Tyler, TX and fog

Driving the old, brick streets downtown. The fog makes you look at everyday things in a whole new way.

Marvin UMC in the morning fog.

Looking West down Erwin Street

Unholy Sonnet 4

I'd love to tell a hard tale of miserable abuse that I have suffered at the hands of conservative evangelicals that might excuse my tendency to push against them when in conversation. The thing is, I haven't suffered enough to have even a modestly-interesting story. I have issues, I guess, and those issues make me bristle in my soul whenever someone claims certainty about God--not certainty that God exists, but certainty about what He thinks or who He loves or doesn't love. Truth be told, I the only concept of God that doesn't set off angst in me is God as the source of unfathomable, unconditional love. That's my idol of choice.

It is no better and idol, really, than my Calvinist friend's 5-point, concrete system, and no better, really, than my brothers and sisters who picket funerals and claim to know with certainty that "God HATES Fags." Still, I choose Love. I say that it is better to throw away the scriptures than to use them in a violent, unloving way as a weapon against another. I say that God LOVES Fags at least as much as He loves self-righteous believers, women-haters and bigots.

But there I go, again, weighing this monologue to may way of thinking.

I love the way this poem, by Mark Jarman, strips away concepts of God as a thing--idolatrous versions of The Real God--and replaces that with the Truth that God is NO-THING, and therefore beyond concepts of God. Jesus is as close as we can get (I believe), and we pretty much mess Him up, too, and use Him in ungodly ways (and there I go yet again!). I swiped it from Steph Drury's blog Get your adverbs here.

Unholy Sonnet 4

Amazing to believe that nothingness

Surrounds us with delight and lets us be,

And that the meekness of nonentity,

Despite the friction of the world of sense,

Despite the leveling of violence

Is all that matters. All the energy

We force into the matchhead and the city

Explodes inside a loving emptiness.

Not Dante’s rings, not the Zen zero’s mouth,

Out of which comes and into which light goes,

This God recedes from every metaphor,

Turns the hardest data into untruth,

And fills all blanks with blankness. This love shows

Itself in absence, which the stars adore. 

 

—Mark Jarman

Sorry I Never Listened, Dad...

People say some strange, amazing things. It's weird to me, but much of the wisdom I've been offered has made absolutely no sense to me until much later, after I reached a certain age, experienced certain things, or just sort of grew up (at least for a time). For instance: I remember reading "The Road Less Traveled" when I was a Junior in college in Oklahoma and being completely blown away by this short, overly-quoted poem. I was actually kind of embarrassed that it suddenly meant so much to me because it was everywhere--I had read it before, and everyone else had, too. Coming to feel the poem in such a way seemed silly to me, especially when I tried to express its perfection to my friend, Nicole. I felt like I was rambling on and on about how much stuff Wal-Mart stocked, or something.

Still, that poem is amazing, which is why everyone has already read it. What is still baffling, though, is why I didn't "get it" the first time I encountered it. Was I not ready at 19 to feel that poem? Was I distracted? Probably all of the above. All I know for certain is this poem, which had seemed trite to me, I guess, suddenly felt unspeakably powerful, and the poem had not changed; I had.

Achtung Baby by U2 is my all-time favorite album. I ignore it for years at a time, but each time I play it again my old friend works, running me through the same whole-spectrum-of-feelings as it did in 1992. But, what I don't usually share when I speak of this album is that, though I wanted badly to love it upon my very first hearing, I was initially disappointing with it. After loving The Joshua Tree so fully, this new album felt harsh and even overly contrived, like the boys were pretending to be Eastern European or something. After having the album for six months, I heard a bit of it in Leigh Ann Tucker's Honda Accord and was floored to know that what I was hearing was the same album from six months back! And just like Frost's poem, the album had not changed. My expectations of U2 and my own feelings about myself did change, though, and allowed me to be open to the truth of the album.

Again and again in my life I find that the difference between experiencing the truth of something and missing the richness of it is often just time. It is true in my marriage; Thanks be to God, Stacy and I are in a place together that I literally could not imagine two years ago. She has changed, I have changed, and what I thought about her and about who she is inside is changed. The same is true in my faith--I doubt God has changed much, but I certainly have.

We ebb and flow. Time does, too. The wisest thing I think of (which may sound trite to you, today!) is that we are supposed to be in this present moment as fully as possible, so we can enjoy the peace and understanding while it is here. Because it will all keep washing in and out, we must try and try again to "get it" when we're ready.