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Giltman

"painful, beautiful, aching madness..."

I have noticed a new trend in prayer requests. A hand goes up and information on yet another earthquake is dispensed with the tone of satisfaction that comes from being the first to proclaim ill news. I don’t know that I have ever had the privilege of knowing a more disaster-conscious group of individuals. I suppose that it stems from a quiet fear, a disquieting of soul and that nagging question that preys on us like a hound—is the end near?

I think first of all that we have a deficiency in the qualification of the terms. “Is the beginning near?” would be more accurate. We are not the reality, but the reality’s manifestation. Much the same as the Tabernacle was not a picture of a worship to come, but a system that always was and had as yet not been revealed. It is the picture Milton gave of God looking at Adam and Eve across the chasm of space and asking, “Who will redeem them?

I try to take each of these questions, these unspoken questions masked in a news bulletin with a sense of calm and lightly remark on the relative normalcy of quakes and their little known frequency. I don’t do this to give a false sense of comfort, or of time stretching infinitely towards that invisible line of the horizon; nor is it a pretense of bravado on my part. I personally feel that the end or beginning is near. I know I join centuries of Christians who say this and yet, Creation seems so restless, so full of violent wonder and trembling anticipation. Perhaps it IS a sense of false or pretentious bravado. I must confess, I do fear it, I fear it the way anyone fears the Unknown.

It is like standing at the entrance to a darkened doorway. There is a tension to that darkness that you cannot shake which is further exacerbated by a friend waiting in the shadows. You know the friend is there; you do not fear them, they are, after all, your friend. What you fear is that brief moment in Time when they leap from the shadows with a shout and all the collective tension collides in one instant of terror and then…quiet—the tension is instantly resolved. It is in every story, as in life, that the tension, much like the shape in a drop of water, keeps us in check in a sort of painful, beautiful, aching madness—longing for and fearing that last and final resolution to life’s shadows.

I am afraid I may fit into both categories of those waiting for Christ’s coming: I will be awake when he comes but fall sleep from cardiac arrest at the trumpet blast and therefore rise first after all.

idea-hating squirrels...

I know I haven't posted in awhile, but the good news is that I am rapidly breaking free from a naive assumption that is perfectly mirrored in this quote from "Finding Neverland" by Marie Ansell Barrie...or rather the script writer:

"I imagined that brilliant people disappeared to some secret place where good ideas floated around like leaves in autumn..."

If such a mythical Eden of verbiage and syntax exists then I am the poor sap who is repeatedly pelted with acorns by devious, idea-hating squirrels hidden high in the trees.

Until then, here is one more quote by that venerable Bard, a one, Edwin Arlington Robinson. Food for thought on the post-modernist's menu and perhaps I'll write more on it later:

“[the world is] a kind of spiritual kindergarten where bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.”

So long. A post on the end (or the beginning) of the world coming soon.

Emily Dickinson madlibs...

During the Regionalists Unit in English 11, I decided, while studying Emily Dickinson, that it might be fun to play a little madlibs with some of her poems. They are mad, strange and incoherent. Enjoy.

Happy is the thing with feathers-
That perches in the steamboat-
And stretches the tune without the books-
And never stops-at all-

And grotesquest-in the scarecrow-is heard-
And excited must be the storm-
That could abash the bluish-gray bird
That kept so many warm.

I've perambulated (Joel's contribution) in the earthen land-
And on the oldest Sea-
Yet, never, in Extremity
It asked a Human-of Me.


This is absurd and almost obscene...keep in mind, they had no idea where the nouns, adjectives or verbs were going to go.

This is my letter to the Mud
That never wrote to Me-
The bulky News that Universe told-
With tender Majesty.

Her Mexico is committed
To toilet paper I cannot see- (That's just irony)
For love of Her-Portly-countrymen
Spanking-of Me.


And finally...

I NEVER ran a bird
I never ran the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a Liger must be.
I never threw with Obama
Nor jumped in Joel
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the teacher were given.

Unfortunately we didn't get to do the rest I had picked out. I was just getting the terms defined as to what kind of verbs, nouns, adjective, etc. that I was looking for. It could have become more and more creative.

I am the vinyl...

I had posted this a few days ago, but some response I received to it made me think it would be badly misunderstood. If you are looking at this as an autobiographical piece, you are mistaken. That being said, I think it is to a point autobiographical for many of us. We are pressed into the world's mold often times without at first realizing it...that is what makes a proper worldview so important. Again, these are just some thoughts I had, don't look at it as my life's story or my current spiritual state, because it isn't.

I am the vinyl. Pressed in a mold and placed on a turntable that spins at dizzying speeds with endless monotony and frightening regularity. The needle finds the groove; the speaker crackles with a dusty uncertainty and then spews maxims, dogmas and endless tenants and absolutes without warmth or conviction. The nostalgic “warmth” of sound is an art gleaned from hours of sermons and being that ear to conversations, that shadow man that was neither part nor parcel to the discussion…parroting, nothing but parroting. When will Love marry my discourse?

This is the external. Inside it feels as if another mold has crushed me into a peculiar conformity—a strange implosion of worldview, ethics and purpose. It constricts me, slows thought; reasoning disappears and before the dust settles, a new figure haunts my shelf.

I have been encoded with billions of sound bytes, video files and MP3 tracks. As if the whole world were a voice and I the indiscriminate Ear that bends low and strains for the beautiful, the grotesque, the lie, the bawdy, the banal, the cryptic and vacuous statements of the upper echelons of style and culture, and pandered to the esoteric philosophies that gild my image but further confuse my mind. I am the dictator, the oppressed, the democracy and the corruption. I have the Bible as my constitution while cutting its entries and pasting in my own like some hallowed scrapbook of personal freedom. I have lain with the Golden Mistress in secret then cursed the wealthy for walking through sunlight with Her, arm in arm. I am that sad paradox. I am man—clothed in religion.

haiti and my dad...

My mother pointed something out to me at dinner the other night. My mother sometimes does this and I have to thank her for it really. She will compliment me on my blog and what I have written and then comes “the clause.” The motherly critique, and in this case, as in most, she was dead on.

“You forgot to thank your Dad.”

So I did. I would like to say there are reasons, but when one makes such a glaring omission, none of them really seem to stand up to any scrutiny. A day or two before Dad got there, I was trying to run the show on my own, with Mike as my runner. No help. I thought, the MAF guys are too busy and I can’t ask them. They quickly realized that it was not working for me to do it alone and jumped in and helped me out on top of all of their own work.

So, when Dad came, that part of the rodeo had already calmed down and he simply slipped right into a place one of the MAF guys had been filling. It was seamless. I didn’t have to worry about him being there, or even think too much about it. Dad was crowd control. He took the bookings or reservations which was one of the more difficult parts of the job and one I didn’t particularly like…dealing with people; desperate people.

I can’t say that by forgetting to thank Dad in my wrap-up post that I was paying him a compliment. There is something to be said for someone who does a job well enough that they aren’t noticed because they don’t require constant praise, but there is also something to ‘giving honor to whom honor is due.’

I don’t think Dad needs me to thank him. Like myself, the greatest sense of accomplishment and satisfaction from that job were the handshakes and smiles you got from grateful people. I don’t know too many people who are privileged to do mission work side by side with their Dad and enjoy doing it.

So, thanks Dad for raising me to honor God and to love the work that I grew up watching you do. Thanks for never making missions or deprivation of ‘the finer things in life’ to be a drudgery. Thanks most of all for living a godly example before me. It was a privilege to work with you. Thank you.

greyskypanerathoughts...

It is one of those perfect days. Low, grey clouds and the rain that falls soft on the earth. The whole earth is still. Only the wind dares stir the trees, grass and leave ripples on the face of the water. I was late to class today; an accidental miss-call from a friend my violent alarm. Awakening shot like consciousness from the barrel of a gun as I stared at the dancing numbers on my stereo clock.

There went my first class.

Not perhaps the perfect way to start a new week, but my host teacher didn’t seem to notice and really, with a day as beautiful as today, I think everyone is at ease. I called my boss to see if he needed me at work…he didn’t and so it was plan A. Panera.

Jack and I found ourselves with a bowl of fantastic soup, the best fontega chicken panini’s I’ve ever had and good conversation. Add to that a cup of hot tea and rain drops on the floor to ceiling windows and you have the recipe for problem solving and the birthplace of thought…or the recipe for no thought at all. Either way, the tea goes down smooth and the talk rises and falls like the breeze through the door as it opens and closes behind each patron.

I watched the keynote from Apple for this year, the launch of the new IPad. Another in a line of gadgets no one needs, but everyone wants. It is an amazing piece of machinery and technology and I found running scenarios in my head to justify the purchase of one later this year. Nothing concrete yet, but I’ll keep you posted. Haiti helps me trump any large superfluous buy on the future horizons. Somehow scrolling the New York Times with my fingers or reading an IBook or painting a digital picture with my fingertips seems emptier than the stomachs of the street children staring at the cold lenses of newsmen.

A few times today I have felt the sinister shadow of self-pity slipping in behind me. I went with very little luggage and came back the same. I did manage to pack in a sinus and ear infection with the dusty, sweaty clothes I crammed into a worn, green, US military issue, duffel bag as I boarded the plane and turned my back to one of the worst disasters in history.

Self-Pity.

Can you imagine that? I who have all the antibiotics and at-your-fingertips medical aid and am sitting in a fully adjustable, heavily padded, office chair in a temperature controlled environment and a fresh cup of coffee a few inches from my right hand. Self-pity?

I grew up in third world countries. I’ve seen poverty, malnutrition, and the empty look of a soul bound in animism and fear. I’ve lived off the warm coast of Ghana on the western side of Africa and I’ve grown playing in the dry, cool, sandstone highlands of Lesotho in the Southern tip of Africa. I’ve known the heat, red dirt and stench of Nigeria’s Lagos suburbs. I’ve walked the winding, claustrophobic passages of Zambian and Namibian marketplaces with the smell of fish emanating down every corridor from the center square. I have seen a few things in my short life and yet I have never looked at food and other blessings quite the same as now. I think I have so much it has become a disease.

It’s like I’m standing in a doorway to a room in some great mansion. I’m looking around the room, but I can’t really see what I’m looking for and I can’t tell why. I see an old chair in the corner, but my eyes are stinging and my eyelids flutter from some invisible auto response. The far end has a window closed by curtains and I walk there and as soon as the curtains come back, a beam of bright light blasts through the gloom like a comet and in its tail dances millions of dusty particles. Haiti was that comet for me. I now see the trappings that blurred my vision, closed my eyelids and kept me from being thankful and for realizing God’s amazing gifts in my life.

There will be two things in the aftermath of this tragedy that will be difficult to balance and to keep in check. The first is to be thankful for all that we have. The second, is not to feel guilty for all that we have. That doesn’t mean unnecessary indulgence, but if God has blessed you, don’t slap His hand away, but thank Him and use that blessing to be a blessing for others. An ear infection doesn’t seem all that bad now does it?