Lyrique

Thunderstorms rage outside as I listen to melancholy musique, tearing up at the somber poetry and its symmetric outpour. Do not decry those tears; rain seeped through the window into my soul. I pen, in the silence that is the storm.
Where I stay up all night / And all that I write is a grey grey tune
Even the dim light of this laptop screen draws moths towards the window - night creatures eager for light. The bats soon swoop in for the feast. A great silk moth latches onto the window, and in my fright, I thought it a bat. Are they here for the light or the shelter beneath the eaves?
Are you looking for answers / to questions under the stars?
Dimly, the street lamps flicker through the valley beneath, illuminating needles of heavenly weeping falling onto unyielding asphalt. The souls of a thousand faces, spread across countless spaces, struggling, fighting, praying. I imagine a web of intersecting colors, illuminated by the cracks of lightning splitting this sky, a network of all our spiritual supplications. I read the Genesis, I read Psalms 23, I read Philippians 4, and I read Revelations 22. Listen, the storm is a song.
Oh I'll never know what makes this man
With all the love that his heart can stand
Dream of ways to throw it all away
Dreams collide, dreams of balloons and skies and transparent goodbyes, but distant, distant, as though a painting of a photograph of someone else's lives. It is a speculum of silver and stained glass, showing clearly nothing of love and hope and love, and the drums of the stormy night rage unending, though it is not rage, but the humming of bass strings.
All I ever learned from love / Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you.
Small rivulets burn their whispering paths down the hills into the valley, into the creek in the hammock of the hills. I suspect the salmon leaping upstream to love and death, inextricably bound, mind this not. I can hear their splashes, a counterpoint. A coyote howls, an owl shrieks, the creatures stand still. But not the rain. I smile, and wonder what whispers the wind to comfort the clouds. May those words be carried far and fair this night.
Won't you come away with me tonight? /  We can fly past the moon and the starlight
What the water wants is hurricanes,  / and sailboats to ride on its back
And I ride the storm into slumber to swim with the salmon, gallop astride the lightning, and follow these rivers unto the vastness of the ocean, so I may gaze in its reflection and witness the sky.

And then, there are no words. Only the weeping of violins as bows breathe across silver strings.

Dichotomies

We love our dichotomies, our contrasts and comparisons. It is almost an inherent dualism, a study in black and white, light and dark, love and hate. Many favorite phrases in our languages are contrived on this principle. Look up any famous writer, rhetorician, or anyone with meaningful quotes, and swiftly you'll discover a dualistic quote of some sort:
The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it. ~ Einstein
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. ~ Mark Twain
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ~ Phil 4:6

We could write without these, but comparisons, metaphors, similes, dualisms, couplets - these are the strongest points of linguistics. Pictures through verbal tension. Verbal tension is one of the greatest tools of our language, the strings we tie around our readers fingers, drawing them in with promises and poetry. What is poetry but beautifully rendered comparisons and metaphoric linguistics? I'm simplifying things, of course. I often do so. Frequently, we invent our own clever metaphors and creative comparisons. I do. And when I do, I often beam at my ingenuity, pleased to have cleverly devised an artistic glass through which I can contemplate creation. It sounds right, it sounds perfect, it even sounds clever. Then, almost by accident, you stumble across someone with an equally clever witticism, reversed, and it, too, sounds valid, sound. Paradox, another piece of our cosmos that we hate and love because it draws us nearer as easily as it drives us away, drives us insane, or into faith.

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The pot of gold cheapens the rainbow.



Before the strength of man's conviction twisted the earth into a sphere, there was a village at the end of the world. Built into the basalt cliffs on the shores of earth's edge, it sat and watched and waited until such time as it was needed no more. The village had long past been named Rope, for that is what it guarded and waited upon. Or so the boy was told.
Down by the beach, waves still washed up against the shore from an ocean only paces wide, and a blackness lay beyond, deep and dark as before-time. At the furthest point of the beach, against the precipice of the world, an arm's length over the water into the great void, there was a rope, or a perhaps-string. It hung from the heavens, falling between the stars, and in neither night nor day could you see its end, but it shimmered as gossamer in the daylight, and as opals in the night, an ever-shifting glimmer of light. It was a single strand, and none in the village knew its purpose, many thinking it was simply a portion of the frayed edge of the world. Beneath the rope, on the barest edge of the shore, sat a boy. He was from the village, though it had been some time since he was of the village. He was forbidden to approach the string, but no matter the punishment or the confinement, the next morning he was always discovered on the beach once more, staring up at the gossamer thread.
It may have taken a year, a season, it may have taken only minutes, but the boy decided, eventually, the string was to be pulled. It was not fear that stayed his hands, not precisely, but the mysticism. Was it better imagining what might happen? If the stars might fall behind a curtain of night, or the sky itself collapse; or if the earth would become the heavens, the heavens the earth, and they might all traipse along island clouds, drifting along sky spume into an unblemished horizon, replete with salty stars. Would the angels corral in chorus to this world on the ringing of a bell, or demons rise from the gaping maws of hell?  Would the world curl into a ball, like a giant rolypoly? Or would the world's edge be drawn back, and whole new lands unveiled to explore? What equally stayed the boy's hand were the disappointing outcomes he conjured in his imagination. What if nothing happened? Or what if the string itself fell, and disappeared off the edge of the world, and he could no longer gaze upon its illustrious glamour? What if it crumbled to ash in his hands? Perhaps it was a fear of a sort, but not of his fellow's punishing, but of an unforeseeable end.
It was wodensday, only a fortnight following fall’s blue moon, and the moon died tonight, only a pale sliver remaining.  The waves were calmer tonight, softer, and a chill breeze forced the boy to cinch his scarf and tuck his hands deeper into his pockets. The rope drifted subtly, though not with the wind, and the boy imagined he could hear the tinkling that might draw the angels earthward to listen, like the gentle plucking of silver violin strings, high, and quieter than the crickets.
Was it time? He pulled his shaking hands from his pockets, feeling the wind against his trembling fingers, wrapping around each digit and pushing it towards the shimmering strand with gentle insistence. His hands hovered there, only a wrist-width away, too tentative to touch.
It might have been courage, though it was likely a clumsy motion that made him stumble forward and latch onto the rope. It was silken, but elastic, and strong as web. It stretched slightly as he fell forward onto it, hanging over the precipice of the world and staring down into bleak nothingness through the translucent waters of world’s end. An eternity of tiny moments he hung there, now clinging tightly onto the strand dangling over an impossible abyss. Then, without any lurching motion, the rope drifted higher into the sky, higher than the shrubs, higher than the houses against the cliffs so that the candle-lights in the windows looked like jack-o-lanterns or wisps inside glossy eyes. Above the hills he clung, until the walls and shores below became like golden and grey landscape snakes beneath him. He climbed up the rope a short ways, wrapping his legs around the strand with terrified fervor, though, in truth, he was more fascinated than frightened.
Alongside wispy clouds he floated, his clothes dampened by the foggy strands as the stars winked at him conspiratorially from above. Along the shores and into the hills, east, east towards dawn he was borne aloft. He stretched how his legs and imagined he was walking on the clouds, and from above he heard the singing of the winds, sweet as the songs of the angels. Over the hills and mountains along the spine of the world, rivers racing as the veins and arteries bringing life to the forests and living things.  A volcano gaped is orange maw from beneath the boy, spewing its boiling fires from the underworld, and the mountains melted into valleys. Vineyards and grapes hugged the hillsides, and roads of hard-packed earth traced webs into the grasslands leading towards roads cobbled together with lime and quarry.
Down below the cities lights were fireflies, like the skies had fallen into the ground, and twinkled on a carpet of farmsteads and village homes of candles and fireplaces. The rope swooped nearer, and the boy glanced down into a city. On the still lively streets, lit by warm, yellow lantern-light and chimney-glow, a few faces gazed up into the sky and saw him, giving him a confused wave and pointing for their friends. Though the boy was whisked by, and stayed not long in place, sweeping over town like a falcon and soaring back into the sky on the updrafts of the night, back into the anonymity of the heavens.
Hours still, he drifted, his arms never tiring, his eyes never shutting as the world shifted past in twilight hues and crepuscular tides, until, at last, a dim fire flickered at the horizon like dragon’s flame and honeyed gazes.
As suddenly as he was raised, his descent began, and soon his toes touched the ground in a glade of maples and elms. Low grasses and thistledown crowned the glade in a fairy ring, the center of which was quartz, burning garnet with the dawn. Nymphs and fauns and dryads emerged from the tree-line and the fluting of pipes and the piping of flutes set their feet to caper and frolic and dance, a sonata to sunrise played by the early birds and the fa of the forest. And the boy danced, and danced, and when a girl floated into the circle and danced beside him, he clasped her hands and danced some more, until he could dance no more.
When he awoke, they lay, she and he, on the beach by the sea on the edge of dreams on the world’s final beach. Worried, still clasping her hand, he glanced up, fearful of what he might see. The sun warmed his neck as he stared up into the rainbow beauty of two gossamer strings, drifting against the sea breeze, singing the song of dawn.

Belief

Amid other deep or casual conversations yesterday, I was asked at one point, "Do you ever find it difficult to believe in God?" I responded no, with a little explanation, but it's actually quite a difficult question. There are a couple of ways this can be interpreted, even, so I'll start with how I responded. (These are my answers, and not indicative of actual apologetic arguments. I'd have to write a book to explain everything, not a paragraph)

1. Do you have trouble believing that God exists?

No. I've read numerous essays and books on apologetics, from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim writers. From ontological arguments to arguments of design and existential arguments and arguments from morality and meaning - all of these and more I've delved into, searching for various proofs. I've been moved by each, and I certainly have been affected by some more than others. I've even read their counter arguments, and arguments from the problem of evil or chaos or arguments on why there does not have to be a being beyond existence, beyond time, beyond space for such things to exist.  But at the end of the day, my experience and my belief and the things I've seen and heard and felt propel me deep into the heart of God and knowing. I don't have any trouble believing that God exists, but that does lead me directly into the next question.

2. Do you ever have trouble having faith in God?

I think one of the biggest cultural blows to religion was at our nation's foundation, when our nation spurred our culture in a very individualistic, deistic direction. I remember a story I was told, about a missionary who went into a small third-world country devastated by famine, war, and sickness. When he was helping at the church, he struggled every day with the hardship, the pain he saw, and asked the priest, "How do you stay faithful when you see such pain? How do you endure when surrounded by such trials?"

The priest was a bit surprised, but responded, "How do you have faith when you want nothing? And culture tells you happiness is simply another toy easily within your grasp? How do you have faith when it is harder to see what you are being saved from?" Sometimes I do have trouble having faith. Not often, but it happens. I heard once that if you do not doubt, you are not asking enough questions. Sometimes, doubting can spurn you into greater wisdom or into seeking more fervently after answers. Yet if doubting turns you bitter, perhaps you are more angry than curious.

If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

~Yann Martel Life of Pi

3. Do you believe that God cares? Or believe in God's interaction in your life?

This comes back to the topic of deism. Yes, I do believe God interacts with me on a personal basis. I have some different perspectives than many American Christians, but I very fervently believe that God loves ME and died so that I could be sanctified by his blood unto salvation. So do I believe that God interacts with me and my life? Everyday. Do I believe that God cares? Absolutely. Do I always feel comfortable in that belief? Certainly not in the most difficult circumstances.


There are difficult times, and there are less difficult times. Sometimes it is like when I have a runny nose or stomach aches. Whenever I suffer such symptoms, I regret not being thankful when I am in good health. You only remember how difficult times are when they are difficult, and how much of a struggle doubt is when you are doubting. The wider view is the tougher one.

Celebration and Sleep Lions.

Since the first week on the dawn of creation, God initiated days of rest and celebration. After working, creating, mythically transforming nothingness into existence (whether in 7 days or 7 aeons, I will not discuss now. That's for another time), God saw his creation as good, and rested.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

The word mo'edim used in Leviticus to discuss the holy days means appointed times. I've discussed before the interesting choice of words, here, so I'll skip it this time (lucky you!). The point is, that God realized that we need rest from work, and appointed times of rest and celebration: seasons of praise.  Just today, a friend of mine whose mother the doctors said would die by the end of the week was sent home, seemingly on the road towards remarkable healing. This is a cause for celebration. I think there it is more difficult, sometimes, to notice the praiseworthy things extant in our day-to-day than the painful things. Sometimes it is hard to rejoice in the Lord always. And sometimes, you look up at the stars and celebrate; listen to the breeze shifting the pines and maples and pour out blessings; feast with friends, for today is a day the Lord has made, and we should be glad to share it.

I was going to write more, tonight, but the lion of sleep is devouring me. I feel like the cogs of life are turning a titanic wheel, a big-ben-timepiece with a chaotic cuckoo chanting the time, a tiny train racing around the base, a symphonic piece played on the quarter hours in hollow chimes. My life is like the daytime version of the clock in Night Circus, enigmatic and somehow intrinsically a piece of the greater circus surround. Come, sleep, devour me. Let the dreaming begin, Sandman. 

It's a Dangerous Business

The more he looked inside the more Piglet wasn't there.

Why must the fire die?

When hope is frail and twilight nigh

Why must now we say goodbye,

The night still young with fireflies

One boon I ask if you may tell

What hope you passed yon wishing well?

I pray it not to end this spell,

forced to face what the toll doth bell.

There are many goodbyes, these days, and feared goodbyes.  Just this past week, I hugged and whispered goodbyes to A and S. Two other friends are terrified of goodbyes to family members suffering from cancer - and prayer is, seemingly, the last bastion. It is hardest to say these goodbyes.  I find myself constantly praying for these, and others: friends abroad, suffering, disappearing from my life, friends getting married and settling into new and adventurous lives, friends anxious and burdened by life.  In these times, where I’m feeling like the center of a giant web with strands stretching on the corners of the wind, my prayers are uncertain. Am I being selfish? I do not even know what to pray for at all. Do I pray for healing? Ease of passage? A happy new life? It is difficult to pray unselfishly. 

It is as times like these that I continually remember these verses from Romans:

For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

The Spirit intercedes for me with groanings too deep for words. Too deep for words. There is something powerful in the mysticism of those words, and reassuring.  “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” It is dangerous, Bilbo, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. I've the best of friends, and I'd pray and love on them if I had to sacrifice everything to do so. Sometimes you must.

I think the last time I got some alone time was almost two weeks ago.  I have read less than 300 pages in the last two weeks; missed writing on numerous nights due to busyness, though a good busyness. It’s been an exhausting run, but somehow restorative.

Losing Battles and Joyous Reminders

Some wars cannot be won, no matter how the battles are fought. Countless times, I've come across these: Pyrrhic victories, where every battle is won, but the cost is too great, or the loss inevitable. These are the worst. More than ever, these drive my competitive spirit, rekindle that flame of conquest I've denied. Why can I not win? Surely I just need more motivation, more study, more understanding... Perhaps that is true, or perhaps another force exists beyond what I can compete with, and impedes my victory no matter the invested effort. Whatever the case, I know I'm not the only soldier in these battles.

I see that others also engage in inevitable defeat, and strive until the bitter end for a lost cause. When I see others endure these losing battles, my empathy cries out. I shudder and cry for them, I pray desperately that theirs will be different - can I help? Can I shift the inexorable tides?  And here I sit, suffering that same generational weakness of the pharisees and Israel, asking for a sign, a miracle, a prayer of a chance for the sufferer. My eyes are fixated on the fact that a particular door is closed, and I cannot deign to see whether any other doors might be closing and opening, for myself or them. So I and they continue fighting, keep on winning battles in a losing war, or not, and the outcome appears an injustice forced upon us, when, if only we'd had faith, we might walk the water away from a sea in storm. Sometimes, there is more than life to gain, more than pride to lose, more than selfishness at stake.
So how can I help?

I'm an empathetic person, mostly. When my closest of friends suffer, I suffer also. I've endured fevers and sleepless nights, nausea and visceral agony (mostly all at once) for friends in hurtful scenarios, and they'll never know. I would not add to their pain. I cry out all night for their anguish - oh, may it cease, may it cease - and when it does, or if, I praise the Lord as in the most triumphant of Psalms. In fact, I believe I suffer more for other's angst than my own, for I know that God will get ME through. He always has, however much through the threshing (and the threshing often comes). Would that I had that same faith all the time.

But I read some comforting words in Psalms, today, chapter 46:

God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change
And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea;
Though its waters roar and foam,
Though the mountains quake at its swelling pride.
...
Come, behold the works of the Lord,
Who has wrought desolations in the earth.
He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth;
He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two;
He burns the chariots with fire.
“Cease striving and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah.

Beautiful and important words. He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth, even wars in me. Break the bow and cut the spear in twain. My God is a consuming fire, and full of loving grace. Have faith.
I'm praying for you all.

(And this is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith)
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I was reading one of my favorite poems tonight, and was just jarred by its lyric:

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats      
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….      
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

---

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall

TS Eliot - The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Such a master of verse, rhythm and rhyme.

Ragnorak Part Trois

The incessant sound of a doorbell ringing in his flat awakened Jak into a grumpy stupor. He tumbled a while, willing the noise to disappear through neglect, burrowing deeper into his blankets and covering his head with a pillow. Dingdingdingding. What manner of cruelty brought visitors at this ungodly hour?
    "Go away!" he attempted, though his voice was greatly muffled beneath the blankets. The ruckus persevered, undeterred. For a few minutes longer, Jak, through sheer force of will, pulled all the blankets over his head, trying to drown out the invasive noise. It didn't seem to help any, but Jak refused to let this doorbell ruin his morning.
   Two minutes more, the doorbell chimed, and finally he could stand it no longer, sitting up in bed, fully awake and angry. And the doorbell stopped. Now, fully awake, Jak realized two things almost simultaneously. First, he possessed no doorbell; second, his flat had no door.
   This realization was punctuated with a loud crash erupting behind Jak, showering him with plaster, insulation, and splinters of wood. He leapt out of bed and turned to see the gaping hole in the wall behind his bed.
   "Jak! Why Did You Not Come Out To Greet Us!" bellowed a booming bass. The bed frame was still in the way, and Jak could not see the owner of the voice through the cloud of dusty white from the imploded wall.
   "I was resting! Can't a man get some-"
   Another series of thunderclap smashes, and Jak's bed was reduced to a smoldering pile of scraps smelling vaguely of ozone.  Jak winced. "Well? Aren't you going to invite us in?" said another voice, this one hard and cold.
   "Before you what? Break the rest of my home? Come in, come in. Make yourselves at home," Jak said with a sigh. "Or what's left of it...." he grumbled under his breath.
   Two figures poked their way through the hole in the wall, stepping across the smoldering remains of Jak's bed, and into the flat. The first was enormous, giant as a bear and heavily muscled. His hair was golden, and flowing down his back like a mane, and his beard was braided with beads and he smelled of mead and meat. In his left hand, he held a hammer that easily fit his palm - a carpenter's hammer, though Jak suspected a mere carpenter's hammer could not have broken into his apartment so easily.
   The second was taller, thinner, and he wore a large, wide-brimmed hat. An eyepatch covered one eye, though Jak later could not recall which eye, and his gnarled, grey beard looked like a nest against his chest. He held a staff, a twisted branch of oak, and the intensity of his gaze caused Jak to shudder involuntarily.

edit me please.
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This morning, I was reading Psalms and stumbled again across Psalm 42. I could wish that I was alive, then, listening to the Sons of Korah composing, or David passionately strumming out his anguish and angst in plaintive string movements. Yet, even without knowing the tune, this Psalm, I feel it.

First, the writer sings (in King James, because it's prettier today):
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?

Later he/she sings:
Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.
Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the day time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.

These are a little out of context, as they make this Psalm seem like a seeking, when it is a Psalm of lament, of weeping for God's presence in time of trouble and trial. I'm not currently suffering from painful trials (my time will come, I'm certain), but I wonder if my soul pants for God as a thirsty deer? I pray it be so.

Other  Notes:
- need to plot out ragnorak (saying it that way sounds epic)
- finish harold's story
- update eternity story
- make list of all currently open stories

All over the place and nowhere useful (+Ragnorak Editing)

It was a silent weekend, perhaps a necessary one. I went on a walk, biked around a while, wrote at a small park where a small stream ran past a couple of picnic tables and a candy purple playground. Every other weekend until early September contains at least one wedding event, so the relaxation should compose me - but all I wanted was another delightful wedding.
I woke up early, wrote later into twilight than desired, played soccer with a boisterous bunch, visited some coffee shops for tea, writing, and reading, went to church, talked on the phone to distant friends, talked on skype to other distant friends, watched a show with roommates, picked roommate and his girlfriend up at the airport - all this, and I felt like nothing happened. I'm ready for a weekend adventure: backpacking, hiking in the woods, weddings, climbing a mountain, kayaking down a river with friends, canoeing on a lake, more soccer. Sometimes it feels like, what with the weddings and general busyness, everyone's lives are leaving me behind, so they've no time for stories anymore. I always want time for stories.

Today's sermon was on the topic of fear, something which everyone, at some juncture, interacts with: anxiety, stress, panic attacks and so on. With the amount of times God says: "do not be afraid" or "be anxious for nothing", one might expect Christians would possess greater skill against these debilitating psychological foes. Often, we do not. I don't consider myself an anxious person. Work is friendly, my friends are kind, even intense social situations often don't stress me out so much as making me step back, and evaluate from a different vantage.
There are some things that I do fear, one of which I even ran away from this very weekend. I'm still working those out. I remember as a kid dealing with fear as though I was a protagonist in a fairy tale. Nothing could really hurt me (this is not a Game of Thrones tale), as I knew the hero of the story would prevail in the end. You'd think I'd be a fearless child with that, but I was quite shy of people. I felt like it wasn't the hero's lot to die, but he could be tortured by uncomfortable scenarios. I suppose it is safe to say that once in a trial, I felt less fear than before. That's often the truth of things though, isn't it? Sometimes, the unknowing is the most intimidating portion. It's amazing how mystery can be both unnerving and fantastic. In the case of the northern lights, which I saw just a while past, I find myself more fascinated by the mystery of the event than the knowing. But other things, darkness, public speaking, spiders under the bed - the unnerving unknowing can be more frightening than the thing itself.

Just another throwaway post, huh? I'm well beyond the tl;dr portion of this mental surgery. I'm in that stupor before sleep, that unsleeping dreamy territory well before true unconsciousness. I should stop, while I'm behind.

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Mid-height and not a penny more, with a penny-colored nest of hair, and penny eyes, and he wasn't worth scarce a penny in a fight.  Yet it was this man who threatened the world with apocalypse. This man, with eyeglasses precariously perched on nose, fingertips pattering as raindrops across a keyboard, was about to destroy the world in a flood, a flood of media silence.  Discarded pizza boxes and crumpled soda cans carpeted, and stained, the floor.  Jak’s only focus was the computer screens, the array of eight screens, on which highlighted code scrolled in tropical-candy colors on a black background as Jak prepared his worm, the greatest worm of all time. He called the program Jörmungandr, and tonight it was ready.

                It was genius, he suspected, a titanic achievement.  It systematically destroyed media outlets from the highest level down, leaving all vital functionality until the end such that each increasing level of chaos was captured perfectly as phones, television, radio, and eventually the internet itself disappeared in a whisper, and the world erupted in a bang.  His finger hovered over the button from whence Armageddon would commence. It was the ultimate prank, he thought with a wicked grin, his ultimate prank.  The world would remember him for this, oh certainly, if they ever found out who did it.

                He pressed the button.

               

                An ancient wood hides from searching eyes, under the sea.  Eldritch and petrified, it still silent sits, shamelessly pacified. Before Atlantis was even dreamed, a glade formed inside spherical reef, a punishment, eternal grief. The water hung at neck level, always neck level, clear as a mirror.  Grapes and ambrosia hovered scarcely out of reach, his fingertips brushing the leaves on his highest leaps.  The glade  was edenic, full of crystal waters and abundant fruits, though he despised its… tantalizing, elusive deceit.

                The almost god still reached when the branches swooped close, still dipped his head for a drink, and the fruit and waters receded. Famished, agonizingly parched, the ab-god waited, not patient, not passively.  The bowels of the earth, hell and hades, were not his alone.  Another’s anguish resonated from the deeps, troubling the earth in violent sweeps.

                But today, while the fire in his gut seethed in unremitting pain, a great power hurricaned through the glade, blasting the ab-god from his feet.  A great light, an aura of flashing pain struck him in his temples, and he saw:

                A cavern, pitch and drab, pockmarked with caustic holes.  Around a great stalactite was wrapped an eternal serpent, mouth hissing wide and dripping with sizzling venom.  Beneath, on a circular platform lay a god on an altar, bound in entrails beneath the serpent. From above, the serpent’s venom dripped towards his face, only impeded by a tiny, ceramic bowl, held by a silent, patient woman.  The god cursed the woman, and still she faithfully protected his face, until the bowl was filled and she carried it to the edge and spilled it into the vast, cavern depths. 

                And suddenly, the cave rippled with power, and the god’s eyes widened with surprise.  In a sudden feat of strength, the entrails were snapped apart, and the god was in the cavern no more.

                When the ab-god awoke in his glade, he was not alone. Another stood in the water beside him, bowl in hand.  The god proffered him the bowl with a broad, mischievous smile. The bowl was filled with water, and for a bowl of water, the ab-god would have sold his very soul. 

My Hope is in the Lord

Zephaniah 3:17 The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

Shabbat Shalom, everyone. I admit that, sometimes, the busyness of life prevents me from taking needed Sabbath breaks. "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." I used to believe this meant that as long as we *could* keep going, Sabbath wasn't requisite. This is true, in some sense. But if you ask any authentic Jewish man what the most sacred of holidays is, he won't answer Pesach (Passover) or Yom Kippur (the day of Atonement), or Rosh Hashanah (feast of trumpets), but the Sabbath.  It was the first holy day, set apart from the dawn of creation.

Another interesting point is that "holy day" and the word for "festivals" in the Bible can be translated appointment. I was reading an interesting book on Messianics (Jewish Christians), and it mentioned how the festivals and holy days were greater than simply vacations from work, they were, and are for many Jews still, appointments with God. And the Sabbath is the greatest of these. I wouldn't miss a dentist appointment, or a doctor's appointment, or even an appointment for a phone call, but, many weeks, I so blithely ignore an appointment with God? I go to Church, I read my Bible, I philosophize about theoretical Christianity, and, when possible, I try to share my beliefs, but there is something intrinsically fantastic about an appointment with God.

I'll explain it this way. I'm something of an introvert.  5 years ago, when taking the Meyer Briggs test, I scored over 90% in all my categories, one of which was introversion. Years later, my score has dropped more towards the median point, a bit, but suffice it to say that shyness understates my original introversion. I was downright petrified of group situations. So in Church, the times I most feared were greeting times. A whole bunch of smiling faces mingling and sharing tiny tidbits of their lives - not my favored activity. It was almost a nightmare. (this has all changed to some degree) Once I started talking to any individual, I immediately felt more comfortable, as if I'd entered into a zone of communication, and fenced off outside elements. So yes, stamp me an introvert and ship me into a corner with a book. 

In the same way, giant group Bible studies and open-speaking scenarios frighten me. I'd rather talk to individuals, small groups (small = 2-3). I'd rather interact with people on a personal level, so why not God? I like the idea of Sabbath because I can choose a personal appointment with God, I can meet with God with friends, I can rest in a meditative contemplation of a divine who has tucked me under his wings, congratulating me for a week well done.

There aren't many weeks where I'm destroyed by the end. My job is gentle, and I've time in my life on the side for writing, reading, playing in the great outdoors, friends, and so on. But I still desire a specific time where I can rest, Sabbath, in the Lord. I can appoint a time where it's Yeshua and I. And when the week is tough, and there appears to be no path of escape, no solution for problems, no winning an intractable situation, God speaks those words from Zephaniah into my ear. And then I always hear my favorite verse: "Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near." (NASB)

Let your hope rest on the Lord, He is near. Shabbat Shalom.

Walking the Week

The word of the LORD came to me: "What do you see, Jeremiah?" "I see the branch of an almond tree," I replied.

The Lord said to me, "You have seen correctly, for I am watching to see that my word is fulfilled."

One of my father’s favorite Bible fun-facts is that God is a punster.  I remember loving this, and probably telling all my elementary school friends.  Even as a child, maybe particularly as a child, I had a greater aptitude than normal for levity. Sometimes we need levity.  Perhaps because of this penchant for the comic, I find I am rarely a stressed out personality. Not many things actually bear down on me (I actually imagined a bear falling from the sky, hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy style), or cause me undue angst. This isn't to say there are no chinks in my armored psyche, but that most trials I slide through without panic.

This past weekend, I swallowed stress, consuming like a fire.  I kept trying to burn up more stress that A possessed, hoping to bear the load on his back, and provide him some healing warmth in return.  Upon my return, my body was not ready for the abrupt cessation of anxiety, and panicked. I spent all day wandering the house, likely burning miles of useless meandering into the floors in circles, loops, or aimless pathing. I couldn't even sit still for five minutes without standing up and racing around my imaginary track. With the amount of in-house speed-walking I managed, I’m certain I walked at least 10 miles, spending nearly 8 hours of work walking around the house, killing energy I did not possess. For the worst part of this was, I couldn't eat. I ate 3 bites of cereal, 4 blueberries, half of half a bean burrito (yes, a quarter), and a couple bites of an apple.  My general thought pattern was, “Lord, please Lord, help me crash, help me eat, what’s going on, why can’t I stop, why can’t I even eat blueberries?”

That last question is important. I can always eat blueberries.

Then I crashed.

Today was different. I slept almost a full 9 hours before waking up, and an entire restful day stretched out ahead of me: no work. My car was broken from this weekend of travel, and needed significant brake repair, and so I drove my car to Les Schwab, and asked them how long it would take for fixing.  They said by 11 o’clock in the morning (2 hours) they would call me. So I walked the 20 minutes to Chapters Coffee, and sat down to read, write, relax my day away. If my car had not been broken, I might have been half tempted to drive to my favorite mountain and spend the day praying at the peak.

But my car was broken. The point is moot.

I read for a while, wrote for a while, and, come 11, decided I might go on a walk until they called me. So I walked up College towards my church, and past it towards the playground. It was a sunny summer day (90 degrees, brilliant blue sky), and children were everywhere.  I would have stopped and enjoyed the sunshine for a while, but apparently the park was being renovated, and construction noises and voices drown the environmental ambiance and destroyed the serenity of the park. I walked on.

                I traipsed up and down the street 4 times, advancing a block uptown each time, simply looking at the houses and yards, charmed at Newberg’s cute lawns and diversity of homes.  It was now 11:20, and still no phone call. No problem, these places are always delayed, correct? So I walked into the disc golf park and lay down for a bit, reading some more beneath an umbrella pine with long, fuzzy needles, the sunlight streaking through its branches in strings. The small valley of the park was filled with a beautiful yellow-green grass under the firs lining the edges of the creek snaking through the park.  The rhododendrons and small shrubbery guarding the path on my right were golden in the nearly noon rays, and everything was awash in light - even the creek mirrored brightly from my hilltop vantage.

                Another half hour passed, and still no call. No matter. The day is lovely, and I’m getting hungry. I’ll walked the 20 minutes to Les Schwab and checked in, asking how much longer it might be until they checked my brakes.  They were not sure, but they hoped another couple of slots opened up in the shop soon enough. Maybe an hour?

                Longer than I’d hoped. I was rather expecting a Sabbath nap to fully heal myself regarding sleep, but maybe I would just get a late nap? Might as well enjoy the day, right? I walked to Fred Meyer, and took a long route, taking me nearly half an hour. Once there, I bought some light lunch: an apple, some juice, some carbs, and cashed a check. While eating, I began wandering back towards Les Schwab, assuming by the time I arrived, surely they would be checking out my car. 

                I arrived back at Les Schwab shortly after 1, and they said it would certainly be less than two hours until they could check out my car and determine what might be the matter. Not even fix it; investigate to see what needed to be fixed. Well, good times. I was stuck anyway, so I figured I might as well walk around some more. I walked from there to my last place of residence, and wandered around in that neighborhood for a little before walking back towards hoover park. After a while more of walking, they called me at 3, saying they’d checked out my car and it would be a little over an hour until it was fixed. I lay down for a while in the green grass, watching the turtledoves and starlings. After a half hour or so, I got up and began the trek back towards Les Schwab.  It was now 4, about an hour after the call, and they were still putting the final touch-ups on my car. Soon enough, I paid and left.

All the while, I could not get my mind off my mountain. How much more exciting would it have been to walk a mountain instead of 10 miles of small-town? I wish I had pictures of the mountain-top vista for contemplating now, but the only time I ever brought a camera, all I could photograph from the peak was the tops of the clouds beneath me. Soon enough, mountain, you will be mine.

I feel a lot better now: a number of full, giant meals behind me, sleep, a mountain of plums, figs, and apples in the fridge. I’m ready for the week now – unstressed and prepared for conquest. With God on my side, I’m unstoppable.

Kahlil Gibran

When you love you should not say,

"God is in my heart," but rather,

"I am in the heart of God."

And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course

Captive (Need Sleep)

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you see me with all your heart. I will be found by you, " declares the LORD, "and will bring you back from captivity."

A number of things I've read or experienced recently entertain the concept of captiv...-  I stop there in the word, because I want the root rather than any particular word that stems from it.

Etymology: from Latin captivus "caught, taken prisoner," from captus, past participle of capere "to take, hold, seize"

I was reading a book called Captivating by John Eldridge and his wife (writers of Wild at Heart - don't make fun of me, it was Matthew's fault), and it discusses a desire, of women in particular, to be captivating. It's more than just beautiful, it is a sort of Quality as exists in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. There is a portion in Name of the Wind that I've always appreciated:
...But there's a better way. You show her she is beautiful. You make mirrors of your eyes, prayers of your hands against her body. It is hard, very hard, but when she truly believes you..." Bast gestured excitedly. "Suddenly the story she tells herself in her own head changes. She transforms. She isn't seen as beautiful. She is beautiful, seen."

Bast says this in the end, explaining a point, but it is part of it. I've read Night Circus, wherein a certain captivity forces the main characters into a romantic, death game. This weekend, I was captivated in A's wedding, by the sea, by the community, by every smiling face. Every stress shared, I swallowed whole, and my metabolism and sleeping is only now recuperating. I was captivated, and now I feel as though I'm in excitement withdrawal, as my entire being remains captured, and the weekend is now over, and the question remains: now what?

What does this need? More Jeremiah!
“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness."

So, that's possibly far removed from context, but that's fine. I think there is something special about quotes like this, something I often forget: this is God speaking about his love for us - not to mention it is God speaking. Awesome. And even though this initially referred to Israel, we have joined the vine of Israel through salvation as per Romans:

 If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.”  Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble.

What a rabbit trail of words. This is how tired I am. These words from Jeremiah have meant much to me, today. The Lord has plans for me (for me!). I can be brought back from captivity, whatever it is holding me imprisoned, and I can make every captive to obedience in Christ. My earlier reference to a marathon fell short, unless, reaching the end, I'm exhausted but cannot force myself into a halt, a Sabbath. Captivity and captivation surrounds me: some of it freeing, other portions claustrophobic.

Blag

Paraskevidekatriaphobia. Even in our scientific age of enlightened logos, superstitions often interfere with our every day. The word (too long for typing again) above means a fear of a thirteenth of the month being a Friday. Superstitious much? Whether it is the concept of "beginner's luck" or knocking on wood, even our logical disbelief cannot retire these actions.  What is "luck" anyway?

I admit to a certain distrust of the concept of luck, having programmed enough to understand that "random" only means "you don't know enough to predict accurately".  Luck would have no existence in a world without misunderstandings. Not that limited knowledge is bad, yet from it we derive paranoia, anxiety, worries, terrors, fears. Many of our debilitating uncertainties stem from the mysterious unknown future.

One of the advantages of religion is the possession of faith. Everyone carries faith in some capacity, though perhaps religion possesses faith in the infinite to provide for the finite, divine providence for the weary and broken.  Hard weeks will come and go, but I know that salvation and grace exist, mercy and love are not unattainable.  I have not had hard weeks, though I suspect some are impending. Even now, I understand a bit of the words of James:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

And when I'm frustrated and tired of people and events and work and things, I always let myself turn to my favorite verse:
Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near.

Let the games continue. Winter must pass before spring is born.