Porch Time

This one's for my friend Kristy--and her front porch. You should go there.


Porch Time

She's my shrink sometimes, I swear--

her porch her office furnished for two 

with kitchen-table chairs re-suited for Fridays at noon.

Brought nothing but my tea mug, and me;

pens and books will still be there--

work will await my return.

Never just doing nothing these days.

Not sure how that happened--

not so sure how friendship happened.

For this reason, there's plenty to mention--

to figure out how life has and will happen--

watching cars race by instead of among them.

The congenial creek caused by our shifting weight and

changes in topic seem to harmonize the breeze

sounding slow and easy--

still sipping my one cup of Irish Breakfast Tea

laced now with prospect. 

Almost three hours in. I didn't know I had muscle tension,

before a moment free from time and movement

together. Free to be weak--but only for a moment. 

The cars flying up and down the street are waiting

to race me--I must face them.

But not right now. At three 'o clock I will. 

A Prayer, A Poem

What is prayer? That's about as bad as asking 'what is poetry?'. Both are so deeply ancient and inherent to our kind that it escapes our modern tendency to create a science out of it. While poetry comes from an ancient Greek word meaning "to make, do, create" (so specific, eh?), the English word for prayer comes from the Latin word precarius, which means 'to obtain by entreaty' (New American Oxford Dictionary). Deep down, humankind has always known that we are not self-sufficient as a race. If we were, then why this long history of asking? And what are we asking for? We ask for things we think we are lacking--we know that we lack. We are asking for Biblical shalom--Hebrew for the state of utter completeness, the state of perfect rest and peace. We are a restless race--always have been. We respond in many types of prayer.

But really, what is it that we're asking (and asking and asking) for? We often ask for momentary things, and even when we ask and desire the good things, we still don't take it far enough into the eternal communion with God that is the root of all truly fulfilling desires. Lucky for us, Jesus--God--lived as a man for a whole 33 years down here. While He maintained rest with His Father, He wrestled for it in constant prayer. The fact that Jesus has to pray to stay close to His Father God is the deepest proof of His full humanity--He, just like us and the ancients, needed to ask in order to keep His shalom, His peace.

Because of Jesus the man who is God, we can find a way to be human that does not leave us chasing, knife in hand, the enemy running around in our own souls and bodies. The knife becomes useful only for harvesting vegetables and chiseling poems in the tree bark.

So where does the random poetry reference fit into this? Writing poetry--among all other expressions of human creativity--has to do with our need to complete things; or perhaps it often has more to do with our need to give breath to our discontentment with the incomplete things we see. In fact, if a poem seems 'too' complete with nothing but bubble gum pastures and cotton-candy clouds plotlessly wrapped with a bow, it runs rough on our ears because we know that life is not this way--not the life in which a Savior-God hangs naked on a cross and dies before He can restore the dignity of every man and woman by rising from the grave. If there was a bubble-gum route to shalom, He probably would have preferred that one. We, Christian or not, know that our world is deeply incomplete as of now, so when we find something small that is complete--or as close as we can find--we call it 'beauty' and must capture it in writing or paint or deliberate body movements of some sort. And it is the naked dying Savior that makes the third day that much more beautiful.

Both the need to ask and to create show that we, from ancient times, need to be overt. We need to express, share, communicate and be known in community. We are not self-sufficient, separate beings--and we are not self-sufficient from God. So we ask, we create. We ask in the form of our creativity; we create from the desires behind our asking.

As of late, I've been overwhelmed by the natural entwining between poetry and prayer. It seems that I can't do one without the other. Without prayer, my life is empty of God and I am dry for things to write. Without poetry--imagery, metaphor, plot line--I am unable to express my prayer. I understand God and prayer through the story and scene that He's given me through Scripture and Sacrament. When I'm writing, I'm using diction and linguistic features along with my silly metaphors that inevitably spill over to my asking for shalom--for myself or for someone else. Or perhaps I write about some place where I found a smidgen of it, or a moment in the day when I could visualize it, taste and savor it.

It seems that the two will never be separate for me. If you are looking for a poem without Christ, you won't find it here. If you are looking for Christ without a poem, you won't find that either. Come Holy Spirit; teach me to find places of shalom, and let me use my words to spread the wealth.

Old Poems

Here are the poems from my other blog url. I switched because this one is much less complicated and I like it better. All the previous posts are transferred from my other blog, too (hence them all being posted on the same day--no, I'm not some kind of genius that can write that many essays in a 15 minute period. Because I know that's what you were thinking.) This also serves to cover up the fact that I haven't written very many poems as of late. I've been trying to get myself out of the habit of trying to accomplish something with poetry. Ugh, what a surefire way to blow a hole in my desk and stick my sense of inspiration in the freezer. I'm still trying to balance my desire to produce something beautiful and the freedom to be less than perfect. I'm still learning how to let go of being 'good' but still doing the best that I can. Ah, the beautiful freedom of only doing the best that I can and striving for nothing more because I'm already doing the best I can do. It's so simple, but so hard for me.

Some women have trouble looking in the mirror--I have trouble looking at my own work, a different mirror of sorts.

The other thing that's so difficult for me with poems is that I've gotten to the point where prose is so easy for me that I think there's something wrong when poetry is hard. But this is only because I haven't been working at poetry the same way as I have been working with my prose--letting it be critiqued by fellow students and caring professors. I would give my left leg to have the same opportunity to do this with poetry, but it's not in the foreseeable future. Just like running a couple miles for the first time, my poetry muscles are out of shape and I feel like I'm going to die trying to get back to the parking lot of the metro park. But with practice, exercise, and discipline, poetry can slip itself into my DNA so that it becomes easier to write poems than to abstain. I shant be discouraged. I must set myself to the task--but not to the task of accomplishing anything but poetry itself. Especially now that I'm done with school, more will come.

Why I Paint

So maybe I like the color red—
But not hot-stove red
And not stop-sign red
And not Irish-brick-layer-been-out-in-the-sun-too-long red.
No, but wilted strawberry red—
The red they get after five lonely nights
In the door of the fridge with
The last three left growing soggy
And wrinkling, the red deepening.
Even though they went to waste,
I let them taste sweet to my whimsical invisible
Paintbrush set.

Like a big glop stuck on the threads
Spreads thick on the page,
Slowly—
I’m five again—
I paint.

The rubber scent of tempera
Feeds my devious grin.
A grin exposing my cause—
My great occasion
(of red colors and childhood questions)—
In my fruit-that’s-almost-moldy inspired masterpiece.
Because that is all the inspiration I need.

Maybe it’s the same thing
As wanting to get married in the summer rain,
Or wanting to beat your sibling in anything.
Maybe it’s the same thing as wanting to paint
When you blow the white dandelion head
Because you have to—
You’re drawn to—
With childhood questions calling you.

So maybe I'll follow
My childhood questions
Calling...


Keep Planting

Upon the end of spring,
Our hands were only three-quarters big as they would be.
The tops of the trees formed rolling hills
As far as the eye can see—
Every opportunity.
And in our youth we didn’t know these hills were only made of leaves,
So we tried as though we could just step and stand
On the canopy without falling through.

The hills can only be enjoyed with distance.
The hills inspire dreams that seem better as dreams
Once we get closer,
And we are left to tend to the soil’s cold shoulder—
To till to the rumble of its groan.
We are left—having been lured by romantic hills,
Of days promising frolicking in the light of the summer sun—
To the unpleasant smell of sod among the damp of the shaded tree trunks
And stubborn rocks.

But there are no roots without soil,
Or trees without roots
Or leaves without trees or
Hills without leaves.
So here we are, blisters and all, planting dreams—
Dreams our children will dream.
We plant long after fairy tale endings have left
Because we love our kids more than ourselves and
Perhaps they will walk upon the tree leaves
As we tend to the forest floor.

But if, every so often,
We leave our work—stepping
Into the almost liquid summer sunlight in the clearing,
A moment or two without trees blocking the warmth now gently resting
On our now thicker skin—
We see that all this planting
Is living the dream.
This moment in the sunlight, this
Is what joy feels like—
And isn’t joy what we were searching for
Aiming for hills upon the now colored leaves
Crinkling?
So keep planning my dear, keep
Planting. The leaves are falling and winter’s coming
To make way for new beginnings.


Drifting Full-Speed Ahead

It's hard to slow down when
The journey's long ahead,
And I don't want to be later-than--
Though later will be best.
So I sail on drifting full-speed ahead--
Wind gusts coming as they please.
And me?--I'm waiting, or learning how to wait.
I throw some crumbs into the sea
To watch the fish to pass the time.
I wonder how long until they too are eaten,
But the wind is picking up now.

I'm sailing for the Horizon--
My yardstick of success,
My end. Yet,

The Horizon keeps moving.
It didn't while sitting at the shore,
But I'm not at the shore anymore--I'm living.
I'm consumed by the mouth of the Ocean,
By the journey past and the journey always long ahead.
There is no rush, no such thing as success,
Except to know this Ocean--
My God, how could I have missed You in all this?


November Rain

It was supposed to snow by now;
I thought it would cover the ground—
Flakes sticking to my hair
Preparing the air
For adventure like when I was younger.

Instead I am inside
Hearing intermittent gusts batter my windows with rain—
With deflated expectation.
I haven’t a clue when it will snow or
What will happen next, but if
I spend my evening looking for snow,
I’ll miss the singing droplets trickling down my pane
Trying to serenade me;
I will find what I’m looking for if only I stop gazing out my window
Waiting for snow.

Instead I’ll sink deeply in my tired arm chair—
Its squeaky complaints mingling with the sound of heavy rain—
And here I’ll sit,
Slowly sip my tea in the meantime;
And here I'll face
Away from the window and toward where I’m living now--
Listening to the rain.

So tell me, dear, what’s new?


Songbird

I'd rather be a poor little songbird
Who tweets for the sake of singing
Of filling my immediate vicinity
With songs my Father gave me--
My Father, who formed my lungs and
Stretched my vocal chords into being.
I'd rather live in an overlooked pine bush
In an unkept yard on a city street,
Perch upon the grayish packed-in snow heap
When cracker-crumbs are rare on the sidewalk
And the bread dropped by strangers sogs too quickly to eat.
The sun will come out at midday, warm my feathers
Teaching me to sing of simple things
While the woman who filled the feeder foreclosed
Leaving me on my heap
Singing--
I'd rather be.
For what good is a songbird
Who wants for nothing
Sitting pseudo-contented, stuffed, and
Silently?

In the Meantime

"I'm so bored of little gods while standing on the edge of something large. While standing here so close to You, we could be consumed."
-David Crowder in "How Great" from Illuminate

A couple of years ago, on the Sunday after Christmas where my church celebrates the feast of the holy family, one of our priests gave his sermon on what it means to be in a family. He spoke to different stages of life, including to us single-folk. Being someone called to, as he says, “the single life,” he spoke with grace and refreshing clarity on what it means for us youngins to wade through this stage of meantime.

“Choose the one with whom you are comfortable praying with—the one whom you can share your presence-of-Jesus with.” This seemed like the ready-made, churchidy-church-church answer, and at first listen I was sure it was far too simplistic. What about mental and emotional compatibility? What about each other's vision of the good life? What if he has tattoos?? (My Dad always told me never to bring a guy home with tattoos. That’s pretty much all I got from him on the subject). Surely there must be more. But then again, this particular priest didn’t strike me as the cheap-churchy type.

I was about to sign it off as cliché until I thought about that interesting phrase he used. Presence-of-Jesus? Perhaps this is more than praying together because you met at a Christian college or church group and because you figure you should pray to make your pastor happy. It’s more than bandwagon Christianity.

I left that week after communion with a hunger to define this phrase in my own life. What does it mean to share this? In order to share this with someone, I should probably have it to give. As a Bible and Theology major, I am often startled at how little I know about deep practical spirituality. What does this phrase mean? I kept it in the back of my mind and forgot about it on and off. Now, over a year later, I find myself coming back to that sermon.

I’ve come back to it perhaps in an attempt to spend the rest of my single life doing something other than wishing I was married.

And don’t anyone dare comment about how my time will come and God has a plan and bla bla bla (although these things are true)—this isn’t a sob story for crying out loud. This is a story of putting fears to rest. Contrary to popular belief, singleness is not the leading cause of death in the modern age. Singleness is nothing to be afraid of—even if I’m single for a long time to come, and even if people all around me are getting engaged and married. Oh, and also contrary to popular American belief, sex alone will not sustain a relationship beyond three weeks. Since I want to be married more than three weeks, I have been looking for alternate means of foraging a relationship with someone.

And I think I’ve found it—from a celibate priest no less. Ironic? I don’t think so, since him and I are searching for the very same ultimate thing. We are searching for rest. We are all searching for rest--for a place to lie down after running and running with a constant sense that there is something more, that we are only in the meantime. And, of course, I will still have this restlessness when I am married someday. If I don’t find my resting place, I will run my marriage right into the ground trying to understand why I still feel like I’m in the meantime. I think the singleness of celibacy has given him a fresh perspective on the ultimate goal of all relationships—a perspective I aim to grasp while I still can. Because singleness for me will not last forever, but life is all about how you travel in the meantime. If I don’t learn how to travel well, I’ll never make it to my resting place.

What is my resting place? My presence-of-Jesus, of course. This is the place I go every time I stop to realize that, in the end, my purpose here is to make God smile. This is the place I go when I need to crumple on the floor and admit that I’ve lost at life again. This is the place I go when I realize I couldn't have made it out alive any other way than sheer grace. It’s the place I go when I thank Him for my food.

But presence-of-Jesus is difficult because in it we are vulnerable and naked. God has called into the Earth, “Adam, Eve, where are you?” and we come out from hiding and respond “Here I am, will you make me whole again?” If my future spouse doesn’t disown me when he realizes how often I talk to myself or when he understands my need to sit and dream about things, I think he can handle any other motleyness that I can dish out. But what would it look to mutually come together in spill-your-gut prayer? If he ever talks to me again after he’s seen me have a talk with God—I won’t know what to think. The only thing left is to look up and say “Fine, God, you win. I’ll marry him…”

The point is this: if two people are able to comfortably share this spiritual nakedness with one another, they should have no problem sharing their mentally, emotionally, and physically naked selves with each other. And this physical nakedness acts as a climax of vulnerability—of two people who have decided to make the journey together, of two people who’ve learned how to pray together.

I’ve realized that sometimes you can want something so badly that the only way to get it is to let it go—to let the pieces flutter off into the wind, turn around, and walk away. To take off the glasses of longing mixed with soap scum and lime blocking my view of the sunshine reflecting off the puddles that the sparrows bathe in. Whether in single or married life, I will miss the abundant life my fallen self craves if I’m pursuing anyone other than Christ. If I am busy looking for marriage, I will miss the one I should marry—the one with whom I will pursue Christ and preach His gospel. In order to know which person I can share my presence-of-Jesus with, I should probably know what my presence-of-Jesus is. In the meantime, I’ll start with that.

Threshing

“We can do no great things, only small things with great love” –Mother Theresa

A few weeks ago, I was traipsing around Barnes and Noble (which seems to be all I ever do in that store) and picked up a book on Millenials. I chuckled because it was in the “Christian Inspiration” section, and I wondered what the chunk of us folks born between 1980 and 2000 had to do with Christian inspiration. In my interest, I found that as they interviewed around 1200 millenials (or something like that) that 96% of them believed that they would do something “great.” We millies have also officially passed the baby boomer generation in size. Lastly, I learned (just from reading the back cover) that only 13% of those millenials find spirituality to be important. Makes sense—when you sit there believing in yourself all day, why do you need God? And what will it look like as we continue to surpass the baby boomers in size and thus dominate the culture with all this believing and lack of belief?

What will America look like as a room full of people who never left the “look at me” stage and they are all convinced that they are the best thing the world has ever seen. And what will happen as the mass of us who grew up watching movies, reading novels, and soaking music through our pours assuring that “you” will be the one to beat the crowd and stand out? After all, if all 78 million of us stand out from the crowd, none of us will be stand out, eh?

Don’t get me wrong—I too am subject to that twinge in my gut that says everything’s going to work out, that I will stumble upon the big dreams that run in and out of my head. When I see a quote like this one by Mother Theresa, I begin to imagine whether or not I should go live in the slums and feed the poor like she did. Wait, why can’t I just end world hunger altogether? Why not? I’m a millennial, for crying out loud. It’s not my fault that my grade-school teachers put all those cheesy posters all over the place about believing and (are you ready for the rhyme?) achieving. I guess I’ve always had big dreams, but I have also learned that my biggest dreams were microscope-sized compared to the scope of the Gospel. We are a generation believing for “great” things, but I’m afraid we don’t know what true greatness is.

For me, getting through college has been about grasping the reality of true greatness. This is what I would be staring out the window thinking about—not quite being able to articulate it in my head—in classes like “History of Christian Thought.” The reality is that 98% of the population in medieval Europe was comprised of serfs. Nothings—that’s what “serfs” means to us generation Y’s (aka Millenials). We have been pulled from the crib believing that “I” will be in that 2% of nobility. Ninety-six percent of us believe they will be in the top 2%, and 4% of us believe they will be in the bottom 98. To a millennial, there is no value in being a serf. And if a fifteen-year-old millennial was in charge of population control back then, maybe that 98% wouldn’t even be there—after all, they don’t matter. He believes he’s going to be a noble anyway.

I even remember learning about medieval Europe in seventh grade or so and not being able to imagine what it would be like being a lousy serf hammering out a meager existence working the land of my lord. I tried not address the fact that the Middle Ages were not exactly a romantic or magical time for that 98%. They lived in a time of harsh reality. For me, magic was appealing because I believed it could happen to me.

But while life is good, it’s not magic, friend.

While the serfs worked on the land of their lord, they also knew that they worked the land of their Lord. I would guess that they, unlike us, knew that they were nothings with no political prospects, meager wages and a short life expectancy. But they were (and are) each minute parts of God’s grand tapestry. One sacrament at a time, the Roman Catholic Church ushered them through a lifetime of pursuing God’s kingdom. One stage at a time, a serf learned their life’s trade with the ultimate goal of developing virtue—habits that produced goodness in one’s nature. Why be good? Well, Hell was a pretty good threat, and purgatory probably didn’t sound too appetizing either. But, threats aside, what’s the real reason to live well? God is good, and we live on His land. Love is the source of all virtue, and while we can only love with God’s grace, the serfs did lots of negligible things with goal of ultimately doing them with great love.

Throughout college, I’ve slowly realize that I’m not going to be a noble. I’ll let myself get cocky for a minute and imagine that I will be in the top fifty percent in terms of greatness—hey, what if I strike gold and get up into the eighties? Yep, I’m still a serf. I’m a nothing. I will not be one in a million; I am just one in a family of 78 million. I will not be “great,” so now what?

This is the part of the show where perhaps one of my generation-X superiors reassures me that I will do great things someday. I will be president; I will receive an academy award; I will find the cure for cancer; my blog will have a million followers. Okay people, I have two. The question of the hour for this millennial is: So now what? Will I pull out the stops, doing whatever it takes to collect a million followers for my blog—abandoning all sensibilities to woo the internet world? Is this what my generation is going to look like? Will we throw all sensibilities to the wind and take our culture by storm with our stage-show antics? We’ve replaced our belief in God with our belief in being “great.” But what is “great,” anyways?

Throughout history, I would guess that at least 98% of the population are people whose names are lost forever. I will probably be one of those unless I do something to make everybody really (really, really, really) mad at me. But since I’m hoping not to do that, my name will probably be forgotten once my third generation or so of offspring die off with the stories of their crazy great-great grandmother dying with them. (But, while we’re on offspring, let us post-feminism women never forget that the call to motherhood is not only because we “want” kids—it’s the most phenomenal of chances to bring God’s creation into the world and care for it in a way that no one else but us can. So cool it.)

Maybe I’ll just leave it to the remarkable ones. After all, there’s a certain freedom in being a serf. Living on God’s land is about learning to love—and it’s a good thing no one’s busy watching me because that’s going to take a while. Threshing God’s wheat in my daily grind for existence is for the ultimate purpose of learning to love. And while the political, economic, cultural world turns furiously on, let me be found threshing wheat in my Father’s field when He comes. I won’t miss a thing.

I will be the vote that no one sees, the dollar that no one misses, the poem that few people read—but let me be found threshing wheat in my Father’s field when He comes.

I feel for the flood of Millenials who don’t figure this out. Maybe 78 million of us will be blindfolded to think we did something great. Maybe we’ll end up horribly depressed by the end of our lives. Or maybe we’ll forsake the human creed for something truly great. For we can do no great things, only small things with great love.

Literary Statement of Faith

I know--long time, no blog. I have had a few things brewing, but I can't seems to edit them into any kind of shape. I also don't have a lot of time this semester. But hey, here's another one of those blogs that I'm not sure anyone would want to read. It's another something in which I--sigh--write about writing. I've really gatta get some new material. Oh well--here it goes.

Literary Statement of Faith


"A well-known writer got collared by a university student who
asked, 'Do you think I could be a writer?'

'Well,' the writer said, 'I don’t know…Do you like sentences?' The writer could see the student’s amazement. Sentences? I am twenty years old and do I like sentences? If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, 'I liked the smell of paint.' "

-From Annie Dillard’s A Writing Life, as quoted on p. 112 of Joyce Carol Oates’ The Faith of a Writer.


I don’t know when it started, because I always thought I was born to be a musician—or maybe a magician or scientist or something. I started off in life wanting all the things I wasn’t all that good at. For instance, I began high school thinking that at 5’2” and 120 lbs I was going to be a multi-sport varsity athlete. Perhaps I could have played varsity fast-pitch if I wouldn’t have wanted it so bad. Instead of playing the game, I dreamt about being good at it—possessing it—so my dream began to possess me. I choked when it counted.

Meanwhile, I was busy not trying too hard to be a writer. I was quite fine to never be a writer at all.

I left high school accomplishing almost none of my athletic or academic goals. I had broken promise upon promise to myself, and shuddered thinking of the points at which I had left my character in the dust. I still shudder sometimes. I left high school having never felt so humbled, but all that failure had left me to sit in the dust I was eating and listen to the wind. No striving, no pressing, no wearing myself out by wanting things too much. Just me, God, and the wind—waiting to see what would happen.

I wanted to remember a time that I felt free enough to dance in front of people. Suddenly it was a year earlier, and I was sitting in front of the computer smelling tomato and short-rib from my mom’s cooking of dinner. I asked her for the name of a really bad movie. “Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. Wait, why? What are you doing over there?”

“Homework.”

I was typing an apology to my English teacher. The assignment was to update a scene of Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing into modern vernacular. I couldn’t do justice to Shakespeare, so I want to introduce my work with an apology. It was so non-academic and nonchalant that I was thinking I’d get in trouble or at least a talking-to. When my mom forbade me to turn it in, I knew it was what I was looking for. I was in a ridiculous mood that evening, and I wanted to test this new-found freedom from my English teacher who seemed to react positively to my humor. But when she had previously complimented my writing style, I was certain that this was not what she meant. A part of me even wanted to prove her wrong. Yet I felt so free to let my personality out of its cage—I couldn’t help myself. So many years of, “Sarah, you can’t say that,” flashed through my mind after I turned it in. As good as it felt to write, there was no way this would fly.

But she liked it—I was so confused. I made it my goal upon entering college to figure out how I could make this happen again. After all, it’s our greatest challenge in life to learn how to dance freely like we did when our sense of balance wasn’t what it is, because we’ve grown up now and are expected to contain ourselves in public. If nowhere else, I had found a place where I felt free enough to dance in front of people—to let my arms and hips go where they would in genuine response to the rhythms of living.

But then, of course, started the trying. I learned about great writers and wondered if I could ever be almost as good as one of them. I wondered if I could be good. And then started the wanting it and freaking out and obsessing over it. So I switched my major to Bible and Theology. I spent a few semesters pretending that I didn’t want to be a writer, and this is what I came up with:

I do love sentences. I love the smell and taste of them. I like to finger paint with them—squishing the reds and yellows in my fist and being mesmerized with what happens when I drag two fingers slowly across a giant notepad propped impromptu on a window sill. Since I love the smell of linguistic finger paint, hours slip through my hands like the wet soap I use to get the dried pigment from my now discolored finger nails. I exhale, satisfied, having spent that time with paint instead of something else—and happy with what product came out of it, even if no one ever cares what I painted. I simply love to paint with sentences.

I only stop when I think about what I’m supposed to do with sentences—when I stress about what they say an essay or a poem is supposed to be. No, little girl, you just take that red and yellow paint in your hands and stop to listen in on your wildest dreams for a minute. Then, craft something that looks like that. Take up your pen; ink out that question they never let you ask in Sunday school and the inspiration you held inside because you didn’t know with what medium to say it. Slouch in your chair late at night—laptop light reflecting on your face—and peck out a rhythm that seems too far outside of the box. Maybe you just like the open air. All of this, I gathered while reading The Faith of a Writer as she continually said, “write your heart out.”

Alright, if you say so…

For now I pretend that I don’t know what it takes to be a good writer. For now I’ll dance in the dust I’ve eaten—just me, God, and the wind—letting whomever sit in and watch. I don’t know what people want to read, but they can watch me dance if they want. If not, at least me and God are having fun. Oh, and dancing doesn’t stop when I get to my academic or theological writing. I don’t know what they want to read either, but I hope they like what they get. If they give me dust to eat, I’ll just dance in it.

If art is a mirror to the human condition—for better or for worse—then this is what I look like—for beauty or for ugliness. My only hope of creating something beautiful is that God might make me beautiful--which is like the dollar my Father gives me to put into the offering that's going towards buying a gift for Him anyways. And like life itself, this love of sentences, too, is a gift that I did nothing to deserve. So let my finger paints and late nights be my offering and my prayer to the One who gave them to me—letting my personality emerge from its cage. He will perhaps, in His mercy, use this medium to let my spirit do the same.

For the Love of Going To Bed On Time

One of the reasons I write is because it bothers me that I can't think of what I want to say in the heat of a conversation. Even if I do get at what I want to say, I don't articulate it in the way I wanted to. I'm just better with written words. So after a conversation, long after the other person has forgotten it and doesn't care to call it back to mind, I dwell on what they said. I chew on it in different parts of my mouth. I imagine myself giving different answers or comments until I find the closest one to the truth as I know it. Then of course it bothers me that I couldn't think of what to say when I had the chance to say it. And now that I've thought of that very thing, it beats on the inside of my chest looking to get out somehow. So it escapes whenever I pop the lid--be it a research paper or poem or random blog entry (sort of like this one; yeah, I'm supposed to be sleeping right now). Then I can rest and my imagination is at peace to explore again (and I will sleep a bit better tonight).

And so it was, to a much greater extent, with the prophet Jeremiah. Once he could articulate the truth as God gave him to know it, it burned. It burned like "fire, shut up in my bones" (Jeremiah 20:9). In the crossfire of king-pleasing court prophets who told the people what they wanted to hear, Jeremiah's fire escaped to proclaim God's case against the nation of Judah.

If my coffee cup has 2 oz of regular coffee and 10 oz of milk with chocolate syrup and whipped cream tuh'boot, Jeremiah was drinking straight-up espresso. Yep, he was awake alright, and who could go back to a sound, deaf sleep after six shots of espresso? Not Jeremiah. No wonder he accused God of pushing him into this gig. God's call in Jeremiah chapter one wasn't exactly subtle. But perhaps God knew that Jeremiah was going to be a man who would look for something more--who would be weary and unsatisfied with the circus peanuts from the washed-out temple cult. Maybe God knew Jeremiah would be a man who wanted to actually pray to the same God that David prayed to instead of just using David's covenant with God as a crutch to assume God was listening to their circus noise. Maybe God knew Jeremiah would want more than circus noise. So his choice was to feel the fires of persecution for the gravity of his message, or withstand the incessant burning from the truth within his chest. So he spoke, he wrote, and today we bear the fruit of his choice.

Yes, we have a choice, but who is to resist Truth when He stands so brilliant and beautiful at the door and knocks?

Here's to Grandma Swaffield...

Sometimes you just know when someone is close to God’s heart—whether they know it or not. These folks walk around practically oblivious to the depth of their own insights about walking with God that you’d love to know. Usually they also seem to be fairly oblivious that some of us are listening to their every word trying to figure out their secret. For me, one of these people was my cousin’s grandma who passed away a couple weeks ago. While spending approximately forty-seven percent of my childhood with my cousin, I got to spend a bit of time with Grandma Swaffield as well. Subliminal and unconscious, as most childhood learning is, I absorbed some of her wisdom throughout the years and didn’t realize just how much I had learned from her until I was struck like a minor chord upon learning that she had died. It’s the deeply stirred kind of beautiful sad that almost makes you feel good. It reminds you that you are in fact still alive in a world of cheap thrills and mundane patterned humdrum. It was the shock that such a person could be susceptible to death but the thrill that I got to know her.

It was strange not to feel that overwhelming regret I’m supposed to feel when someone dies. Was it just because she wasn’t my biological grandma? Perhaps partly, but it was strange to feel privileged—because I really did take every opportunity to talk with her, get to know her. As I learned what she was up to, I learned about her character—a character I wouldn’t mind gleaning from. She lived life until God took her home, and didn't quit a moment sooner.

She was a breeze at high noon in a culture where everybody’s wanting something for themselves and trying to get ahead. I never met anyone so content simply to be alive. I would often wonder what she was like when she was still raising kids and cooking dinners, but even if she hadn’t learned yet to be content, she had learned well by the time I got to talk with her. But contentment didn’t mean sitting and watching life pass by because she was old or something, contentment made being alive a good excuse to go out there and live.

For some strange reason, going to the senior center every day didn’t appeal to her. I guess she wasn’t up for bingo and all that jazz. She used to tell me how bored she got the times she went. “My son wants me to go, but I just can’t stand it.” She didn’t like the Senior Sesame Street effect—treating seniors like we treat our three-year-olds: entertain them and keep them busy so the rest of us can keep things moving in the real world. Grandma Swaffield wasn’t content to be sat down and entertained.

Instead, she began taking art classes at the community college. She was already an artist—my cousin’s house was peppered with some of her work, and her art had been displayed in the public library. Every family gathering she would show me the things she was working on and tell me, “You know, I am the only one in the class with white hair…” In her eighties, she was still working at it, still refining her skill, still looking for things to paint about. It's too bad she was the only one with white hair.

Her work was simple and concrete, but clear, nuanced, and detailed—usually having to do with somewhere she’d been or something that caught her eye. She was simple and concrete, and I suspect that she knew more about walking with God than she let on. With a simple and cheerful disposition, she was oblivious to most things. Sitting politely and looking toward the window in a room full of people on Christmas Eve, and a chair usually empty next to her, I couldn’t help but have a conversation or two with her whenever I got a chance. Besides showing me what she’d been working on, she always asked about college—my major, Bible and theology—and gasped, “Oh, you’re going to be a missionary…”

“Well, not exactly…”

By the end of our Christmas Eve dinner, she had my family asking what country I was planning on going to.

In his book Art and the Bible, Francis Schaeffer talks about why one would create art. He has an imaginary conversation with pre-king David, composing psalms in the solitude of his pasture, tending to his flock. When asked why he plays his harp for no one to hear, he responds, “I’m singing to the God of heaven and earth—He hears my song and that’s what makes it so worthwhile.”

And there goes a woman who knew what it means to sing the song of your life. Simple and humble, she did what God gave her to do, and painted the world her color. Sometimes we don’t have to do things because they’ll help us get ahead. Sometimes we can do something just because God’s put it in our heart to love doing it. She loved art, and God loved her loving it. In this way, she knew God deeply and accepted His call to live life abundantly. We can walk with God by loving the things God put in ourselves to love—be it painting, math, cooking, running, entertaining, laughing, simply being. The act of relishing the created world leads us to the One who created it all.


Cheers to that.

Learning to Be Hungry

Prayer is one of those things I should know about as a Bible and Theology major. I mean, I could write a pretty snazzy essay on prayer. That’s something. I could quote some great saints, quote some great Psalms, dissect a few key Hebrew words and call it a day—all of which would be a rather splendid time. I would muse and be satisfied with my musing. No one would ever know that at the end of the day, when I do what I guess you would call praying, that I always feel as though I’ve somehow missed it. And there always comes a point when musing gets old; at this point wasting one more moment musing about prayer instead of doing prayer is going to make me spit.

So my natural response this past summer was to bookmark a bunch of books on Amazon.com about prayer so I can read other people’s musings on prayer. Yeah Sarah, real productive. Let the spitting begin.

And the spitting did begin. I got about half-way through a CS Lewis book before I got tired of thinking and talking and spitting about prayer. I wasn’t hungry for a stinking CS Lewis book, I was hungry to pray. I was filling the hunger for a verb with lots and lots of nouns. Being a Bible/Theo major has involved a lot of nouns, and I've wanted to trick myself into being satisfied with only nouns.

But prayer is not a matter of mechanical logic; it’s a matter of dynamic relationship. Prayer is like a river—a river is only a river when it is alive and moving. Otherwise, it is only stagnant water for the breeding of mosquitoes and growing of bacteria and collecting of muck. Prayer only works when we are alive and moving with God. Knowing this, I would sit--in my desk chair late into summer nights--starring into the corner of my room. Or lately I turn the lights off right before I go to sleep and lie flat on my back on the floor until I can manage to still myself and silence my mind so I can finally pray—so I can stop running in circles and find the River’s current and let it sweep me away. This is my latest venture on prayer; it is influenced by a retreat I’m preparing to help with involving six hours of silent reflection of the scriptures and silent prayer. It’s been better than anything else—but that is if I can manage to corral my thoughts and shove them in my closet for a half hour or so.

But in the midst of my quest, I was blindsided the other day by a youtube video depicting a homeless man doing prayer, not just musing about it. Yeah—no books, no tricks, no philosophy—just a homeless guy singing and a not-so-homeless guy playing a guitar.

The not-so-homeless man strums casually and begins a mid-tempo worship song. As he plays, the homeless guy approaches uninvited to join in with singing, but first he removes his hood and then his hat to let his weary dreadlocks spring out. He kneels down and buries his face in his hand for a moment and listens to the song the not-so-homeless man is singing about a God who gives second chances. After a verse or two, he joins in with his own improvisation about this God he seems to know too. His word choices were painfully humble to hear: “Jahovah, remember me…Lord have mercy, mercy, mercy.” When the not-so-homeless man ends the song and gives Danny, the homeless man, a hug, he asks him if he’s keeping it real, trying to make it.

“No,” Danny says, “I am makin’ it.”

Now, perhaps Danny sees something that I don’t. It seems to be quite cold judging by the thick winter jackets and scarves the folks in the video are wearing. His clothes are tattered and he is wandering around in the park in “a really bad neighborhood,” as someone behind the camera informs us. I wouldn’t doubt that he is living out of the plastic shopping bag he sets down beside himself.

But Danny has his God, and he knows that his God is his portion. Yes, he sees a lot of things that I don’t. He understands a bit of what Jesus experienced in the wilderness as He went out to learn what it means to be hungry for God. Danny has learned that we need God more than our next meal.

His Jamaican accent beats like quick finger-taps on a small hand drum—a dume-tek-teking echoing the tension of both contentment and longing. “Hallelujah in the highest praise…mercy, mercy, mercy.” He understands to great depth both the hope of salvation and the need of his current state. God’s mercy is the only way he gets through the day. It is this great tension of his that caught my eye. His voice was so satisfied—but longing for so much more.

In preparation for the retreat I’m doing, I also have to practice fasting. Now, I won’t even go into how bad I am at fasting. “Bad at it,” is a bit of an understatement. Before this, I’ve never even had a successful fast involving actual food—you know, the not-eating kind of fast. I would always fast other things that I would say were big parts of my life. I’ve done the no-meat-on-Fridays-during-lent thing, but I’ve never actually gone an extended period without food. This brings us to the other day when I was sitting in the library studying for my science test and I was freakin’ hungry. I had forgotten to pitch my PBnJ from Friday and it was sitting in my backpack on the table next to me. But I was fasting. No more whining or excuses or bargaining (“God, don’t you know you designed me to need food?” Oh, wait, He knows). I was amazed at how the smell of old peanut butter overwhelmed me. The faint aroma of peanut butter lingered in my olfactories and I couldn’t help but notice it. I was hungry. It is only when we are hungry for God that we are heightened to the aroma of His work lingering in our olfactories. Danny, too, had a heightened sense of what it means to need God.

I once read a book by Heidi Baker, a missionary who’s worked chiefly in the African nation of Mozambique with some of the poorest people in the world. She talks about how much she has learned from them, namely what it means to be desperate for God. Reading this makes me flush with shame for being an American who has everything. The funny thing is that many people here would think that I don’t have very much—or at least the guy who cut me off in his Mercedes today might think so. I drive a beat-up chevy that makes noises and has a hole in the top of the gas tank. But I have a closet full of clothes and a fridge full of food and my own bed to sleep in. Danny doesn’t have that, and the orphans in Mozambique are only fed sometimes because God miraculously multiplies the food. I eat because the people in my household have jobs and there is a grocery store down the street.

In light of this, I usually shrink back and lose all hope for myself in becoming poor in spirit like they are. I don’t have the discipline to live on nothing, and it’s nearly impossible when the means are right in front of me and I turn on the TV to hear the tele-evangelist who tells me that God will give me riches if I ask for riches.

But Heidi said something that struck about God and His riches. His riches, of course, are far deeper than any material wealth. Heidi redefined being poor in spirit for me. “Poor in spirit is a posturing of the heart rather than an economic position. From Harvard to Mozambique, God visits those who want Him.” It has nothing to do with how much or how little I have. It has to do with that peanut butter sandwich that sat next to me and yet I refused to eat it. Why? Well, I was supposed to be practicing fasting—but who’s to say anything if I don’t? If I was good at lying I could just lie about it and say that I did. (I’m actually a terrible liar, but that’s a different blog entry). But why? Because in light of spitting at CS Lewis’ book and myself and whatever else happened to be within three feet of me when I was in a bad mood this summer, I found that if I didn’t learn how to pray I was going to end up falling apart or worse.

In Mozambique, their liturgy is simple: “If God does not show up, we are dead,” Heidi says.

If you were to ask me if I know that I need God—well of course I know I need God. I grew up in a Pentecostal church for crying out loud; that’s church where you have to need God and show it. But there was a different kind of knowing taking place when old peanut butter caught my attention. I was learning how to be hungry. I was learning how to be hungry and let that hunger be an expression of my hunger for something more, and I was physically feeling it in a way I could not ignore. I was saying that the gnawing in my stomach and labored concentration was merely chicken-change compared to the gnawing in my spirit for the River of life. If only I could let that gnawing turn into a heart-cry that would transcend that moment in the library, and take over the rest of my life.

I’m learning that I can pray until kingdom come, but unless God meets me there, I will die. It’s not this complex philosophy I have to wrap my mind around, it’s not a special way I have to speak. It’s not about knowing the right way to do the lectio divina (or even knowing what lectio divina means). It is simply that, day by day like fresh manna from the sky, I need God to show up. It’s joining Danny and the orphans in Mozambique in saying “Jahovah, remember me.”

So I’ll save CS Lewis for another day. For now, I’m learning how to be hungry.

A Wave of Faith

So I really want to rant about Lebron. Not because I care (okay, maybe I care a little), but because the country seems to be in a state of chaos and disorder because some guy picks another team. It’s just sports, people. Sigh, my spot on the great Throne of Rant has been stolen, however, and I can’t rant as I intended. All it took was six simple words to render my energy on the subject diluted and confused.
I was all ready to go at work the day after The Decision. Someone picked up the front page and I was off.

“Don’t even tell me about him. I don’t care.”

I had revved my engine and was ready to take off like a drag racer on a full-scale rant. Red light, yellow light…

“You know, Crudy [Crudy=me—don’t ask],” said the one person who was supposed to be on my side—the side that says starving people are more important than sports, “people put their faith in things.”

Huh? I have never had a rant so wisely interrupted. How frustrating.

You see, I would love to say that Lebron James doesn’t matter—not anymore than any other human being, that is. And what does his Decision have to do with world hunger, or living life to the fullest, or justice for the oppressed? I would love to say that sports don’t matter, but I can’t. Because it seems that that—you know, “faith”—is there lurking both behind and within the beer-spilling, and money-spending, and fools-of-themselves-making. Besides we are talking about Cleveland, here. As a kid, I thought a “consecutive sellout” was something that happened at every baseball game ever—at least it seemed to happen at every Indians’ game my dad took me to.

Sports are more than just sports—especially in Cleveland. If sports were just sports, then Rudy wouldn’t be such a great movie. But what leaves one non-football buff after another in tears by the end of it? Why does anyone care that he gets to play in the end? Faith does. It’s because the movie isn’t about sports; it’s about Rudy. It’s because Cleveland sports are not about Cleveland sports; they’re about us. Sports embody a microcosm of life. Athletes are born, they rise, they fall, they rise higher, they win or lose, and of course they do die.

And as we watch them die, we imagine their legacy and place ourselves in their position. Perhaps we go as far as to ask what our own legacy will be in respect to the one placed before us. Or maybe we stand around the coffin of an athlete's retirement and say “sucks to be you.” Yeah, that’s probably what most people do, but work with me here; I’m trying to be sanctimonious. We place our dreams of victory in their dreams of victory as we watch them chase it within their short-story of a career. As kids, it was probably these athletes that taught us how to chase our own dreams.

So we chase them at every stage of life. I’m in my early 20’s—the stage of life when you usually figure out that most of what our culture tries to sell us isn’t romantic or fulfilling as promised. Life becomes about having enough money to get through college and about doing something—for goodness sake something—with our new-found rat-raced lives. These are years when some of us will lose sight of our childhood dreams in the intensity and pressures of the heat of the day. As we watch Lebron make or break his dream, we dream with him—whether we want to or not. And maybe no one else is thinking about this, but as I watch Lebron’s motivations steer him, I think about my own motivations in life and how those will steer me. I think about how today’s decision (which does not include and ESPN special report) will affect my legacy and my contribution to life here on Earth. The Decision reminds us all about the importance of legacy in the midst of living paycheck to paycheck.

Yet the million-dollar question remains. Why, oh why Cleveland, have you patiently held on for so long? You would think that Clevelanders would never want to hear about football, or baseball, and now basketball ever again. You would think that we would just give up and try to be the first city to make soccer cool because we seriously have nothing else to put our hope in. But oh no, if you build it, they will come—a new stadium for a losing football team, that is. Oh Cleveland, what makes you believe?

Maybe it has to do with the months of gray in between October and May. Maybe it’s the unemployment rate. Maybe it’s the fact that when mom says, “Okay kids, were going to the beach,” we get there only to find harsh, gritty sand and murky, bitter water. But we swim anyways because it’s hot out and lake is there. So we swim in the Lake Erie of sports—because the heat of life is on and the water is there. So, at least for the playoffs, life seems a little cooler.

I can’t pretend that I don’t get into the playoffs—no matter the sport. I usually couldn’t care less about sports until my antennae catch a whiff of that electric buzz floating around the sidewalk. The stimulation is seducing. And instead of the work-week being one more cycle among many, it is broken into stretches of however many days until the next game. Instead of hanging on the next paycheck, life hangs on the series standings as hope lingers thick like the stubborn humidity. And life is somehow cooler.

I imagine that even if we do win, life will still be there to greet us—just the same—on Monday morning. But we will be there to greet it somehow refreshed, and invigorated, and ready in the face of its stresses and disappointments. We will have a high wave to ride for at least a little while, and we will let it hold back the heat of life’s stressful summer sun. We’ve put our faith in the story-line that someday we will win, too.

Lebron, don’t take it personal that we all hate you. Can’t wait to see you at the first Heat/Cavs game in Cleveland—it would be wise to bring a helmet and some pads. European futbal fan etiquette just may make its ugly way over here to the States.

Story Time

When I think about writing a story, I usually decide that I’d rather go kill a centipede. Yep, one of those ugly hairy ones that make me run away, grab the poison, and proceed to avoid that corner of the house for a month. If not killing a centipede, than perhaps I consider sabotaging my health with 620 calories of cinnamon roll—and let’s not even talk about fat. I mean, last time I had two bites of a Panera cinnamon roll, I immediately felt it sort of stick three-fourths of the way down as my stomach warned the rest of my digestive system that this was not going to be pretty. Yep, much much better than composing any sort of narrative anything.

The last time I wrote a story was over four years ago for junior-year honors English. It sucked. I’m talkin’ process and product. I’d never hated writing more in my entire life. I decided that my “writing career” that my teacher continually nudged me to pursue over the course of that year would have to limited to “stuff”—and maybe some poetry.

I’ve grown a lot since then as a person who feels the need to say things on paper. I’ve grown a lot as a person who has the ability to say things on paper. I’ve also realized that I tell stories and form characters more often than I know—it’s just that I don’t know that I’m doing it. It’s as if I stomped on the stupid centipede on my way down the street and discover later that there’s guts in the crevice of my sole. And you know what?—centipede guts aren’t so bad when I didn’t have to see the thing wriggling around from one damp shadow to the next. Ugh, and the crunch—I can’t do the crunch. But like taking care of centipedes in their current fallen state, perhaps facing the dreaded narrative giant is merely a psychological blunder. If only I could somehow avoid the crunch. Ick. (But centipedes will be redeemed someday—or perhaps just my psychological disposition to them needs to be fixed. Either way, I can’t wait.)

Thus I’ve been doing what I do when I know the stupid thing won’t even hurt me but I’m still just on-stuck about it: I think, and I think way too hard about it. I make it way more complicated than it has to be because that’s just the way I roll. And besides, it’s fun.

I am ruined and convinced that stories are never just stories. In fact, I can’t read a story just for the sake of a good thrill—I always read to learn. (Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me.) And stories, I believe, provide a deeply and universally human way of learning. This is the kind of learning that does not always process its way through the intellectual sift; it simply changes the way you see things. And when we see things from a different angle, we respond to the rooster differently each morning. Maybe it’s just that you’ll hold your spouse a little tighter, or try a little harder, or believe a little in humanity again. Stories can perch us on the side of a mountain and say, “Hey, look at that.” Or maybe not.

I’m reading an analysis of the Rwandan genocide from a Christian perspective. The author, a native of Uganda with Rwandan parents, digs deep into the question about how the most Christianized nation in Africa could begin Easter week celebrating the resurrection of Christ together on Easter Sunday and be, by Thursday of Easter week, intimately slaughtering their fellow congregation members in the very churches where they worshiped together. The answer is illusive and deep, but it is found in the lens through which Rwanda saw itself—the story in which they saw themselves as characters. To make a long story short, Rwanda saw itself as characters in the story of two separate tribes loyal only to themselves while professing to have faith in the story of the one body of Christ. Jesus’ story had not stained their vision of themselves—so they took up machetes instead of the cross. The story they had believed brought them—buried them—in the valley of the shadow of death and said “This is where you belong.”

“From dust to dust,” says Genesis to the unhappy couple and to us, “from dust to dust.” Our author depicts, in perhaps accidental but potent imagery, what this character displacement looks like as he walks through a Catholic church after the genocide: “Behind the altar, the tabernacle that housed the blessed sacrament had been ripped open. It sat there with a hole in the middle, empty. The body of Christ was presumably crushed, mixed with the dust on the floor.” Instead of becoming a part of the story of the resurrection, they returned back the fallen dust of futility.

As a Christian, I am called to write the story of what happened on the third day. What does it look like for a character to wrestle with this reality in the here-and-now? This is my story. Our author describes what Christianity without consequence looks like (both in Rwanda and the west), so what does Christianity with consequence look like? This is my story.

As I read through Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, I realized why African American literature is so important. I realized why the literature of any people is important. It’s that African American folks don’t get to read about their ancestral human experience in the history books. Their history and identity has been preserved in their art—in voices from obscure places. Every writer is a voice to that which may never be able to make the history books, and our children will look there to find who they are. Will we tell them? Even in our ‘casual’ art—especially our casual art—they will learn from whence they’ve come and perhaps be able to find where they are going. If I write for my people, who are my people? Well, my people consist of many different colors.

Questions. Stories begin as I look around and ask questions about what I see. I feel sometimes as though all I do is ask questions. So why is expressing them in narrative form so difficult? I haven’t yet cracked the code on my physiological disposition to centipedes or story-telling, but I know that I have all the necessary means to do what I’ve set out to do. I know we are all characters in the narrative of life, and who we will become depends on whose story your listen to. I know that stories are one of the most basically human things we have—right there with religion and the two have always been entwined. I know that I’m “supposed” to be good at writing stories—so they say.

Yet something still grips me. You see, this is the part where I’m supposed to have an epiphany and tie up all the loose ends. Well, that was the plan anyway. I even went to target the other day and bought a green inked pen and a folder with Perry the Platypus on it--it was supposed to help or something. Oh, fart. I guess I’ll just go and finish my book on Rwanda. When I’m stinking ready to leap from the side of the kiddie pool, I’ll let you know. Stupid centipede…