Soap

I feel manufactured. I feel like I smell like the soap of a thousand public bathrooms. I feel like I’m wearing the clothes a thousand women my age have cluttering their closets. My fingers are no different. The ink of my tattoo is not unique. I am a product. A by product of an overworked and under-dreamed society. So can the passion I have be attributed to anything more than a side effect? Am I really a rebel if I am simply another reaction against the movements that are unstoppable?

nihilism calls

absurdity beckons

i answer

i fade

And in the fading I find that i am. And I find I AM. Because the material world will fade, but something will keep going. If spiritual can outlast material, and ideas are larger than the buildings we construct, then I have something to live for because my life is more than an end in itself.

romanticism calls

beauty beckons

i answer

i thrive

Why write? Why imagine? Why do anything? My nihilist mind wept non-existent tears in a mourning without grieving for a beauty that was never seen…. Until I understood. Why do I write to please my soul? Because I too was written as a pleasure to the soul of the Author. And my pragmatic behavior rebels. What good does it do to revel in beauty when it saves no one? Because it is saving me. In beauty, in creating, I am experiencing the heart of my Creator. In beauty, in running, I am experiencing the physicality of the Incarnation. In beauty, in singing, I am experiencing the music of the heart of God, the creator of unknown notes. In beauty, in hiking, in travel, in exploring, I am with the heart of the Living One, the Mighty One, Adonai.

He calls

Beauty beckons

I answer

I live 

Status Detour

As if I was unaware of it before, I don’t belong. Pardon me if it is offensive or strange that I begin most everything I write with something about myself. My subjective experience is all that I have to explain the way I see life, it’s such an important thing to me because it’s my story. I suppose that is what made me start thinking as I stood on the jet way, about all the stories around me. Or, why I sat in my seat on the plane feeling both invisible and unique simultaneously, as I observed the other people. As I fell in love with The Beat Reader, I constructed, rather deconstructed,  what I would write here. Bear with me as I let the picture I have in my mind struggle to find its form through words.

What is a person?

Not a human, no I don’t need to know the elements that make man man.

But what is a person?

 I of course sit here upon this plane, the only person wearing  color, and  blazing red at that, interrupting the gray and black mass around me, thinking that a person is not their job, that a person is their dreams. A person is made of their aspirations. A person is…  I imagine peeling back the receding hairlines and wire rimmed glasses, knocking Blackberries from passengers hands, de-threading the Gucci jackets, and throwing Armani pumps out the window, to find the pictures of his childhood, the princess play from her earlier times. But, who says that I am right? Am I wrong? I presuppose that this business class and premier executive flight is full of people who have forgotten how to be persons and have succumbed to the identity of a salary and a suit. I could be wrong. I mean, I really could… right? I overhear their conversations and I don’t think that I am. I wonder when we started caring about things that have no tangible frame of reference in the world.

[what is the real world?... too philosophical.. I refrain for your sake.]

But to be honest I find myself ripping apart the world we have created these days, wondering where it all began? Perhaps I have without realizing it placed myself at the top of a hierarchy, of an anti-society that I don’t belong at the top of, that has no reason to exist.  Maybe it’s simply my rebellion against the man who tells me he is worth more because his bank account has more than $30 in it… because I don’t think that’s what makes me valuable. Am I wrong? Is it true that it only matters that I am aware of the condition of the stock market and the deal that Geico struck that fell through? Does that mean that the knowledge I have that someone else does not have makes me more valuable?

I wish to take it all apart

To begin again looking through a new frame

All the ideas that clutter my mind fall like dust

Dust that you can see in the window on a sunny afternoon

And I want to understand what it is that makes ideas sparkle

Like a child reaching for the particles

Sinking into a faded floral sofa

But why is this child so frail?

For lack of ideas and knowledge?

Are they worth so much less than the counterparts of their parents

Without the ability or opportunity

Or want

To receive a degree from Harvard or Yale?

Perhaps there is something to the subjective reality of individuals

But I cannot help but think we really are still entwined

I cannot be left to think that my own story stands alone

It cannot

It does not

so where do I begin?

Where does the essence of a person begin?

Creation

corazón roto

Can we be honest? Not depressingly, dramatically, darkly honest.... but a little raw about the way things are. I realize quite well that it is cliché of me to be writing about heartbreak. Let me begin by announcing to the eyes reading this who are exhausted of watching people vomit their innards all over their blog: I'm not writing about myself, though I would eagerly step up to be included with the people who these words silhouette. They are real, strong and dangerous. And, I am proud to stand with them in the risks they take in life. 


People are deeply complex. My mind spun senseless words in a conversation tonight in which I pointed out I could never reduce humanity to the wonderings of my mind concerning the point of their existence, or the  possibility of their uselessness. Humans cannot fit within the boundaries of these questionings. Humans are so intricate that we are all but oblivious to what is really happening inside the walls of our own hearts and minds, let alone attempting to understand the ebb and flow of another's thoughts. They cannot be deconstructed. They can barely be understood. And they can hardly be trusted. Yet, they are beautiful. 


So we pursue other humans, wanting to be a part of their beauty, their stories, and in the reflection of their lives. We find our friends, we find our enemies and we find our lovers. Our lovers we grasp onto, because in them, we see the hope that someone belonging to our present physical world will spend their lifetime listening, cherishing, fighting, searching, wandering, and living beside us. Perhaps some of us have even reached the point that even if we never find the spark of "true love" we would at the least find someone willing to live the rest of their days out, exhausted, laying next to us. So many do find someone. And then so many times, we realize that human is not someone we want to watch the time march by with. Worse, they decide that we cannot pass their days with them, for countless, various and inconsequential reasons- the result is nearly always the same...


Heartbreak. I look into the eyes of those bewildering humans who have become my friends and there is  a little bit of light that goes out in their passion in the midst of heartbreak. You do not talk the same anymore after you have your heart broken. There is an aged wisdom in the youngest of children who have experienced a heartbreak. While their adolescent faces betray them,  uttered words could fool that they have seen things beyond their years. In heartbreak we are beat down, yet we are pulled up into growing up. A tense and impossible paradox. Heartbreak strips us, makes us feel like we're starting over, yet when we come out on the other side, we look back at the mountain range we've crossed and feel that metaphysical years have gone by. We come out wiser, but more somber. Joy is more precious, but love is more fragile. We know what we have to give- so much to offer, but we know what we have to lose- so much to risk. So, they are the brave ones. Sometimes the stupid ones. But everyone wants to love and be loved. Heartbreak will be.  

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. 

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.

I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky. 

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.

How could I not have loved her large, still eyes? 

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her. 

-Pablo Neruda

Love for the Torah

Theodore Tolby's brilliant and dedicated
 painting, "Love for the Torah."

I do not live as I do because I will get in trouble if I don't. I live as I do because Body, Soul and Spirit I am a created being. My Creator is not distant, but active. My life is entwined with His reality. The closer I am to the Creator, the more human I become. How can that be? If I am closer to the Divine that I am more human? Because humanity is meant to be entwined with the Divine... both physically and spiritually. The gap was bridged when Jesus set foot on this earth. The Law was broken when Jesus destroyed the wall separating physical and spiritual salvation. It was broken when Jesus fulfilled the entire Mosaic commandment... and in doing so made it possible for me to be alive. Do I live as I should? Certainly not. I am still apart of a broken and depraved world. "Creation groans..." We as an entire creation, the rocks, the trees, the birds, the children, groan because we know that something is not right. 

In this world I will never be completely whole. I will never be able to look just like Jesus. I am a sinner. Do not console me. I am a stubborn, disgusting, selfish sinner. That is what I am. Yet, in this reality, what freedom! What freedom I have because I cannot do it... no longer am I subject to attempting to follow every passage in the law because I cannot do it, and yet I will still be saved! Because, by the grace and power of the One who created me, I am being restored but not by my own works. Yet, my flesh and my soul remain just as valuable, equally valuable, whether I stand or fall. And so, with creation I give testimony that my value is bestowed upon me not by my obedience of the law, but by the only one who can give value because He Himself CREATED value. 

And now, from where I stand, free from the law, I can see its beauty. And I treasure God's commands in my heart not because I need something to obey but because they are His words, and I can see in them a life that I was meant to live! They bring me freedom from the chaos and hellishness of a world with no authority. In them I find purity and peace. So, my soul is subject to the Spirit who lives within, and my flesh moves and bows to the words of a God who walked the same earth... 

How now....

.... shall we live?

It was last week while I was running that I began to think of how much time we spend talking about how to change the world, instead of moving towards a new world. As I sloshed through the left-over snow in the middle of a hazy Joplin day my thoughts ran faster than my feet could carry me. We who are Christians create such deep divides between the physical and spiritual needs of humans. Humans are not considered to be in two parts, being only spiritual or only physical. No, one cannot live without being both. Just as a body is incomplete without a soul, no human soul can ever be human without its body. So, how now then do we bring truth to those whose physical bodies ache and fail? And how now do we bring rest to those whose souls cry out from hunger pangs of spiritual starvation?

We take the hope of Jesus.
We move the hope by truth and faith. The truth may be a word, the truth may be food, the truth may be freedom.
When they do not hear our words we continue to aid their physical pain.
If they reject our material sacrifice, we press on in feeding their souls.
We feed their souls by prayer, by a rousing cry among the saints to Power.
When they stop their ears to our words, when they close their doors to our hands...
We live.
As we live lives of radical love and revolutionary contrast to a world of tragedy and oppression, we win.
When they tire, when they anger, when they rise against this life...
We die.
And in our death, we birth another generation of hope.
When we die, we prove that we were not slaves to life, nor slaves to death, but owned by something more.
When we die, we give life.
When we die, we live.
So, how now shall we live?


Simply as Christ.

Briefcase.

"Interesting how moments that were once our favorites can be the ones we abhor the next day. and the ones that seemed so... meaningless are realized as pivotal points in our existence. Life... funny thing."

I love moments. I love to live them. I love those small seconds of the day that you know no one else noticed. They dangle and then dash away, leaving you breathless to describe them.

The day faded out and I sat on the bus, surrounded by familiar strangers on my way to Vancouver. We'd talked about Christmas, about families, how I feel about Texas and then laughed as I retracted my statements when approached by a Texan. We talked about writing and we talked about why we were on that bus. On the outskirts of Vancouver I wondered out loud why we had pulled over at a broken down gas station. It had a crooked sign, and the pumps were rusted. Through the window you could see the convenience store clerk looking bored as the last of the sunlight disappeared, doubting she'd have any customers the rest of the night. One pick-up truck was parked outside. The boy sitting next to me answered my wondering, facetiously asserting that this must be a stop. 

It was. 

From behind me an old man got up. He was wearing a blazer and a cowboy hat. He was no hillbilly though, but a figure emerge from a novel. He reached above his seat into the overhead storage of the Greyhound. He removed a single piece of luggage, a small, brown, square briefcase. Leaning slightly forward, he shuffled to the front of the bus. He descended the stairs and paused on the pavement below. I waited for him to move to the side of the bus to claim the rest of his bags which I assumed were underneath. Instead, he looked around, and then walked away. My head tilted in curiosity as I watched him move away from the gas station down an old road, one foot before the other on the asphalt, cracked and uneven. There were no lights ahead, no car to pick him up, nothing for miles. He turned quickly into a phantom. I turned to the boy next to me, and told him with the utmost respect for this man that I wished I could be so free as to travel holding only a briefcase. He replied, "How Kerouac..." 

I have no idea where the old man went. But in my mind he walked for miles, one of the few left from the Beat Movement. Still part of the anti-culture, still preserving adventure, still moving against the tide accidentally. Yes, it's moments like these that drive me back into my crazy mind, that unhinge me and send me hurtling back into the dreams of being On the Road. I'll never get over it. My life is one of those moments.

Faces

If you have not yet, please read the story of Kate Donahue and Jesus Sanchez. And if you pray, plead. Give if you can. But, listen to the story, because it is more than a story- it is the living, breathing pain of a family that has been hurt. It is more than a story, it is a reason to care, a jolt to stop being so hardened to the suffering of the people we are so privileged to love. 

Newspaper clipping from the Beat Museum
in San Francisco. Another product
of the Beat Movement. Thought it fit
the mood, and have been wanting to share
it for awhile now. 

I’ve been itching to write something quirky and lighthearted. Today is not the day I think. Quite the opposite from how I feel. Flying 40,000 feet above the earth I ache to look down and see a different world. Days like this make me wonder why I’ve decided to dedicate my life to uncovering pain and studying the causes and solutions. Social work does not promise happy endings. It’s days like this I see my mother in me because I feel such brokenness in the depths of my soul, I feel the burden of those I love.

If you’ve ever read The Secret Life of Bees the character May Boatwright best describes what I feel when I step out of my head and look at our world. The Psalms echo through my mind, words of pain and recognition of such depravity and tragedy in our world. It’s too much when we see it all, I become nonfunctional in the face of such great human suffering. From of our first breath, we cry. Pain is real, it is inescapable. Our friends, our family, our loves, ourselves… we confront daily incredible and real broken heartedness. The faces of my friends flash in my mind, those who are close to me. And they are followed by the children who have never been loved, whose faces are unknown to me, by the women who have only ever known touch to be abuse, by the boys whose own father’s face was their greatest fear... and by the humans who have fallen so far, who hurt so much that they lash out and become the abusers, create the abused. Create victims. Perpetuate pain. Break goodness.

I don’t want to see anymore. All of this makes me hateful and angry, tears of sadness turn to rage at the Creator who says He will be there to give us the strength to handle it all as we see how desperately we are. But why do we have to handle it at all? Why do I have to see the ones in my life I care the most for sit helplessly as an uncaring disaster attacks their beautiful hearts?

And then, that small, persistent reminder arises. A nudge at my temper. It will not always be like this. As simple as that. I wish with all that I am that everything was renewed now, that all of the perfection we beg for would take form in the life we live right now. I cannot even begin to fathom sitting in the seat of God, seeing and feeling every single thing that happens to hurt His beloved people, the crown of His creation. I would surely break my promise and wash them all away, simply to stop my own connection to the pain. But the promise holds fast: mercy. There will come a day. Despite darkness, despite the fight, despite rage, He is good. I was reminded yesterday, I do not know the whole story of God’s love for the world. I don’t need to know the answers to know that God still gives breath. And while I breathe I will know and I will see that God is good, that He is love, that He is better. So go the Psalms: tears to anger, anger to rage, rage to brokenness, brokenness to helplessness. Helplessness to praise. Redemption rises.