Coming Down (from RF2k7)

a little nostalgia -
My last few days in selected photos, chronologically:













***chvnk decathalon battle here ***
(some title about building a cake)






















Because there is no i in Team

That Which does not Kill me

makes me wonder how much more I could take,

spares me to regroup and reform,

gives me material to assess my current stance,

and prompts me to consider that dying isn't really that a big of a deal
and to spend myself in a manner of living.

I got my wish

I try not to wish for unreasonable things, or things that I cannot bring about.


Today, I finally finally
(I have been wanting to do this for weeks)
got to lie on my back in the sun

For as long as I wanted,
Absorbing warm,
staring at the cirrus clouds brushing the high blue sky,

talking about dreams and flying
and gliders,
and I

am fortunate in so many ways.

And this
has been my favorite Renn Fayre.

Dear Friends,

We are each the Atlas of our own world,

but with you around me,
what else can I do but stand?

Thankyou,
we hold up each others' worlds,
and it is a beautiful work.

Maybe Sisyphus could've gotten that rock to the top with a little help.

cookies

A friend and I, invited to a tea yert, brought a wrapped towel of 3 cookie-like items as an offering. Upon arrival, we discovered that no one looked cookie-in-need.
The society was discovered already content.

I returned home alone, with the towel-wrapped cookies tucked in my arm and a promise to give them to any less content societies.

Their bundled warmth at my side lacked only a heartbeat

-or friends to eat them.

I soon discovered these, and then I too was content.

all that glitters

walking toward the library at night

suddenly the sidewalk swirled beneath my shoes

in the dark, a river of shimmering met me





The sidewalks are covered in glitter

It's here.

Rooted in the feet... Extended through the fingertips

Only after the principle in things is fully apprehended does knowledge become complete; knowledge being complete, thoughts may become true; thoughts being true, the mind may become set in the right; the mind being so set, the person becomes cultivated; the person being cultivated, house-hold harmony is established; household harmony established, the state becomes well governed; the state being well governed, the empire becomes tranquil.

Ta-hsueh, "Classic of Confucius," para. 5


6.28. A person must examine his mistaken mind with his unmistaken mind. The unmistaken one is the original mind; the mistaken one is the original mind lost. (12.7a:3/205:14)

6.21. For the person [whose mind] is bright, it's bright. Others must nurture it. Nurturing isn't to hammer and chisel away at it laboriously. It's simply to keep the mind open and calm, and in time it'll become bright of itself. (12.5b:12/204:10)

5.5. When one's original mind has been submerged for a long time, and the moral principle in it hasn't been fully penetrated, it's best to read books and probe principle without any interruption; then, the mind of human desire will naturally be incapable of winning out, and the moral principle in the original mind will naturally become safe and secure. (11.1b:3/176:12)

3.10. As soon as a person makes the effort, he'll discover the obstacles. When he begins making the effort, he'll be intent on doing one thing, but some other thing will get in his way, and he'll understand neither. It's just like when we practice inner mental attentiveness and probe principle - these two things get in each other's way: practicing inner mental attentiveness refers to the way of controlling and restraining oneself; probing principle refers to the way of investigating the ultimate. These two things simply hinder each other. But when we get good at them, naturally they no longer get in each other's way. (9.3a:7/150:12)






(all quotes except the first are from Learning to Be a Sage, selections from the Conversations of Master Chu, Arranged Topically translated by Daniel K. Gardner)

I must say I feel somewhat in the wrong by posting pieces of the text here, since many of the comments about learning and reading speak against skipping around and not reading things in an appropriate order...

Tonight: A Long Walk Home

(There will be a second showing on Friday 5/4)

Dear God,

I will sing of your mercy
you bring me through valleys of sorrow

to rivers of joy



yeah.

God Rocks

This is our altar

(posted 0:06 4/27)

I got myself some flowers,

and played myself some music. And it's spring.






Lilacs in the spring and fireflies in the summer - two of the more eagerly awaited things in my life. The march of seasons has its main events and special attractions. Sadly, it might be my first summer missing the fireflies.




I'd told him about feeling like I must store up my memories now because it'll never be this way again, and in case I suddenly had to spend my life deep in a dark mud pit (or a metaphorical one...) and all I would have to sustain me were my memories.

It's not gonna be like that, he told me. Because you'll always have it - It'll always be that way - it's a conscious choice in how you see things.


I think he's right,
and even if I am left a pit,
by choice, I will still see beauty there.
They can't take it away from me because it's not things,
it's a choice.

Perhaps this is one reason why despite many other things, I consider this possibly the best spring semester I've had in the last... six years.

Ritual

He told me about one of the first times he'd been to an orthodox church.

When the minister came to him for participation in some ritual of the service, he declined, saying that he didn't believe in the aspects of the ritual and it didn't mean anything to him. Oh, that doesn't matter. Just do it, the minister said. And maybe after 20 years or so it'll start to mean something.

Now he is orthodox.








I heard about how he questioned his motivations to their very foundation, and found no compelling reason to either sit or stand, to eat or not to eat. No action or thought had any particular meaning of its own, and so he entered a state of philosophically-induced physical paralysis.

But as his friends urged him to do something, he remembered that there was a time when certain actions made him happy, and though this also did not necessarily mean anything, it was at least reason enough to eat, to see friends, to move and accomplish various things.

I heard that he seemed more accepting of the usefulness of religion to people after this.



So,
Is there something, some structure that must go before the yi?

Mental Intent

The yi goes first and the qi follows.

So I'm told.

Silly Me

I'd been thinking I could stand on my own two feet and move under my own power.
I should know better.
Maybe now we'll finally get somewhere.


Or maybe it's just another iteration in a constant sequence of nested hopes for maybe this time... but that's the cynical me speaking.
The usual me says if nothing else, the movement is good and even if I'm always restarting, it does help.
The overseer me says that I should be more responsible, consistent, with my direction.
The practical me says not to fuss too much if it's working.
The responsible me says I should be more clear about what it's working for.
The determinist-critic me says it's no use trying to describe structure around motivations and motion that will unfold regardless of my descriptions, I'll only fool myself.
The idealist me says no, we can make it better from the inside out.
The writer me says I should at least observe carefully.
The me I'm trying to find recognizes something of herself, and for that at least, is glad.




One of my friends was just telling me about Russian Fiction and how its themes are unique and very interesting in light of the Gulags (and their lack of structure or pattern of any reasonably correlative sort) and the country's oft-uprooted sense of national identity (apparently the sense of the ideal man has been uprooted and revamped so often that nobody ever felt like they belonged to the national identity, leaving individuals to either be isolated or to connect as individuals). I think I would like Russian Fiction.

Luke 8:16 - This little light of mine...

Following the Parable of the seed on different kinds of ground:


Luke 8:16-18


16
No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covereth it with a vessel, or putteth [it] under a bed; but setteth [it] on a candlestick, that they which enter in may see the light.

17
For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither [any thing] hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.

18
Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.

I would like to point out first of all that I think many church-going folk who have grown up with this verse tend to lump it together with the city on a hill and take it to mean that Christians are supposed to be a model and that we must put forth the best possible image because we will be under observation. This interpretation seems to result in a pressure for Christians to put on the best possible show without much consideration for the content.

I think that this interpretation leaves a lot of the verse uninterpreted and perhaps even gives a false impression. I do not remember Jesus often telling the disciples that they have to look good for everyone else, and I think that a close reading of the verse, especially considering the verses around it, will yield a richer understanding of the point that Jesus seems to be reiterating regarding hearing the word of God and doing it.
(Additionally since, society is always changing its mind regarding what it considers 'good.' If Christianity is trying to put on a 'good show' in the eyes of the society viewing it, the definition of what makes a 'good show' will keep changing.)

I attempt to summarize my 'conclusions' thus far:

I notice that verse 18 begins with an admonition to listen well.
I consider that the light represents those teachings of Jesus. I consider that to listen well means not only hearing, but understanding and internalizing. The teachings were meant to be enacted and put to use in the world, not to just be heard and put away for later.
For those who believe and enact the teachings, it is as if they have a light - doing what it was made to do - illuminating the world around it. Their light is not only good for them, but for those around them.
For those who hear but do not enact the teachings, it is as if they are putting the light away somewhere, foolishly because a hidden light cannot fulfill its intended function as a light. It is no good, no use hidden.

Nothing will be kept secret, but everything shall be made known - it is not difficult to determine whether someone is using a light or hiding it.

To those who have light, and use it for its intended purpose, even more shall be given as they continue to enact the teachings.

To those who do not have it, even if they think they understand or are doing the right thing, eventually it will not be difficult to determine whether they actually have been using their light. If not, then when the truth comes out, even the illusion that they thought they had will be taken from them.

The focus then,
is on hearing the word and understanding it in a way that leads us to implement it. It's not about putting on a good show of implementation. The truth of how the light is being used will eventually be obvious so I consider that the point is to focus on using the teachings. Since nothing will be kept secret, the rest will follow.

Oh. Yes, good afternoon.

Stories from a Sudanese Refugee School in Cairo

They were displaced from Sudan to Cairo,
Their stories have been carried from Cairo to America,

and I have been a terrible messenger thus far, but it's going to happen.
Getting A Long Walk Home in has been really helpful for seeing concretely what can happen, I think.

I got the ball rolling today, so now I have no more delays or excuses.



4/24 -Movie- A Long Walk Home
5/2 -Talk- Stories from a Sudanese Refugee school in Cairo -Tracy Mehoke
5/4 -Movie- One more showing of 'A Long Walk Home'

*********
As some of you know,
I volunteered at a school for Sudanese Refugees in a slum in Cairo last
summer. It's taken me waaay too long, but I'm finally putting together
an open-campus Show-and-Tell from Cairo.


I will share my story of 6 weeks as an American volunteer in Cairo as
well as the stories of my teachers who were there as Sudanese refugees
in Cairo. Some background information on the conflict in Sudan will be
explained. Ethan Rafal (http://ethanrafal.com/), a Reed graduate who
has actually been to Sudan, will make a guest appearance, /Inshallah/.

The 2 parts are

*#*
A screening of the Documentary (about 45 minutes long) about the
displaced Sudanese in Cairo 'A Long Walk Home'
http://www.alongwalkhomefilm.org/
A Long Walk Home was shot in Cairo, partially at the school I worked at,
during the summer before I got there (2005). Some of my teachers were
among those interviewed.

*#*
My presentation of my own story and the stories of those who cannot be
here to tell you

please set aside some calendar time now for at least one of these events:


1) NEXT TUESDAY, April 24th 7:30pm Psych 105

A showing of A Long Walk Home (I will be available for questions Afterward)


2) READING WEEK WEDNESDAY, May 2nd 7:30pm Psych 105

My talk (and pictures!) about the stories I brought back with me.
My stories come from the same places and people as were filmed in A Long
Walk Home,
Definitely Questions/Discussion afterward. Hopefully, food.


3) READING WEEK FRIDAY, May 4th 4:30PM Psych 105

One more showing of A Long Walk Home in case you missed it the first
time. Questions/Discussion time afterward.


I will have more official advertising out soon. In the meantime, feel
free to talk gregariously about this especially among people who don't
know anything about it yet.

***

Memorial, take II

It's happened again.

I remember ... about 6 months ago interestingly enough were the high school shootings scattered around the country.

It is interesting to compare my reactions then to my reactions now regarding the Virginia Tech Shooting.
I think there's something to be said for my Egypt/America transitioning process.
This time around, I read the article from the NY Times page and was genuinely upset and concerned that such a thing of such a scale would happen in one of our schools.

Last fall, all I could think about was (cynically, and in a slightly scorning tone of thought that comes from wishing it had not been my first reaction)

What a lucky country we are ... we stretch to touch two oceans yet we all stop when a handful of our students are killed at their schools. What a lucky people we are, that a few deaths in a few states far away are one of our greatest concerns right now.
(This sounds horrendously callous - I'm sorry if you are one of those for whom the victims were more than a name, geography, and a tally)

I was thinking about my school in Cairo, many of the students or teachers at which had been tortured, had their families killed, and their villages burned and NO BODY KNOWS what's going on.

I wrote
While certainly larger, more noticeable events have more influence in the general historical conscience, ... to overlook the small, minor injustices in favor of only large events is to treat the disease with tissues.

I'm not sure how much I stand by that wording, but I know what I mean.

Anyway, everyone else seemed be be finding meaningful the process of remembering those dead and their attackers. Those few dead. Meanwhile, 80% of a country is being quietly massacred. I kept these thoughts to myself.

Because everyone else was putting together this lovely memorial:

(I will put pictures here later. It's getting too late right now. But it's pictures of prayers hanging from trees.)

Alongwalkhomefilm.org

I watched it tonight

...craning my neck around as though I could get a better angle to see into the window to Cairo that was my computer screen...

I'm very glad I didn't have to watch it alone.
One of my friends was there and allowed me to interrupt the film by pointing out kids from my classes or telling him about teachers I recognized.



I was there.

That's my school.

Those are my kids.









Everywhere I go,
I meet people that I will probably never see again.
But they're still real.

I understand better why exchanging photos seemed so important to the refugees.

in Just - Spring

At the End of Spring

Po Chu-i

The flower of the pear-tree gathers and turns to fruit;
swallows' eggs have hatched into young birds.
When the Seasons' changes thus confront the mind,
what comfort can the Doctrine of Tao give?
It will teach me to watch the days and months fly
without grieving that Youth slips away;
if the fleeting world is but a long dream,
it does not matter whether one is young or old.
But ever since the day that my friend left my side
and has lived an exile in the City of Chiang-ling,
there is one wish I cannot quite destroy:
that from time to time we may chance to meet again.


白居易

I intend

From reading for Intro to Islam a little over a week ago
(Ironically, I considered intending to post it earlier):

"You know, I don't believe in vows. If God knows something should be done, why does he need to be persuaded by the gifts of a poor woman like my mother? My father always quotes the proverb, Even if I vowed to redeem my life with alms, if need be, my son and I will eat the alms first. I agree with him."

"Vows like obligatory prayers or contracts are valid only if formed intentionally, and, like contracts, if formed with intention, they must be fulfilled," said Ali in a formal tone as if he were quoting a text he had learned by heart. "Look, if we learn to say 'I intend' before we do a good deed, our hearts get used to doing good deeds. As Muslims we must believe that God cares for the intention, not for what we actually get to do. What if, for some reason, God lets us die before we do anything? As Muslims we believe we should bear witness before God that we intend to do something before we do it."

Roy Mottahedeh
The Mantle of the Prophet p. 48
1st published 1985

6 months later

I have been intending to post this since 10/14/06 (actually written on the 12th). Seems appropriate to get around to it now.

I have finally posted it in its chronological context.


6 months since.

today, it is a peaceful Saturday afternoon.
My room is surrounded by hanging green leaves.
The sky is gray with clouds, but light.
The air is fresh and I
still have living yet to do.

haunted

(Feeling relevant to THIS)

I just got this DVD today:
A Long Walk Home

The girl on the cover looks so much like one of the girls - Muahe - from the school I worked at.



The only time I've seen the DVD so far is BEFORE we went to Cairo.
Now,
it occurs to me that if I watch it, I will likely see many people and places that I not only recognize, but count as home and family in another world.

You can't see it,
and I don't know how to show you,

but the worlds, so necessarily separate, are mixing and I feel like I am swimming in a swirling gap between them. This is not a pleasant swimming and I don't know which way to go. I hope I can trust the current.
Where is the bridge?

Her picture calls to mind the other faces that I might recognize.
I am almost afraid to watch this DVD.
And I am ashamed for it.

So of course, I must.

What am I doing?

Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream
-Amos 5:24



I just came from a John Perkins lecture.
Here is some of his cool stuff

He talked about Justice.

He speaks against the prosperity gospel that is dulling our churches.

(I want to be a missionary to the American church)

Some of the things he said:
(These are pretty close to direct quotes, but I can't write fast enough)


What we have have done to day is reduce 'tolerance' down to nothin'. 'Let's not have any convictions,' and we'll all get along.

The art of preachin' is to share the love of God in a way that people can hear sufficiently and make a conscious decision based on their own convictions and the Holy Spirit and not be condemned by the preacher

Preachin' is to present truth in a way that people can come with a conviction and make the kind of decision of what they want to do in life.

Prosperity Christianity is the kind that will allow injustice to flourish.

Capitalism has bought off the church's voice because we have made money our God.

He asked, What is Justice? and proceeded:

Justice is stewardship. Justice is a management issue. The earth belongs to God, and the fullness thereof. In-Justice deprives people from access to God's creation. In-Justice deprives people of their part in the stewardship.

With our greed, we're destroying the very earth that we are supposed to manage and protect?

Our dignity is affirmed by our creativity.

I'm prayin' that this generation will be the one to make the American Creed a reality: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident...'

Hold it,
I don't wanna go back to the religion of the founding fathers - I'd be a slave.

My mother died of a disease brought on by lack of nutrition. She died of starvation.


He defines Education:

The ability to understand what is goin' on around you and get some skills to manage the environment (like Gen 1:26-28)

Don't let the environment crash in on you. Subdue it. Take your knowledge and turn it into technology.

The issue today is your values.
Who controls your values?


Most creative thinkers come out of prison ... (lists great men who had been imprisoned)... because in prison, you don't have anything to lose. In prison, you can go for it.

We have to bring Christianity back to its authentic faith in society. A new, more creative congregation in our community. Churches by race is not biblical. Whenever you get a sense of heaven, you see all people and all races praising God together. We gotta create a new community.


(cites religion being used to mobilize small groups of people to bring about the death of another in recent history)
This is the kind of religion in our society. We gotta create a new society.


Paul suffered for religion rather than suffering with it. (Gal 2:20)

In the process of falling in love, you want to love this person who you think loves you - I want to love this God ... (end of Matthew 25) .. by reaching out for the broken in society.

We have taken the precious love of God and put it in the culture in a way that loses its power.

I want to preach a gospel stronger than my race, ..stronger than (other characteristics of himself and of society)...
...that will deal with people that are aching in the world and in society.

We have to be forever seeking after the truth and examine it.

I really like Tylenol - it's good medicine, but it don't cure cancer

it's like religion - we go around saying 'Your truth is your truth and my truth is my truth' and they don't do nothin.' It makes me curse ...




YES,

I thought. Finally, it's so good to hear someone saying these things again. I went to hang around by the book signing after his lecture to ask questions about what he thought could be concretely done, and what the most immediate and efficient ways to do it might be.

I wanted to flip through his books and see the same resounding call for Justice and Education and against the prosperity Gospel that he spoke of in his lecture. Especially since one of them was Let Justice Roll Down. The title is part of Amos 5:24 which became the 'theme verse' of my project in the refugee schools of Cairo last semester during our study of the book of Amos. I wanted to page through and hear all of our struggles and convictions of last summer looking back at me from the page.

Even better, it had a foreword by Shane Claiborne the guy from The Simple Way. I wanted to read more of the same.

And then I realized,
I knew enough to know what the answers to my questions would be. To find something to do and do it. If I'm not already doing that, how can I expect to be responsible for the answer to my question?

And if I knew the material so well, that I wanted to read it and be affirmed and encouraged by seeing it in his book,
then why was I wanting to ask a question? Why did I want to come hear him speak again?

I know the basic philosophy of The Simple Way. I've heard Shane speaking about it on some CD tracks. I knew what I was going to see.

Why did I want to see it again? Just to make myself feel good for already knowing it? Just to feel like it was somehow speaking a language I understood?

What am I doing? I'm not nearly enough out there on ground level being the change I wish to see in the world. How dare I surround myself with repeating ideas of justice without actually having a clearer idea and intention of what to DO with it?

sometimes,
I make me sick

and then I try to blame it on the world and on society.





And for all this typing on Justice,
what am I doing?

Hope

I have wanted to remember this poem for a long time.
It is quoted in A Ring of Endless Light by Madeline L'Engle.

I don't think I can adequately explain the significance of this poem to me. It is a challenging, difficult, but very substantial hope. To be a shell, then to be filled.

Indwelling
By T.E. Brown


IF thou couldst empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf,
And say—" This is not dead,"—
And fill thee with Himself instead.

But thou art all replete with very thou,
And hast such shrewd activity,
That, when He comes, He says :—" This is enow
Unto itself—’Twere better let it be:
It is so small and full, there is no room for Me."

I think I still believe in emptying.
I hope this does not result in death.
I hope that I am not forgotten.
I hope that when I have given all that I have, I will not be left empty.

Hold Fast

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow

- Langston Hughes

Old Man and the Fish

I couldn't appreciate, at the time we read The Old Man and the Sea in high school, why it might or might not matter whether the Old Man was physically dead or not.

And there is a different story - I can't remember the title,
but it's about this guy floating around in a yellow raft. I don't remember how he gets into the ocean in the first place, but I remember there is a water distilling device that he keeps having trouble with. He eats by spearing the large blue fish that take to schooling under his raft, cleaning them and laying strips out on his raft to become some kind of fish jerky. There are two greener ones that keep their distance. He calls these the emerald elders.

The part I remember most often from that story is a scene nearing the end when he recalls how difficult it was at first to spear the fish and is grateful because as he grew weaker and less capable, they seemed to come nearer and move slower, sometimes practically laying belly-up in the water for him to spear as the emerald elders watched from their safe distance.

I am all of these characters.

often fails because

Man so often fails because he gives up what he wants most for what he wants at the moment

remembered from a quote in my high school math teacher's room

Contact

Spring and

the new leaves, vibrant green and deftly-lined
unroll like
wet butterflies




I have met Ethan Rafal,
which is something I have wanted to do for a while.
I heard about his forays into Uganda and Darfur, saw one of his photo exhibits, and even saw him speak at a Save Darfur Coalition event earlier on,
but I never actually met him.

What did I expect? A reed shaken with the wind?

I didn't have any concrete expectations of meeting him except maybe to hear some part of his story that would further affect my own.

I didn't have any plans to follow up a mutual introduction - I knew I wanted to meet him as if only good could come of it (and if I did not, to wonder forever what might've come from it). I wanted to meet him the way that two similarly shaded puzzle pieces with corresponding structure look like they should fit regardless of whatever picture that the puzzle might be supposed to look like.

The thing at that time is not to finish the puzzle but to just put those two pieces together.
I just wanted to meet him.


I'm very grateful for a remarkable turn of events and to Nelson Pavlosky for introducing us. This makes me think I may have been expecting something which I did not admit to myself, but which I nonetheless found.

As if connecting these two pieces might also connect their two halves of the puzzle.

I think,
he helps me believe that my stories are real
and that I didn't just dream them up like I thought I did with Readin' on a Dream. It was so good, but nobody else had heard of it. I began to wonder if I'd just invented the memory I thought I had.

It's disorienting when the things which seem like they should be so influential
seem the most likely to be all in your imagination.

I was thinking about what I would say, if I ever get to exchange and compare stories with him, and I feel like a hypocrite for feeling as if speaking with him somehow enables me to act on these stories, and for feeling as though somehow I am more encouraged to do this than I was alone. And by 'alone' I mean,

[now see,
if I could tell you exactly what I mean,
then I think I wouldn't be playing this warping mental game of 'Doctor, Doctor!']

because although I went with a family,
we returned separated
we each returned by ourselves to our former lives.
And, you can never really go back to a former life.

I feel like a hypocrite because I am so glad that he understands

(what does he understand? Again, if I could tell you...)

he understands, he must - he said some things that I don't think he would say otherwise.

I think he understands the conflicting frustrations and longings that eat at me,
This concept does strange things to my sense of gratitude -
as if I believed that no one else can actually listen to me when I tell the stories I carry - as if I believed that that's what I need, what they need in order to not shrivel up like a raisin.
But, I don't know whether that's a true representation, or just my mental explanation to myself.
Maybe that's just how I THINK I should feel.
And the mental knots twist again.


And I am sorry,
I am really sorry because my stories are not nearly as intense as his, and while I am encouraged that he understands me,
I wonder who understands him. Maybe there are things that I must still fit in their place, and when I have done this, I will have solved the riddle of the thing that coils inside me. Is it a parasite? A larvae? Will it consume me? Must I feed it?

Have I really felt so isolated? Have I really felt so trapped for so long?
It is difficult to say
You may not realize your traps until you come up against the bars.


I do not know the name of that which eats me


I think I am afraid that I will commit myself to a love that cannot be realized and will never recognize what I try to give to it.

Post-Lent

This year,
Passover and Orthodox Easter
and Easter all lined up.

and Lent began on Feb 21st - the day I was baptized.

Usually,
I don't understand Lent.

Usually,
it seems like one of those traditions that meant something for someone at some point, but then someone else took the action and told other people to do it. Then those people had an empty action that they had to find some meaning for.

(This is not meant as an insult to those for whom Lent is meaningful, it is just a mark of my own disconnect between the way I understood the story and a different institutionalized ritual.)

I'd known lots of people who gave up chocolate or sweets or something like that.
I'd heard that the reason was to remember Christ's suffering.
I'd heard of others who didn't give things up, but rather took on additional things that they thought were more righteous.
It seemed to be a 40-day contract of sorts.

I'd tried a couple of different things, to see if performing the action would help me understand the meaning that others found in it. I didn't really get it. I would forget. Or overdo it. Or make such a big deal of it that it seemed to counter whatever purpose there might be.

This year, I started a little late, because I didn't realize it was Lent.
I wanted my 40-day contract to be something both meaningful and constructive and challenging.

Later on, the idea came to me.


So I gave up pride for Lent.


Yes, I slipped up now and again. A lot.
The idea was to be more conscious about which of my reasons for doing or not doing things were coming from issues of pride and working through those. At the end of the day, I would go through an evaluation of my actions and responses, making mental connections and trying to repent as appropriate. I reminded myself of what I was trying to avoid periodically with a green cross.

40 days is a decent amount of time to practice.

Some things which seem like a horrendous process to complete look much more possible when practiced for only 40 days.
Yet, at the end of 40 days, sometimes a good deal of progress, or even better habits can be made.

Practicing for 40 days gives me courage to continue.

Easter

Luke 24:5-8

And as they were afraid, and bowed down [their] faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?
He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee,
Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.
And they remembered his words,

***

I don't understand it.

I don't understand Him.

But He saved my life at His expense,
and continues to save it in ways I hardly dare to have the confidence to expect.

What else can I do,
but to go where He is?
But where is He?

I believe in love,
but I lose His footprints.
I go in circles trying to follow (or stray from) my own.

a Musing

One man's madness is another man's beauty

i received a most wonderful poem this morning

To Every Thing, there is a Season...

Hazy Shade of Winter

Simon & Garfunkel

Time, time, time, see what's become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Hear the salvation army band
Down by the riverside, its bound to be a better ride
Than what youve got planned
Carry your cup in your hand
And look around, leaves are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Hang on to your hopes, my friend
Thats an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
Look around, the grass is high
The fields are ripe, its the springtime of my life

Ahhh, seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry
Wont you stop and remember me
At any convenient time
Funny how my memory slips while looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme

Suspension

It's feeling like a summer night
and I was wanting to play outside in the yard until someone calls me in for the 3rd time to go to sleep.

Who can I play with? I consider whether I even can.



My present situation feeling too much
like a loose stack of sketches on transparent tracing paper,


I suspend some insanity
in a mixture of adrenaline and velocity

and afterwards, stretching beneath a tree,
I see the dark-bodied earthworms nudging their way above ground
like pointed tongues feeling out uncertain teeth

I lie down on my back in the grass
and realize that this is what I have wanted to do all week
If Tolstoy's right about how much land a man needs, I'll take this spot right here.

With my hands on my stomach, I watch the orange-shadowed clouds moving slowly through a starless sky.
And I mistake the bloom of a billion new leaf buds on overhead trees, catching the light from the lamppost, for stars.

Lucid

Some people have the ability to control their dreams.

Sometimes, I have the ability to assure myself that eventually it will be ok - it's only a dream and whatever happens, I will wake up in the future.

But, sometimes, when I'm awake (I think)
I feel like the moment I stand in is fluid and I could make anything happen next - anything - if I believed it enough to commit a thought to what I want to have happen. It feels too amorphous and very confusing, and I know I could cast the feeling aside and continue on. But, the idea is so drawingly curious that, paralyzed and shaking with potential impossibilities, I wonder whether it could be true, and what I could do.

But inevitably, I accept the life and direction I had before.
I have responsibilities, you know.

And I carry on, but wondering
just how poor my ignorant, complacent decisions are
without having much for comparison.

Last Meal

I remember one time
years ago, when I was a little over counter-top height:

My Dad telling me that in some countries, people have nothing and so when they move somewhere else and come to a store for the first time - a grocery store like we're used to - they fill the shopping cart with more than they need because they don't know that the store will always have pineapples. They are used to having nothing, and to taking what they can get when they get it. It is a strange idea then, that the food won't be all taken away; that they don't have to bring home as much as they can carry from the grocery store. Because there will still be food tomorrow (We're lucky like that).

I remember
Hearing anecdotes about older couples -
one or both of whom had survived the Holocaust who,
- having lived in a time when they had nothing, and when anything could be taken from them at a moment's notice -
numbers tattooed on their arms, stocked up jars and boxes and filled their cupboards with anything, everything, because you never know.

Even as I watch, every moment shatters brilliantly, beautifully as
the forced march of change compels me forward through it. I try to go slowly enough to collect some pieces to tuck away in memory, their edges sharp and fresh with the deep, imperative understanding that I shall never pass this way again. I try to keep my head up, eyes wide open, listening to admire the constant fireworks of new moments shattering even as I stoop to scoop the jagged edges and huddle them like baby rabbits in my arms.

Some days I dance through the shattering like falling petals.

Some days I scramble to tuck them away,
feeling the pain of change on every side,

half-certain that I'm being given these things now -
because later I will be led to a place where my hands are numb and cold, where I cannot lift my head, where I will sink -
and I must survive on what I have collected.

I am preparing my own last meal.

4.5.07

Sometimes
my head and heart are filled to burst with
beautiful things

I carry them with me, collecting
the feel of the air, the glow of the sky between branches,
the way I can stand up on my pedals to brush beneath the flowering trees.

The energy of cooking in a kitchen
music playing such
that I might never wish for something else

The people my life intersects with
whom today, I love dearly
and dearly, I feel I can love

I think I could curl near a tree
and the beauty all bundled inside me
would sprout from my mouth and my stomach
or maybe
grow roots from my fingers and knit me together enmeshed with the bark
I'd be ivy

or moss.
I'd be soft.

Even as I collect every sense of the moment,
I know I can never return
The homeland I'm building inside of my head is of pieces
just shards of this journey


It hurts so much to hold them
but the pain is of a joy well-worth it

although they hurt my hands to collect,
I'll be glad later when,
edges worn smooth
they just shine.
And my memory will not be empty.

And maybe someday I will find
something that looks like the pieces that I've been collecting
and I will no longer long for a home
and no longer hurt
because all of my homes can finally be
in the place that I've found at that moment.

homeland for a nomad

“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody but my own confusion.” --Jack Kerouac

I don't mind being spread thin so much anymore,
but I worry sometimes that I will stretch too thin to hold anything together.

and I don't mind feeling at home in many different places,
but I refuse to forget
and keep a little piece of that place inside me, which is always wanting to go back.
Everywhere I go, I want to go back.

"It has been the custom that those who are away from the homeland where they spent part of their youth, yearn for it, whether they be Bedouin or city people.
-Rifa'a Rafi' al-Tahtawi
The Extraction of Gold, or an Overview of Paris and The Honest Guide for Girls and Boys page 33 (A Discourse on the Homeland)

I love traveling to visit new things and to be with people,
but I never really leave
it makes me reluctant to go again - to call a place home, even if briefly, to which I may never return.

I used to think it was good to be so able to move and adapt,
but I wonder if this comes at an expense of being able to stay for any longer term and maintain anything solid.

In high school history, they taught us that when the British and German sides each dug their trenches, the British expected the war to be over soon and so moved quickly and efficiently to get by with just what they needed since of course nobody wanted to stay in the trenches long-term. Certainly, nobody wanted to be in the trenches, but the Germans, on the other hand, steadily prepared for a long-term drawn-out conflict. They went into the unpleasant scenario of trenches with the prospect of being there for a long time. While the British were forced to roll in the mud of what they expected to be temporary housing, the Germans had prepared bunks for themselves that kept them in much better condition.

Stories

I remember a line from the beginning of a book I read in high school.
We were supposed to be reading a book each quarter and doing a report, and you could pretty much read any book you wanted.

One of my books was a biographical sort of narrative tracing one Jewish man's path into the Holocaust as he tried to help himself and others to survive. He succeeded, and if I remember right, the book was largely, if not entirely written by his wife.

There is a line in the beginning as she explains some of their background in which she says that they told their stories to each other so often that his stories are her own, and she can tell his stories as if they belong to her as well.

I was thinking today about how we experience things in so many different ways, and how our past individual experiences color our interpretations in ways that influence and direct how we give meaning to future experiences.

Maybe we can understand each other
when we know each others' stories well enough,
and they belong to all of us.

please tell stories

Early Birds

...a little too early...

algorithm

def Reali(t):
while t==now:
for i in range(then,death):
consider(i)
print(i)
return(i)
t = (t+1)

*edit*
(AAaagh! No wonder reality's so messed up! My indents aren't being recognized!..)

Palm Sunday

I wonder what he was thinking
passing barely above the crowd (donkeys not being exceptionally tall),
amid the cheering and the screaming
waving palm branches rustling
people shouting, arms raised
in acclamation, recognition, celebration for the man who'd come to free them.

Dear people,
we never know what to be free from.
We wanted freedom from an invasive government -
a rebellion to prove something about us to someone who doesn't care -
something to shift the lines and structures that are only real to rulers and cartographers-

He wanted to bring freedom from fear, from death, the freedom of a second chance afresh, freedom to love -


I wonder what he thought as they shouted for him,
praising him for something that he knew he would not give them.
I wonder if he was angry that they were so mistaken
or sad
or frightened.

I wonder if he'd begun to ask himself whether he would really go through with it. Whether God would make him go through with it.

In my head,
he drifts through a blurry-shouting crowd -
emitting sounds in the shapes of words they will reverse in just a week
in just a week, they'll be screaming again, but for his crucifiction. In my head, he looks back and forth, shaking his head slightly. He wishes it could feel good, but
They're all so wrong.

He tries to look past their loud, mistaken ignorance and see them for the beautiful possibilities his Father made them to be. He sees not just the crowd, but all that come after it and reminds himself that they are worth it. Even with this resolve, he tries not to listen to keep his heart from sinking.

***

Dear churches,

why do you lie to me?

I went to hear about God, not about us.

Why do you tell me of the rewards that await us? For what?
Don't tell me this. It's not the whole story. It's harder than that.

Why do you sing songs of how God has forsaken us? NO
The words 'Why have you forsaken me' were spoken by Jesus - they are not mine.
Because he said them, I am acceptable.


redemption.

loss, love, joy, pain, separation, sacrifice, reuniting, forgiveness, destruction, new life...
These have separated in my head.
I must recondense the concept: redemption