Oysters but no Pearls

Blog Has Been Moved

2010-01-08T21:17:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, I am a different person than I was when I started "Oysters But No Pearls", moved on to a different phase in my life. Accordingly, I have started a new blog, a new journal:

http://www.introducinghuntersharpless.blogspot.com/

with love,
h

Lift Up Your Head

2009-12-12T08:35:00.001-08:00

It, then, becomes not the realization in the mind, or even the feeling in the heart, but, when complete, it builds, rising like a tsunami in the ocean, water swelling over water, builds and builds and accumulates into a climactic revelation of the soul

Do you know what I mean when I say “I don’t wanna be alone” –Jars of Clay in “Work”

And too many things fall into place for it not to be true and real like the way Maddy felt about FOXFIRE the way they were sisters and are and YOU’RE MY HEART Maddy and all one and none alone

And it all makes sense in your head and it is sinking, slowly, into your heart to make you see see see that something is new and real and revelation coming over your soul and even your body your toes tapping on the ground like little energy and everything makes sense

the lust and passion

the constant seeking to gain the approval of others even in their f****** low f*** eyes

the having to look around of the heart to have a new flavor of the week

the sex

the in the face of such a HOLY Redeeming God who has saved himself for us do the same

But then the sun comes up and up and now you can see it’s all bright and warm too and lift up your head because you’re already holding me and you say

Do not be worried about your life

Come to me all who are weary and heavy-laden

Lo, I am with you ALWAYS

Even to the end of the age

So what then?

I am not alone, but I am free

Pure and Holy

2009-11-23T10:34:00.001-08:00

Hello all, it has been a few months since I have kept this going, but that is no reason to not pick up where we left off—

Just three days ago I looked at a map of the United States and a schedule of the tour, just to see where I’ve been in the last two and a half months, and it turns out that there are only three continental states I haven’t been to: Utah, Wyoming, and South Dakota. I have seen this country from Atlantic to Pacific, at twenty years, from Canada’s edge to Mexico’s border, from Seattle’s coffee to Nebraska’s corn; I have seen so much so young, and am incredibly blessed to call this life my own.

To tour with an Americana roots rock band is to take part in a world unknown to 99% of the population—the amount of work, the schedule, the business transactions and complexities, the way in which relationships are formed and then kept or cut off, the whole process something I can’t explain in a blog (I suppose that is why I’m writing a book about the tour). Because of this, and because the last few months have been a time away from spiritual fellowship, I’ll take a minute to describe what is going on spiritually in my life.

First, know a few things—it is hard, very difficult to be away from a church and Christian community for three months after growing up in such a Christ-centered environment and then continuing that in school. Also, despite the difficulty, allow me to say that this experience has caused me to grow like no other, in unique ways, and never have I felt so strongly about what I believe and the power Jesus has to make everything right and good and beautiful and perfect and full of grace. Truly, I am blessed.

The hardest part, spiritually speaking, of the tour was losing the sacred. I strongly believe that God is holy beyond our comprehension, that in Him there is no sin or wrong, and I think in a well-developed, sincere Christian culture that holiness is reflected. In Iowa City, for instance, at RUF (my college ministry) or One Ancient Hope (my church) there is a desire to please the Lord, to seek righteousness, to be holy and sanctified like Him; consequently there is a purity of heart, an innocence that is preserved. There are things that, due to God’s commandments and desires, are sacred—not to be meddled with. In a purely secular world, however, there are few (if any) things that remain sacred. Going to church this past weekend, I was reminded and refreshed by the fact that, in the midst of this life, God remains holy. Pure and holy.

Short and sweet—the more I take this tour in, the more the posts will come.

With love.

Days

2009-08-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

The sun is just up. The sun is just now rising. The ability music has to convey the exact cravings of my heart is astounding, and will always be astounding and mysterious. In my life, at least, the life of someone who probably has too many feelings hahaha, there is this tension between my loneliness and my knowing that I don’t need you. At once, I often feel lonely and driven to succeed without you. I don’t need you; I really don’t, but it often makes me sad and even angry that she isn’t here. When the night is over it is gone, and the sun is out and rising and is both hopeful and dangerous. It starts out and the realization I have what I was like last night hurts my heart but more than that it inspires me to do something greater (without you). I know that all that matters is loving God, loving people, and being loved; but that certainly does not mean I need you—not that I don’t want you in my life, but that it is my fault when I get needy—I want you and love you, but in no capacity do I need you. The sun brings almost the anger, you know? The anger may be brief but it is no less real. Why would I even think I need you? That is the feeling. It is like, You can be over there and let’s never speak and it will all be okay, Okay? And you move from an uninformed anger almost to an anger that is knowledgeable. I am understanding now, in the later part of the morning, what I was so angry about, and it angers me less against you and more against myself—for the knowledge lurks in my head by so rarely yields itself in my life—no, actually, not that, it yields itself, much more in the last five months, but it pains me that the fruitfulness of what I know doesn’t yield itself all of the time, you know? I understand that I need to not focus on you, really, or at least not focus on you at first. You know, that whole priorities thing. I need to get them straight. The anger, though, is terribly fruitful, because it shows me that I don’t need you, and that is such a powerful realization, because last night I was my old self, and I don’t hate my old self but I realize he’s non-existent now. But now—without you!—I’m moving faster, and I know what I’m after. The anger gives way to hope with a chip on its shoulder, hahaha I like that.

But then—

there’s this drop-off. And you know the anger was real, and even important, and even vital, but now you have to surrender. So there’s this moment of surrender. And it really can be a moment, and is a moment often. It’s almost noon. And the stillness of the day is creeping into my marrow. It produces not nostalgia but peace, because it’s not if I believe in love but if love believes in me. In my head, when I pray, when I really pray in deep and hurting earnest, I often imagine myself in rags at the bottom of a pearly-white staircase, my King sitting atop it in a golden and dazzling chair, and I am crying, weeping, tears streaming down my strained, red face, and I throw my arms out because there is nothing I can do by myself without His love, and I say to Him, “I am sorry; I have forgotten my First Love—Lord, will you yet have me?” and He sprints down the stairs, off His throne, leaving majesty in His shadow, and embraces me, even in my rags. And this is what the moment of surrender entails—love has left His glory and is among us. He sweat and thirsted and hungered for us, for me and for you. And just after this moment of surrender comes a soft revelation, a revelation that I can’t make it on my own, a revelation that I need Love. It’s not that I need you, because I don’t—at all—need you, but I need Him so desperately that it’s absurd. Sometimes you can’t make it on your own. A house doesn’t make a home—please don’t leave me here alone. And last night I thought I was all alone, empty and abandoned and left to die with no-one even to say, I am here; but that is not the case and never will be the case, because He has not left us alone, but will be with us always, even to the end of the age. I will fight for my life. It is mine. My paper heart isn’t paper anymore.

I fight and fight and fight and then it the light comes brighter than the sun, and it is early afternoon now; the nostalgic morning is over and the brightness of the day is fully upon me, and suddenly I see—I am her. Everything around her is a silver pool light; people who surround her feel the benefit of it—she holds you captivated in her palm. This is who I want to be. This is what I want to be. This is, perhaps, the greatest happiness—the realization that the person who you wanted to be is the person you are. I’m not empty—how dare you say that. Don’t you ever say that. I hate, despise, absolutely abhor sermons that are in the second person (you! you! you!) and label you incompetent. Imago Dei. We are intrinsically good. Do they not see that? Before we were sinful, we were good, and that remains in such majesty. I’m at this happy crossroads, and I just linger for a moment—I’ve been hangin around this town on the corner. It took me a very long time to realize that He loves when we are able to revel in peace and joy and contentment in His love, and that’s what I’m doing. Suddenly I see, and then I linger in the carpe diem. It’s like stretching time, meditation is, you know? When you meditate on one feeling or fact or phenomenon you are warping time. And that’s what hangin around does for me. But you spun me around and you loved me instead—after I revel in it, I realize that after all this, after last night and that terrible dip into my past self—I’m alright, I’m alright, I’m alright baby I’m alright—not because of me, but because of Love, and what He has done for me. Though the deadly torrents of loneliness occasionally ensnare my soul and emotions, I’m all right.

On it’s way down, the sun loses its bright light and descends into more of a glow, and though last night it briefly, so briefly, wrung my neck, I know that this night it will be different, because He has loved me and put me at a place for a reason that taught me something I needed to hear, or rather it re-taught me something that I intentionally turned my hear from. Instead of fear, this late afternoon brings reflection, reflection on what I have learned in so short a time, or what He has taught me in so short a time. We were perfect. And then we sinned and were torn apart from Him. One of the million lies she said is all of the things you love are dead, but I see what she thinks of love and it leaves me laughing—we will come around. I don’t need you; I’ve never needed you—when you’re gone we will come around.

And at last the sun is sunken. It gives way to darkness. It gives way to solace. The anger is gone, the happiness dissipated, the revelation ingrained, and I realize that this is my life, it isn’t much but at least it’s mine. With this night comes complete composure, a containment of my collected satellites.

With everything, I can only walk on. If every step I take is forward, then I become a continual source of renewal and life, an existence opposite of last night. I will walk on.

Wither and Bloom

2009-08-17T08:24:00.001-07:00

It’s been a phenomenal week on the road, and I guess part of that is because I officially got the gig last Tuesday. If don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m going to be writing for a band—Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers—this fall, and touring with them. That’s the long story shortened many, many times. And I’m usually awful at explicating things right after they happen, but I think I can pin down a few things that I’ve already learned.

1. One: Don’t have expectations, and I’m pretty firm on this one. My friend Jeremiah and I were talking about this the other day, about how we crazy humans (and Americans more specifically) live life with expectations, like we’re naturally entitles to something; and I think that when we live life with tons of expectations it inhibits our ability to live carpe diem, to live in the moment. I tried my best to avoid expectations for this week, and I was blown away.

2. Two: Empathy. I’m officially a writer now. It’s weird. Because I’m 19 and have been given this incredible opportunity, but I am thankful. Empathy—in the introduction of his biography on Abraham Lincoln, Stephen B. Oates says that empathy is the biographer’s best asset. I would whole-heartedly agree, and would say that it might be any writer’s main asset, for it is empathy that allows a writer to put himself or herself in another’s shoes, experience another person’s point of view and emotions and fears and hopes and shortcomings and goals and prejudices. And the more I think about it, the more it seems to be true that empathy is a very noble thing, and a very Christ-like virtue; I think that when we truly strive for empathy we are able to love other people more, because we can understand where they are coming from and where they are going and why they act that way. It’s really a fantastic thing.

3. Three: By no means are there only three things I learned this week, but the last one I want to touch on is something I talk about a lot, and it might bother you but I don’t really care if it does. Brothers and sisters, it is so damn important that we learn to live now, that we learn to live in the moment and not in the past or future. There is no past or future. They don’t exist, and yeah it’s obviously smart to have a plan for things, but don’t box yourself in by constantly dwelling on things like that. For Christians at least, this is my thinking: Our sins are forgiven (past); God is omniscient and omnipotent (future)); and what is our calling?—it is love, for Christ says, Love the Lord your God, and, Love your neighbor as yourself; love, most concretely I think, exists only in the present. Let’s live now. Let’s do that.

(Life is transient; people come and go; relationships wither and bloom. Though it may hurt, though it may pain our hearts, let us love those even if it’s someone that will leave all too soon; let us love the unloved; let us love the house sound guy or the famous musician’s son or the bartender or Cousin or Skunk or anyone that we come across—smile and shake someone’s hand, because it may make someone’s day just a little better, because when someone does that for me it makes my day better. Love your neighbor as yourself, and I know that I fail at this so much of the time but I am learning and strive to take lessons to heart. Love. It’s never an exhausted topic, and God has given me this fall opportunity first for love.)

Contradictions

2009-08-07T16:07:00.000-07:00

As self-indulgent and conceited as it might sound, I consider myself an artist, and subscribe to the belief that artists are different, that they have a sight and vision others do not, that they feel in ways that others do not, and that they live out their lives in ways that others do not; this is not to say, however, that artists are better, in any way, than anyone else here on the earth, or even to say that there are not drastically different forms of art, for I would be foolish to consider the brilliancy of mathematics and physics un-artistic. But, as I was discussing with my friend recently, a painter herself, there are terrific downsides to being an artist. For myself, I take an odd fancy to loneliness, and I struggle with depression and relationships but at the same time relish my time alone. I also straddle the line between self-deprecation and artistic arrogance without the proper balance. In many ways, I am a walking and breathing contradiction. Here is Whitman in Leaves of Grass:

“Do I contradict myself?

Very well, then, I contradict myself;

(I am large—I contain multitudes.)”

The latest contradiction I have found myself a part of lies in the realm of the abstract. On the one hand, I am an artist, and I savor the idea that millions of people can read a single sentence and have different responses evoked; but on the other hand, I hate, absolutely abhor not understanding things. Like God, like women, like poetry, like love, like Picasso, like relationships. There are so many things which I do not understand and that I desperately desire to understand. I yearn for the ability to consistently derive joy and ecstasy from the abstract—in all of its forms.

In the Midst of Love

2009-08-04T08:30:00.000-07:00

A thing that I struggle with is the tension between the temporary and the eternal, between things fleeting and things staying. And so often I don’t realize that even the things fleeting in my life have eternal consequences. There is a Love that seals the two seemingly opposite poles.

In my life, I sense this tension most in my relationships. If you worked at Pine Cove with me this summer, you know how much of an asshole I can be in friendships and getting to know you. Here is the problem: I don’t want to get close to someone just to drift away from them a few months after. It hurts. It hurts my heart. What I don’t realize is that, as believers, we are called to love no matter what. (Recently I was thinking about various convictions I had, like political convictions, or moral convictions, or whatever, and it occurred to me that sometimes one must choose between a conviction and loving a person, and the more I dwell on that the more I see that love is our primary conviction and should not be ousted by anything—this is not to say, however, that we as Christians are to be pushovers; look at Christ! He ran into the temple with a whip and drove people out [John 2:15]; He cursed at people [Luke 11:19-40]; Jesus wasn’t a pushover. We have to balance, learn to balance, love and passion; it’s a tricky line we Christians walk.) Back to the point—love love love. I missed that at Pine Cove to a great degree. I thought about myself first and love second. If you worked with me at Pine Cove, I’m sorry. I probably didn’t love you as I should have. I was selfish (still am). I was in the wrong.

In that, you can pray for me. It’s all love and carpe diem.

The solution is Love and God is love (1st John 4:8) and Jesus is God so the solution is God/Jesus/Love. Love is our calling.

Love love love love love.

This is a line from a Rachael Yamagata song that says something good about love, and—in part—she is talking about romantic love, but I think this line speaks true of love in general and definitely would have helped me:

“So for those of you falling in love . . . throw yourselves in the midst of the danger, but keep one eye open at night.”

Love!

You Know?

2009-07-12T15:12:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure what I think about life right now. I’m not sure what love is, or what it looks like, and I’m bothered by abstract statements made in Christianity (Galatians 6:2—What does that mean? What does that look like?). Well, here’s the deal—I don’t doubt the truth of my current convictions; I doubt the worth. What I mean is this: Though not more satisfying, life would be much simpler and much easier if, indeed, it were about me. In order for life to be about me, however, I would need to ignore the truth and fabricate a lie in my mind, because I know life is about love and glorifying God. I know that all that matters is loving God, loving people, and being loved, but I don’t know if I’m ready to accept the consequences.

Now, don’t freak out on me; I’ll say that this is most likely a slump, and that I’ll snap back into it in a day or two, if not later today, but I don’t think doubts like this should be ignored. If God is God and the God He says He is, then He’ll come through, and we have nothing to worry about—right? Right.

My friend John is too amazing for the world and too amazing to be my friend. Frankly, I don’t know why anyone would want to be my friend. I’m so damn selfish and talk about my problems all the time. If you are my friend, you are probably a good listener, and I am sorry for all the talking about me I have done. (Sidenote: If you haven’t discovered the likes of The Velvet Underground and The MC5 and The Stooges, then discover them. Now.) John is always there and John listens and thinks he doesn’t give good advice but he does. He helps me. But he is doing this thing called The Forge at Pine Cove which is great but I don’t want that to separate us, and I know that is selfish but it is true and if it is true it should not be hidden—(which I need to realize because up about I obviously contradict that statement).

Also, when someone says, “I’m praying for you, Hunter,” what the hell does that mean? Does it do anything? What does it mean? Is it just the Christian version of a nostalgic, “I’m thinking about you, Hunter”? I don’t understand people when they say that. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

I don’t know. I don’t know about a lot of things. I know a lot of truth but don’t know if I’m willing to follow it. Is that so terrible? Is a moment of doubt so terrible? Is it? I’ll be through it soon. Humor me, will you?

You know, do you doubt? I hope you do. I think that if you don’t doubt then you maybe don’t have true faith. I’ll say that and sleep fine tonight. If you don’t doubt then you aren’t struggling with things, wrestling with them. Wrestle. I have plenty of friends who wrestle and it makes them stronger. (These Velvet Underground songs have such fantastic heartbeats, you know?) I’d encourage you to doubt. Go a day without believing in God, and see where you end up. Do it! Is that a terrible thing to say?

They say, you know, that things are never as easy as they seem, and I agree with that but I also disagree with that. I think that things are never as easy as they seem, sure, but I think that things (that life in general) is so much simpler! than people make it out to be. Love is all that matters. Love is abstract and love is bitchy and love is hard and love is dirty and love is difficult and love is all these but love is life and life’s love is all that matters. I believe that. Live now and love now.

I believe it.

You know I believe it, but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

You know?

419

2009-07-07T11:02:00.000-07:00

I’ve only just gotten back, so don’t (yet) expect anything grand or altogether beautiful; don’t expect good things or bad things; don’t expect anything but the truth, as abstract as it may be. As I begin my story, the story of the last six weeks, I must admit I’ve been utterly hypocritical, for though I warned you to expect nothing, I myself went into camp with expectations. I expected to have an emotional time (I didn’t); I expected to grow closer to God the way that you normally would at camp—a mountain-top experience with a slight fall afterward (there was no mountain for me there); I expected to change lives (and I learned, or re-learned, that only God is the changer of hearts).

I’m out of writing practice so this will all be very sloppy and rather poorly written, which is a travesty, but I need to start processing things as soon as I can. Here I go:

Though I expected those mentioned things above, I came into Pine Cove with a large number of prejudices, prejudices that I’ve had with me for a while, prejudices against the North-Dallas, upper-middle class, white, fraternity/sorority types, prejudices against the South and against the semi-conservative nature of things down here in Texas. Before I start out with camp, let me give you a few-month’s-prior-to-camp history.

The second semester in Iowa City was, to even put it modestly, euphoric. Words cannot describe how much I learned about grace, about myself and about the world, about God and people and the way things work, about love. I discovered that I had truly been given the church of my dreams in Iowa City; I discovered a man ten years older than me who taught me life’s secret; I discovered a community of believers who lifted me up, who realized that it’s okay to cuss and love God at the same time, who realized that Obama isn’t the anti-Christ, who see that the Christian life is about fruit, who know that faith without works is completely dead. It was a wonderful semester. It was fantastic to be away from Texas. Blissful.

And then I came back to Pine Cove.

East Texas.

Conservative.

Cross-heavy and lacking in emphasis (to my understand) on the resurrection, on hope and the fact that we were noble before we were sinful. Not once did I hear “Imago Dei”—Hunter, you are created in the image of the living God, the “Father of Lights” as James says. I believe in original nobility and secondary sin. I believe this: In the cross we find mercy, in the resurrection—grace. It’s not that I disagree with the faith statement of Pine Cove (I agree one hundred percent); it’s that I think they focused too much on one thing and not the other.

I disagreed with a few focus-related things about Pine Cove, and with the gender roles they play and definitely the America-fondling nature of things there, and I was blinded by my petty trifles. For the first three weeks (orientation and weeks one and two), my selfishness inhibited my ability to live carpe diem, to live in love, and to live with the very gospel that I myself preached: the gospel of the resurrection and of salvation.

But things began to change Thursday night of week two.

Let me interrupt briefly to say thanks to the following people, without whom I couldn’t have made it through camp:

Opa!

Tatt

Rafiki

Davey

Silly Rabbit

Bow Thai

I would have been screwed without you.

Back to week two. So, I’m walking back to my cabin after a frustrating Bible-study type of thing (called “Cake ‘N Stake”), and I’m semi-angry with the fact that I just read a section of a book claiming to preach the “gospel” that had absolutely no reference to the resurrection. I’m walking with Opa! and we aren’t saying anything but we both know we want to say something. We part and I get to my campers, who are getting ready for that night’s theme night, and I start to cry. Damn it.

I wept and met with Opa!, and he had someone take my cabin and we talked for an hour or maybe more. I don’t remember it perfectly. I was struggling with my prejudices. I was struggling with the fact that I felt lonely, with the fact that I hated being back in the south, with the fact that I didn’t love being around all the smiles that I thought were mostly bullshit. I felt lonely and alienated and deserted and purposeless (I think that the feeling of purposelessness is one of the worst feelings in the world, and it goes hand-in-hand with the feeling of not being loved). It was all pride and selfishness; I only realize that now. It was like being high-school Hunter all over again. It sucked. I’m sorry, Pine Cove staff who had to deal with that. I wasn’t being the Hunter who left Iowa in May, the Hunter who lives now and loves now. Ah!

I spilled a lot to Opa! I spilled most of my story, all of my frustrations regarding Pine Cove and myself. I missed Iowa. To all you Midwesterners out there, I love you and you are amazing. I missed my church and the friends I had made. I told him quite a bit. Deflated. Emptied. It was a beautiful thing. There was an empty cabin. We sat on the edge of one of the beds. I had bronchitis. I was stopped up. I was sobbing. He put his arm around me and hugged me. He cried a little but not much. He prayed for me. It was a soul-molding experience. Thank you, John. Also, the washing of the feet. Thank you.

After that night things changed—I saw that even people from Texas A&M had stories; I saw that even people who were in a fraternity or a sorority could be deep and intellectual. I know it’s a silly thing to put large groups of people (or even single people) in boxes, but it might life easier in some ways, but I needed to learn that that was wrong. God showed me my pride.

I could go on and on about the last three weeks of camp, not about how great they were (they were good but not great), but about how much I learned and how—even after the night with Opa!—they were hard. But I might do another post on that. I’m just going to wrap this up by saying a few things that I learned:

1. I need to be me wherever I am.

2. Depression is in my life to stay, or at least a melancholy overtone, and I am perfectly okay with it, because I know how to deal with it—by giving it over to Him.

3. (As a writer I should have known this but—) Don’t put people in boxes; everyone has a story; everyone has potential. If you truly want to engage humanity, leave your prejudices behind.

4. Love and live in the present. Carpe diem.

1st John 4:19

7 words.

Live it.

a=a

2009-05-21T10:58:00.000-07:00

Relationships oscillate. They go up and they go down, up and down, and up and down and up and down again. You fight but then you make up and it’s better than before even though you fought, and you always love each other but you fight and those are the low points on the oscillation and you forgive each other and seek forgiveness and that is the turning point from a negative slope to a positive slope. And hopefully the general trajectory of the graph is upwards. That’s how my relationship with God is, and I think that all relationships oscillate to a certain degree, some going up, some going down, and some staying flat, but all of them oscillating. You’re even better than the real thing. When I meet someone awesome, and they blow me away, they’re even better than the real thing, and that rarely happens. Maybe because I don’t let myself get blown away or maybe you aren’t good enough or maybe there aren’t very many people in the world who can blow anyone away. That might be sad but it might be true. When I think of the people who have blown me away, I mean just completely knocked me off my feet, they have had (always, at least in my life) the Holy Spirit. God is awesome, and He always blows me away, so sometimes when He is in a person that person with the Holy Spirit blows me away, but not always.

She blows you away. Breathless.

You know, you meet that person and they blow you away, and it’s all very exciting at first, and the excitement might carry on for a little bit, but after the initial excitement, and the initial giddiness, comes fear—the fear that the thing inside you (sin, presumably) renders you utterly INSIGNIFICANT. It’s happened in the past, you know, getting hurt and stuff. You got close to someone and they stabbed you with a serrated blade and watched you bleed and laughed at you. I don’t want to feel so different, but I don’t want to be INSIGNIFICANT. First you are so excited that you have met someone and then you are very sad, very scared, and very volatile. It’s a low point, but it’s not the lowest point, that’s to come, it’s just a low point, the initial fear and dread that you are too messed up to be loved. And the feeling continues. It continues. And you feel just like a fool. A fool for a lonesome train. Lord I’m a fool for a lonesome train. Right now you are low and you don’t see too much hope or light, but it’s not an unredeemable low, it’s just a low low. The oscillations might stop here for a bit just to wallow in the low for a little bit. But wait.

While low, something happens. It’s both good and bad. You realize, This is bullshit. I f------ hate this low, this pathetic feeling. And you get to feeling rebellious, you know, maybe like there’s a chip on your shoulder, and you see that IF YOU FEAR DYING THAN YOU’RE ALREADY DEAD. So you get angry and you get out of the low, because you are so angry, maybe at yourself or maybe at her, but at any rate IF YOU FEAR DYING THAN YOU’RE ALREADY DEAD. So you escape the low with purging anger.

In your anger, you stop just for a second, maybe to look at her or take a second to notice her again. And then she does it. Like she always does. She takes you by surprise which is stupid because you should have expected it. Sweet Sophia, with a fearless disposition like the beat of a drum, you get hurt more than others but you have more fun. She does it all over again. And after she blows your mind you forget the anger, and then you get to know her and something deeper begins to happen because you get past the thirteen-year-old sort of crush thing and you get to one. You get to know her and you see that she is the same as you and different at the same time, very different but very the same. We’re one, but we’re not the same. We get to carry each other. You get close to her and closer and closer and close to her and closer and closer. We’re one, but we’re not the same, we get to carry each other. Carry each other. She blew you away after the anger and then you get closer, past the crush thing and to the gritty, amazing stuff.

It’s all going well and swell and then—Miami. Everything is perfect, and then you are scared again, but it is a much deeper fear than before. Miami is the culmination of all fears. You are horrified and you aren’t only horrified but you actually want to run away because things are maybe working out too well. The scary thing is, this isn’t even the lowest point. You’ll get lower, but this is the worst low point, and the lowest is not the worst but the best, and it is coming in a little bit but wait for it because right now things are the worst. You are at this point, you know, where you’re scared, and then you begin to reflect about things, about relationships in your past and stuff like that, you know, and you think about the one who tore you up the most, and who you were in love with for real, and you think, THE TIME THAT I’VE TAKEN, I PRAY IT’S NOT WASTED. HAVE I ALREADY TASTED MY PIECE OF ONE SWEET LOVE? You feel like that, you know, and right here you aren’t even thinking about her, the one right now, but you’re thinking about the girl who hurt you the most and who you loved in the past, and it’s just a time of reflection. You are forgetting: if you fear dying than you’re already dead. But again, even in this time of past reflection, and fear, you get to feeling—it’s not my fault, it’s hers. I’m the same. I’ve always been the same. She’s changed, you know? Things are going bad because of her.

Oscillations.

And it happens again. You stop just for a second and look at her seriously and the heavens open every time she smiles. You know, you can hear her heart beating from a thousand miles. She’s got a fine sense of humor. Take away my trouble. Take away my grief. She just blew your mind and she’s even better than the real thing, but your mind returns to her—the one who hurt you. But you think of the old girl in light of the new girl—NEAR TO YOU I AM HEALING BUT IT’S TAKING SO LONG, CAUSE THOUGH HE’S GONE AND YOU ARE WONDERFUL IT’S HARD TO MOVE ONE. I’m better near to you. It’s sad but it’s also very happy. It’s both. I’M ENJPYING IT CAUTIOSULY. I’M BATTLE-SCARRED. I’M WORKING OH-SO-HARD TO GET BACK TO WHO I USED TO BE. I only know that I belong where you are. And then you look at her and embrace her being there and think, If it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad. Things stop revolving around the girl who hurt you and you start thinking about this new girl, because you know that she is better, because she’s better. Things are good and getting better but, you know, there’s that lingering fear, and so you get scared.

You get scared again.

WHY’D YOU COME HOME? TO THIS SLEEPLESS TOWN. IT’S THE LIFETIME COMMITMENT RECOVERING THE SATELLITES AND ALL ANYBODY REALLY WANTS TO KNOW IS WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO COME DOWN? You are up there in the sky and you are scared and somehow you have to reconcile yourself with this new girl, and you have to reconcile the past with the present, and you have to reconcile hurt and pain and loss and love and vulnerability and it all and it is all very, very scary. So you go Colorblind. You are now at your lowest, but just wait there a minute because at your lowest is where you have the most potential. You go Colorblind. The piano is haunting you and the beat of the song is smooth but haunting and very scary. You feel doomed or not doomed but like things might be meaningless. Pull me out from inside. I am ready. I am ready. I am ready. I am. I am covered in skin. No-one gets to come in. Pull me out from inside. I am folded, and unfolded, and unfolding. I am Colorblind. The piano continues but it’s Videotape. It’s a beat still, and it’s still haunting, but there’s something redemptive about it, because things are just the way they are. It’s like how a=a. This is my Videotape. This will all be my Videotape. a=a. YOU ARE MY CENTER WHEN I SPIN AWAY. You are at your lowest, you know, and the piano is still going, but something very beautiful happens and it is the most important movement that has happened so far. It’s still only the piano. You and the piano, you know? It all boils down to you and the piano. TILL I ONLY DWELL IN THEE. You realize that it’s only you and the piano and God. IF I FLEE FROM GREENEST PASTURES, WOULD YOU LEAVE TO LOOK FOR ME? FORFEIT GLORY TO COME AFTER, TILL I ONLY DWELL IN THEE? You realize that it’s only you and the piano and God and you see that it’s all very beautiful and that you don’t need to worry about the girl who hurt you or this new girl or any girl or anything ever. Because all there is is God. All that matters is loving God, loving people, and being loved.

That was the beginning, only the beginning. The beginning is the realizing. You know, you realize that it’s only you and God and the music. And then a little beat starts. From a computer. And drums. And some chords. The Moment of Surrender. You have realized it, and now you need to surrender to it. You are listening to the music and seeing God and something is rising deep within you and you are smiling all over and your cells are throwing a party and it’s all very glorious and very wonderful. IT’S NOT IF I BELIEVE IN LOVE BUT IF LOVE BELIEVES IN ME.

AT THE MOMENT OF SURRENDER, I FALL ONTO MY KNEES. I DID NOT NOTICE THE PASSERS-BY, AND THEY DID NOT NOTICE ME.

You are on your knees, you know, and you are surrendering, you know, and it’s all very wonderful and very beautiful, you know. You are giving it all up to God because that’s all that matters.

AT THE MOMENT OF SURRENDER, OF VISION OVER VISIBILITY. I DID NOT NOTICE THE PASSERS-BY, AND THEY DID NOT NOTICE ME.

You surrender and that’s it. That’s it. a=a.

a=a.

Things are just the way they are, you know?

And you here it, the music, and it’s reggae, and Bob says, DON’T WORRY ABOUT A THING, CAUSE EVERY LITTLE THING IS GONNA BE ALL RIGHT. And you know it is and you believe Bob because you know God and God knows you and loves you all the same.

So this is it. THIS IS MY LIFE. ON THE 4TH OF JULY. IT ISN’T MUCH, BUT AT LEAST IT’S MINE.

This is my life, folks.

Welcome to it.

Clock Aesthetics

2009-05-10T20:12:00.001-07:00

Looking back at my life, to high school and junior high and grade school, to the ups and downs and twists and turns, even in considering my situation now—in college—one of the biggest problems, in my life, seems to be the temporary nature of all things. I’m reading Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung by Lester Bangs right now, and it’s great, and there is an article on Astral Weeks, one of my favorite albums in the world, that is especially beautiful, talking about the depth of the album and its closeness and intimacy with people and love and relationships, all in terms of music and lyrics. It’s a very wonderful thing, Astral Weeks is, music is, but after you put the album into your record player, it ends—

because that’s the way music is, and life is, and people are, and relationships are, and movies are, and books are—temporary

(clock aesthetics)

they start

(clock aesthetics)

and stop—

(clock aesthetics)

and then they are over

The only thing that is not temporary is God, and what we do for Him and His glory: loving people and being loved. God solves all the problems in the world, and I’m not saying I understand Him fully, because there are still things that I am wrestling with in my faith, and that’s a good conversation I’d love to have, but I know that, ultimately, every time I question Him, He comes through, because He is God and this is the way things will be with God—everything is going to be all right; that’s just the way it is. And the tricky part about that statement is that it’s not necessarily true here on earth—here is the health-and-wealth gospel: Jesus lived a perfect life, and He got pinned to a tree, so even if you live in perfect obedience, life is going to be hard. And God doesn’t promise the “perfect someone” for you; He doesn’t promise that there will always be food on your plate, that you won’t be tortured, that your children won’t die in a car accident, that you won’t struggle with lust and depression and pride and jealousy and evil thoughts; God doesn’t promise a pretty life here on earth, because it’s just not going to be like that. Life on earth is

(clock aesthetics)

temporary

(clock aesthetics)

it stops

(clock aesthetics)

ends.

The band I might be touring with, Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, has this song, that makes me wish I had lived differently. It’s called “Cradle of Family.”

Friends come and go. They are temporary. They are like the wind. Girls come in and tease you and then they are gone. It is romantic for a bit but then they are gone and they just hurt. I’m in college in Iowa and I feel so temporary. I don’t like it. They

are

(clock aesthetics)

gone—

(clock aesthetics)

so fast.

(clock aesthetics)

I miss the cradle of family

I miss the comfort of home

I miss the way that I used to be

More than I miss being alone

I miss my family and I love them and I never got to tell them that enough, and family is something that is temporary, too, but something much less temporary than dates or flirts or even friends sometimes. I love you, family.

To Cody,

You were always stronger than me, and braver, and still are that way, and more willing to put yourself out there, and in many ways I look up to you, to the strength and courage you have that I don’t and maybe never will, but I will always be looking to you for that; and I am sorry that I wasn’t closer to you and that I wasn’t always there for you, and I love you and it’s hard for me to verbalize that because you are braver and stronger and more courageous. We are still young and we can be closer. I love you.

I miss the comfort of a lover’s bed

I miss the girl that I once knew

And I miss the idea we created in our heads

More than I have ever missed you

To Carson,

Carson, you have the softest heart in our family by far; with you and me, it’s like the difference between Mother Teresa (you) and Jack Bauer (me); you are a servant and love people and I have to yell all the time or something. Eventually all metaphors break down, and that’s the same with this one. I’m getting off track. Carson, I will always admire your kindness—it’s a true, actual, authentic kindness, one that is very rare, not like the Southern artificial sort of kindness, but you have a gift from God. I will always try to mimic and replicate the soft heart you have. Your heart is one of flesh. I love you.

To Mother,

I know I messed up this Mother’s Day, and I am sorry, and I will eat my cold pie even though it doesn’t taste good. I love you and you know it and it’s weird how much we actually talk, and that I actually call you for advice (and you are always right). When I think of all the mothers in the world, and the jobs they’ve done, it seems like I scored the best one or something, and there’s no handbook for motherhood that’s absolutely correct so I’m guessing you got it all from God, and I thank Him so often for you and dad, because—being here in college—I have been able to see how blessed I am to call you my mother. I love you. Happy Mother’s Day.

I can’t believe the secrets that I keep

The scars that you can’t see

Are nothing the like we have unleashed

To my Father,

Dad we are so similar that it is eerie, I think. We have the same mannerisms and people notice it right away. I am very lucky to be similar to such an amazing man. I look like you, but you are sexier; I am very smart like you, but you work a lot harder; I try to love like you, but your love for God and our family is unquenchable and for that I will always thank you, love you, and look up to you. When I have kids some day, I don’t really worry whether or not I’ll be a good father—I know I will because I have you as an example. I love you.

I miss the innocence of a purity

I miss the things I never had

I miss the way that I used to be

Before you ever got into my head

And now

this post

is over—

Nobility

2009-05-03T13:43:00.000-07:00

Perhaps what most concerns me about many, not all, evangelical churches is the separation I see of the spiritual and the physical, the “eternal”—as they might think of it—and the incarnation. The two are not, in fact, separated at all, or so I am convicted.

Another reason I love Hemingway, aside from the fact that he is a very character-based and relationship-based author as opposed to an image-based author, is that he finds nobility in things that most wouldn’t consider noble. In a sense, when read from a Biblical perspective—which is my perspective—Hemingway does not, in any way, separate the “noble” endeavors with the “mundane” endeavors. If he had been a Christian, and I dearly wish he would have been, he would have been the kind of Christian the evangelical church needs right now. In To Have and Have Not, the opening chapter describes several characters swordfishing in the Gulf of Mexico—and it is one of the most beautiful Hemingway passages I have ever read. He puts such strength and beauty and nobility into—fishing. Similarly, in The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway describes with great care the bullfights.

What I am saying is that things like fishing can glorify the Father. We don’t always have to have some grand plan for saving peoples’ lives. To be sure, we should build relationships so that we can love other people and hope that God might use us to bring them to Him, but ultimately that is up to God. It is our job to just love and do things to make Him happy. Fishing is spiritual. Writing is spiritual. Teaching is spiritual. Selling software is spiritual. Everything is spiritual. Playing golf, reading, going for a run, buying a banana from the grocery store, smoking a cigarette, drinking a cup of coffee, going to a concert, riding a bike, going to the bathroom, eating a meal. Everything is spiritual. Why do we have to differentiate? God wants us, I believe, to enjoy Him, and sometimes we think we are just here on a mission or something like that, and that is simply not true. We should see the nobility, like Hemingway does, in fishing and eating and pooping and smiling and working and laughing and all of it.

The difficulty lies not in the writing this truth or reading this truth or even in realizing this truth, but the difficulty lies in practicing this truth. Doing it. We don’t read James enough. James is very beautiful, because he says that if you don’t have works your faith is dead. If you don’t have works, where is your faith? Did you ever have it? I think that when we get to heaven the crowd will be much different than we think, perhaps smaller and—gasp!—not all Americans! Oh the horror. White people will probably be the minority. We’ll see, I suppose.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not very good at seeing the nobility in simple things. The truth is, it is very difficult to see how drinking a glass of orange juice can glorify God or is noble, but I believe it is, and I believe that when we enjoy things that are simple it makes them noble and it makes God happy.

We should pray that God will give us this ability.

I need to go.

Hemingway and Coffee and God and Cured Restlessness

2009-04-30T14:17:00.000-07:00

The coffee is a sort of gray-brown and is warm in right hand, and A Farewell To Arms is folded open to page 178 in my left hand, at the time when Frederic has been sent back to the front, back to Gorizia and back to the fighting, back to the blood and the ambulance he drives; he just left Milan, and Catherine, and it was very sad. A few months ago I thought it would be intellectual to read A Farewell To Arms, and so I picked it up and began to read it—very casually—and I finished it just last weekend. I liked it so much that I wanted to read another Hemingway novel, which I did (To Have and Have Not—finished it in three days), but then I kept thinking about Catherine and how much my reading of Hemingway did not meet my expectations. To be honest, I thought that reading A Farewell To Arms would make me—like I mentioned above—very intellectual or something, and before that I had never been in love with Hemingway, but after To Have and Have Not I felt empty, so I picked up A Farewell to Arms again, starting it again yesterday, and now I am more than half-way through it. And now I am in love with Hemingway. I wrote a sentence about it yesterday, because it is a true sentence about how I feel about A Farewell To Arms, and it plays with the frustration/infatuation I have with the word “read”—how it can be both past and present tense:

I read it, and I read it again, and I was always reading it, and always am reading it, and always will read it, on a plane or at home or in between classes or with a cup of coffee or smoking a cigarette, and when I read it I felt and feel very disillusioned—very sure about things and very unsure about things at the same time—and all the time when I was reading it, and am reading it, even though I felt and feel disillusioned, the real things in life became and become very real and the small things in life became and become very small, and that is the way things ought to be in life and that is the way things were and are when I am reading A Farewell to Arms.

It is true that A Farewell To Arms is becoming my favorite book, more so than The Great Gatsby ever was, and it is also true that, when reading A Farewell To Arms, I feel more in-tune with life. It is a very good thing. It is a very good book. If you have not read it, you should read it.

School is almost over and I am feeling restless, and I know I am about to meet the band this weekend and hopefully that will work out, but I am still feeling very restless and wanting to fly to Africa or something. I also know that I have been pretty busy—which I think is a lie that Americans tell themselves so they feel good about the things they haven’t done—so I guess I haven’t been busy but I have been not reading God’s word for a few days. And it’s only been like three days since I’ve poured myself into his word, and I have still been writing in my prayer journal every day, but I can totally feel the difference. I am very restless, and it is not my favorite feeling; I just end up drinking enormous amounts of coffee and occasionally playing basketball to burn off some energy, which actually is very helpful. You should read A Farewell To Arms, and don’t miss the horrors in the book by passing by his beautifully understated language. You should read it, all right. Please read it. I sent a short story to the New Yorker today via email. I am writing a collection of short stories based in Galveston, Texas, where I spent a lot of time as a kid. They are good short stories, I think. Hopefully they will be published some day. If you want to read one now just let me know. I am generous in my letting people read stuff. I only have two done right now, and they are rough drafts but they are at least done and I think they have good endings, and I have another one that I am planning out and it will be interesting and I think it will be very good, too, like the other ones, and if they are all published as a short story collection it will be called “The Gulf Tales” I think, which sounds simple but is good because they are just simple tales with larger implications if you read into the characters like you should.

If you love Jesus, you might check out Revelation 21:1-7, because it is very beautiful and very comforting and it eases my restlessness like NyQuil eases un-sleepiness.

Hemingway and Narrative

2009-04-25T20:45:00.001-07:00

As a writer, as a human being, over the past few months, I have been retrogressing from a preoccupation with complication—images, foreshadowing, symbols, hidden themes in my writing—to a primarily narrative-concerned state of things. When I read a book, or when I write one, why can’t a red car just be a red car? What I mean is, we inject far too much into things; not that deep meanings or thematic notions aren’t there, but that so often we lose the bigger picture, and in my mind, the thing that matters only: relationships. I’ve noticed this change just quite recently; firstly, a friend noted a difference in music taste that I’ve been going through—from Counting Crows (who, don’t get me wrong, I still practically worship) to other bands, Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, U2, to name a few. The more recent development, however, has been my taste in literature. I’ve discovered Hemingway.

All that matters is loving God, loving people, and being loved; syntactically, I see this simple truth most manifested in the simple prose of Hemingway, not the depth and complexities of Joyce’s or—I hate to say it—Faulkner’s writing. Though I do relish in the ability of a writer to manipulate the words on a page, I see what matters most (relationships, in my mind) more easily in simple forms of art, in the Hemingway novels and story songs.

Donning Love

2009-04-12T18:47:00.000-07:00

At once people confront this life with fear and audacity, with reluctance—great hesitation—and zealousness—an unquenchable fervor. At once I fear pain and embrace vulnerability; at once I curse and praise, hate and love, dispense grace and stifle it, sin and serve, speak and am silent, mourn and rejoice, celebrate and grieve; at once I am dark and light, holy and imperfect, saved and disobedient.

All these I feel or am. Walt Whitman said that, in “Song of Myself,” and it was a beautiful thing to say, and—for me and those words above—it is a true thing to say. All these I feel or am. We are walking paradoxes, beautiful catastrophes; we are searchers, wanderers; we are seekers and rarely finders; we are lovers; we are loved; we are human beings.

Through this confusion, the eternal paradox of the human being, in all of her complexities, in her lying and honesty, love and hate, sin and service, through this chaotic darkness there comes a great Light—a Light who is the Truth in the form of a human, who is the Son of God and the Son of Man, who is Alpha and Omega. This Truth brings me hope and light. It spurs me to cast away my sin and don purity—holiness for His name’s sake.

Today, above all days, believers of Jesus Christ and His Father YHWH, believers of the Holy Spirit and the cross, believers of the Trinity and of flawless grace, today, above all days, we should focus on the love of God; more than ever, we should focus on the fact that, truly, God Himself is love. God is love.

A problem I have with the church is this: more often we focus on the cross and not the resurrection; more often we dwell on the sin and not the grace; more often we fester in the guilt and not the freedom; more often we think of what we did wrong and not what He has done right. If you are not a Christian, and you are reading this (which, I hope to all hope that there, indeed, are non-believers reading this entry), I apologize on behalf of the church for not always projecting the correct message: life is love—nothing more, nothing less. Life is Jesus Christ—love incarnate. Life is love.

Today, Jesus Christ is risen. With that truth, let us rejoice; let us love.

Love

2009-04-07T18:45:00.000-07:00

My friend Josh the Writer is full of grace. There aren't very many people full of grace in this world. But he is one of them.

Josh helped me realize this:

The only thing that matters is loving God, loving people, and being loved.

That Night (Lights Are Shining)

2009-04-05T18:15:00.001-07:00

I have never been one of those people who really believed in a defining moment. I have never been the person who thinks that someone could actually change from a single moment in time. I have always thought—had always thought—that change was something that solely occurs over a given period of time, a period of time usually being more than weeks or months. I suppose that was always my belief because that was always my experience. Never before had I been changed by a single moment, a moment of surrender. Never before, had a single night drastically changed my life.

Granted, when one puts their faith in Christ, that is obviously a life-changing moment, so don’t hear me wrong or anything. That happened a long while ago, and even in considering that I have learned that faith in Christ just gets harder after you accept Him.

But then something happened.

As I have shared with you before, my biggest struggle, the scariest thing that stood in the way of my relationship with Christ was my inability to forgive myself. I couldn’t do it. I could not bring myself to forgive myself of my own sin. I used to semi-hate myself. And that was selfish. It was all about me. All the time. It was all about whether I was happy or sad or depressed or if I had a crush on a girl or where I was going to school or what I was going to do with my life. Everything was about me, for so very long.

One night—March 22nd, 2009—I decided it was time.

Here’s what I want to do:

1. I want to describe what spurred me on to make the decision.

2. I want to describe the actual moment, that night.

3. I want to describe the two weeks since then.

There is the movie—American History X—that you need to see. In it, someone (several people, actually) goes through a transformation. And there is this one part, at the very end of the movie, that is on my mind often. I’m going to paraphrase it because I don’t remember the exact lines, but a character—one of the changed ones, says, “Life is too short to be pissed off all the time. Life is too short to carry so much baggage.”

I thought about that line; I thought about Matthew 11:28-30, where Jesus tells us that He wants to carry our shit; I thought about change and surrender; and then I decided that life is too short to be pissed off all the time, that life is too short to hate myself, that life is to short to not accept Christ’s sacrifice.

Simply put, I just decided I had to get my shit together. I had a problem that was easily fixed, and I had read the invitation (Matthew 11:28-30) hundreds of times. All of the pieces were there, but never—before that night—had I decided to do it.

So I did.

II.

It was a Sunday. And I had been thinking about several things: the movie Watchmen, a close friend, and American History X. I have blogged about Watchmen before, so I won’t say anything except that it was giving me dark thoughts about humanity, about the world and where it was headed, about myself. I was talking to my friend about—complaining, actually, I was complaining and being whiny about humanity—and she said something that made me think about American History X.

Life is too short to be pissed off all the time.

It was about 10:00 p.m. and those three things were in my head, and then I decided to go take a walk and forgive myself, to defeat my biggest problem, or—rather—to let Christ defeat my biggest problem.

I brought my Bible, and the keys to my dorm room.

I walked out into the dark night, the wind blowing softly but consistently. From the time I stepped out of my door I knew where I was headed; I knew that any literarily beautiful rebirth takes place by water. So I walked to the river, along the river, by the river and over the river, until I found a bench. There was a lampstand by the bench:

Before I sit down I look out onto the water, lights from the city shining, flickering, reflecting on the water’s surface, soft ebbs rising and falling on the river’s banks, the wind gliding over the river’s surface, under the bridge and over it; not a person in sight, only the grass and the river and the reflecting lights, I sit down on the bench.

Before I peel open the Bible with me, I sing softly, softly but roughly, my out-of-tune voice having no audience except an audience of One, a tripled Being. Light of the world, you stepped down into darkness, opened my eyes let me see. I sing it, and I sing it again; in the darkness of the night and the light of the lamp, I sing it.

I close my eyes and see a white staircase, leading directly to a throne. On either side there are angels in white robes with gold edges, some singing loudly with strong and beautiful voices, some blowing silver trumpets, some simply smiling, their eyes turned to mine, their souls touching mine, connecting. The path to the throne is wide, all stairs leading upward; if not for the angels there would be no end to the stairs. The angels form an end to the eternity of the stairs, leading me to the throne. I start to walk up the stairs, toward the throne, encouraged by angles.

When I focus my eyes on the throne above, when I strain to see what—who—sits upon the throne, when I look closer, as I step up and up and up the stairs, glancing neither left nor right, as I approach it, when I get nearer, I can see only a smile—

I open my eyes and there is the river; the lights are dancing.

The lights are dancing.

I open the Bible, the Word of the Lord, and read—over and over—Matthew 11:28-30. Take my yoke, He says. He says, I want to carry it. My yoke is easy and my burden is light, He says.

Take it, I say. Life is too short to be pissed off all the time. I forgive myself. I accept Your love.

Finally, He says. I have been here the whole time, dude.

I know, I say. It’s my bad—obviously.

No problem, He says. I love you, dude.

I love You too, I say.

III.

Even though I had doubts about that night (when reflecting on it the next day), even though I wasn’t exactly sure what had happened, even though, never in my life, I was never one to believe in a moment of change, even in the midst of all my previous doubting and pessimism and depression, even then I knew, the moment after I said “I love you too,” even then I knew something was drastically different. I am a new person.

Since that night, I have not struggled with depression at all. Isn’t that beautiful? I have not even felt an inkling of it. Now, don’t consider me naïve, I do not think it’s gone for good, but I have learned several things about. One, my depression is easily controlled. Two, my depression is not mine anymore; it is Christ’s depression now. I gave it to Him that night.

I have grown closer to Christ in the past two weeks than in any two weeks of my entire life. For example, the other day I had a revelation. A mini revelation. A minirev. My minirev was simple but beautiful and it was this: I can glorify God by receiving love—receiving it from Him, from others, and from myself. If I love myself, I am loving His handiwork; I am loving His creation. That night, when I forgave myself, only then I was I able to love God to the fullest. Only when I accepted the cross was I able to love God and be loved by God.

Things have changed; they are different since that night. Now it is all about God. Never in my life has God been so firmly the foundation to my everything. To my relationships, He is the love upon which all love is founded. To my schoolwork, He is the diligence from which all diligence derives. To my writing, He is the creativity from which all art flows. He is the foundation, my foundation, my refuge, my home. He is my home. God is my home. The God who created everything is my home. The God who is love is my home.

I see the beauty in people rather than the ugly. I see the good in the world rather than the evil. I see the God in people rather than the sin. I see beauty everywhere in everything.

Everything is different.

Jesus changed me.

All it took was surrender.

I feel like all my life I have been told: love God.

I have never been told: be loved by God.

I think that being loved by God is a prerequisite to loving God, and, consequently, I think it is more important to realize that God loves you. If we don’t know we are loved, what then? If we don’t feel and see and realize God’s love for us, what then? When we truly see God’s love for us, only then can we truly love others, only then can we truly love God.

Be loved.

You are loved. God loves you. When you see this, you will love him back. Also, there is another beautiful thing about this. If it is more important that we realize God’s love, which I believe it is, than the emphasis, the focus is put on God’s love rather than yours or mine. And that is how it should be. God loves you. Be loved. You are loved.

That is the most important thing in the world.

Artists See

2009-04-01T13:50:00.000-07:00

It troubles me that the church, in general, is not more involved with art, with artists, because—at least from my perspective—it seems that there is a disconnect with the church in America and society in America; something, or someone perhaps, a group of people need to bridge the (growing) gap between the evangelical church and secular culture.

Here’s the great difficulty in America: because we are capitalist, and everything is something to be bought—(notice that we even speak in economic terms when we speak of relationships; we invest in people; we spend time with them; they are worth a lot to us; their friendship is valuable; now, I’m not saying it’s altogether wrong, even Paul talks like this sometimes [1st Corinthians 6:20], but I definitely think that the economic jargon is overdone and, if I may say it, sickening)—and because of this, the fact that (literally) everything is something to be bought, the gospel has been transformed into something to be bought as well. And that is wrong—but here’s the problem: in America, almost all we understand is commodity, price, so then how do we effective share the gospel, spread the gospel, if not by selling it because our society only understands things that are sold?

I saw Donald Miller the other day with my friend Tori, and he is honestly brilliant. He was on this panel of Christian authors and it was great and all, but I have to admit, the whole “Christian Book Expo” thing was—well, it was sickening. It literally made me sick to my stomach. Everywhere there were banners that said, “Be Transformed!” And I know that’s wrong, but if God is so intimate and powerful, then why do we have to advertise him like a new toothbrush? They handed out these brochures that were worse, in terms of advertising density, than fashion magazines or telephone poles in New York. Everything was, Buy This!—You Need This!—You Aren’t A Good Christian Unless You Have This!—and that is all bullshit.

The Truth is not a what but a who.

Why do we take something so beautiful (the very gospel of Christ, the good news, grace incarnate!) and make it something—tangible. God and his mercy should be alien; the gospel should be something we never understand, because the gospel is God’s love for his people, and who here would claim they understand God and his love? Certainly not me.

Instead of selling the gospel, like a toothbrush, instead of asking our neighbors to church every third week of every second month, instead of turning the gospel into another product, instead of making something beautiful something ugly, why don’t we mimic the Lord’s grace in our homes, our neighborhoods and cities and states, our country; why don’t we open our homes to strangers, to people who curse God’s word, to the filthy and the rich, to the intellectuals and the uneducated, to the Republicans and the Democrats, to the black and white, to people of all nations? What if we took grace seriously and did simple things like invite the neighbors we’ve never talked to over for dinner, or bake cookies for the old couple next door, or order flowers for the widow across the street, or make sack lunches for the homeless? Wouldn’t that be beautiful? It would most certainly be beautiful.

Let’s just love people. There’s no reason to make the gospel an advertising campaign, into something complex and nitpicky that we can fully understand; let’s keep the gospel simple (it is love and grace) and mysterious (we will never understand God, never).

In the first paragraph I mentioned that the church has lost (or never claimed) its connection with artists; and that is a wretched thing. Artists can see things that no-one else can; not pastors, not priests, not intellectuals, not counselors, not businessmen or businesswomen, not PhDs or scholars.

Though it is bold thing to say, I think that artists—often, but not always—see clearest the depth of man’s fall and, consequently, if they know Christ, they best perceive the grandeur of God’s love. We need this love in America; artists should be helping churches the way CEOs run businesses.

Artists capture best God’s creativity.

Artists see.

I think Jesus is an artist.

Artists can make anything beautiful; they can translate things the way nobody else can; they can connect people’s minds with their emotions.

Jesus is an artist. Jesus made death beautiful. Jesus connects us to God.

Is there a more beautiful piece of art—in the world, the galaxy or universe—than the gospel?

Thank you for being an artist, Jesus:

Psalm 19:1—The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.

Walk On

2009-03-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

Well, first of all, I did that to my ear. But anyway . . .

On a bed of nails she makes me wait. I wrote this blog a few days ago but waited to post it. So here it is:

Nights are the hardest for me. At night, my depression sets in at full strength; at night, I feel loneliest; at night, the literal darkness of the world spins and spins into a vortex of something evil, reminding me of so many things.

Mornings are different. In the morning, I see the day’s possibilities; in the morning, I see the opportunity for grace and for making things right between me and God, between me and people. Mornings promise something new.

This morning I had to take a fairly long walk to drop off an assignment for one of my classes. So, naturally (for me), I put in my iPod. Now, for a little bit of background, I have three playlists that mirror what I believe to be the three stages of mundane life and growing in Christ. First, there is a crisis. Second, there is progress—a sort of putting off the old, shedding your old self and your old ways. And third, there is Zion—redemption, the new city.

Crisis:

1. 1) Round Here (Live from New York)—Counting Crows

2. 2) A Murder of one—Counting Crows

3. 3) Recovering the Satellites—Counting Crows

4. 4) Richard Manuel (Live Acoustic)—Counting Crows

5. 5) Oh My God—Jars of Clay

6. 6) Other Side of the World—KT Tunstall

7. 7) Videotape—Radiohead

8. 8) Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of—U2

9. 9) Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own—U2

10. 10) Red Hill Mining Town—U2

11. 11) Moment of Surrender—U2

12. 12) The Scientist—Coldplay

Progress:

1. 1) Faster—Rachael Yamagata

2. 2) Sunday Afternoon—Rachael Yamagata

3. 3) I’m Alright—Jars of Clay

4. 4) Amazing Grace—Jars of Clay

5. 5) I Don’t Want You Now—KT Tunstall

6. 6) Another Place To Fall—KT Tunstall

7. 7) Township Rebellion—Rage Against the Machine

8. 8) You’ve Changed—Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers

9. 9) Walk On—U2

10. 10) I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For—U2

11. 11) I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight—U2

12. 12) Breathe—U2

Zion:

1. 1) Hand—Jars of Clay

2. 2) Unforgetful You—Jars of Clay

3. 3) Take Me Higher—Jars of Clay

4. 4) Three Little Birds—Bob Marley

5. 5) Suddenly I See—KT Tunstall

6. 6) Beautiful Day—U2

7. 7) Where the Streets Have No Name—U2

8. 8) White As Snow—U2

9. 9) Two Hearts Beat As One—U2

10. 10) Come Around—Counting Crows

I’ve been listening to these playlists—in order: crisis, progress, Zion—during the last few days and it has brought much understanding of the gospel, of the way I have been saved and the way I am being saved and the way I need to love others.

When I was on the walk this morning, listening to the Progress playlist, on the way to drop off my assignment, U2’s beautiful song “Walk On” came up on my iPod. In between two rows of buildings, on a walkway flooded with students moving swiftly from class, a beautiful thing happened.

As Bono’s words rung between my ears (“And I know it aches; how your heart it breaks; you can only take so much—walk on”), I looked at all the people in the crowd, the jocks, wearing their sweats and Nike products, the sorority girls, sporting the ever-in-style Uggs and revealing key areas of their orange-because-of-tanning-booths skin, the artsy kids with their brightly colored shoes and tight jeans; I looked at the humongous conglomeration of people and thought to myself: We are still here; despite all of the evil in the world, despite the hunger and war and death and pain and sickness, despite the nuclear warheads we have pointed to each other, despite the countless injustices committed by people and the twistedness of our hearts, we are still here; we are walking on, continuing in life.

And in that moment—that moment of the instant, glorious unification of mankind—it occurred to me that we are all beautiful; every person has a story; every person has the potential to serve the one, true, living God—one man is not better than another, nor is one woman more precious than the one behind her. We are beautiful miracles. The way the billions of cells work together in our body to create something capable of love, capable of sacrifice and grace and loyalty and service.

We are still here. As humans, we should rejoice in each other; as humans, we are one; we are one because we are Imago Dei, because we are the Lord’s children, because we are all loved. We are all loved. We are all beautiful and we are all loved.

Something Other

2009-03-24T16:17:00.000-07:00

I have a class that is a whole class dedicated to syntax, to writing sentences. We recently had an assignment that required us to write the first three sentences of our would-be autobiography using suspensive or periodic syntax, which is basically a fancy way of saying, The end of the sentence is the most important part; or, Until you get to the end of the sentence you won’t understand it. So, naturally, I did the assignment. I talked about how I was born in Austin (to this day—and I realize I’m only 19 years old—one of the best cities I have ever been to) and how the hospital was called St. David’s hospital; I built a nice set of sentences, but there was something missing. It wasn’t right. I did the assignment but it wasn’t the actual start of my autobiography. But then I did the assignment again. And it produced what will now be the opening sentence of my autobiography:

“Though a darkness often surrounds and suffocates my heart, restraining and hindering my spirit, though the ominous cloud of depression hangs over me—hangs over me the way a rain-cloud follows only one character in a cartoon, hounding him from left to right as he tries to escape it—though feelings and thoughts of death often haunt my mind, though I focus much sharper on the evil in man's heart rather than its good, my life has been permeated by something other than that darkness, something other than that evil, something other than that death: grace—scandalous, despicable grace.”

As I’ve gotten farther into this life of following Jesus, I have realized several things. Firstly, it can really suck at times. For all of the health-and-wealth gospel preachers out there, What you teach is complete bullshit. Here’s why: If producing fruit and serving God, giving your money to him, gets you earthly wealth—money and riches and Escalades—then what did Jesus do wrong? I mean, Jesus was perfect and he got nailed to a tree. God doesn’t promise an easy life; in fact, I would say the Christian life is much more difficult than life without Christ (in some ways but not in all). There is certainly a large amount of suffering in the Christian life.

You know infomercials? Those amazing commercials that go on forever and ever without the real smiley guy or gal explaining how awesome his or her product is? Let’s make one for Christianity, trying to sell you to believe in Jesus:

*commercial starts; a man in a power suit sits and reads a Bible at an executive-sized desk covered with books; he puts the book down and makes eye contact with the camera; man has a thick, brown beard*

Man with Suit: Howdy there, how’re y’all doin’ tonight?

*man’s voice is loud and overbearing; he’s almost shouting*

Man with Suit: I know what you’re thinkin’: What could I possibly learn from a man in a suit with a Bible? Well, let me tell ya—A LOT!

*man laughs hysterically for roughly ten seconds; then he gathers himself and looks directly at the camera with a straight face*

Man with Suit: 2000 years ago lived a man—the Son of Gawd, in fact—and he lived a perfeck life here on this piece’a dirt we call earth. After that, he got nailed ta a tree because he loved you an’ me. He wanted us to be called sons uh Gawd.

*man’s voice is still loud and overbearing; a smile begins to form—slowly—on his face*

Man with Suit: Because he died we getsta live lifes in service ta him.

*man checks his watch and looks at the camera with great distress but then smiles widely*

Man with Suit: Uh-oh! My time is runnin out! Before I go let me tell you what YOU—as a follower of Christ—could go through: Peter, one’a Jesus’s disciples, got nailed on a tree, too. Only he got crucified upside down! Stephen, another follower of Christ, had rocks thrown at’im till his head sploded! Paul, who wrote lotsa the New Testament, was always gettin the tar beat outta him and thrown in a jail!

*man smiles and awkwardly stares at camera in silence; he then throws open his arms like he is embracing a long-lost loved one*

Man with Suit: SO—if you wanna get nailed to a tree, get rocks thrown atcha, get beaten, or go to jail, follow Jesus by calling this toll-free number: 1-800-GET-KILD

*screen fades away to the show you were previously watching: The Office*

Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I got carried away—but the point is, you shouldn’t expect a life—when following Jesus—that is easy or not filled (completely filled!) with suffering. Our expectations should be such that we will endure painful lives, but these lives glorify our wonderful God who, in the end, saves us from eternal damnation for his name’s sake.

Before the infomercial I was talking about the things I have learned in the Christian life. First, we will suffer. Another thing I’ve learned is that the joys of the Christian life far outnumber the pains. It’s amazing to me that I can go almost anywhere in the entire world and have something in common with someone; and not something small or artificial, like that we both skateboard or like the Beatles, but something deep and everlasting—that we worship the same, the one and true God; that we both believe in the death and resurrection of Christ.

As you know, I struggle with depression. And every once and a while it gets to a point where it definitely shouldn’t, but when I am close to Christ, when I am daily throwing my baggage onto him, it vanishes almost completely. He alleviates so many of my problems I can’t even begin to explain it.

A third thing I have learned is that nothing matters except what Jesus says matters. There are lots of things to do in this world, in this country. There are too many things to do, actually. We are attacked with so many advertisements and new things that say, You won’t be happy until you buy me or experience me; that we often can sin by simply not giving the Lord our time or attention. It’s sad, really; it’s sad how ingrained Satan is to this country but we don’t hardly acknowledge it at all.

The most fulfilling things I have done in my life have been things for others. Isn’t that ironic? (The answer is yes.) Grace is the only thing that matters, people. Grace encompasses all others: love, fear, hope, service, loyalty, motivation, desire, peace.

God is grace.

Love Power Peace

2009-03-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

I saw the movie Watchmen yesterday. I liked it. Now, it’s gotten a load of bad reviews and fans of the graphic novel are upset. I know all of that. But I don’t care, because I thought it was fantastic. Here’s why.

Though Watchmen is a dark movie, though it is bleak and pessimistic, it is spot on in its critique of human nature. We are dark people. There is a part in the movie where Rorschach (interesting character) is talking about the evils of the world—how these evils are not from God but caused by man—by the darkness in man’s heart.

We all want to be loved. We all want power over people. We all want peace.

It’s dark. But I see almost every movement in my life, in mankind’s history, as a movement to one of these principles: To be loved, To be powerful, To be at peace. We are low. We are dark. We are evil.

But that is before grace came into the picture.

“Every day I have to find the courage to walk out into the street with arms out; I got a love you cant defeat. Neither down nor out, there’s nothing you have that I need, I can breathe.”

And instead of darkness, there is light. Instead of evil, there is good. Instead of power, there is love. Instead of low, there is high. Instead of us, there is Christ.

Watchmen is correct about the world if there is no God, no grace.

But there is

Grace

2009-03-10T12:10:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday my pastor gave an excellent sermon on Revelation 2:18-29—which is a letter from Christ to the church at Thyatira. In this series of letters, Christ points out what the churches are doing well and what they need to do better.

Perhaps my favorite part of this sermon series—of these letters to the churches—has been looking at the introduction Christ gives Himself:

Revelation 2:1—“The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands.”

2:8—“The first and the last, who was dead, and has come to life.”

2:12—“The One who has the sharp two-edged sword.”

2:18—“The Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet are like burnished bronze.”

3:1—“He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars.”

3:7—“He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no-one will shut, and who shuts and no-one opens.”

3:14—“The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God.”

Jesus is quite frightening. He has such an absurdly large amount of power, and yet, somehow, He loves us. Christ’s love, God’s love, the Spirit’s love, is ridiculous, by our standards at least. God’s love is absurd. I’m trying to offend you. God’s love is completely stupid. It’s so dumb (for Him—by our standards). God’s love is dim-witted and mindless.

Let me paint you a picture: You are married. If you are a guy, you have a beautiful wife, and if you are a girl you have a wonderful, compassionate husband. The day after you get married, on your honeymoon, your spouse sleeps with someone else, or goes to a strip club, or goes to Vegas and hires ten hookers. What do you do now? Let’s say you forgive them, “It’s okay, honey, I still love you.” The relationship is whole again. You go to bed all happy and full of fuzzies because you have forgiven your spouse.

You wake up in the middle of the night and your spouse is gone—uh oh. You call and they don’t answer, but you find out later that they were unfaithful again. It stabs your heart. You get that lumpy sort of feeling in your throat where you think you might cry if you talk. Because it hurts so much that the person you just married is sleeping with other people on your honeymoon.

Now, repeat that process every single day. Would you divorce the spouse? My guess is: yes. If my wife sleeps with another dude on my honeymoon—and I’m gonna be honest here—I would most certainly divorce her. And, on the off chance I didn’t, if she slept with another dude right after I forgave her for the first time, I would for sure divorce her. You should get the picture by now. And hopefully you have made the connection.

You are the spouse who sleeps with someone different every day. I am that spouse. God is the husband who forgives me every day, even though I hook up with a different girl every day. I screw up big time. I tell God, with my actions, that he can take the back seat for a while, and He forgives me. That’s completely illogical! Look at our standards above! If any man or woman stayed with a spouse who committed adultery every—single—day they would be insane! Are you getting this? It’s so ridiculous! And awesome! And beautiful.

How, why does He still love us? I’m not sure it’s our job to figure that out. But I do know it’s our job to bask in His love, and respond to it. With action—showing others, as best we can, His love—grace

Hosea 2:19-20—“I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and compassion, And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. Then you will know YHWH.”

Cypress

2009-03-04T09:21:00.000-08:00

Normally, if I don’t put up a post in more than a week and half or so, I would say you should be worried about me. But, this month, that is not the case. I am doing fine. Really!

Here is what I have been doing—here is what I have been spending my time on instead of blogging (which I would have normally been doing):

It’s really hard to write a novel. Like, no joke, it’s hard. I’ve gone through three or four ideas (I even started writing one) but now I think I have found the one. Writing novels is kind of like finding the woman you want to marry, ya know? There are endless possibilities, but when you get to know them you find something that makes them a big no. I hope this doesn’t sound harsh or anything. There are so many girls and there are so many ideas for writing a book, but the girl has to be right for me; she has to be the kind of girl that God wants me to marry, so there can’t be a whole lot out there. Similarly—I’ve probably already lost you—for me to be able to write a novel, I have to be clicking with the idea on so many levels: the voice, themes, language, plot, characters. Endless!

All this said, I am well. I am working through my biggest problem with the Lord, and I ask that you would pray for me. Here is my problem: I cannot forgive myself. And I know that that basically means I am prideful (because I’m telling the Lord His sacrifice isn’t good enough for me, essentially), but that’s it. It’s not that I have a sin-saturated life; it’s just that I can’t even forgive myself for the littlest of sins. Judging somebody. Looking at a beautiful girl and thinking the wrong thing. Putting the Counting Crows before God. Or writing. Whatever. I can’t forgive myself. But I’m making progress.

I will leave you with this; well, God wants to leave you with this; He is saying this:

“It is I who look after you. I am like a luxuriant cypress; from Me comes your fruit.”

Laura

2009-02-21T13:19:00.001-08:00

Last night, after seeing a movie, I walked into my dorm room. Our AC is broken, so we have to keep the window open almost all the time (our heater is like a huge monster—it can’t be stopped, so we have to use the AC or the weather to make our room the right temperature). In the quiet, through the bursts of quick, sharp, cold wind, I heard two girls talking outside. One girl, her name was Laura I think, was talking to another girl, whose name I never caught. Laura was mad at someone for treating her wrong or cheating on her or something, and, like a volcano, the conversation gradually rose in intensity. Not five minutes later Laura was screaming at the top of her lungs, simultaneously weeping, saying, “I am so fucking tired of this; I hate him and I am fucking done with you.” I wanted to cry. It was sad. It was horrible and broken.

I wanted to run outside (and I almost did, to tell you the truth) and give Laura a hug, an embrace, saying, “Laura, I love you. Laura God loves you. You are loved, Laura. It’s going to be okay, Laura. I am here for you Laura.”

I wanted to weep with Laura. I wanted to weep for her. I wanted her to know she is loved. Because it breaks my heart knowing that she thinks she is not loved and adored and appreciated and sought after.

I want Laura to know that God loves her, that I love her. I want Laura to know there is hope that doesn’t fail when the storms come and the torrents destroy our homes and our hearts.

Laura, God loves you and wants you in His kingdom, in His arms, in His embrace, enjoying his wedding feast, feeling the warmth of His grace.

Anna Begins

2009-02-12T16:13:00.001-08:00

My friend assures me, "It's all or nothing."

I am not worried, I am not overly concerned.

My friend implores me, "For one time only,

make an exception." I am not worried.

Wrap her up in a package of lies,

Send her off to a coconut island.

I am not worried, I am not overly concerned with the status of my emotions.

"Oh," she says, "you're changing."

We're always changing...

It does not bother me to say this isn't love.

Because if you don't want to talk about it then it isn't love.

And I guess I'm gonna have to live with that.

But I'm sure there's something in a shade of grey,

Or something in between,

And I can always change my name

If that's what you mean.

My friend assures me, "It's all or nothing."

But I am not really worried, I am not overly concerned.

You try to tell yourself the things you try to tell yourself

To make yourself forget. To make yourself forget. I am not worried.

"If it's love," she said, "then we're gonna have to think about the consequences."

But she can't stop shaking and I can't stop touching her and...

This time when kindness falls like rain

It washes her away. And Anna begins to change her mind.

"These seconds when I'm shaking leave me shuddering for days," she says.

And I'm not ready for this sort of thing.

But I'm not gonna break and I'm not gonna worry about it anymore.

I'm not gonna bend, and I'm not gonna break. And I'm not going to worry about it anymore.

It seems like I should say, "As long as this is love..."

But it's not all that easy, so maybe I should

Snap her up in a butterfly net and pin her down on a photograph album.

I am not worried cuz I've done this sort of thing before.

But then I start to think about the consequences,

And I don't get no sleep in a quiet room and...

This time when kindness falls like rain

It washes me away. And Anna begins to change my mind.

And every time she sneezes I believe it's love and,

Oh lord, I'm not ready for this sort of thing.

She's talking in her sleep.

It's keeping me awake. And Anna begins to toss and turn.

And every word is nonsense but I understand and,

Oh lord, I'm not ready for this sort of thing.

Her kindness bangs a gong,

It's moving me along. And Anna begins to fade away.

It's chasing me away. She disappears, and

Oh lord, I'm not ready for this sort of thing.

Cookie-Cutter Nation

2009-02-11T17:54:00.000-08:00

When I eat at the dorm cafeteria I have to turn on “Bullet in the Head” by Rage Against the Machine. The song is about how we, as a country, as a society, subscribe so readily to a certain way of life, a way of life leading us to apathy, to stagnancy, a way of life leading to selfishness, to self-worship. Here is a section of lyrics from the song:

No escape from the mass mind rape

Play it again jack and then rewind the tape

And then play it again and again and again

Until ya mind is locked in

Believin' all the lies that they're tellin' ya

Buyin' all the products that they're sellin' ya

They say jump and ya say how high

Ya brain-dead

Ya gotta fuckin' bullet in ya head

As I sit and eat my packaged apples I think, pondering the people around me, and on the rare occasions my headphones aren’t in, I listen. The number one topic of conversation is alcohol. No shit. Conversations go like this:

“Oh—my—gosh! I had like seven shots of tequila last night!”

“Oh my gah really? That is like so much! Do you remember anything?”

*Girl thinks for a few seconds* “Um I don’t think so . . . ”

What the hell are we doing?

Conspiracy-theory people are really weird, but this is truth: media tells us several things in America (I will say America all I want because this is where I live and I have only abroad so many weeks, so I don’t know their media, but I have every right to rant against the American media). Media tells us that alcohol both makes you happy and gets you sex, and the sex you get from alcohol isn’t some half-ass leftover sex, but sex with girls who look like air-brushed supermodels (girls who actually ARE air-brushed supermodels in the commercials). Google-Image Coors Light or Bud Light and see some of the pictures. Beer is sex is happiness. Better yet, Google-Image Sports Illustrated—what comes up? Oh, every single picture is a girl in a bikini. We are so bent on sex. Sex and drugs. Sex and drugs and buying things.

Another fact about America: our economy is built on buying things. Buy more things! How much of the stuff we buy do we actually need? The whole stability of our nation lies on purchasing things. Even now, when the economy is almost at rock-bottom, what are we told? Buy things! Buy things because they’re cheaper than ever! Our society, our economy is way past the point of capitalism; we have reached an obsession with things. I can’t even describe how insane it is that we think all day long about things. Everywhere we are bombarded with things, with sex, with alcohol. We are being conditioned. And it’s bullshit.

Another aspect of the mass conditioning of American society is that, due to the (obvious) fact that we are all being shot with the same ads, we are all being told to be one way, to live life in this way. The alcohol and hot sex and skinny big-boobed money things more iPods (pause: have you ever noticed how funny it is that they are called I pods . . . how selfish can we get? it’s all about me! and the funniest thing is we are losing the me because we are all told to be the same!). More stuff!

Also notice how sexist this all is. Women are becoming objects more than ever. If you don’t think that there are feminist issues that we as Christians should be fighting for your head is up your ass.

Back to the lunch room: I can see the fruit of our media. I can see how we all are becoming homogenous. All the girls are looking the same and all the guys are looking the same and all the clothes are looking the same. We are becoming one—completely losing our individuality. I sit in the lunchroom and people talk about alcohol. I sit in the lunchroom and people all look the same. I sit in the lunchroom and go insane. We are becoming cookie-cutter people. We are letting the way our economy works govern our lives. Sex sells. Our economy runs on sales. So let’s sell sex. Let’s tell people sex will make them happy, or that beer will make them happy, because if they think it will cure their disease they will buy it. My gosh this is such bullshit.

I might have lost you by now but here is the part that angers me most. Because our country is so me-centered, we neglect other areas of the world (and here at home as well) that are impoverished that so desperately need our help.

In the first chapter of Galatians Paul talks about how he was “set apart” by God to do His will, for the advancement of the gospel. Like Paul, we (brothers and sisters in Christ) have literally been chosen by God to share the goodness. God has hand-picked you and me to share in the knowledge of Christ so that we may bear fruit and glorify the Father. God doesn’t want us to be what the American media wants us to be. God wants us to be like Jesus, who cares for and loves them and doesn’t (didn’t) live the alcohol and hot-sex-skinny-big-boobed-money-things-more-iPods life. Jesus, believe it or not, was not a product of America. Thank God.

We are set apart, sisters. We are set apart, brothers.

I conclude with a word of encouragement:

As most of you know, I have been involved with RUF (Reformed University Fellowship) here at the University of Iowa, and the friends I have made in and through RUF are so close to my heart. I see the Holy Spirit so evidently in their lives. The people at RUF aren’t cookie-cutter people because they have the Holy Spirit. The people at RUF and One Ancient Hope give me a smile. They gave me optimism and hope that this whole country isn’t going to shit.

God’s Holy Spirit moves. His son cloaks. He loves.

Wings of Wax into City

2009-02-08T11:54:00.000-08:00

I step outside and it’s colder than I expected. The wind, blowing in quick, sharp bursts, slices against my unshaven face, coldly reminding me it’s still winter. I light a cigarette. The bank tells me it’s 34 degrees. The wind tells me it’s colder. I stand for a minute or so, the cigarette in my mouth as I put on my black leather gloves. The wind cuts. When the gloves are on I look right, then left, looking for someone I know. It’s Iowa City. It’s small. Besides, I’m almost always within the two-block radius of Java House and Java House-Prairie Lights. I’m not a homebird but routine is nice. Gloves on, cigarette burning, I walk from lunch to Java House. I arrive and the cigarette is still burning. It’s about a 100-yard walk. Outside the door I wait, drawing from the Camel Light, back against the wall, looking toward the street. As the cars drive by (routinely), my eye wanders to the sidewalk, to the familiarity of this city. Not two feet in front of me stands a lamppost, its base surrounded by snow, dirtied with specks of brown, black, and dark-gray. I look closer and see hundreds of cigarette buttes, strewn about the snow like bodies in France after World War II. Toward the edge of the snow are five brown lumps. Dog shit. And all it once it comes to me: this is the world. The world is dirty snow, cigarette buttes, and dog shit. I throw my cigarette but into the pile. My mark.

Over the last few weeks my thoughts have been dominated by two things: the shortcomings of this life and the perfection of God’s heavenly kingdom. Josh the Quarterback and I were talking yesterday. U2 is an amazing band and they have a song called “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” Josh and I were talking about this song. About how, despite all the beautiful things in life (community, family, love, to name a few), there is still longing. Nothing here can make us perfectly happy. That’s what I saw in the pile of cigarette buttes. That’s what I saw in Nigeria this summer. That’s what I see when I listen to the Counting Crows and when I read good literature and when I see my friends cry and smile and when Bono sings. “But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” But but but but but. Life is “but.” Life is, “Please one more.” Life is, “A little longer.” Life is, “A little deeper please.” Life is Icarus. If you aren’t familiar with the story of Icarus you should be. It’s an amazing story because, once you hear it, you see it everywhere.

In short, Icarus and his father were trapped and needed to escape. Icarus’ father fashioned them wings of wax, but before the flight he told Icarus not to fly too near the sun. When in the air, Icarus did what you think he would do, what we all do, he flew too close to the sun, and consequently his wings melted and he died in the sea below him.

We all try, in one way or another, to touch the sun, to “get there.” We try to reach heaven. And we die right before we get there. Look at Icarus throughout history: the tower of Babel comes to mind. Celebrities come to mind. Solomon comes to mind. I come to mind. You come to mind. The story of Icarus is the story of humanity: of trying to do it by ourselves. And damn it we get close.

“I have spoke with the tongue of angels. I have held the hand of a devil; it was warm in the night. I was cold as a stone, but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

Now, if I haven’t lost you yet, the second pervading thought is much brighter. The brightest, in fact. And, as always, there’s a song that encompasses this thought.

Though the world is dark and painful, gray and bleak, my life is guided by a hope brighter than the sun that scorched Icarus. My life is led by a light greater than all the heavens together. My life is lead by the Light of the World. See John 8:12.

Though the world is stormy and rough, oft harsh and never enough, our world, my brothers and sisters, is a world of hope. Not a hope that is here just yet, but a hope to come.

“Don’t worry about a thing, cause every little thing is gonna be alright.” Bob Marley puts into words all the hope I have. “Don’t worry about a thing, cause every little thing is gonna be alright. Rise up this mornin, smile with the rising sun. Three little birds is by my doorstep, saying, ‘This is my message to you: Don’t worry about a thing, cause every little thing is gonna be alright.’”

I have hope that the Light of the World is gonna make everything alright, and that is how all the darkness is illuminated. I am guided by hope.

Revelation 21:1-7

garden—fall—redemption—city

The Email

2009-02-05T15:28:00.000-08:00

I’m listening to “Guerilla Radio” right now by Rage Against the Machine; my fingers are shaking as I touch the keyboard, double-tapping letters and misspelling words, because I haven’t been this angry perhaps ever. I’m seething. My blood is boiling and my heart is thumping out of my chest. The way you feel when someone insults your family or hurts someone you love. The way you feel when your Lord is assaulted, when your Lord is shown disrespect, when your Lord, when the Lord, is spat upon.

I’m in a fiction writing class and I wrote a story that says the infamous “f-word” and deals with violence and racism, and it’s a great story; it’s well written and contains multiple themes, motifs, and symbols. It’s a damn good story. It’s a great story that doesn’t offend anybody’s world-view, that is, unless you are a racist psychopath murderer. If you are, don’t read my story because it will offend you.

So our teacher sent out the stories we’re supposed to read for Monday. You see, four students write a story and the class critiques it. I got the stories about two hours ago. One of the stories was written by a guy, we’ll call him Jude, who is a Philosophy-Math double major (brief pause—my fingers are still shaking because I’m still seething). Jude is not a Christian, and apparently Jude also hates Christians and the idea of Christ being the Son of God, and the fact that God even exists bothers him to. It bothers him to the point that he just loves to hate on Jesus.

You know those people who are fans of a certain football team, but all they do is trash-talk the rival team? Jude is one of those guys. Jude is one of those guys who demands respect but doesn’t give it. Jude is one who doesn’t talk about his own (extremely insignificant) beliefs but other peoples’ beliefs. Jude is one of those guys who is all about tolerance but, oh so ironically, shows none. Jude is one of those people who write stories attacking Jesus Christ. People like Jude anger me. My temper is not terribly quick; there aren’t many things in this dismal world that anger me to the point of wishful violence. Jude is one of those things. Let me just get this out: right now if he walked into the room I would hit him in the face until he has brain damage. I’m sorry but I needed that out.

Now, all that you have just read is me speaking. It’s Hunter speaking. It’s the human side of Hunter speaking. It’s the side of Hunter that doesn’t have Jesus, the Jesus that Jude so horribly misinterpreted.

Here’s the side that Hunter is now: I love Jude. I love him and am praying for him. I am praying to God that Jude will come to a knowledge of Him. I will not respond like-mindedly but in love, however that may be. I love Jude and beneath the anger my heart breaks for Jude. This isn’t Hunter speaking but Christ. This is the Holy Spirit. This is YHWH: I love Jude. I would not be able to love Jude right now if it weren’t for Christ. Thank the Lord.

Here is an email I sent my teacher after reading Jude’s story:

"Okay, this is probably really annoying for you to have to deal with, but I have to ask about it.

I read Jude’s story, and, as a Christian, found it extremely offensive, and not only offensive but, to a certain extent, naive and uninformed. But most certainly offensive. I find it very ironic that so many non-Christians cry for "tolerance" and yet show many of my brothers and sisters none or very little. So, I'm presented with a huge dilemma: if I were to go with the initial feelings I have of the story's theme and ridiculous portray of Christ, I would most likely lash out and semi-attack his story, but I know that's not what Christ would want me to do (somehow I don't think that's the Christ Jude knows). He would have me respond in love. I'm attacked, I feel attacked, and not only am I attacked but God and His Son are attacked. There are really only a few things that anger me, and this is the one that angers me most. It's so damn hard for me to exercise any self-control at all.

How would this fare in older times? If I were a loyal vassal of a lord in Medieval times, I'd think I'd respond with violence, or at least some verbal defense. My Lord has been attacked, so what am I to do? Certainly the uncontrolled passion in me right now says attack back, isn't that the natural, "human" thing to do? But no, that's not what my Lord teached, despite what so many people think. He teaches love.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are a lot of idiot Christians out there, and I hate dealing with that fact. I apologize on behalf of them: for the Crusades, for the violence so many people have committed in the name of God, for the Church's stagnancy in the Civil Rights' movement, for the many of the deeply-racist churches in the South and in Dallas where I'm from. I'm sorry for anything that any Christian has every done wrongly to you, Miss Briggs. I apologize and hope that you see that's not ever what Jesus wanted. It breaks His heart and it breaks mine, greatly. I am sorry.

Back to our situation here. Here's what I figure is best for me to do, but I would like you to OK it first: There's enough I don't love about the story stylistically that I could fill half a page, so can I do that and just ignore the offensive nature of the theme? I am trying to see what He would have me do, and right now that is the only thing I can come up with.

I'm sorry you had to hear all that.

Peace, hunter"

And Language Fails (My Heart Returns)

2009-01-29T11:53:00.000-08:00

Doers

2009-01-26T12:57:00.000-08:00

Often when I read the Bible I connect to it (only) on a surface level—skimming the surface of the words and breezing through the stories like it’s homework, and if I’ve learned anything at camp or church or Bible studies, it’s that other people have that experience, too. Christians, brothers and sisters through the Messiah, I am talking to you right now, you who are (most likely, almost definitely) identifying with me. Ya know?

Here’s how it oft plays out: I sit down with my Bible, and I honestly want to connect with the Lord and learn more about Him, and hopefully find an application to my life that bears fruit, but then I start reading and something . . . just . . . happens. I get into the passage a little bit and either get distracted or just plain tired of reading it. The above happens: skimming the Lord’s Word (Isn’t that a silly thought? Here we are given the truth and yet we treat it with such, with such lightheartedness).

But I don’t want that—I’m not satisfied with that, and I don’t suspect you are as well. I’m tired of bland Scripture readings (which should be an oxymoron); I’m tired of digging into truth and only finding dirt; I’m tired of not connecting with the Lord of my salvation.

So there’s this band, called Rage Against the Machine, and they are pretty hardcore (like I wish I was some of the time). They have all these cool political beliefs and hate America and stuff. They’re pretty hip and make you feel rebellious even when you are listening to them. Tom Morello, the band’s lead guitarist (and a Harvard grad with a degree in Political Science I might add), has said that J former J President George W. Bush should be charged with war crimes and hung. Now I don’t agree with that but they say stuff like that, which is semi-shocking and kinda makes you want to lock your doors or something.

But Rage Against the Machine, despite some of its near-psycho beliefs, stands for a lot of amazing things. The band promotes and helps organizations that further women’s rights, fight poverty and injustice, and stuff like that. I was front row at a show they did and Zack (lead singer) gives a political speech every time, and here’s what I’m getting at: Rage Against the Machine stands for something. They believe in something enough to take action for it. Even if some of their beliefs are not what we would deem morally right or whatever, that’s more than most people can say.

I was eating lunch today and looked around at all the college students, eating, drinking, laughing, etc., and I thought to myself, “Holy shit, most of these people (including myself 99% of the time) don’t stand for anything but themselves.” And then I listen to Rage Against the Machine and they are standing for something. I can respect anyone who stands for something that’s not rooted (somehow) in their own personal gain.

As I sat, eating my apples and watching bleach-blondes flirt with Hollister guys, it occurred to me that I don’t want to be like them; I don’t want to be another person who seeks his own—I want to be one with something bigger, and better.

I realize this post is scatterbrained, but I’m (at least) attempting to make a point. Just now I was reading Ephesians again and listening to Rage Against the Machine (I suggest it) and thought to myself, “This is something that is serious, something that has eternal consequences, something that is worth being acted upon and not (solely) meditated upon.”

Therefore, I resolve and pray (because, once again, as Christ says, apart from Him we can do nothing) to let God use me. I’m giving God the 1% He needs to do something. To do something—because that’s what this is about—this life and this gospel—it’s about doing. Farewell—I got stuff to do.

My brother James says, “But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.”

One

2009-01-25T13:29:00.001-08:00

Admittedly, I’m a wishful-but-not-near rebel. I do really little things that people don’t normally do so I feel like I’m rebelling. For example, the other day I put on all my clothes and realized I looked normal. So what does a rebel do? He puts on his half-turquoise half-plum Converses. Impressive, right?

But no joke it made me feel cool, so shut up about it already. I do the same thing with the Bible (stop, I’m listening to a playlist on shuffle and Good Charlotte’s “Hold On” came on and you have no idea how happy I am . . . okay). No, I really do.

It’s like this: we study Paul’s letters so much, and it really bothers me. Like, we are called Christians right? So shouldn’t we read the gospels more or something? Sophomoric, I realize, but I feel that sentiment all the same.

Despite the incredibly rebellious act of not reading Paul, I am going through Ephesians. Ugh. I know. It just sounds stupid and defeating. But I am, I admit it, I’m going through Ephesians and I really like it. I mean, I’ve read it before but you need to read things over and over and over again for them to sink in.

Just read this, it’s the first six verses of chapter 4 in Ephesians: “Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.”

Oh snap. Look at all the words in that passage: humility, gentleness, patience, tolerance in love, diligent, unity of the Spirit, peace, one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father, over all.

When I think of my life, when I think of the world, when I think of the Church, one is not a word that comes to mind. In fact, so distant is the word one from our being that is seems distant—distant like the word love is to me—distant like the East and the West—distant like humility and peace—but these traits, these ideals seemingly, are not so distant because of Christ, because of Adonai and the Spirit, because of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of the Messiah.

Jesus tells us, in John chapter 15: “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” (You like that? My blog is like the Bible! Calm down I’m kidding. Why is my writing so giddy today? I feel like a girl or something—or happy? What is that?)

How awesome is that! I cannot do anything without Christ! I cannot have love without Christ, I cannot have humility without Christ, I cannot have peace without Christ, I cannot have one without Christ. One.

Here’s what one isn’t: every day I commit flagrant harlotry to my Lord, like Ephraim in Hosea, and every day I put things before the Lord (stupid little things like my writing and my tiny well-being) . . . I do stupid things that I shouldn’t and I sin and must look horrible to God who is sad that I am not following, loving Him as I should be.

Here’s what one is: one is Christ coming in flesh—one is the Father sending the Son to be born in a manger with hay in a barn that smells like horse shit—one is Christ living a perfect, a perfect life—one is Christ being nailed on a cross and bleeding like no one should—one is the gift of the Spirit—one is perfect communion with the Trinity—one is our God.

Our Lord is one

Storytellers

2009-01-15T13:30:00.001-08:00

Testify:

Born in Austin, raised in the church, and constantly fed scripture, I was set up to be a beautiful disaster from childhood. I went to a private Christian school in Austin and moved to Dallas in third grade, where I went to another private Christian school. Church was fine—just something to see my friends at again. I took God as seriously as a grade schooler could.

In junior high I went to Pine Cove, a Christian camp out in east Texas. I think my spiritual journey started there, the summer before ninth grade (a vital summer). We were water-skiing and I was sitting in the boat watching another kid fall over and over. His frame was slightly heavy, and he moved with awkward pre-high school movements. I sat in the boat and wondered if he would ever get up. After about six or seven tries (which were so far from successful that we all wanted to leave), the boat driver told the kid he had one more shot. Hmm, I thought to myself, I wonder if this kid can actually get up. Being the insecure person I was and am, I had been slightly proud of my doing better than him, but something entered me and I prayed: Dear Lord, please let this kid get up on his skis; I know there is seriously no way he can do it without You. So could You help him out? Ten seconds later the kid was water-skiing.

I know that story seems trivial but it’s close to my heart, because that is the first moment I can remember where I honestly knew God was up in the Heavens, and all around my face.

I continued to grow in little steps and read my Bible and pray as often as I could spare time for Him. The next significant step I remember happened the summer after my sophomore year: Monterrey, Mexico. I was 15 going on 16. I spent the preceding months pouring over the scriptures. I would literally read the Bible for two or so hours almost every day. It was weird, I know. I haven’t read so much of God’s word since then. I read the Bible so much because our football coach, in a Bible study he had, told us that if we get into the Word a lot before camp or a mission trip or whatever, we will get more out of the trip and have less of a drop-off after the trip’s emotional high. Coach was right.

Monterrey was a unique experience. I loved the trip for its mixture of relational and physical activities. Building an orphanage is quite a cool thing to do. Highly recommended, but when you also get to meet the people who will be running it and the people who are putting their lives in its service, it’s a real treat. I continued to dive into God’s word in Mexico, and the fruit of the months before the trip began to ripen. Often during the worship time I would get real emotional and shit. Not that it’s a bad thing; it’s just a hard thing to control, and sometimes (at least for me) it can cloud what’s real and what isn’t, or at least it can make trivial things seem important and vice versa. But despite that, the trip was an amazing success and I learned a lot about myself and my God. And the better part was that it carried over greatly into the school year. My junior year of high school has been one of the best years in my life. I was close to God and it showed in all aspects of my life. At the same time, though, I began to be attacked by the Enemy and the enemy in me. My sin nature. Ever since freshman year I had suffered from mild depression. Little spurts at first, but it began to increase through high school to the point where I had suicidal thoughts and shit like that. The thing is, so many people struggle with depression in the church, and because of our fear of being rejected, we often don’t share struggles like depression.

But because of my closeness to the Lord, I was able to evade most of depression’s harmful effects. Here’s what happens when you are close to God: 4.0 GPA, make it to state in football, most joyous times in your life. But this also happens: the Enemy sees an opportunity to cut you down before you grow too close to the Lord, so you might (as I did) endure some of the most painful things in your life.

The next summer passed without too much consequence and my senior year looked to be bright and easy. And then a strange (not necessarily bad) thing happened: my family moved to Boston, and I moved in with my aunt and uncle. It was fine, just weird. So football started in early August and I was ready to apply for great colleges and get into all of them and stuff like that.

And you have to remember that this all happens after my great junior year. At this point, I was extremely close to God and everything was (for the most part) smooth sailing.

And then . . . so many things. For starters, I fell in love. I can honestly say this is the only time I have truly (deeply) been in love. I can also say, to all you people who realize I was only 17 and 18 years old, that it was love inside of me. I know this because I have never in my life thought about myself so little. I was always thinking about her and what made her happy. It was, as love is, a rollercoaster, and eventually it didn’t work out. It hurt a lot, but I could have probably dealt with it if something else hadn’t of happened at the same time.

I love playing football. Like you have no idea, well a few people might. I love hitting the shit out of people. It’s so fun. So here’s the picture: we, as a team, had a great junior year, we made it to state and brought back all our starters. I, as a player, had a great junior year, and was ready to win a state championship. And then something unexpected happened. Through the first three games our team was having a great year, and I was having a great year in football, too. But then, all of a sudden, I tore my ACL and my MCL. Done. No more football . . . ever. Surgery, physical therapy, and months of workouts. Never again would I strap on the pads and buckle my chinstrap. Never again would I see the ball floating into the receiver’s hands before I would dismantle his body from the ground. Some of you might not think it’s a big deal, but it was. When you lose something you have passion for it hurts.

So here’s the senior year situation so far: my family moved to Boston, I fell in love but wasn’t loved back, and I tore my ACL and my football dreams were over. Probably the worst four months of my life, even though I have some great memories from them. On top of all this, my depression began to set in, and this time more deeply. After surgery and a couple seeks on painkillers, I hadn’t spoken to God in a while and it all seemed futile: school, relationships, God even.

Somehow I didn’t do anything too stupid. I thank God for that. He put great people in my life when I needed them most. I don’t feel like naming people here but I will name some at the end. So December passed in Boston and there was reason that this year would be better than the last. It started great: I got all my college applications in on time and was excited to see which ones I would get accepted to.

The months passed, I waited tables, and I waited for the acceptance letters. Sadly, none came. I got rejected from everywhere I had applied in the fall and by now I was just too exhausted to be terribly pissed off. My parents scrambled and we found, according to His plan I am now sure, the University of Iowa. But before I scampered off to college, my life was to be changed forever.

After the, excuse my ever-worsening language, extremely shitty senior year, I was headed to Africa with the below-mentioned Bumper, Cici, Papa, and Audra. I have blogged many entries on Africa, and that is because no other event in my life had so drastic of an impact. You have no idea, and I cannot explain it now. I can only point you to the blog entries from June 2008. If you want to know me and the experience I had there, go read those. The realization that so many things in my life are useless luxuries and that 10 pennies can buy a meal is a realization that will stab your side. My heart returns to Africa every day, sailing over the Atlantic into the dusty red paths of Jos. I can’t escape it. It obliterated everything I thought about myself and my faith in God. It brought me closer to God but not in any ordinary way. I will be back in Jos some day, hopefully soon. Africa, and God through it, gave me a heart for totally new things. Poverty was actually a real thing now. Oh damn.

So that summer, having been shattered, I tried to regroup for college. It took a while for me to realize the power of Africa and the effects it had, but as I slowly took them in I began to change. A trip to Scotland with my dad helped quite a bit. I gathered myself. Or actually He gathered me.

And then I was off. College-bound! Honestly, college is a really messed up thing. Me and Carol were talking about this the other day. It’s a place where kids go and learn and get drunk at the same time. It’s just so damn weird. But anyway, one time me and Michael my pastor in Iowa City, had a conversation about growing up, more or less. He told me that he knew I had made my faith my own, but that my personhood was not yet my own. I was still a product of a controlled environment, and college was and is the time for me to become the man He wants me to be. It took a few months, but eventually thanks to God and JD I found the groups I was supposed to be with and the friends who were supposed to sharpen me. I did well at school and am still recovering from the many failings of my senior year and the shattering that happened in Africa. Depression was at a minimal

It’s so funny how He literally has everything planned out. I found that out hard core in college. I have met amazing and God-fearing people in IC and will continue to do so thanks to His unmerited faithfulness to me.

So here I am now: growing closer to God, and “finding myself” as they say in shows like the OC.

Thank you to, God has used you to change me: Mom. Dad. Brothers. Aunt and Uncle. Cousins. Bumper. Mountjoy. Chris the worship guy with the tatts. Andy my pastor. Noah. Jeremiah. Caroline my friend. Frances. Caleb. Ellie. Craig AKA Keg and his little brother the fighter. Carley. Holly. Jinx. Audra. JD. Coach Helton and his wonderful wife. Cici. Papa. Rick. MJ you are incredible.

Since being in college, the same thanks to you: Michael my pastor and your rock-star family. Josh thanks to you and RUF. Stonewall. Peter Yoda. Jeremy and your wonderful wife. Josie. Professor Folsom. Sunday. Vauhini. J Casteel you are me but smart.

There are many more not mentioned. Please don’t be offended if you aren’t on there. If we have talked, ever, you have made a difference in my life.

Thank you friends and family. Pray for me and I for you.

What’s written is written.

Thank you Adonai.

Change

2009-01-12T09:56:00.000-08:00

To me, New Years is bittersweet and, ultimately, disappointing. It is so for this reason: when a New Year comes around we have hopes and dreams of change and newness, of redemption and second chances, of a clean slate. But as the year goes by and we don’t get our resolutions done (I realize some people actually do) we see that the change and newness hasn’t come, but that we are still the same. I think that New Years is so fragile because we look for things in the New Year that only God can provide: I want to start doing things that I haven’t been and stop doing things I have been, but God is the only Changer of Hearts. A calendar or four-digit number changes nothing.

When New Years comes I don’t really know what to do. In the past I haven’t made New Year’s resolutions either because I think I’m anti-establishment (I realize I’m not) or because I always fail at them, and even if I succeed the fruit never tastes as good as it looked in my mind. At the end of December I put a bunch of hopes and dreams on myself, which just adds to the burden I already bear, and when I fail at the things I put on myself, it increases the yoke even more.

So here is what I am not going to do this New Year:

-I am not going to make any New Year’s resolutions for myself.

-I am not going to place any hope in myself alone.

-I am not going to try to feel new by myself.

-I am not going to try to rely on myself for change.

-I am not going to try to be my own redeemer.

Here’s what I think I’ll do:

-I am going to beg God to take my yoke.

-I am going to tell God to change me.

-I am going to scream at the Lord for redemption and forgiveness.

-I am going to fall flat on my face in the full glory of His radiance.

-I am going to count on the fact that God has New Year’s plans for me, so I don’t have to worry about it.

(make Him do it, He likes it that way)

Happy New Year

2009-01-11T08:08:00.000-08:00

A long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leaving
Oh the days go by so fast

And it's one more day up in the canyons
And it's one more night in Hollywood
If you think that I could be forgiven
I wish you would

The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl

And it's one more day up in the canyons
And it's one more night in Hollywood
If you think you might come to California
I think you should

Drove up to Hillside Manor sometime after 2 a.m.
And talked a little while about the year
I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her

And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass

And it's one more day up in the canyon
And it's one more night in Hollywood
It's been so long since I've seen the ocean
I guess I should

I am Seriously the Rain King

2008-12-26T13:20:00.000-08:00

I love Lord of the Rings, and when I tell people that they either think I’m kidding or laugh or just think I’m weird. But I still love Lord of the Rings. Tolkien is a genius in so many ways. For example, he invented multiple languages while writing LOTR, and he invented a whole world with extensive history, unique cultures, and brilliant characters. I first read LOTR when I was in 7th or 8th grade, and it was a great story and easy to read. I just recently picked up the books again and right now I’m about 200 pages into the Fellowship of the Ring. As a snobby writer, when I start a book, I analyze the way the writer employs language and assess their capabilities with all of language’s intricacies (ridiculous for a 19-year-old, I know). I thought, as I picked up the book again a few weeks ago, that Tolkien would be, stylistically speaking, an average writer, not amazing, but not poor. But as I read the opening pages of his tale I was in awe.

The language is beautiful, a feat in and of itself, but it is beautiful in a way that few writers can render it. As I read Tolkien I feel as if I am being read the book, not as if I am reading it. It’s like I am sitting in his house, cuddled around his hearth, listening to him tell me a story. In Heart of Darkness, which is Josh the Playwright’s favorite book, Marlow tells his story to a few sailors on a boat. It follows the oral tradition of story, and Tolkien uses language in such a way in his novel Lord of the Rings. I find it nearly impossible to make language both uniquely beautiful and easily read by the masses. If I write something with lofty language that is beautiful, but that is not for the layman, then what is my work truly worth? If I write a good story with poor language and boring style, then what is my work truly worth?

Walt Whitman taught me an important thing, and that is to write to ordinary people. I wrote a novella before I learned this lesson, and I like my novella a lot, but I don’t think it speaks to everybody. If I were to read my novella as an outsider I would perhaps think the writer had a very specific audience to which he was writing. I don’t want to do that, I want to reach an audience large and great in size: young and old, black and white, American or Canadian, whatever whatever whatever, I don’t care! If you are a person, I want my book to be directed toward you in some way. And Minus the Sunlight is not that (my novella, I really like that name and if you want to help me get it published please do haha). However, as I am forging my new work, I am keeping these newly learned lessons in mind.

I want to read my Bible so I am going to say one more thing about LOTR and then be done with this.

As a writer, it is sometimes hard to feel like I am glorifying God in what I do. I feel like people think I should be a “Christian writer” or something. Like Philip Yancey or Donald Miller or something, but I don’t want to do that. I just want to write stories; that’s where my heart is. But Tolkien has encouraged me lately.

In LOTR there is an epic battle between good and evil, Mordor and free Middle Earth. If you know the tale you know a fellowship of different races is forged to help Frodo in his quest to destroy the Ring, the manifestation of everything evil. The fellowship is made up of four hobbits, two men, a wizard, an elf, and a dwarf. Each member of the fellowship is fighting for the same cause but does so in a different way. Each member of the fellowship battles against evil with their own specific talents. You can fight for the same cause in a million different ways. You can fight the same evil in a million different ways.

And that is where my hope lies. I pray and earnestly hope that I am serving the cause of our Lord in my writing, because I long to serve Him.

Peace.

Carving Out Our Names

2008-12-17T18:23:00.001-08:00

My friend Peter from North Carolina has a blog and one time I read an entry about how the kingdom of God, our Lord, is like a tree. (Peter also told me that he befriended me so he could be a character in one of my stories.) I think that is beautiful because trees are beautiful and if a tree had God in it it’d be really beautiful. Trees are beautiful. They grow in all sorts of ways to get the sunshine and capture the glorious sun. They distort and contort and are beautiful from every angle. They have different colors and leaves that fall sometimes and sometimes not.

It’s funny that he should say that because I think God likes trees a lot or something. Jesus loves botany. It’s everywhere in the Bible. Like here:

Jeremiah 17:7-8 says, “Blessed is the man who trusts in YHWH, and whose trust is in YHWH. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.”

So that’s a beautiful verse and talks about what Peter talks about. Here is why it is beautiful: because it’s not me or my water. If it were up to me I would be screwed in the drought. Remember what Josh the Quarterback says: when you read the Bible always keep Jesus in mind. So that’s what I try to do. And in the context of this verse it’s like this: We are a like tree if we stay close, if we trust, in God. And if we stay by God in the desert-like times we don’t even have to worry. It will hurt and it will be hard but deep down inside of us the Spirit will say, “It’s going to be fine.” Jesus loves botany. Jesus wants us to be big tall trees that bear lots of fruit so that Daddy gets the glory.

John 15:4 says, “Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.”

I like fruit. I like Jesus, too. And Jesus likes fruit. Here’s the beautiful part: if we aren’t in Jesus we can’t do anything. Isn’t that beautiful? I have to be reminded daily that it’s not me doing anything. It’s all Jesus. Literally, if Jesus weren’t Jesus we’d be nothing. Me and Josh the Quarterback talked about this yesterday, or two days ago I can’t remember. But Hebrews 1:3 says, “And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the Word of His power.” If Jesus weren’t holding everything up, it’d all fall apart. So on one level, we can’t do anything without Christ because if it were: World — Christ . . . the answer would = chaos. Hell.

In another sense, and I touched about this briefly in the last entry, it goes like this: if I do something out of my own, or for my own benefit, then it glorifies me. Even if I do a moral or ethical act, but have not Christ’s love, it is nothing. Like Paul said in his first letter to the Corinthians, “And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrendered my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” Hunter! Pay attention bucko! Gosh that seems so obvious. If I do all this and all that for poor people but don’t do it for God’s glory, don’t do it with love, it is nothing! Nothing. nothing

Josh the Playwright is in the UK but before he went to the UK we went to mass together and I really like mass. It is such a good compliment to evangelical worship, and so very (obviously) different. One thing I really liked about it was how much scripture is read to you. There is a little sermon thingy but much of the mass is the Bible speaking for itself, and not that sermons or interpretations are bad or anything, but there’s something to say about just having the Bible read to you. Like for instance this problem right here, that we are talking about. If I do all this shit for the poor but don’t love Jesus, it’s nothing. Paul says that rather clearly and I don’t really have to sermonize anything for you to understand what he means.

My favorite book of the Bible is Hosea. You might know this already. I read Hosea over and over and over again. It’s so beautiful because Israel and Judah mess up and betray God and then He says He is angry but then all He does is love them. I identify with Israel because I realize that every day I betray God. I commit adultery every day, and I think adultery is a big deal: “If there is a man who commits adultery with another man’s wife, one who commits adultery with his friend’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” –Leviticus 20:10

God told Hosea that Israel was committing adultery in Hosea chapter one, “Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord.”

Crap, having read what was just said in Leviticus, what are the ramifications for those who commit “flagrant harlotry” . . . death if I read that verse right. Gulp . . .

Thank goodness for Jesus, because when we keep Him in mind we realize that He will always love us and come back to us. I will leave you with more botany, and keep Jesus in mind, and keep the fact that you and I are adulterers in mind (oh and really do think about Jesus because think about how prophetic this passage is):

“I will heal their apostasy, I will love them freely, for My anger has turned away from them. I will be like the dew to Israel; He will blossom like the lily, and he will take root like the cedars of Lebanon. His shoots will sprout, and his beauty will be like the olive tree and his fragrance like the cedars of Lebanon. Those who live in his shadow will again raise grain, and they will blossom like the vine. His renown will be like the wine of Lebanon. O Ephraim, what more have I to do with idols? It is I who answer and look after you. I am like a luxuriant cypress; from Me comes your fruit.” –Hosea 14:4-8

I Would Kiss Adam Duritz

2008-12-14T11:18:00.000-08:00

Because I am this:

Prone to sad before happy.

Prone to gloom before joy.

Prone to pessimism before optimism.

Prone to focusing on wrong before focusing on right.

Prone to all things rain before all things sun.

Jesus is perfect for me!

But, because I am this:

Human.

I don’t like to rely on Jesus to fix all my problems.

I don’t like the free grace that Christ gives. Don’t take that the wrong way. I’m saying, when we boil our nature down to our fallen humanity, we want to prove ourselves. We want to do it on our own. We don’t like the fact that we cannot do anything without Christ. If that’s not true for you, then maybe I really am a freak, because that’s how my life works. I spend so much time trying to earn God’s approval, trying to be my own righteousness, trying to be my own Jesus, that I forget to let Christ do that so He gets all the glory. It’s such a burden! It’s such a burden trying to do it by myself! So, if I don’t humble myself daily, I will fail. If I don’t give it all to Christ on a given day, I will fail. I can’t do anything good outside of Christ. If I do something moral without Christ, which I believe is possible, but it is not done in Christ, it doesn’t glorify Him, so then what good is it? It is chaff in the wind.

The first verse I ever memorized by myself was John 15:4, which says (Jesus talking), “Abide in Me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the Vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.” Isn’t that funny? The first verse I memorized is so close to my nature it’s brilliant irony. It’s close to all human nature me thinks, but especially for me. Because when I try to do it on my own I just get sad and then it all starts spiraling down, but if I remember verses like these, I will (hopefully, prayerfully) remember that it’s (thank God) up to Christ to be my righteousness.

Hope hope!

I need to pray a lot too; else I get in the “it’s all about me” kinda phase. I have to pray like this, a sonnet by John Donne:

BATTER my heart, three person'd God; for, you

As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;

That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,'and bend

Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.

I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,

Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,

Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.

Yet dearely'I love you,'and would be loved faine,

But am betroth'd unto your enemie:

Divorce mee,'untie, or breake that knot againe;

Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I

Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,

Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

Also, I love the Counting Crows so much. This is why: Adam is so honest and true to himself that he is honest and true to human nature. Oh my gosh it’s so beautiful but so many people don’t see how great they are! It’s disgusting! Especially people my age, gosh. I love them so much I just have to express that right now. Okay, dear reader, will you please PLEASE do me a favor? Like seriously. I really want you to do this. I want you to go do ONE of the following FIVE options (not that you can’t do more than one):

1) Go listen to the song “Insignificant.” I like this song, it’s not one of my favorite CC songs but it’s good and defines human nature.

2) Go listen to AND Google the lyrics for “Round Here.” This is one of my top three CC songs. It’s about how, when you are young, you are told to go make a name for yourself, and to be famous. When you’re young you have to go to bed early but you have all this so-called “freedom” when you’re older but it’s to no avail.

3) Go buy August and Everything After. This CD was released September 14, 1993, when grunge metal and Nirvana and all that stuff was the mainstream thing. Oh gosh, AAEA is and always will be (mark my words) my favorite CD, so go get it.

4) Listen to “Mr. Jones.” A lot of you have probably heard it and like it, because it’s a catchy song and one of their hits, but the lyrics are actually quite amazing. The song is very close to human nature also: “When everybody loves me, I will never be lonely.” Right?

5) Okay, last choice. Go buy the song (99 cents, please, it’s the least you can do. Am I worth 99 cents?) “A Murder of One.” BUT WAIT! The recorded one is on their first album August and Everything After, but I want you to get the LIVE version off the CD “Across a Wire,” released in 1998. Please please go get it. “I have been to Paris, and I have been to Rome, I’ve gone to New York City and I am all alone.” Wow I get real emotional listening to this song . . . think about it. This guy, Adam, CC’s lead singer, has sold over 20 million records and he is all alone. What wisdom and insight! This is human nature my friends!

Adios, please do one of those if you love me. Yes I just pulled the “if you love me” card.

I have to go work on my novel/trilogy woohoo!

Stuck In Circles

2008-12-09T14:12:00.001-08:00

It’s weird how alike people can be. Just a few hours ago I was with my friends William and Tiffany recalling how William and I have had several moments where I am thinking something, and he says the exact same thing, or vice versa. Today we were talking about announcing my birthday and immediately I thought of the Party Planning Committee from The Office; I didn’t say anything. But lo and behold, William perks up and says that we should start a Party Planning Committee for my birthday. Gosh darn it.

Two days ago I hung out with Josh the Playwright, and, as you have read already, we are sort of the same person. And this time we weren’t talking about the feminine nature of the Cross, but the concept of ideas versus being, concept versus concrete, the spiritual versus the incarnation.

Now, obviously, moderation is something that is always needed. So when I gripe against our obsession with spiritualizing everything, realize I am trying to let us see that we need to tip the scale, not polarize to the incarnation.

Here’s the deal: I’m stuck in circles. (Bear with me, because right now I am going to voice a concern with the evangelical church, but later I am going to voice a concern with the writing community, who I usually deify and hold in high, uncritical regard, so just be patient.) My problem lies here: so much of the time in the church we “spiritualize” things. What I mean is this: If something bad happens, some of the time we blame it on Satan. What we don’t do enough, as I believe we should, is ask ourselves the question, “What did I do to try to make the situation different?” Here’s another example: You might be tired of me going back to Africa but I will always go back to Africa. When many Christians talk about Africa, and many people in general (non-Christians, agnostics, whatever), they tend to blame or question God in regard to the pain, disease, and material lack in Africa. In a sense, we spiritualize a problem that, otherwise, we could have a huge impact on. One last example: Many times I am sitting in a Bible study, church in general, or some other gathering of Christians, and I am overcome with an angst for movement, for action. Especially in Dallas, where we have the seminary and more churches than Christians, we love, I mean love, to debate theological footnotes. We adore the combative nature of concepts like free will or predestination or whatever. We spend so much time dwelling on ideas, and so little time dwelling on the physical solutions to pain, hunger, disease, and want!

The first circle I find myself in is that of Christians, and it is a circle I love and would not trade for anything. The second circle I find fault in is the writing community, and moreover the academic community. As writers, we try to make everything so damn deep and stuff. We try to inflate stories with meaning and poetry with loftiness (not always, obviously, but a lot of the time), and we seemingly forget the nature of this life: Five senses. We have eyes to see, ears to hear, noses to smell, hands to feel, and tongues to taste, but we have become so absorbed by our minds that we disregard our five senses! Why do we forget so easily that without our physical senses, we would be not? In Christian terms, why do we forget so easily the incarnation of Christ? The fact that he slithered out of a 15-year-old’s vagina covered in birth goop? We have wrapped ourselves around ideas, Christians and writers, and have forgotten that the nature of action lies on the physical manifestation of these ideas, not the debate or discussion of them.

And so, in attempt to offer solutions to voiced problems, here is my effort. As for blaming problems on Satan or our own brokenness, and altogether focusing on the loss and not the possibility of restoration, I offer you this:

“Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked on himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was . . . Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” –James 1:21-24; 27

And we must remind ourselves who the “word” James speaks of is: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The “word” is our Lord Christ Jesus!

So, as James says, we must become “effectual doers,” not mere hearers, listeners, or discussers! If we love the Father, if we truly love the Father, it will follow that we will be doers. So what is one solution offering to the obsession of concept over being? It is to touch, to ask the Great Being for a strength, a love that abides not in ideas but in action, in rough love, in such a way that we would find ourselves waiting at the hands and feet of orphans and widows. For example, I have a friend in Dallas whose name is Shae. She is brilliant and loves Jesus and you can tell because she is a doer and not merely a hearer. She works with IJM (International Justice Mission) in freeing people from forced prostitution and slavery. She raises money in her community and literally changes, saves really, lives in the name of our Lord.

Another example (for Mary): In one of, if not the, greatest stories of all time, a little hobbit takes action that leads to the restoration of a kingdom. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is an amazing tale of reality. In talking of spiritual versus physical, Tolkien provides the perfect picture. If you have read the books or seen the movies, recall the scene in Rivendell when they great leaders of the nations are debating on what to do with the Ring. Elves, men, dwarves, hobbits and a wizard gather together to discuss the fate of Middle Earth. Not long after the adjournment of the meeting heated argument arises, tearing apart the allies who stand against Sauron and Mordor. Amidst the clamor, the discussion, a small hobbit, our friend Frodo, stands up and announces, “I will take it.” Gandalf’s brow darkens as he realizes the incredible toll the task will take from the halfling. Frodo does what we all should: stand against the ever-long debate and take action. Incarnate action. Frodo bears the yoke of all Middle Earth around his neck as Christ bears our yoke on the Cross.

The ideas are important only for this reason: When Christ’s ideas are realized and truly “implanted,” they bring love to fruition in physical action.

I do not discount the spiritual! Prayer is one of the most beautiful things we have and is a very “spiritual” thing . . . we must learn to balance the pendulum, steady the ship, placate the ebb and flow of our tide. We must realize this metaphysical obsession and reap the loving harvest of Christ’s incarnation.

“Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.” –James 2:17

Flower Power

2008-12-06T11:44:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks ago, before Thanksgiving break, I was talking to Josh the Playwright at the Java House, and we talked about the feminine nature of Christ. Now, don’t get me wrong, I recognize that physically, Christ is a guy, but His ministry and His ultimate sacrifice were and are very feminine things. We had been talking about politics, and the phraseology associated with campaigns and such. Campaigns tell you they will “stay firm,” “try hard till the finish,” or “push through.” It might be crude, but it’s true. Related to this is war phraseology: “penetrate” the enemy lines and what not. Very masculine imagery. The aim of these such endeavors is to attack, to thrust forward, to protrude outward with one’s own being or abilities.

In Matthew 5, basically the foundation of Christ’s teaching, we are told something radically different. Jesus says, right off the bat, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Bam! Is that not a huge shot below the waist? Being poor is something completely unmasculine. Hell, so much of my manhood depends on my paycheck. Jesus says poor in “spirit,” which, I believe, is heavily related to a passage found later in Matthew: “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these” (19:14). Jesus said that to the disciples, who were “rebuking” the children. If I were a disciple (these guys were late teens to early twenties), I’d have said, “What the hell, Jesus? You’re not their babysitter!” Isn’t it awesome that Jesus told the disciples off like that? What does this remind you of: a person with a bunch of little kids around them, acting protective and telling the older ones (in this case, the disciples) to act more like the younger ones. Well . . . think for a second . . . it reminds me of a . . . wait for it . . . a mother! Dads, don’t hear it like that, y’all are great too, but there is something in a mother that is inherently protective of her children. We are God’s, Christ’s, Sophia’s children: John says, in 1st John, “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are.” (My stomach feels warm and fuzzy.) And the list goes on: “Blessed are . . . those who mourn, the gentle, those who hunger and thirst, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who have been persecuted.” And further on in the chapter: “Do not resist an evil person . . . give to him who asks of you . . . love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” So many of these attributes are seemingly motherly, feminine, things. (In contrast: Ancient Rome: gladiators chopping each other’s heads off. Jesus’ teaching is distinctly different.)

Now, what is the ultimate weapon, in a sense, of Christianity? Is it a missile-launching tank? Or a sword that bursts into flames when it hits Satan in the face? Or a plasma grenade? No—it is Christ’s sacrifice on the cross; it is our Lord literally taking in our sins, receiving what we have done wrong. Christ’s death is not an outward action, but a bearing of our yoke. Our filth. Like a mother, laying herself down at her own expense, seeking to protect and lover her children, so Christ lays Himself down, humbling Himself to the power of Satan, only to resurrect Himself in order to complete the process. Christ’s power is vaginal, receiving the seed of what we, you and I, have sown, and bringing to fruition His own righteousness. He takes in with compassion, mercy, and grace.

As I was thinking about this, I decided to read some excerpts from the Qur’an, Islam’s holy book, knowing there would undoubtedly be a fundamental difference between the feminine nature of Christ’s deference to God’s will and the heart of Islam. So here is an excerpt from the Qur’an, regarding paradise:

[Note: every ellipsis in the following passage marks a place in the original where the question “Which of your Lord’s blessings would you deny?” is repeated.]

“But for those who fear the majesty of their Lord there are two gardens. . . . They shall recline on couches lined with thick brocade, and within reach will hang the fruit of both gardens. . . . Therein are bashful virgins whom neither man nor jinee [spirits] will have touched before. . . . Virgins as fair as corals and rubies. . . . Shall the reward of goodness be anything but good? . . . And besides these there shall be two other gardens . . . of darkest green. . . . A gushing fountain shall flow in each. . . . Each planted with fruit-trees, the palm and the pomegranate. . . . In each there shall be virgins chaste and fair. . . . Dark-eyed virgins sheltered in their tents . . . whom neither man nor jinee will have touched before. . . . They shall recline on green cushions and fine carpets. Which of your Lord’s blessings would you deny?”

Versus an excerpt from Revelation 21:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.’ . . . (Ch. 22) . . . Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street.”

I don’t know where to start. First of all, I’d like to say how tired I am of this life being about me. Every day: me, me, me, me. And even though I’m tired and weary from the “me-yoke;” it’s impossible for me to change that without Christ. My heaven, Christ’s heaven, the heaven, is about deference to God; it’s about submitting to a greater Being; it’s not about plucking fruit from trees and having sex with virgins. Islam’s paradise is literally thus: putting your own seed into virgins . . . While, to Christ, I am a bride. Hallelujah!

The nature of Islam’s heaven is this: It’s about you, in a garden, eating fruit and delighting yourself in virgins. [I realize this is a simplification from a biased person, but go ahead and do the research yourself.]

The nature of YHWH’s heaven is this: It’s about Him, His Son, and His Spirit, in a city; it’s about Him dwelling among His people and wiping away every tear for His glory. [This also is a simplification, but for further reading check out the entirety of Revelation 21 and 22.]

Having said all this, I realize that Christianity isn’t only feminine in nature. For example, “He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses” (Revelation 19:13-14). Also, Christ is literally incarnate as a man, and God is referred to as our “Father.”

One of the countess beauties of Christianity, and the reality we all dwell in, is the fusion of the masculine and the feminine in Christ Jesus. YHWH sets up a paradoxical dichotomy for us on earth: We are in a war, generally a masculine sort of thing, but we must realize that our enemies are “the spiritual forces of wickedness,” and not against anything, and may I repeat anything, physical in nature. We are in a war (the masculine), but what is our greatest weapon? Our greatest strength is love (the feminine). Our greatest weapon is Christ’s sacrifice; our greatest weapon against Satan is deference to God.

It’s not about us. (Thank YHWH, imagine if it actually was about us. What if we had to sort out this mess? Oh dear.)

Also, let me say that I officially love Van Morrison.

A Dragon, a Hobbit, and Our Lord

2008-12-04T15:01:00.000-08:00

This past summer, in July, my dad took me to Scotland. We saw the Counting Crows (i.e. the best band in the world ever; Rage Against the Machine, the best live band ever; and others) and drank Strongbow. The music festival was Friday through Sunday, and I’m almost certain we were the only Americans there. Brilliant, it was, really brilliant, a great time.

Most of the Scots were drunk, literally most. It was probably closer to two-thirds of the group. Not just tipsy, but absolutely intoxicated. The group numbered 80,000. So a pinch more than 50,000 people were completely drunk every day. It was hilarious at first, but as the weekend passed it wore on me.

As I walked to my computer, to start this post, from getting my iced vanilla latte, the screen saver popped up and the first picture that appeared was one from the trip to Scotland. The picture wasn’t of a band, or me, or even my dad; it was of an old couple, mid sixties probably, who had met and embraced my dad and I, noting that we were the only Americans. They were angels or something, really nice angels. They showed hospitality like no one else there had, not that the Scots weren’t hospitable, but that this couple went out of their way to get to know my dad. They smoked pot, but they had grace unlike most people I know, period. I felt warm in their presence, as if I were at the hearth of their home eating bread and drinking stout ale. I saw the picture on my computer screen (of the couple, cross-bone t-shirts and all) and I thought, I want that. They were happy, and they weren’t lonely. Of course they must fight and have problems (unless they were really angels like I supposed), but they were warm. They had a good air about them. Air that not many have.

We are very lonely, I think. Super lonely. That’s why marriage is so beautiful: it obviously doesn’t cure loneliness to a perfect degree, but it’s a beautiful picture of what Christ will be to us someday. Our husband, intimately warming us with His beauty and grace. Lavishing our souls for love’s sake. With Jesus we will be like the pot-smoking hippies from Scotland. Happy, not lonely, and gracious.

I know I try to be all deep and stuff, especially with my writing, but I think I’m overrated or something. I am reading a book called Brisingr right now, and it’s a fantasy book, the third in a cycle of four, about a dragon rider, Eragon, and his dragon, Saphira. I love fantasy. I love it so much. I feel so warm when I am consumed with a tale of loyalty, risk, friendship, love, and heroism. And the story really does consume me. I love it! This book is good, not great. The story is good and the writing is pretty good, but I love it so much. It’s not terribly deep but I love it like a fish loves water.

I think the archetypal form of fantasy literature is Tolkien’s trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. Both Tolkien and Paolini (author of Brisingr) deal with the theme of loneliness. Frodo, the actual “Lord” of the rings, and the hero of the epic, would have died if it weren’t for his companion, Samwise. Frodo would have literally died of loneliness, consumed by himself and the evil in the ring. Eragon, similarly, feels the icy-cold grip of loneliness when he is parted from Saphira. Here is a beautiful quote from Brisingr. In this scene, Eragon and Saphira reunite after nearly a week of separation (oh, and it should be noted that Eragon and Saphira share minds, or consciousnesses):

“Like a flood of warm water, her consciousness rushed into him, even as his rushed into her. Eragon gasped and tripped and nearly fell. They enveloped each other within the folds of their thoughts, holding each other with an intimacy no physical embrace could replicate, allowing their identities to merge once again. Their greatest comfort was a simple one: they were no longer alone.”

I think that is beautiful, and a very accurate image of heaven. I cannot express to you how strongly I long to be in His presence, tripping as I run to His embrace, smiling and laughing as tears of joys stream down my face, knowing that, once and for all, I am no longer alone.

Here is the hope I hold to when the world is a dark cloud: I will be in Christ’s presence, in YHWH’s hold, in the Spirit’s motherly warmth. In that moment, all my desires will be quenched: loneliness (I will no longer feel the great chasm in my heart that I long to be filled); wonder (I won’t have to read Lord of the Rings or Brisingr to be consumed by story); purpose, intimacy, wholeness, whatever your, my desire may be, if we hold fast to Christ’s death and resurrection, God will quench it. We will exist in a state of pure and undefiled satisfaction. Perfect unity with our Lord and the rest of His followers.

Pot-smoking hippies, Eragon and Saphira, Frodo and Sam. How much greater is our intimacy with Christ! And not only with Christ, but YHWH Himself! And His Spirit! And all who believe! I cannot and perhaps should not dwell on this hope too much, for it excites my heart to the point of delusion.

But think, just think, and ponder this hope with me for one moment. A perfect city. A perfect God. A perfect eternity. That’s what you call hope. My heart trembles within my soul.

Imago Dei and Apple-Eater

2008-12-01T14:05:00.000-08:00

I sat in silence so I sit in silence, bombarded with colors: ads, pretzels, coffees, ice creams, beers, candies—the swirling colors of a purgatorial airport. Terminal D. I sat, then, untainted by the purity of a world absent of these colors. But I sit, now, living with what I have seen, heard, and witnessed. Brook Fraser says, of her visit to Africa, “Now that I have seen, I am responsible.” And that is what I found. I began the journey looking for purity, a self-cleansing, defying God’s jealous process of sanctification. I could make myself right. I could die on the cross: slit wrists ushering blood like wedding guests through my marriage to myself. But Brook is right. She is right. I ventured to the depths—the grandeur depths—of Africa, looking for purity (some escape from these wretched colors). But there was none to be found. The white man is corrupt. The black man is corrupt. Red, yellow, blue, green, I don’t care what color you are. You are messed up. And, even if you are a good person more than not, you aren’t fit to enter the presence of a holy and jealous God. Brook is right. My wrists weren’t slit—my mind was but it brought no cleansing blood—only more mud. Brook is right, though, isn’t she? I am not pure. Look what I have done: I am letting people die. By my complacency lives are lost. I don’t want to complain, and I don’t want to hear complaints: it’s my wrong—fault—the blood on my hands. Our hands. We all fell—with Adam and Eve. Do not, for one instant, think you are exempt. I bite the apple every day. And then you eat it too. You are a pig, an adulteress. You are a pig, my dear reader. And I am a murderer, a rapist, slobbering in the filth of the pit. The pit of the fall of us all. Brook is right, though. Now that I have seen, I am responsible, and I hold you, too, dear reader, responsible, but though I hold you responsible I do not condemn you, nor do I even condemn myself, for condemnation is not mine to dispense, but Another’s. Action that stems from fear or condemnation stands in the shadow of the power of action in response to love.

And that is where I am joyous, though weary. The dichotomy in my being: Imago Dei and apple-eater. I am torn: worship my Lord YHWH like I am built to or worship myself—I believe we only have two options. Suppose you argue: worship of family, sex, and food, whatever. I believe those are extensions of self, but no matter—what do I choose? Self or YHWH? The obvious choice is obvious, but we are corrupted deeper than we know. Slimy to the roots. Before Africa I worshipped self, and my motives for traveling to Africa were ultimately a form of self-sacrifice, me trying to be Jesus for God—but, thankfully I will never be, God is so beautiful that he used my apple-eating motives for Christ’s glory, His own glory, the Trinity’s revel. So: before: apple-eater. I was acting on behalf of myself (though, granted, not fully, my desire to go to Africa was not all corrupt, I daresay even mostly, but at the root: corruption). But now, and since then, a flame within my heart flickers, albeit in a continual wax and wane. But the flame, the Spirit of YHWH presumably, guides more of my love than ever. God is growing the flame, and He used Africa in a great way. To extend the metaphor: as lighter fluid on the flame of my heart.

My mind races back to June 2 daily—the beginning of an epic climaxing in confusion: I can’t die on the cross for myself, let alone anyone else. Thanks be to YHWH and His Spirit for sending His blood-dipped Son to my rescue. I stand in the continual process of sanctification.

Now, dear YHWH, grant me Your love and faithfulness, Your respite and Your compassion, so that I may have a burning flame. Lord YHWH grant me a love that wants to act in response to Your love: “We love, because He first loved us.”

Now, dear YHWH, grant my reader a knowledge of You and Your love for them. If they know You, I pray that they continue to pursue you. If they do not, I pray that You would touch them.

Like a Ghost (White on White)

2008-11-28T13:40:00.000-08:00

Thank ye, thank ye

Well, it’s come and gone, Thanksgiving has. Quickly, perhaps too quickly, I think.

(I step out the front door like a ghost into the fog where no one notices the contrast of white on white . . . )

I’ve been home since Friday the 21 and have accomplished nothing. I have a paper due Tuesday but I have most of it done, so I’m not at all worried or anything. And it’s just a paper, anyway.

Thanksgiving is weird because, it seems to me, that we eat a lot and just are lazy and watch football. I have been so lazy this week. All I’ve done is play video games and watch TV, eat and sleep. I gave thanks at the dinner table, but not really any other time. I thanked God for the Counting Crows, and it’s not a joke I love the Counting Crows and would be in trouble without them. Now what?

I need to get back into the swing of things in Iowa. I miss my coffee shop and Drew the Barista who mixes the espresso in my iced vanilla latte ($4.08) for me. I miss the three or four books I was reading and having time to be productive with my laziness.

I feel fat, lazy, and worthless. Well, not worthless, but worthless to other people. In that I haven’t dispensed any grace to anybody in a while. I feel angst-ridden and cooped up. Trapped in a Thanksgiving birdcage or something.

A self-imposed forest of rusting iron.

But thanks be to God for the Spirit, who is guiding me to the lines on His face.

Green Apple Sea

2008-11-19T09:57:00.000-08:00

Today I had my first scuffle with (adamant) anti-creationists. How silly it all is. We were in rhetoric class, reading an article from the editorial Nature, which was talking about radical environmentalists and how they rely heavily on passion. Emotion, as the book says. The article compared the radical environmentalists to creationists in that they both (according to the article) rely on emotion rather than the ever-glorious “Scientific Method.” As I read the article, I noted how very pretentious it is, putting words in people’s mouths and beliefs in people’s hearts.

So, a really nice kid named (well, let’s just call him) Toby says, “I like how the author associates them with creationists, because they both rely on an emotional belief.”

Bob (again, not his real name), the most annoying kid in the class (and a McCain-Palin supporter I’d just like to throw in there) says, “Yeah, all of those have some deep-rooted belief in them.”

I say, “Well, since the Scientific Method relies on repeatable, observable experiments, isn’t the Big Bang or evolution just as much about faith as creationism?”

Bob says, “Well it’s about inductive reasoning.”

I say, “But that’s still not something you can experiment, observe, and repeat . . .”

Class ends. How silly!

Africa Revisited

2008-11-18T16:13:00.001-08:00

Journal entries:

June 3rd: “Dear Lord, Please give me a foundation of wisdom and love as I mentally and emotionally prepare for Nigeria. I will be changed—I know that much.”

June 3rd: “I haven’t slept in a bed in three days, and plane sleep doesn’t really do the trick. This trip will be extremely tiring but I could be changed so much.

Dear Lord, thank you for getting me here, and the wonderful opportunity to serve others for You. I pray that You would change me. Amen.”

June 4th: “The air is crisp this morning, promising a day of renewal and change: rebirth in the breaking humility of brotherly human spirit, separated by eons of ocean and time before the fall . . . my whole life has culminated to this trip: to this journey into oblivion, it is here I will realize the power of God. Lord please change me for a lifetime and prepare/enlighten Your will for me . . . Amen.”

June 4th: “When people talk about Africa they talk about the jungles and lions and stuff. And the weird thing is that there actually are really sweet jungles and forests—etc . . . On our drive to Jos from Abuja we saw locals growing a certain kind of plant into a fence. There are lots of colors here, but I think I have only seen the reds—the blood of lost human life manifested in the conquest of the evil Europeans, who robbed the Africans of their culture forever.”

June 4th: “—visited land for women’s home—Gidan Bege, “House of Hope”—Blind Town, girl with open sores.”

June 4th: “Women’s home—that was the first thing we did the first morning. The poverty is simply amazing. Baba drove us along this ridiculously horrid rode to a plot of land that’s gonna be a home for women. We were standing around and a man in an orange shirt came up to us and asked us for money. He actually got on his knees when he was introducing himself. We prayed over the land and then we left.”

June 4th: “Wheel chair ministry—we drove straight from the women’s land to the wheel chair thing. Basically it was a group of men who built tricycles for disabled people and gave them out for free. The thing is that the ministry is run by a man who is disabled himself. He was strong, with a deep voice, he had weathered skin and bore a smile adorned with hardship, pain, and experience. His eyes seemed sad—his being was totally in service. It amazes me that in a country of such destitution people can give their full being into service and live. Live. To serve others.”

June 4th: “Gidan Bege—“House of Hope”—it’s a place for orphans, or actually street kids, and widows. We sat around in a circle and they (a few of the boys) gave us their testimonies. I sat in between Livinus (left) and Cilas (right). It was really sad. The boys who gave their testimonies were Moses, Samson, and Chinu? It was amazing. Moses’ story: his father was a drunk. His father came home every day and beat Moses and his mom every day. Then Moses’ mother got sick. And Moses’ father still beat her . . . then she died. Moses’ grandmother eventually got him to Gidan Bege. (—they love having their picture taken) Blind Town—Blind Town is basically the poorest are in Jos. Which is saying a lot considering how poor the city is. We (the men) got to meet the chief of the lepers and his wife. They had rooms the size of walk-in closets and they had stubs for hands and feet. Martha laughs after everything she says—good. Night.”

June 5th: At this point, my heart couldn’t feel, and my head couldn’t think. I couldn’t even write in my journals. At the end of each day I would scribble down what I did. I remember much of it, and my older blog entries (from July I believe) have much of what I experienced, but I will re-interpret my scribbles, now that it has almost been a year. “Things we did today:—drove from Jos to Makurdi (5 hrs)—knocked down a wall so the orphans don’t have to walk around the compound for water—went to the Makurdi Marketplace to get food, a sledgehammer, sodas—went to a Bad Boyz scrimmage.”

June 5th: The drive: It felt odd. Marque drove myself, Bumper, and Papa with Monday to Makurdi. We were the only three white people there—we arrived at the Makurdi Gidan Bege and were introduced to David, who ran the place, with his wife. There were 22 boys at the Makurdi Gidan Bege. David also had a soccer team: Bad Boyz. He did so much. We walked around the place and America seemed to vanish from my head. There were two parts of the orphanage: in one half lived David and his wife, in the other lived the boys and Sebastian, who was basically the house dad. He had five kids and his wife lived there, too. So: 22 Gidan Bege boys + 5 Sebastian’s children + 2 Sebastian and wife = 29 people. A wall separated the two halves, and the well (the only source for water) was on David’s side. So: 3 David, wife, their baby, had the water. And: 29 on the other side had to walk on the outside of the complex, around the outer wall, and into David’s side with a 5-gallon bucket and get water (and then they have to walk back with the full bucket). Then we went to the market place: as we drover the van through the jam-packed marketplace a Nigerian man said, “White man . . . (5 second pause as the van was stopped and the man looked at me through the open van window) . . . how are you?” After the marketplace we went to see the Bad Boyz play a scrimmage, and that was a unique experience in Africa even. The players were amazing—better than anything I had ever seen. When they were done we got to meet them, and we took like 40 pictures. Felt like the red carpet. It didn’t feel right—they seemingly worshiped us for nothing. What had we done? Done: we lived spoiled American lives and came to their country with a Bible. I know spreading the gospel is good and all, but the interaction with the players was extremely wrong. Why were we worthy? They smiled and shook our hands and took pictures with their cell phones. Why?

June 6th: painting the church building with Bad Boyz players. Film at night—

June 7th: Dwight said: “It’s a tactic I like to call . . . diversion.”

June 8th: The last journal entry that wasn’t a list of things done: “The courtyard defined squalid. No longer was that word associated with photographs—reality has rudely intruded into the realm of meaning: a stray flip-flop, a skinny dog with right ear gnawed to the raw flesh, a pile of dirt and sand three feet high (laying inches from the well), and a gazebo screaming with the moans of a generator returning to Jos with us. The stillness of the air spelled an evil stagnancy, as the people lay robbed of their rights.”

June 9th: Luke said, of Obama, “He swore on the Quran to enter the Senate, does that not scare you?” For the record: no. not at all. In the morning we had to go to the immigration office, because something had happened when the three men were in Makurdi, so we went to the immigration office. Dwight was so scared. We answered questions from the immigration officer: who was on a huge power trip. He liked that the white people in front of him were at his mercy, literally. After that we went to EMS, a school for kids whose parents were missionaries (these were Nigerian kids whose Nigerian parents did local missions stuff.) I my journal I say, “EMS=joy (room w/ drum and dancing). Colors: I’m seeing colors besides red.” We went to a small room where the joyful children put on a small drama for us, song us songs, and danced. I also have written down, “Monday—now I feel.” In that room, the dancing room, I actually had feelings. No other part of the trip gave me feelings. Home and slept—

June 10th: “Hospital tour, lunch @ Ardill’s—soccer match @ Geiro (we lost 2-1) I broke my toe at the soccer match.

June 11th: “Spent 3 hours drawing shit in the morning—Gidan Bege for the last time—(Simon, Samson, Musa)—Bad Boyz (not the soccer team, but the poor area of town where all people do is drink)—went to pubs and handed out tracts to drunks: we need prayer, follow-up, and discipleship.” I could explain Bad Boyz, but I can’t. there is another entry on it. I am tired now this has made me tired

goodbye, hunter

ps, from june 19th, three days after being home from Nigeria: “reality: what’s real and what isn’t? reality: what matters and what doesn’t?”

War

2008-11-18T11:43:00.000-08:00

I realize that I’m only 19 years old, and sometimes it probably seems ridiculous that I make some of the statements that I do, because how could I possibly have the knowledge or experience of one to talk about politics, spirituality, truth, or life? If your stance on my blog, in the past, has been one of skepticism or doubt, criticism or judgment, you might want to pass on reading this one, or perhaps you would like to pick a fight with me, I don’t know. But I am going to talk about war. Yeah, war.

First of all, I will say that I strongly believe God hates war. People often point to the Old Testament in saying what a just war is, in the manner that God used war, the amount of times He used war to accomplish His will, and such claims. Now, I think most of you might agree with this, that God hates war, and I think most of you will agree that war is an evil thing, and is only necessary because of the fall.

(I pause, briefly, because I realize we are in a battle against Satan, “Against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” We are, as Paul says in Ephesians, in a war against Satan and his spiritual allies. Now, let us notice that we are not in a war against “flesh and blood,” as Paul states prior to the listing of what we actually are at war with.)

In Hosea, a beautiful book and story, God’s anger and love for Israel swings back and forth between punishment and redemption. In chapter 2, as God explains how He will restore Israel, He says, “I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and will make them lie down in safety.” God’s plan for restoration does not, at all, include war. I think you know this, dear reader.

One: I do not agree with the so-called “War on Terror” we are waging in Iraq. (I think most of us have (hopefully) reached this point.) What are we fighting?

Two: I do not agree with the war in Afghanistan. After convincing from my smart friend in DC, I have come to oppose this war also, a war which many people still support/like, or whatever. I think that the search for bin Laden is just provoking our enemies in the Middle East and simply multiplying the problem. Here is an article that talks about the surge of al-Qaeda related groups: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11173538 (It’s from NPR which rocks.)

Three: I am terrified, and would strongly oppose a war with or in Pakistan.

Four: I am flirting with pacifism.

Here are a few quotes from Letters from Abu Ghraib, by Josh Casteel:

“Freedom is not made by pipelines being bought in Afghanistan, nor by the major private corporations handling construction and oil distributions (Enron, Halliburton) who profit incredibly by the joint military venture/tax breaks set forth by the Bush Administration. Freedom is nor made behind closed doors with Saudi regimes (who espouse the very same Wahabist Sunni ideas as the terrorists) because we fear losing their input in the American economy (which is over 7%). My contention with George Bush is not one of believing him malevolent, but rather believing him unwise and guilty of maligning God’s freedom with mere political rhetoric.”

“Capital Hill has replaced the Vatican, and hospitals and political parties have replaced the Church as “new salvation,” granting “life” and “freedom” to those who follow their teaching. We don’t need the Eucharist, we have medicine. Democracy is now forced upon peoples like Christianity was during the Holy Roman Empire, in the “Christianizing” of civilization—now, we’re “Democratizing,” and instead of the Pope or an Emperor, we have the American President.”

“You can’t call [President Bush] “Pro-Life” . . . Campaigning in the name of Life and Family in circumstances such as these, to my mind, is simply unconscionable. And if I could sit down with the commander in chief right now, and talk things through, I too would simply say “shame on you, Mr. Bush.” How dare you take up the sword Peter was told to lay down, and use it in the name of a freedom which cannot be won by force . . . Where’s al-Qaeda? Where’s bin Laden? Where is the investigation into the nation from which all of the 9-11 hijackers were natural-born citizens (Saudi Arabia)?”

Point being: I am learning, and forming my opinions, and right now I strongly oppose every war we are in. I hate war. If you have ever been to a war-torn country, you hate war too. If you haven’t, go.

I was at Prairie Lights just a few nights ago and was hearing a guy read from his book, which is set in the Cold War and is basically a James bond knock-off. A host asked him questions, and at least four or five times he mentioned how cool it was to invent different ways of killing people. How cool it was. To invent ways of killing. This man, reading from his book, is a fully-grown man living in Iowa; he has an M.D. and is a fulltime doctor. I leaned back in my chair, searching for eyes as horrified as mine, but none came. Rather, instead of sickened eyes, I saw smiles, smirks and hungry grins. How cool, they thought. How cool.

What is with our obsession of violence?

I Don't Want No Damn Religion

2008-11-16T13:45:00.000-08:00

Jesus, this is why I love Jesus. Well, at least three quick ones.

ONE: Jesus is an environmentalist. Something bothers me about Republicans: for the most part, they seem like war-mongering oil tycoons who love rich people and don’t mind if the poor get stepped on like a worn, cobbled path. I know that’s probably not true but it’s the vibe I get. In Genesis 1:28, God charges man with a responsibility, “Fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds in the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

It feels really good to us that God tells us to “subdue” the earth, because somehow we (being the egotistical bastards we are) take this and add it tour our damn power-trip selves. We think that, somehow, subduing the earth means destroying forests and brutally killing animals and raising chickens in little rectangular cages and cutting their beaks off and dipping baby pigs in boiling oil to get their hair off. Somehow we take it to mean dumping waste into the Gulf like you would dump bubble bath into your kid’s bathtub, or drilling for oil across the world—tearing the earth apart and literally tearing areas of the world apart because we drink oil like Michael Jordan drinks Gatorade.

As I read that charge in Genesis, I thought about what the word “rule” means exactly. And, clearly, it has monarchical implications. God rules over us; He is our Lord. Christ is the King—that sorta thing. So, when I hear God tell me to rule over the earth, it makes me think about how He rules over us—with love, gentleness, sacrifice, diligence, faithfulness, and humility. God’s ruling over us is so opposite of the ruling we have been doing over nature. Though Bush did create one of the biggest ocean reservations ever, so many areas of gotten worse: rivers have become more polluted, he backed out of the Kyoto Protocol, which is an initiative to prevent Global Warming. (And, no matter where you stand on the issue of Global Warming, I think we can agree that dumping a bunch of gases into the atmosphere isn’t a good thing.) He backed out of the Kyoto Protocol AFTER promising to reduce CO[-2] gases . . .so . . . that’s sorta backward, coming from a man claiming to know and love Christ.

When I hear God tell us to rule the earth, I would like to think we would rule it as He would rule it Himself. I love Jesus because He cares about the earth He created, and no matter how much we [EXPLITAVE] the earth up, He will come back and clean things up for us. Go green, Jesus did.

TWO: Jesus loves the poor. I have a big heart for the poor, and for homeless people. I think it’s because I went to Africa and God changed my heart there. But caring for the poor is something the church, as a whole, does a pretty poor job of doing. Say hi to my friend Joel Osteen in Houston, Texas. His church is gigantic and mega and like a world of its own, a world I, thank God, am not a part of. His world, Lakewood Church, meets in a stadium where the Houston Rockets used to meet. Each week there are about 40,000 people showing up because Joel says that it’s God’s will for you to be rich. It’s like the American Dream mixed with God: bad, bad, horrible, disgusting, appalling idea. It’s bullshit, really. He makes so much money at church and even more money from his ridiculously absurd “books.”

I read an article about Osteen and his humble family in People magazine a few months ago. It showed Osteen’s house (not absurdly huge, but bigger than 99% of people’s houses in the world) with a cream-colored Escalade out front. It was shiny. His church brings in about 1 million dollars a week, and even more from online donations. Over the course of the year Lakewood Church rakes in about 70 million dollars. Yeah, my mouth hung open a little too.

With all this money in the hands of someone who claims to love God you might expect better stewardship. But no, he hasn’t really started a homeless shelter or anything too grand. Just Escalades, trips to Colorado, flights with his wife pushing flight attendants, and Barbie houses.

Jesus, when He was in Nazareth, said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.” Jesus literally came here for the poor, but the great part is it wasn’t only for the physically poor, but the poor in spirit.

Jesus loved the poor: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

THREE: Not only does Jesus love the poor, but he loves the rich as well. Yes, he gets angry with them a lot, because they say one thing and do another, but the extraordinary thing is how anchored his anger is, how focused it is on love. He is angry because he loves these people but they just. don’t. get. it.

This is something that bothers me about Democrats (and myself): they, and I, complain about the rich-loving Republicans so much, how they don’t love the poor. The hypocritical thing is: it’s so hard, near impossible, for the Democrats to find love for the Republicans. They claim to love the poor so much, giving to them and slating the economy in their favor, but then they can’t bring themselves to love the Republicans. It’s sad, really. Because it creates a cycle of hate and ungrace.

Somehow Jesus found a way to love the poor and the rich, the hippies and the CEOs, the Democrats and the Republicans. Jesus doesn’t care where you were born, what color your skin is, how you vote, as long as you seek Him first.

Jesus wants us to be one, like He and the Father are one. But we are so split because we are split inside, in our hearts. That’s why this life sucks so badly sometimes. Because of the fall. We are so disenfranchised and fragmented. Jaded—

I really, really, am tired of religion. All of them. I just want Jesus. The church isn’t a building or a group of building, it’s a group of people who all love the same dude: Jesus Christ the Environmentalist who loves rich people and poor people and blue people and Republicans and Democrats, all of whom can’t love each other. God is love.

I want Jesus. I want Revelation 21:1-7.

All in good time.

I Sold My Piano

2008-11-16T12:28:00.000-08:00

Prayer is a funny thing. God is a funny thing, or being I guess. Whatever. I remember the good ol days of 722, I mean way back in the beginnings, and we discussed prayer, its effectiveness (or lack thereof). It was actually a night where people took different sides. If, as some did and do, someone believed in man’s complete lack of free will his or her view of prayer seemed to be diminished quite a bit. If God know everything that will happen, and man’s path is paved without choices, then why pray? It’s sorta useless. And some people who are 5-point Calvinists can try to argue their way around it but I haven’t heard anything too dreadfully convincing. The interplay between God’s sovereignty and our free will is something we certainly can’t wrap our minds around, and that might seem like a cop-out answer to some of you but I don’t really care what you think.

Having said this, if you’ve read my last few posts you’ve discovered I’m having trouble finding like-mindedness. People who think and breath like me—with the same passions and such. So I prayed a lot. About this. And while I was praying the thought occurred to me, Prayer, funny thing, is this helping? So with that thought in mind I perused the Bible. (Yes, I was questioning the practical effectiveness of prayer, though I have never really struggled with the value of prayer. If Jesus prayed to Daddy, it must be important.) But, as I was perusing, I stumbled upon a verse in James, a passage really, about prayer. And the funny thing is it’s one I’ve read quite a bit. It’s marked red with ink in my Bible. So I read it again, and God slapped me with revelation (like a jealous lover her boyfriend as he checks out a girl in a green dress not too far off):

“Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months.” –James 5:17

Are you kidding me? Why had nobody ever shown me that verse? It seems like this is one of those things that puts out an argument faster than a fire brigade can put out a candle. The sentence before answers the question, “Does prayer really do anything?”

“The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.” –James 5:16b

Hello? Is anyone hearing this? Pray you dummies. It seems obvious that prayer is something not only valuable to God, but something effective in mankind’s efforts against the Evil One. Golly, it’s like someone was hiding that from me or something. I wish I could go yell it out.

But anyway, I prayed to God that He would give me people I love to be around. And, ideally, people who I love to be around and who love Jesus, too. So the past couple of days I have met some really cool people. Some who are Christians, some who aren’t, some who I’d like to get to know better and might not get the chance to, and some who I will get to know better as the year rolls by. Here are a few:

Vauhini is really great. She is from Seattle and went to Stanford. So, as you can already guess, she is brilliant. She is in the fiction department in the Writer’s Workshop and writes really well. Characters are people you know or at least can believe. Vauhini isn’t Christian but has been really respectful of my faith and has asked a lot of questions. Jesus would love to have Vauhini follow Him. She would do wonders for His name. Vauhini, after she went to Stanford, spent four years working as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in San Francisco. Not only is she terribly brilliant, but she is great with people, too. She has a soft and gracious heart that is the kind of heart the Church needs.

There is also Josh, and since there is already a Josh the Quarterback I will call this one Josh the Playwright. Josh the Playwright wrote a book, non-fiction, that is just great. I will probably blog about it later in the week if I think about it. But here’s what it is: think Donald Miller meets St. Paul meets the “War on Terror” (Yes, that bloody mess). It is awesome. If you want to read it ask me about it. But anyway, I am getting coffee with Josh on Wednesday and I am really excited about it because he loves Jesus and he doesn’t like the fragmented nature of our political system. He is a really honest guy in his book, like Adam Duritz in his lyrics, and I connected with his words a great deal. In fact, it has probably been the closest book to my heart in the past few months. Read it! If you want to know the title, ask me! Hopefully me and Josh the Playwright connect well.

Andrew the Poet is the last one I will blog about I think. Hopefully me and Andrew can hang out soon, because he is really great, and we have a few automatic connections: he is from Alabama, which means he is awesome already because even though Texas is different from ‘Bama, it’s still a South thang. Also, something which I learned today, Andrew the Poet is a Christian, which is rare in Iowa City and even rarer for a student in the Iowa Workshop. I walked into the coffee shop today and he was reading Job. That’s cool.

So, that is what prayer did. It brought these (and a few more) people close to me and hopefully closer in the future, so you can pray for that. Also, pray for Vauhini, Andrew, and Josh, that they would either come to know the Lord (in Vauhini’s case) or that they would continue in their integrity and faith (in Josh’s case and Andrew’s case). I will even give u a checklist:

1. 1) Pray for Vauhini, that she would continue to ask great questions and, Lord willing, come to know Christ. (Because I can feel how much Christ loves her it wrenches at my ventricles.)

2. 2) Pray for Josh the Playwright, that God would comfort him and give him peace and fellowship.

3. 3)Pray for Andrew the Poet, that God would encourage him and allow him to find a church that will nourish his Southern spirit.

4. 4) Pray for me, that God would bring one of these people (or more, obviously) close to me so I can have true, beautiful fellowship with other believers.

5. 5) If you want to read Josh the Playwright’s amazing book, ask me.

Come Around. Come Around. Again!

2008-11-13T14:40:00.000-08:00

Betrayed . . .

Like Christ . . . scorched from an inner heart burned a flame of life and love . . .

Not I only . . . but you too . . . my beautiful and loyal blood

My blood . . .

My blood . . . stabbed

Hello Judas!

Hello Brutus!

Shed not mine but both . . .

No matter:

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."

We will come around, baby.I'm comin' around. Now.

Two Hearts Beat as One

2008-11-12T12:34:00.000-08:00

I don’t like Pita Pit. I had it once, not too long ago, and I think I almost threw up. I really hated it. But I don’t hate the people there; they are cool. They are like hippies and people who have trees tattooed to their wrists or something. They are environmentalists who vote Democrat and like free-range chicken or are all the way vegan.

I’m at the coffee shop right now. And on my walk here I passed the Pita Pit. I first thought, when I saw the sign: Geez, I hate that place. I continued to walk and my mouth twisted and contorted like Paul Hamm from gymnastics in the Olympics. Adam sang “Recovering the Satellites” in my ear and my elephant-skin cowboy boots marched along the wet cement. Pita Pit’s obnoxious red sign screamed and I looked through the window: I saw a dude, you know, a college dude. He had a gray, Iowa hoody with a black Northface pulled over it so the hood sticks out the back and looks cool. His blue eyes focused on absolutely nothing, but they stared directly in front of him. The pita sat lonely on the table, with hands resting on either side. With his jaw slightly open, the dude looked at me. Oh shit, look away Hunter. I looked at my boots, turned the corner, and walked up the blue-carpeted stairs to my beloved coffee shop.

I love that dude. Here is my point, people: the world thirsts for Christ. It longs for Him. It needs him and everybody is looking for Him, I’m convinced. G.K. Chesterton said, “When a man knocks on the door of a brothel, he is looking for God.” Dude is looking for God. The man next to me, reading the newspaper, is looking for God. The business execs walking in their expensive suits are looking for God. It drives me crazy! I wish we could be better dispensers of grace.

I did laundry this morning. I like doing laundry, mainly because I get to lay down for a few minutes while my clothes wash and dry, but I still like doing laundry. While my clothes were drying I decided to burn 15 minutes reading articles on MSN. I scrolled the home page and looked for something interesting. Embarrassingly enough, the tagline for the article I chose was: “Aniston lashes out at Jolie.” I know, I know, I’m more mainstream than I’d like to think, but I learned something cool from the article and it prompted me to write this entry. The thing was about Aniston getting mad at Jolie for some things Jolie said about the filming of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, apparently the sparkplug for the Jolie-Pitt domination of celebrity love.

Anyways, as I read the article I came to a quote that made me really sad. Aniston is talking about marriage and says, “Whoever said everything has to be forever, that's setting your hopes too high. It's too much pressure. And I think if you put that pressure on yourself, fairy tale! It has to be the right one! That’s unattainable.” I don’t even want to read it again now because it will make me sad again. When I walked past dude I thought about this quote. Sometimes people are so hopeless and desperate, like my friend Jennifer Aniston, because they have been tossed like ragdolls through life’s tempests.

Whether they/we realize it or not, the one thing we look for is Jesus. He is hope. He is comfort. He is love. He is good. He is intimacy. He is forever. He takes away the pressure. He puts your yoke on His back.

Read Revelation 21:1-7.

Hope. Let’s dispense it.

Have You Seen Me Lately?

2008-11-10T15:34:00.000-08:00

"To quarrel with God is to pay God the supreme compliment: it is to take God seriously. It is to say that God matters enough to be worth some anger. To be indifferent to God is to pay God the supreme insult. It is to say that nothing of consequence is at stake."

—Elie Wiesel

Brief Wiki on Wiesel: Elie Wiesel (born Eliezer Wiesel on September 30, 1928) is a Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of 57 books, the best known of which is Night, a memoir that describes his experiences during the Holocaust and his imprisonment in several concentration camps. Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a "messenger to mankind", noting that through his struggle to come to terms with "his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler's death camps," as well as his "practical work in the cause of peace," "Wiesel has delivered a powerful message "of peace, atonement and human dignity" to humanity.

It might be self-justification. It might be truth. But it’s probably both self-justification and truth.

I’ve been quarreling with God, not in a dangerous way, but in a way that is a conquerable mountain, an obstacle in front of a strong warrior. It seems silly, well in fact it is silly, to quarrel with God, but perhaps not fruitless.

I’m mad at God for a few reasons. Reasons, I might add, that are quite trivial when I read Revelation 21. When I think about the big plan, God’s end game, the New Jerusalem, the established kingdom where we will sup with our dear Lord Christ Jesus and feel the light and warmth of God’s grandeur. Small things, but they hurt nonetheless.

The first might make you laugh. As a guy, I want a girl. (Well I know that all guys don’t want a girl, but I do.) Most college guys want a girl’s body. I hate to be arrogant, but I think it’s quite obvious that I’m in the upper echelon of maturity and spiritual development. I don’t really like to go on dates, and it might be kind of unfair to girls. Because this is what I normally do: I am friends with a girl, and I get close to her and decide if she is the type I would like to marry, and if she isn’t then I sort of stop being close to her. I’m an asshole; I realize this, so please forgive me. It’s selfish. But it’s true. I want a girl. Like-minded, Christ-loving, beautiful. Proverbs 31, really. And she has to have a heart for the poor. Although that would fall in the “like-minded category,” but you get the picture.

The second reason I’m quarreling with God is because I’m about two and a half months into college, and have not really found anyone my age who is really like-minded. Who has the same vision or thoughts as me. There is one in D.C. and a few in Dallas, but I haven’t found my Iowa City clique yet. Don’t get me wrong, there are wonderful and (a lot of) beautiful people here, but not so many me-kinda people. It’s fine. It will come. And I need to pray. And I need you to pray for me also. Or rather pray to God that he will slam me with people like me that can sharpen me.

The third reason is perhaps the most trivial but I feel it all the same. I wish I could hug Jesus. Ya know? Do you get that desire. I do. Here is a short excerpt from my novella that talks about what I mean:

"Problems diminish when there is someone to think about. Someone—not an abstract idea or a faceless name, but someone. Not a collection of stories with the same name reprinted, not even a great being or spirit missing some great body and warmth. Someone—to squeeze when towers drop and buses explode. Someone to smile with—smile at stupid, silly things nobody else understands. Someone with an unquenchable desire, an untold want, like your own. Someone who is honest—raw with problems. Honest with their disease—the one you have too. Someone whose skin bleeds."

Pray for me please. I’m doing really well up here, I promise. I adore Iowa City and my heart is throbbing more and more in tune with its problems. With its beat. I’m going to go talk to God if you don’t mind. Farewell.

Jesus

2008-11-06T19:24:00.000-08:00

I think that Jesus is attractive. What I mean by that is, if you see someone who is like Jesus, or has the same characteristics as Jesus, you will be attracted to that person. Unconsciously. Like you are drawn to people who are like Jesus. Not because you recognize in your mind that they are like Jesus, but because Jesus possesses all the qualities that are good. And perfect. And genuine. Attractive.

For example, tonight I was watching The Painted Veil with Ed Norton and Naomi Watts. It’s an awesome love story. It’s not even cheesy or anything. It just rocks. And, knowing the story, when I turned it on, I thought to myself, When Ed becomes more like Jesus she is more attracted to him, she falls in love with him because of what he does. Because of an affair, Ed and Naomi have a cold marriage, completely loveless. In fact full of spite. But as Naomi sees Ed serve, love, and give himself to the infected city, she falls in love with him. When he gives himself for something higher, she falls. When he literally sacrifices himself, she falls. Jesus is attractive.

Best part: if we truly see Jesus and his sacrifice, not only will we be attracted to him but we will be compelled to act. Duty, in a sense. Loyalty. First we will fall in love and then we will want to become more and more like Him.

Though there is a catch. There’s always a catch. You are the catch. I’m so selfish I don’t like to look at Jesus, and if I don’t look I won’t be attracted, and if I’m not attracted I won’t act. We are so damn selfish. We can’t get away from ourselves. So we have to break, or be broken. Over. And. Over. We’re stuck in ourselves. Jesus is literally the only hope.

Words from the Prof . . .

2008-11-05T10:32:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, I got an email from my Whitman professor this morning, who has influenced me and been a great person in my life this semester, I asked and he said I could share his words with you regarding the election:

Hey my old Whitman friends,

Indulge me for a moment at this pivotal point in history, when waking up today truly does, without hyperbole, mean waking up to a new America. Our history trembled and shifted last night; it will never be the same. I’m thankful I’ve lived to experience it.

One of the poems we didn’t have a chance to explore this term is a poem Whitman wrote in the late 1860s, called “Ethiopia Saluting the Colors.” It’s always a troubling poem to confront. Often read as betraying Whitman’s racism, the poem has nonetheless been revered by many African American writers over the past century. Langston Hughes called it “the greatest poem in our language concerning a Negro subject,” and the great African American composer H. T. Burleigh set it to music; it was often sung at Harlem Renaissance gatherings. It has always seemed that African American writers and critics see something in the poem that most white readers do not.

Take a look at the poem. Whitman writes it from the perspective of a Union soldier who is marching with Sherman into the Carolinas in 1864, a march that resulted in the liberation of many slaves, who often—to the irritation of the Northern army—tried to latch onto the soldiers for protection and guidance. In Whitman’s poem, a hundred-plus-year-old slave woman, dismissively named “Ethiopia” by the soldier-narrator, comes out of her hovel and salutes the American flag, to the consternation of the white soldier, who wonders who this “dusky woman, so ancient hardly human” is, and why she should care about the American colors. The old slave woman, who was torn from her parents in Africa by slavers a century before and has experienced the Atlantic crossing, the American Revolution, the founding of the country, and its development as a slave republic, is now experiencing something she could not have imagined: white soldiers liberating her and her people. The white soldier can’t see it from her perspective and can only ask, dismissively, “Are the things so strange and marvelous you see or have seen?” But, of course, the things she has seen ARE indeed strange and marvelous, none more so than what she is seeing at that moment, when the nation’s flag, for the first time, seemed suddenly to symbolize something positive and had begun to include this ancient and “fateful” woman. (One of my favorite stories of the end of the Civil War is when abolitionists came to Charleston harbor to raise the Union flag over Fort Sumter; in the harbor, a ship filled with celebrating African Americans—many with their children along—heard a white officer say, as the flag was raised, “Now for the first time it is the black man’s as well as the white man’s flag.”)

When my graduate seminar was discussing this poem a couple of weeks ago, it seemed oddly different to me, once Barak Obama had become the Democratic nominee for president. During the 1960s and 1970s, the poem was almost unteachable because it seemed so clumsily insensitive in its understanding of racial attitudes. But I’ve always been attracted to the poem, in part because Whitman’s very first published piece, in the New York Mirror in 1834 (when he was fifteen years old), was also about how “strange and marvelous” things could appear to an old black person who had witnessed American history from a vantage point that only an African American in this culture could obtain. Whitman’s little article is called “The Olden Time,” and it starts by talking about how “vastly strange” it is to be told, that as “old” and “civilized” as New York City felt in 1830, there were still people alive who “conversed with men who once saw the present great metropolitan city as a little dorp or village.” Whitman goes on to tell how, in 1758, a “Negro Harry,” “aged at least one hundred and twenty years,” had died on Long Island. He had been a slave in the same family for a hundred years. This “old oracle” carried the history of the community in a way no one else could, and he remembered New York when “there were but three houses in it.” The young Whitman had talked to people who knew Negro Harry and heard his amazing tales. I’ve often thought that Whitman carried with him this little bit of history he had picked up in his childhood and used it again thirty years later as he thought about what that hundred-plus-year-old slave woman might have seen in her century’s journey through America.

So you will understand last night, as Barak Obama stood before 250,000 people in Chicago’s Grant Park and spoke to us of our history and how we were now experiencing it do something, respond to something, that we could only barely begin to register, why I was struck when he evoked a hundred-plus-year-old black woman to guide us through the moment. This woman, as you all heard, was 106-year-old Ann Nixon Cooper who cast her ballot yesterday in Atlanta. It’s one of “many stories that will be told for generations” about this election, Obama said, and it’s the “one that’s on my mind tonight”: “She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons—because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.” You’ll remember how Obama then took us through our history, from the “time when women’s voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed,” to the “despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land,” to the bombs falling “on our harbor and tyranny threatening the world,” to “the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that ‘We Shall Overcome,’” to a man touching down on the moon, a wall coming down in Berlin, to a moment when Ann Nixon Cooper “touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.” It was during that catalog of the past century’s history that Obama began to intone his campaign chant, but somberly now and with quiet conviction: “Yes we can.”

He ended this amazing address by saying, just as Negro Harry and the old slave woman Ethiopia, “America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do.” Another 100-plus-year-old black woman had looked at what America had become and was, like Whitman’s slave woman a hundred and fifty years earlier, shaking her head at what she had seen. I’m sure many white Americans, like the befuddled Union soldier in Whitman’s poem, were wondering what was so “strange and marvelous” about what Ann Nixon Cooper had seen. But I, for the first time, thought I understood what those Harlem Renaissance writers had seen in Whitman’s poem, had seen in that “fateful” ancient slave woman’s wonderment at what the American flag could come to mean, of how its shape-shifting symbolism actually can change, of how far we have come, and, because of that, of how far we can still go. Those three black centenarians--all carrying the nation’s fate, living the three centuries of our history, from Negro Harry when New York was but three houses, to Ethiopia seeing white men liberating the slaves, to Ann Nixon Cooper voting for the first African American president—carry the stories of all of us, and I loved President-Elect Obama’s final evocation of the next black centenarian (maybe one of his daughters!), leaving us all to wonder what “strange and marvelous” things she will tell at the beginning of the twenty-second century.

Best,

Ed Folsom

She. Is. Just. Like. Mercury.

2008-11-03T08:51:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the most frightening thing about a trip to Africa is the damage it will do to your soul. It will force, undoubtedly, you to question, prod, and dissect your previously held notions of what you believe is reality.

My junior year of high school I picked up a book from Starbucks, expecting a good read with a few things I didn’t know about. A few pages in I realized that the words of Ishmael Beah didn’t come from a distant planet, or even the musings of his mind, but they came from the experiences of his body, hardened by the horrors of war. I sped through the book like the Devil was on my back, and, when I finished, I loaned it (and bought more and more copies) to multiple friends. They read it, but nobody seemed to be as touched as myself, or, more accurately, disintegrated. It blew me apart.

I felt the lure of the forbidden continent. I felt its draw. After my senior year, and in large portion due to Ishmael Beah’s book, I took a trip to Nigeria, the most populated country in Africa, split by Christians and Muslims, and corrupted by wealthy government officials. While there, I learned truths I otherwise would be blind to, things to make one shudder in one’s sleep and wake from the solace of the night. Marque, for example, told me a story. Marque is a 37-year-old man, (who looks like he’s 22) who is the tech guy. He can fix anything: radio, TV, car engine, watch, you name it. If it’s electrical and it breaks, give it to Marque. Brilliant guy. More intelligent than most any American I have ever met. Sharp. World-weary, and loving. I spent less than two weeks with Marque, but I would put my life in his hands without a question.

I leaned in closer as Marque produced his tale: he was in the Northern parts of Nigeria, a stronghold of Muslims, and as a Christian preaching the gospel, Marque had plenty reason to fear for his life. Marque and several others were asleep in a house, having just proclaimed the gospel in a Muslim town. Suddenly a cinder block shattered the window in Marque’s room—he heard yells. Marque and his three companions crawled, as quietly as they could, to another window and they took a peak: several men wielding machetes, blood in their eyes, fire in their hearts. They crawled to a new window: more men, the house was surrounded. Adrenaline pumped through Marque’s veins—he had been in sticky situations before, but not like this. Through every window hungry, red eyes searched for movement like sharks in deep waters. Marque and his friends gathered and prayed. There wasn’t much else they could do. The yells continued, but through the drone a new voice arose, different and stronger. It stifled the yells of the machete-wielding warriors. The murmurs died down into nothingness and Marque heard a creak near the front door. The warriors had finally decided to stop the intimidation and start the brawl—but the voice, the stifling voice, told them the men with the machetes were gone. Marque and his friends, still huddled together, looked out the window—the men were gone. The man with the voice showed himself: a tall, barefoot impostor, clothed in a cream-colored tunic, worn red by the dirt. He told Marque he and his friends were free to go. The men were gone.

A desire for tea led to a trip to Starbucks, which in turn led to the purchase of a book, which followed with a trip to Nigeria, which culminated with soul-wrenching experiences, but the journey wasn’t over.

I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered what the school reading would be: A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. And I was even more joyous when I found out Ishmael himself, the one who sent me, would be coming to our campus to speak.

As I filed into the tightly packed church I reflected on how much this author had affected my life, unbeknownst to him. It forced a certain wonder through my brain: how could one man, whose experiences occurred during my first few years of life, affect another so much? As Ishmael took the podium I gawked. There he is, I thought. This is the guy, the guy! This is it!

Despite the complaints of numerous students around me, I listened to what Ishmael had to say. (It was quite disappointing that many of the students complained about being there, they whined that there TAs made them go. I felt like telling them they need to leave their own heads and experience someone else’s worldview.) His talk was shorter than I had hoped for, but he answered questions like a genius. He put Sarah Palin, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and John McCain to shame.

One thing stood out, above all else. It was small: when he said that he still only sleeps three hours a night. My heart did a loop (like a crazy roller coaster) in my chest. Holy shit, 3 hours. I thought about the students who were actually complaining about being there. I hope you heard that. (Only now do I realize I was being just as snobby and self-righteous as they were.) Ishmael still lives with all of the memories. Every war scene rides his brain like a horseman on a stallion.

After the talk there was a brief book signing. I didn’t have my book, but I wanted to meet the guy. With my new friend Barb the Artist I reached (finally) the table, which Ishmael sat at. My heart pounded, like a caveman on an animal-skinned drum. I shook his hand, and was quickly ushered out the door. Quick, but beautiful.

Every experience either Ishmael or I ever had converged into the meeting of our hands. Two completely different worldviews fusing and then breaking in a moment’s time.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

2008-10-28T16:42:00.000-07:00

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

"The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought."

"At all times the Party is in possession of absolute truth, and clearly the absolute can never have been different from what it is now."

"The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant; the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism."

"The Party is immortal."

You are the Party.

I am the Party.

(Title Title)

2008-10-22T12:07:00.000-07:00

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