Another Christmas past. This year's was better than most. Even with a couple of solid kicks in the peepee place. For all my hand-wringing fume and fret I can absorb some pretty fair blows and still stand. That would be a dandy thing to know without having to absorb them.
But I can't complain. I am saturated with gratitude. It has its roots in some odd things, but they make perfect sense to me. Christ wasn't born anywhere near this time of year. The Roman church co-opted a pagan festival, apparently. I don't know the story and I don't care. Something for others to argue about, 'cause there's nothing at all more important than debating someone else into the ground, right? I know His voice, and in spite of all the cosmoline layered on my soul I can feel His presence if it's strong enough. It is just that, this time of year, at least for me, the essential spiritual retard.
This is real to me. And that only matters to the extent that it points the way for it to be real to someone else. It was real before I happened, and it will be real long after I'm gone. It would be real if I had never happened at all. The gift He gave us demands attention. It demands a response. And yet it doesn't, because it is free. There is no gun at my head, just a surety that it would abase me to subhumanity to ignore such a gift, or worse yet to dismiss or desecrate it.
My will and ability to respond are contemptibly inadequate. I can't even touch what other humans have done for me, let alone God. What I do for them is so ludicrously disproportionate to the love and gifts and sacrifice they lavish on me that I never make it through Christmas encounters with friends and family without feeling a little slimy.
Christmas, in defiance of all the waste and nonsense our culture has heaped on it, still sees God invading our world right on schedule the same time every year. It's supposed to change us. I want it to change me, forever. I think it does. I listen to songs that I know will bring me to tears, even if I'm cleaning a rifle when I'm listening to them. I detail strip every hour of the holiday weekend and stamp the imprint of every song and gift and conversation into my soul like arsenal marks. I want those things to define me. I want to always be the tolerable creature I turn into this time of year. Even more, I want to know that I am stamping those same lovely marks into other lives, especially those who have poured so much into mine.
This is a very overdone and roundabout way of saying thanks. I have a lot to be thankful for, and I owe a great deal of thanks to a great many people. If you read this, and you think you're one of them, I won't argue. It would cost me nothing if I was wrong to think you were. I do not expect to ever scratch the surface of approaching, let alone matching what you do for me, but that's not the point. St. Paul admonishes us to owe no one but to love them, and I do not ever want to default on that. I know that I will, and that hurts, but to my eternal amazement it doesn't stop God or anyone else.
So thank you.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Saturday, November 13, 2010
back to the future
Today I went with my father and his girlfriend to three cemeteries. I saw the graves of his parents, who I knew well, and their forebears, who I did not. I learned that I am directly descended from veterans of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, that my family has roots in this part of the world that stretch back to the seventeenth century, and that a distant ancestor was once Lord Mayor of London.
That’s a rare thing in our culture, to be grounded in so many centuries of history. It perhaps explains my peculiar slant on things, which I inherited in large measure from my parents. I saw that in new ways tonight as Dad and I discussed Stephen King and Japanese culture and the movie Grand Torino. Clint Eastwood still kicks ass. I know it’s not very Christian of me, but I hate gangbangers. I want to get my genocide on when I see them. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
We live by a code that so much of the world is passionate about pissing on. We are losing ground every day. We don’t care. We’ll die with rifles in our hands ass deep in brass and grenade pins, at least figuratively speaking. To the rest of the world, we’ll just fade away forgotten by all but the very closest (and not all of them), but the rest of the world will never know that every day was a fight, and every day we went to bed the same people we woke up as held victory for us and those we love. We may fall, but we will by God fall forward.
I do not need to be a racist to be proud of my heritage. I do not need to be ashamed of my ancestors to be tolerant, compassionate, or responsible. What I need even less is to be the least bit concerned about how I will be judged by the fickle, flawed opinions of a vapid, predatory commercial nonculture. The gavel is held by One, and my fathers stand behind Him and beckon me to better things. I want to spend the rest of my life answering that call.
That’s a rare thing in our culture, to be grounded in so many centuries of history. It perhaps explains my peculiar slant on things, which I inherited in large measure from my parents. I saw that in new ways tonight as Dad and I discussed Stephen King and Japanese culture and the movie Grand Torino. Clint Eastwood still kicks ass. I know it’s not very Christian of me, but I hate gangbangers. I want to get my genocide on when I see them. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
We live by a code that so much of the world is passionate about pissing on. We are losing ground every day. We don’t care. We’ll die with rifles in our hands ass deep in brass and grenade pins, at least figuratively speaking. To the rest of the world, we’ll just fade away forgotten by all but the very closest (and not all of them), but the rest of the world will never know that every day was a fight, and every day we went to bed the same people we woke up as held victory for us and those we love. We may fall, but we will by God fall forward.
I do not need to be a racist to be proud of my heritage. I do not need to be ashamed of my ancestors to be tolerant, compassionate, or responsible. What I need even less is to be the least bit concerned about how I will be judged by the fickle, flawed opinions of a vapid, predatory commercial nonculture. The gavel is held by One, and my fathers stand behind Him and beckon me to better things. I want to spend the rest of my life answering that call.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
lunch date
Friday noonish I am walking downtown to take a dear friend out to lunch. It is about right temperature-wise, perhaps a touch on the warm side. The rain that has persisted for the last day and a half has just subsided. Leaves are falling in earnest now, making sidewalks slick even for the newish ACU boots I’m wearing. I have never been to Britain, but the weather and the air and the little Connecticut city feel like Doc Martens and best bitter and shepherd’s pie and bagpipes and Sex Pistols and heart-melting accents in fetching female voices that waft from unpainted lips framed in creamy white skin. I wish I was still thin enough to wear my Levi’s 501’s and my Ben Sherman knockoff with narrow scarlet braces.
The Britishness intensifies as I near downtown. And yet it is undeniably American. There are old men who worked at Electric Boat for thirty years and hang out at the library and walk up and down State Street. There are BMWs with New York plates champing at their automotive bits at traffic lights. There are tiny convenience stores full of incense and penny candy and do-rags and cheap slippers made in China.
There is a splendid Thai/Japanese restaurant on the corner of Eugene O’Neill Drive. My friend works on the other side of that corner, and I spot her not five minutes after I get there. We hug and I compliment her on her new green corduroy coat. I make my way for the wrong door, and as I notice the sign putting me aright I also notice that there is a little plate of food and a cup of what looks like black coffee on the sidewalk just inside the doorway. Just like the last time we were here. I remember that my wife had a coworker whose parents were from Ireland, and they would leave bacon on the front steps for the faeries (na pucai, pronounced “na POOkee”) so they wouldn’t cause mischief. A paranormal gastronomic protection racket. I told my friend that story last time, so I won’t repeat it, even though she likely wouldn’t resent me if I did. I wonder what Thai faeries are like.
We haven’t hung out in quite a while. There isn’t a whole lot of catching up to do, so the conversation comes back around to relationships. We are both married to people we dearly cherish, though my wife and I for a good bit longer than her and her husband. I remember when we first got close to her, a little over five years ago. We had known her a little, but were unprepared for the vise-grip she would envelop our hearts in, which sounds maudlin and cliché if it’s never happened to you. It just happened. We went out for ice cream after a picnic with about a zillion other people, and before we knew it we couldn’t get enough of each other.
It felt naughty and wicked and exhilarating, though absolutely nothing remotely untoward was ever happening. I had been taught well by American Evangelicalism. Fear the opposite sex. Fear intimacy. Assume the worst about all desire to draw near to another person. God doesn’t use anyone but your spouse to speak to you. Because He just doesn’t. Stop asking questions. Shut the fuck up. Watch your language, God damn you.
We talk and enjoy the food and the camaraderie and the memories and the myriad ways our minds and hearts are interlaced like the vines and Celtic knots I’ll be working into the tattoo I’m designing for her, interlaced with those of our spouses and our closest friends and our Creator who designs this weird little clan a day and a life and a battle and a triumph at a time.
The tattoo will feature a bad penny, whatever I decide that looks like. I remember a time not long after that delightful season started, when I was confronted by yearnings and desires that I needed no one to tell me were evil, interlaced with the good and true so tightly that I couldn’t tell them apart, and the only thing that kept me from shutting the whole thing down and retreating back into the fortress I had so dutifully constructed to keep this from happening was that the need was just too damned huge. The cork was out of the bottle and there was no getting everything back in.
They had every right and every reason to shun me. Forgive, sure, but that doesn’t equal trust and acceptance. They saw everything I was. I saw the ugliness and depravity; they saw the desperation behind that to see it transformed into something better. And they could have turned away but they stepped forward to help that happen. She placed her hands on shoulders quaking from the release of long-repressed tears, beneath a head that was screaming silently to put a bullet into itself, and prayed aloud to a God Who had heard all of the filth and lust and evil hurled into the open, that I would see her and the others as friends who were like a bad penny – they would keep turning up.
We finish lunch and brainstorm tattoo details and I walk her back to the plaza where she works. She vents a bit about family struggles, the kind that are as old as she is but renew themselves afresh in the same tired ways. She handles them so much better now than she used to. They are annoying tickles around her face instead of tentacles that squeeze the life from her. I remember all the talks we had, all the rants I unleashed on her behalf, all the times I visited her when she worked for that buffoon up the street just to be with her and remind. To remind myself that she wasn’t just a cruel hoax. To remind her that the forces that try to grind her into oblivion pale before the love of her God and her true friends. To remind us both that there are those who will keep turning up.
It has been a well-spent hour. We hug goodbye and look forward to dinner at a pub later that night with our spouses. She goes back to her office and I turn about to walk back home. I pass the building she used to work in and I remember Chinese takeout and a purple plastic disc with the name of an Australian city inscribed on it and terror and love. I pass my workplace and see the platform behind the Quonset hut where the compactors are, the ones I fed two or three times a night when I worked on second shift and agonized that I had so little time to spend with her and a giant comic geek and his lovely pregnant elvish wife and a delightful twelve-year-old sprite who once asked me to paint a Union Jack on her face at a festival because she’s that feckin’ cool. I remember seeing my friend’s blue Honda Civic through the chain link fence two houses down from the plant every time I went out to dump the trash and cardboard, and feeling snakes with razor-blade scales twist and writhe in my guts because I couldn’t be there with her as she faced her own bottomless need. If I had only known what would be happening a year from then, and all the joy and triumph in between and afterwards. All I knew at the moment was a red haze of pain. And terror. And love.
I don’t want to forget. I don’t want to give in to fatalism. I want to keep turning up. I don’t want this to end, and I never, ever want to be fooled into thinking that it has, or that it will, if what I have been promised is true.
Donasgillin gu Brath. Bad Penny Forever.
The Britishness intensifies as I near downtown. And yet it is undeniably American. There are old men who worked at Electric Boat for thirty years and hang out at the library and walk up and down State Street. There are BMWs with New York plates champing at their automotive bits at traffic lights. There are tiny convenience stores full of incense and penny candy and do-rags and cheap slippers made in China.
There is a splendid Thai/Japanese restaurant on the corner of Eugene O’Neill Drive. My friend works on the other side of that corner, and I spot her not five minutes after I get there. We hug and I compliment her on her new green corduroy coat. I make my way for the wrong door, and as I notice the sign putting me aright I also notice that there is a little plate of food and a cup of what looks like black coffee on the sidewalk just inside the doorway. Just like the last time we were here. I remember that my wife had a coworker whose parents were from Ireland, and they would leave bacon on the front steps for the faeries (na pucai, pronounced “na POOkee”) so they wouldn’t cause mischief. A paranormal gastronomic protection racket. I told my friend that story last time, so I won’t repeat it, even though she likely wouldn’t resent me if I did. I wonder what Thai faeries are like.
We haven’t hung out in quite a while. There isn’t a whole lot of catching up to do, so the conversation comes back around to relationships. We are both married to people we dearly cherish, though my wife and I for a good bit longer than her and her husband. I remember when we first got close to her, a little over five years ago. We had known her a little, but were unprepared for the vise-grip she would envelop our hearts in, which sounds maudlin and cliché if it’s never happened to you. It just happened. We went out for ice cream after a picnic with about a zillion other people, and before we knew it we couldn’t get enough of each other.
It felt naughty and wicked and exhilarating, though absolutely nothing remotely untoward was ever happening. I had been taught well by American Evangelicalism. Fear the opposite sex. Fear intimacy. Assume the worst about all desire to draw near to another person. God doesn’t use anyone but your spouse to speak to you. Because He just doesn’t. Stop asking questions. Shut the fuck up. Watch your language, God damn you.
We talk and enjoy the food and the camaraderie and the memories and the myriad ways our minds and hearts are interlaced like the vines and Celtic knots I’ll be working into the tattoo I’m designing for her, interlaced with those of our spouses and our closest friends and our Creator who designs this weird little clan a day and a life and a battle and a triumph at a time.
The tattoo will feature a bad penny, whatever I decide that looks like. I remember a time not long after that delightful season started, when I was confronted by yearnings and desires that I needed no one to tell me were evil, interlaced with the good and true so tightly that I couldn’t tell them apart, and the only thing that kept me from shutting the whole thing down and retreating back into the fortress I had so dutifully constructed to keep this from happening was that the need was just too damned huge. The cork was out of the bottle and there was no getting everything back in.
They had every right and every reason to shun me. Forgive, sure, but that doesn’t equal trust and acceptance. They saw everything I was. I saw the ugliness and depravity; they saw the desperation behind that to see it transformed into something better. And they could have turned away but they stepped forward to help that happen. She placed her hands on shoulders quaking from the release of long-repressed tears, beneath a head that was screaming silently to put a bullet into itself, and prayed aloud to a God Who had heard all of the filth and lust and evil hurled into the open, that I would see her and the others as friends who were like a bad penny – they would keep turning up.
We finish lunch and brainstorm tattoo details and I walk her back to the plaza where she works. She vents a bit about family struggles, the kind that are as old as she is but renew themselves afresh in the same tired ways. She handles them so much better now than she used to. They are annoying tickles around her face instead of tentacles that squeeze the life from her. I remember all the talks we had, all the rants I unleashed on her behalf, all the times I visited her when she worked for that buffoon up the street just to be with her and remind. To remind myself that she wasn’t just a cruel hoax. To remind her that the forces that try to grind her into oblivion pale before the love of her God and her true friends. To remind us both that there are those who will keep turning up.
It has been a well-spent hour. We hug goodbye and look forward to dinner at a pub later that night with our spouses. She goes back to her office and I turn about to walk back home. I pass the building she used to work in and I remember Chinese takeout and a purple plastic disc with the name of an Australian city inscribed on it and terror and love. I pass my workplace and see the platform behind the Quonset hut where the compactors are, the ones I fed two or three times a night when I worked on second shift and agonized that I had so little time to spend with her and a giant comic geek and his lovely pregnant elvish wife and a delightful twelve-year-old sprite who once asked me to paint a Union Jack on her face at a festival because she’s that feckin’ cool. I remember seeing my friend’s blue Honda Civic through the chain link fence two houses down from the plant every time I went out to dump the trash and cardboard, and feeling snakes with razor-blade scales twist and writhe in my guts because I couldn’t be there with her as she faced her own bottomless need. If I had only known what would be happening a year from then, and all the joy and triumph in between and afterwards. All I knew at the moment was a red haze of pain. And terror. And love.
I don’t want to forget. I don’t want to give in to fatalism. I want to keep turning up. I don’t want this to end, and I never, ever want to be fooled into thinking that it has, or that it will, if what I have been promised is true.
Donasgillin gu Brath. Bad Penny Forever.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
black and white
A word on seeing things in terms of absolutes.
I am at a loss to reconcile with, or even fathom, the idea of truth being anything less than absolute. Something is true, or it isn't. Conditions and circumstances and other variables may change, but there is truth in the midst of all of it. Believing otherwise doesn't change that. My ability or lack thereof to prove something true does not affect its truth - or lack thereof.
So if it can be agreed that truth is absolute, then seeing reality in terms of black and white is not a bad thing, in and of itself. In fact, it's the ideal. Why, then, are we rankled so by those who do?
There are multiple factors, many related to human nature (an unsavoury subject, to be sure), but I won't focus on that. I think it's safe to opine that what we find so irritating is not the concept of seeing in black and white, but rather what seems to be an infuriating tendency to ignore the gray that seems to completely dominate our perception of reality.
If you take a colour photograph and run it through a photocopy machine, you will produce an image that is comprised almost entirely of varying shades of gray. And yet it really isn't. There is no gray. There is nothing at all there except black toner and white paper. But you need a magnifying glass to see that. In other words, you need to lend your eyes a power that they do not possess in and of themselves.
Those of us who claim to know and be known by Christ are called to live and proclaim truth. If we are going to accomplish that, then we need to avail ourselves of His power to see details and patterns and contexts that we could not possibly comprehend in our sadly limited human view. If such power is not ready to our hands (or eyes), then we had best trust Him to use it and stay out of His way. I am convinced that moral relativism is one of the greatest obstacles to the knowledge of God in our culture, but I cannot blame people for running screaming into its arms from people who claim to be divinely appointed surgeons, yet run amok with scalpels while wearing welders' goggles.
Just because something is true doesn't mean it's the right thing to say at any one point in time. Jesus told those closest to Him, who had abandoned all life as they had ever known it to follow Him, that He had many things left to tell Him that they weren't yet ready for (John 16:12). I believe that He knew exactly where each of them were regarding spiritual growth, or He trusted that His Father did, and waited until the right time to reveal those things, knowing that to do otherwise would have destroyed their faith, and perhaps their ability to ever recover it.
If our ham-handed, insensitive approach to giving away Truth drives people away from Him, we are not only failing, we are working for the enemy. We had best learn this, and fast. Humans by nature are fallen and rebellious toward God. Every one of us started out that way. We can't afford to snuff out the tiniest spark of openness to Him.
I am at a loss to reconcile with, or even fathom, the idea of truth being anything less than absolute. Something is true, or it isn't. Conditions and circumstances and other variables may change, but there is truth in the midst of all of it. Believing otherwise doesn't change that. My ability or lack thereof to prove something true does not affect its truth - or lack thereof.
So if it can be agreed that truth is absolute, then seeing reality in terms of black and white is not a bad thing, in and of itself. In fact, it's the ideal. Why, then, are we rankled so by those who do?
There are multiple factors, many related to human nature (an unsavoury subject, to be sure), but I won't focus on that. I think it's safe to opine that what we find so irritating is not the concept of seeing in black and white, but rather what seems to be an infuriating tendency to ignore the gray that seems to completely dominate our perception of reality.
If you take a colour photograph and run it through a photocopy machine, you will produce an image that is comprised almost entirely of varying shades of gray. And yet it really isn't. There is no gray. There is nothing at all there except black toner and white paper. But you need a magnifying glass to see that. In other words, you need to lend your eyes a power that they do not possess in and of themselves.
Those of us who claim to know and be known by Christ are called to live and proclaim truth. If we are going to accomplish that, then we need to avail ourselves of His power to see details and patterns and contexts that we could not possibly comprehend in our sadly limited human view. If such power is not ready to our hands (or eyes), then we had best trust Him to use it and stay out of His way. I am convinced that moral relativism is one of the greatest obstacles to the knowledge of God in our culture, but I cannot blame people for running screaming into its arms from people who claim to be divinely appointed surgeons, yet run amok with scalpels while wearing welders' goggles.
Just because something is true doesn't mean it's the right thing to say at any one point in time. Jesus told those closest to Him, who had abandoned all life as they had ever known it to follow Him, that He had many things left to tell Him that they weren't yet ready for (John 16:12). I believe that He knew exactly where each of them were regarding spiritual growth, or He trusted that His Father did, and waited until the right time to reveal those things, knowing that to do otherwise would have destroyed their faith, and perhaps their ability to ever recover it.
If our ham-handed, insensitive approach to giving away Truth drives people away from Him, we are not only failing, we are working for the enemy. We had best learn this, and fast. Humans by nature are fallen and rebellious toward God. Every one of us started out that way. We can't afford to snuff out the tiniest spark of openness to Him.
Friday, October 15, 2010
games
I could stay here the rest of my life
I could be happy, never be lonely
I don't need to go looking for misery
I could surround myself with my props
Playing my part, getting caught up
In a game, some game, that anyone can play
I could be proud of things I have done
Pretend I don't have to try to be someone
I could say that I've done it all before
I could get wiser, I could get jaded
I could remember, I could just fade away
In a game that anyone can play
I am so proud, I don't have to try
Never a need to justify it when
People say "Hey I was important too"
Memories go to reinforce
The things I have done, for better or worse
It's a game that anyone can play
Just when you think that all your answers are so right
You'll fade away and disappear from sight
The ones who said you're great will find another way
I could be sad, I could be lonely
I could still have some friends if I only
Didn't play the games I had to play
I was important when I was cool
Now it gets lonely playing the fool
It's a game that anyone can play
- Husker Du, Games
I could be happy, never be lonely
I don't need to go looking for misery
I could surround myself with my props
Playing my part, getting caught up
In a game, some game, that anyone can play
I could be proud of things I have done
Pretend I don't have to try to be someone
I could say that I've done it all before
I could get wiser, I could get jaded
I could remember, I could just fade away
In a game that anyone can play
I am so proud, I don't have to try
Never a need to justify it when
People say "Hey I was important too"
Memories go to reinforce
The things I have done, for better or worse
It's a game that anyone can play
Just when you think that all your answers are so right
You'll fade away and disappear from sight
The ones who said you're great will find another way
I could be sad, I could be lonely
I could still have some friends if I only
Didn't play the games I had to play
I was important when I was cool
Now it gets lonely playing the fool
It's a game that anyone can play
- Husker Du, Games
Sunday, October 3, 2010
punked
so, mirror boy, what do you know of love? who do you think you are? if love is of God, why aren't you moving mountains? a tree is not known by its noble silhouette against a sunset sky (retch), it is known by its fruit. to hell with your poses, produce something for once.
you are pissed off because you were exposed as a rank amateur, no less a psychic vampire than those who molded you in their unholy image. you need to be needed and can't offer others the same acceptance you crave when they don't fit into your Pollyanna constructs. you bleat of love but deny it to others when they even look like they might be thinking of straying from the very path you can't even stay on yourself. you want them to embrace real faith but what the hell is it doing for you? if this is so real why does it die inside you instead of transforming you and drawing others to it?
how does anyone stay so naive in the face of so much reality?
so what will you do about it now?
my guess is the same old nothing.
you are pissed off because you were exposed as a rank amateur, no less a psychic vampire than those who molded you in their unholy image. you need to be needed and can't offer others the same acceptance you crave when they don't fit into your Pollyanna constructs. you bleat of love but deny it to others when they even look like they might be thinking of straying from the very path you can't even stay on yourself. you want them to embrace real faith but what the hell is it doing for you? if this is so real why does it die inside you instead of transforming you and drawing others to it?
how does anyone stay so naive in the face of so much reality?
so what will you do about it now?
my guess is the same old nothing.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
I'm sorry, you were saying?
...ya know, every thought that flits through dies before it can be caught. It gets piledriven by the one behind it. Can't keep up. Read comments on the Glenn Beck rally and saw red, wanted to charge out with some ringing manifesto of defiance in the face of hate and division. Watched Shadowlands with Lisa and wanted to capture something about the importance of living and not hiding from pain, how nothing at all in this life matters if it's not centered in Christ and radiating His love outward from ourselves. Wanted to, to, to...oh well.
I do believe that I just may have followed the mirage of a transformed heart into a desert that I will probably not see the other side of. Try though I may, I am not going to change anything. All the drive and passion I ever had, every heart's cry *retch*, every yearning that threatens to explode my ribcage, is birdshot against a battleship. The truth doesn't need my telling it to still be true. Which is good, because my grasp on it is tenuous at best. God will just have to be God without my help. I'm sure He's up to it. And He could not be blamed for being happy to have me out of the way.
Nothing. Nothing at all. It was fun trying to matter, but we all gotta grow up.
It still hurts. Shut the hell up. It hurts. Your point? It hurts.
I hope that not one single person ever takes anything like this to their own heart. Don't ever listen to me.
I do believe that I just may have followed the mirage of a transformed heart into a desert that I will probably not see the other side of. Try though I may, I am not going to change anything. All the drive and passion I ever had, every heart's cry *retch*, every yearning that threatens to explode my ribcage, is birdshot against a battleship. The truth doesn't need my telling it to still be true. Which is good, because my grasp on it is tenuous at best. God will just have to be God without my help. I'm sure He's up to it. And He could not be blamed for being happy to have me out of the way.
Nothing. Nothing at all. It was fun trying to matter, but we all gotta grow up.
It still hurts. Shut the hell up. It hurts. Your point? It hurts.
I hope that not one single person ever takes anything like this to their own heart. Don't ever listen to me.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
showtime
This is one of those times when I can watch myself burn without a care in the world. No anger, no depression, no overblown sense of betrayal. Just looking through a warped lens and losing my grip on what straight looks like. And not having the energy to figure it out.
Where did I ever come up with a sense of purpose or right? What the hell do I know? Who's counting on me to get them through anything? Help as good as any I can offer is falling from the trees. I need more than damn near anyone. These pathetic words are the most profound thing I've done in weeks.
I'm good at doing what I'm told if the teller has a right to tell. Not so much if they're just being a prick. Living? Different story. Forging ahead, dreaming (gag), bringing inspiration to light and form, all that's so lost to me I have trouble believing I ever had it. I exist. So does a mushroom.
I'm not even feeling much of anything about it at the moment. Fuck feelings. They change and morph and bait and switch and tell me nothing except how far off I am from any mark that ever meant anything good. Process them. Why?
I feel (there's that goddamn word again) very much like leftover matter from a failed experiment. Oh well.
But I do indeed miss knowing that I mattered, even if what I knew was false. If truth wants to destroy me, let's be done with it already. Stationary target right here. Light me up.
Where did I ever come up with a sense of purpose or right? What the hell do I know? Who's counting on me to get them through anything? Help as good as any I can offer is falling from the trees. I need more than damn near anyone. These pathetic words are the most profound thing I've done in weeks.
I'm good at doing what I'm told if the teller has a right to tell. Not so much if they're just being a prick. Living? Different story. Forging ahead, dreaming (gag), bringing inspiration to light and form, all that's so lost to me I have trouble believing I ever had it. I exist. So does a mushroom.
I'm not even feeling much of anything about it at the moment. Fuck feelings. They change and morph and bait and switch and tell me nothing except how far off I am from any mark that ever meant anything good. Process them. Why?
I feel (there's that goddamn word again) very much like leftover matter from a failed experiment. Oh well.
But I do indeed miss knowing that I mattered, even if what I knew was false. If truth wants to destroy me, let's be done with it already. Stationary target right here. Light me up.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
lighten up
Life unwinds like a cheap sweater
but since I gave up hope I feel a lot better
and the truth gets blurred like a wet letter
but since I gave up hope I feel a lot better - Steve Taylor
Hope is a lot of weight, and one wonders if it's worth carrying. This tiny world I inhabit cannot possibly be worth all this struggle, yet a larger one would choke me without a sound. I think it should.
I just wanna know--am I pulling people closer?
I just wanna be pulling them to You
I just wanna stay angry at the evil
I just wanna be hungry for the true - Steve Taylor
Hungry - check. Terrified of the hunger's object, but hungry. Angry - check. Impotent and aimless, but angry. So much for the pulling.
The kid never learns. Ever. Everyone else is so much better. Really. Too bad the admiration hurts like it does, otherwise it's be a wonderful distraction from character bankruptcy.
If He loves this thing, then He can have it.
*click*
but since I gave up hope I feel a lot better
and the truth gets blurred like a wet letter
but since I gave up hope I feel a lot better - Steve Taylor
Hope is a lot of weight, and one wonders if it's worth carrying. This tiny world I inhabit cannot possibly be worth all this struggle, yet a larger one would choke me without a sound. I think it should.
I just wanna know--am I pulling people closer?
I just wanna be pulling them to You
I just wanna stay angry at the evil
I just wanna be hungry for the true - Steve Taylor
Hungry - check. Terrified of the hunger's object, but hungry. Angry - check. Impotent and aimless, but angry. So much for the pulling.
The kid never learns. Ever. Everyone else is so much better. Really. Too bad the admiration hurts like it does, otherwise it's be a wonderful distraction from character bankruptcy.
If He loves this thing, then He can have it.
*click*
Saturday, July 3, 2010
thy name is desire
There is not enough hate in Hell for you, or for myself for being so vulnerable to you. You are the one constant I know, a perennial backdrop of torment and taunting. Your derisive laughter echoes from my earliest hours to now. Every moment of joy or so-called triumph you unmask as a snare, just another height to get knocked down from. And I am stupid enough to get back up believing it will be different this time, chasing the mirage of hope farther into a void where nothing is real but pain.
You know exactly what I need, you know I'll come back so it doesn't matter what you do to me. Your timing is impeccable. You wait until I show some faint glimmer of courage to take a step toward whatever you're dangling in front of me, then you pull it away and it's still my fault. It's always my fault.
We think we know what love is, what good means, what we were made and meant to do and have and be. Love and good and purpose are whatever the guy with the gun says they are, unless someone stronger disarms him. Who's going to disarm God?
I feel invincible in this citadel of hate, but it won't last. He will either bitch-slap me back into submission or give me another fix so I keep chasing the mirage. Either way I'll come back, but what does that make me? And what hurts is that I know He is good and I'm not.
I doubt very much I can forgive Him for allowing me to exist. People say God doesn't make junk. I say He makes anything He wants, and does whatever He wants with it. I only wish I didn't care. I deserve all His hatred, and yours. I wish I could be and deserve better, but what do my wishes have to do with anything?
You know exactly what I need, you know I'll come back so it doesn't matter what you do to me. Your timing is impeccable. You wait until I show some faint glimmer of courage to take a step toward whatever you're dangling in front of me, then you pull it away and it's still my fault. It's always my fault.
We think we know what love is, what good means, what we were made and meant to do and have and be. Love and good and purpose are whatever the guy with the gun says they are, unless someone stronger disarms him. Who's going to disarm God?
I feel invincible in this citadel of hate, but it won't last. He will either bitch-slap me back into submission or give me another fix so I keep chasing the mirage. Either way I'll come back, but what does that make me? And what hurts is that I know He is good and I'm not.
I doubt very much I can forgive Him for allowing me to exist. People say God doesn't make junk. I say He makes anything He wants, and does whatever He wants with it. I only wish I didn't care. I deserve all His hatred, and yours. I wish I could be and deserve better, but what do my wishes have to do with anything?
Friday, July 2, 2010
change
got to get used to it.
embrace it? dunno how, too sensitive, too incorrigibly wedded to impossible ideals, amazing how I never change when everything else does, you'd think the kid would have learned by now.
it's coming, and it's constant. it will either take me down or it won't. the best decisions are swept out of its path like they were never there unless they were already made by Someone else.
get used to it. or die. really don't care, either will get you out of the way, it said to itself. it knew it was bad, and was terribly afraid God didn't know, or worse, didn't care enough to destroy it.
hate is an amazing drug.
I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me. - Erich Maria Remarque
embrace it? dunno how, too sensitive, too incorrigibly wedded to impossible ideals, amazing how I never change when everything else does, you'd think the kid would have learned by now.
it's coming, and it's constant. it will either take me down or it won't. the best decisions are swept out of its path like they were never there unless they were already made by Someone else.
get used to it. or die. really don't care, either will get you out of the way, it said to itself. it knew it was bad, and was terribly afraid God didn't know, or worse, didn't care enough to destroy it.
hate is an amazing drug.
I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me. - Erich Maria Remarque
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
landslide
I took my love and I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
And the landslide brought me down
Oh, mirror in the sky--what is love?
Can the child in my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
I don't know.....I don't know...
Well I've been afraid of changing
Because I've built my life around you
But time makes us bolder; children get older
I'm getting older too....
So, take this love...take it down
Oh, if you climb a mountain and you turn around
and you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
well, the landslide will bring you down;
The landslide will bring you down...
Well I've been afraid of changing
Because I've built my life around you
But time makes is bolder; children get older
I'm getting older too - Stevie Nicks
changing and changing and changing and not changing a bit. it all comes around to where it started, and it hurts and won't stop. time should make me bolder but it just makes me tired.
I had it all right here and now it's gone and it hurts.
wanted to see what is, not what isn't. now I don't know what's what and I'm afraid to find out.
no one could possibly be worth all this trouble.
why can't I believe anymore?
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
And the landslide brought me down
Oh, mirror in the sky--what is love?
Can the child in my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
I don't know.....I don't know...
Well I've been afraid of changing
Because I've built my life around you
But time makes us bolder; children get older
I'm getting older too....
So, take this love...take it down
Oh, if you climb a mountain and you turn around
and you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
well, the landslide will bring you down;
The landslide will bring you down...
Well I've been afraid of changing
Because I've built my life around you
But time makes is bolder; children get older
I'm getting older too - Stevie Nicks
changing and changing and changing and not changing a bit. it all comes around to where it started, and it hurts and won't stop. time should make me bolder but it just makes me tired.
I had it all right here and now it's gone and it hurts.
wanted to see what is, not what isn't. now I don't know what's what and I'm afraid to find out.
no one could possibly be worth all this trouble.
why can't I believe anymore?
Sunday, May 23, 2010
yawn
My favourite season is just around the corner and I really don't care.
I'm terrified to write that because I fear being taken seriously and having privileges revoked, as if God would throw off the seasons just for the sake of slapping me in the head to remind me Who's in charge.
I don't care anymore. I have no desire for anything. I will probably go down South to visit one family or the other, maybe both. I'm supposed to love road trips and Shoney's and weird little convenience stores off otherwise-deserted West Virginia exits at 3 a.m. and down-home drawls and reunion and firearms and four-wheeling and general depressurisation. Yawn.
I don't want to be reminded of how out of reach the life I wanted is. I never knew I wanted it until it was already too late. It's still my fault, because I was warned and I didn't listen. Every time I go there I can watch others reveling in it, bathed in possibilities and options and boundless optimism. Every year I see how far they've climbed and they know at a glance how far I've fallen. I am so insubstantial compared to them that I am surprised they can even see me or hear my voice when I speak.
I had dreams and desires and vision once. I had a heart once. Yawn.
I should be alive, reveling in possibility, exploring new corners of some huge good thing I was made to be and do. I don't. I ship denture adhesive to Kansas and collect old Romanian bayonets that attach to rifles I'm not allowed to own and pack gear for hikes I never take and my house gets messier every day and when I think about cleaning it's already nine-thirty on a Sunday night. I try to hold my own in a crowd of people I dearly love and get squeezed into the margins because I'm no good at interrupting or speaking with force and clarity. I hear or read others' words and pain and struggles and the things they describe are exactly what I know and feel, and the connection should be wonderful but it's hollow and empty and who cares? I share what little I know of life, as an act of faith that it matters and will be received, but in that act I am constantly exposed as weaker and more naive than anyone around. I don't think I am really in the room when I'm in the room. If this is all I bring to life, that's probably for the best.
It may be that no one intends stratification with me at the bottom, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. What else should I expect?
I don't want to not care. I want to once again desire to live and enjoy and affect for good. I don't want to waste a second of this summer, or any other second. But what if everything I bring, everything that's within my reach, everything that makes me come as nearly "alive" as I ever get, is itself a waste?
I wish I was them. Anyone or anything but this. I wish I could stand among them and know I mattered like they do. I need to be punished. I dread it, but know how to expect nothing else. I am a very bad thing. Yawn.
I'm terrified to write that because I fear being taken seriously and having privileges revoked, as if God would throw off the seasons just for the sake of slapping me in the head to remind me Who's in charge.
I don't care anymore. I have no desire for anything. I will probably go down South to visit one family or the other, maybe both. I'm supposed to love road trips and Shoney's and weird little convenience stores off otherwise-deserted West Virginia exits at 3 a.m. and down-home drawls and reunion and firearms and four-wheeling and general depressurisation. Yawn.
I don't want to be reminded of how out of reach the life I wanted is. I never knew I wanted it until it was already too late. It's still my fault, because I was warned and I didn't listen. Every time I go there I can watch others reveling in it, bathed in possibilities and options and boundless optimism. Every year I see how far they've climbed and they know at a glance how far I've fallen. I am so insubstantial compared to them that I am surprised they can even see me or hear my voice when I speak.
I had dreams and desires and vision once. I had a heart once. Yawn.
I should be alive, reveling in possibility, exploring new corners of some huge good thing I was made to be and do. I don't. I ship denture adhesive to Kansas and collect old Romanian bayonets that attach to rifles I'm not allowed to own and pack gear for hikes I never take and my house gets messier every day and when I think about cleaning it's already nine-thirty on a Sunday night. I try to hold my own in a crowd of people I dearly love and get squeezed into the margins because I'm no good at interrupting or speaking with force and clarity. I hear or read others' words and pain and struggles and the things they describe are exactly what I know and feel, and the connection should be wonderful but it's hollow and empty and who cares? I share what little I know of life, as an act of faith that it matters and will be received, but in that act I am constantly exposed as weaker and more naive than anyone around. I don't think I am really in the room when I'm in the room. If this is all I bring to life, that's probably for the best.
It may be that no one intends stratification with me at the bottom, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. What else should I expect?
I don't want to not care. I want to once again desire to live and enjoy and affect for good. I don't want to waste a second of this summer, or any other second. But what if everything I bring, everything that's within my reach, everything that makes me come as nearly "alive" as I ever get, is itself a waste?
I wish I was them. Anyone or anything but this. I wish I could stand among them and know I mattered like they do. I need to be punished. I dread it, but know how to expect nothing else. I am a very bad thing. Yawn.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
challenge coin
Last night I went for a stroll about the neighbourhood. I went with my usual intentions of connecting with God, and my usual expectations of being distracted into failing at it. I was pleasantly surprised.
For the first time in longer than I can remember, I knew He was there, walking with me, engaging me in real conversation, for His own inscrutable reasons taking an interest in my blather and gushing. I could actually hear Him answering me. We actually hung out and enjoyed each other.
It is strange to converse with the Creator of all that exists as if I were a vet bumping into the CO of his old unit in a bar. As a fat civilian, I have no such first-hand experience, but I imagine it would feel very much like last night. Whatever pathetic "battles" or struggles or trials can be called my own were undertaken at His behest. He was with me all the way. He has total authority to evaluate and judge the outcome of my conduct on those occasions. He was not "leading" from the safety of an office. He has known every step I've taken before they ever happened.
I reminisced with Him about my early years as a Christian, when I was much more easily impressed by anything that had His name on it. I was so glad to be alive and in Him that the cheesiest band or book or song or sermon could delight and inspire me, and I didn't much care who knew it. I went gleefully and implacably berserk over things that it actually hurts to remember. They were that bad.
What makes the memories so painful is less about artistic quality then about lost innocence. Even coming out of a lifetime of mockery and contempt and reasons aplenty to mistrust my own species, even after having my very faith hijacked and poisoned by legalism and bondage and spiritual abuse, I hadn't really learned how fucked up people are, myself included. I am afraid I still haven't.
I hadn't yet learned how much corruption lurks under so much of what is broadly accepted as Kingdom business. I hadn't discovered how hollow and world-weary and cynical so many of my favourite Christian musicians were when the shows were over. I hadn't yet learned the knack of reading and listening between the lines to spot the little twists of deceit and empire-building and doctrine-peddling that now seem to hit me almost everywhere, even, it sometimes feels, in the living rooms of those precious few souls whom I can still muster the moxie to trust with my very life. People call that discernment, and sometimes it's apparently a spiritual gift. I am assured it is necessary. So is a designated marksman in an infantry squad, the one who doesn't merely fire at muzzle flashes or rustling leaves but looks through an expensive scope at an enemy with a face and a certain eye colour and maybe a wedding ring two fingers down from the one on his trigger, and who is forced to learn all that in a very few seconds about a person he has already decided to kill.
I don't pretend to equate myself with a combat veteran of any stripe, but I know one or two, and I have tasted a very muted, minor shadow of a phenomenon they have described to me. The things they have had to learn and do and become to survive have changed them forever, and sometimes they don't like what those changes add up to in a mirror or a moment of introspection. I wanted to go on finding God around every corner and reveling in Him forever, but I had to learn a lot of harsh, bitter lessons about the gulf between His heart and so much of what is done in His name. I learned this not only to survive, but to help others do the same, though I hope that anyone I may have helped came through with a little less cynicism than I have. Okay, a lot less.
I used to be giddy and enthusiastic about Jesus. I saw Him through and beyond and in spite of all the junk and trash and hype and petty human antics. There isn't much I know, but I know that He was pleased with that. Oddly enough, that scares me on some level, because I fear He will ask me to do my thing again and it will no longer be real and spontaneous and heartfelt, but only embarrassing. Make no mistake, He's no less real, just a lot harder to see and hear for all the noise. And I still love Him, though I've become quite a bit harder to pin down because it doesn't pay to stay still for long. There are snipers everywhere. I hate this. I really do.
I don't know how many more episodes of "doing my thing" I have left in me, if any, between now and heaven, but there is one thing I would like very, very much to know. I would like to know that I lost my innocence from fighting an adversary worth standing against, not from letting it die by default or whoring it out for the approval of others. I would like most of all to know that He knows that I did. Whatever He knows about me is true. I hope that is better than I feel.
For the first time in longer than I can remember, I knew He was there, walking with me, engaging me in real conversation, for His own inscrutable reasons taking an interest in my blather and gushing. I could actually hear Him answering me. We actually hung out and enjoyed each other.
It is strange to converse with the Creator of all that exists as if I were a vet bumping into the CO of his old unit in a bar. As a fat civilian, I have no such first-hand experience, but I imagine it would feel very much like last night. Whatever pathetic "battles" or struggles or trials can be called my own were undertaken at His behest. He was with me all the way. He has total authority to evaluate and judge the outcome of my conduct on those occasions. He was not "leading" from the safety of an office. He has known every step I've taken before they ever happened.
I reminisced with Him about my early years as a Christian, when I was much more easily impressed by anything that had His name on it. I was so glad to be alive and in Him that the cheesiest band or book or song or sermon could delight and inspire me, and I didn't much care who knew it. I went gleefully and implacably berserk over things that it actually hurts to remember. They were that bad.
What makes the memories so painful is less about artistic quality then about lost innocence. Even coming out of a lifetime of mockery and contempt and reasons aplenty to mistrust my own species, even after having my very faith hijacked and poisoned by legalism and bondage and spiritual abuse, I hadn't really learned how fucked up people are, myself included. I am afraid I still haven't.
I hadn't yet learned how much corruption lurks under so much of what is broadly accepted as Kingdom business. I hadn't discovered how hollow and world-weary and cynical so many of my favourite Christian musicians were when the shows were over. I hadn't yet learned the knack of reading and listening between the lines to spot the little twists of deceit and empire-building and doctrine-peddling that now seem to hit me almost everywhere, even, it sometimes feels, in the living rooms of those precious few souls whom I can still muster the moxie to trust with my very life. People call that discernment, and sometimes it's apparently a spiritual gift. I am assured it is necessary. So is a designated marksman in an infantry squad, the one who doesn't merely fire at muzzle flashes or rustling leaves but looks through an expensive scope at an enemy with a face and a certain eye colour and maybe a wedding ring two fingers down from the one on his trigger, and who is forced to learn all that in a very few seconds about a person he has already decided to kill.
I don't pretend to equate myself with a combat veteran of any stripe, but I know one or two, and I have tasted a very muted, minor shadow of a phenomenon they have described to me. The things they have had to learn and do and become to survive have changed them forever, and sometimes they don't like what those changes add up to in a mirror or a moment of introspection. I wanted to go on finding God around every corner and reveling in Him forever, but I had to learn a lot of harsh, bitter lessons about the gulf between His heart and so much of what is done in His name. I learned this not only to survive, but to help others do the same, though I hope that anyone I may have helped came through with a little less cynicism than I have. Okay, a lot less.
I used to be giddy and enthusiastic about Jesus. I saw Him through and beyond and in spite of all the junk and trash and hype and petty human antics. There isn't much I know, but I know that He was pleased with that. Oddly enough, that scares me on some level, because I fear He will ask me to do my thing again and it will no longer be real and spontaneous and heartfelt, but only embarrassing. Make no mistake, He's no less real, just a lot harder to see and hear for all the noise. And I still love Him, though I've become quite a bit harder to pin down because it doesn't pay to stay still for long. There are snipers everywhere. I hate this. I really do.
I don't know how many more episodes of "doing my thing" I have left in me, if any, between now and heaven, but there is one thing I would like very, very much to know. I would like to know that I lost my innocence from fighting an adversary worth standing against, not from letting it die by default or whoring it out for the approval of others. I would like most of all to know that He knows that I did. Whatever He knows about me is true. I hope that is better than I feel.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Good Friday
My mother sent me an e-mail a few years ago that was meant to be an encouragement to me after a conversation we had. She told me that, among other things too wonderful for me to have ever hoped to be, she saw me as "someone who is much too critical of himself, but perhaps does not expect enough from others." I have wondered a great deal about that, and whether or not that was a good thing. I think I have the answer, and if not, God will correct me.
I think it is both good and bad. As much as my words and actions do not seem to bear this out, at my core I know that the merciless standards I hold myself to are not good at all; moreover, they are not the least bit effective in bringing about the changes I need to make. At the same time, it's certainly better to expect too little of others than to hold them to the same draconian ideals I reserve for myself.
Let's be honest, mmkay? Oddly like Mussolini when he bragged that he made his own rules and didn't even keep them, I'm no better than anyone else at being consistent. I fudge and rationalise and make excuses; perhaps if my own standards are as inhuman as others claim that's sometimes all that keeps me alive. And like everyone else I am adept at judging and categorising and dismissing other people while holding myself outside the problem as if it had nothing at all in me, when all the while I am as much a part of it as the enemy himself.
Expectations have always gotten me into trouble. My own set me up for a seemingly endless and predictable string of disappointments with myself and others, those of other people are all too often bricks in the pitiless wall of my own standards that I keep hurling myself into. I need very much to learn to expect what should in fact be expected, not because it's natural or even comprehensible, but because it's real and true. Or rather, He is.
As I write this, it's about an hour and change past Good Friday, another term I've often wondered about. The term "good" as used here has always been puzzling, as it's attached to the name of the day set aside to commemorate the Son of God's death by torture, but again, that's natural expectations talking. It was good for us, because there was no other way to save us. It was good for Jesus, because He was fulfilling His Father's will. And in some inscrutable, scandalous way, it was good for God because He loves us enough to pay such a monstrous cost for us.
Make no mistake, I am not in the least deluded into thinking that he came out ahead in this deal because of our intrinsic worth. We don't have any. Dirt is cheap. Except that He blew the breath of life into some and got us. So all the worth we have is from Him. And that is the only fact that offers any hope for us to understand how the the day that marks the most infernal and horrendous act in human history can be called good.
My expectations of satanic triumph are dashed when I discover that he was playing right into God's hands when he spilled the blood of Christ. My expectations of life as it always was - bereft of real living - shatter when the cross is revealed as the gateway to Resurrection, first His, then ours, not only on the last day but a little each day until then. My expectations of despair and damnation wither before the inescapable fact that the God Who loved me enough to die for me knows full well that my bottomless failure is precisely what qualifies me to receive His unspeakable gift.
If I can really learn to expect what He has never once failed to come through with, all these crushing, stultifying false expectations will fall off like scales off a pair of long-blind eyes. That's His plan. That's His business. That is good. He is good. All the time.
I think it is both good and bad. As much as my words and actions do not seem to bear this out, at my core I know that the merciless standards I hold myself to are not good at all; moreover, they are not the least bit effective in bringing about the changes I need to make. At the same time, it's certainly better to expect too little of others than to hold them to the same draconian ideals I reserve for myself.
Let's be honest, mmkay? Oddly like Mussolini when he bragged that he made his own rules and didn't even keep them, I'm no better than anyone else at being consistent. I fudge and rationalise and make excuses; perhaps if my own standards are as inhuman as others claim that's sometimes all that keeps me alive. And like everyone else I am adept at judging and categorising and dismissing other people while holding myself outside the problem as if it had nothing at all in me, when all the while I am as much a part of it as the enemy himself.
Expectations have always gotten me into trouble. My own set me up for a seemingly endless and predictable string of disappointments with myself and others, those of other people are all too often bricks in the pitiless wall of my own standards that I keep hurling myself into. I need very much to learn to expect what should in fact be expected, not because it's natural or even comprehensible, but because it's real and true. Or rather, He is.
As I write this, it's about an hour and change past Good Friday, another term I've often wondered about. The term "good" as used here has always been puzzling, as it's attached to the name of the day set aside to commemorate the Son of God's death by torture, but again, that's natural expectations talking. It was good for us, because there was no other way to save us. It was good for Jesus, because He was fulfilling His Father's will. And in some inscrutable, scandalous way, it was good for God because He loves us enough to pay such a monstrous cost for us.
Make no mistake, I am not in the least deluded into thinking that he came out ahead in this deal because of our intrinsic worth. We don't have any. Dirt is cheap. Except that He blew the breath of life into some and got us. So all the worth we have is from Him. And that is the only fact that offers any hope for us to understand how the the day that marks the most infernal and horrendous act in human history can be called good.
My expectations of satanic triumph are dashed when I discover that he was playing right into God's hands when he spilled the blood of Christ. My expectations of life as it always was - bereft of real living - shatter when the cross is revealed as the gateway to Resurrection, first His, then ours, not only on the last day but a little each day until then. My expectations of despair and damnation wither before the inescapable fact that the God Who loved me enough to die for me knows full well that my bottomless failure is precisely what qualifies me to receive His unspeakable gift.
If I can really learn to expect what He has never once failed to come through with, all these crushing, stultifying false expectations will fall off like scales off a pair of long-blind eyes. That's His plan. That's His business. That is good. He is good. All the time.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
aye, different
Just read a piece by someone I love dearly that detailed her struggles with body image. From my point of view, it's an unnecessary concern for her, although she seems to be staying on top of it rather well. Of course, my point of view is heavily biased in her favour and incorrigibly slanted towards her benefit as a whole person. There are no forthcoming apologies for that, but it will of course make it harder for me to understand how said concern affects her.
I don't worry about her; it just made me realise how infuriating this issue is to me. Can there be a more useless facet of a human's existence to wield so much power over them, to thwart them and berate them at every turn, to force them to alter and amputate pieces of themselves inside and out to chase this impossible and ever-changing mirage of perfection?
Why do I give a flying fuck what people think of how I look? Why have I ever once changed the way I did anything to appease their judgments? I'm ugly by most standards. Overweight, oddly shaped, impenetrably strange fashion sense. Deal with it. I'm done trying to impress anyone. I have a wife who's happy with what she's got here, even if no one envies her. She told all of Facebook today that she married me for my weapons. I love this woman.
She dealt with the same body-image bullshit growing up. It still bogs her down sometimes. I'm as happy with her as I'd be with any other woman on this planet, but you don't turn off three decades of taunts and derision and objectification in a blink. I don't try to turn it off; I work my ass off to prove it all wrong. Because it is.
Has anyone but me rationally considered that there had best be more going for a person than looks if they're a potential friend, let alone life partner? It is infuriating to see and hear and breathe this mania at every turn. I can't do, say, or think anything without some nattering voice trying to turn it into an obsession.
I looked up Virginia Hey recently. She played Warrior Woman in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, the movie that formed the backdrop for much of my misspent youth, and Zhaan on the Farscape series. She accepted me as a friend on her Facebook page, and I looked at the photos she had posted, not only from her films and television work, but also of her hanging out with dear friends in London, just being another pretty 50-something out and about in a nifty city with people she loves.
She happens to be a strikingly beautiful female celebrity who had a fairly major role in a film dear to my heart. Her beauty does not intoxicate me or addle me with lust. I am interested in the person that she is, not the image she projects. I refuse to be obsessed with or overawed by her. Or anyone else. If I could have any relationship at all with Ms. Hey, it would be the same kind of friendship my wife and I have with Angela or Jenn or K or Niko. Real people sharing real life and bearing each other's burdens through love and faith.
I very much doubt it'll ever happen, unless New London explodes as the new East Coast film capital, and that's okay. Because I know, no matter what anyone wants to think, that there are other ways to respond to a famous beauty besides stalking or worship. I've been on the losing side of the body-image game since birth. It holds no promise or illusions for me. I care about my own much more than I should, but that's just one of a long list of bugs that God's fixing in me a day at a time. The people who matter most to me like who they see when I show up no matter what the outside looks like.
There are those who doubt or deride what I wrote here, because they are likely so given to this sickness that they can't help but see it in others. They'd rather infect everyone else than get healthy. Stuff every one of them. Let them prove me wrong about them or keep it to themselves. I'm armed and insecure and about to hit my wall with this noise. It never has been a good idea to fuck with me, and it gets to be a worse idea every day.
I don't worry about her; it just made me realise how infuriating this issue is to me. Can there be a more useless facet of a human's existence to wield so much power over them, to thwart them and berate them at every turn, to force them to alter and amputate pieces of themselves inside and out to chase this impossible and ever-changing mirage of perfection?
Why do I give a flying fuck what people think of how I look? Why have I ever once changed the way I did anything to appease their judgments? I'm ugly by most standards. Overweight, oddly shaped, impenetrably strange fashion sense. Deal with it. I'm done trying to impress anyone. I have a wife who's happy with what she's got here, even if no one envies her. She told all of Facebook today that she married me for my weapons. I love this woman.
She dealt with the same body-image bullshit growing up. It still bogs her down sometimes. I'm as happy with her as I'd be with any other woman on this planet, but you don't turn off three decades of taunts and derision and objectification in a blink. I don't try to turn it off; I work my ass off to prove it all wrong. Because it is.
Has anyone but me rationally considered that there had best be more going for a person than looks if they're a potential friend, let alone life partner? It is infuriating to see and hear and breathe this mania at every turn. I can't do, say, or think anything without some nattering voice trying to turn it into an obsession.
I looked up Virginia Hey recently. She played Warrior Woman in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, the movie that formed the backdrop for much of my misspent youth, and Zhaan on the Farscape series. She accepted me as a friend on her Facebook page, and I looked at the photos she had posted, not only from her films and television work, but also of her hanging out with dear friends in London, just being another pretty 50-something out and about in a nifty city with people she loves.
She happens to be a strikingly beautiful female celebrity who had a fairly major role in a film dear to my heart. Her beauty does not intoxicate me or addle me with lust. I am interested in the person that she is, not the image she projects. I refuse to be obsessed with or overawed by her. Or anyone else. If I could have any relationship at all with Ms. Hey, it would be the same kind of friendship my wife and I have with Angela or Jenn or K or Niko. Real people sharing real life and bearing each other's burdens through love and faith.
I very much doubt it'll ever happen, unless New London explodes as the new East Coast film capital, and that's okay. Because I know, no matter what anyone wants to think, that there are other ways to respond to a famous beauty besides stalking or worship. I've been on the losing side of the body-image game since birth. It holds no promise or illusions for me. I care about my own much more than I should, but that's just one of a long list of bugs that God's fixing in me a day at a time. The people who matter most to me like who they see when I show up no matter what the outside looks like.
There are those who doubt or deride what I wrote here, because they are likely so given to this sickness that they can't help but see it in others. They'd rather infect everyone else than get healthy. Stuff every one of them. Let them prove me wrong about them or keep it to themselves. I'm armed and insecure and about to hit my wall with this noise. It never has been a good idea to fuck with me, and it gets to be a worse idea every day.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
cheers
Lisa and I went to Willimantic last night for an "Anti-Valentine" party. We were invited by a schoolmate I recently reconnected with on Facebook. I saw a few other people I knew from back in the day and met some new faces. We went to two clubs I'd never been to, and honestly wouldn't have if not for the nifty folks we were with who made them bearable. Not my scene at all. I'm way too old, too skinhead, too married. For the club clientele, that is; the crowd we went to hang out with had no problem being seen with us. And I thought that was pretty swell, given that their gathering was a sort of good-natured backlash against romance. It was actually rather an honour to have a huddle of thirtysomething singles let the most revoltingly cute married couple on the planet in on their fun.
My friend is a single mom who, like me, grew up overweight and felt the wrath of our culture for her "defect". It's amazing how focused and passionate the contempt and derision can be when you don't measure up to some arbitrary standard. And when it starts early in life, from all angles, even from family, it can stay with you long after people are no longer throwing it at you. The voices still bray inside your head, the shame and self-loathing carve deep ruts in your soul and you can't see yourself any other way. You know and fear loneliness like few do. And you tend to be prone to falling into unhealthy relationships because any attention at all is so intoxicating that you panic at the thought of losing it, especially when you're programmed to believe with total conviction that you're too undesirable to get it from anyone else. You have no concept of being able to choose from a position of strength.
For reasons like these, she hasn't done well with relationships, though by God she's tried. She loves her daughter and wants a man to share her life with who is willing to commit to them. Not much to ask, given that such is what God designed humans to do. And she is worth it. Better still, she is starting to learn that.
I am glad she reconnected with me on Facebook, and that she and Lisa get along swimmingly. When we were in the Dean's Office Cafe, surrounded by wannabe thugs and college tarts and pumping dollars into the jukebox to blow holes in the stream of Top 40 tripe with AC/DC and the Dropkick Murphys, she confessed that she was a bit afraid that we would hate what she turned into after a few drinks, which really wasn't a whole lot different from her sober self - bubbly, vivacious, friendly and pretty darned sweet. She was afraid our faith would cause us to cast a jaundiced eye on her. Apparently when God gets a hold of someone He sees to it that they don't have much stomach for someone letting their hair down.
Has it really come to that? Does my claiming the name of Christ really cause someone who doesn't know Him personally to expect the very opposite treatment from that which He exemplified in His earthly sojourn? The religious leaders of His day couldn't talk enough trash about His choice of company or the pursuits He engaged in with them. He was known for hanging out with far more notorious people than our friend could ever bring herself to be. Why should she expect His followers to turn their noses up at her when she's being nothing but herself?
That's pretty embarassing, and it's yet another reason for me to be thankful for the delightfully misshapen saints He's surrounded me and Lisa with. I can't play the church game anymore. I want to be like Christ, not like the neutered, Prozac'd mannequin that religion has held up in His place. If that means I drop some cash on a few pints and get my wife and I into cheap nightclubs to have deep conversations with hurting people whose lives aren't neat and tidy (as if ours ever were), then sign me up. I want the church to look more like a bunch of thirtysomething singles rallying around each other on barstools like a family to share each other's burdens, and less like a management seminar with tips and techniques on how to prop up the facade of Godly oblivion to real human need.
Jen, thank you for being seen with us. We love you. And so does God. I hope we can help Him to prove that to you.
My friend is a single mom who, like me, grew up overweight and felt the wrath of our culture for her "defect". It's amazing how focused and passionate the contempt and derision can be when you don't measure up to some arbitrary standard. And when it starts early in life, from all angles, even from family, it can stay with you long after people are no longer throwing it at you. The voices still bray inside your head, the shame and self-loathing carve deep ruts in your soul and you can't see yourself any other way. You know and fear loneliness like few do. And you tend to be prone to falling into unhealthy relationships because any attention at all is so intoxicating that you panic at the thought of losing it, especially when you're programmed to believe with total conviction that you're too undesirable to get it from anyone else. You have no concept of being able to choose from a position of strength.
For reasons like these, she hasn't done well with relationships, though by God she's tried. She loves her daughter and wants a man to share her life with who is willing to commit to them. Not much to ask, given that such is what God designed humans to do. And she is worth it. Better still, she is starting to learn that.
I am glad she reconnected with me on Facebook, and that she and Lisa get along swimmingly. When we were in the Dean's Office Cafe, surrounded by wannabe thugs and college tarts and pumping dollars into the jukebox to blow holes in the stream of Top 40 tripe with AC/DC and the Dropkick Murphys, she confessed that she was a bit afraid that we would hate what she turned into after a few drinks, which really wasn't a whole lot different from her sober self - bubbly, vivacious, friendly and pretty darned sweet. She was afraid our faith would cause us to cast a jaundiced eye on her. Apparently when God gets a hold of someone He sees to it that they don't have much stomach for someone letting their hair down.
Has it really come to that? Does my claiming the name of Christ really cause someone who doesn't know Him personally to expect the very opposite treatment from that which He exemplified in His earthly sojourn? The religious leaders of His day couldn't talk enough trash about His choice of company or the pursuits He engaged in with them. He was known for hanging out with far more notorious people than our friend could ever bring herself to be. Why should she expect His followers to turn their noses up at her when she's being nothing but herself?
That's pretty embarassing, and it's yet another reason for me to be thankful for the delightfully misshapen saints He's surrounded me and Lisa with. I can't play the church game anymore. I want to be like Christ, not like the neutered, Prozac'd mannequin that religion has held up in His place. If that means I drop some cash on a few pints and get my wife and I into cheap nightclubs to have deep conversations with hurting people whose lives aren't neat and tidy (as if ours ever were), then sign me up. I want the church to look more like a bunch of thirtysomething singles rallying around each other on barstools like a family to share each other's burdens, and less like a management seminar with tips and techniques on how to prop up the facade of Godly oblivion to real human need.
Jen, thank you for being seen with us. We love you. And so does God. I hope we can help Him to prove that to you.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
steel cocoon
My job schedule is four 10-hour days so that leaves me with three-day weekends. For the last few of these I've been fairly steeped in various little survival projects, and the depth with which I can become absorbed by them is by turns comforting, wondrous and disturbing.
I've modified an aircrew survival knife and four different machetes. Nothing major, just little tweaks with a rotary tool and some sanding and filework to improve different functions. I took the knife and one of the machetes and made a survival package with some odds and ends and a few ideas of mine and others I found online. It's cheaper than drinking and there's no hangover, just a lot of little metal shavings everywhere.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist or zombie apocalypse enthusiast. I haven't been camping in any way that requires more than a pocketknife in nearly two decades. I just like this stuff.
I have to take my ideas when and where I can get them. If they involve things I already have, that's even better. Give me the time to work on them and it's better still. To take something good and improve it, adorn it, weave it with other good things to make a system, leads to a rare and elusive euphoria. Trial and error doesn't enrage me here like it usually does as long as the errors can be corrected. Here like almost nowhere else, I grasp the meaning of learning from mistakes.
Mistakes are illegal in my world. They are to be prevented, avoided, and failing that, punished. The main thing to be learned from mistakes is not to make them. There is no dodging or evading responsibility. I own my mistakes. They define me. This is not what I believe because I want to; this is what I have learned. This is what I was taught. This is the signal I picked up five-by-five from people and life almost from the start.
In the bubble I've locked myself in for the last few weekends I receive a different signal. I still own the mistakes, but I also own what I learn from them. Oddly enough , the absence of pressure to perform improves my performance. I excel by not obsessing over excellence, by focusing on what's good enough.
It's a tiny island of competence in an ocean of haze and uncertainty and failure. Here I'm the boss, and I'm a pretty decent guy to work for. The job gets done and enjoyed in the process.
People use the term "cocooning" to describe a deep, tunnel-visioned retreat into any activity as an escape from life and reality. When I get this deep into a hobby I feel pangs of guilt as though that's what I'm doing. Wouldn't it be a right kick to learn that it really is a cocoon, not a coward's refuge but a place to transform into something better?
It could be argued that I have more important concerns than convex grinds and paracord wrap patterns. I do, in fact. It often feels like fiddling while Rome burns. My only defence is that this, like it or not, is part of who and what I am, and it has not a thing to do with how long it's been since I hacked out a campsite. I still don't know like others claim to that I matter much at all, but I know that many people and other forces have expended tremendous passion, energy and resources to nullify and erase me. If there are things I need to address, than I matter at least as much as those things. If there is none of me left to bring to them, they are lost to me.
I don't think God made me for that. Any step I can take towards what He made me for, however trivial, however mundane, is closer to where I belong, if such a place exists. I wish these tiny things didn't loom so hugely on my pathetic little screen, but it is still better to have them than not.
Friday, January 22, 2010
dance fever
come on already, just write it down. you hate it so bad you wish you could step outside it long enough to kick it down the stairs. every swing of a boot into its ribs would be an orgasm. rage and loathing spewing all over the concrete and never spent.
tread the same ground over and over, learning nothing, losing every good thing it's entrusted with, and yet it's still trusted. no one suspects because it's too much of a coward to speak up.
weak, impotent, defective little thing, swollen with delusions of significance.
I want to scream the hate until my throat bleeds. I want to feel the electric rush of flesh impacting flesh, perp and victim reveling in their dance within the same misshapen body. belt across the face and neck, head against the wall, fists on the skull, round and round and back and forth. no one around to have any clue or try to stop it.
it's a drug, it's a crutch, it's a corner to be pushed into and hide in, it's within reach, unlike life.
I'll stop when it gets better, when the weakness and stupidity of it don't drop to the ground and unroll like the stench of a corpse and precede it into a room or a relationship or a job and wring inane words and lame excuses from its lips and lock it behind a glass wall where the Bright Ones are close enough to watch and hear but just out of reach.
I tried to break the glass but I bled all over them, they said they didn't mind but come on.
still hurts, still needs, and bears all the blame for that.
tread the same ground over and over, learning nothing, losing every good thing it's entrusted with, and yet it's still trusted. no one suspects because it's too much of a coward to speak up.
weak, impotent, defective little thing, swollen with delusions of significance.
I want to scream the hate until my throat bleeds. I want to feel the electric rush of flesh impacting flesh, perp and victim reveling in their dance within the same misshapen body. belt across the face and neck, head against the wall, fists on the skull, round and round and back and forth. no one around to have any clue or try to stop it.
it's a drug, it's a crutch, it's a corner to be pushed into and hide in, it's within reach, unlike life.
I'll stop when it gets better, when the weakness and stupidity of it don't drop to the ground and unroll like the stench of a corpse and precede it into a room or a relationship or a job and wring inane words and lame excuses from its lips and lock it behind a glass wall where the Bright Ones are close enough to watch and hear but just out of reach.
I tried to break the glass but I bled all over them, they said they didn't mind but come on.
still hurts, still needs, and bears all the blame for that.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
finish
great at starting, not so much at finishing.
got a million foundations laid and no clue which one to build on.
ghost surrounded by real beings, want to join the party and no one believes me whan I tell them I don't speak the language.
whatever this is supposed to be is locked away and don't know how to open the door.
the kid never learns, does he?
"I went to Georgia, to convert the Indians, but O! who shall convert me?" - John Wesley
got a million foundations laid and no clue which one to build on.
ghost surrounded by real beings, want to join the party and no one believes me whan I tell them I don't speak the language.
whatever this is supposed to be is locked away and don't know how to open the door.
the kid never learns, does he?
"I went to Georgia, to convert the Indians, but O! who shall convert me?" - John Wesley
Friday, January 15, 2010
stretch
(from a Facebook app.)
"On this day of your life, Doug, we believe God wants you to know ... that God sees you as you truly are - a holy child of light:
'I see you strong and whole. I see you blessed and prospered. I see you courageous and confident. I see you capable and successful. I see you free from all limitations or bondage of any kind. I see you as the spiritually perfect being you truly are.' "
not going to lie - that's a bit much.
whatever God says is true. were "we" hearing Him or just being Hallmarkish?
if it were anyone but God I would tell them to lay off the peyote.
I'm not given to relying on Facebook apps. for spiritual insight, but a body can't help but wonder if there is any way this could actually be true.
and if it is, why can't I see things the same way? any idea how much of my thoughts and actions have to be ignored or denied to make this stick? do you not know what a showcase of depravity we have here? everything God hates about fallen man in one convenient location.
I exist too much. I need to cut back.
God if this is true then how do I see it?
if it ain't I'd very much like it to be, but it won't unless You do it. didn't say I wouldn't, said I can't. think You know that.
this hurts.
"On this day of your life, Doug, we believe God wants you to know ... that God sees you as you truly are - a holy child of light:
'I see you strong and whole. I see you blessed and prospered. I see you courageous and confident. I see you capable and successful. I see you free from all limitations or bondage of any kind. I see you as the spiritually perfect being you truly are.' "
not going to lie - that's a bit much.
whatever God says is true. were "we" hearing Him or just being Hallmarkish?
if it were anyone but God I would tell them to lay off the peyote.
I'm not given to relying on Facebook apps. for spiritual insight, but a body can't help but wonder if there is any way this could actually be true.
and if it is, why can't I see things the same way? any idea how much of my thoughts and actions have to be ignored or denied to make this stick? do you not know what a showcase of depravity we have here? everything God hates about fallen man in one convenient location.
I exist too much. I need to cut back.
God if this is true then how do I see it?
if it ain't I'd very much like it to be, but it won't unless You do it. didn't say I wouldn't, said I can't. think You know that.
this hurts.
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