LGBTQ in the Church (a meeting on a minute)

Is this Spirit here? Or just high spirits?
Does the Spirit split two ways? Is it a river or a hurricane? Every "leading" eddies and suffocates - which side holds the sense of truth?
How is it possible to exist so divided and so compelled and spirit-filled within the unified body? Is it possible not to? Can we? Do we?
Does anyone know, with shadowless certainty, the Truth? Or even one Truth? In such a multifaceted view, both sides tossing out vindictives and dismissives at the brick-wall-minds of the other side.
The "other side" doesn't value diversity or discussion, acceptance and unity, love, grace, or forgiveness.
Or the "other side" exists in shallow theology, being biblically naive, sitting with sinners, misrepresenting a "holy" God and wholly disregarding a depth of tradition and wisdom and practice of faith.
What middle ground between the spectrum of hell and bigotry? When it's either damnation or discrimination. Where are the enlightened sophists who have risen above the sheeple in middling belief and sit in the golden means of compromise? Surely these possess some Gnosticism worth being? But everyone is so obnoxiously right sometimes, or humbly condescending. Where are the patient listeners? The quiet dialectic?

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.

Abraham and Isaac

One of the hardest Biblical passages to swallow for me, and I doubt these experiences are mine alone, is the Binding of Isaac. Even reading the anonymous Hebrews author’s comments on faith, even reading commentaries and the various viewpoints that attempt to reconcile the request of a perfectly good, loving, kind God asking a faithful servant to sacrifice his promised son, this passage sits unwell within my gut. Even the story of Job I find more palatable at times, though not reasonably so, than this story. I think the story feels more visceral and relatable than the mythological, archetypal, fabular book of Job.

                The problem of evil is the most difficult of challenges. I grapple with this question constantly and not as doubt but as opposition, as competition, as that foe that subverts directed motion. So I dreamt up a world without. Not a world entirely bereft of terrible things, but a world devoid of evil allowed to target that which is considered good. A couple of difficulties immediately presented themselves.

1.       What determines goodness? Is goodness a spectrum? A black and white? Are there those who are “innocent” and “guilty”, and the innocents are immune to damage while the guilty are laser-sighted and hunted down? Or is goodness and innocence a graph. You can be good but not innocent, innocent and good, or guilty and evil, or varying degrees of each. This graph helps a little, because those same horrors which afflict the overall good might be justified if they also were not innocent. Is it possible to be good and guilty (not guilt-ridden, but objectively guilty)?

2.       Assuming levels of goodness, what does this effectually mean in this world? Is there a standard bar like a height mark at an amusement park: only those of a goodness greater than this height are protected from this level of evil? For instance, a perfectly good human being who has commit no sins won’t even get sick, while someone who has transgressed (whatever standard determines transgression), depending on their level of iniquity, might experience colds, the flu, or even food poisoning. If their sin is great, they might even experience the greater of evils possible (as determined by randomness? God? Natural selection? Nature?)

3.       Who determines goodness? And is it a balance? Common Christian belief argues that sin is final and irrevocable without grace. A murder in cold blood cannot be outweighed by a thousand acts of kindness and giving in terms of eternity, or even a million. But since I’m god of this imaginary world, what do I believe is the most culturally fair, according to conventional philosophical premises? Let’s believe that a contrite and willing soul might eradicate the stain of sin in an earthly purgatory of sorts. A good person might commit an atrocity which dips his/her soul-goodness down into evil for a short time until such time as his/her actions raise that level back into “the safe zone” once more.

At this juncture, everything is so ephemeral and intangible that this world doesn’t even make sense. So I’ll throw out a couple of analogies to add flesh onto the dust of this earth. First, we have to add a standard of goodness. There are a lot of philosophical and ethical measures by which to determine good that sages have discussed for centuries. For ease of conversation, I’m going to suggest a simple utilitarian ethics, and “good” under this system promotes love, life, kindness, care, gentleness, giving, peace, patience, honesty, and integrity. This is all a bit of an oversimplification. World-building is intricate and I have not the time for it in great detail in this thought-experiment.

        Let’s say that in this world, a god decides at the end what is good and what is not, and we’ll define God by that system of good. We’ll pick a god whose entire purpose is computation: determining statistics of good, updating a few csv files on behavior of individuals, and does some server maintenance every once in a while. God isn’t arbitrarily deciding, but is following a clear system of good and evil like a computer. There is no random number generation in the decision making, only a series of variables. God is without emotional capacity in this thought experiment.

       

        In our world, there is a type of game called an rpg, or a role-playing-game. DnD, online role playing games, or single-played versions where the user controls a character in an imagined world and makes decisions. Because this is what we are doing, of a fashion, this will provide some good analogies to our world. In these worlds, there are often a couple types of zones: Player vs Player zones, Player vs Enemy zones, and gladiator zones. Gladiator zones are really just PvP zones that you enter willingly in order to test strength; Player vs Player zones means that you enter at your risk; a stronger player might be lying in wait to destroy you. Player vs Enemy zones are the safe zones, where you can battle beside unknown players and they are unable to apply damage to your character.

        This gives us a good analogy. Let’s give ourselves a spectrum of good. At each level of good (or evil), players are subject to different types of damage. If you are perfect, you are untouchable. If you are almost completely good, with light iniquity, casual evil might befall: light sickness, bumping your nose, stubbing your toe, burning your tongue lightly on tea.  If the black plague hits your city, the chances of catching it are nil. And on down the spectrum: middling people experience middling evils; completely evil persons are subject to manipulation of person and evils embodying the gravest harm. The goal of this system, of course, is fairness. And it isn’t apparent goodness that determines a person, but the underlying statistics of their being. A secret murderer might appear good to his family and friends, but his internal infestation of evil would be great according to the system.

        The system does not take sides. There is a natural selection of evil and good. But there are some problems. Let’s say I’m perfectly good. I’m also a daredevil. So I jump off a mountain cliff with a squirrel suit without adequate training. Do I die? I’m young and naïve, but unquestionably perfect. Am I miraculously saved? Next: I’m a perfectly evil person, and I can do what I want. I get into a truck loaded up with explosives and drive it into a preschool. What happens? All the kids miraculously survive and there is no damage? And what about situations with no criminal intent: it’s an icy day and I’m doing a little distracted driving and my car slips into the other lane and into an oncoming car. Does the system reach out and replace me like a Mario Kart vehicle?

        Imagine it like this: good people possess a semi-permeable firewall spiritual membrane about their being. This firewall prevents untoward activity and negative outcome. A natural phenomenon hits the town, but they are unaffected. There is no chance of them being affected. They don’t even need faith. Abraham walking up that mountain doesn’t need faith – his goodness prevents Isaac’s death, right? And that begs another question, even about that murderer.

        Let’s say that someone is a terrible murderer, in secret (let’s not consider, for the moment, who he’s allowed to murder. Let’s assume this person is very, very bad of heart), but that he’s well loved by a younger brother and his mother and father and family. They are all innocent and perfect. His death affects not only them, but everyone within his perfect community. Is that not an evil befalling the entire population? How can a nuclear bomb strike a city and kill only those who deserve it? The problem here exists that distinction of collateral damage is impossible as long as damage exists.

        So we could consider another world, a world without collateral damage or damage at all. Let’s imagine that world. Nothing bad could happen. Is this the Garden of Eve without the central component: the tree of good and evil? In this situation, we also run into problems. Either there is no concept of evil – I couldn’t steal your waffle. It would be physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually impossible to steal – or evil is prevented. If evil is prevented, if I’m driving a car around and try and force it into another lane, I’m prevented from doing so by “the great preventative rules from the heavens”. In a way, these are like borderline cases in programming. Can I walk over that mountain in the video game? Not if I can’t jump over the fence or if there is an invisible wall bordering the town.

        But my world isn’t working, and I’m not sure how to fix it. And if I cannot fix it, I have to remedy this world in my head, this God in my head with the perfect God that told Abraham to sacrifice his son, with innocents being sexually abused, with refugees from nations being forced out by militant extremists and terrorists, with war and famine and malnutrition for children. I have to reconcile the inequality extant with a God capable of preventing it who doesn’t.  I have to walk with Abraham up that mountain, expecting the sacrifice and having faith that God will provide.

        This is a harder walk. I cannot simply level-up my goodness and make achievements and rewards by following a life-checklist. I will get sick, my relatives may die, but the price was free will and humanity chose poorly.

        Do I struggle with Abraham’s perspective more, or Isaac’s? Isaac the promised son, whose loving father bound him onto the altar and raised the kris above his head. Salvation was found in sacrifice, even then. It’s so hard to swallow all of this. What was God telling us about our world? What should I be learning that I am missing?

        Kierkegaard wrong a novel on an imagined journey with Abraham at this time.  He wrote some interesting statements that have provoked some thought along these lines.

        For he who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God.

~ Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling)

       

Then faith's paradox is this: that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the single individual determines his relation to the universal through his relation to God, not his relation to God through his relation through the universal... Unless this is how it is, faith has no place in existence; and faith is then a temptation.

        ~ Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling)

The ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he meant to murder Isaac; the religious expression is that he meant to sacrifice Isaac—but precisely in this contradiction is the anxiety that can make a person sleepless, and yet without this anxiety Abraham is not who he is.

        ~ Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling)

        I’m not certain what I think. There is too much here to reconcile in my head that I simply cannot contain it. I read and re-read this passage, and find little that is comforting in my philosophical meditations over it. Earlier I mentioned the ethical standard of utilitarianism. This is the greatest good for the greatest number of people. But this is impossible to know with our angle of knowledge, isn’t it? Without God’s understanding of cause and effect, how are we to know whether our actions will provide the greatest good for the greatest number.

        Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggled with the concept of peace in the face of evil himself. He wrote:

If I see a madman driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders, then I can't as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe and then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver

        He says that, “Silence in the face of evil is evil itself. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”  I think about this in relation to utilitarianism. What if killing Hitler made things worse? Utilitarianism suggests that murder in this case would be a greater evil. And you cannot always know the ends to the means that you practice. So what is ethically good cannot rely on an intellectual void of chance, can it? The end does not justify the means, and certainly the means cannot justify the end, either, right?            

        So that which is good must be based on intention and values, a Quality of sorts, such as that present in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (by Robert Pirsig). This is a great Platonic Form, and our adhering to its designs as closely as we may, knowing only that we attempt to draw nearer to divine perfection in our actions, is good.  Good isn’t actions only, but intent, purpose, belief, and heart that initiate the behavior.

        And I reach the end of the trails of thought, finding myself once more at the beginning. But the beginning offers new paths that I failed to notice before, and I must travel down each, hoping I’ll find the finish line eventually. I have no answers, only rambles and empty thought experiments. Nothing of any particular meaning or anything worth taking away in the long run. There are more holes in these arguments and thoughts than a perforated straw man. It is, in a sense, a red herring, a non sequitur, but what purpose is stream of consciousness save this?

       

Pensive with Mark Strand

It's a reflective night, a pensive one, and as nano's left in its tiny coffin of tags, margin, and punctual bounds. I'm mulling over poetry, and the nutmeg and cinnamon sticks of my mentality perfume the dreamy air. I am Mark Strand in these stanzas, tonight:

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
(Mark Strand - Keeping Things Whole - Reasons for Moving)


We are all scattered pieces of a shattered whole. None of us, as yet, perfect, I'm fairly sure. Wherever I am, I am what is missing. I feel this, sometimes. Stronger in the retrospective melancholy of hindsight, where I am here and there and now and not. Nano is finished, but my story is undone. And in the void, spilled treasures of fae gold are left ashen. How I remembered these memories differently. A puzzle, once vibrant, stained in salty water that no longer matches its master - how will I ever arrange these cardboard cutouts again? If your life is remodeled, you cannot walk through the same doors, slide over the laminate in your socks, or ride the banister into the grand hall.



And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.
Mark Strand - Lines for Winter

Every season is love

It's not been a month for blogging, or journaling on many days. It's difficult to find time for extra writing when novel writing is already the struggle of the month. After writing 1700 words, sometimes I don't want to immediately rush into writing for myself, and even when I do, I often don't have the time to do so. And because of this, journal time gets tossed out the window, blogging gets flush down the toilet, and novel writing takes the fore.
It's a beautiful time of year. The cold of winter has arrived and it's no longer the portion of fall with brilliant colors. Fall is so short, sometimes. It comes back for a few days of Thanksgiving and for Halloween, but the interim is all winter's edge and the hunger of darkness.
Every season provides room for complaining. In winter it is too cold, too dark, or too rainy for far too long a time; in spring, the colors only arrive at the end, and really spring is winter in disguise. Spring, too, is rainy, and the snow hasn't melted off the mountains for hiking, and the allergens flourish. Summer is beautiful, but sleeping is often difficult when the sun refuses to set and the warmth lingers after dark, and the wetness of the air, and the constant sweating, cloying weather. Fall brings lovely colors, but dies too swiftly, entering eagerly into winter's deathly embrace. Fall suffers the same pains of winter, and worse knowing it has only begun and you've many months left to go.
If you want to complain, there are always points worthy of complaint in each month. And yet, you can also celebrate the differences, and there is ample opportunity for such blessings and thanksgiving. Fall is beautiful in its colors, and resplendent in its holidays: chanukah of the lights, thanksgiving with its cornucopia of colors, family, thanks, foods, and the warmth of togetherness; halloween with its candy, and the entire season full of pumpkin, apples, harvest, corn, turkey, fireplaces, cider, chai, and maple.
Winter arrives with the advent of Christmas, and what better holiday is there than that? Shortly after, you celebrate the new year, and the greens and the reds of christmas join Janus' two-faced nervousness about the impending days. There is valentine's day, the day of love and single-angst, stuck in the center of the northern-hemispheres cold, and st. patricks day celebrating green in a season of white and gray. Winter is full of snow, rain, lovely mountain peaks and early morning fogs. It is the best time for snuggling by a fireplace and reading a book, and drinking warm tea and lighting candles.
Spring is a blessing of verdancy, as the first snowdrops peak their heads out from the frost, and the deciduous trees tentatively turn out leaves, and the evergreens shake their white-fur coats from their sleeves. The animals emerge and the birds begin to return, and the fogs and lakes lie in cold beauty as the world remembers colors and light. Wildflowers come to life on the mountainsides, and the butterflies and bees remember life.
Summer is the time of life, the blooming of full flowers: lilac and lavender and rose, and the sunflower season and time where everyone is outdoors enjoying each other and the world.

The Other Side

There aren't always a multitude of paths, but often. And at these crossroads, an easier road and the harder options. The easier road isn't always better, nor the harder always worthy of the journey. But there the easy sits, parallel to the spiky pit, and the rivers are bluer, the sky clearer, the grass greener on that rise, while through these ruts I claw.
And it's beautiful for the summit, splendid for the crawl, but what does the other side look like?  In those twinning times, where I dream I stole to the other side, I wonder if I was strong enough, or was there joy enough like this life?
What if I'd picked the harder trails? I could have chosen any life, and this I took in stride.

And even happier than can be, I'm stuck with wondering who else I could have been. How much better can I be?

Write til' you drop

A name can be an identity, or the barrier between you and one. Your name is the sohl-reason for your being. But it is not your being. It's a fly tied to the fishing line, and even forgetting, you've not lost everything. 
Sometimes, I think I enjoy sentences without knowing, or caring, how they connect. I often relish writing the words, feeling the taste and texture of them, with an appalling apathy with regards to overarching structure. I love words; I love sentences; sometimes I don't desire any greater tapestry than simply marveling at the few strands of thread I'm twirling in my fingers. 
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/03/28/specials/dillard-drop.html
Annie Dillard has a remarkable essay on writing, and I've read it often to remind myself why I continue writing. I don't expect to sell my sanity and soul into this, but I do have some small passion for it. 
I often glance at my works and see only the skeleton of artistry, the meatless bones, and I wonder if I'll ever have time to clothe them. I've swirled up the dust of creation, but Adam looks like a halloween dry-bones or those crab shells left by sea gulls on the stones by the ocean. 
I jump from topic to topic, considering a new sentence that inspires me, even if its connection to the last is tenuous, or non-existent. I'm sewing non-sequiturs in patch after patch on a dirty rag, and hoping it will hold together if the patches are pretty enough. And the patches are beautiful, but the motif is all spontaneous confusion.

The River Why and Why

Ems asked me what my ideal schedule would be like, and I've been considering that, with regards to the coming month and time in general. In the book I'm currently reading, The River Why by David James Duncan (a re-read), Gus, the main character, moves out of home after high school into a cabin on the river and writes up "The Ideal Schedule" for his life. He even calls it that.

His ideal schedule is: fish for 16 hours, sleep for 6, eat and do what needs to be done in the extra time. After living thusly for a short while, he realizes how despondent he’s become – and why? Why is the question of the book. He realizes that his ideal schedule is lonely and purposeless.

One of the reasons I have difficulty articulating ideal schedules is that I tend to tackle personal obstacles as they arrive. I don’t consider myself a spontaneous person; it’s more like I plan to eradicate any despondency as it arrives, immediately, and then move on to what I want or need to get done. I also struggle with the concept of ideal. I’m not an idealist, and I think that my post on perfection explains a little of my confusion over what “perfection” even is. What is a perfect day? I have no idea, and no inclination to rigorously discover that quality. It’s too ephemeral.  I just live, love the best I can, work the best I can, and try to maintain a healthy, happy self when I’m melting in the crucible.

So I’m still trying to find balance between self and others in this newness of life. Mostly, self gets stuffed into an over-full closet of to-do, but that’s part of the discovery of the “other” the quality of loving and being loved in addition to understanding being an entity, of itself, in relationship. It’s a learning process, and I always feel way behind. I’ll need more journal time to find my soul.

Perfection

Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

there is none righteous, not even one;

there is none who understands,

there is none who seeks for god;

all have turned aside, together they have become useless;

there is none who does good -

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

for by grace… and not of yourselves…

Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.

I think, growing up, I grappled with the idea of perfection all the time. I was, and am, something of a perfectionist when it comes to my being. If I sacrifice time and effort into an activity meaningful to me, I expect nothing short of excellence, of perfection. My competitive spirit always found comparison with those performing better, or those persons who were smarter, faster, stronger, more able.

Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

My perfection was an odd one. If an activity meant little to me, perfection was (is) unnecessary. With homework assignments, or games that I disliked, I rarely tried harder than what was necessary to do “well” or “above average”. But how does one spiritually acquire perfection? We’re constantly showing our efficiency at failure, myself in particular.

I remember once having an argument with myself about what perfection even meant. It means a life without sin, no? And sin means “falling short”, and its original use was in archery when the draw fell shy of the target. Sinning isn’t overshooting, or hitting the target and just failing to hit the bullseye – sinning is knowing that your arms simply aren’t broad enough to reach the target; the distance is behind your ken.

My argument was, could I simply lock myself into a room, and quarantine my iniquity from the world, and live a perfect life in seclusion? But I always came around to the idea that sin, and lack of perfection, wasn’t simply *not failing* but also striking the target. You cannot live perfectly by refusing to draw the bow in the first place.  “But I never even shot an arrow – how could I have fallen short?” It was an argument that always left me a bit miffed; a “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” sort of frustration. It was a catch-22 (thanks Heller), no doubt, and I felt the fall like a cancer within me.

Grace is a miracle. But it doesn’t make me perfect. I’m feeling particular imperfect lately, having been sick, and looking at my writing and wishing it better, and noticing all those places in my life where I feel like a spectacle of imperfection. We all are, perhaps, but that doesn’t relieve the feeling that we’re in glass houses, and everyone is witness to our weakness.

Echo

The most mind-bogglingly obvious features of anything are the flaws, when viewed from a critical vantage. Our soul selves harbor needs, wants, and our minute foibles like baubles and broaches of indefinable value. Every time I write, I cringe at the glaring weaknesses of the English language with regards to relational linguistics: love, needs, wants, hopes, dreams - the words falter beneath the scope of what I crave to mean.
Needs. Wants. I wish there was a stratus of grey between these saturated extremes. I'm trying to navigate desires with a shoddy sextant beneath a sky of foreign stars. At least I feel like that's so, though feelings, too, are foreign features in this enigmatic landscape of the soul. Needs I categorize too closely to actual body requirements: food, sleep, water. If asked what I need, I usually reply "nothing." I'm not dying, am I? Sure there are psychological, physiological, emotional, psychosocial, biological imperatives, but are these moment-by-moment needs? Can I survive a day in no-space without these being met?
The next difficulty is "wants". Without the capacity for transforming those crude "scientific" terms into meaningful terms (a hug, a debriefing, a held hand), wants start feeling selfish, rude, and narcissistic. I'm staring into a pond, delighted at the beauty of my reflected face, wanting only to touch up the rippling water and clarify my own existence - how boorish and egocentric. But because these words: "needs" and "wants" are equivocated within my understanding, I cannot dissect my desires, necessities, hopes, dreams, passions, angsts, fears, failures, ennui, listlessness, pain, and tensions into queries and actions aimed at balancing out the terrible into the tolerable.
Christendom has instilled in me a refusal to accept empathy as selfishness, and a nervousness about help, and this bitter misunderstanding has transformed loving-kindness into a farcical facade of pity. Not in hindsight, but at the casual inquiry - I never need, I shall not want. If I'm lying down in green pastures and led beside still waters, either my wants must be illusory or faithless, or out of line with belief.

Summer's Close

It’s amazing the different forms writing takes simply based upon what I’m reading at the moment, or what fascinates me, or how my days progress. As I encounter different stimulus, I find myself enamoured of certain facets of life, like angles on a beautiful gemstone or vantages on a ridge over a magnificent vista. A fleeting infatuation that my aesthetic teen dictates as love, for how can it be anything less?

Right now I’m reading an assortment of books: Gilead (Ems), The Sparrow (barely started), Fragile Things short stories by Gaiman (JG), and fluttering around with the attention of a fish for flowers over poetry. I’m probably not getting enough sleep, but summer is the season of love, not hibernation, and I’m more bear than marsupial – I’ve no tendency for estivation. I sleep poorly in toasty weather, and ever since my high fevers of this past Christmas, I’ve found myself waking up more and more drenched in sweat when using fewer and fewer blankets, or in chills when using more. I occasionally believe my sleeplessness is having an existential crisis, and inventing reasons for dragging me from the ocean depths of dream.

My journal lately is so hodgepodge, it’s certainly a testament to summer, sleeplessness, the wired and antsy reading regimen I’ve developed, relationship, and the ambiguous and divergent passions kindled by spreading myself thin over so many breads. Even now, I feel so tentatively tied to this topic, I almost wrote, as my next sentence: I haven’t even seen any waterfalls this summer; I do so want to see waterfalls afore the summer’s end. But what has that to do with the rest of this? Little, I expect.

There are many things to pray for this month, as it’s been bountiful in love and grace, but also hardship and pain. Matthew’s mother-in-law’s death, little brother’s going to college, P  getting a promotion and losing weekends, Ems starting school and the frustrations and angsts that attend that dramatic switch of lifestyle and scheduling, the continued changes of being a homeowner, friends moving from Bend to the valley, friends getting jobs and starting school, friends just continuing on in the norm and growing frustrated with the status quo or debating whether it’s worth a change in life to upset the balance of normalcy. Really, there are a lot of prayer requests, and as many joys if you remember to look for those, equally. There are always a lot of joys.

a people pauper, indigent of joy

holds a slim stack of papers

whose columns claw at the sky

and grunts, cold beneath the smoky night

without friend blankets or family fires

a lacrimae factory shivering and tired

he sneezes, allergic to life

until a cup, half full of empty wine

passed over from whoever

bears the stigmata tonight

saves some time for a fleeting life

ah ophelia, I loved you so

believe me well this time, and give up not

Problem of Pain Musings - Part 1

The problem of pain, of evil, is a difficult one. It's been grappled with for some time now, and we reach no easy solution. Hypothetically, you can argue that God and evil aren't incompatible existences, and that evil can exist with God in the same universe, but how do you explain that to a refugee from a war zone? A mother who loses a child, a trauma victim, a torture victim, or to someone whose child suffers from cancer or agonizing affliction? 

It's hardest with the children. What have they done, the toddlers, the pre-births, the adolescents stricken with pain from the moment of consciousness until whatever ensues - how is this rectified with a perfectly good, all-powerful God?

I have no answers.

Why do we have a problem with evil and pain, anyway? Biblically, we know sin entered the world through Adam, and with sin, death. Romans 5:12 tells us: Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned. This doesn’t console unbelievers and, frankly, doesn’t console suffering believers in the slightest, either. Why? Shouldn’t we know that sin, death, pain, and the horrible entered the world through our rebellion against God? Why do we suffer such angst over intolerable pains, knowing the fault originates in our ancestral transgression? Do we feel blameless for such a distant past?

Partly, it’s the disparity, the randomness, the unFAIRness of who suffers – and who doesn’t - that conceives a self-righteous entitlement and anger. Is it a valid displeasure? Who knows. We live all our lives admitting and hearing that life is unfair, and expect it should be anyway. It’s never our fault that it isn’t fair, like a twisted, alternate, Dunning-Kruger syndrome. But it still should be, right? Equality, in opportunity and person, seems like a righteous aim for a religion of love and impartiality.

Since life is unfair, God must be either malicious and cruel or missing-in-action in deistic fashion – this is our conclusion. Are we right, and are those the only two options? Really, it’s such a difficult and pervasive problem, and even if you theoretically arrive at an understanding, the instant your child suffers from endless pain without surcease, the invectives loosen from the lips.

I’ve been reading Job, and I’m no expert in Job theology (JG – that’s you), but it’s clear right from the beginning that Job is considered a blameless individual as per the story. He’s not a child, and a bit of the powerful symbolism inherent in child-metaphor is removed, but the story is important. God allows, even suggests, the absolute destruction of a faithful follower.

Right from the start, God himself (in the story) says that Job is blameless, and allows (even encourages) Satan to destroy Job as proof of Job’s faith. With Abraham, God tested his faith by asking him to sacrifice his only son; with Job, his entire prosperity: children, home, health, wealth. David as punishment for a sin was chased around the world by armies and lost a son as well; Eli’s entire family was doomed by the sins of a father.

God does not take sin lightly, but we cannot fully comprehend the punishment of sin – how is a baby’s death punishment of sin? Who sinned? Why was this baby punished with death or this child with torture, and not that one, whose parents swindle and steal and murder with a capitalistic vengeance? We have tunnel vision, but why-why-why must the innocent suffer? Are they truly suffering the sins of their parents? Why does it always seem so arbitrary?

I think following this path easily leads to bitterness. When a baby or child suffers, the parent suffers immensely. So perhaps that could be some twisted form of justice over the iniquity of a parent, but even though we see that happening in the Old Testament and we can somehow make ourselves understand it, when the faces of our children and the people we love endure these pains, it’s an injustice, an atrocity. There is a difference, yes, but still none of these answers why, or whether we are right, or what sort of God we believe in that allows these sorts of things.

There are a lot of troubling aspects about the story of Job, but one that has been running through my head is the punishment of others to prove the faith of Job. All Job’s children die, all his servants – and even when Job’s wealth is restored, and he regains children, the originals are not returned. How do you recompense a life?

Personally, this is something I’ve been contemplating a bit over the course of my life. I lost a little brother at birth, as my mother suffered from pneumonia and was forced into labor too soon.  My brother, Jonathan, was not developed enough, and the medical technology at that time was insufficient to support his underdeveloped lungs and heart. He would have survived if the same occurred today.

In momentary evaluation, this is a tragedy, and I think it was, and perhaps still is, though one far removed and numbed for my family over time. The hidden blessing, one only seen four years later, was my little brother Sam. My parents only wanted three children, and if Jonathan had been born, my parents would have been content with those three, but his death meant another try, and the hardship of years without child. It took four years, and when they had a child finally, they named him Samuel because they asked long of God, and a child was delivered.

It would be heartless of me to say that every evil is justified by subsequent goods, and not honest. But in this case, I cannot diminish Samuel’s person by wishing Jonathan had survived, nor can I forget that Jonathan did die, and how difficult that was. When referring to life, saying: the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away feels cruel, terrible, and unjust. But Samuel has been a great blessing to our family and to countless people, and though Jonathan would undoubtedly have been as well, we have Samuel, and not he.

This is a tangent, of course, and one specific to a case of mine. It does not answer the problem of pain, but only shows one of my experiences with seeing the other side. There is often grace and mercy to follow when the hurt is great, but not always for the one who suffers. This is another facet to the problem of pain which hurts like stones in the gut.

To Be Continued

Ostriches

I’m duped, baffled. I feel as effective as a tree holding back the sea breeze from the mainland. Perhaps, if someone hides directly behind me, I might provide a modicum of shelter, but even so my tree is scarce, boney and bare. The sea breeze isn’t always terrible; on summer days it cools the world, and at nights pulls the heat out over the waters. But storms rise from its mystical depths, and its ferocious rains batter the mountainsides. Against these I, too, am battered.

Life can be hard, joyful, beautiful, and cruel. Everything is like an Escher painting, and my words follow a non-Euclidean progression, a backwards-sideways mumbo-jumbo whose incomprehensibility offers no solace for the wounded. Is there solace for the wounded?

But this is me. Some people can form massive, thin sheets that block much of the stinging storm, or towers that blot out the sky and shift weather patterns, or vast hillsides that form a rain-shadow against the mightiest of winds, but I am made for one small frame at a time, and even then I do little to stop the rain and the cold from getting in.

Ostriches don’t bury their heads in the sand from fear, but swallow sand and pebbles to help them digest. I keep telling myself that, but who am I fooling?

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/08/ostriches/ ‎

Buried Treasure

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/buried-treasure/

in the staggering steps of night

a trite, yet honest, man, speaks:

standing upright means less than once.

brushing back the cobwebs of summer

as a brawl laced with liqueur -

ah, he stutters, whittling at a stone

he clasps tight between his fingers,

war is a brutish adze we claim carves

figurines, or a hammer for sewing doilies -

he sips his soup carefully, balancing

each broth drop on his sharpened blade.

true marble sculpture, he tells me,

requires just the right sort of scythe;

and then he dies laughing, and night goes on.

I live in a world where everything that merits nothing demands my attention, and those things that deserve my notice are drowned in the clamor. Today, I received five piece of mail that all said: “urgent, please reply as soon as possible”, and each soon found a new home in the recycling bin. And there are those tiny advertisements from charities, demure, tentative, knowing that each cent must be well spent and spread thin over a vast territory. But these are the silent questions, the dumb mendicants and lepers who shame us with their neediness.

Anyone can laud the fashionable, the showy, but it takes a great deal of courage, heart, and patience to love the derelict and the wretched. But everything, almost without fail, asks for some semblance of notice. It may be an obscure misdirect, or an embarrassed request, or a gaudy sign that leaves no doubt of intent, but we’re not eternally solitary, aloof creatures.

There’s a lot of life, yet, to live; I see this in myself. But I must also engage in vying for that life in others, so that their joy, too, may be complete. Often I set that precedence so blithely, and blindly glance over the wounded ones, the lepers, the untouchables – those who need more than anyone else in the world the touch of divinity. Can I be love’s hands and feet?

Introvert Sabbath

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/introvert-sabbath/

Life has a way of sneaking up on you. You can either be a predator, or the prey, and you are not locked into the food chain of being. I think I’m woolgathering much, of late. I feel as though I’m one of those tribesmen mentioned in the Golden Compass who drill holes in the roofs of their skulls to collect dust. The magic-manna is falling from the heavens, and I’m gathering it where I must. It’s all very surreal, where I am. The skies are so elegant blueblueblue, and as I drove up Rex Hill, I marveled at the magnificent range of greens supplied by all the different trees. The darker pines and firs, the spring-bright verdancy of the maples and poplars, the darker edge of the oaks, the almost yellow hint on the aspens, the silver underbellies or the leaves on the bushes at the base of the mighty trees – greens arrayed all before me, side-by-side all reaching for the sky-lights.

But I’m woolgathering, as the world is beautiful and bright, and I’m spinning in circles as life shark-swims around me, preparing its strike, though I believe that I am the predator here. And in this time of new relationship, house, people, places, busyness, summer, Oregon, sunshine, earth, friends, books, thoughts, I’m discovering so many difficult and beautiful things.

I’m learning that relationships have a seemingly selfish component. That is, that relationship means I have to share my feelings, opinions, and desires, instead of merely seeking to fulfill the wishes of those I love. Not that that is a lousy tendency, and it is one that relationships in general tend to enjoy, but that a healthy relationship requires a certain reciprocity of giving and reception. You cannot simply give, but must receive and share also.

Because of this, I’m learning what it means to explain, carry, and examine feelings. I’m such an individualistic person that I’m quite capable of hiding these things so deeply inside of me that I only ever bless others, and never expect anything in return. I grew up lying so that I didn’t have to share these feelings, and though I stopped doing so in college, understanding that lies are not a firm foundation for honest friendships, I’m still playing my cards so close to my chest that it’s difficult to remember what showing them is like.

I’ve learned, again, how little things can be important, and even if I don’t value them, others might. Isn’t that the nature of reality? One man’s trash is another’s treasure?

Life is sneaking up on me, but I think I see it coming. It’s none so stealthy as it believes, and it never leaves, truly, only schemes another angle of assault. And I’m learning, living, loving, and laughing through life, and every day the Spirit intercedes for me in my weakness (with groanings too deep to utter).

But that’s enough babbling for one evening. I’m exhausted, but pleased. Sabbath Sunday: success. Even if much of it was cleaning, it was still sufficiently introverted in all the necessary ways.

Summer 2

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/summer-2/ ‎

far away and all too near,

my thoughts dress a thousand shipwrecks -

shattered stained-glass windows

collected into a graveyard

of a colored cathedral smashed in our laps;

and through this pastel mass

I dance on magic toes that float

above every little death the sea holds.

an apology to the wind, I deny

its grasp on me, no one my master be,

I'm over the clouds the ocean breathes.

how silver and august the marine waves -

don't chastise me for flying defiantly

through a beautiful world whose spirit

comforts me, and carries me ever home

Summer’s ever so busy. People bustling like bees, believing this to be the season of flowers, nectar, and dreams. And I’m behind where I thought I’d be, and ahead. Every day breathes so carefully, like a child behind a late-night couch where their parent watches tv, knowing they should be in bed, but needing, feeding on the closeness and love of unknown proximity. Life is tilting, and every time I shift my feet, everything else shifts. But I’m thankful.

Everything is a balancing act, and I’m trying to decide how to best navigate the things in life I need, want, and provide. And which should be first? I always consider my giftings as the most important, but that should not always be so. Perhaps never so, over my own needs. But what do I actually need? Most things are just wants. Other than food, water, sleep, warmth, and hope, what do I actually require for survival? My hope is in Christ, I’m well fed, sleep is iffy lately, but I’m certainly getting almost a REM cycle a day (maybe), and summer keeps me very warm. Everything after that is wants, cravings, and it feels greedy and selfish to ever expect those over provision for other’s wants. But perhaps this, too, is even not always so.

There is too little that is black and white that we try conforming into that dualistic picture. When we see greys and colors, we mentally try to collect them into black and white boxes for easier compartmentalization. Ems and I discussed this for a moment after watching Les Mis, when contemplating the suicide of Javert. When black and white justice acquires some semblance of grey, when Jean Valjean displays kindness, mercy, and humanity, Javert loses his pedestal of righteous judgment. His divine purpose is twisted, and his entire life’s compartmentalization is unboxed, and like the Greek story of Pandora, all his fears and nightmares are released.

Little is actually black or white, but that’s still what we pretend to see. I, in particular, want a simple trigger clause for activity and love, though such things cannot be applied. If so-and-so situation is this, follow this list of directions; if so-and-so does this, reply with these exact words. I don’t want to be a machine, but I sometimes internally fancy a set of machine instructions. What a silly world I’ve constructed for myself.

And summer is ever so busy with the musings on such topics, and the movements of life. Life is dancing, running away, and flirting with my consciousness in such a way that I’m ever confused, bemused, and craving more. 

Paradox (only maybe two cents)

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/paradox-only-maybe-2-cents/ 

There is a lot of paradox in life, or seeming-paradox. Immediately, you wonder how can God be good, and the world so rife with war, agony, injustice; how can non-time create time from particles that exist pre-particles, and when do such particles start moving if there is no time? Why not (what is) before? To become the greatest, we must be the least; to see, we must be blind; to truly live, we must die – we love and hate these dichotomous paradoxes, and we claim to understand them, but they are hard questions, hard callings.

And even as we are called to faith, we are called to press our doubt, to seek out furtherance of our understanding of a God who is beyond knowing. No one has seen the invisible God, yet we are called to seek and to find God. Religion was made for the boundless, but I am a creature of chains, fences, and guarded borders. I can’t always tell when I’m called to move beyond the containment and into glory, or to stop, kneel, and lay beside the stillness of the waters, resting in the lushest of grasses.

These questions are hard, no? I had one troubled person tell me once about his own interaction with the question of divine intervention and a perfectly good God. He said, if every time an accident was about to occur, God reached out a hand and prevented it, a semblance of free will would be revoked every time an atrocity was occurring. The problem with this is, why does God fix some things and not others, and this is also a frightening pathway into a very deistic view of God, a view incredibly commonplace in American religious culture: God exists, but he’s sleeping, or distant. And this is not the God I believe in.

Another viewpoint is that God works through the hands of his followers, which means that every time I witness a terrible situation, more of the guilt lands in my hands. That’s not particularly a comforting picture, but perhaps it’s closer to the uncomfortable truth.

Yet we often claim God for the good things, as though God had his fingers in every blessing pie, but ask why God isn’t around for the bad things. It’s easy to see God in the valleys, the wildflowers, the rivers, the dance and the music of the world, the beautiful – how do you see God in the hospital room in the gaunt face of the afflicted, in the suffering, in the malnourished? How do we bring God’s love there?

Even Especially a Child

 http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/even-especially-a-child/

Even especially a child can change the world: the boy with stockings, suspenders, and too-big shoes and the lass with frilled dress, mother’s necklace, whistling a new-found tune. Now, when the stars are too big for solemn hearts and the moon, Olwen, larger than any room in the manse of my soul, I contemplate the negative space of shadow, and is that light? And does the lunar night illumine dust? Or twilight angels falling as broken stars, meteorite well-stones wishing for right and wrong to clarify in the ripples of falling fire?

Is the number of questions without answer, divided by the number with, irrational or just am I? Do the heavens mock, or is the gravitas pulling my own satire back into my own eyes?

We’re at the blurred lines of time, and I’m still running my stopwatch to see if moments are faster than always, but I’ll wait until the end for conclusive evidence. If this is a race, I’m wishing I hadn’t tied my shoes together, and cinched the blindfold so tight, but with the heavens as my guide I may be all right.

I’ve not gotten sufficient sleep lately. I had a few words stuck in my head, and as I stared at the cloudy sky they rumbled around my skull like thunder, but without the lightning strike cracking through the fogginess of creativity. So there is a tiny bit of cleverness and a lot of finding myself squinting my eyes at every word I write, wondering whether it could be worse, and whether focusing on that aspect is actually driving me in that direction. We’ll see, but for now there are questions whose answers I might only find once I pass the starting line. I thinking I’ve only managed to knot my shoes further, and maybe I must progress barefoot, for spiritual travel is sanctified ground sometimes.

Castle Caretaker

I collected all of my “100% poetry” computer writings from over the past year (not including prose of any sort), and the compilation is over 11,000 words and 50 pages. It’s odd looking back over them, not only because I consider many of those poems irreparable, ugly, or hopeless, but because they are footsteps along a journey I’ve taken. Faltering, yes, but an obstinate trek nonetheless. I see in those words things others cannot, knowing when I substituted joyful poems for sadness, or vice versa, or wove a net of complicated ideas into an elitist glob. And there are pretty moments, also.

I remember.

And the tears that arrive at the corners of my eyes, well, I remember why, and they are warranted, welcome, for the happiness, fears, failures, pains, hopes recalled, restored to me in moments like these where the soul needs a little refurbishing.

I’m the caretaker of a cobbled castle

stoking forever the struggling furnace.

never do I, even on whim, allow visitors

ringing the threshold carillon in;

my fortress is drafty, and only

by locking and shuttering myself within

might the fires suffice.

yet here they are, outsiders - oh my soul -

drinking the wine, pulling the pork,

leaving trails of grime and dirt,

opening every window and door -

and I care for them all the same

opening the treasures of my domain

which they collect in their inquisitive hands –

overnight they slip out again, whisking

the gold with, with windows wide behind

and every morning, the biting cold,

the drafty emptiness of morning

shoulders in, settling over everything,

and the furnace is insufficient again

Some of the poems I remember writing fondly, and some I scarcely remember writing at all. These poems are the oddest, because usually I can remember journal entries I wrote years ago, merely by reading the opening lines of the page. But as I glanced over my poetry, even pieces I wrote mere weeks past are foreign to my eyes. I cannot recall the emotional backdrop or even the time I spent puzzling together those lines. I had those pieces inside of me, once, but they are mine no longer. 

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/castle-caretaker/

Housing

Housing is like the not-quite-girlfriend I’ve never had. I’m shy about her existence, coy, and hesitate at showing her location. I’m playing a hedging game, and telling no one, and what will her parents, the bureaucracy, think of me? And what if the Mahr is insufficient? And what if she won’t even go to prom, or accept the roses and the card I labored so long on?

So I sequester my resolve and thoughts, knowing there is nothing of substance yet - not yet, no, please, I don’t know – and my heart races the hummingbird along, prodding at every flower until I find the perfect one.

I thought perfect love drove out fear. Does it not? Or is perfect love beyond me?

But it is working. Every day I laugh at smaller things – how hard can anything be? – if I can suffer being an adult for a month. Hah! If only they knew I planned on filling my house with ball-pit balls and legos, why, they certainly wouldn’t grant me a loan. And the sky was a granite countertop, looming overhead, and I, the toddler, beneath its hanging reach. Sometimes, I cannot even stand to touch the sky, or push back the clouds with my eyes.

As a child, I remember reading fairy tales where the king rewarded loyalty or heroic behavior with a boon. The king would say, “You may ask for anything, up to half the kingdom.” Invariably, the hero always asks for the princess’ or prince’s hand in marriage. I always thought this strange, as a child, despite the obviousness of the request, as the whole story always led up to that point. Still, every time I reached that point in the story, I wanted half of the land. I wanted to ask the king for half of the kingdom. I always imagined at this point the king would offer me half the land, and instead of ruling it, I’d set it free. Then I’d be able to wander the forests, the hills, the rivers for an eternity, living wherever I pleased.

I imagined that acquisition of place meant freedom of being.

This is not how it is with housing. I imagine by the time I acquire a house, it will be filled with the paperwork. It’s like the story Kraken, by Mieville, though I realize as I give that analogy, explaining it might spoil the outcome. It is the fear of the Wee Free Men, the magic of names, the Horned King appearing in my waking life, the frightful power of Yubaba in Spirited Away. It’s the losing of names, the scattering of self into the wind. In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, a character at once discovers that he is being pursued, and he removes his shadow, gives the shadow his name, and leaves, nameless and savage in the form of a bear. This is what I believe the summer will do to me.

But I’m excited. I think after a month, I’ll be free, to a certain extent. And there is a peace in that revelation.