UpfromtheStump - Archive 54

3 September 2009 5:07pm

Finally am beginning to get set up in Seattle. Arranging the various parts of being in this place: housing, jobs, bank accounts, phones, etc. So much to arrange just to be alive. And in the middle of it all there is the chaos. I got burglarized two weeks ago. Someone came into my house in the middle of the night and stole my laptop with tons of memories from Africa which I'll never get back, along with opening sections of a book I've been writing. Nerves were racked about the car's health during the 40hour drive from Grand Rapids to Seattle. Then more chaos as I got here, as the last day was done driving through the mountains in the dark, other cars blaring at me to go faster, passing and passing around me in a gain and dim of headlights, all while I drive the speed limit. A screaming 65mph trip down winding mountainsides in the middle of the night, and I'm the one who is out of line? I finally collapse at my host's house, and he has just been robbed that very hour. I may have even scared the criminals away when I arrived.

Strangely, I am pushed by this nutsness into gratitude, thankful that the man in my house two weeks ago didn't wake up my housemates with a gun, thankful that I did indeed survive the insane mountain drive down I-90 westbound in the dark, so thankful that I did not have to meet the burglars face to face when I arrived, but scared them off. So much more could be wrong right now and it isn't.

I remember, back when I was deconstructing and reconstructing the Christian religion during seminary, when I was thinking through some of the more dicey issues that required me, at each corner, to reconsider whether God did exist and whether or not he was worth following in this way. I remember the disillusion I felt when all would disintegrate some nights, while I had bad digestion or was awash in emotional misery, steeped with chaos to such a degree that it had sunk me below water, where I was twisting below the waves, struggling whether to fight back to the surface for air or whether to just sink all this nonsense. Because, with the right lack of light, the world is cast in a ridiculous glow and nothing seems worth spending time on. The people you pass by are all into themselves, the houses are in disrepair. Everything expels fumes just enough where nobody can outright complain.

The truth is that this condition is strangely human and well represented in the holy scriptures. In fact, the entire psalter of the bible is common with my kind of madness. If this book is holy because it catalogs the true condition of mankind and the true condition of God, and a desperation and need for stability is the theme of Psalms, then how truly human and normal is my heart during this dark moments?

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I escape from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will have me, your right hand will hold me and not let go.

If I say, "But this darkness will hide me and the light will become night around me," even the darkness will not be dark to you; the nightime will shine like the daytime, for darkness is as light to you.

And I rest in that truth. Because while chaos is a part of this move to Seattle, I am even moreso swathed in God's embrace. There is no darkness when I am anchored in him, there is only the daytime of himself. And all of life, by this light, becomes illuminated as a gift. The whole world is turned right in this condition. A slow methodical beat begins to takes charge in my center, a stirring and resolution and peace that things are allotted as they should be for this moment. Not only myself, no, all the world is being held by God. The continents are filled with this psalm. And if the current state of all I see is in both that beautiful and hurting way, both as living and needy as myself, then I am pushed to join his work, to be those hands in that compassionate embrace of this world that loose the cords of despair and help others to stand upright and free.

God, teach us to count the days. Teach us to make the days count. Lead us in better ways, because somehow our souls forgot that life means so much.

11 August 2009 11:03pm

Did you know that they sang 'This Little Light of Mine' in the superdome during Hurricane Katrina, while people were dying of thirst, being separated from their loved ones, while the world was being torn apart? Did you know that it caught on like an agreement, and that hundreds of black men and women were marching the round circlet of the stadium, clapping and singing this song like a Sunday morning service of a hundred thousand people?

And do you know why they sang this song? Because it contained two things: meaning and practice. Speaking towards its meaning, 'This little light of mine' contains a barebones message of strength. Thats all. And its practice was equally important. The African Americans in the Superdome had sang this song countless times, as many of us had, and did not need to learn something new. Its practice allowed a very simple song to breech into something deep and waiting: a communal desire to endure.

One last thing remained: a person had to strike up the song. Somebody needed to hear the call, catch the divine spark, the wit, and the guts to make that activating motion. This is the believer, and that is how God is singing the world to help itself.

15 July 2009 1:24pm

I don't understand why some of my favorite ideas come while I'm in the shower or taking a bath. The heat and the water are on my skin, and for some reason I become an inventor.

I've recently realized what a machine a mind is. If much of my work in life is to come through deliberation, then how can I facilitate this process? Its like how a good physique is the product of being healthy, not the means to be happy. I want to be healthy, to eat good wholesome foods and drink wholesome drink, that a good mental state might come about. I heard that good brain chemistry is as linked to cardiovascular health as lifespan.

But I'm trying not to be too American here. Because my culture is doing everything to maximize production through trimming things to efficiency. I am so thankful that the 'business' of God values the child and the fool, the unproductive and the unaccomplished. Any day which has been a waste causes many to hang their heads in shame. "I did nothing today," some say morosely.

Let me live between these poles, or perhaps, one leg within each extreme. I want to have weeks, months even, where I get nothing produced but simply affirm my love for you and for your world. Do not let me be tempted to put a price on priceless things: time with family, walks in the biosphere, and caring for the poor. And also maximize my life God. Let me use my 'talents' to their fullest, to more make love reverberate through the land. Let me prepare for hours what I say in moments, read and meet and write and organize full of sweat and outcomes. Because all that sounds like how you were, stretched between heaven and earth.

3 July 2009 9:40pm

We are weighing what works, watching the results, trying twice what works once. Sometimes it works again. This is the pragmatism of peace-bringing, the trial and error of excellence. We are making money second place, pushing prestige and ambition back in their chairs. We are focused and working on a single goal: the perfect world of God, how things used to be and how they will be again.

Two things make this work. Firstly, we meet people on the way who are resonating with this work. "All things will be made new," we remember. "The old is passing away brick by brick, in God's own way, and we are simply a small part of it." And with these words, the people we meet are stirred to rise. They nod with wide smiling eyes and leave behind the conversations of yesteryear.

Secondly, it is wonderful. In other words, people really are finding the fullest of life they could imagine. People are healing broken relationships and focusing the work of their hands. They are becoming better parents, husbands, friends, and citizens. This is the wonder. Because nothing is more deeply enthralling than good friendship and work. This alone is worth the life-choice.

And so we are finding work because people want more of it. Because the depth of our need is solved with a new lifestyle of each minute. Because holding unending value of everything one sees and hears may start with a decision, but really comes with practice.

15 June 2009 6:02pm

The best part of the people I am meeting are their dreams. I ask them about their visions for their streets and neighborhoods, and they paint the same long winding dream-drunk pictures of health in their area: housing, business, community: sleep, work, play. With the million lives winding in and out of the city block, with the now closing now opening storefronts and changing street flyers, with the homeless men of ten years ago, I watch them remake it all in their minds eye.

Here is the hope of God: beauty and health as common as oxygen, His vision so grand that he wrote himself into our story to make it happen. And the crazy thing is, and I know its stupendous, the crazy thing is that I am meeting people here who, centered on this God, are their neighborhood's prime points of shining health and fruition: life, love, and strength.

21 May 2009 10:37pm

How is it that tragedy strikes two people, and one finds in it new strength while another finds new despair? One has newfound song and another gains a void of hope and promise in life. Two people have such hardship, and their result is polarized in such a way. One grows stronger, another weakens.

Here is one way this can happen: the one who finds new life is supported by outside love in their misery. This isn't always the case. Sometimes people in struggles who are loved maintain a rugged and tested cynicism. But overall, the rule remains: life gains beauty from tested love, and I am enraptured by this. I've seen it blossom like petals after storms: a person emerges from darkness and sees anew the light that shines around us every day.

8 May 2009 1:11pm

There are times throughout my week where something reminds me of living in Kenya. This past weekend I was having some cheap sushi in Morristown, and Eric Clapton's song 'Badge' came over the speaker. Seriously, a Clapton song? But thats what did it.

I was transplanted to Kurialand in south Kenya, to driving around in Thomas' brother's taxi, trying to find Nescafe. His brother put his taxi business on hold for my visit, so that we could be driven around, since their family didn't have any other cars except the one used for the business. And they knew I was a coffee drinker in the morning, so there I was, hours and hours south of Nairobi, driving down rutted two-tracks, watching Tom jump out of the back seat and inquire with each tuck shop about Nescafe instant coffee.

We kept losing out: shaking head after shaking head framed by hanging chickens and bags of sugar, by leather-brand soap and stiff brown paper bags of Unga. As each shop owner told Tom 'no', my desire not to be such a nuisance increased. "Its ok Tom," I told him. "I can go a day without it." No answer back, just another tilting rutted ride to another shop. Finally, paydirt. Tom comes back with four packets of that stuff. And so we are back on the road to his brother's house, doorways of hanging sheets, oil lamps surrounded by ugali and sekuma wiki, pictures of themselves hanging above the stiff handmade couch.

As we head back in the dark to that wonderful house, I hit play on a CD player, and Clapton's 'Badge' begins to beat through my ears, a mental folded page-corner of a time when people went out of their way to call me family.