Cast Die

I think the greatest obstacle to my motivation and accomplishment is confidence. Perhaps overconfidence. It stems from a competitive inclination and quickly becomes an inhibition. I'm a great lover of competition, and yet I struggle mightily with correcting myself when I'm not actually "losing". In those situations where the conditions for victory remain obfuscated by circumstance or the object or opposition against which the game is played is enigmatic. And those situations where my opponent lies within myself - those I always lose. The problem is, once I've acquired some semblance of inertia, even I cannot easily gainsay my own inclination. It isn't impossible, but so much more difficult without outside motive.
When I must practice to better myself, yet without any relative comparison, I fail. I'm overconfident in my abilities and fail in the daily follow-through. One of my most difficult problems with my competitive spirit was that once I knew that I could win, I moved on. Once winning was technically within my grasp, everything else was academic. I knew I could do it; those that mattered understood I was the stronger competitor. That was my youth - never an opponent worth beating.
Except myself.
And now, forcing myself to maintain rigor, to daily accomplish various rituals of living and life, I struggle. What competitive urge forces me to eat a certain amount, exercise just so, or write a certain quantity? The competition rests in the long haul and the terms of ambiguous.
Another of my competitive angsts was in chance. I disliked games of chance and sometimes even games of dull strategem. I loved the knowledge games. Games that possessed not only a breadth of opportunity, but a depth of decision. But life contains its own fair share of frustrating chance, or seeming chance. Why does one child get cancer, and another fly free? Why does one get born into poverty and another wealth? Why does this curmudgeon survive into longevity and this kindly soul find an early grave?
The dice feels weighted against good sometimes, or most ostensibly so when those miseries occur. And the hard part for me is deciding to struggle against myself when I know that my future seems somewhat contrived and chancy rather than directed. There are too many variables.

I used to play a game with myself. I would ask myself impossible statistic questions like: "I wonder who is both the fastest, shortest, and most stylish person on this field?" The problem with questions like these is the weighting of the variables. Is "fastest" the most important? What if the fastest is also the tallest? Or the least stylish? How do you diagram that out? Even one of those seems so arbitrary and subjective. That's how life feels, except with more variables. Each person has a say in my destiny, and so does the spontaneity of factors too invisible for me to ascertain: genetics, environment, and so on.

With all this, how does one maintain motivation towards an uncertain end? It feels like that line in Annie Hall about why Alvie was not doing his homework. "Because the universe is expanding, and eventually everything is going to collapse" was the (inexact) response. That can be how it feels - a bit fatalistic. But then you can so easily get stuck in the rut of doing nothing at all, which is worse, sometimes, than mistakenly taking a wrong step. At least you can learn from a wrong step. And all this is really just a bit of rambling sophistry, but it's interesting to think about those tiny obstacles and factors that stagnate us like flies in honey. When we are our biggest enemy, who will lift us free? I think that's question answers so many others. You can tell a lot about a person by who will lend them a hand, and how many kindnesses come when the dice lands poorly.

Spectrum of Life

A lot happens in a year, a month, even a day.

I’m married, and I was not.

Arguments regarding LGBT in the church community.

Legal suits in town against the yearly meeting of friends.

I’ve been surprised how quickly people rear up with opinions like king cobras. Beliefs on wedding timing and relationship mantra, or arguments against persons – all with such violent strikes. Less than the content of the arguments, the entitlement and anger with which people defend their beliefs can be appalling. And frightening.

Not that such a righteous anger is always wrong. Au contraire, a righteous anger is often warranted. The scary portion is the direction of the anger targeted towards persons rather than ideas. Rarely is hate an agreeable ideal. Rarely is vindictiveness a moral imperative. It’s that same quality of person that stands outside an abortion clinic killing doctors in the name of Christ (or any higher cause).

I haven’t written in forever, and my first is somewhat angry, itself. Shoot. And that’s what I’ve noticed. Anger begets only anger.   

I think what’s been a joy to see in the passing weeks is that the flipside is also, often, true. Generosity, grace, and mercy often beget similar reactive replies. More than all of the miserable actions, more than all of the hatred and anger and angst of an uncertain people, the generosity and kindness of those loving persons in my community sticks with me.  At the wedding, people jumped into action to help, even without being asked. Whether it was pushing tables outside, organizing books, or grabbing Ems and I a bite to eat, people leapt into action. I couldn’t help but smile. It’s reminded me of all those times I’ve had the opportunity to help my friends, and how it’s never a chore, but a great blessing to be that servant. I remember how lucky I felt getting to look after a friend following a surgery (dental) and just hang out and make sure everything was okay should anything need doing. I feel similarly blessed helping each of my friends when they have to move (packing, and lifting) even if I’m the least qualified person for the task (have you seen these biceps? Most people’s ankles are bigger).  I honestly love it. And that’s what fills me with so much joy. When Ems and I wrote our prayer for the day, we hoped that the day might be filled with joy, and that that joy would be an evident reminder of our beliefs and hopes and joys. Our wedding was.

I hold these two great  scenes in balance, teetering forwards and backwards into each. The anger that bubbles up in reply to such, and the grace I force myself to remember, having been shown so extravagantly where joy is begat. These weeks have travelled fast, and are filled with great and weighty feelings, spanning a sea-wide spectrum of emotions. But I’m happy. I’m joyful; full of joy. There are heartbreaks, and there are moments so perfect I’m brought to tears.

I’m thankful for this and my community. In sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, I’m married to it in my spirit and I love it. I’m learning a lot about community and belief through my marriage already, and I’m only getting started.

Here’s to many more such days, weeks, and years. Here’s to life.

Fences I never before found

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/fences-i-never-before-found/

It’s difficult for me to sleep, fighting. My hands jitter, my heart drops, my head enters into a sky-vision, where everything is so distant and immense, so colossally on the horizon, that I’m nauseated by that grandiosity. If nothing else, I am at least that.

And then everything settles into an uncomfortable silence, an eerie, graveyard calm. I’m tired, and I’m exhausted, but I’m blessed, and my heart is stronger than it was once before. It is the same as callouses on the fingertips after working with wood and stone, as the hard-packed earth after the storm brushes away the loose earth, as a fire burns away the impurities of coinage metals, for though the process is blood, and sand-blasting, and scorching heat, the result is a rugged, noteworthy one. Not always beautiful, not always kind, but dashing, and poignant. You grow a respect for the hardiness of the desert flower and the cliff-side brush and the Amazonian trees deep-rooted on the banks of the floodplain.

And the world is full, too, fuller than you know.

I’ve discovered a whole different life, and how many bridges I never saw. Life is a city a million miles wide, and I won’t finish exploring my own side, the bazaar, the esplanade, the city-scape. And you Wendell-Berry-come, full of life from the forest I never knew resides over the hilltop I never crossed.

I measure life boundaries in blocks: a poetic, tired skyscraper, a cracked sidewalk, a roadblock and all the construction no one ever found in a run-down port of a town with only an alley-cat or two, some garbage, and a confusing cottage whose smokestack coughs like a tiny factory.

Do you know what all my fingers are letting go? How I’m dropping rubies for diamonds for gold? Life is a simple transaction of beauty to beauty, mud for mud, and your hands are only so large for what you must hold – and I’ve got small hands.

Diagrammed Life

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/diagrammed-life/

You plot out your dreams, and layer schemes until every possible point is mapped, webbed, diagrammed into a sunset-reality with wildflower hills rolling into a swooping valley and a whispering stream, and the evergreens and weeping willows glow in the aging sunlight and the quaking aspens have burst into an autumn gold – and then the sky falls, and lightning cracks like a whip. The storm canter-claps across the heavens and hail hammers into the country-side like the hoofs of a great and dreadful beast.

But the sun dawns again, and the flattened flowers rise and bloom, and the grasses hold up their heads and answer Whitman’s question so sagely and wise that the stream is almost silent, pensive over the stones. Time is just this, no? Where the raging stream widens and slows, then stumbles into a slope and races and falls and flies into a waiting pool, where it sits patiently, and ambles towards the ocean as a drunken bloke, speeding up and slowing as the earth leads.

I’ve lost track of time. I came into this past month realizing my intentionality, my process, and knowing the sequence of my life as surely as a machine. My instructions were already lined up in the processor, awaiting the machine to stamp each tape deck, nod at the instructions, and calculate the function. But now what?

Providence, divine, has sewn wings onto my arms while I sleep, and the wind now carries me aloft, and I’ve no control, little control, over the breeze that sails my over the trees. A first house, a first girlfriend, a first time for many responsibilities, and life is overwhelmingly beautiful, but overwhelming. These are not, I’ve discovered, exclusive in the slightest. I think they resonate so intricately that they cascade, rebound, and reverberate until the echoes resound loudly in the ears of time.

Rivers Mighty

There is beautiful land here: the Columbia gorge, the Willamette (the river why?), Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier, the Olympics, the Cascades, the Issaquah Ridge, the national forests, the stony refusal of nature to comply with silly roads and forested towns, the bays and ocean vistas, the lakes and river curlicues – how arabesque and wavy is our world, like a dervish dance spinning or the sinuous shapes of ancient eastern art, twisting and rolling like the waves and the snakes, and the wind eddying around the minarets and parapets of time.

But every string I’ve seen possesses both beginning and end, end and beginning, even the wind whispering and the ocean waves singing, even the dreams I’m clinging to, with distant, foggy shores. Some metaphysical kitten plays with the sweater-threads of my life, gnawing, clawing, fraying its unravelling strings and deftly splitting the colors into a mess of sudden ends and new. And though it is a sweater no longer, I’m beginning to believe it’s beautiful, nonetheless. Perhaps more so, with its spontaneous elegance, an arbitrary truncation into a colorful next – a rough patch in a river makes the river leap, and where water falls, rainbows spring.

Is the river’s might in raging rapids,

smoothing the stones and leveling mountains?

or in the width of its waters gently

etching a means towards eternal seas?

perhaps her strength lies in a sleight of hand

breaking boulders into sand and hiding

around clever bends, tracing the moon’s path

through desert, forest, fields, and quiet hearts.

but no matter where it goes, it’s coming

home again, racing to the end, he sways,

tipsy and tired – greeting the ocean

with sad smiles, wondering now and then,

how poignant the sunrise and set can be,

even here, even now, even eventually

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/rivers-mighty/