My own smallness is thrilling. By the crashing ocean or in a driving Kenyan thunderstorm I am this tiny thing and I matter so little that it is amazing; that I forget why on earth I operate with any sort of caution or careful behavior. I can live and love and laugh and hurt and cry and be and die and I can do it all at once, and it is amazing. It is amazing because it doesn’t matter to the rest of the universe. I can do anything and not hurt it. Anything can happen and things will go on and that is so freeing. I can go climb a tree and break my leg and the worst it can do is hurt for a bit. I can throw my heart at people and they can drop it splat on the ground, and the worst it can do is cause me some temporary pain. “Temporary” could mean weeks or months or even years, but what is that in the scope of infinity? How much worse is it for something like me, with ultimately so little to lose, to just sit here and do nothing? Invest nothing, feel nothing? I can do anything, because I am nothing. Bring it on.
Do you know what that means? That means what I am right now doesn’t matter to the infinite universe! I can, in this particular moment, be selfish or lazy or arrogant or overly-analytical, and I am not hurting the universe. I can be free to have my flaws, try to change them, to fall flat on my face in failure and the universe doesn’t care. I can feel anything right now—-I can feel angry or sad or unattractive or pissy or bored—-and it matters so little to the rest of the world that how much can those feelings actually mean? And if they don’t mean all that much after all, how much power do they really have over me?
Look, guys, we don’t matter and that is awesome. Maybe when you realize how little your pain or failure really counts in the grand scheme of things, it gives you freedom, and maybe that freedom provides you with the potential to do something that actually does matter.
Maybe others might not see it that way, and of course there are times that call for meticulous thought and care, but I know I tend to take myself too seriously and that inhibits me from doing things and being things and investing in people, from taking risks and living my life. And I get tired of that, of being so careful and worrisome. There’s freedom and thrill right there for the taking; all I need to do is chill out. Stop overthinking everything. And know that if I do chill out and stop overthinking, it’s going to be ok. Really, it is. Cause it’s not as big of a deal as I’m making it.
Embracing that is easier said than done, but something I need to remember.
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Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Monday, August 12, 2013
State of Being
I’m staying awake these last few nights but I don’t know what I’m waiting for. I’m waiting for something to happen, I think, waiting for a forward step, for the stakes to be raised just a little more. How, I don’t know, but I feel I am on the edge of something. I listen again in my mind to some abstract subtleties and the shapes of big words going clunk clunk clunk on their way down my ear canal. Halfway down they are interpreted and I can only hope I construe them accurately. Sometimes I need things spelled out for me. Sometimes I misunderstand the words, sometimes I misread the context. Sometimes the combination of the two confuses me, and some times I am afraid to assume one thing over another.
If I were a letter and all the world some ancient alphabet, I would be that rune with five different, fragile meanings, defined not by itself but by the symbols that come before and after it. What do I mean? I don’t know, it depends on what you mean. You go first, then maybe I’ll be able to tell. I am something all my own and yet I am defined as well by my context. How is anything it’s own thing unless contrasted against it’s surroundings? Isn’t it context that establishes the relevance of anything? How could I possibly be defined without it? Would I exist apart from anything if everything was the same? I could be, certainly, but would I be anything in particular? So my context changes and thus what it means to be myself also changes, while simultaneously I stay exactly the same. Somehow they are separate, what it means to be, and the being itself. At least it seems so to me sometimes.
I fall into such musings because of some personal conundrums of mine. For example, it seems to me that who I am in essence exists differently within the context of my body than it might if it dwelt in a different body. While I believe in an integrated, whole-person philosophy, sometimes it seems that my body and I are separate entities tied together by unfortunate circumstances. I am lively, adventurous and active. I love to run and move and climb and explore; I love to see and do new things. But my body likes to sit inside, though, and frankly be rather boring. The two of us are often at war; we care about such different things. I care about people and relationships and experiences and understanding and involvement in the world. My body cares about rest and storing energy and avoiding the discomfort of fatigue and pain. We seem to be two different people grafted together in skin and bone and brainstem. We are conjoined twins with very different dreams, but we’d never survive the separation surgery. At times it feels as if we exist begrudgingly toward each other; a loveless marriage of body and soul. There are times when we get along and I feel free of its weight, but the separation is always there, a rift between us somewhere inside.
It makes me wonder, what is it that makes me? Am I what I feel I would be separate from my body, or am I the two of us combined? Is my true self a boisterous and fun-loving person because that is the way I was before my body made me more subdued, or has my true self become a more subdued person because that is how I have now been forced behave? Who am I, in essence: my “soul” alone, or an integrated combination of my physical self and immaterial self? I know this is somewhat of a classic question, but the contrast seems all the more bright to me. In theory I would say that an integrated body and soul makes one who they are (to put it very simply), but in practice it is difficult to apply the concept to myself, considering how very different I seem to feel from my body.
But we compromise, my body and I, and we do alright compared to many other body/soul relationships. We are dysfunctional, we admit, but we have seen worse. Many bodies are far more frustrating than my own, and in that way I am lucky. But I still wonder: does my body hide and suppress the “real me”, or has it become part of my true self? Can I exist apart from the context of my body? Or has that context become a defining feature of my true, essential self?
Answer me, all ye philosophers and seekers of meaning. Tell me who I am.
.
If I were a letter and all the world some ancient alphabet, I would be that rune with five different, fragile meanings, defined not by itself but by the symbols that come before and after it. What do I mean? I don’t know, it depends on what you mean. You go first, then maybe I’ll be able to tell. I am something all my own and yet I am defined as well by my context. How is anything it’s own thing unless contrasted against it’s surroundings? Isn’t it context that establishes the relevance of anything? How could I possibly be defined without it? Would I exist apart from anything if everything was the same? I could be, certainly, but would I be anything in particular? So my context changes and thus what it means to be myself also changes, while simultaneously I stay exactly the same. Somehow they are separate, what it means to be, and the being itself. At least it seems so to me sometimes.
I fall into such musings because of some personal conundrums of mine. For example, it seems to me that who I am in essence exists differently within the context of my body than it might if it dwelt in a different body. While I believe in an integrated, whole-person philosophy, sometimes it seems that my body and I are separate entities tied together by unfortunate circumstances. I am lively, adventurous and active. I love to run and move and climb and explore; I love to see and do new things. But my body likes to sit inside, though, and frankly be rather boring. The two of us are often at war; we care about such different things. I care about people and relationships and experiences and understanding and involvement in the world. My body cares about rest and storing energy and avoiding the discomfort of fatigue and pain. We seem to be two different people grafted together in skin and bone and brainstem. We are conjoined twins with very different dreams, but we’d never survive the separation surgery. At times it feels as if we exist begrudgingly toward each other; a loveless marriage of body and soul. There are times when we get along and I feel free of its weight, but the separation is always there, a rift between us somewhere inside.
It makes me wonder, what is it that makes me? Am I what I feel I would be separate from my body, or am I the two of us combined? Is my true self a boisterous and fun-loving person because that is the way I was before my body made me more subdued, or has my true self become a more subdued person because that is how I have now been forced behave? Who am I, in essence: my “soul” alone, or an integrated combination of my physical self and immaterial self? I know this is somewhat of a classic question, but the contrast seems all the more bright to me. In theory I would say that an integrated body and soul makes one who they are (to put it very simply), but in practice it is difficult to apply the concept to myself, considering how very different I seem to feel from my body.
But we compromise, my body and I, and we do alright compared to many other body/soul relationships. We are dysfunctional, we admit, but we have seen worse. Many bodies are far more frustrating than my own, and in that way I am lucky. But I still wonder: does my body hide and suppress the “real me”, or has it become part of my true self? Can I exist apart from the context of my body? Or has that context become a defining feature of my true, essential self?
Answer me, all ye philosophers and seekers of meaning. Tell me who I am.
.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Let Them Eat Cake
Lately I’ve been wishing I was more philosophical; more intellectual. I’ve been thumbing through books that I hope will make me smarter; grasping at strands of abstract thought that I hope will give me answers so that I may give them to others. So that I may use them to be more sure of myself. I’ve been both drawn to and intimidated by those more intelligent than myself, hoping wide-eyed that I might steal in on the heels of one of them to become something of a shadow in their world. I listen furiously to what they say, even the things I don’t understand, trying at least to tuck some bit of information into a wrinkle in my brain. Surely I will absorb through osmosis whatever I immerse myself in? I can only hope.
Because sometimes I feel like I have exhausted every good thing in myself. Like I have nothing left to give the world, nothing left with which to impress. When I am out of creativity and light, I can only hope that the Creator will help me make something beautiful, help me to draw beauty to myself and reflect it back into the world like the glint of a broken mirror in the sun.
An eternal effort can be exhausting, but when I turn it over to the rhythm that the Master drums within me, the experience is rich and it is called life and I eat it up like chocolate cake. That isn’t to say it is easy, even after the letting-go bit is done. Chocolate cake isn’t just all the tasty stuff put together, you know. It’s mostly bland flour, really. There’s sour baking soda, there’s bitter cocoa, and the oven gets so miserably hot. It’s not all sugar and vanilla and comfort. As a child I was mortified to learn that there was salt in the cookies, but Mom said they made the cookies taste better so then I was ok with it, but it was still strange to me that not all the components in something so tasty were tasty by themselves. A five-year-old’s first lesson in “The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.”
But altogether cookies and cakes are delicious; I find that even the bad ones have some redeeming qualities. They’re being served at the party in the Now suite on the eighteenth floor of Mortality, and they’re for me; they’re for everyone. For all the would-be magicians and the planners of plans, dreamers of impractical dreams and the artists under the bridges with their cans of spray paint; spray-on anger, spray-on angst. You Picassos, you; you Michelangelos and you don’t even know you’ve made the overpass your Sistine Chapel. For the used-car salesmen and the sk8r punks; calling all the thumb-suckers and the overbearing mothers. Come you pseudo-scientists who love to experiment with the boundaries of life, calling all time-wasters and procrastinators. Calling all attention-addicts and all you nerds from your basements; calling all thrill-seekers and adrenaline junkies, all you hippies with unwashed hair. All the intellectuals and philosophers, creators and consumers, criminals and congressmen, ladies and gentlemen, tramps and gypsies. Calling everything I’ve ever wanted to be, everything I have ever been and everything I have tried desperately to avoid becoming, everything it has never occurred to me to be. There’s cake for you and cake for me, because every day is Eternity’s birthday and we’re invited.
Just so you know.
Because sometimes I feel like I have exhausted every good thing in myself. Like I have nothing left to give the world, nothing left with which to impress. When I am out of creativity and light, I can only hope that the Creator will help me make something beautiful, help me to draw beauty to myself and reflect it back into the world like the glint of a broken mirror in the sun.
An eternal effort can be exhausting, but when I turn it over to the rhythm that the Master drums within me, the experience is rich and it is called life and I eat it up like chocolate cake. That isn’t to say it is easy, even after the letting-go bit is done. Chocolate cake isn’t just all the tasty stuff put together, you know. It’s mostly bland flour, really. There’s sour baking soda, there’s bitter cocoa, and the oven gets so miserably hot. It’s not all sugar and vanilla and comfort. As a child I was mortified to learn that there was salt in the cookies, but Mom said they made the cookies taste better so then I was ok with it, but it was still strange to me that not all the components in something so tasty were tasty by themselves. A five-year-old’s first lesson in “The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.”
But altogether cookies and cakes are delicious; I find that even the bad ones have some redeeming qualities. They’re being served at the party in the Now suite on the eighteenth floor of Mortality, and they’re for me; they’re for everyone. For all the would-be magicians and the planners of plans, dreamers of impractical dreams and the artists under the bridges with their cans of spray paint; spray-on anger, spray-on angst. You Picassos, you; you Michelangelos and you don’t even know you’ve made the overpass your Sistine Chapel. For the used-car salesmen and the sk8r punks; calling all the thumb-suckers and the overbearing mothers. Come you pseudo-scientists who love to experiment with the boundaries of life, calling all time-wasters and procrastinators. Calling all attention-addicts and all you nerds from your basements; calling all thrill-seekers and adrenaline junkies, all you hippies with unwashed hair. All the intellectuals and philosophers, creators and consumers, criminals and congressmen, ladies and gentlemen, tramps and gypsies. Calling everything I’ve ever wanted to be, everything I have ever been and everything I have tried desperately to avoid becoming, everything it has never occurred to me to be. There’s cake for you and cake for me, because every day is Eternity’s birthday and we’re invited.
Just so you know.
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Metaphorical Metamorphosis: A Story in Photographs
For an introduction to media class a couple of years ago, I was assigned the task of putting together a series of images that was autobiographical. A series of pictures that could tell a story, independent of words. This is that meticulously-composed series of original images, briefly illustrating my diagnosis with lupus in 2005 and a metaphorical representation of my journey over the following two years. My photography skills have somewhat developed since this was originally created and I would like to refine it someday, but you get the idea.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
God-Songs
Sometimes I find God in places where no one intended Him to be. Many times, those instances occur for me in music. I thought I would share my playlist of God-Songs, specifically ones that were not originally intended to be about God. Some of these I imagine coming from God, some of them as prayers to Him, some of them just about Him in general. Or all three of those, intermixed. I love that, when God speaks through art regardless of the artist's intentions. I have more of those types of songs on my God-Songs playlist than I do songs purposefully written about Him. Maybe not all of them on this list will make sense to you, but (if you end up taking the time to follow the links and listen)I hope a couple of them do. If you listen, listen with a mind open to hidden--and sometimes unconventional--connections. Maybe you'll find one or two that connect you to Him, too. And if you have any song suggestions, I would absolutely love to hear them.
Make a Plan to Love Me by Bright Eyes
Lila by Bright Eyes
Easy/Lucky/Free by Bright Eyes
First Day of My Life by Bright Eyes
Yellow by Coldplay
I Have Never Loved Someone by My Brightest Diamond
I Want to Know Your Plans by Say Anything
I Will Follow You into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie
Jesus the Mexican Boy by Iron and Wine
For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti by Sufjan Stevens
Heirloom by Sufjan Stevens
Make a Plan to Love Me by Bright Eyes
Lila by Bright Eyes
Easy/Lucky/Free by Bright Eyes
First Day of My Life by Bright Eyes
Yellow by Coldplay
I Have Never Loved Someone by My Brightest Diamond
I Want to Know Your Plans by Say Anything
I Will Follow You into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie
Jesus the Mexican Boy by Iron and Wine
For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti by Sufjan Stevens
Heirloom by Sufjan Stevens
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Some Challenges of the Spoken Word
People say things, right? Isn’t that how people are supposed to interact, by speaking mouth-words? That’s the impression I get, anyway. And apparently one is expected to respond relatively quickly, without taking too much time to process. Conversations should be slower things, I think. Is it alright to say things that don’t necessarily need saying?
When I’m quiet, I do have things in my mind. Things I could say, I suppose; things I could make into words and push off of my tongue for other people to hear. But I ask certain questions of myself before saying things. Like Who Cares? Is what I am about to say genuinely relevant to the conversation and its participants? Will it make someone think? Will it make someone laugh? If the answer to all of those questions is “no”, my lips often refuse to move. But I’m never quite sure if that is the right decision, because I tend to experience many awkward silences and I can’t help but think that it’s my fault for not filling up the space with words.
On lugubrious days
I get the impression
That others may notice
My verbal recession.
Sometimes on desperate impulse I will regurgitate some vaguely-related phrase from my mind, whatever is floating closest to my mouth. How very spastic I must seem, stretches of silence awkwardly punctuated with puzzling interjections and broken responses. Then sometimes there is nothing floating nearby and I feel a solid white space behind my eyes, a catch in my throat.
I need to make
More words with my mouth,
Build them on my tongue
And then push them out.
I suppose it doesn’t matter very much anyway; everything I have to say has been said before, if not by me then by someone else. Any concept my little brain could possibly conceive has surely already been thoroughly wrung out by minds brighter than my own. Why bother saying what has been heard before? I’m only twenty-three; I don’t think I’ve lived long enough to say new things, or even to know very much about old things. Why bother saying something that is not new, or that is essentially unproductive?
Sometimes I feel like a ineffectual robot: inexpressive due to lack of data, then randomly activating in sudden bursts of short-circuiting gibberish. Hell-o. Would. You. Like. To. Con-verse? Yest-er-day. I. Ate. Straw-berr-ies. Do. You. Like. Straw-berr-ies? Data: Straw-berr-ies. Carry. Their. Seeds. On. The. Out-side. This. Has. Been. A. Pleas-ant. Con-ver-sat-ion. That. Ful-filled. Social. Re-quire-ments. Good. Bye.
I think I am better at the letter-format of communication, when I am able to contemplate my words. To edit them, to see them somewhere other than my head-space before they are announced. I make more sense that way.
Why do you think I write so much?
I pronounce to the world
Some stuttering sounds.
They look at me strangely;
I’ll just write it down.
.
When I’m quiet, I do have things in my mind. Things I could say, I suppose; things I could make into words and push off of my tongue for other people to hear. But I ask certain questions of myself before saying things. Like Who Cares? Is what I am about to say genuinely relevant to the conversation and its participants? Will it make someone think? Will it make someone laugh? If the answer to all of those questions is “no”, my lips often refuse to move. But I’m never quite sure if that is the right decision, because I tend to experience many awkward silences and I can’t help but think that it’s my fault for not filling up the space with words.
On lugubrious days
I get the impression
That others may notice
My verbal recession.
Sometimes on desperate impulse I will regurgitate some vaguely-related phrase from my mind, whatever is floating closest to my mouth. How very spastic I must seem, stretches of silence awkwardly punctuated with puzzling interjections and broken responses. Then sometimes there is nothing floating nearby and I feel a solid white space behind my eyes, a catch in my throat.
I need to make
More words with my mouth,
Build them on my tongue
And then push them out.
I suppose it doesn’t matter very much anyway; everything I have to say has been said before, if not by me then by someone else. Any concept my little brain could possibly conceive has surely already been thoroughly wrung out by minds brighter than my own. Why bother saying what has been heard before? I’m only twenty-three; I don’t think I’ve lived long enough to say new things, or even to know very much about old things. Why bother saying something that is not new, or that is essentially unproductive?
Sometimes I feel like a ineffectual robot: inexpressive due to lack of data, then randomly activating in sudden bursts of short-circuiting gibberish. Hell-o. Would. You. Like. To. Con-verse? Yest-er-day. I. Ate. Straw-berr-ies. Do. You. Like. Straw-berr-ies? Data: Straw-berr-ies. Carry. Their. Seeds. On. The. Out-side. This. Has. Been. A. Pleas-ant. Con-ver-sat-ion. That. Ful-filled. Social. Re-quire-ments. Good. Bye.
I think I am better at the letter-format of communication, when I am able to contemplate my words. To edit them, to see them somewhere other than my head-space before they are announced. I make more sense that way.
Why do you think I write so much?
I pronounce to the world
Some stuttering sounds.
They look at me strangely;
I’ll just write it down.
.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
The Classic Question has No Answer
Sometimes I see people living their lives and I think, “Wait a minute, that was the life I was supposed to live. I was supposed to do that. That was my thing.” I watch people have the strength and energy, the supple joints and clear mind to do the things that I’ve dreamed of doing my whole life. Things that I am too tired for these days. I watch the world go by me, many people them with their strings of accomplishments that I had hoped to achieve; their experiences I’d dreamed of having. As I am left behind I think about wormholes, and alternate realities. A universe where things went the way I planned. Because, if those theories are true and the alternate universes are infinite, surely there is one where things unfolded the way I would have chosen.
Maybe there’s one where things are even better, but there’s probably one where things are much worse. I wouldn’t gamble for a different life, but at times pesky lupus things make me lose count of my blessings. And there are so many of them—blessings, that is—in spite of the negatives.
I have been to Kenya and visited one of the largest slums in the world, walking in the midst of some of the deepest poverty imaginable. Right here in Kansas I’ve carried an abused child on my hip, and played Pokemon cards and dinosaurs with another. I’ve been friends with people forced to bury their parents far too young, and with people who were raised in a world of drugs and violence.
Relatively my life is oh so very, very good.
Yet, sometimes...What if I were healthy…?
If I were a rich man, deedle-deedle-didle-deedle-deedle-dum…Would it spoil some vast eternal plan?
Would it? Of course in the midst of my own pain I have asked the classic question, “why?”. I have asked it all the more desperately on behalf of those I’ve met whose suffering is far beyond my own.
Of course we all wish we could look into the future, to see “why” we have had to endure particular things. Except, I don’t really believe in that “why”.
I don’t mean that it’s just hard to believe; I mean I really don’t believe there is always a reason for things. Sometimes there is, maybe. But in most cases, I think, bad things just happen. I believe that God will indeed work everything out for ultimate good, but He is working with a world that is already broken, and full of broken people. I don’t believe that He broke us for some divine “reason”. I don’t believe He inflicts suffering on us based on His own agenda. I believe He is in the Emergency Room of Souls, working tirelessly to heal us as the hurts come. We stumble in bleeding pain and loss from some sudden blow, and He gives us the stitches that keep us from falling apart. Then He connects us to communities with people to help and support us, and helps design our lives for their greatest possible capacity of joy while we wait for eternity.
I don’t know; I’m no expert on God or theology. I’m not even a ministry major in college. But I have had a lot of time and several reasons to dig for answers, scratching desperately at the questions until blood seeps from under my fingernails. I have thought, and I have reached a few conclusions in my own mind. And one of them is this: The Classic Question has no definitive Answer; only a Healer.
Maybe there’s one where things are even better, but there’s probably one where things are much worse. I wouldn’t gamble for a different life, but at times pesky lupus things make me lose count of my blessings. And there are so many of them—blessings, that is—in spite of the negatives.
I have been to Kenya and visited one of the largest slums in the world, walking in the midst of some of the deepest poverty imaginable. Right here in Kansas I’ve carried an abused child on my hip, and played Pokemon cards and dinosaurs with another. I’ve been friends with people forced to bury their parents far too young, and with people who were raised in a world of drugs and violence.
Relatively my life is oh so very, very good.
Yet, sometimes...What if I were healthy…?
If I were a rich man, deedle-deedle-didle-deedle-deedle-dum…Would it spoil some vast eternal plan?
Would it? Of course in the midst of my own pain I have asked the classic question, “why?”. I have asked it all the more desperately on behalf of those I’ve met whose suffering is far beyond my own.
Of course we all wish we could look into the future, to see “why” we have had to endure particular things. Except, I don’t really believe in that “why”.
I don’t mean that it’s just hard to believe; I mean I really don’t believe there is always a reason for things. Sometimes there is, maybe. But in most cases, I think, bad things just happen. I believe that God will indeed work everything out for ultimate good, but He is working with a world that is already broken, and full of broken people. I don’t believe that He broke us for some divine “reason”. I don’t believe He inflicts suffering on us based on His own agenda. I believe He is in the Emergency Room of Souls, working tirelessly to heal us as the hurts come. We stumble in bleeding pain and loss from some sudden blow, and He gives us the stitches that keep us from falling apart. Then He connects us to communities with people to help and support us, and helps design our lives for their greatest possible capacity of joy while we wait for eternity.
I don’t know; I’m no expert on God or theology. I’m not even a ministry major in college. But I have had a lot of time and several reasons to dig for answers, scratching desperately at the questions until blood seeps from under my fingernails. I have thought, and I have reached a few conclusions in my own mind. And one of them is this: The Classic Question has no definitive Answer; only a Healer.
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