the hound of heaven has fangs

"God is pursuing you," a friend said to me, "and it's not your typical courtship, full of sunrises and chocolates and warm butterfly feelings. Most of the time God's pursuance involves heartache in some other area of your life that only He knows is distracting you from Him."

Bucket list--open for renovations

1. Drag race on the salt flats of Utah

2. Summit Mt. Rainier

3. Run a marathon

4. Bungee jump off a bridge in Australia

5. Spend intentional time in community

6. Learn German

7. Read everything by Madeleine L'Engle. And Wendell Berry. And Annie Dillard.

8. Learn to love deeply

9. See the Grand Canyon

10. Get to the highest point of every state in the US

11. Adopt one to twenty dogs

12. Learn all the words to "We Didn't Start the Fire"

13. Revisit South Africa

14. Practice hospitality everyday

15. Do something with my degree that actually matters
16. Vote in an election
17. Hike the North Country Trail in its entirety
18. Realize daily that the world is BIG

thunder and lightning, very very frightening!

You know you're in the right major when a somewhat simple statement with regard to loving the heavy rains that the rest of the campus finds a nuisance and bother develops into a 20-minute long philosophical discussion on the pleasantness and necessity of "insideness."

You also know you're a philosophy major when you can pass off "insideness" as a word.

ah, but it's cold outside

In defiance of today's clouds I've donned a bright orange dress in an attempt to fight both a case of the Mondays and a case of the dull-ies. If I can elicit some smiles from the mildly depressed, my temporary lack-of-dignity will have served its purpose well. After winter's glorious first snow I'm tempted to sleep outside in my warmest clothes and bask in the richness of all of its freshness. The wind it brought along has created an interesting effect that is still visible today: the snow has been smacked into only one side of the trees, so that someone walking from the wrong direction will get the idea that the trees on Gordon's campus remained immune to the harsh frost of the violent flakes. Sunday's early morning sunlight reflected brightly off the new and untouched ground, creating the ethereal effect of dancing shadows and clearer-than-usual rays of light. Today was a little bit dull by comparison, with the remnants of eager footprints and snowmen having disrupted the newness and stillness of the snow. The little bit of dirt that's been mixed in has turned it to a dull brown color; still, I cannot fault intrepid spirits from embracing all that they can of Narnia's wet and wild paradise. These gifts are meant to be enjoyed.

my lonely little life

I journeyed into Beantown yesterday for a concert by a band I've come to love these past few months called Good Old War. They are a surprisingly high-energy acoustic folk ensemble comprised of three youngish guys who dance more than they sing and commanded the audience of about 150 (standing room only) with the grace of seasoned pros, even though they were only on tour to promote their first CD. Normally I avoid the opening band, expecting something a tad lackluster and unoriginal, but Good Old War chose to tour with Hezekiah Jones, a fourty-something piece band that tours in variable size ensembles--for us it was a four-member band (guitarist, violinist, string bassist and drummer) that crafted a rough-around-the-edges beauty that was overwhelmingly breathtaking. They brought a stunningly simple and mellow sound, with poignant and elegant lyrics complemented by the plucking of the string bass and the beautifully rough voice of the lead singer. The honesty and quiet thoughtfulness of the words lent to a remarkably stirring response in many of the audience members--especially me. Here are the lyrics and audio to one of my favorites of the performance, called Nothing's Bound--although "Postpone," "Agnes of the World" and "How Do You Feel About Traveling" were equally heartbreaking and true.

Nothing’s Bound

I hope this letter finds you well
you took pleasure in the small things
when I could barely tell
Now that I've found you gone
replaced with memory
I write you this song

I carry all your themes around
realities in love
and how nothing's bound
to the next

You’re not in my world but still in my heart
sorry I left without explaining my part

But I thought you knew me
I thought you knew me
Things really have changed so much
you were always gone
and I missed your touch
all those nights and that lonely ache
the rip in my heart you managed to make

Well I carry all your themes around
realities in love
and how nothing’s bound
to the next

‘Cause of you I didn’t want no one
time heals wounds and I move on

I thought I knew you
I thought I knew you

if I forget your face I’ll remember your name
if anyone asks well I’ll take the blame

your faith has made you whole

The people called for Blind Bartimaeus,

and, unhelped, he stumbled his way to Jesus.

"Teacher," he asked, "would you

restore the sight I so sorely miss?

O exalted Son of David,

This you have promised.

My father has spoken of your famed

ancestry, of the God who has done

no small manner of miracles.

Might I bear witness to the same?"

"Your faith has healed you," Jesus replied,

"Go and see. My robes, you see, ,

will soon turn to red, my face will become ashen,

and you must behold this glory.

See the color of the blood poured from my side,

the dark red shades of my mercy,

the way my patient hand will crumple around

those nails, the way my loving eyes will

narrow at the thorns in my skull,

the shape of my mouth as I choke on

the spiteful gift of bitter vinegar.

Go and see. Your faith has healed you."

Restored to wholeness, fullness, sight,

Bartimaeus looked upon his Lord,

this merciful young man,

and followed him to Golgotha,

understanding carefully the way he would

henceforth be called to walk.

Shadowlands

I can't seem to escape dear old Jack. I'm enrolled in a Lewis seminar for this semester, and so far I've read Surprised By Joy and A Grief Observed; the latter is a heartbreaker of a read. Would that my reflections on death and dying were as poignant and lyrical, and that I would have loved someone so deeply and truly by the end of all things. That, of course, is another theme for another post. On the other side, my Great Conversations class (for which I am only a TA) was required to both read The Four Loves and watch Shadowlands, the film about Lewis' coming to know and marry Joy Davidman Gresham, a woman very much Lewis' complement in arenas romantic, intellectual and spiritual. Lewis' longing for a world beyond this one, beyond the Shadowlands, as he called earth, was ever more clear in his relationship with Joy; "You are the truest person I have ever known," he tells her as she lies helpless on her hospital bed, suffering through the pain of cancer. And though he admits that his incessant seeking after the next world, the real world, has ever consumed his entire being, he carefully reminds Joy that he only started living after he met her. I'm eager to call theirs the poster of anti-romance, a relationship that almost works backwards, and yet I'm keenly aware of the influence each had on the other even when love followed marriage. Their rapport and sparring is inspiring, as is their honesty and mutual longing for the real life, for Heaven as it is both imagined and left to God's creative prowess.

George Knightley does it perfectly...

“I cannot make speeches, Emma:”- [Mr. Knightley] soon resumed; and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing.-”If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. …”


Emma, Volume III Chapter XIII

Love.

The blue in your eyes fades as
clouds offer their stomachs,
pitying the dry flowers and the
gardeners who’ve grown tired of
watering cans and shade.
Would that I could replace it with
the sea’s cerulean, but that is
in the sky you cannot see,
and I can only hold your hand,
not turn your head.

Deus Absconditus

God was in the water that day
Pickin' through the roots and stones
Trippin' over sunken logs
Tryin' not to make his presence known
God was in the water that day
Wadin' in careful steps
Bubbles rising from His feet
Comin' up from the muddy depths

-Randall Bramblett

Someone who flips you off from a moving car is a placeless coward

Read THIS now.

And I mean NOW.

It's a rainy day outside, and I'm sitting on an old couch in my living room--a treat to be at home, to smell familiar smells, hear familiar sounds, anticipate love and comfort without admitting to my sometimes overwhelming need of them--in pain because I've got two huge canker sores in my mouth. While it is fun to tell people I've the herpes complex virus (the horror!), each word becomes harder to say, each bite of food a little harder to take. Per my father's advice, then, I've soaked some cotton in a saturated salt-water/baking soda solution and stuck it in my mouth. And though the initial sting of sodium chloride against open wound is excruciating, I'm reconciled to some sort of "ends justify the means" mentality, aware that whatever ungodly pain I'm subjecting myself to is, indeed, for the best, Nicole, so suck it up. Any discomfort now will end in renewed health and vigor, and I'll be rewarded for withstanding the aching.

I don't know if I want to believe that, but I also don't know any other way. Is it better to just "suffer through," life feigning hope? or to make preemptive judgments and anticipate failure/pain and pull out before life starts to hurt? I wish I wasn't as afraid of taking risks. I wish I was more willing to let things progress naturally rather than take them into my oft incompetent and far-too-small hands...are the ends worth the byproducts?

Word of the summer: wait. Just...wait.


But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:25, NIV)

something different

This song, Houses in the Fields by John Gorka, has become a new favorite. It's simple enough, but I do fear its truth. And consequence.

"It's a sign I'm getting on in years when nothing new is welcome to these eyes and ears."

Song of the Barren Orange Tree

I was recently given Federico García Lorca's Collected Poems, and apart from the initial elation of returning to one of my favorite poets from the days when all that dearly I loved was Spanish-based, I discovered again that its oft-intractible medium speaks so often what I cannot.

In this world of shadow and settling, of consolation and complacency, of comfort and cage, we only see ourselves in mirrors and through the eyes of others. How, then, do we know what we are? how we are? how we are measured?

Followed incessantly and necessarily (or so it would seem) by shadow. Reflected always in mirrors. Always in terms of.

So Lorca would say here. Similarly a restless soul, I share his desperation. May we all. And may we all be fruitful, uncopied dreamers.



Song of the Barren Orange Tree

Woodcutter.
Cut down my shadow.
Deliver me from the torment
of bearing no fruit.

Why was I born among mirrors?
Day turns round and round me.
And night copies me
in all her stars.

Let me live unmirrored.
And then let me dream
that ants and thistledown
are my leaves and my birds.

Woodcutter.
Cut down my shadow.
Deliver me from the torment
of bearing no fruit.


[Federico García Lorca]

photo shoot!!

Some of my favorite photos from my floor's end-of-year shoot.

Thanks to the brilliant Scot Huber for his keen eye and patient spirit. Hire him!!

(Ask me about this one.)

the world is full of magic

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful,
inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it. [Thomas Dekker]


Walking through the woods this morning I was reminded of a line from the Disney movie Brother Bear (be advised this a judgment-free zone!) in which an old bear narrates: the world is full of magic. Small things become big. Winter turns to spring. One thing always changes into another.

the burden of legality

"You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking...ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: 'It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.'"

-Charles Baudelaire

The God Who May Be

Last year some Gordon faculty hosted a panel discussion as a response to much of pop-atheist literature (Hitchens, Dawkins and that slew of writers). One student brought up a reference to the post-internet movement "Why Won't God Heal Paraplegics?" by asking that same question. Of course if God wanted the world to turn to Him all He would have to do would be to perform some great miracle of healing, right? Dr. Gedney responded above most of the audience's heads when he said that that is the wrong question. It is not that God doesn't perform miracles; rather it is our response to these miracles that needs to be called into question. He mentioned that some of the greatest miracles ever performed were by His incarnate Son, and certainly not everyone fell at the feet of the Almighty even then. Would we prove any more responsive to shows of His power today? Thus the question and its assumed answer is misappropiated

In similar enigma--actually, I'm not certain that's entirely fair--Richard Kearney talks about "the God who may be," the God not of imagined existence, but the God our imaginations know. He is not, he claims, resorting to mere atheistic resignation, but rather encouraging--exhorting, requiring!--the use of imagination, of story, as means to God's incarnation post-ascenscion. In this way I'm encouraged; it is my responsibility--and, indeed, gift--to become a co-creator of this world by inviting God, through imagination--which doesn't imply fantasy or mere myth--to become incarnate.


Scripture as the human transcription of the divine.

Rabbinical interpretation is more generous--and no less aware of the divine nature. Certainly Christians have the knowledge of the incarnation, and yet Christ's mystic nature and enigmatic commandments are given little weight in our frantic efforts to "translate" the words of Scripture. Isn't interpretation then a more faithful approach to the divine, a method more in line with Christ Himself? Kearney argues that Christianity has, as one of many flaws, become all-too-eager to possess Christ, to worship Him as God understood (despite Christ's command "not to build a shrine here") rather than seek after Him as God-who-is-yet-to-be-grasped. When we ask "who is God?" we ask it unfairly, because we assume we already have right knowledge and correct answers.

We can't hope for the kingdom without interpretation.

"Hence there is hermeneutics in the Christian order because the kerygma is the rereading of an ancient Scripture. It is noteworthy that orthodoxy has resisted with all its force the currents, from Marcion to Gnosticism, which wanted to cut the Gospel from its hermeneutic bond to the Old Testament. Why? Would it not have been simpler to proclaim the event in its unity and thus to deliver it from the ambiguities of the Old Testament interpretation? Why has Christian preaching chosen to be hermeneutic by binding itself to the rereading of the Old Testament? Essentially to make the event itself appear, not as an irrational irruption, but as the fulfillment of an antecedent meaning which remained in suspense. The event itself receives a temporal density by being inscribed in a signifying relation of "promise" to "fulfillment." By entering in this way into a historical connection, the event enters also into an intelligible liaison. A contrast is set up between the two Testaments, a contrast which at the same time is a harmony by means of a transfer. This signifying relation attests that the kerygma, by this detour through the reinterpretation of an ancient Scripture, enters into a network of intelligibility. The event becomes advent. In taking on time, it takes on meaning. By understanding itself indirectly, in terms of the transfer from the old to the new, the event presents itself as an understanding of relations. Jesus Christ himself, exegesis and exegete of Scripture, is manifested as logos in opening the understanding of the Scriptures." (Paul Riceour)

Coalescence of the "no longer" and the "not yet."

So we are fated to wait, but wait in imagination.

At the Transfiguration God becomes enshrouded in white cloud and we don't know who He is anymore.

Even those who spent years with Christ, Kearney notes, didn't immediately recognize Him, because God decided against full self-disclosure. We cannot possess God, nor the idea of God. Thus the reality of God is manifested and actualized through, interestingly enough, the realm of the possible. We are not--like children--questioning the raw existence of God, but rather our idea of Him, a task to which He holds us responsible.

Story is the great mediator of the Bible.

Is it almost more heretical and blasphemous to read the Bible literally? Of course, Riceour would say that we're only reading an interpretation of an interpretation...

Kenneth Cauthen says that "the modernist view is that everything in Scripture must be judged by what is most excellent in its witness, and it is we the interpreters who decide that. Authority resides in the fact that the biblical witness evokes acceptance by our reason in the light of our experience and all the relevant evidence we can bring to bear from all sources. This provides for me the best way to use the Bible with integrity."

And yet God is something to be reached for. God is something to be grasped!

Rather than an object to be completely known and/or contained.

We are given the choice--and the power--to become co-creators of the seventh day, to help complete the work God left unfinished.

God’s very narrative of creation leaves room for His creation to not just dwell, but to live. To effect, and not be affected.

God is calling for incarnation, but this cannot be unless and until we respond to these cries.

Just as we are co-creators with God, we become in a sense agents of His return, the means of His incarnation and vessels of His incarnation--to the least of these.

brave new world, that has such people in it

Twenty hesitant English honors students walked into Roger Smith's notoriously unpredictable classroom the first day of eleventh grade and sat down, waiting for him to enter the room and tell us what to expect. His classically plain name belied his frazzled appearance: glasses on the end of his nose, grey hair a little too long to sit comfortably behind his ears, wildly traveling eyes, one finger a little shorter than all the others from the time he'd cut it off in a carpentry accident. The chairs had been arranged in a circle, so we were all able to see each other, and--most importantly--Mr. Smith could see all of us. He handed out a packet of Native American creation myths, and informed us that the course, "American Connections" would begin here and journey on through the evolution of American literary thought, through Puritan literature, the Romantic Period, the Transcendentalist thinkers, political satire and modern poetry. Without wasting a moment we opened the packet to the first myth, "The Earth on Turtle's Back," and began reading together. After finishing the first paragraph Mr. Smith stopped us and asked our thoughts. Years of literature classes had all taught us to search for the "deeper meaning," and so one brave soul, a brilliant girl named Emma, said she was frustrated with herself; past teachers had all said that she was horrible at finding the "deeper meaning," and she sure as heck couldn't find it here.

"Fuck deeper meaning, Emma!" Mr. Smith roared, as we all sunk a little bit lower in our chairs, wide-eyed at his flippant use of such crassness. "That's not what literature's concerned with. That's not even life! What I want you--all of you--to think about when you're reading is a very simple question: what does this piece, this story, this poem, say about the human experience? What does this particular thinker have to say about what it means to be human?"

Grateful for a clean slate, we eagerly dug into the class. Poe, Fenimore Cooper, Anne Bradstreet, Jonathan Edwards, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Elizabeth Bishop...all these were read with this question in mind, and we were all better for it. Literature, I've learned--and am learning--is about the human experience, not about what our enlightened intellect can pull out of it. Certainly there is room for discussion, for insight, for poetry, but literature stands alone, stands on interpretation, not on what secrets it conceals. The most enduring works are enduring not for their "deeper meanings"; if that were the case the discovery of such enigma would signify the end of all appreciation. But it doesn't, because the value of literature--works classic and modern--lies in the human experience, interpretation, response. The works--our Bibles, our Shakespearean volumes, our Dante--have their value manifested in us. Narcissism? Egoism? Perhaps; but human history has deferred story to the individual.

On that note, I recently finished Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and promptly had a dream about it (because of it? within it?), one in which I was walking along a foggy beach with hazy figures. There were people all around, but none had any concrete shape, their edges all obscured. I reached out to grasp hands for proof of being, but couldn't feel anything. There was movement, sound--the low murmur of discontented groaning--but nothing to touch, no physical presence (a fitting element given the utopia's penchant for administering a drug called soma, Greek for body, to its inhabitants). After quite a bit of time in that strange place I was very grateful to be woken up by a phone call, wonderful reassurance that there are real people to be found.

One of the most powerful passages in the book speaks to Mr. Smith's question:


"What you need," the Savage went on, "is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here...isn't there something in living dangerously?"
"That's why we've made the Violent Passion Surrogate compulsory," the Controller replied. "Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenin. It's the complete psychological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences."
"But I like the inconveniences."
"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said.


Mr. Smith, I do think being human looks something like this: to claim the right to be unhappy. To desire God, poetry, real danger, freedom, goodness, sin. To claim the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind. To be completely and utterly savage, as long as it means being alive.

stuck in the suburbs

Day one of spring break:

Wake up at 6:30. Shower. Get dressed. Eat breakfast. Take Candace to school. Go to the library and read. Get home and take a nap. Read some more. Pick Candace up. Go to the store with my dad. Go back to the library (I do love that place). Take out Time Bandits, Natalie Merchant's Tiger Lily and Appalachia Waltz from the library. Watch said Terry Gilliam masterpiece with my family. Eat lots and lots of grapes.

Not quite the Girls Gone Wild experience the rest of my age group seems to desire, but I'm contented. I sat outside my high school this afternoon, car parked in the waiting line while Candace made her way through her tightly-clothed, cell phone-carrying, freshly-manicured cohort. As 17-year-old after 17-year-old drove past me in Acura after Audi after BMW after Mercedes after Volvo I was struck by an incredible sadness. These are the "privileged," the ones who will spend their college spring breaks (and most likely spent their high school February breaks) in Cancun, in the Bahamas, in Europe, nary a care, living the "good life," returning to cold New England a slight bit more tan, with a slight sneer at us ignorant and pokey small-town hicks.

If only. Perhaps it's simply the perspective of self-justification and rationalizing that compels me to feel sorry for these young suburbanites. They will never learn to feel (really feel), to think (really think), to adventure (really adventure), to read (really read), to live (really live). My years at Trumbull High School, though highly beneficial--and this most likely because I never was settled in anything, always reaching (for what?)--were often cumbersome and frustrating. One feels at times that one spends one's day with empty shells; by this I don't mean that people are dead, per se, but that they aren't really alive. These are not people who have nightmares for weeks after reading Orwell's 1984, these are not people who take 20 books out of the library after reading Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 just-in-case, these are not people who look for marlins every time they're fishing after reading Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea, question EVERYTHING and its brother in an existential crisis after Rosencantz and Guildenstern are Dead's philosophical onslaught, or give up on a hard-fought-for faith for a little bit after reading Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley. These are not people who cry for hours after seeing a brilliant photo of the sun--the closest I'll ever get to that great ball of fire. This is not to say that my responses are the epitome, but they are, at least, responses. And to respond is proof that we are not empty shells. (Expect my thoughts on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World soon.)

I recently found a slip of paper on which some six years ago I'd scribbled the following words: there are some people who live and some who simply...exist.

Inquiring about a certain relationship, my mother asked if the other party found me too boisterous. Perhaps, I replied, but that is how I live, and it is the only way I know. There is great merit in withdrawing and thinking-really thinking, deeply thinking--but this crisis-plagued girl finds greater meaning and freedom in running amongst the stars. I'm not nearly enough, and I never will be, and I'm so tired and frustrated with letting myself be. I desperately long to break free of cages--both the ones I'm forced into and the ones I've made for myself, unwilling to accept any consolation but the real, willing only to gaze in perfect silence at the stars, the only impetus to keep running...

So I watch vapid adolescents make their way from day to mundane day--ticking clockwork ever haunting their steps, though they don't (can't? won't?) hear the echoes, and pray that I never find such satisfaction. Time is, indeed, a clock in a crocodile, chasing after all of us, and we are growing up--Neverland a well-phrased myth. And I cry a little bit for them, because they've let themselves be enough, big dreams only a facade disguising comfort, safety and package. Dream big, friends. Dream! Not the dreaming of privilege and wealth, of society's unbounded offerings. Further up and further in! Hope for the Shadowlands. You may end up right back where you are, but you'll have known the joy and pain of dreaming, and you'll have lived...

"See yourself in the mirror, you're separate from yourself. See the world in the mirror, you're separate from the world. I don't want that separation anymore (Joy Gresham)."

Here's a link to Natalie Merchant's San Andreas Fault, a song I've been letting repeat (and repeat and repeat) over the past couple of days. "San Andreas Fault moved its fingers through the ground, and the walls came tumbling down. O, promised land O, wicked ground. Build a dream, tear it down."




Thanks to Mary Shouvlin for the photos.

sublimity

I believe that a man is converted when first he hears the low, vast murmur of life, of human life, troubling his hitherto unconscious self.

-David Herbert Lawrence


I've been immersed these past few years with questions of consciousness, of what it is to be alive, of what it is to be human. Chalk it all up to an influential English teacher, a bit of Walt Whitman and the vision of Thomas Jefferson clinging for dear life to the only piece of safety standing between him and peril:

"Though the sides of this bridge are provided in some parts with a parapet of fixed rocks, yet few men have resolution to walk to them and look over into the abyss. You involuntarily fall on your hands and feet, creep to the parapet and peep over it. Looking down from this height about a minute, gave me a violent head ach[e]. If the view from the top be painful and intolerable, that from below is delightful in an equal extreme. It is impossible for the emotions arising from the sublime, to be felt beyond what they are here: so beautiful an arch, so elevated, so light, and springing as it were up to heaven, the rapture of the spectator is really indescribable!"

Oh, how I long for emotions arising from the sublime. Every now and then I'm overwhelmed with swells of life and joy, though I've grown to suspect my incessant desire to dwell consistently in such manners may be more a lifetime's endeavor than the longing of a moment. Perhaps it is the human condition that we are resigned to--as Lawrence so succinctly phrases it--troubling, that we are destined to come alive little by little only as life whispers to us, converting our shamed selves. Until then this grain of dirt, this speck of dust shouts in desperation at the blinking stars: I am here!

water the earth with tears of joy

"[Alyosha] did not stop on the steps either, but went quickly down; his soul, overflowing with rapture, yearned for freedom, space, openness. The vault of heaven, full of soft, shining stars, stretched vast and fathomless above him. The Milky Way ran in two pale streams from the zenith to the horizon. The fresh, motionless, still night enfolded the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the cathedral gleamed out against the sapphire sky. The gorgeous autumn flowers, in the beds round the house, were slumbering till morning. The silence of earth seemed to melt into the silence of the heavens. The mystery of earth was one with the mystery of the stars....

Alyosha stood, gazed, and suddenly threw himself down on the earth. He did not know why he embraced it. He could not have told why he longed so irresistibly to kiss it, to kiss it all. But he kissed it weeping, sobbing, and watering it with his tears, and vowed passionately to love it, to love it for ever and ever. "Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears," echoed in his soul.

What was he weeping over?

Oh! in his rapture he was weeping even over those stars, which were shining to him from the abyss of space, and "he was not ashamed of that ecstasy." There seemed to be threads from all those innumerable worlds of God, linking his soul to them, and it was trembling all over "in contact with other worlds." He longed to forgive everyone and for everything, and to beg forgiveness. Oh, not for himself, but for all men, for all and for everything. "And others are praying for me too," echoed again in his soul. But with every instant he felt clearly and, as it were, tangibly, that something firm and unshakable as that vault of heaven had entered into his soul. It was as though some idea had seized the sovereignty of his mind -- and it was for all his life and for ever and ever. He had fallen on the earth a weak boy, but he rose up a resolute champion, and he knew and felt it suddenly at the very moment of his ecstasy. And never, never, his life long, could Alyosha forget that minute."

-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

to dust I will return

The picture to the left is a representation of the ninth station of the cross, depicting the third time Jesus fell on the way to Calvary. This rendering particularly strikes me. While praying through the stations this afternoon I was struck by this station in particular, as it was the first in which Jesus was completely prostrate on the ground . Jesus--mighty, powerful, holy, GOD!--lay crumbled, helpless and still in the hard dirt.

Who would have thought God's saving grace would look like this?





This past week I observed ("celebrated" isn't quite the appropriate word) Ash Wednesday for the second time. I began a day of surprising solemnity and introspection with a 6:30 am church service in the Episcopalian tradition. The liturgy was read, and--perhaps most meaningfully--communion was taken. We take communion weekly, so I expected it, but there is still something remarkably surreal and haunting about remembering Christ's death while being told that I am dust and to dust I will return. But that is what I am. I am but dust, a fleeting moment. Heidegger, in his Introduction to Metaphysics asks, "...what is a human lifespan amid millions of years? Barely a move of the secondhand, a breath. Within beings as a whole there is no justification to be found for emphasizing precisely this being that is called the human being and among which we ourselves happen to belong." Taking some creative interpretive liberties, I am quieted by this call to understand transience. I am a move of the secondhand, a breath. I cannot justify myself. I exist in a non-human construct, for I did not make myself.


Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm:

"Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.

"Would you discredit my justice?
Would you condemn me to justify yourself?

Do you have an arm like God's,
and can your voice thunder like his?" (Job 40:6-9)


No. To all of the above, a roaring NO! I am but dust, and to dust I will return! As I walk--weakly, blindly, flailing--the forty days of Lent, the gruesome crucifixion (and glorious Easter!) always in view (though I see but through a veil fleetingly), my head is caught between hanging low in deserved shame and staring upwards in joyful hope.

Jesus, return to us soon! We pieces of dust have been blown around in the winds of sin and narcissism far too long.

the hands of the ancient artisan

Georges Rouault on his Landscape:


I have spent a fortnight now scrutinising the same horizon. As in former days when seeing travelling shows, or at fourteen in front of old stain-glass windows, forgetting everything and forgetting myself, I discovered this fundamental truth: a tree outlined against the sky has the same interest, character and the same expression as the human form. The question is how to express this: the difficulty begins there….I felt dwarfed by the task of rendering the colour of a grey wall turning to silver and the naked flesh coloured delightful tones according to the light. The taste of variation in tonality is a joy to the eye and to the mind, but it is also a monumental labour.

The good advisers among my friends said ‘You will soon tire of nature.’ On the contrary, should the obdurate visionary or the epic poet spend a thousand years examining it in diverse and various ways, it would always remain the promising source for new growth.

The ancient artisan loved his stone or his wood. And he worked with love. Anonymous hand of a grandiose work, was he not far superior to so many of the shallow personalities of our age?

In reality, what is beautiful remains hidden. And it has always been so. One must be worthy of searching for it and of persevering until death to find it. There will always be pain and anguish for whoever engages in this quest. But also profound and silent joy.

on "les fleurs du mal" and the best question ever

In late October I visited Boston College with a class in which I'm currently enrolled. The Jerusalem and Athens Forum is a great books program at Gordon College that seeks to bring together questioners and seekers of every sort and every age. We visited the art gallery at Boston for an exhibition, which was at the time running a showcase of works by Georges Rouault. Rouault is a curious artist to study; while many of his pieces are set to religious tones and carry redemptive themes, the art itself often seems desperate, in many places the paint reaching as much as an inch off the canvas, as if he was struggling to create as quickly as he was seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling, smelling, his works bearing the brunt of his soul's weight, panic and seeking. In an obscure corner of the lower level I found a case in which had been placed several pieces of illustration--Roualt putting to paper what French writer and poet Charles Baudelaire had so gravely described in his much-chagrined "Les Fleurs du mal," a work unabashedly full of sin and pain and ugliness and eroticism--all things the common sense of decency has deferred to the shameful category of "unmentionables." But perhaps it is the ugliness and sin in our lives that makes them meaningful. WHY WHY WHY? Why is Aldous Huxley so darn right? Goodness only when there is sin, freedom only when there is real danger, God only when there is poetry.

I think the best question I've ever been asked was posed by dear old Mr. Smith--that man certainly knew his way around the seeker's psyche. While reading through Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish," he asked what in this wide world makes me angry, makes me happy, makes me feel free, makes me feel so caged I could scream. What makes me feel like an old fish at the end of a thin piece of line? the fisher(wo)man reluctant to take pride in her catch once she's seen its eyes mirroring her own? Rainbow! Rainbow! Rainbow! What is it that makes me alive, for good or bad?

Is there some sinful thrill in desiring a life of tension, if it makes things seem more real? Of what am I afraid? Of unhappiness? Of feeling insignificant, useless, lost, lonely? Of not knowing how to repent, or for what TO repent? Of forgetting how to trust, to love, to hope?

I'd let the fish go for any of those reasons. For all of them.


Our sins are obstinate, our repentance is faint;
We exact a high price for our confessions,
And we gaily return to the miry path,
Believing that base tears wash away all our stains.


(Baudelaire)

never would have come this way...

More and more I'm aware of the periphery, or, at least, aware that it is banal and faithless. Seeking, journeying, wondering, screaming--it all seems futile, until I'm reminded of Ecclesiastes 3:11, and the promise (hopeful? frightening?) that "[God] has also set eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."
Grasping for the unreachable (and it may always be this way, I'm coming to understand) is thus given a greater context. This rotten, horrid, sinful shell of a girl has but one purpose, and the deep desire to fulfill this purpose carries with it a necessary leaving behind, a forgetting of duty, obligation, utilitarian expectations.

Lord, may I only seek after You, after whatever little pieces you offer. I'll take any of the crumbs You condescend to wipe off Your table. They are never wholly satisfying, but perhaps this is what You've intended all along. May I never cease my seeking. May I live--truly live--here, but never find this mortal world quite enough. Oh, Deus Absconditus, part the veil but a little bit more!


We made it to a strange town
Going down the wrong road
Like any story retold
Couldn't find a common ending
We're way gone, be gone, looking for our own way

We needed a distraction
You said you were redemption

We knew it as a wrong turn
We couldn't know the things we'd gain
When we reach the other border
We look out way down past the road we came from

We're looking at redemption
It was hidden in the landscape
Of loss and love and fire and rain
Never would come this way
Looking for redemption

We were looking out past the road we came from

Looking at redemption
Hidden in the landscape
Of loss and love and fire and rain
Never would have come this way
Looking for redemption
In the eyes of sorrow, eyes of rage
What a sordid histories they played
The drama of redemption
Redemption

-Jars of Clay

Trismegistus

O Egypt, Egypt—so the great lament
Of thrice-great Hermes went—
Nothing of thy religion shall remain
Save fables, which thy children shall disdain.
His grieving eye foresaw
The world’s bright fabric overthrown
Which married star to stone
And charged all things with awe.
And what, in that dismantled world, could be
More fabulous than he?
Had he existed? Was he but a name
Tacked on to forgeries which pressed the claim
Of every ancient quack—
That one could from a smoky cell
By talisman or spell
Coerce the Zodiac?
Still, still we summon him at midnight hour
To Milton’s pensive tower,
And hear him tell again how, then and now,
Creation is a house of mirrors, how
Each herb that sips the dew
Dazzles the eye with many small
Reflections of the All—
Which, after all, is true.

-Richard Wilbur

and it was not void

Then the voices of the Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto countless choirs singing with words, began to fashion the theme of Ilúvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Ilúvatar were filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void.

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion