're looking for. Would you rather:

A) Have it as it is now (50 items per page, sorted alphabetically first by genre, then author, then title. Lots of information per page, but only 17 pages.

B) Smaller chunks of information (15 items per page, sorted the same way -- less to process, but 56 pages to wade through)

C) "Press One for Theosophy" (A different set of pages for each genre, but if I export them this way, the sorting disappears, so C.S. Lewis may show up on all five pages in the genre, but there are only five pages...)

Please, Lord, there's gotta be a better way...

"Duh" Moments That Lead to Happiness

2005-08-09T22:41:00.000-05:00

The life of a "computer geek" is chock full of "Duh" moments. You know, the kind where you've spent half an hour looking for your car keys only to realize they've been clipped to your belt loop the whole time?

I recently had one of these when I read Craig's comment to my post on Too Many Blogs. He said something like "I hope you're using something like Pluck or Thunderbird..." and I was like "Duh! I need me an RSS reader! These are programs that let you enter the sites you check and they check them for you -- displaying new posts when they're posted. MUCH more low-maintenance than clicking through 50 bookmark tabs per day.

So, I did my homework. Pluck is only for Internet Explorer or Firefox (I use neither) and is browser-integrated (I wanted a stand-alone program). Thunderbird is a mail client that also handles blog/news feeds. I tried it for most of the day and it didn't really do what I wanted.

Then I came across NewsFire, a Mac-only client from an amateur software designer who also wrote some other programs I love enough to use every day. It's simple, it's clean, it does what I want -- in otherwords, it keeps to that delightful Apple spirit.

If you're like me -- with new friends getting their own blogs almost daily -- an RSS reader is well worth looking into. Check it just like your email box... But be sure to still post me comments :-)

Seeing More (Part Three): The Discipline of Attention

2005-08-06T04:48:00.000-05:00

“Didn’t have a camera by my side this time
Hoping I could see the world through both my eyes”
-- John Mayer, “3x5”

John has a point. But sometimes, a camera can help you see – or at least pay attention. Last summer, we were reading Esther DeWaal's book Lost in Wonder, and I got this hunger to pay attention, to see more. On an impulse, I went away to my parents’ house for a weekend and took my dad’s new pro digital camera out for a walk. I found all kinds of crazy beautiful stuff within five minutes of the house and was amazed that, for twenty years, I just plain hadn’t noticed.

Since then, I occasionally grab my camera to take pictures of everyday things. It’s not a discipline, really… more of an exercise. An attempt to pay attention, to see things from a different vantage point and open myself. It’s like switching my eyes into four-wheel drive, giving me more perceptive traction somehow.

The last time I did this was while I was dogsitting for Malette’s. They have a lovely apartment, and I wanted to see it in pieces to explore the unique minutae of the environment. I strung some of those images together here (a broadband connection would be helpful...).

The exercise is good. The attentive mindset helps me go deeper. The discipline it energizes and cultivates is one of inviting divine attention to my inner décor. Taking a loving look with God at my soul’s furniture that I rarely see in the midst of rushing around to get things done. Some pieces need to be rearranged or refinished. Some need to be thrown out. Most need to be noticed… recognized… appreciated.

The rhythm of noticing also helps me love better in response to everyday moments. The line that shows up in my mother’s face when my dad makes some remark over the cell phone... The blank stare of a fellow student when I make some 80s pop-culture reference... The tear in the eye of the woman coming forward for prayer... I suspect that the little things, the things I so often miss, are usually the 10% of the iceberg.

The camera, the exercise, the discipline – they help me pay attention, within and without, so I can steer myself away from shipwreck and maybe nudge others in a similar direction.

Lord, nothing is so small as to escape your gaze. Help me to pay attention to You, that I may see more and deeper. Help me keep my eyes on Your face so that when You look somewhere, I can follow Your glance and move.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, make it so.

Seeing More (Part Two): The Word and Images

2005-08-04T13:02:00.000-05:00

I got my first Bible midway through the second grade. One of the advantages of growing up in a small-town Baptist church is that you wind up with respect for and knowledge of the Word, whether you're aware of it or not. Our church had an admirable commitment to giving each student two bibles: a children's bible midway through second grade and a leatherbound study bible for graduation.

When my number first came up, it was 1978. McDonald's had recently introduced the Happy Meal, Debby Boone's star was in the ascendant, and the world was thrilled to shift its attention from the cold war to incredible things that supposedly happened a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Rumor had it they were making a Star Trek movie, and everyone knew it could never match Star Wars. The idea of Leia being Luke's sister would have been met with derisive laughter -- I mean, she kissed him, for crying out loud! Gross! And if someone had posited Darth Vader as Luke's father, I suspect I would have reached for the nearest bludgeoning tool. Like everyone else, I wanted nothing more than my own lightsaber and made every effort to let my parents know that depriving me of one constituted child abuse. My jungle gym became the gunner's turret of the Millenium Falcon and the schoolbus became a Star Wars Trading card swap meet.

In the midst of all this, our Sunday School teacher offered us a choice: The Illustrated Bible for Children or the Children’s Living Bible. We got to look over a copy of each before making our decision. The former was Bible-as-comic-book. All the major stories and parables, very little in terms of the law or genealogies or epistles, just page after page of images conveying What God Did. The latter was your standard Bible. It contained both testaments in an easy-to-read paraphrase, words of Christ in red, and a few color plates.

I turned out to be the only one who went with Option B. As I said, I was more into “real” books anyway, and this felt like the more "adult" thing to do. Besides, after watching the Death Star blow, six-color comic images just seemed lame. On the following Sunday, I unwrapped my new Bible and just petted it for a few minutes. The cover was ivory-colored faux-leather over cardboard, with the title etched in gold foil and a picture of Jesus holding a young boy on his lap, pointing out a part of the Word. I thumbed the pages, feeling superior to the other kids who were saying things like “That’s not a very good whale…” or “So that’s what Mary looked like!”

The only thing I remember about that Bible today is the picture on the cover. When I open the Word to study, I sometimes think of that little boy and clamber up into Jesus’ lap in my head. It’s comfy there.

This all came back to me several weeks ago, when I joined some dear friends in visiting the Art Institute to see sections of the St. John’s Bible. This is an incredible project, amazing in its detail, artistry, scope, and beauty. We wandered through the cases, looking at these rich images next to the text of divine revelation.

Most of the pictures were a bit abstract, the artists’ manifest bow before mystery. I think I was most moved by the frontispiece to the Gospel of John. The rich colors held the depth of the universe,and symbols blended with the Word to deepen my encounter with God. I began to catch a glimpse of the Bible as art, to experience the Jesus-Word as Beauty, to see all human history and the life of the Church as God’s magnificent tapestry of Who He IS. For a moment, I wished I could page through that other Bible – the one I didn’t choose all those years ago. I wanted to experience the stories, child-like, in basic line and color and form.

And then I looked around. This is the story, I realized. This is the painting, the tapestry, the sculpture of God’s love and glory. These trees. These clouds. These friends. It’s all right here, and it’s been going on forever. I thought of the scene in Postcards From the Edge where Meryl Streep tells Gene Hackman: “That’s my problem. I don’t want life to imitate art, I want life to BE art.”

I’m with ya, Meryl, but I don’t think it’s a problem. I think it’s precisely what God had in mind. Painting and Symphony and Dance and Tapestry and Gourmet Feast all at the same time.

Lord, make it so in me. Help me see with those eyes more and more, and in all the works of Your hands display your artistry to Your neverending glory. Deo Gratias.

A little (geeky) comic relief

2005-08-03T13:03:00.000-05:00

OK, say you're a Macintosh person. The past few years with OS X have made your computing life a dream, and you've found yourself more and more willing to wade into the Windows vs. Mac fracas. How many times has this happened to you:

You've got some Windows geek totally backed into a corner. You smoked him on stability, security, user-friendliness, design, and cool factor. He rallied with the whole objection about there not being any good games for Mac, but you successfully managed to make the argument about "real" computing, not frivolous time killing supported by vast quantities of caffeine. You can see him sweating. He's glancing around for an escape route. You can sense his panic rising as he realizes he may actually have to admit Apple superiority. You're almost salivating...

Then his eyes light up. He's found a silver bullet: "Well, how come the mice still only have one button?"

Crap. Not that again. In past arguments, you've tried to argue that macs are so seamless and powerful, you only need one button, but Apple itself has betrayed you by including support for extra buttons not only in applications, but the OS itself. And they always know... the Windows diehards always know.

Stop right there. Don't slouch, don't start sweating, don't let him smell your fear. There's nothing to be afraid of anymore. Uncle Steve has finally come to your aid.

Take heart, courageous macgeek. The reinforcements have arrived. Time to close in for the kill.

Hey, all you acolytes of the Church of Microsoft? BRING IT ON!!!

Seeing More (Part One): Words and Images

2005-08-02T11:45:00.000-05:00

Growing up, my cousin Brian was Officially Cool. He is four and a half years older than me and he lived in the city. He had great stuff and a sophisticated, wisecracking sense of humor. So, of course, I idolized him. Not completely – I had zero interest in sports, so his collection of 20,000 baseball cards meant nothing to me – but in most other ways, Brian was The Man.

His other major collecting passion was comic books. I remember his prized possession was Fantastic Four #88. No Superman or Batman for this guy – they were too established for their books to hold any value. X-men, X-factor, FF, Spidey, Doctor Strange – these were his ouvre. Every time I came over, he gave me a refresher course in handling the books: turn the pages gently, try and touch only the edges, and never, EVER let the corners get bent. Each comic was reinforced by cardboard in its plastic sleeve, and I’d never get through more than four before he got too agitated and made me put them away.

The stories were great, if a bit heavy-handed. All about Good Vs. Evil, the neverending burden of misunderstanding that comes with a secret identity, the death-defying adventure, the certainty that (no matter how dark the scene before the words “to be continued”) Good, in the person of Our Hero(es), would triumph in the end.

I have to admit, I occasionally fantasized about Brian “outgrowing” comics, or tragically perishing in a bizarre softball accident and leaving his entire collection to me. I’d take good care of them, really I would. Nasty, I know, but hey – I was eleven.

Even at that age, though, I preferred “real” books. I liked the pictures in my head better than the ones someone else had drawn. The worlds in my mind were so much bigger and brighter than a twelve-panel page and my characters moved in three dimensions. They breathed and lived in the space between the author and me.

In the past few months, though, I’ve been spending more and more time in what are now termed “graphic novels.” The vast majority of them are still overgrown comic books complete with superheroes and epic tone, they just have more room for complexity in the story. The ones I’ve been seeking out, the ones that fascinate me, are different – distinctly uncomicbooky (Look, ma! A whole new word!). In fact, most of them are rendered in stark black and white.

Persepolis is the story of a girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. It chronicles her social and spiritual uncertainty in the midst of that upheaval. I picked up Maus: A Survivor's Tale because it was billed as the Holocaust with the Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, but it goes so much deeper. It's about families, the way we shape each other, the aftermath of suffering on relationships, experiences, and decisions. It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken tells of the artist's quest for an obscure cartoonist, but it spoke to me of dreams and passions and duties and tensions and contentment.

These are stories without easy answers, stories that have no end other than a certain sense of grace and perhaps a taste of greater understanding. Stories that feel less like spandex and artifice and more like real life. They require fewer words because they rely on images to carry the emotional undertone of events. Art becomes a sort of shorthand for human experience in unpredictable ways. The realities illuminated are sad and funny and rich and beautiful, and I hope to get to more soon. They give me another way to see.

Check them out if you have the time.

Too Many Blogs!!!

2005-08-02T09:50:00.000-05:00

I finally sat down for a moment and sorted my 50+ blogs I check into separate bookmark folders. Whew. I feel much more together now. :-)

Under the Water

2005-07-31T21:56:00.000-05:00

Baptism was beautiful. I was overwhelmed by God's foresight in giving us sacraments that involve our whole persons in Kingdom reality. It seems like the world so often provides only the illusion of connection. A trailer for a movie out now touts online dating as "a chance to be whoever you want to be." It seems so much time and energy are devoted to building this wardrobe of illusory selves -- an outfit for every occasion -- to the point where we forget who we really are. Disconnected from each other. Disconnected from ourselves. Disconnected from God. See Abba's Child by Brennan Manning for more.

Yet at the lake Saturday morning, the waters were cool, the smiles and the tears were genuine, God's presence was real. We touched and were touched. The Spirit stirred over both physical and spiritual waters. With all of who they are, God's beloved surrendered publicly to Him, declared their utter dependence, and were blessed. Heaven rejoiced in the faithfulness of those to whom God has been faithful.

Lisa was taking pictures and video of the event, and she said that in much of the video, all that can be heard is the sounds of the moving water. There's something appropriate in that for me.

I realize I haven't said much here lately. In a sense, I've been under the waters myself -- not knowing whether I have nothing to say or entirely too much for words. Probably both. Anyhow, as promised, I'll share my reflections on images this week. Check back soon, check back often. Deo Gratias!

Words and Images

2005-07-22T17:38:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking alot about these over the past several months. Judy's blogs on beauty, books I've been reading, photography work and so many other things in my life have orbited questions both philosophical and practical about the conveyance of meaning. Mostly, all that stuff went into a pot on the back burner of my soul to cook. It's possible that I'll be ready to ladle something out for tasting early next week.

One of those things has been this site: PostSecret.

My friend Daniel introduced me to it, and it's quite remarkable. Here's the premise: write or draw something you've kept hidden on one side of a postcard and mail anonymously. This untold fragment of your story makes its way through the world via the US postal service until delivered to the site admin, who may or may not scan and post it. It's kind of a cross between vast art project and techno-confessional. The idea seems lovely in some ways and harrowing in others.

Warning: there are two images (line drawings, not photos), way down, that are a bit explicit, and some of them are crass. Don't let your kids read over your shoulder unless you're ready for a lot of 'splaining to do. BUT - it's worth it. Some of these are quite funny and clever. Almost all are thought-provoking, and many will break your heart and move you to pray for the person and the world. At least, that's what happened to me in a way I wasn't expecting. Check it out. If you do, and want to share in the comments section of this post any cards that spoke to you, that might be kind of neat, but no pressure.

Fiat Lux, and may God bless each and every one of you this summer weekend.

(Holy) Ghost in the Machine...?

2005-07-20T22:22:00.000-05:00

As I was pulling out of Panera on my way to baptism class, I remembered the iPod in my pocket was freshly loaded with a new worship playlist (somehow, I managed to lose all my playlists and have been slowly building them back up). I hooked it up and pushed play, hoping to get my heart ready for whatever God had on tonight's itinerary.

Class began with table talk. Our table revisited something one of the candidates had shared last week -- that baptism was somewhat intimidating, since it would basically be stepping off the fence in a very public, unretractable way. People might have higher expectations as a result. We talked about obedience... accountability... the power of testimony.

Jan led us in an opening prayer before we moved to the main event: the candidates' sharing of their faith stories. The whole group sat in a circle, faces open to each other. Some looked nervous, others at peace. Each candidate shared as they felt led, and we heard story after story filled with pain and grace and need and struggle and deliverance. Beautiful stories that rang with honesty and truth. In one way or another, each and every candidate said the same two things:

"God is amazingly, incomprehensibly faithful!"
and
"Jesus alone offers LIFE -- life beyond survival -- life that is worth living!"

I felt as though heaven was lit by God's loving "yes!" over each speaker in turn; like grace was rippling backwards, moving inward toward the person who spoke. As we closed, Jan and Becky anointed and prayed God's blessing over each candidate. I left with a sense of the vast panorama of God's goodness. Sliding into my car, I turned the iPod back on to let the worship serve as a background while I prayerfully savored the stories I'd just heard.

One of the odd characteristics of the contemporary worship movement is that you often find the same song on three or four different collections -- the studio version, the artist's live version, the version recorded at the Passion conference, etc. You may find yourself wondering "How many times will I pay for the same song?" Well, my whole collection went on the iPod, and my iPod is always set on random. And so it came to pass that I was pulled out of my musings by the realization: "Wait, this is the album mix of the song that just finished..." With each candidate's journey fresh in my heart, I actively listened to the same words I'd already heard:

The Cross before me, the world behind
No turning back, raise the banner high
It's not for me, it's all for You!
Let the heavens shake and split the sky
Let the people clap their hands and cry
It's not for us, it's all for You!

Not to us, but to Your name be the glory!
Not to us, but to Your name be the glory!

Our hearts unfold before Your throne
The only place for those who know:
It's not for us, it's all for You!
Send Your holy fire on this offering,
Let our worship burn for the world to see
It's not for us, it's all for You!

Not to us, but to Your name be the glory...

The earth is shaking, the mountains shouting
It's all for You
The waves are crashing, the sun is raging
It's all for You
The universe, spinning and singing
It's all for You...

In that moment, the imagery of sunlight and water was all about summer baptism. With the randomness of the iPod, God caught my attention. The event these much-beloved Kingdom children are preparing for is a consummate act of worship. While going into the waters will demonstrate a desire to be faithful to God and say something about who they are, any "performance anxiety" will be swallowed up by God's faithfulness to them. As each publicly affirms his or her commitment to Jesus, each will also be publicly repeating, in a whole-self way and with the entire universe shouting along, the two truths every one of them affirmed tonight: Jesus is LIFE, and He is faithful!!! The unfolding of their hearts in obedience will shake the heavens and reveal to their family, friends, and community who HE is. In the hallowed motions of baptism, every part of who they are -- spirit, will, soul, mind, heart, and body -- will move together and declare the glory of the Lord.

OK, OK, I know I'm getting wordy, but I can't describe the richness of what I was tasting there in my driver's seat.

Turning onto 169, I was humbled and overwhelmed with honor to have a chance to be a part of this; to get to hear and walk with these "living stones." My mind and heart dwelt on who God is and how much He has done in me and in them until, weeping, I had to pull over and let my soul cry out from the level of my DNA: "DEO GRATIAS!!! BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD!!!"

I'm now at work, and I know it's going to be a while before I can sleep, but I've rambled on for long enough. Pray for us -- the baptism candidates, sponsors, facilitators and guests, that we may all see more as we continue this journey. Thanks.

Oh, and the next song that played? Trading My Sorrows. I love it when God abandons subtlety altogether.

Wise Companionship from a Dead Monk.

2005-07-15T14:06:00.000-05:00

I think a massive form of comfort in holding the tensions comes with the sense that others are, too. There's an odd solidarity between those who value solitude, those who long to be separate from things so they can be closer to God. As I was thinking and reading last night, I picked up Tomas Merton's Dialogues with Silence, and I had to read this entry like six times to let it sink in:

My God, it is to You alone that I can talk because nobody else will understand. I cannot bring anyone on this earth into the cloud where I dwell in Your light - that is, in Your darkness where I am lost and abashed. I cannot explain to anyone the anguish which is Your joy, nor the loss which is the possession of You, nor the distance from all things which is the arrival in You, nor the death which is the birth in You, because I do not know anything about it myself. All I know is that I wish it were over - I wish it were begun.

You have contradicted everything. You have left me in no-man's land.

You have got me walking up and down all day under those trees, saying to me over and over again: "Solitude, solitude." And You have turned around and thrown the whole world in my lap. You have told me, "Leave all things and follow me," and then You have tied half of New York to my foot like a ball and chain. You have got me kneeling behind that pillar with my mind making a noise like a bank. Is that contemplation?

Wow. I get that. It's good to know Merton was there, too. It's good to know my blogsiblings are wrangling some of the same questions. It's good to know God is HERE, and all that He is is good, and holy, and available. Again, Deo Gratias.

On Falling Rocks and Troubled Waters

2005-07-13T23:58:00.000-05:00

In case my last post wasn't direct enough, the past few days have been hard. Thanks to my beloved blogsiblings for your words of solidarity and encouragement. You have no idea how you bless me, or how much it means to ask and be answered. Of course, it was Jesus who said "Ask and it shall be given you."

Tonight, He put His two cents in.

I wasn't thrilled about going to baptism class. I was feeling very weak and tossed and uncertain, not remotely competent to stand with my new friend Jason as I sponsor him in this process. But I felt like I was at least up to the first two elements Judy reminded me of: show up and pay attention. Before I knew it, rocks were falling into the choppy cauldron of my soul.

Rock #1: Instruction in Reality -- Each year, those participating in baptism are given a t-shirt that bears the logo of water and the cross on the front, and a single word on the back. Jan explained that a different word is selected each year. This year's word? Beloved. As she said the word, I had one of those Homer-Simpson "D'oh!" moments. God split the word in two and it became a command, answering the question of my last post: BE LOVED. I realized I haven't been paying attention to that reality much lately. I felt sheepish. Which is appropriate, since I am a sheep.

Rock #2: History, both Personal and Corporate -- Becky (whose heart I love) spoke on the symbolism and history of baptism, and at one point she shared how those going into the waters of baptism would disrobe as they came up and let the flowing waters carry their old garments away. As that image formed in my head, another rock dropped as I remembered my own baptism experience. It was in a pentecostal church, and my best friend Peter stood by me as I entered the tank in a scratchy blue polyester robe. The church leaders started praying loudly for me, that the Spirit would transform me in the waters. I went under, and that moment felt like an eternity -- a warm, fluid eternity where God is very close. Immersion in God. I came up suffused with joy, and soon went to the small room to change back into my clothing. As I entered, I caught sight of myself in the mirror and was shocked to stillness to see that the robe was still blue. The reality in my soul said that, in the waters, the robe had become rich, white cotton, luminous in its purity. It didn't seem possible that the robe was still blue. As I removed it, I felt God hold me in place and clothe me in that white robe of the Spirit. I realize some might think I'm skirting blasphemy here, but I really believe I heard Him say "You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." Talk about undeserved favor... Beloved.

Rock #3: The Power of a Name -- I'd seen the Jesusy-baby-name-books on the table when I came in, and thought of the perceived irony of my own name. The brown wood-and-parchment plaque that used to hang on my bedroom door said: JEFFREY, Peaceful One. Given the chaos of my adolescence, I always got a good chuckle from it. Becky invited us to look up our names and write on a stone something we resonated with or felt called to around our names. The book I picked up listed literal meaning and spiritual implication, and it had a slightly different take. It gave the literal meaning of Jeffrey as "DIVINE Peace." My name is not at all based on MY peace, it's based on God's peace. Revolutionary. Just above it, I saw "Jefferson," a nickname my friend Holly gave me years ago. It's spiritual implication was "Contemplative." Something started to shift. I wrote down on my stone: "Contemplate the peace of God."

Rock #4: A Friend, A Film, Abide -- Bob had been setting us at ease all evening in his honest, mildly self-deprecating way ("And now there will be a few minutes of awkward silence I'll break up shortly"). I noticed he had written on his stone, "Abides in God." I like the word abide. It tastes like that divine peace, like actively waiting, like restful resistance to being tossed. I remembered the main character in The Big Lebowski, another Jeff who lived the identity of "The Dude". Whenever someone asked him "How's it going, Dude?", he'd invariably respond: "The Dude abides." In spite of the fact that the viewer couldn't tell if this serenity was the product of Zen or vast quantities of weed, I liked the sentiment. I aspire to abide. Abide in belovedness, contemplating the peace of God.

Every new remembrance or realization shook me, jolted me, forced my perception in a new direction. As each rock plunked into the waters of my soul, it produced a new set of waves, and this is what's so amazing. Each expanding circle of ripples cancelled out more and more of the choppiness. I re-visited who I am and whose I am, and as I did, the waters settled. Belovedness. Cleansing. Divine Peace. Abiding.

The waters are still stirring, though not much more than can be expected when the Spirit is hovering over them (at least, I hope that's what's happening). Part of my reason for blogging all this is an attempt to make sure I don't stick my spoon back in the pot first thing tomorrow morning and start making waves again. That would be entirely too in-character. But now, as I prepare for bed, all I am is grateful. Christy (fairly new to blogland, but already feels to me like a welcome mothervoice) frequently ends her blogs with two words I'm going to shamelessly appropriate tonight:

Deo Gratias.

Overstirred and Overstimulated

2005-07-11T15:20:00.000-05:00

Can someone please teach me how to hold the tensions?

I have two distance-ed classes I need to get through. I have at least four poems, two personal essays, and a short story that are crammed like children in a playpen inside of my head, pushing and shoving one another to be the first to get out on paper. I have hurts and thoughts and feelings about several situations in widely disparate communities that I need to express and resolve. My To-Do List is a mile and a half long.

I'm relatively happy, don't get me wrong. I'm in a good mood. I love life, even though it's been a little warm out lately. I just feel like my will is crippled, like there are casts on both my psychic legs and even the simplest progress requires a ton of work. I'm a blogger, I'm majoring in English Writing and Literature, and yet more and more I find myself aspiring to wordlessness. I catch myself wandering through the hallways of my soul, peeping into old rooms that haven't been touched in years and noticing all the little knicknacks and reminders of days gone by.

These are good things. I think we all need to take some time to be still, to meander and rest and remember. But I haven't managed to find a way to structure these things; to integrate them in such a way that my inward life gets fed and watered without my outward life falling into chaos. The picture in my head is of a large kettle of water and I'm stirring it so fast that a whirlpool forms and then I reverse the direction of my stirring and the water gets all choppy and splashes everywhere.

I appeal to the collective wisdom of blogland. Has anyone figured this out? Even if the answer is no, that will bring some comfort. And don't hesitate to point it out if I'm being ridiculous...

Quote of the Day

2005-07-08T13:07:00.000-05:00

"There's a bookcase in his apartment... an empty bookcase. I don't understand... How can you be an adult and have an empty bookcase?"

Postcards from Real Life, Part 1

2005-07-06T17:07:00.000-05:00

Driving home, I found myself following a silver Saturn with two bumper stickers. The first read, "Modesty is the emblem of faith and the entry pass to heaven." The second said "I drive this way on purpose. Deal with it." Go figure.

Dog Therapy 101: Beyond Pavlov

2005-07-06T13:23:00.000-05:00

Dogsitting is odd. My lack of a day job means I'm free to chill with the pooches for long hours. They get walks and attention at times of day that they are unfamiliar with. I feel like I'm disrupting their routine. But it's been interesting. Being away from home, having this spacious apartment all to myself, having a chance to be quiet with canine company has let me sink a bit deeper.

I'm noticing things about their personalities. Hudson is older and fixed. I imagine the whole emasculation thing would cause a personality change in anyone. He's more mellow and quiet, though he still oddly humps things on rare occasions. Percy, on the other hand, is a complete nutbar who bears constant watching. His fondest desire is to take things apart. He noses under the sofa cushions as if convinced he'll find a canine version of Davy Jones' locker crammed with kibble. Left alone too long, he'll worry a rug until a strand comes loose and then pull out row upon row of yarn. When you catch him, he'll look up at you as if to say, "Dude! I figured it out!"

He reminds me of... well... me. As a child, I always needed to understand how things worked and I'd hoard the most random treasures. The click pens in our house never worked because I'd unscrew the barrels and take them apart and get fascinated by the springs. They seemed to me to be miniature slinkys. I'd push them down on the table with my thumb and, without fail, the tension would twist them sideways and they'd launch across the room, never to be seen again. My parents modified their writing grip to hold the button on top of the pen down with their thumbs.

Legos were my favorite toy, in part because they were just as much fun to dismantle as they were to put together. I disassembled calculators, wristwatches, anything I could get my hands on. I think my parents brought me up short when they caught me approaching the microwave with a Phillips screwdriver. Thinking back, it's a wonder they're still sane and functioning considering the number of times I raided their dresser drawers on treasure hunts. I collected foreign coins from past trips. I found my dad's one-inch black and white mini-TV, and we spent about a year taking it back and forth from each other. Aspergum became my favorite treat.

My sister told me recently that we needed to get together and talk, because her eldest son seems to be exactly like me and she has no idea how to deal with it sometimes. Since that chat, I pray for them both every day. They need it.

I hope, though, that I'm becoming more like Hudson and less like Percy. I hope I no longer piss in the dish I drink from. I hope I've learned to respond to the tugs on my leash more rapidly and calmly. I hope that I'm taking more time to curl up on the top of the couch and look out the window just to see what there is to see. I hope I'm understanding that not everything must be analyzed and deconstructed and conquered and possessed to be valued. In short, I hope I'm growing up without losing the wonder of a puppy.

Maybe those metaphors don't work for you. That's OK. If not, just be amazed with me at the way insights come in the oddest packages.

A Hypothetical Experiment

2005-07-05T14:43:00.000-05:00

Of the 27 blogs I page through every day, 3 of them today were about politics in some way, shape, or form. So I'm going to do something I've (quite deliberately) never done before. I'm going to propose an experiment.

I wonder what would come of it if the following happened:

1) Fifty intelligent, educated, qualified individuals (one in each state) legally changed their name to "Tired of Partisan Obstructionism" or something of that nature.

2) Each of these people got on the Senatorial ballot in their state for 2006.

3) None of these people did any advertising or campaigning beyond what was necessary to get on the ballot.

I wonder how many votes they would get? It would be interesting on several levels. First, it'd demonstrate how many voters actually READ the ballot instead of just checking down a column. Second, it would offer a barometer of how fed up people are with our political system. Third, it would speak volumes about advertising dollars and the bombardment of the airwaves every other blessed fall.

OK, yeah, the state government is shut down. My dad's cousin is a state representative, and I suppose she could wind up taking this entry personally. I suspect, however, that she wouldn't know a blog if one bit her in the fanny, and I never really liked her much anyhow. Still, I'm amazed at how most people find it so much easier to care about issues and agendas than they do about people. It's like when politics comes up, compassion shuts down or metastasizes into this massive Abstract Ideal that is pretty much totally disconnected from need and suffering and justice. I'm wondering if authentic transformation can ever be imposed, or if it must be inspired.

OK -- that's enough on politics.

Something I Heard

2005-07-01T12:41:00.000-05:00

As I was on my way to work Tuesday night listening to my iPod on random, I heard a spoken-word poem that moved me more deeply than it ever has before. It's about God and the ways we view and use Him and see Him portrayed in the world. Now, I have no idea what the spiritual state of this poet may be, but I found it very powerful and thought-provoking.

To listen to or download it, Click here.

Simple Pleasures

2005-06-30T11:07:00.000-05:00

Well, I got to Malette's, Dogsitting Central, only to find that Percy had messed his kennel - and did a pretty danged thorough job of it, too. So I got to muck it out. Praise the Lord for removeable floor trays. (By the way, this was not a simple pleasure. I'll get to that.) Then, I spent about two hours experimenting with various odor-removal techniques, since the kennel sits right in front of the air conditioner. Meanwhile, I did the Weather-Anticipation tango, trying to get the dogs walked and watered between afternoon showers and evening thunderstorms. I forgot to eat until around 10pm. But by the time I went to bed to read at around 11, I was pleasantly tuckered.

I normally sleep on my side, legs bent at a slight angle, and occasionally wake halfway and roll over to the other side for a few hours. This morning at around 1:30, I had a rollover impulse and found myself coming fully awake, unable to move my lower body. Not knowing where I was, I freaked out for a moment. I looked down and found Hudson lying along my front side, cozied up against my kneecaps. Percy was curled into a perfect oblong in the angle formed by my thighs and calves. Both of them sensed my movement, lifting heads with perked ears and turning their amber eyes on me curiously. I got a bit teary with that flood of warmth that only comes from a dog. I stretched to alleviate the soreness in my hip, but pretty much stayed where I was. Sometimes love is worth a little discomfort.

This morning, I came home and finally yanked the weed whacker out of my trunk to tackle those "boundary areas" of the lawn. I thought a bit (Jan-style) about threshholds, the places where wall meets ground, where pieces of land come together, where the organic chaos of grass meets the smooth order of sidewalk. No great revelations came. I mostly just enjoyed watching the weeds fall, the tension in my arms as I maneuvered the spinning plastic string, the way the lawn's beauty got kicked up a notch like the difference between a remade bed and one that features fresh, crisp sheets, starched a little and folded at the corners so you could bounce a quarter off it.

I'm reminded of Matt's new song, Labor et Orans. The title is latin for "work and pray." It's an intsrumental track, one where Matt used loops running at different lengths and speeds and frequencies, and is ordered but somehow chaotic at the same time. I love it. It's like life. I think work and prayer are more often than not the same thing - or at least they ought to be. A simple task done simply can be very full of God.

And now, I'd better get back to the dogs before they do something unlovely.

A couple of quick notes

2005-06-29T14:21:00.000-05:00

Note One: For those who care -- the blue worked out just fine. I actually think it may be my favorite. Not so bright, but unusual and fun. A pic is now available on the JeffSite.

Note Two: I'm off to dogsit for the mischievous partnership of Hudson & Percy, Canines-at-large. I'm not certain what the internet access situation is so all them crazy blogs may be a bit slower in coming than I promised.

Note Three: The old software I used, iBlog, has updated itself to allow comments and all kinds of other funky features. I'm going to play with it a bit and may be moving back to that blog. I'll post a definite announcement here if/when that happens. Either way, it will still be linkable via "The Original JeffSite" link to the right.

Onwards and upwards!

~~j~~

Hair Anxiety

2005-06-28T14:35:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm in the process of color change again. Bleach? Check. Condition? Check. Let dry? Check. Apply dye? Check. I was shooting for something between baby blue and periwinkle, since I mixed the white toner with what was left of the Bad Boy Blue. Unfortunately, at the moment it's looking like I'll be a match to my grandmother's hair 10 minutes after leaving the salon. Ah, well, it'll be fun to be geriatric before my time... Even though I've never seen a dignified older man -- or any older man, for that matter -- who blues his hair.

Waiting with anticipation.

"I think that I shall never see.."

2005-06-27T14:19:00.000-05:00

The neighbors across the street are having a tree removed. I'm sitting here blogging on my front steps, sipping my green caffienated 7up that matches my hair color du jour and watching four guys tackle one tree. I had no idea how intricate the work was -- one guy up in the tree, tying the anchor line into place, then making his cut and carefully lowering the errant branch to his colleagues below who rapidly convert it to wood chips. Eventually he gets down to the bare trunk, which they lower and cut into manageable chunks of wood indistinguishable from the ones I used to spend hours hauling as a child to keep the fireplace stocked and provide heat for our family.

The workmen have obviously done this many times before. Each man knows just where to be when, how to move, what needs to be done next. It's like a dance, choreographed through daily practice to the point where everyone moves smoothly in time with each other. It's actually quite beautiful.

The tree comes down. The neighbors' yard takes on a different character -- a stump the only remnant of the shade that used to be the norm. But the buzz of chainsaw and wood chipper has absolutely zero impact on the birdsong that twitters in my ears as it always has. Life as we know it goes on, sans shade, sans tree.

I have a lot of blogs coming. My whiteboard is getting messy with the list of topics I've been ruminating on that should manifest here in the next week or so. I hope you're all being blessed by the moments of your lives, the endings and beginnings and goings on that flow in and out and around each of us as we journey together. It's been quiet here in blogland lately, but I've been looking in on you all -- thinking about you and praying for you. I'll try and make this a quiet spot to pause and rest and read. Over the Rhine, one of my favorite bands, calls their discussion board "the imaginary apple orchard." I like that. So, while I don't want to be derivative, I'll try and plant some pear trees here and let them grow. Enjoy the shade and sweetness.

Such Great Lengths...

2005-06-23T11:47:00.000-05:00

OK, for those of you who don't know, I work with Down Syndrome guys at a group home. Sleep overnights -- the perfect college job. I get to wake up three cranky eight-year-olds in adult bodies in the morning and get them off to work. It's almost like trial parenting in some ways... Ah, well... enough exposition.

This morning, after almost two years working there, I ran into something new. My boss left a note asking staff to be sure that Tom (name changed) leaves his underwear in the trash. Apparently, he has an entire drawer full of spotless white boxer-briefs, but chooses to sporadically rotate the same 3 pairs of 12-year old briefs. When we (the staff) tried to throw all three pairs away at the same time, Tom went dumpster-diving to alleviate his separation anxiety. So, we're going to slowly whittle them away one pair at a time. What scares me about this job is that - sometimes - I can almost wrap my head around the behavior. I can see how it would be tough for Tom, who's worn tighty-whities for all of his thirty-seven years in a child's brain, to feel right and normal in these strange new short-y things. I can also see that the house budget is equally tight, and we're not going to throw away about twenty-five pairs of brand new underwear. This is how I found myself in the utterly bizarre position of noticing only paper towels in Tom's trash and having to stand outside his room arguing with him until he changes out of his rescued briefs into the new undies and thrown the old ones away again. I brought the trash out as soon as he left.

Yes, yes, I know. This is a totally too-much-info kind of topic for a blog, and you have NO IDEA how I've struggled to avoid the kind of sensory language that's just begging to get out. The point is that I realized in the midst of this surreal situation that there are some things in my life that have long since outworn their usefulness and are now just plain nasty. This all-too-visceral living allegory managed to cut through all the romanticizing rationalizations I've built to justify hanging onto my mess. I need to do some serious emotional and spiritual housecleaning. Now. Thanks to Tom's undies of all things, I can joyfully and wholeheartedly say "bring it on!" As I drove home from work, I did a little confession. I had the strange sense that God and I were both choking back laughter at the lengths He had to go to to shatter my illusions.

And, apparently, God is already putting fences around the potholes of navel-gazing introspection. When I got home, I turned on the TV to quietly zone and make plans for eliminating my psychic deadweight. Sitting on my bed, wielding my spiritual shovel and wondering if there's such a thing as a spiritual backhoe, a Fruit-of-the-Loom commercial caught my attention. The dam that held back the laughter burst, and I nearly passed out laughing. Their new slogan?

"You can't overlove your underwear."

I beg to differ.

I Can't Imagine.

2005-06-14T13:32:00.000-05:00

Literally. I feel like my brain has some form of osteoporosis, best described by words like "gnarled" and "wizened." This is not good for a creative writing major. Judy's lovely blog about the story she read hit me in an unexpected way. I noted when I finished reading it that I didn't have the slightest impulse to rush out to Barnes & Noble and get me a copy, which is so uncharacteristic of me that I had to stop and figure out why.

The timing for this whole thing is strange. I just finished my research writing class, and I feel like I rocked it. I'm pleased, but I feel like I should be celebrating - being free and having fun and reading and writing and doing summer and stuff. Part of my paper actually dealt with the issue of beauty. I'm so FOR beauty. Judy's noticings connect; they hit me right between the eyes.

Yet, I can't read. I have dozens of books that sit there and call to me. The dust jacket blurbs alone were so compelling, I had to give the books a spot on my shelves. I try to start one, and it's nothing more than black marks on a page. No life whatsoever. I try to write, and it's the same deal. I have note cards and voice memos and computer files with story ideas that sound really good - that have major potential to me. Should I sit down to type, though, I'm all thumbs.

Am I just tired, or am I afraid? I've identified a couple things that I'm in the middle of grieving - the natural separations and losses and loneliness that come with having a pulse. The crazy thing is, I feel like I'm entering some sort of Jeremiah phase - it's confusing because I feel like all that grief I mentioned in past posts is still waiting for me; that it's going to be so hard and it's going to last forever. But at the same time, the grief tastes like a strange form of love. That in order to love the world, I have to grieve for it -- not just that someone has to grieve for it, but that I have to. That makes no sense, but that's where I'm at. Every time I unfurl the sails of my imagination, I find myself weeping. Not curled up in the fetal position and gnawing on my pillow or anything, not sobbing uncontrollably, but just sitting silent as hours go unnoticed with tears streaming down my face. It freaks me out. It makes me question my mental health. And it's so big, I'm afraid I'll lose myself.

So what's a guy to do? This is not entirely a rhetorical question. While I'm not really looking to be diagnosed or anything (Mandie...), I feel a need for some language around what I'm sensing - or unable to sense. Either that or some psychic crutches...

No Small Transformations

2005-06-02T21:45:00.000-05:00

OK, so I'm at worship rehearsal tonight. Communion weekend = mellower tunes. In the set is the song "You Alone."

I must be honest. I'm sick of this song. I realize I may be angering my beloved friends who totally adore this tune, but there it is. We've been doing it since the first Passion CD came out in '98, and it is a very VERY rare song at our church that has a seven-year shelf life. The song seems to have lost its vitality for me and faded into the realm of the happy, Christianese elevator worship stacked with repetitive platitudes that seem to slap a nice, pretty, Jesus-y bandaid on the gaping wounds of the world.

Then Matt commented that he'd played this song fast and slow, rocky and mellow -- he'd even played it in the minor key. I remembered that. I thought about it for a sec, and tears started to well up and I said something like "Oh, could we?" So we are. And I am blessed. What's the difference, you ask? Good question. Most people won't even notice the difference, but here's what it does for me.

It sets me up in a different place. The guitar intro in the minor key cuts right to my spiritual poverty -- my utter begging dependence on God for anything resembling joy or meaning. Instead of tromping around in the major-key musical boots of the hyper-spiritual, oblivious Jesus-freak, I finally get to be barefoot and broken -- a child of God who needs to hear and say and mean these words in order to stay in the countless, often gratuitous battles of life:

"You are the only one I need. I bow all of me at your feet. I worship You alone. You have given me more than I could ever have wanted, and I want to give You my heart and my soul. You alone are Father, and You alone are good. You alone are Saviour, and You alone are God."

YOU are God. Not me. Not any of the voices that shout into my life from my peers or my empty checkbook or the blasted idiot-box TV I should've thrown out months ago. The minor key (a really small change) seems to throw the lyrics into sharp relief, as if to say:"Yes, life is hard. Yes, it's OK to be tired and wounded and worn. BUT... These words are -- this GOD is -- still true anyway." Where singing these words in the major key feels like work -- like I need to actively beat down the tiny little gods that have huge voices -- in the minor key, the lyrics flow out of me like truth, like rest, like a desperately needed and clung-to lifeline. Repeats feel like clinging. Like this is all I need to know and God will accomplish the rest. And that tastes like hope.

So by the time we switch to the major key for the "I'm alive" section, I've remembered why so many of the beloveds' hands go up at that point. The verses have convinced me again that life is gift and joy and freedom when it's all about God -- hard, frustrating, often painful, but gift nonetheless.

Of course I realize (Jan, Judy, Lisa...) that these reflections say far more about me than they do about the relative merits of any particular key signature. But I'm OK with that. I just pray that the changes -- the minor adjustments -- God is making in my own life and heart have equal or greater significance.

"God's business is putting things right;
he loves getting the lines straight,
Setting us straight. Once we're standing tall,
we can look him straight in the eye."
--Psalm 11:7, msg.

There are no small transformations.

Nothing deep today.

2005-05-24T14:03:00.000-05:00

Well, I finished The Prophetic Imagination last night, only to realize it's probably one of them books I have to read like eight times before I'll really "get" it... I have all the windows and doors open at the moment in an attempt to get a lovely breeze rolling through the house, and I've realized it's time to start adjusting to sleeping with only one comforter instead of three. I'm not sure why, but in the fall, I never have an adjustment period switching back. Ah, well.

The spring cleaning impulse is on me again. I want to unload all my bookshelves and finish staining them, and then reorganize my library. I also want to do something brilliantly artistic with the junky shelf I have sitting out in the garage. As far as replacing the books on the shelves, order is not the issue -- spacing is. I know I'll be continuing to acquire and it's tough to predict which shelves will need more space and which won't. Ah. The agonies of life... :-)

Speaking of acquiring, I saw copies of the "MAUS" graphic novels on sale today and was SOOO tempted, but I knew that if I got them, I'd read them, and I really need to be working on unraveling the Marxist literary hermeneutic/epistemology so I can demonstrate how a biblical one encompasses and supersedes it in my research paper. I know, sounds like fun, but I'm actually really looking forward to it. Correction: I'm really looking forward to learning and understanding. I'm not looking forward to the actual amount of reading I'll have to do in the time frame alloted. Perhaps that's why Maus looked so very appealing.

The quiet, everyday, normal moments can be a pleasant break from the deep tensions -- provided, of course, it's sunny and 72.

Buckle in, y'all -- long and serious post ahead.

2005-05-22T14:07:00.000-05:00

Several things have come together in the last few days. I ran across an article talking about how Bono is promoting the One Campaign (known in England as "Making Poverty History") in U2 Concerts. The One Campaign, in their own words, is "not asking for your money, [but] asking for your voice." So I went to their website (www.one.org) and watched the video and added my name to their cause of compassion and social justice, and I encourage you to do the same. Still, as I was typing my information on the web form, I noticed skepticism and not a small sense of futility lurking around the corners of my heart. A question was starting to form in me.

Then yesterday as I was driving to Mora, I listened to a global call-in on NPR talking about the dynamics of globalization. I heard a man from India arguing that economic conditions are getting better overall because even most households in the slums now have TVs and people are considering a second car at the same point in their careers when their parents were scraping for a first. Again that skepticsm rose up and the question became a little clearer. I started wondering if Marx didn't have it backwards -- if materialism and not religion is REALLY the opiate of the masses. {NOTE: Reader, please know that I am PAINFULLY aware that I am typing this on one of my two Apple computers and posting it to a blog linked to my list of 800+ books. Know that I know that if materialism is the opiate of the masses, then I'm a total crack-head.} Is it possible for a person weighing considerations of hybrid vs. SUV to see the neglected child two blocks down? To feel the lesions of an AIDS victim as if they were growing on his/her own skin?

The question boils down to this: what good is compassion anyway? Reaching out to another person may mitigate their suffering for a while, but is a localized, momentary flash of relief even noticeable? Aren't our only true options either numbness or despair?

While I couldn't articulate it that clearly, the sense of the question gnawed at me all night. I didn't sleep well. It was as if my lofted bed was about to tip over, and I was headed for a fall. Then, this morning, I continued reading Brueggeman and hit this land mine of the soul. It's long, but please, read carefully.

Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unnatural condition for humanness. In the arrangement of "lawfulness" in Jesus' time, as in the ancient empire of Pharaoh, the one unpermitted quality of relation was compassion. Empires are never built or maintained on the basis of compassion... Thus the compassion of Jesus is to be understood not simply as a personal emotional reaction but as a public criticism in which he dares to act upon his concern against the entire numbness of his social context. Empires live by numbness... Governments and societies go to great lengths to keep the numbness intact. Jesus penetrates the numbness by his compassion and with his compassion takes the first step by making visible the odd abnormality that had become business as usual. Thus compassion that might be seen simply as a generous goodwill is in fact criticism of the system, forces, and ideologies the produce the hurt. Jesus enters into the hurt and finally comes to embody it... Thus Jesus embodies the hurt that the marginal ones know by taking it into his own person and his own history. Their hurt came from being declared outside the realm of the normal, and Jesus engages with them in a situation of abnormality.

My first reaction to that is an immediate drop to my spiritual knees -- a teary, heartfelt cry from every cell in my body, "HALLELUJAH! My Lord and my God!" That last bit strikes home with me in part because I've never felt "normal," and every life-changing encounter with Jesus has been in the context of my abnormality. I get that. I'm grateful for it. I am struck dumb with amazement at the thought that the one undefeatable force against the spirit of this world is compassion -- not just in a spiritual and individual sense, but potentially in the political and socioeconomic realms as well.

But then comes the sense that I can't do it. That all my comparative material wealth belies my utter poverty in the emotional, mental, and spiritual resources to feel and hold and grieve for the hurts of even my friends, much less the world. When Dan Rather used to list three or four servicemen killed abroad as a segue to commercial breaks (ponder the irony) on the CBS Evening News, I would get teary. And I'm not sure God is calling me to be completely non-functional with grief for the world for an extended period of time. Maybe He is, but then He also has me back in Research Writing on the 31st.

Lord, deepen my compassion. Strengthen my ability to hold the tensions and seek the Answer, not just answers. Only in You is there freedom and life. Help me live in Kingdom, not Empire. Tell Your story in me, and teach me how to live it, speak it, breathe it.

There it is, y'all. I told you it would be long.

Thoughts from Uncle Walty...

2005-05-20T00:16:00.000-05:00

Ok -- so I read the following last night:

"[This] consciousness with its program of acheivable satiation has redefined our notions of humanness, and it has done that to all of us. It has created a subjective consciousness concerned only with self-satisfaction. It has denied the legitimacy of tradition that requires us to remember, of authority that expects us to answer, and of community that calls us to care. [This] program of acheivable satiation: a) is fed by a management mentality that believes there are no mysteries to honor, only problems to be solved. [...] b) Is legitimated by an 'official religion of optimism,' which believes God has no business other than to maintain our standard of living, ensuring [the leader's] own place in his palace. c) Requires the annulment of the neighbor as a life-giver in our history; it imagines that we can live outside history as self-made men and women." -- Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

Brueggeman is writing this to define and summarize the prevailing worldview opposed to his "prophetic imagination". Does this sound familiar to anyone else? Self-made men and women? Official religion of optimism? No mysteries to honor, only problems to be solved?

I grieve for the ways I have been that kind of Christian -- that kind of person. For me, it ties back into Judy's call for a theology of beauty, since beauty and mystery are intertwined in my soul in ways impossible for me to articulate. Brueggeman also asserts that the prophetic voice rises from our capacity to grieve, and I've always thought I was impossibly morbid for finding grief almost inexpressably beautiful. But maybe I'm not so far off after all...

Quick Celebration

2005-05-19T23:56:00.000-05:00

Hey, all - I don't want to toot my horn, but I got a 4.0 for the second semester running. I share that because I want those I love (this means you, dear reader) to celebrate with me and also because it makes me feel like the fatigue I blogged about last night was at least not in vain. So, happiness... As Ricardo Montalban used to say at the opening of every episode of "Fantasy Island", smiles, everyone... smaiyles........

Danger: Neuroses Ahead

2005-05-18T22:02:00.000-05:00

Hmm. Judy writes about needing a theology of beauty. Jan writes on the necessity of deep change. Both of these things smack me upside the head. The change has to move toward beauty and thus toward God, otherwise it's no more than a different pair of jeans. But that deep change has to be motivated and inspired by deep beauty -- the call beyond myself toward the greater.

The problem is I'm tired. Maybe it's just what feels like a month of consecutive rainy days, maybe it's that I don't feel able to rest, but at the moment, I read "change" as "work" and "beauty" just kind of sits there in the middle of my head on a heap of tangled and contradictory associations. I hang out with my friends and just feel like being alone, but being alone seems empty and futile. I start to wonder why the phone's not ringing -- and why it never really has. I think John of the Cross might call this a kind of desolation. Not really sure of who I am or what's happening or where the crap God went in the middle of this mess.

Of course, He's right here, underlying and holding it all together, but that's hard to feel when your spiritual skin feels cracked, chapped, and fragile. I want to find some nice mineral hot springs, rent a scuba tank, and just float for a week or so. Let the scales fall off. Breathe a little. Maybe sit in some artificial sunshine since the real stuff went AWOL.

Anyhow, that's me at the moment -- tired, dry, wasted, unable to recognize beauty if it walked up and bit me in the ass. So, yeah -- get to know me! But don't say you weren't warned.

Finally!

2005-05-16T15:31:00.000-05:00

Hey, all -- the library software I use has FINALLY added support for HTML export. I'm trying to streamline it, but at least it's there! All my friends are welcome to browse my library and email me if there's anything you want to borrow. Click on "the Original JeffSite" in my sidebar and go to the library. While you're browsing, you can click on any of the book covers to go to the Amazon description for that book. Email me if you want to borrow something.

More personal information coming soon here in blogland...

Back to happy hair

2005-05-08T18:21:00.000-05:00

Yes, ladies and gents, a new color is being absorbed right now! As I type! I've said green for a while, but I found some others on sale today, so.... Anybody got a guess? It's not the world poker tour, but just for fun...?

Results posted soon on my Original JeffSite -- see sidebar -- under "Dyes of our Lives"...

Oh, and be sure to post your guess by clicking "comments" before you go find out -- NO CHEATING!!! :-)~

2005-05-02T19:04:00.000-05:00

Last night, when I arrived at work with my Down's Syndrome guys, one of them was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs (split entry). I looked upstairs and said hi to the other two as I took off my shoes. When I looked back down, "Tom" had pulled the back of his t-shirt up over his head and was tottering around saying "Jeeeefff... heeelp... I can't find my head..." I laughed like crazy, then went down and pulled the t-shirt off his head. The picture stuck with me, though...

I know how it feels.

The semester is winding down, things are getting crazy, and I feel like I've disengaged... like I've grabbed the edges of myself and pulled them around and over me in an attempt to keep my world manageable -- small and under control. My eyes fixed firmly on the top of my to-do list. I miss fun. I miss wonder. I miss being fascinated by the radiant glory of God in each individual face and voice and life that I find myself in front of. I miss those things, but I am so tired. I need to get some rest -- more sleep, more time, more inner and outer silence. But for now, that can't happen. Is it OK to disengage a little, to just crank it out when it feels like your only option? For some reason, I feel so guilty about it. I feel like I'm alienating people, like I'm alienating myself. Oddly, though, I don't feel distant from God. I don't think I can -- I'm too busy trying to draw from Him the stamina to make it to summer. I don't know.

I'm confused. I guess I'm just blogging cuz it's one of those things that wound up outside my existential t-shirt. Maybe to resolve some of this by getting it out, maybe just to assuage my guilt. Who knows? All I know is God will get me through. Somehow.

The Extravagance of Joy.

2005-04-12T08:06:00.000-05:00

OK -- it's been too long since I posted a blog, but mainly cuz I have too much to say. That's going to have to wait til I have some time, but just a few words this morning on the Great Hair Experiment.

I'm amazed at the reception. My mom is, naturally, disgusted. In her mind, such nonsense is grossly inappropriate for a 34-year old. She's still willing to be seen with me in public-- barely -- but she has put her foot down. It MUST be blond for my cousin's wedding on May 6. This is fine by me -- I may even be able to make it through the Green Phase by then...

Everyone else, though, has shattered my expectations. Yesterday, at my Christian college that (in general) prefers its waters calm and its ice-cream vanilla, a random student stopped me in the hall and said "You know, every time I see your newest hair color, it makes me happy." It's been remarkable even to move toward those who subconciously move away and engage them genuinely -- you mean guys with blue hair are normal?

My favorite, though it really shouldn't surprise me, was the response at church. I arrived for Spiritual Direction Class last night having almost forgotten about the peacock crest on my head. I saw Gloria first -- Gloria rules. She laughed out loud and cried "I LOVE the blue!!!". Gloria and I are (probably) the youngest people in the room by a decade or so, and she's a blogger too. She'd already commented on the last blog, so I knew she'd seen it. It was the other reactions that moved me.

These are people I respect tremendously. Most of the time, I don't feel I fit in this crew -- they all seem so calm and connected to God and serenely alive in a way I can't quite grasp. I generally feel out of my depth, but God always meets me there, both directly and through His Beloved. I skipped a couple months when I bought the lie that I couldn't afford the time, but no more. I'm not sure how it can be a place of deep rest and profound stretching at the same time, but it is. Anyhow. As I collected my papers and headed for the circle, I met one older woman who gazed with somber mien at my head like an insurance adjuster. As I began to brace myself, she said "What happened to the orange? I really liked it, but now I wonder if this doesn't suit you even better." All around the circle, I was met with laughter and grins of approval. These people were entering into my fun -- my joy. Words are too small to frame my gratitude for these people in particular and my church body as a whole.

We talked about discernment last night, about the reality that discernment is easiest, works best, when it is lived as a lifestyle -- discernment is a function of relationship. We live immersed in God. He is never absent, never silent. All that's missing is our awareness of Him. Now, I am not saying that brightly-colored hair is God's Plan For My Life, but it IS helping me pay attention. Through my weird hair I'm feeling His joy, entering into His celebration, and the surprise is that He seems to be using it to bring others with me! Maybe soon, my mom will even come along.

It is my pronounced tendency to end these posts with worship lyrics. There's a tiny, bespectacled critic that sits at a desk by the bay window of my mind, marking up these pages, scribbling in the margins next to those lyrics things like "cliche'," "trite," "could you be more pontificating?" I want to throttle his dignified neck, but all I can do is open my hands. How can I pay attention to my life and not end up worshipping? I keep trying to convince God that none of this is really necessary -- that I don't deserve all this -- that His goodness is embarrassing.

He keeps saying "Tough. Deal with it."

Your Love is amazing, steady and unchanging, Your Love is a mountain firm beneath my feet.
Your Love is a mystery, how it gently lifts me, when I am surrounded, Your Love carries me.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Your Love makes me sing...

Just For The Fun of It...

2005-04-07T22:31:00.000-05:00

I recently turned 34. And I'm a college sophomore. I decided (all in fun) that 35 was it. No more ridiculously adolescent behavior. So to take advantage of the year I have left, and as an effort to not only "live in the tensions", but host a party there, I have decided to spend this marvelous spring exploring the range of outrageous colors of hair dye available to modern man.

Note: I really don't want to take myself as seriously as I sometimes do. Now when I look in the mirror, I get a shocking reminder that life is supposed to be fun -- at least some of the time.

Check my progress here: http://homepage.mac.com/jeffmacsimus/PhotoAlbum14.html

Besides. The bird with the brightest plumage attracts the finest mate, right?

Who's Chasing You?

2005-04-03T23:19:00.000-05:00

It's happening again. It seems like some of the people I feel closest to -- the people I most want to know and be known by -- are the people that are coming off as most distant and guarded (Notice, dear reader, I said SOME... This is a clear invitation for you to assume I'm not talking about you -- a cue for you to not take this personally, because that's not how it's intended. Roll with me, here...). I find myself surrepititiously checking my zipper, sniffing my armpits, mentally replaying conversations to isolate the exact moment my foot may have entered my mouth all unnoticed. It makes me feel frustrated, cut off at the emotional knees, like I'm hip-wading in the relational equivalent of setting concrete.

I'm reminded of that scene at the end of "My Best Friend's Wedding" where Cameron Diaz catches Julia Roberts kissing Dermot Mulroney and runs off. Dermot chases her and Julia's chasing him and talking to Rupert Everett on her cell phone. Rupert, with that sagelike wisdom and wit so often attributed by Hollywood to the Gay Best Friend, asks Julia "Who's Chasing You?" Ouch. Harsh Reality.

I wonder if I don't make God feel that way sometimes. I'm in hot pursuit of good grades or cool toys or deep, fulfilling relationships, and he's stuck to my heels driving a delivery van in rush-hour traffic. There's a big difference between Julia and God, though. He actually loves me, though He is jealous of all the things I put ahead of Him. He's not ditzy or conniving or manipulative like Julia. He's brutally honest. You don't get much more loving or brutal or honest or real than the cross. And really, why would I need anything more than that?

So I'm sitting here at work, typing on my laptop when I should be asleep. The chase always ends as soon as I realize that I'd rather be the one who gets caught. Odds are good that what I'm sensing from my friends has absolutely nothing to do with me, anyhow. Just Lewis' Law of Undulation sending ripples through the waters of community, waves that will rise again in time.

Meanwhile, there's communion... Soli Deo Gloria...

When Songs Break Out of the Box

2005-03-31T21:32:00.001-06:00

"Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so."

The song is buried so far down in the layers of my personal history that it's a fixture -- part of the sonic furniture of my soul. But as I look at those words... "for the Bible tells me so..." Is that enough? Is the Bible in and of itself enough to persuade my entire being of Jesus' love for me? It's certainly a primary source, don't get me wrong, but no matter how potent and authoritative, are words on a page sufficient to absolutely persuade and sustain me?

Peter and Paul didn't seem to think so. When they argued the validity of the Gospel, they naturally quoted and appealed to the authority of scripture, but there was another piece. In both his sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2:14-36) and his address to the household of Cornelius (Acts 10:34-48), Peter balanced appeal to scripture with personal experiences -- "And we are witnesses..." Paul does the same thing when he is laying out the Gospel for the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15).

Do you have concrete experiences you can point to and say "The Bible says it, and THIS confirms that it's true. Jesus loves me. Me. Not in some universal or impersonal way, but loves me personally. Deeply. Tangibly." I thank God that I do.

I added another one today.

Some background: I have been a U2 fan since 1981. This was back at a time when you could actually buy U2 in Christian bookstores. Thank goodness, because I probably wouldn't have set foot in a Musicland at that time in my life. The music was groundbreaking, the lyrics profound. As I've sung along with the band for the last 25 years, I've been blessed, disturbed, challenged, moved, shattered, elated, and blown away. I've seen them live on every tour since the Joshua Tree. Their music has helped me learn to live in the tensions, acknowledge harsh realities, and come to terms with mystery while ever pushing deeper.

A few months ago, U2 released their new album, "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb." I bought it at 9am that day. I remember driving to church listening to the CD that night and listening raptly to the last song "Yahweh" -- one of the most overtly Christian songs the band has ever recorded. It's a prayer of dependence, of desire, of longing to be stretched and thirst for fulfillment. I had to pull over and weep. When I got to church, I told Matt (good friend and worship guy) about this song and how moved I was by it. I made some sweeping statement like "this feels like a prayer for our church right now."

Fast forward to tonight: When I got to church for worship team rehearsal, Matt greeted me. "Dude! I'm so glad you, in particular, are on this weekend!" The focus of our services is on community partnerships -- the ways we're involved in living out God's love tangibly in our city. Matt asked Tom (Metro Impact Pastor) if he had suggestions for offertory and Tom said "I'd really love it if you guys could do 'Yahweh' by U2." As Matt told the story, I thought there was an audible thump from my jaw hitting the floor. "So you and me get to be Bono this weekend, Jeff."

I know it seems ridiculous, but I felt like God handed me the keys to a brand new car. Like I got a hug from the Lord of the Universe. Like Jesus was saying "This song is for all of my Body, Jeff, but it's also for you. And I planned for you to help sing it." I got weepy all over again.

Jesus loves ME, this I KNOW for the Bible tells me so. And I know that it's true because He shows me. Every day, all the time, whether I notice or not. But sometimes, like tonight, He really pulls out all the stops. He does it for you, too. "Surely Yahweh's mercies are not over, his deeds of faithful love not exhausted; every morning they are renewed; great is His faithfulness!" (Lam 3:22-23)

Blessed be the Name of the Lord!

Spring has Sprung!

2005-03-28T15:08:00.000-06:00

So, on a break from homework, I decided to walk down to the corner gas station on this beautiful day and pick me up a nice, frosty Dew. As I got closer, what to my wondering eyes did appear but a seagull. A lone seagull floating and basking in the sunlight. As I watched him frolic and cavort in the air above the Stop-N-Go, I had to pause and identify the feeling seeping through my chest. It was one I hadn't felt in a while -- unadulterated glee.

Welcome back to Minnesota, sixty-degree temperatures. You have been missed.

Bad News and Good News

2005-03-28T09:26:00.000-06:00

This Terri Schiavo thing has been ping-ponging around my head.

Heather asked the other night why the husband didn't just sign guardianship over to the parents. The easy answer to that (eliminating all money/romantic issues Mr. Schiavo may have) is that he honestly believes this is what Terri wants and feels the need to fight for it. Her parents need to fight for what they believe, too. So the whole thing becomes this tragic, uncertain tug-of-war that's captured the nation's imagination. Note to self: Figure out what you want and write a living will.

It's so sad to me that this woman's life and story have become politicized. It seems no-one can get a definitive picture -- medically, ethically, spiritually. All concerned have pieced together their own bully pulpit, pulling bits and pieces of fact, spinning interpretations like saucers on sticks to support their own agenda. Meanwhile, this woman starves (I'm not going to judge if it's merciful and right or demeaning and evil -- I think you've already got your own opinion on that), while those around her suffer.

For some reason, the whole mess calls to mind the election this past fall. I attend a school that's so conservative that it was deemed ideal for the Bush twins to visit. I wasn't in a crowd mood that day, so I left campus, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were greeted by shirtless guys with "BUSH" painted on their chests in red, white, and blue, as if the twins were our beloved baseball team returning from the World Series. From September until around December 1, the few Democratic students who weren't hiding under the carpet in their closets were vilified -- some even had their salvation called into question.

This hurt me. In my experience (and this is a gross oversimplification), the Christian Democrats I know are Democrats because they have hearts that long to see people's lives and our nation touched with God's compassion -- occasionally to a fault. But in their thirst for compassion, they remind me of Jesus. Most Christian Republicans I know are Republicans because they have hearts that are striving to see God's holiness manifest in themselves and the world -- occasionally to a fault. And in their hunger for holiness, they remind me of Jesus.

This past Holy Week, I saw a video that presented the horizontal bar of the cross as a symbol of God's loving arms reaching to surround the world in His embrace. These arms stretch out from a post pointing straight up, a concrete image of God's overwhelming and incorruptible holiness. This image rings true to me. In accepting the cross, Jesus fulfilled the demands of both holiness and compassion. He bound them inextricably together in the Mystery that encompasses His incarnation, death, and resurrection -- the same Mystery that invites and infuses His people even today.

So when I'm confronted with troubling news or questions of politics or the numerous dilemmas of life that seem to pull my heart toward one extreme or another, I have to remember that holiness and compassion are no longer mutually exclusive -- PRAISE GOD!!! I still don't think I ever get it truly right, but I'm trying to let those tensions drive me to Jesus, suspended at the center of the cross, radiant with holiness and overflowing with love. I want -- I NEED -- to cling to Him in times like this, to let Him teach me the tensions and the resolution, to depend utterly and completely on Him. Only then can holiness and compassion mingle into the selfsame thing -- sweetness and life -- the very Wine of God to quench my soul and satisfy the thirst of this parched universe.

The Trappings of Death

2005-03-20T10:41:00.000-06:00

In Spiritual Direction class Monday night, Pam opened us in prayer from John 11 -- the raising of Lazarus. I guess I should say this is not your typical evangelical read-the-scripture, pray-something-relevant-and-off-we-go type of opening. The scripture is read twice, slowly, and then we spend about 15 minutes in silence, connecting our hearts with God around the scripture. It's always powerful and revealing.

That day, I had started a new class at school -- Christian Discipleship, a freshman level required course on basic doctrines, worldview and lifestyle of the Christian. I walked in anticipating seven weeks of boredom. You see, I thought I was past that point in my spiritual journey. We spent the class period defining discipleship, and I left class oddly excited.

So as we moved into silence that night at church, I was caught by something I'd always totally missed in the story of Lazarus. At the end, when he walks out of the tomb, Jesus tells the crowd to unwrap him, to set him free and let him go.

Why? Why didn't Jesus unwrap him? Why didn't He cause the bindings to fall away on their own when He raised him? I thought of the Easter story, how the visitors to the tomb found a pile of cloth left within, the facecloth neatly folded. Why was this different?

It occurred to me that, in a sense, this was a picture of discipleship. Jesus gave the community the task of coming around a person God has raised -- given life -- and removing the trappings of death. All that mental crap and lies and patterns of thought and behavior that are hallmarks of dependence on ourselves and the world need to be stripped away. We are to help one another be free.

Judy also pointed out to me that Lazarus would have been buck naked under his wrappings and needed the crowd to cover him. I think that relates to discipleship, too. As we come around each other and help remove the trappings of death, we need to protect the vulnerabilities of those we minister to. We are to screen them from shame as they move into greater and freer life.

Too often I think we unwittingly use shame as a cattle prod to produce the illusion of life, rather than slowly and tenderly lifting the bindings. We get it backwards.

All of this makes me wonder about the dry and cracked strips of bandage that are still dangling from my own soul. Only One rose from the dead who was capable of thoroughly freeing Himself. Only One was ever truly and fully Alive. As we move into Holy Week, I'm so mindful of that... thankful that He has raised me... grateful for the community that shields me and peels away the funeral clothes that still stick and trip me up... hungry to be even freer and more alive than I am.

Come, Lord Jesus. Holy Spirit, come.

For RS

2005-03-05T14:53:00.000-06:00

Violent Blue -- Chagall Guevara

Hey, don't I know you
from some other life?
You were wide-eyed and green
and a little bit taller
and you didn't look away
when spoken to.

Do you still take two sugars?
You seem a little tense...
And I can't help notice how hard you appear
When I look into your eyes
of violent blue.

Was it sudden?
Was it clean?
Were there a lot of shades in between?

Step away
Lay it off
Throw it down
And Lose yourself...

The Misapprehended "Yes"

2005-02-24T09:30:00.000-06:00

OK, So I'm cleaning my room this morning, letting the studying I did for my lit test last night gel in my brain, and I catch myself reading over old class assignments. I'm sitting here, reading over old pages, looking for comments like "excellent!" and "good insights" as if to say "LOVE ME!!!", or at least "YOU LIKE ME, YOU REALLY REALLY LIKE ME!"

What total crap.

Why am I such a spiritual lemming? I know -- not just head know, but sometimes even heart know -- that only one Yes is worthwhile, and that's God's. So why do I still so often turn and run toward the stale waters of human approval? There's only death there, all the more deadly because it so cleverly counterfeits life. "All of You is more than enough for all of me." Help me remember that today, especially, as I press into tests and homework and frienships. Lord, smile on me. Make your "Yes" a whisper that drowns out the shouts that try to cater to my need. All I need is You.

To that, my soul says "YES!"

More from the News...

2005-02-22T08:41:00.000-06:00

The Supreme Court today is hearing a case about land. Seven property owners in Connnecticut are challenging the city's "public use" buyout of their land. The city intends to turn around and sell to private developers to revitalize the community.
I heard from one of the landowners. His house was a wedding gift from his grandmother. He tends the same garden his great-grandparents did. The land has been in his family for six or seven generations. It's become part of them -- part of their story. I felt the weight of that. After all, I have no similar circumstance and it must be really good to know your place, to live in a bigger story even in the sense of your own family.
The city is in trouble. 80% of their commercial properties sit idle. 20% of their homes are empty. Industries have moved out, jobs have dried up, mom-and-pop businesses have gone the way of all flesh. They're desperate. This ninety acres will be used for a drug research center, a hotel/conference center, shops, condominiums. I picture Maple Grove in the last 5 years... And this smacks to me of hope. That good days are on the way again, that the town won't just fade away.
So today the Supreme Court gets to decide between the past and the future. The story makes me think about the ways I pick one or the other to be my focus, my home. I stress when I need to think about making sure my grades are up for financial aid and grad school, figuring out what to "do with my life". I get beat over the head by the ways things that have happened to me have shaped the way I respond to now. The ways I hurt people without knowing it and rifling through my memory trying to figure out why.
It is so hard to live in the now. Hard to stay present. Hard for me -- hard for everyone, I think. It's a battle. But the past is shrunken, a tunnel I can't stand up in. The future is smoke, always shifting and off-balance. Only now do I have a place to stand and freedom to move or be still. Only now can I remember God's presence and sit in Him, walk in Him, breathe Him, live in Him, let Him live in me. I need that for today if I'm going to experience it and not just remember it. I want to put on the Holy Spirit's presence like a warm sweater and luxuriate in it all day.
"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. (Mt. 6:34a, Msg)" God, what are you doing in me now? How about around me? In chapel, in class, in between -- help me to look for it, to live in it, to move toward it. Remind me moment to moment that the story I live in is not about land, but a Kingdom.

Crazy Nights

2005-02-21T22:33:00.000-06:00

Working with Down Syndrome guys is always a challenge. The latest iteration: using 50+ sheets of toilet paper per bathroom visit, totally clogging the pump and causing total backup. So I spent last night picking up the dog bed (wet with effluvia) to try and wash/deodorize/rescue the thing. Then, on to disinfecting the entire lower floor with bleach solution. Meanwhile, the boys sit and sing along with Shania Twain or play PS2. This whole time, the dying battery in the carbon monoxide detector is causing a loud chirp about every 15 seconds. Then the boys won't go to bed. Is it any wonder I have a headache? No, the wonder is that my parents aren't in a rubber room somewhere. I think back to the time I stayed up reading. My flashlight batteries were dead, so I put the desk lamp reeeeeaaaal low and hoped it'd be invisible. Well, in short order, I was soon smelling smoke, so I woke my parents figuring better safe and yelled at than sorry and spanked really really hard. The mattress was burning -- from the inside out. It's a miracle that we survive our childhoods. It's a miracle our parents survive our childhoods. After all, if it gets too bad here at work, I can always flip burgers instead.

Thanks, mom. Thanks, dad. I love you.

OhButILoveIt

2005-02-19T10:50:00.000-06:00

Yeah, yeah, I haven't been here in a while. I'm trying to decide what to do with this space. I first started blogging to keep a "slovenly, honest, bold" journal of what's going on in my life, but there's always this felt ego-self pressure to SAY SOMETHING (All caps intended) -- there's a bizarre awarness of WHO's reading this and a need to say something thought provoking or deep or interesting or funny or enlightened. Well, no more, folks. No more promises to blog every day, though I'll try. No more forcing it. No more poses. And as soon as I say those things, I know they are LIES, damned lies. But they're what I want. How does that work? It's like I was telling Heather yesterday that I want to have a heart that God trusts. And as soon as I said it, I teared up because I became so aware of how true that is in sentiment, but how empty it sounds in light of my actions and behavior, how little time I spend consciously pursuing that. I'm really uncomfortable with my finite-ness sometimes. My soul longs for depth and wideness that my body just can't handle... and maybe my soul can't handle it either. No more than brief flashes of the Deep Structure. Maybe all the finite-ness is just to train us for infinity. None of this makes any sense on the screen, but it's what's in me and it's what came out.

So there. :-P

Carve this one on my heart...

2005-02-10T00:07:00.001-06:00

"O God, teach me to be satisfied with my own helplessness in the spiritual life. Teach me to be content with Your grace that comes to me in darkness and that works things I cannot see. Teach me to be happy that I can depend on You. To depend on You should be enough for an eternity of joy. To depend on You by itself ought to be infinitely greater than any joy which my own intellectual appetite could desire." -- Thomas Merton

Tribute of Delight

2005-02-07T19:18:00.000-06:00

"Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yesterday's hour and season was communion. jeb posted a wonder-full blog on the subject of serving that I can't say any better, but I was struck by a part of the experience this time that knocked me someplace new. Keith spoke of ministers in the 10/40 window... Pastor Steve was leading a group of students in Haiti... About a hundred kids were dragging us to the throne to offer our tributes of delight in worship... It dawned on me that this was the Body -- this is what it's all about. Age, race, location, language, these are all reduced to trivia when we step into that Body that we're always a part of.

As I served communion, I was in awe of the parts of His Body coming to meet me. The ones with bowed heads who whispered a hushed "Amen" as I blessed the cup to them, the ones who made eye contact as soon as possible, smiling and saying "Thank you!", the few who met my gaze with their tears and came to the table with desperate thirst. I was stretched by their beauty; I realized that by some mystery I was, in this moment, both the agent of Jesus on Earth and the least of the "least of these". I felt God's smile on me, on them, on US as we met with Him at the table.

I end just as I did on Friday, but this time not from emptiness, but from a fullness that is so far beyond being about me. It's about the Body. And tonight with the Body I say: "Come, Lord Jesus"...

nothing to say

2005-02-04T16:47:00.000-06:00

Wow. All my friends' blogs are so brilliant, and I am so empty. It's a good thing (and a great comfort and reminder) that emptiness is OK. Emptiness can be the preparation for filling. It's communion weekend. Come, Lord Jesus.

Metanoia

2005-02-02T12:24:00.000-06:00

The article jeb posted today reminded me of this poem by Scott Cairns that's caused me to think a bit more deeply about how I respond to my sin, and to my God.

Adventures in New Testament Greek: Metanoia

"Repentance", to be sure,
but of a species far
less likely to oblige
sheepish repetition.

"Repentance", you'll observe,
glibly bears the bent
of thought revisited,
and mind's familiar stamp

-- a quaint, half-hearted
doubleness that couples
all compunction with a pledge
of recurrent screw-up.

The heart's "metanoia",
on the other hand, turns
without regret, turns not
so much away, as toward,

as if the slow pilgrim
has been surprised to find
that sin is not so BAD
as it is a waste of time.

I don't want to be trapped in the unending cycle of myway-Godsway-myway. I want to be moving steadily upward, though it may look scattered and eclectic, bouncing back and forth, I want the motion to be always toward -- running when I can, and crawling when I have to -- but always wasting less and less time.

Implications for Community

2005-01-31T09:01:00.000-06:00

As I was driving home from work this morning, I heard a news article on NPR about a small town in Louisiana that is having a fish fry today to celebrate the arrival of phone service in their town. January. 2005. Phone service for the first time.

That made me wonder. What will happen to this town? They obviously have a strong sense of community -- or why the fish fry? What will getting phone service do? Will they fragment, ignoring one another to talk with distant relatives formerly rarely heard from? Have they stepped up on to the ladder that leads to exurbia?

I remember when I was young, my maternal grandmother still had a party line. Five houses in their neighborhood shared one phone number. I don't remember how it worked for sure, but that was a community.

I wonder what it would be like to live in a town with no phones. To have to step outside and walk to Tom's place to ask him about my car or have someone just walk up and grab a seat on the porch for a chat. What would I suddenly notice that I've been missing? Would I be any more present to my friends and my life than I am now? Would my handwriting improve from wrtiting all the letters to people out of town? My budget for stamps would sure go up.

A huge chunk of me longs for that kind of simplicity. Unfortunately, that chunk is wrapped in a titanic "what-if" struggle with the other piece of me that already feels too disconnected and lonely. Maybe that will never be resolved until I can acheive some sense of community in myself.

Creative Idleness

2005-01-30T23:56:00.000-06:00

This concept came up in my reading "If You Want to Write". Unfortunately, my idleness today was anything but creative. Motivation can be hard to come by. So can intimacy. Ah, well.

Learning to say "Yes"

2005-01-30T00:07:00.000-06:00

I watched the movie "Waking Life" again tonight and was struck by this idea: What if our lives -- what if the manifest universe -- is God's mechanism for teaching us to say "Yes" to him?

It's late, so I'll leave that out there and sum up with this:

God is GOOD. People are gifts. Say "yes" with all your might.

Deep Thoughts Du Jour

2005-01-28T22:45:00.000-06:00

Everybody is brilliant and original.

The Quest for Transcendence

2005-01-27T15:34:00.000-06:00

I was reading an article the other day, and the author mentioned (totally in passing, not on topic AT ALL) the possibility that our culture is sex-obsessed because sex is one of the only transcendent experiences that remain open to us.

This got me thinking. How much of what we Christians rail against can be ascribed to the search for transcendent experience? Sexual Immorality (see: abortion, homosexuality, etc.), the drug culture, New Age spirituality, gambling (the rush of the cards turning), and the list goes on. The common statement "Is this all there is? There must be something more to life." is the expression of the soul's longing for transcendence.

How can we not have compassion for these? We were CREATED for the ultimate transcendent experience -- a continuous, loving relationship with our creator. But it seems that, somehow, the church reacted to the culture by downplaying or eliminating transcendent experience out of fear or need for control or whatever else we use to justify these things. Here's the thing: transcendent experience is transformational. If we, as individuals and as a body run from transcendence, we cannot be changed. If we are not changed -- if our faith doesn't make us DIFFERENT-- how can we possibly think we can be attractive? If the church doesn't break ground for the culture in seeking and living out rightly-ordered transcendence, how can things not get worse?

I am so grateful to be a part of a community that embraces and calls out transcendent experiences -- even when they're painful, even when they call us beyond where we can go.

It wasn't me, but it coulda been

2005-01-27T09:15:00.000-06:00

Hey, all -- this is NOT my blog for the day, but I read this on a friend's blog and HAD to share. This is so quintessentially my experience that I wish I'd written it myself.

You knew I needed to get up for Hebrew class this morning, and you woke me gently and quietly, the same way you always do. But instead of the usual dream-filled smile and loving pat, as the remnant of sleep drifted away, I fixed you with a vicious glare. I didn't expect myself to do that. I don't know why I did. Maybe because I was short on sleep, I acted that way. I know it was wrong, and it isn't the way I really feel, I promise. I'm so sorry. Your face was chilled in the air from the window--the air that reached you because you were close to my bed--because you cared for me. And when my palm hit that loving face of yours, something broke inside me. I can't live like this, knowing that I hurt you. How can I explain this to you--you who saw the hatred in my eyes, my animalistic passion, and my primitive blow. No apology can erase such a memory, but I beg you, forget what you can and have mercy on my unfortunate heart. Let me convince you I meant none of it. "I didn't mean it"--such a hackneyed phrase, but how true it is! How readily I return to you once the contemptible passion of the moment subsides. Forgive me, I pray, dear alarm clock. I will henceforth be true.

~sam v

Blogging epidemic

2005-01-26T16:09:00.000-06:00

I write this post with great excitement, but also some mixed feelings. I now have eight friends (that I know of) who have started blogs here. That is AMAZING, since most of them are people I would spend far more time with if the vagaries of life permitted, and I get to interact with them here far more frequently.

I am also committing henceforth to blog a little something every day. For a class, I'm reading "If You Want to Write" by Brenda Ueland. Every writing book EVER talks about the need to write every day -- even if it's just a little, even if it makes no sense and is anything but brilliant or profound -- something. Every day. So I am going to start to use this venue as a way to do precisely that. Every day. (Sorry, but I have to keep telling myself that).

Those of you who stop by here may get bored or even (God forbid) baffled by my ineloquence, but I hope you'll keep coming anyway. Because my aspiration, my desire for this, is that it can in some way become sacred space -- liminal space -- a place where we can together be transformed in ways that none of us can separately. A place where I can set aside or chase down the thoughts of the day and have you come alongside me and leave me stunned with your brilliance and insight.

I want this to be a place where Jesus would feel at home. Every day.

Worshipful Wounds

2005-01-16T19:11:00.000-06:00

The past few days I’ve been out of it – Depressed, the mean reds, totally under the howl. But I told all my friends I’d be at church tonight. So I bundle up my paper-thin, monochrome, crinkled soul and get in the car.

“I will sing to and worship...”

Sometimes people talk of feeling or seeing the hand of God. More often, I have the sense of being under His thumb – pressing down on my forehead and my tear ducts – pushing into and through me, driving me into the world like a thumbtack. The world hurts.

“Everybody singing Glory, Glory, Hallelujah…”

This crazy little blue ball, hanging in space. Mostly, when I picture it in my mind’s eye, I see black clouds swirling; clouds of willfulness, greed, despair; clouds of anxiety and hopelessness and all the things that seem invincible. I see our dark marble of a world again tonight, with different eyes.

“All God’s children singing...”

As we sing, I see beneath those clouds a little column of brilliant light, streaming to God over a distance that is both infinite and nonexistent. I realize this point of light is kindled every time any of us come together anywhere, every time we worship, and it beats back the clouds. Spiritually, the earth burns brighter than the sun.

“Better is one day in Your courts...”

I open my eyes, expecting to actually see the liquid gold I feel flowing down the aisle, coming on me from behind. As molten love and power pour over me, I feel the dry husk that is me catch fire and burn. The fire hurts like healing; it consumes me utterly while leaving me intact. As if I weren’t already overwhelmed.

“You are the only one I need”

I identify with the dry bones. It’s tempting to be a dry bone – dry bones can’t bleed. The fire burns, but it doesn’t make things hurt any less. It is a comfort, though. The fire is hope. Hope that the fire can burn brighter. Hope that it will burn away the darkness within and without. Hope that I will endure, abide, and, eventually… thrive.