What is the grass?

What, in the earth world,

is there not to be amazed by

and to be steadied by

and to cherish?

Oh, my dear heart,

my own dear heart,

full of hesitations,

questions, choice of directions,

look at the world.

Behold the morning glory,

the meanest flower, the ragweed, the thistle.

Look at the grass.

-          Mary Oliver

There simply isn’t enough time in life. Add a few hours, and still they’d be filled before sufficient purchase was gained. Choices must be made at the expense of others. And occasionally there is no choice, or no foreseeable alternative. This poem reminds me of part of the Walt Whitman poem:

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full

                hands;

How could I answer the child?. . .I do not know what it

                is any more than he.

This week has been full of prayers, passions, and incessant motion. I’m the boulder Sisyphus rolls interminably up that hill, and I’m scraping, bouncing, bounding, tearing down, expecting I’ll reach a rest shortly before I’m clawing up again. And what is the grass I’m trampling beneath my stony toes? I just don’t know, sometimes. But it’s soft and reminds me of my dreams. What a wonderful world.

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. 

Barefoot Soccer

This, this is not beautiful, not good; I cannot believe that. As God glanced over creation, a day of rest was deserved, but these scribblings on tortured wood are none such, not the perfect world. They are refined silver, not even gold, not yet. And it’s the first day, and five remain before I rest, before the coup de grâce following the fall from cleverness. Then is Sabbath, if I flood the world not, nor destroy it in fire, and I deem it worthy to breathe life up from dusty pages into my own.

oh, the doe, how graceful in motion

across the grasses, I envy your blur

of elegant, tangible wind

and the kite, swooping low,

up again, swimming in sky,

I jealously admire every dive -

and what of I?

barefoot in spotty grasses,

a long-limbed fawn

with wobbly legs,

existential mud between my toes -

when the spirit moves,

I imagine it thus: lovely

and untouchable, I feel it

tugging every string of me

asking me to run

as it brushes by with eyes

bluer than the heavens can be

melting my heart, my being,

by someone I cannot

imagine leaving I’ll never see again

Schrodinger, why me?

I crave what’s killing me

because it’s keeping me alive

holy spirit, have mercy on me

Where are you going, where do you go?

Are you looking for answers, to questions under the stars? (Dave Matthews)

Playing soccer as evening drew to a close, the sunset lighting the tips of the evergreens with slow fireworks, ribbons of red, streamers of purple cloud, golden sparks flying between the branches, roman candles celebrating the end of day. And the short green grass; the goals like the pearly gates of heaven: nothing can stop me entering; the laughing voices and comraderie, ah, it is everything.

If this is not heaven, what can it be? I’m just thankful Yeshua is on my team, because I’d hate to lose when everything is drawn so exquisitely.

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/05/barefoot-soccer/

Night Swings

I wonder if I could see statistics on how often my opinions, arguments, thoughts, and beliefs were wrong, how humble would I be? And then, if I could walk the paths each person tread to reach the present and see their trails not only in passing, but in their entirety, how ashamed would I find myself of my own response to tiny, trivial things?

The plank itches today, it’s heavy. Every time I try sawing it out, I quit because I’m getting sawdust in my mouth. One thing I’ve realized about my life is that tomorrow is never the time for fixing myself – it must happen now and always. It’s so easy to enter into the mindset of: “when I have free time after this x” or “after I finish y, I’ll focus on myself”. Maybe in some instances, that is plausible, but when it comes to spirituality, the time must be now.

I’m like a lump of clay in the kiln, and every moment I stay in the inferno, I’m less malleable, more resistant to change. That would be fine, except I’m unfinished. A finished piece is ready for the bisque, the wood fire, the salt kilns, but I’m riddled with flaws still.

But today I realized life is moving, consistently and fully. Right now I feel about to an irrevocable fate, and its overwhelming gravitas keeps me on my knees. I’m an unbalanced equation, still prodded by the pencil of uncertainty, and things are subtracted from my being, added, multiplied and divided out from under me. I’ve got no feet to stand on, some days, but I’m almost certainly being carried.

Like Abraham climbing the mountain to sacrifice Isaac, I see only pain in exchange for faith, but I keep praying the faith will stand – perhaps God provides a ram. But there is still a sacrifice; there is always a sacrifice, the ugly necessity of our disobedience.

And swinging in the park after dark I’m singing with the air brushing past me. I am like this swing, these days, the false force of centrifuge, the faux wind brushing the moisture from my cheeks, the pendulaic rhythm, and the pretend motion that carries me nowhere – that’s what I am. But even so, I’m a smile of geometry, and there is laughter in the squeaking of chain links, even if they are only existential.

Existentialism

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/05/existentialism/

There are a lot of words running around in my head, and little that’s cohesive. I’ve been contemplating what life is, means, and the purpose thereof. The words of Solomon rush to the forefront first:

Guard your steps as you go to the house of God and draw near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools; for they do not know they are doing evil. Do not be hasty in word or impulsive in thought to bring up a matter in the presence of God. For God is in heaven and you are on the earth; therefore let your words be few. For the dream comes through much effort and the voice of a fool through many words.

When you make a vow to God, do not be late in paying it; for He takes no delight in fools. Pay what you vow! It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. Do not let your speech cause you to sin and do not say in the presence of the messenger of God that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry on account of your voice and destroy the work of your hands?  For in many dreams and in many words there is emptiness. Rather, fear God.

 (Ecclesiastes)

I’m not sure why these words immediately overwhelm me, but that there is a despondence in Solomon’s voice that is never far when walking the path of existentialism. That road is long, and not wrong, though precipitous at points – what road is not?

This passage isn’t as popular as the more poetic Ecclesiastes 3, with a dichotomous sequence of times for everything, but I think it speaks of the oddness of this experience we’ve suddenly discovered ourselves mired in. It’s a territory of emotions as wide as the world, with mountains as tall as the depths of the seas, and even though we dream of flying, we forget what the secret was on waking.

-Chloe- “When I dream, sometimes I remember how to fly. You just lift one leg, then you lift the other leg, and you're not standing on anything, and you can fly. So what I want to know is, when I'm asleep, do I really remember how to fly? And forget how when I wake up? Or am I just dreaming I can fly?"

-Sandman- "When you dream, sometimes you remember. When you wake, you always forget."

-Chloe- "But that's not fair!"

-Sandman- "No."

(Brief Lives – Neil Gaiman)

Then my existential journey wanders. I start wondering whether I’m stepping in the right places, or following in Christ’s footsteps properly. I used to play a philosophical game with myself, wondering whether I’d ever lived any “perfect” days. It was a common Sunday School understanding that no one, save Yeshua, is perfect. But how many days could I go without sinning? And is simply “not sinning” good enough? Or does “living perfectly” require a significant motion in the other direction?

Could I fail to live perfectly simply by not living at all? If I locked myself into a room and prevented myself from engaging in any negative thoughts, or lying, or behaving cruelly to those around me, does that day fall short of perfection simply by virtue of having not moved?

Paul said that walk of Christianity was a race – so simply standing still isn’t wandering down the wrong path, but it’s making no headway towards the finish line, either. Does that make it… sinful? If sin is simply falling short, motionlessness might be falling short also, right?

And this thinking goes round and round.

Next, I contemplate Micah, the famous words:

He has told you, O man, what is good;

And what does the Lord require of you

But to do justice, to love kindness,

And to walk humbly with your God?

To love kindness; to do justice; to walk humbly with my God.  This, too, I’ve contemplated over these last weeks, days, hours. Christianity today is a puzzle of beliefs, with everything hinging on a “God is relationship; God is love” factor that suddenly implies that God “must love everyone” and so anything that makes up a person must be “good”.

This concept stuffs God into a small box of “if God doesn’t appreciate what I’m doing, he must not be Love because My God would love what I was doing”. And this sort of thinking is such obvious bullshit that I’d immediately dismiss it if it weren’t so prevalent in our culture. And the second aspect of this is, one we fail on one portion, we assume that we’ve permanently failed, and if God can forgive us for the beginning, why should we stop now?

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

(Romans)

Yet there are those consistently making concessions to their “God image” they’ve designed imago adam, until there is nothing respectable, nothing fearful, nothing remotely righteous about the God of dust we’ve breathed ourselves into. Whenever you start saying, “this is who I am so God must be satisfied with that” then you are fooling only yourself.

God destroyed whole cities of unrighteousness with nary the bat of an eye; God opened up the earth and swallowed countless Israelites for their faithlessness; God killed two people in the new Church just for lying about money. Our God is a consuming fire, not a penpal writing little hearts on Bible leaflets and hallmark cards with cute verses to cheer you up.

I was also contemplating community, and our world. The culture of our day is an unbelievable mess. The convenience of technology has eliminated the need for community, because your friends can talk to you in video conversation from forever away, or email eliminates the need of heartfelt letters sent in slow-haste along postal lines (though I love letters dearly, and would prefer to long-distance communicate this way).

But there is no staying, no holding force that knits a community together. Churches have become businesses, linked on Sundays in a single building as a concession for community, but the personal nature of communion has been eviscerated from our services, and the raising of voices beside everyone you love is lost in a crowded vacuum of who, who are you?

This may just be me, an introvert stuck in a great emptiness, and no hands or inertia moving me.

I long for an Amish-type community where everyone lives, labors, and loves in a small place, understanding the depths of happiness that derive from hard work beside friendly souls and the gatherings of those you know every day in a small town.

We’ve created a crowded room if individuals instead of a family, and that’s what our media and culture create also.

The real problem, of course, is me. Why engage in existential and philosophical musings, anyway? If a problem exists in every friendship, it’s likely the reason is yourself. I should have known that – what was I thinking? There was once a study which resulted in the naming of an effect called the Dunning-Kruger effect, where individuals vastly overrate their own abilities and fail to recognize genuine skill in others. I see this in myself, knowing my weaknesses are many.

I was asked, once, what my love languages are, and though  I think the question is a bit of a silly one – because what occasion have I had, as yet, to love like that? – I realized that my language of love with friends is that of quantity time.

Quantity time? Not even one of the original list – what a psychological hipster. (quality time; service; words of affirmation; touch; gift-giving) None of the others apply to me. I don’t find myself desperately trying to serve others to express my love, or effusively thanking those who offer their service for me. The same is true of gifts: I hate giving gifts, because I’m always self-conscious, so I avoid it. And I always try to return gifts I’ve been given, because “things” don’t matter to me. Touch is important, but not something I overemphasize to a great degree in my friendships; words of affirmation are important to me, and perhaps this is a close second in my love languages. Quality time is fine, but I really don’t care what is being done, as long as the duration is sufficient.

I’d rather spend five days with someone doing nothing than one day with someone doing everything, every time.

This makes the long distance relationships in my life nearly impossible to maintain. With Matthew, we talk every day, sometimes twice, sometimes more. With other examples, generally I find that I grow less and less attached to the people the less we communicate. Eventually, I don’t consider them at all – they are nonentities in the timing of my life.

See? It’s definitely a personal problem.

I remember when I used to play games with my older brother, I’d always get frustrated whenever he started over before beating a game. I didn’t understand the waste of struggle, the waste of playtime, in “trying something new for fun” instead of “beating the game”. To me, beating the game was the only source of fun. In a way, this personality quick carried over into my interaction with life. I hate starting over – I hate moving somewhere without finishing everything in the previous place.

This is a very ambiguous state, because how can you “finish everything” in a particular place? I think the real truth of it is, I don’t make friends easily, because I don’t understand the purpose of “half-way” friends. Why have acquaintances at all? What use are they to me? The sort of people you say, “hi how’s the weather” to, and then move past them to grab your tea or coffee or whatever – this isn’t relationship. So why have it at all?

I only want deep, lasting friendships, and so the very idea of starting over pains me, because I hate to see everything I’ve invested in get burned away to chaff. People assume the technological inventions we’ve made circumvent that necessity, the necessity of removing that which you love in a place, but it doesn’t. It slows the poisonous decay, but only barely, and probably makes it harder in the end.

That’s my existential crisis of the day. What do I do? Where am I? What should I be doing? And how is it so easy for everyone else to say goodbyes? I think because they don’t realize that to me, it’s actually a goodbye. 

Coffee Shop Existentialism

Staring around the coffee shop today, I found myself asking questions, inwardly, about everyone's life - what had brought every one of these people here, across lives wide as the sky or brief as a breath? Every seat was filled: babies burping against their mother's backs, or bawling at some discomfort; children reading on couches or exploring the underbellies of tables; teenagers rescued from the tedium of school, excitedly discussing sports, boys, and Christmas break; college students discussing existentialism on the couches, and the boundaries of love and loving one-self; other college students silently absorbed in nursing or psychology; parents and graduates meeting for tea, or bringing their kids into a new environ for adult adoration, and a caffeine-accompanied breather; middle-aged business meetings and work breaks; seniors reading the paper and sipping at black coffee or holding hands, as though youth was found again; and an old pop song tells of age and growing old, wrinkled, tired as a december setting sun.

Who are they all, and why is dissonance defining such distance between their souls and mine, when I just want to touch their lives? May I, please, just one time? But even in the chair next to me, they live in a different eternity, and the Christmas tree tells of gifts given like this. It displays, with glittering ornaments and a star guiding those with open eyes to see, though I'm no wise man, the way.

It's a hive of drones, each one droning on with scarce a moment for passing love, few with smiles even to light the day. Thought and memory always assault me so poignantly on wodensday, like carrion birds swooping in to carry my ramblings away.