These Hands

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/these-hands/

As I lied, I lied

tears shook your shoulders while you cried:

please stop, and hide the truth no more -

A ghost, poltergeist, an echo at most

left behind when you’ve carved out hope

replacing dreams with ash and lime;

traipsing down the somber street side

blithe and blank with an empty face

no matter the distance down aching lane

turn around and you’re home again

beside a hearth-whole fire

safe inside these walls

It’s amazing how little distance you must travel to find people hurting. We assume missions are necessary to Africa and Eastern Europe, or dangerous places for Christians like China or the Middle East, but plenty of hurt sits next to us on the bus, at the dinner table, or even on the church pews - perhaps especially on the church pews.

And how do you address such pains, the problems not of meals and poverty, but of internal poverty and spiritual starvation? How do you address depression, anxiety, loneliness, anger, despair, a lack of self-confidence, doubt, pain, or stress? These things our individualistic society has told us to bury deep within our psyche until they are embedded in our personality, entrenched in our existence, when a person cannot separate their identity from stress, pain, and the horrors of ill-relationship.

And I’m an introvert, tentative with hands of healing, shy with words of comfort, timid with grace and mercy, wordless with exhortation, bashful with blessing, hesitant with hope and helpfulness. How do I extend hands that are stuck in my pockets, and how do I open eyes that are self-consciously staring at my toes, and how do I love when my heart hides in my sleeves?

Holy Spirit move in me; a susurrus of wind and wave that washes me from head to feet, and dresses me in neat white linens, and sets me free to serve and be, and be wholly loving.

These hands that have taken, let them give; these feet that have wandered, set them true; these eyes that have judged, let them cry with mercy and grace.

Gentle Summer Love

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/gentle-summer-love/

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda

Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

      For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

      I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

      Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

      How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

      I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

Sunny days pierce me as surely as biting winds, colliding with my soul and warming me. It’s as though I’m sitting beside a fire with my friends, the cool wind nipping at my neck but my eyes are mesmerized by the embers bright, and the sparks like shooting stars fired back at the heavens – I’m warmed and unafraid, the master of my destiny. And love surrounds me in just such a way, the intense fragility (nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals / the power of your intense fragility - cummings) of our spirits strengthened like a three-cord rope (And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart – Ecclesiastes), until we are more than the things we bring.

There is peace in this world, and anger. As the sun rides high over the sky, and sets in pumpkin and cranberry sauce like a thanksgiving spill, the storms of night linger over distant Europe, tearing snow up from the mountains and dashing it violently against the rocks. The herbivore quietly nibbles at flower stalks while the predator stalks the prey, and what shall we say, when the beast survives? That the world is not beautiful? But see the petals, the roses, the sky, the mountains striking even in the night where only their shadowy silhouettes frame the horizon.

Tonight, I’m enveloped in loving-kindness, and shipped into sleep, praying the waves are gentle, else I might wrestle with the good night.

Entitlement Rant

Our culture has really adopted, and swallowed whole, a sense of entitlement. In Christianity, we say a few words and claim an entitlement of love, grace, protection, hope, and kinship with the creator of the universe; in friendship, we imagine our contract of mutual care ensures an entitlement of mercy, grace, forgiveness and love, even when we grossly overstep our bounds without remorse.
I hate this word, and equally I despise its connotations. Sanctification does not come from an empty proclamation of faith, but from an abiding belief. If your personal convictions of immorality and choices are stronger than your belief in the divine, your faith is empty. Are you not Judas, trading sanctity for coins? If your desire to sin, to cross the line, to ignore the laws of righteousness are stronger than your faith, what IS your faith in? Yourself or Christ? And if God does not grant you justice, can you really blame him? If you decide morality, surely you can impart your own justice? If you have set yourself up as your own god in life, aren’t you to blame for its misfortunes?
Friends, too, do this same thing. “I don’t mind lying, betraying my friends by abusing their trust and kindness, but I consider it a personal affront if my friends return the favor.” Entitlement then conceives an anger, a bitterness like that Blake spoke of in the poem A Poison Tree.
Let’s say for a moment you’ve made a mistake with someone whom you love, or claim to love. There are some options: confess the mistake and root out the mistake before it flowers and grows, or conceal it, nurture the mistake and water it until a poisonous tree grows up betwixt the love, and when it is noticed, your entitlement claims it is the other party’s fault, or tries to conceal it again. You see, those people will find out those things eventually, whether you will it or no. Perhaps you’ve chosen to conceal it, and when they find out, you pretend that you thought they knew all along, and so you initiate another lie to replace the first. You are the Johnny Appleseed of Poison Trees.
So, who are you, then, having planted so many poisonous trees amidst your relationships, to claim entitlement in these relationships? Perhaps if you had behaved respectably yourself, you might merit a little grace, a little forgiveness, a little kindness, but having behaved atrociously can you expect the other party to protect your abuse of their love?
As a simple example, if you lied, can you really feel entitled to know the truth your friends carry when you’ve lied? If you haven’t kept a secret, can you feel entitled to be told them? Entitlement is foolish, but I’ve seen it so many times throughout my life, often coming to the fore in passive-aggressive self-righteousness.
I know that as a friend and someone who loves, it is my job to forgive and love, even if I’m hurt. But there are limits. If a friend lies to me, or betrays my trust, even having forgiven them, I’m less likely to trust them in the same capacity, the same circumstance as before. And if I’m betrayed twice, or they justify their betrayal, doubly so.
If you were a knight and betrayed the knight’s code, can you really expect the all-knowing monarchy to protect you when you find yourself in trouble? Especially if you are unrepentant of your trespass, and perhaps continue to break the code daily (without remorse)?


On the flip side, there are many around me with enduring kindness, endless selflessness that I cannot help but return. Love is contagious. When a friend hugs me, I want to pass on that hug to the next person I see. When a person shares a truth with me, heals me, listens or speaks reassuring words, or comforts me in pain or sorrow, I can’t help but be a prism for that light.

If I'm hurt, this doesn't mean I'll deliberately be vindictive and full of vengeance, either. I hope I'm the very opposite. But it does mean I won't leap into making the same mistake twice.

I was thinking about entitlement today, and just was disgusted with its use. I think passive aggressive natures are my least favorite, and I’m no stranger to acting them out myself. So this was a bit of a rant. And so on.

But I know that in the end I need to be more forgiving, more graceful in reply. It's a vicious cycle otherwise. Instead of repaying with vindictive hate, anger, revenge, or petty cruelty, I need to be loving and patient, even especially when those who have hurt me know what they've done, and may even continue to exacerbate the circumstance. But even as I love them, I'll likely protect myself from future pain; even as I love them and extend the grace of God their way, if I choose not to return to them first when I need comfort or love, it is this, the poison tree, that stood in the way

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/entitlement-rant/ 

Flux

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/flux/

I read an article recently on divorce, whose author suggested that America's concept of marriage is tremendously skewed into believing you are marrying an instant of a person, a daguerreotype. People change, year by year, day by day, moment by moment, and if you love someone as an instant, as a trophy mounted on the wall, it's no wonder that divorce rates skyrocketed. There's no value in a person as a person, but only a value in the haloed, sanctified idol we’ve replaced them with.

I’ve never been in a relationship before (until now!), but I can’t tell you how excited I am to change, and see change moving through us as we grow in relationship, Christ, and simply as persons.

An ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, said that no man ever steps in the same river twice. He invented the concept of “flux”, the constant shifting of things, organic and inorganic. There is a hint of truth in his words, in that things are constantly changing, new molecules pass down the river instant by instant, and experiences mold the clay that makes a woman or a man. But there is some quality, a consistency of being, that stays.

Life, being, persons, everything is in flux, perhaps, and it is this which makes the “daguerreotype love” so precipitous, and enduring love so beautiful, even divine.

Your first love for somebody can last ... but it changes too after promises have been made and time as passed and knowledge has come.
Wendell Berry (in Hannah Coulter)

At the same time, the rustling zephyr canters

Through the leaves of trees and pushes clouds

Across the countryside, a gentle scythe over wheat

It transforms fields into a great, golden sea;

And a newspaper tumbles like a wheel of weed

Down soggy streets whose only light bounces down

From building window to window until it drowns in the road

And makes alchemy of oil, puddles, and spilt drinks;

And the clever man tips back his tumbler and taps his feet

To the beat of the jazz hands stumbling up the bass, down the piano

While a hundred classy customers celebrate with feast and dance;

And the same stars rise, climb, and fall where a boy sits

In the hospital and glances out the screen, remembering

That in the relativity of things, the heavens are a great eternity

Tonight was soccer night, coffee night, and the beginning of the weekend. There is nothing like soccer to end a week – I wish every night ended thus, sometimes: the adrenaline, the friends, the grass between my toes, the goals, the smiles, the joy at understanding how to run and kick and play.

Nervous Quotations

Standing atop the tallest turtle, Yertle, I think I own the sky. Nothing could be so high as I, I smugly reply to the wind, which turns me around to see a mountain-top nestled within the mighty clouds. Well, and then again, perhaps my head has been misled, and it’s time to climb again.

This weekend, this week, is beyond my comprehension I think, at 2 in the morning. I think the whirlwind of events is more the cause than the hour, but I suspect that little makes sense to my addled brain at 2am, even were I not on being set aflame, with teary eyes, pumping heart, nervous fingers, and lungs remembering what breathing is. So this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.  (TS Eliot, Hollow Men)

You think, as you walk away from Le Cirque des Rêves and into the creeping dawn, that you felt more awake within the confines of the circus.
You are no longer quite certain which side of the fence is the dream.
(Morgenstern, Night Circus)

Let your gentle spirit be made known before all men. The Lord is near. (Philippians 4:5)

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. (Yann Martel Life of Pi)

Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud... (Yann Martel Life of Pi)

You would rather face a life without me than to have me choose a life I would not choose for myself. (Scalzi)

And for you, Em:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
(Mary Oliver)

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
(Mary Oliver)


I don't know what my life is at this time, but here are some quotes that I've left running through my head. Some are relevant, others just for thought. There is much to be found in the world, even when you think you know everything.

You can learn all that there is to know about their ways in a month and yet, after a hundred years, they can still surprise you. (on the topic of hobbits.. or perhaps anything)
(Lord of the Rings)

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/nervous-quotation/ 

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.

The Cowled Mount

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/the-cowled-mount

At times like these, I feel I’ve unfettered feet, and more than perhaps two. I’m a centipede, marching mind thinking a hundred things, estranged from my own wandering shoes. I found the glory within, crawling over the pass and seeing the mountain, wearing no hood or cowl to match its name, but gleaming like a frozen font, a spike, a rigid canine, a snow-leopards ear. A valley swoops beneath me, the very land removed from under my rolling toes, and the curving wyrm of the land is like a Chinese dragon colored in wildflowers, a royal carpet sliding towards the sanctified Olympus.

And seeing that vision, the pinnacle of creative mass, I understand the inertia of love and the gravitas of sacrifice and sanctification, if only a little. I can feel the weight of it on my dreams, the deep, heavy sighs of the earth and I imbibe of the grace therein. I need everything, the nearness of it all and the prescience of divinity.

Tonight is the last day before my last best friend is married off. I found the most beautiful road in Newberg (well, I’ll hedge that with a ‘one of the’), and drove along a ridge facing Mount Hood, vineyards and grazing livestock filling the periphery with the perfect ambiance. I wonder whether my words are a subtle injustice, a slight on the majesty of creation. Does poetry only detract from true creativity, and music only a cheap substitute for the orchestra of creation? I cannot believe this to be true, as a general rule, but sometimes I cannot collect any words that portray the mountain, that harness the motion of the river, that captivate as surely as the woods, the rain, the clouds gloomy and playful over the starry sky.

I want to sleep, but my body fights me; I want to eat, but there, too, I’m refused; I want to imagine worlds and write poetry, to sing, play guitar, dream, and write beautiful things, but I’m stymied by an incessant farewell-love. It’s that inhibitive time where nothing can be done until I’ve done what must be done. I’m not the parents, but I feel as though I’m surrendering J and S to each other and to another place, just as I did Matthew, just as I did A and S, just as perhaps I’ve done countless times before, though each time with a greater piece of my heart to offer up.

So here I am, staring down a bag of chips and wondering if my pacing mind will focus enough to finish reading a book, or whether I might just sleep instead. I fear I’ll be stuck in a pasture without sheep to count, dear Olwen, but perhaps this is how all vigils should progress, in existential-quandaries of beauty, peace, and letting go.

There’s probably a Disney song about this.