I Used to Be Smart.

It was not yet daylight when he awoke. It was like this every morning, and every morning he hated the waking just as much as he had hated it the day before. It was not just the waking he hated, it was everything about the disturbing way that we always awakened that bothered him so much. It was the sound of his father’s voice that seemed to come earlier and earlier each passing moment. It was the rough way in which his father grabbed his shoulder and shook him free from whatever dream he was having. It was the way that he was always at the plate with a full count, ready to double in the go-ahead run on a sharp line drive, and the way the crack of the bat was always replaced by his father’s complaints.

It wasn’t that his father hated him. It wasn’t that at all. His father was just a kind of distant that he never could quite grasp. There was always a tension between them that was rarely broken. His father was one of those intense kinds of men, always working away at some job, always moving toward tangible results. He had been in Europe when his son was born, during, “America’s greatest moment.” That’s what he called the war on the rare occasions when said anything about it. He would never say much beyond those few words. Talk of the war only brought about a distant look, like his eyes were trying to focus on something that was never there.

He liked to call himself a carpenter, but it was always clear that a misnomer. He was a keeper and a taker of odd jobs (some jobs, of course, were more odd than others). Occasionally, he managed to use his carptentry skills. However, it was not out of the ordinary for him to rescue treed cats or remove bird from inappropriate environs. He had once been paid $1 to kill a large spider for Florence Stenglemen. “Work,” he said, “is work.”

On days he was not in school, he was always with his father. He was always being ordered to do something for his father, and the steady stream of orders made it clear that his father needed the extra set of hands. Nothing, it appeared, came easy.

And that his how he spent his days — following the end of a calloused finger and a short order, moving steadily from one task to the next until his day was complete. It was the only life he knew.

—–

The accident was nothing that anyone could have predicted. Forced to develop a sense of humor about it all, he would always laugh and say, “I never saw it coming.” It was true. He had never seen the rock fly from his friends hand, and he had never seen it as it crashed into his left eye. All he would ever be able to remember from the accident would be the shock and the sting. When he was honest with himself, that was all he ever wanted to remember.

—–

There was no money for the expensive surgery that would save his eye. Even if there had been money, there was no way that his parents could have could have gathered it in enough time to save their son’s eye. More than that, there was no money for an expensive prosthesis. There was but one alternative. Their son would have to wear a patch over his eye until his parents could afford something more permanent. It was a terrible solution, but they were left with no recourse.

(More to come…)

I may have just seen one of the greatest things that I have ever seen. (And I may have just written one of the most horrible setences that I have ever written.)

It was a mustard-yellow van, painted with “Amp-Rite Electric” in bright red letters on the side. I was driving slow enough that I caught the driver’s face. He was the most grizzled looking man I have ever seen. He wasn’t bearded as much as he was unshaven, and he wore a knit hat that couldn’t have been more than a dollar at Wal-Mart. That’s pretty standard for a guy driving an “Amp-Rite Electric” van, I know. However, there was one detail that was startilingly perfect: the eye patch. Eye. Patch.

How do you get an eye patch these days? And aren’t there alternatives to eye patches? So if you’re the kind of person that WEARS an eye patch, you must be a piece of work, right?

I’m pretty sure I have no choice but to write a story about this guy. (And by write, I mean invent a bunch of stuff. He was a little too scary to actually talk to.)

Stay tuned.

(Now I’ve got you hooked. I should be in marketing.)

I figured out tonight what I’ve been so enamored with lately — the art of protest. Watching parts of a Rage Against the Machine video followed by a ride home with The Boss made that abundantly clear. So I started thinking about all of the different kinds of protest art that I’ve been enamored with over the past few years, and how the protest is an old, old thing. Much of the Old Testament is registered in the form of protests. The prophets, especially the ones we (wrongly) call “minor” are adamant assailers of the Way Things Are. The protest is nothing new, for a long time, The Way Things Are has been a thing that has, necessarily, needed questioning. So the people that I’m enamored with now — Woody Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen, Derek Webb — they’re nothing new. They’re just new voices of a protest that has been ringing all out through history.

So? Malcontents have been griping for thousands of years. Why should I care? “Let ‘em riot!” The problem with all of that is that the continuity says something. That the protest has withstood the test of time and continues to be an important part of culture says something.

So I have to wonder what it is.

Is it simply that The Way Things Are will always be a problem? As long as there are institutions and people in power, will there be dissident voices whose roles will be question The Way Things Are? And are those institutions so prone to corruption that those voices will always be necessary? Are some people simply just malcontents who feed off dissonance and dissent?

Furthermore, why are so many voices of protest looking for the same thing. How can I, a Christian, be completely riled up by a Rage Against the Machine song — a group that has no ties to Christianity? How is it that a Bruce Springsteen song can find a way to stir something inside me that I wasn’t even aware I even had? Why do these protests have such a universal quality?

I have a suspicion that, at the end of the day, we’re all looking for the same thing. The same reason that I believe so strongly in this Christian thing (no matter how many times its followers let me down) is the same reason that Zack de laRocha can scream so passionately from a stage. It’s the same reason that Woody Guthrie could twang out his songs and that Bruce Springsteen can bleed into microphones. At the end of the day, we’re all looking for the same thing. At the end of the day, we’re all finding pieces, and we’re grabbing as tightly as we can to those pieces of a better life that we know is coming. (Don’t get me wrong. I think I’ve been given an incredibly important piece in Christianity. However, my limited understanding and knowledge is still nothing more than a small piece.) We need these voices, and we need their pieces.

Bruce Cockburn says the same thing, much better, like this: (And no, you haven’t heard of him, but that’s okay.)

Maybe the poet is gay
But he’ll be heard anyway

Maybe the poet is drugged
But he won’t stay under the rug

Maybe the voice of the spirit
In which case you’d better hear it

Maybe he’s a woman
Who can touch you where you’re human

Male female slave or free
Peaceful or disorderly
Maybe you and he will not agree
But you need him to show you new ways to see

Don’t let the system fool you
All it wants to do is rule you
Pay attention to the poet
You need him and you know it

Put him up against the wall
Shoot him up with pentothal

Shoot him up with lead
You won’t call back what’s been said
Put him in the ground
But one day you’ll look around

There’ll be a face you don’t know
Voicing thoughts you’ve heard before

Male female slave or free
Peaceful or disorderly
Maybe you and he will not agree
But you need him to show you new ways to see

Don’t let the system fool you
All it wants to do is rule you
Pay attention to the poet
You need him and you know it

I can’t agrue with him.

—–

To switch gears, from the “I Wish I Had Written That” file:

“Sometimes it’s like someone took a knife baby
Edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley
Through the middle of my soul

At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
And a freight train running through the
Middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire
I’m on fire”
– The Boss, “I’m On Fire.”

(This is probably just a bad attempt to be Nick Hornby, and there’s no way I’m Nick Hornby.)

Sometimes, there are things in life that need to be done. Some days, a man needs to sit at home for most of the day and listen to music. There may not be anything about that kind of day that society would deem as “productive.” Then again, society has produced trainwrecks like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, so any inclination I have to listen to what society would to tell me is thoroughly diminished.

Spending an afternoon doing this, listening to music all day reminds me of all sorts of things that I (for some unknown reason) constantly forget. How do I forget how clever the Beastie Boys are? How do I not remember the way being in love sounds so much like dying when it’s Al Green describing it? How do I forget about the way that Patty Griffin’s voice has an uncanny ability to feel exactly like home? Or the way that Ben Gibbard always finds an entirely new way to say something that we’ve all felt? Why is it that I can’t remember Springsteen’s uncanny ability to raise my skin into goosebumps with nothing more than his voice and just one guitar? (Thanks, Boss.) How do I forget the passion with which Woody Guthrie twangs out his ballads and the improbability of his sense of humor? I could keep going for days — there’s the soul that only Marvin Gaye has. There’s the way that Conor Oberst is so tortured, so young, and makes me believe every single word of it.

I don’t think I could ever make music. I used to think I could. I used to write songs and sing songs (though only to myself) and think that I could get my name on one of these lists, if only given the time and the opportunity. But all I ever wanted to do was be like someone else. I just wanted to be Derek Webb, or Paul Simon — that was all. I didn’t want to write my own songs, I just wanted to be the guy who had written those songs. Because when someone comes along and says something just a certain way, you are ruined from the moment after you hear it. It will always knock around in your mind, and you will always wish that you could have been the one to come up with that. And when someone lays down a chord change that happens JUST a certain way, your head will never be free from that melody, and the way it ALWAYS makes you feel, even when you wish it wouldn’t.

It’s not like I can help it. Most days I am just the sum of all these songs, and I’m just a product of the way that they bounce around in my head, contained and guided by some though process that I can’t possibly hope to explain.

So maybe it’s my fault that my room is a mess. Maybe it’s my fault that there is laundry that needs to be done, applications that need to be submitted, books and articles that need to be read. But some days the call is too strong, and I have to surround myself with too many pop songs, and waste too much time listening to them. Maybe all of that’s a sin. But I just can’t help it.

My top 5 all-time recording artists:

1. Bruce Springsteen
2. Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie/The Postal Service/All-Time Quarterback)
3. Patty Griffin
4. Derek Webb
5. Paul Simon

(It’s subjective. It’s just my favorites, not a compilation of who is the best or who I am supposed to think is the best.)

So here’s the question of the night:

If any part of the Bible is not true, is Christianity itself not true?

(I’ve probably done this before, and I’m a bit out of practice, but oh well.)

The problem with this question is that it is huge. It’s so huge that it might be impossible to answer. Attempting to define “true” could take all night. However, I’m dumb enough to tackle all of this anyway.

(For the sake of brevity and sanity, I’ll leave the discussion of “true” for some other time. Kinda.)

The best place to start, I think, is to try and figure out what the Bible is, and what the Bible isn’t. So, to offer a brief description:

The Bible was a book written by a multitude of different authors. Some of those authors are identified, some of them are not. It was a book written over a span of thousands of years, in multiple languages and from multiple locations. It is a book that contains multiple genres of literature and multiple voices from all sorts of different contexts. It is a book that only appeared in its current form hundreds of years after all its components were finished, and its contents were selected by groups of men (yes, men) who did not participate in the authoring of any of its contents. Though it is especially well preserved and especially reliable, it is still a compilation that went though a long process of creation.

The temptation is to discount all of these things. The temptation is to think of the Bible as something like a textbook — a cohesive, coherent work with a fixed beginning and a fixed ending, in which all of the contents of the Christian faith can be found. It is that temptation that leads to the original question. It is the temptation to view the Bible as a textbook that leads us to think that the discrediting of any one piece of information leads to the discrediting of the entire book. To believe that the Bible is the proof itself, simply because it is the Bible is the error that we are making.

Christianity has found itself in the middle of a piece of messy logic. It is a nasty circle that works like this: the Bible must be true because God says it is, and God must be right because the Bible says he is. It is self-referential logic — it uses itself to prove itself. Perhaps that is the fault sloppy logic, perhaps it is the goal of people attempting to find a rational basis for their faith. Whatever it is, I believe that it utterly stifles the Bible. Turning the Bible into a textbook that is unquestionable and unassailable robs the Bible of its power and actually injures the ability of the Bible to be a coherent part of our apologetic.

That should make my answer to the first question a clear, “No.” If any one part of the Bible is proved to be untrue, then the entirety of Christian is not proven to be untrue.

So, now that I’ve engaged in that nice little piece of deconstruction, I must, at the very least, offer some sort of alternative. (And as I’ve said before, I’m not deconstructing because of a dislike. I’m deconstructing as an effort to find something that I believe is better.)

Again, I’ll start at the beginning. The Bible, I believe, is something much simple than must people would have us believe. The Bible is the record of God’s dealings with humanity. That is important. The Bible is NOT God’s dealing with humanity. The Bible is the RECORD of God’s dealing with humanity. The two are entirely different. This starts with a belief that God DOES deal with humanity. It acknowledges that most of the time, the way God deals with humanity is nearly impossible to record perfectly, and it believes that the Bible is the various writers’ best attempt to record the ways that they believe God was working in the world.

I’ll use an anecdote as an example. Nearly every Christian is familiar with the story of the parting of the “Red Sea.” The problem is, the Red Sea was probably never parted. I am not entirely sure why some people believe that it is the Red Sea, and whether there is something that validates that. However, it is also true that the Hebrew in that passage reads “Yam Suph” which means something closer to Reed Sea than Red Sea. Moreover, it is more geographically probable that the Hebrew people were passing through an area further north than the Red Sea. What is more likely than the parting of the Red Sea is that the Israelites found a passage across one of various marshy wetlands, and that the armies of the Egyptian pharoah could not follow their path, and were halted by the marshy land, allowing the Israelites to escape. (If you also consider modes of transportation in those days, the image of the army hot on the heels of Moses and his followers is probably not as correct as two groups of people seperated by a significant distance.) However, whichever version of the story is true — whether the Red Sea parted into two great walls of water or whether the Isrealites found a passage across precarious, marshy land, the point still remains — it was obvious to Moses and followers that God was at work, looking out for their people in their safe passage through a place that, by all means, should have meant their capture. Whether it is absolute, objective truth or not, the point is obvious and the point remains — the people of Israel believed that God was working in the midst to bring them safely to the land that they believed God had promised them.

The Bible is full of such examples. Whether they are true in the modern, rational, “objective” sense of truth or not, they still stand as powerful examples of the ways that they are communicating what God is working towards in the world and the ways in which we may join God in that work.

Hand in hand with that is the way in which the Bible never speaks of itself as a whole. Even in the oft-quoted 2 Timothy 3:16, the writer is talking about a limited range of texts, since he had no vision of the Bible as the whole we have now. Furthermore, even if he DID, the author gives us NO lisence to view the Bible as something that is meant to be 100% historically and metaphysically accurate from the first word until the last. Any such assertion that he does relies, on some point, on an assumption that is more than simply what the text says.

I am convinced that the Bible is a book full of “errors.” There are numbers that are too huge to be right. There are varying accounts that simply do not add up. However, that does not to shake the faith that I have. It does nothing to make me believe that Christianity is not true.

It seems to me that there has to be something before the Bible. The Bible is not a book that proves anything, it simply reveals something that is already happening. It sheds light on the ways that God is already working in the world, and confirms the ways in which we already know God to be working in our lives. The Bible is not proof because there is no proof. Faith is not an animal of proof, and Christianity is not a faith of proof. Nothing is about the ability to have objective, unspoilable proof.

This Thing that is Christianity is a completely irrational exploration that starts with the belief that we have seen God working in the world, and that we wish to join up with God in however he may be working in the world. The Bible serves as a guidebook, not an answer book. It shows us how people have believed God was working in the world in a certain time in history, and it gives us a way to measure the ways that we believe God is working in the world now.

(So that’s that. I don’t know what it’s worth. It’s just what one guy thinks about the faith he tries hard to have. Take it or leave it.)

There are days when I like to take a few minutes to think about who I am, and to think about who I used to be. Mostly its days when I’m riding in my car and my mind starts to wander, hyptonized by the road. More than once, my mind has I’ve thought about faith. I’ve thought about who I used to be and who I am. That usually makes me laugh.

Who I was and who I am are so far removed that is hard to think of myself as the same person. However, at both points in my life, I have been sure of one thing — that I am genuinely and deeply rooted in this mystery that is faith. That is no less true of me now than it was then. That I am so much different, and still so convinced is something causes my self-reflection to take a turn for the difficult. At times, I am tempted to think that one version of me is “right” and the other is “wrong,” and I get scared sometimes that the version that is writing these words is the one who is wrong. To steal a line from a man who said it better (Ben Gibbard), “It’s a complicated fear.” That fear leads me to believe that there is a certain kind of self-reflection, and a certain act of storytelling that needs to happen so I can figure out if that fear is founded or ridiculous.

(I am willing to admit that all of this may be utter narcissism. If that’s the case, then I am genuinely sorry.)

I think that I can roughly divide the story into three major sections. There is no neat division between the three, and they all have their ways of overlapping in one way or another. However, as broad strokes, they seem to tell the story fairly accurately.

The story starts with Me. The focus of my faith was Me. What was at stake, I very much believed, was My salvation, and what was most important during than time was My own personal piety. My prayers, my conversations, the things on which I placed value — they all focused directly on Me. For all I knew, the object of faith was Me. I did very little for which I was not My own motivation. Whether I felt it was assuage the God who would stand in judgement or Me or to be seen by the people that I was convinced were looking, there was no act that did not have its antecedant in Me.

I have no doubt about this stage of my life. The Fear is not relevant here, I do no believe that I was, at any point, right. I was immature. It was the faith of a teenager who simply did not know any better. It was the faith of a kid who had yet to realize that there was a world outside himself, and there was immense value in that world that did not have to be first be measured in terms of himself. I cannot judge that faith harshly, either in myself or in anyone else, for it is only the product of an immaturity that always occurs in faith.

It is at juncture number two that the trouble begins. Things get messy here. In this second stage, everything is all about God. However, the problem is that everything is about (I now believe) a reduced version of God. How and why that reduction occurs is unclear. There are so many strands, all wound and knotted so tightly that it would be impossible to either pick them all apart, even with much time and many skilled fingers, or to follow the path of each strand. Everything must be taken as it is, though knotted and tangled.

This focus on God was bundled tightly with a burgeoning conservatism, in all matters. Whether political or theological, conservatism was the only the game in town, and certainly the only game I was playing. Additionally, “purity” became a very big issue. Doctrines and beliefs were supremely important, and those doctrines and beliefs could not be defiled by those that were inferior. It was a time of new words — big, defining words — inerrant, infallible. It was the land of systems and dogma, rigid and high-walled that I was entering. People were judged by the Big Words, and labelled with Big Words. I believed very different things. I believed that every word in the Bible was exactly true, no matter what sort of mental gymnastics that I had to do to work around certain issues. I believed that women were, by nature, something less than a man and should not hold certain positions in the church. I believed in the power of the American right. I voted Republican and knew no force but the grand savior that was the American free market. I had yet to find a problem with Jerry Falwell or George Bush.

If that image is shocking to anyone, it is duly shocking to me. The important thing is that I felt that I was going everything because of God. I felt that this is how God would have people to live. However, more than that, there was an overriding sense that I was doing this because this was what God needed. God needed me to be on this side of some sort of “purity,” some staunch conservative resistance to a world that was attempting to profane all things that were “God.” My withdrawl and my militancy were essential in some (however marginal) way to protecting something that I percieved as under assault. My life had become about certain in-groups — in groups of which I was sure God approved.

Those conservative doctrines were very much defining points for that period of my life. I lived and died by my Big Words and they way that I felt they impacted things. It is those conservative doctrines that lead to The Fear that I have that one version of me could be right and the other could be wrong.

So that brings us here — to the version of me who is trying to tell this story (and could tell this story all night and still not sort it out). At a rapidly increasing rate, I have become a person who has started to recognize that there is a world that exists outside of himself, and that world has great value. It is the most recent in a line of progression that has ventured from self to God to other. That recognition, the recognition of the value of the other in the world (the WHOLE world) has managed to turn the views of the conservative that I was completely upside down. The recognition of the world and the value that God places on the world has made it clear that the self-preservation that was the root of my staunch conservative was misguided and misdirected.

I spent more than a few nights lying in bed, confronting the possibilities that all of the Big Words that I had found so important were utterly useless and that everything that I had always thought to be true might just be completely wrong. I spent many long nights both talking and listening, all the while changing my mind. I spent more than one night lying in bed, feeling as if everything I had ever believed was gone, and that I must have no faith left at all. Those nights were an essential tearing down that lead to a building up of something different. And when it was all rebuilt, the new would have trouble recognizing the old and speaking its language.

What I find when tell this whole story is an inevitable conclusion — the conclusion that what I have become is something better than what I was — that I am participating in a progress, not any sort of regression. I do believe that to be true. I believe this story to be one of maturity. It is not a faith that is in conflict, but a faith that is part of a process, a faith that is growing and changing into something always better than what it was before. (That doesn’t mean that I think I’m better than conservatives. Don’t read me as saying that.) It is not that any part of my faith has ever been wrong, it is that thing that is faith is a difficult journey, and that journey is one that requires a kind of maturity that cannot happen all at once. It forces us to be “wrong” because we are not yet ready to be “right.” It is because of that that I think my story may be relevant for more than simply narcissism. It serves as a reminder (to me at least) not to judge anyone too harshly, and to remember my own steps along on the journey, and the ways that each step was necessary to take the step that would come after it. The Fear I have is not unfouded, but it is misplaced. It is not that any of have taken all of the steps that we must. It is simply that none of us have taken all of the steps that we must take, and we all realize the ways in which we are all growing, and that allows us to both give and recieve grace with those around us.

There are few things in the world better than a night spent with a Wendell Berry book, a chocolate stout, and some rock ‘n’ roll songs.

(I promise that my next post will not contain the words “Wendell” or “Berry.”)

Some people only have the words to tell certain stories. Anyone can outline a plot and the exploits of a few characters, but only a few people have the right words to tell some stories. No matter how much I read Wendell Berry and the language of his farmers, no matter how many times I listen to my grandmother’s childhood stories, no matter how much value I place on each of those, I do not have the words that they have. Their words are the products of entire lifetimes spent gathering just the right words to tell their stories, whether they have been aware of the process or not. Their words are their own, and their stories are their own, and those stories can only be shared with their words.

But I am learning. I am learning that I have my own words, and that I have my own stories, and that my words are the only ones that will work for telling my stories. I cannot try to tell stories with someone else’s words. I must find my own words, and speak my words with my own voice.

At the end of the day, I think that’s all I can ask of myself.

“Doubled up in the floor with a gut ache.” That would probably be the best description of how I feel right now. I hate going to my grandmother’s to eat. Or I love going to grandmother’s to eat. I’m not sure. Her cooking is the age-old battle. Nothing that my grandmother cooks can really be seen as “healthy.” However, everything that my grandmother cooks tastes amazing. She has that gift that grandmothers have. The thing about my grandmother’s cooking is this: it is a product of how she was raised. It is heavy cream, it is butter. It is corbread and biscuits. It is more food than you can ever eat, and always a dessert. If you’re 24, overly concious about the numbers on the scales, and stupid, it would be enough to make you angry.

However, if you make the effort to steer the conversation in certain directions, it becomes clear that this meal isn’t an effort to make you fat, but it’s the culmination of a life spent lived in a certain way. Pretty soon, the stories come out with no pulling at all, and things become clear. Stories of how my grandmother grew up in Lewis County (it’s like a game within a blog entry!), and how her mother would kill chickens led to stories of hog killings, and large pigs bleeding from huge scaffolds, which ALWAYS led one thing — pork tenderloin for supper. What you don’t know about my grandmother is that the vast majority of the time we have a meal at her house, pork tenderloin is involved. The affection with which she recalled cooking the pork tenderloin of her childhood makes it clear why it is such a staple of her cooking.

It finds its way into everything she is — the way she worries about my family, the way lunch at her house is an information session, filled with goings-on of all the family and questions about my parents and my brother. It is a search for information that is not simply nosy, but a desire for information meant to show that the people involved in the conversation are important. It is the kind of conversation that is glossed over by the speed at which we operate. It is the way that she thinks that I am too thin, even though I am not nearly thin enough. It is my luxury of vanity at odds with her necessity of health.

I’m not sure if I have a point. It just makes me sad to know how long it has taken me to appreciate the things that I have around me, and it makes me sad to know that there is something in America that is disappearing that cannot be replaced, and that we are no more aware or saddened by its demise than we are when we swat at annoying flies.

We must learn how much it is we have to learn.

Looking out the windows in section 3, the row of icicles that hung from the awning was so perfect that it was hard not to think that it was something contrived. I’m not sure if anyone else in the store noticed it, but there was one icicle that was clearly better than all the rest. The freezing and refreezing of the dripping water has made this one bigger than all the others and it hung from the canvas perfectly. I was impressed by it all morning. I wanted to take a picture, but I had neither the time nor a camera.

He couldn’t have been more than 7. The excitement in his eyes was visible. The snow had netted him a day out of school, and he was taking every opportunity to enjoy it. Watching him was like a scene from some movie, only the event was only tragic in my mind. As I stood at 3-2, looking out the window, he charged up the sidewalk, his sister in tow. I said out loud, “Don’t do that!” But before I could finish my sentence, he had jumped from the concrete and began tearing at the ice. In one smooth motion, he destroyed the unbroken line, and pulled down the biggest icicle in the row. I won’t pretend I wasn’t a little mad at him. I can’t blame him. He had only seen what I had seen — something special; something beautiful. He had only succumbed to an impulse that I still struggle to control — to own what is beautiful. That was all he wanted, to own that beautiful piece of ice that only the spontenaity of nature could create. And though he had ripped it entirely from the awning, and was wielding it like some magic sword in front of his sister, he had ruined it. In seeking to own the beauty, he had destroyed it. Though it would have eventually melted anyway, the more violent end seems a tragedy.

I will resist the urge to sermonize and moralize. For those things only serve as attempts to own the beautiful.

He would stand out if you saw him in a crowd, as large, black men usually do in Kentucky. His work uniform consists of multiple aprons and something that can only be described as a dress made out of a garbage bag. Most of the time, he is faceless, he is just a large pair of hands reaching out to grab stacks of dishes. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him smile, and I can say that I have never seen the man laugh. He just does his job (though never very happily), eats his lunch, and waits at the bus stop until it’s time to go home.

—–

She was ugly. There is no other way to say it. She didn’t look “interesting” or “different.” She was just ugly. Time had not treated her well. Orthodontics had apparently not been an option. The cheese from her burrito that had found its way to her face was not something she had noticed yet, and it was not something that helped her appearance in any way. The man sitting across from her was not much better. The most cursory of glances made it clear that he was her son. He sat in a sweater in that had never been fashionable. His skin was a shade of pale that usually leads to classroom jokes, and I hope that whatever had found its way to his shoulders was excess hair product that had long since dried. He wore glasses that were an odd yellow tint, and an expression that was as blank as any I had ever seen.

She spoke loud enough that the subject of their “conversation” was evident to anyone close. She was recounting a long list of injustices that had been done to her, and detailing a long of list of people who did not meet her approval. Her son was obviously wishing to be anywhere but across that booth from his mother in that Taco Bell. While she ranted, he looked out the window. He picked his finger nails. He stared at the table. He interjected the occasional platitude, just enough so that he kept up an appearance of listening.

—–

You probably wouldn’t notice either of them in a crowded place. If you did, your only implus would probably be to check your wallet, or to make sure your car was locked. They really are the margins. They understand very few words that you say, and unless you’ve learned a few phrases like “Uno mas!” then they’re not going to understand very much that you say. But your oversight does not mean that they’re not there, working. Always working, always doing the jobs that you would never take. And because they have something to work for, they are always working hard, never stopping, never questioning. Occasionally, you may recieve some insult in Spanish for your clumsiness or for your inconsideration, but you don’t know any better, and they are making your lifestyle possible, all while trying to find some success of their own. Neither of them will probably find much better work than what they have found right now, they will just find it somewhere else, for some other “guero” who will yell at them all the same. And you’ll still never know their names.

—–

I’m sure all of this looks like a willing setup. It looks like I’m arranging the pieces for a tirade of heavy-handed judgement upon all of us, I am sure.

I promise that is not my desire. Instead, I want to make a confession. I want to confess that I’ve been viewing all of this all wrong, and that I am nearly as adept at paying attention to the people in the margins as I have pretended that I am. I am not nearly as involved in looking after “the least of these” as I should be. In fact, I have completely missed the point.

(Everything from this point on, I must confess, is Wendell Berry’s fault.)

What I have always thought is that I must turn to the big things in life. If I am seeking change, then I must seek it at the highest levels, and in the broadest strokes, as to make the things that are good an necessary possible for the most number of people. My thinking has been very utilitarian. Because of that focus, I have been largely frustrated. I have been largely unable to see how I may, at any point, do any good. The worlds of politics and religion are so large and frustrating that making any inroads into them is difficult and arduous, and my well require the compromise of much of what one holds true. Even if the proper positions are gained, it is unlikely that any significant change can ever be effected at those large institution. I have been content with railing at (as Berry calls them) the ideas. The ideas of nation and Church have been my targets. Ideas that I thought, somehow, could be changed from the top on down.

The idea that had been slowly turned over in my head, and the idea that I am now starting to see more fully is that most of the people in the world are invisible to the ideas (the suits, the “man”, the whatever). Most people will live their whole lives never having been known or cared about by the ideas. Most places come and go without any regard from the ideas. That is why the ideas cannot be our focus. If we are focused on banging on the doors of the ideas until we finally get them to listen, then our hands will become red with the senselessness of our pounding.

All we can do is narrow our focus. All we can do act on what is near us. Our goals and our avenues for change must be our immediate contexts. For that is all we will be able to change and all we really can change. It means that my thinking shifts. Rants about politics (though I’m sure they will still happen) must give way to finding ways that I can love “the least of these” that are all around me. Before I assail the ideas, I must look to the ways that I am not implementing my own words in my own life — the ways I continue to marginalize people around me. The way I become angry at some people because I believe that they are perpetuating the things that I percieve as problems, the way I continually assail the church without being active in the changing process of any local church.

I know it sounds simple to the point of absurdity, but I doubt I’m the only one who needs to hear any of this.

So I was sitting in church this morning. The preacher was preaching a sermon in which he made more than one good point, but it was a serom with which I could not completely agree. As it usually does, my mind started to wander (wonder?), and I started to think about what this Christian thing would look like if it were done in full concert with the gospels. I found myself presented with quite a problem. Everything I was thinking about had the problem of being tied up in context. Much of how things were done then were a product of certain contexts. The challege (I figured out) was how to take the things from that context, and import them into this context. It quickly became apparent to me how difficult that is. In fact, it seems pretty much impossible to seperate what people in the gospels believed and did from their context, just as it is impossible to seperate us from our contexts. I don’t think that, until this point, that we’ve done this work of crossing contexts well. However, I sit in the position of being unable to offer any solutions as to how we might do things better.

It’s something to think about.

Every step was more difficult than the step before it. We had gone too far, and we both knew it. Armed with nothing but bravado a camera, and a faulty sense of direction we had picked a grey day and plunged into the woods. We should have become suspicious when the path we chose followed along the river without much diversion, but we were both too enthralled by the walk to realize our mistake. I pushed too far too fast, and I eventually convinced myself that path would find a bend that looped it back around and brought us out of the woods. But our feet grew more tired. The backpack grew heavier. The camera became more of a nuisance. It all forced us to turn around, to retread the path from which we had come. We felt all of the down becomes up, and all of the ups become downs. The same transformation happened with the lefts and rights.

I can only speak for myself, but that made it all the more greuling. We had not even walked that far, but all I could focus on were the ways in which it all hurt — my feet, my legs, my lungs. It was clear how foolish I had been in my decision to charge ahead.

The woods and the river had been beautiful — full of pictures to take and hills to climb. It turned into an enemy to be hated — the woods for their depth and their breadth, the river for the way it seemed to have no end, just brown water rolling along, going no place anyone could see. I could only think of the way that each merciless step would bring us closer to the comfort of my mechanized world — to my car and its air conditioning, its bucket seats, my cellphone. I hated the woods and the way they would not end. I hated the river and the way it had nowhere to go. So we plowed ahead — sore and tired, reaping the fruits of my misguided enthusiasm.

Enough tortured steps eventually brought us back to the place for which I longed. I felt good. I felt good because I had plodded along, but I had plodded along because I had no choice. But I can’t help but wondering if I missed the point — if I always miss the point — if I had viewed the woods as a thing to be conquered rather than a thing to be treasured. I had missed what the ups looked like as they became downs, and how the lefts changed as they became rights. In my rush to conquer, to keep going further, to show the woods how little power it could exercise over me, I transformed something deemed “good” into something that must, at all costs, be owned.

And I checked the messages on my cellphone, and filled my ears with the noise from the radio the entire way home.

Thoreau went to the woods to live his life and to “drink deep” of everything he could. The Desert Fathers had their arid escapes. Merton had his tool sheds in the woods of Gethsemani.

I am stuck here — in a room with so much clutter that I can’t think straight. I’m tied to a job I hate because I like the money, and I’ve got no woods, and I’m thousands of miles from any desert, and it all just makes me wonder if I’m doing anything right, or if I’ve just managed to be nothing but talk. And I’m never quite sure whether I’m supposed to stay or go and whether I have the courage to do either one. And maybe the truth is that nothing’s wrong, I’ve just been listening to the wrong songs all day. Who knows? I at least have to ask the questions.

So give it up, throw your hats in the air
And change just as they land
You’re saying, “We’ll get out of here”
Something tells me you’re too scared to go
–The Format, “Give it Up.”

If this post were an episode of Friends, it would be called, “The One Where Josh Takes an Insiginificant Event and Tries Too Hard to Stretch it to Much Too Large a Scale.”

Okay, so nobody in their right mind would ever make a show title that long, but that’s why I didn’t write for Friends.

Last night, I was at the UK/Vandy basketball game. If you’re unaware, it was quite a mess of a game, with UK losing to Vandy for the first time in 30 years at home, and the first time ever in Rupp Arena. Though UK only lost by 5, it was a game that they were never quite in a position to win, and the bookend to a previous 20+ point drubbing by Kansas.

Right around halftime, my focus shifted, I started caring about the game less, and started caring more about the people around me. The first thing I noticed was how quickly I bought into it all — how some fireworks and highlight clips turned me from objective observer to impassioned fan. It really didn’t take very much. Before I knew it, I was yelling sarcastic, passive-agressive comments at the players in an attempt to prove the idiot beside me wrong (not to mention thinking of him as an idiot). Before long, all of the same old symptoms returned — the inability to sit still, the clenched jaw, the inappropriate language, and that wonderful capability I have for knowing absolutely everything. That was no big deal. I knew that would happen, and I was taking steps toward self control. What was really interesting to me was the way that it was happening all around me — the way grown men with lives and families were letting their night be RUINED by the bad play of a basketball team. I thought a few of those guys were going to cry, and if they didn’t cry, they were definitely going to hurt someone. Eventually, all of that became much more fascinating than the game, and I started watching people instead of basketball.

Lately, I’ve had something like an obsession with soccer. (If you haven’t figured me out yet, this is what I do, find something new that I think is REALLY cool, get REALLY into it, and then burn myself out on it. It’s pretty standard.) Soccer gets a bad rap in America, especially soccer fans. But watching it, and watching American sports, it’s all become clear that we’re not much different. Whether it’s Raider fans in Oakland, Red Sox fans in Boston, UK fans in Kentucky, Arsenal fans in North London, Barca fans in North Africa, or cricket fans in India, sports have the remarkable ability to show us that, at the end of the day, when we climb into bed, we’re all the same. Whether it’s the anticipation of a 4th and 1 on a comeback drive, that feeling you get for those few moments while that potential go-ahead 3 point shot is in the air, or the feeling as that cross sails across the pitch, search for a header in the 90th minute, it all connects to something in all of us that is the same. And when we walk away defeated, with our egos bruised because of the actions of some athletes over which we have no control, it just confirms that we’re no different from anyone else.

I’m not smart enough to figure out why all of this is true. Maybe we just need to belong to something bigger than us; perhaps the drive to belong and to be accepted is so strong that sports and teams have become a way to find that acceptance that we crave. Maybe we (especially men) are so invested in fragile egos that we badly need something to boost them, and we cannot handle when those egos are questioned. Maybe it’s just fun. Maybe it’s just fun to go to some stadium and lose yourself in a crow — to yell things that would NEVER say in any other circumstance with very little recourse, to live and die on every possession, to join with strangers in singing songs that, somehow, all of you know. Maybe it’s all of these things.

Whatever the case, it just makes it clear — we’re all just the same. No matter where we’re from or how we speak, we’re all looking for the same things from this life, and we’re all grasping at straws to find those things.

There is nothing more encouraging than realizing the scope of human solidarity.

So, I gushed for once before about Springsteen’s The Ghost of Tom Joad and how great I think it is. Tonight, on the way home from work, “Dry Lightning” from that cd popped up on the iPod, and I remembered how good it is. Copying and pasting the lyrics absolutely cannot touch listening to The Boss sing, but the song is poetic enough that it’s power holds up at least marginally (I know.) in the translation.

I threw my robe on in the morning
Watched the ring on the stove turn to red
Stared hypnotized into a cup of coffee
Pulled on my boots and made the bed
Screen door hangin’ off its hinges
Kept bangin’ me awake all night
As I look out the window
The only thing in sight

Is dry lightning on the horizon line
Just dry lightning and you on my mind

I chased the heat of her blood
Like it was the holy grail
Descend beautiful spirit
Into the evening pale
Her appaloosa’s
Kickin’ in the corral smelling rain
There’s a low thunder rolling
‘Cross the mesquite plain

But there’s just dry lightning on the horizon line
It’s just dry lightning and you on my mind

I’d drive down to Alvarado street
Where she danced to make ends meet
I’d spend the night over my gin
As she’d talk to her men

Well the piss yellow sun
Comes bringin’ up the day
She said “ain’t nobody gonna give nobody
What they really need anyway”

Well you get so sick of the fightin’
You lose your fear of the end
But you can’t lose your memory
And the sweet smell of your skin
And it’s just dry lightning on the horizon line

Every time I listen to this song, I get stuck on one line.

(This is the part where you see if you know me well enough to guess the line that would fascinate me.)

When he sings, “Well the piss yellow sun comes bringing up the day,” I swear I want to rewind it every time. For the character in the song, I don’t think he could have written a more perfect line. There’s no other way the character COULD describe the sun. It’s not that he has any aversion to it, it’s just how he sees the world, in the light of a piss yellow sun. I can’t say I blame him. That’s the thing about Springsteen’s characters. They’re often callous and cynical, but you can’t ever blame them for being that way. There’s something about that I find resonant and true about the world — and at the end of the day, that’s all anyone can really ask or an artist.

For a further example, see “Youngstown” from the same cd. It’s impossible to capture what Springsteen does with this song without hearing it, but there’s a level on which just reading the lyrics make it clear enough:

Here in northeast Ohio
Back in eighteen-o-three
James and Dan Heaton
Found the ore that was linin’ Yellow Creek
They built a blast furnace
Here along the shore
And they made the cannonballs
That helped the Union win the war

Here in Youngstown
Here in Youngstown
My sweet Jenny I’m sinkin’ down
Here darlin’ in Youngstown

Well my daddy worked the furnaces
Kept ‘em hotter than hell
I come home from ‘Nam worked my way to scarfer
A job that’d suit the devil as well
Taconite coke and limestone
Fed my children and make my pay
Them smokestacks reachin’ like the arms of God
Into a beautiful sky of soot and clay

Here in Youngstown
Here in Youngstown
Sweet Jenny I’m sinkin’ down
Here darlin’ in Youngstown

Well my daddy come on the Ohio works
When he come home from World War Two
Now the yard’s just scrap and rubble
He said “Them big boys did what Hitler couldn’t do.”
These mills they built the tanks and bombs
That won this country’s wars
We sent our sons to Korea and Vietnam
Now we’re wondering what they were dyin’ for

Here in Youngstown
Here in Youngstown
My sweet Jenny I’m sinkin’ down
Here darlin’ in Youngstown

From the Monongahela valley
To the Mesabi iron range
To the coal mines of Appalachia
The story’s always the same
Seven hundred tons of metal a day
Now sir you tell me the world’s changed
Once I made you rich enough
Rich enough to forget my name

And Youngstown
And Youngstown
My sweet Jenny I’m sinkin’ down
Here darlin’ in Youngstown

When I die I don’t want no part of heaven
I would not do heaven’s work well
I pray the devil comes and takes me
To stand in the fiery furnaces of hell

In a world of disposable, forgettable, pop songs it comforts me to know that there are voice of Truth still out there.

You just have to look a little harder.

(don’t ask. I just have to some days.)

so i will sound the broken-record alarm, “it is no god but profit that she serves!”
“it is no end but her own gain that she seeks!”
and she tells you that it is you she protects while she feeds on the labor that is your life,
and she pays you notes that are promises that cannot be kept.
and she convinces you that is your god that she serves.

so i will sound the broken-record alarm, “it is no good but her own that she seeks!”
“it is no power but her own she craves!”
and she will feed herself on every pint of your blood
and she will gorge herself on every drop of your sweat if you let her.
and she will tie you to herself with the ropes that you made — the work of your hands.
and she convinces you that is your god that she serves.

so i will sound the broken-record alarm, “it is no god but profit that she serves!”
“it is no desire but greed she has!”
and she has no motive that is not lust
and since she tasted the fruit she cannot stop
and you will give her the next fix, and will think it is for your own sake.

so we must listen to the disquieting retort, “come back to the love that you knew first.”
“rediscover the truth she pretends to serve.”
and we will see that lust is no motive.
and that profit is no gain.
and that your sweat and your blood are food for no beast.

and we must heed the softly spoken rebuttal, “the name they say is not my name.”
“the way they speak is not my way.”
and we will know her lies from the truth.
and our work will be our own.
and what we see will be the thing that sets us free.

so i will sound the broken-record alarm.

(I tried to warn you. Now there are a million new entries.)

Wendell just won’t stop. Just when I think he can’t do any more, he outdoes himself.

I’m going to warn you. You have to be careful with this one. It could change things.

Part of reading Wendell Berry is figuring out how it changes my life. Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out what it means to do good work, and what sorts of dimensions that good work has apart from just the abstract issues. That’s when Wendell lays it on me. The amazing part is, that he doesn’t even do it himself. He’s smart enough to know when someone has said it well enough already. This time, it’s a guy named Terry Cummins from Pendelton County, Kentucky (right up the road). Here’s what Mr. Cummins says:

You may not be real important like people who do great things that you read about in the newspaper, but you begin to feel that you’re important to the life around you. Nobody else knows or cares too much about what you go, but if you get a good feeling inside you about what you do, then it doesn’t matter if nobody else knows…I get that good feeling inside and don’t much worry about what will happen to me.

Wow. The first time I read it, I stopped, and read it again.

Then I underlined it, and read it a third time as I was underlining.

Then I closed the book and stared at the wall while I tried to take it all in. Terry Cummins has it figured out. He knows exactly what good work is. He also made me stop to think about my work, and to wonder if I can make my work good work. Can I make Rafferty’s good work? Can I feel that I’m important to the life around me, and feel like I’m doing good work even though nobody notices?

That’s hard. That’s really hard. When people are rude or condescending, or absurdly impatient, it seems impossible. However, am I bound now? Do I have a cop-out? Could my wish to be somewhere else and the temporary nature of this job make it so I don’t have to be burdened by doing good work?

I think I’ve sealed my own fate. Because it is my work, I think that I have a duty to make it good work. That’s not a sentence that I want to say out loud, because I know how often I’ll fail. I know how much I will complain about it. You know how much I will complain about it. I know that I will get upset more times than I care to count, and that’s just next week. But I think that I have to — I have to find a way to make this work good work. More than that, we have to find a way to make our work good work, even when we feel undervalued and overwhelmed.

I’m torn. I’m torn between wheter that means I must transform Rafferty’s into good work or whether I have to find some other work that is closer to good work.

(It is at this point that the entire entry becomes patently “Bobbitt” and takes a crazy flight into the explication of an incredibly obscure song lyric.)

That’s the old, old question. Do I stay here to change what I have, or do I leave it to forge something new. There’s this song by the Crash Test Dummies called “Superman’s Song.” Maybe it’s because I watch Smallville too often, but the Superman myth (and it’s just that, an American myth) fascinates me. (Wow. This is a tangent.) The song compares Superman to Tarzan, and finds Superman superior. (I’m getting to the point, I swear.) This is the last verse:

Sometimes when Supe was stopping crimes
I’ll bet that he was tempted to just quit and turn his back
On man, join Tarzan in the forest
But he stayed in the city, and kept on changing clothes
In dirty old phonebooths till his work was through
And nothing to do but go on home.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe amidst the temptation to give up the fight, and just head on the forest, we just keep “changing clothes in dirty old phonebooths” (I’ll spare you the rambling about how great a metaphor that is) until all we have left to do is to go on home.

“Superman never made any money for savin’ the world from Solomon Grundy, and sometimes I despair the world will never see another man like him.”

(Who else could go from Wendell Berry to the Crash Test Dummies? Nobody.)

(Why is it that when I’m reading Wendell Berry the updates just fly off my fingers?)

I like to write, and I like to imagine that one day, I’ll be able to say something so insightful and so profound that people will take notice. I like to believe I can refine my language and my ideas to get something just so right as to be almost perfect. I do that, and then I read things that are just perfect. Earlier today, I read Wendell Berry say this:

What is or what should be the goal of our life and work? This is a fearful question and it ought to be be fearfully answered. Probably it should not be answered for anybody in particular by anybody else in particular. But the ancient norm or ideal seemed to have been a life in which you percieved your calling, faithfully followed it, and did your work with satisfaction; married, made a home, and raised a family; associated generously with neighbors; ate and drank with pleasure the produce of your local landscape; grew old seeing yourself replaced by your children or younger neighbors, but continuing in old age to be useful; and finally died a good or a holy death surrounded by loved ones.

Just when I begin to think that I have the ability to say things in exactly the way that I want to say them, and I think that I’m finding the words that I need to write what in a few what I have been hinting at with many, I find a way in which someone has already done it, and I realize that they have done it more perfectly, and with more understanding than I ever could.

I am tempted to be discouraged. However, there is a way in which it is unbelievably reassuring. G.K. Chesterton figured out the same thing on his journey to orthodoxy. He compared his finding of orthodoxy to some colonial expolorers who believed that they have found a new land. He talks of the joy of discovery, and the belief that something new has been found. However, his metaphorical explorers find that the land is already settled, and it is already inhabited. They have really found nothing new to anyone but themselves. Wendell Berry, G.K. Chesterton, me, you — we’re all just dangling our feet in the same old mysteries. Something about that makes us so free. It relieves of the burden of saying something perfect and new and grand, and it lets us just speak, because we know that we’re saying nothing new.

Again, I must defer to a man who always finds a way to say it better than I ever could. Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie, “Farmer Chords.”

I can’t begin to compete with you and everyone knows I know you know it, too.
It’s a complicated fear that grows with every year and it’s walking on it’s own finally

All I can offer are farmer chords, these simple rhymes and you painted in words
You can sing this when alone or whistle it through your teeth and it
will feel like home no matter how far you’ll be from my lonely arms
outstretched just beyond your reach singing “ooh, baby, please…”