On a greyhound. To the north, in particular north and west to Minnesota. My bearings are skewed right now as it is dark. Pitch painted masses glide past the window and restlessness takes a hold of my mind once again. Times like these are fruitful mostly for reading, writing, and prayer. Things feel a bit out of kilter right now
Earlier in the trip, the sights took me. There's something thoroughly captivating about the north woods, in my perception. The cabin you can barely see from the greyhound cab is far too exposed as it is. Why? Because seclusion is the name of the game in many of these parts. And what of it? One might polarize two scenarios very easily in a way that pits a desire for seclusion against a love for people. The argument might go along these lines: A desire for seclusion must be wrong because it cannot include a great love for people.
In fact the same argument is turned on its face when one observes the young hermit who drowns out the daily drone of city masses, who has exiled himself from all real community with shallow relationships. Or when otherwise "secluded," quiet, country folk gather regularly in the county hall or at church house and seek community, we could label it as quaint, but what if the true transformation of hearts and minds abounded? Further still, what if they were centered on the proclamation that the power of resurrection redeems simple lives and in turn they use their quiet homes as havens for the lost.
A warm fire, a slow-cooked meal, a fire-side chat: these aren't things to shrug at. Shivering off years of burdens, you're outside with the simple task of gathering firewood to stay warm. The trees make a fitting cover from the cold, bare sky, yet you're shivering, perhaps with excitement. You're grateful to return to warmth and other people, but somehow you are humbled with gratitude for your task with the trees. It's been a while since I've even seen those trees, but I'm just passing through for now.
The soundtrack to much of this: The mix that iTunes Genius made to Matthew and the Atlas' song "To the North." Where you can find an excellent recording: Daytrotter. Bits of Nick Drake here and there, like an old friend, and I've been pretty partial to Horse Feathers in these settings as well.
Greyhounds are quite fun. If you haven't tried one, indulge just once, at least. An elderly chap who sits just in front of me has been of interest at sporadic moments during the trip. He smells like he hasn't bathed for a day or two and he hacks with coughs periodically, but they're the kind of coughs that have years behind them, not necessarily smoke-filled lungs. I asked him about his plans in Minneapolis and apparently he's visiting his ex-wife and will then move on a bit further north to stay with his sister for an extended period. "Family is the best of things for me these days. What about you? You got family, son?" "I do, and I am living with them now." "Well, I guess you'll be wantin' to get off on your own soon, eh? But it's always nice to have family."
All this was spoken with a lisp that I can't quite replicate in print. I should train ear to catch the nuances of such things for future writing. Mental note.
It's now nigh midnight, and still an hour. Needless to say, the further north the better. Here's to the starry hosts in skies untouched by populous electric boxes. Here's to the untamed north, and long may it live as a haven.
A most resplendent day! Visited with my family toward mid afternoon and then with a chum for fireworks in the evening. But throughout, all that I could focus on was the color. These are the summer days that truly showcase a grove of trees. The unflinching blue and flood of warmth beckons you to play frisbee with cousins or read a book.
I am picking through East of Eden right now, and today I started on the Aeneid for a change of pace. That's one that will have you begging for a spear's shaft and shield, with salty sea brine stinging cracked lips, hungry for an encounter with kings and with gods. I'm a sucker for epic poetry.
Thus did my literature pallet variously indulge itself. I must confess that I resist the conviction that I am a bookworm, especially lately. I'm sure I've written this before, but I really am slow at it. I seem to process the words with languid, meandering thoughts that try to digest the whole picture with vivid images, but I miss much and I know it.
I haven't the chops for great insight into these writings, but I cannot help but savor the pictures. The mind is remarkable and fills in the deep shades of landscape and countenance with light to catch a glimpse of another world, but always with respect to this one. I don't imagine that I see these things in a profound way. I try to see them as the author paints them, but there is something about the literary mind that blows me away. It can take anything–the vivid narrative, the straightforward cookbook, the dry philosophical work, or the detailed biography–and create light and meaning in different hues. If it does not, there is no understanding the words.
Much like the bombs bursting in air earlier this evening, words themselves can ignite the imagination individually (like in word association games), but it is the explosion of color and light that gives each line of a great work its definition and meaning. In my estimation, a day's well-spent basking in such revelries.
Tonight, some low-life hoodlum launched a firework from the top of a hill onto a cluster of families below. I believe no one was hurt, but it was a dirty trick. Not two minutes passed and the young men from below had charged up the hill to seek revenge. My chum and I forsook the fireworks finale to go after the crook as well just to see what might happen. The rascal escaped, but we had a jolly good time with the chase.
In general, Jove's light colored the day. Praise to the Lord, the giver of all good things.
I was reminded tonight by a friend that I don't keep up with these things often enough. I suppose I've pictured myself as a steadfast, faithful writer for years, either professionally or simply as a pastime. Actually, I notice such a lack of follow-through in my initiatives, that I often second guess my passion for the art. Indeed, it isn't that I haven't anything to say, but rather I simply haven't the discipline to practice saying it.
Permit me a moment of introspection, but I seem to have lost all initiative in the practice of saying things well. I speak, and far too often carelessly or with empty, loquacious tendencies, but it is a rare thing for me to speak with both confidence and clarity on a subject of interest these days.
I've taken a job of menial papers, staples, and phone messages. For a job, in the universal sense, I am very grateful. For this job, in particular, I am far from thrilled. Furthermore, I am realizing that my job search at the outset of the summer could have been better planned and executed so that I might have found work in a field more suited to my talents and tastes. I am learning and these things too shall fade away. For now, doctor's liaison is what I am. Redemption knows no limits for even the faintest glimpses of hope in the eyes of a patient in pain are enough to cause one to consider the health one has too often taken for granted.
Today, I was scheduling an MRI for an elderly patient with a thick, familiar accent. She smiled as I reassured her that the exam would not take long, because our tech is superb and speedy.
I approached her with her appointment card, and she exclaimed, "Ah the French Seven."
I squinted at her, puzzled.
She continued, "Isn't that how the French write their sevens? At least, that's what we were taught in the British schools."
I have always crossed a horizontal line through the middle of my sevens, but never knew the tradition behind it. An opportunity for such a simple exchange was most welcome.
"I never knew," I replied. With smiles on both sides, I asked, "Are you from Scotland?"
"I am originally," she replied, with that lilting brogue which hearkens the highlands, the haven home, the stone hearth, and thick stew all at once. "I moved here when I was about your age," She said. "The accent is about all I have left."
"Have you visited much?" I asked.
"Oh, yes."
"And been to highlands much."
"Of course, quite often." I was ear-to-ear in a grin. "I have always wanted to go."
Practicing simpler conversation might help one become a friend to another, but one cannot help but feel slow when things move into a race of the wits. Battles of the wits seem to disarm me in some way, so that often I feign interest. Patience is the key that I have so often misplaced in the heat of things. It has the potential to unlock charity toward the other, but my mind lapses too easily into judgment. I wonder, if we knew we could only say so many words in a day, how conversations might be different.
I could chew on that for awhile. They are tender subjects, our words, language, and in general communication. Such things go well with broiled potatoes and perhaps cabbage. If we kept it simple like that, maybe meaning would come to the forefront in our speech, rather than remaining aloof.
Here's a fundamental fact about my life that was clearly witnessed today: My father, with a modest snow-blower, and I, with a trusty shovel, are an unstoppable force in the wake of a blizzard's effects. We quite blazed (almost literally, as if a flame-thrower were involved) our way through our driveway, walkway, and the sidewalk all around our house by midday (and this was after breakfast). We're talking two to three feet of snow on average (probably a bit more in certain areas). We make a great team.
Other than that, we have enjoyed the warmth of our home. And yet there is no sense of entitlement behind that statement. Quite the contrary, I was struck by pangs at the thought of those in our own community's backyard who did not have shelter during this horrendous storm. What springs up is not guilt, so much as gratitude, and a heart posture of prayer.
All that to say, after a hard day's work plying the shovel to magisterial mounds of snow, A bowl of Chili and and cornbread was received with so much gratitude and gravity.
By the way, this kid wants to snowboard. Who's with me?
Today was simple. I arose to cranberry juice (coffee is out until the stomach can fathom it). After Greek vocabulary, pieces of exegesis (seeing all of the parts, and none of the whole), and further progress on an outline, I made for my auto so as to pick up my younger cousin from school. What a mind, honestly. I pray that he becomes a writer, because then I could bounce ideas off of him, and perhaps they will make it into one of his books.
Then again, I could write one; though not while my stomach is in this state. How did Calvin do it (ulcers breed unwanted profanity in my thoughts, and surely spoil the appetite)?
Anyway, we read Lewis' The Great Divorce. He was inquisitive: "If the narrator honestly sees himself as a ghost, how can he possible grasp at the flower or the blade of grass?" or "How can they feel the pangs of hard grass, when they have no bodies?" These types of questions prompted great dialogue. And let me just say that the lad is eschatologically solid, which is encouraging. No pie-in-the-sky, "cloud-walkin' after I die," for this guy. He and Lewis would get along well. There are weighty matters milling about in his mind. Oh, to learn from a child.
Dinner tonight was at the home of our church's worship leader. His family is wonderful and very hospitable. Pizza was on, salad, the like, and variegated chatter on past life, hopes, and directions. The conversation climaxed in a full-on jam session – two guitars and a dobro. The latter was a true proficient, with much experience in the art of bluegrass. My favorite. So many possibilities, so much potential. Even in this heart, seemingly hard and numb of feeling as of late, there yet resides a spark for the innovative steel-string, the rhythm and blues, and a stalwart melody with which we sail the stars in strokes of harmony.
Decisions are never weightless. They don't float or meander in thin speculation or theory. They bear consequences, burdens, and sometimes children (no cause for alarm, 'tis merely for the literary effect). Life is a great gift, and we are a generation, bent on milking it for all its worth, without the least sense of gratitude... or responsibility. I stake my claim among the worst of these. I only regret the years of wasted choices... corporately. This is apparently what "makes man great, that gives him stature with the gods" (Steinbeck: Lee, in East of Eden; long before Mumford & Sons). It may also be his very own demise. Medieval man believed that the stars played an intricate part in providence (so, we thank the lucky ones). "Poppycock!" say we. But perhaps modern man sees too little in the stars (i.e. mere gases and chemicals) and too much in the mind: a fickle playground, indeed. Perhaps there are entire worlds, an otherness of sorts, that we neglect (I refer to Lewis' The Discarded Image for justification of these last few lines, which may be mere nostalgia; or perhaps something more).
You do have your choices. Make them, but remember to tread lightly upon the grounds of our collective conscience. We just might fool ourselves with our empirical magic and analytical sorcery, and perhaps we are more engrossed in a tradition than we like to admit.
But I cannot abide these thoughts long, for it is nearly bedtime. Books just came in the mail, and perhaps a Johnny Flynn vinyl... Huzzah!
At times I wonder if I cannot read. I am slow at it, and the words dissolve quite gradually, mixing in with any thoughts that might occupy my mind at a time. In this way, I try to encounter the author on his own terms, but I'm positive that many of my own thoughts impose upon the text. It's perplexing when a mind finds itself thinking in so many directions at once. The body slows down because it knows full well that so much of its energy is focused on internal matters.
In some instances, this is helpful.
In others, it is problematic, lacking a certain discipline.
Even still, I find that I find that I rejoice in the thoughts that connect. I'm all about making a connection.
C. S. Lewis is capturing my imagination once again literarily, philosophically, and even theologically. With The Great Divorce and The Abolition of Man behind me, I am making way through Screwtape Letters. Upon their completion, it is further up and further in with Problem of Pain, Surprised by Joy (which I have not read), and Out of the Silent Planet. Such works will always hold a special place in my heart, and as I hope to pursue a very interdisciplinary way of life and of teaching, I hope in many respects to imitate such a mind.
The weight of glorious matters hangs heavy on my heart, yes, in part because I am rediscovering a childhood literary hero, but also in light of Advent, and the season that implants the glorious incarnation in the minds of so many (Yes, such a matter should constantly drive those who are a part of the 'New Humanity'; however, the nature of the season as symbol is not to be diminished).
A man of no mean age sits in his wheelchair, in the well-to-do retirement home, listening to children demonstrate various proficiencies at the piano, as they play, in the spirit of the holiday, many a well-known jingle. He hardly speaks, for he barely can. He mumbles, as if to himself, something of passing significance in between songs, yet it does not seem that he is fully aware. It may be that his attention is devoted to the music. He fixes his eyes into space and seems, from my perspective, lost in thought, or simply lost. He hums along in dissonant groans to familiar tunes, but any words are incoherent. Others applaud the children, and to this also he is oblivious.
A young lad, no more than nine, marches dutifully to the piano, and nervously performs a rather broken semblance of the song, "Hark the Harold Angels Sing." The song reaches a welcomed climax to a nearly indistinguishable tune, yet the last melodic chords are seamless. At this, the elderly gentleman, disregarding propriety, clearly intones in full voice, "Hark the Harold Angels sing, Glory to the new-born King!"
I cannot help it: my eyes are averted to the man's countenance. He smiles boyishly, gives a single clap of his hands, and fiddles with his fingers, as if all joy collects before him instantly as dust, so that he might capture and savor it. I saw then a young lad, many years earlier, in the living-room of his household, sitting at the piano in his father's lap while these fingers, enraptured with the joy of learning their first carol, play tentatively, dwarfed by the hands of his teacher. The thought was simple, and not elaborate. How could I know if they were true memories, they certainly were not mine. There may have been a tear in the man's eye, my eyes could not see clearly.
I am not entirely sure what prompted this sudden outburst from the elderly man who did not otherwise speak. I do not particularly care to know for sure, but I venture a guess: Advent draws hearts to hear a wondrous news. The reality of Advent is that, whether consciously or unconsciously, men and women of all ages sing of it every year in these parts. Granted that Victorian, romanticized imagery imbues every song for those who do not grasp their weight. That is why the weight must remain.
It is not merely about keeping Christ in Christmas (As if winter solstice was sacred among all other days). Christ cannot be removed from any realm of this present day, for he reigns, firmly established, and "of the increase of his government and of peace their will be no end." All who are in Christ are established thus, and the principalities and powers shall not prevail. It is ultimately about the reality of all things wrong being made right because of incarnation (ultimately through resurrection). If we lived constantly in light of this, the truest of realities, putting off such frivolous, polar extremes as idolatry and iconoclasm would not so rend the Body.
For we believe that we have died, been buried, and are raised with him who formed the New Humanity. So, we enter into this identity at our baptism, in symbol, but also in truth, as this baptism is nurtured in our lives. We believe also that flesh and blood, having been broken and spilled, were given for the redemption of man, the conformity of many sons to glory. So also, we partake of these, through the elements, in spirit and in truth: in remembrance, yes, but also in reality pertaining to substance.
We live a reality as Christians. It is a mythical reality, filled with types, symbols, forms, and narrative, but history and myth coincide in unison, preparing the way of the Great King, who shall return, in flesh and blood, to rule the 'High Countries' of new creation. Legend will no longer give way to intellectual criticism, but intellect, will, body, soul, and passion shall be transformed fully into the likeness of Christ. Advent must look to all of these things, in symbol and in reality alike.
"All shall be well,
and all shall be well,
and all manner of things shall be well."
~Julian of Norwich
Merry Christmas
