καιρός

There are moments between words, places we can only just barely describe. They dance with us on hot summer nights, but never tell us their names, leaving us forever thirsty.

These times between time are always accompanied by light and awe. I can tell you the brightness of the experience and I can describe the feelings which bubble up in me, snaking up from within like sprouts from a tulip bulb. But these descriptions are charcoal sketches of bright oily paintings which would inspire Van Gogh.

The doorway frames her, and light is shooting from her hips, her hands, her hair. She is a flame, frost white, so brilliant I must fight back tears in order to keep my eyes on her. She is smiling and somehow even her lips have light blooming from them. In this rare moment, a space which is before our marriage and beyond our engagement, I find myself in simple joy of her and all she is. My love is the shape of a starfish, a willow, a crinkled note.

I am holding a piece of romaine lettuce, patting is veins dry as I have done with one hundred and three pieces before it. I am praying the Jesus prayer and I do not remember how I began. Perhaps I have always been praying it, somewhere down and beneath my rib cage. It does not matter that I do not believe in God, does not matter that I do not wish to pray. There is only the wet lettuce and a cycle of orange and glowing words which pulse like coals on my lips.

The sound of worship music is hot lead in my stomach, a drill which winds its way into the bedrock of my body. There is only fire, an anger and sorrow which sears back the callouses of reason and facts and evidence, leaving ashy bitterness and scorched love to smolder and cool. I was not made new by good news, did not feel rebirth after my death, only the algid grip of Sheol. No third-day resurrection, and no life-giving breath.

I wake in bed next to her. I am in warm and vast darkness. I have been holding her hand as we slept. I do not know the meaning of this, but I am grateful for the love which does not wait for morning light. I smile, squeeze her hand, and fall back asleep.

All She's Got

The moon has arisen on the desert beyond the Judea and it is waxing existential. The religion of death and resurrection is buried now on the roadside, back there aways, because I never met Him on my journey to Damascus. I left my faith when its immutable threads became too moth-eaten to shroud that horrible truth: this life is all we've got.

I will never live long enough to learn everything I wish to. Were it that I could spend eternity lounging in my armchair, feasting upon words like a bushel of Fuji apples. I would fill my belly with botanical brunches, devour mathematical massala, munch Humean ham sandwiches and Socratic scones. But instead of reveling in an everlasting bacchanalian of books, I scarf wisdom like a starving man, hardly bothering to chew, much less taste, pressing centuries of patient wisdom into gaping maw, choking down calcified aphorisms and slippery syllogisms, squeezing enlightenment past incisors, canines, and molars. May I die bloated and hungry because this life is all I've got.

I will die starving. Despite the monotonous beeping of the machines, despite the insistence of family and nurses, despite my own grating desire to pass in a field of wild wheat, I will die wishing I discovered more willingly the beauty of moss and mosquitoes.

What was it like when Luna first became our world's lover? How far should we trace their story? Was it when Terra and Luna first began to court, two great masses in the emptiness of space, swinging round and round the tiny dance floor of our solar system? Was it when she was belched out of Terra's skin, an 'ishshah to that 'adam, made from the very dust of our home? Was it when she was the mere twinkle in the great eye of some long dead star, a product of nuclear fusion in some distant end of our galaxy? If only I could ask her! String a tin can from here to there and whisper secret adorations for her pockmarked face and too pale skin and perhaps she might confess that despite her 4.527 billion years, (give or take .010 billion years), she still loves to dance, but she too worries what will happen when she's gone.

Reminder to myself

At some point in the near future, I will need to start exploring my doubts and concerns regarding Christianity. They've been bubbling up rather strongly ever since I began this Eschatology course and I have been mostly trying to brush them aside because I really have no practical time in which to address them. This has led to an increasing feeling of uncertainty and listlessness which has continued to keep up into the long hours of the night. I have yet to put my finger on the major problems, but to be quite honest, I'm having a great deal of trouble buying into this whole Christianity thing right now. It's not for lack of trying, but I just can't get the energy up to take it as seriously as I have in the past. I'm not sure what all that means or where I ought to go with that, but I will have to go somewhere soon.

Jonah and the Shades of Nineveh

There is an old story about Jonah and the Ninevehites that we hardly ever hear.

Jonah came from Gath-Hepher, a little town just north of Nazareth. In Gath-Hepher, sunflowers grew so thickly and so abundantly,that the whole land was painted a bright yellow, so much so that the faces, hands, and clothes of the people shown like the very sun itself. When the Lord called Jonah to preach to the Ninevehites, Jonah ran away from the Lord, straight out to the sea. See Jonah knew something that we don't. In the land of Nineveh, lavender grew so thickly and abundantly, that the whole land was painted a dark blue, so much so that the faces, hands, and clothes of the Ninevehites shown like sapphires. Jonah knew that if he went to Nineveh, his brilliant yellow robes would be so coated with lavender that he would turn from his sunshine yellow to a sort of putrid green.

So Jonah went kicking and screaming to Nineveh and his face, hands, and clothes became sickly, and Jonah huffed and puffed and pouted when the Lord would not even destroy the Ninevhites for all Jonah's efforts.

I think sometimes that I am a bit like Jonah, frustrated and childish in my cares for my own greenness. I have traveled from the yellow lands of irreligion to the strange blue lands of faith and I am now no longer home in either. I don't fit in with either place and this seems a problem worth huffing, puffing, and pouting over. But the Lord is not concerned for our silly games of colors or beliefs. He doesn't much seem to mind my irreverent concern for my faith's shade, the flora that the defines my home, or the blossoms of the land that I am called to. He is especially unconcerned with how each people will perceive me and my strange new colors. I am beginning to see the abundant silliness of my self-consciousness over my skin's new hue. Am I really so concerned about my wardrobe when I have been so clearly called by the Lord?

In the years to come, Jonah found, much to his chagrin, that instead of becoming a bluer, and bluer green, his clothes, hands, and face became more deeply and richly green. I hope only that I may meet my increasing greenness with more pleasure and delight than Jonah managed.

By all means, rid yourself of an impoverished faith

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I ought to be writing my honors project, digging in to the dense theology of the Fathers, busting down silly arguments about priests as Icons of Christ. I really ought to be writing and analyzing and reading, reading, reading.

But I have trouble reaching into those beautiful images of Orthodoxy, have trouble grappling with Thomas Hopko and John Zizioulas when my faith is falling apart.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I am taking a class on Eschatology right now that is shaking and crumbling the foundations of my Christianity. The problem is basically this: I cannot hold beliefs that I do not recognize as true and Christian eschatology requires me to believe that all will be made well in the world. I'm not sure this is true. I'm not at all sure that we Christians are not deluding ourselves into thinking that justice will come and good will triumph over evil. If anything, the history of the world has indicated time and time again that evil persists despite all attempts to eradicate it.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I am concerned that Christianity is merely a structure that we map our needs onto, that all religions are like this. My concern is that religions function well for us but do not represent truth. Take Jurgen Moltmann for example. It's easy when you are a German who lived through World War II and all its atrocities to believe that hope and liberation are the essential elements of the world to come. This is precisely what you want to believe will occur. This theology of hope may represent the wishful thinking for how Moltmann would hope the world to be.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

We have this image of Christianity as something the Apostles passed down, that there is a line tracing back to the earliest Christians to today, no matter how twisted and bent that line may be. But this is not true, it's not true that there was one Christianity at any time. The Church has constantly fought against other churches within the midst. They have called these others heretics, but how do we know that they are? We have no reference to give that does not already presuppose our rightness in our biblical interpretation.

It matters to me what is true, whether I have good reason to believe it is a fact. This is not modernistic. I'm not searching for the monolithic answer, the one way of being. I'm just searching for something I can trust in.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I have never encountered God. I did not have a conversion experience. I have not met Jesus. I have not seen lives changed that would not be changed by interacting with the practices of other moral systems of living, including my own.

So my faith is aching, groaning for answers. I'm trapped between historical and sociological problems and a Christianity that begs me to have hope that seems magical and wishful. I'm still praying, still pursuing a life of unceasing prayer, but I do not know how to persist in this faith, do not know what more to do than say my prayers and wrestle with these problems.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy on me, a sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God...

The Sea and the Sadness of Things

I woke this morning to crashing waves and gulls cawing overhead. My first thoughts were "Where are you? Will you join me by the sea?"

There are times, dear love, that I wish I could reach down through your pores, past muscles tight from strain, between aching joints and heavy bones. I wish that my fingers could peel back layer upon layer of you until I set hands upon the snarled corners of your spirit. These edges of you have been clutched by other forces, then twisted, like little Indian burns. I wish that I could squeeze into these knots and ease them apart, set right the furrows of your brow, and relax the muscles near your eyes.

Not everything in this life is beautiful. Always knocking at our door is the mono no aware, the sadness of things, the slow and bitter death of cherry blossoms and ourselves. Yet, I would not ask for less than this, would not ask the leaves to stop falling, or our own ailments to stop crashing into us like so many waves.

My love, the sea is calling. Come let the waves tickle your toes and ease your troubled bones.

What a piece of work is man?

I can't explain to you what it's like to live with chronic pain. I can barely gesture at it's effects. The pain itself is immense, but it is the wrenching of my life's normal path that I find truly devastating. These past two days I have been blessed with an odd reprieve in certain measures of my emotional clarity about this headache, but it has not come without a price. I am joyful to feel the sun shine on my soul's face, but this illumination has also shown me how much I am wasting away in places where I was once so full. Numbness can hold off feelings of bitterness, frustration, and alienation, as much as it can bar joy, passion, and humor.

I am being torn to bits by this headache, scourged and starved by a war within my skull. This may sound titillating, dramatic, or otherwise attention seeking, but I assure you this is not my intention. I need only point to a frightening discovery these past days: I have ceased to be able to sing. No, no, my voice itself is working fine, but it has so seldom been used to sing that I have lost control over it's workings, lost all sense of texture and tone. I do not sing because my spirit is wracked, and thus I have lost touch with it.

Could not the same thing be said for so many things in my life that once were common, even near constant practices? Eye contact, confidence, and a sense of my own self-worth are partners gone these long months. I cannot concentrate on reading, and writing, and my mouth struggles over familiar words. My hearing and eye sight have weakened, even teeth brushing hurts from medication side-effects.

I'm losing this campaign and I'm weakened by these years of war. The clouds will surely return and so these terrible and triumphant feelings will go with with them. I merely hope that my desire to see the sun does not pass on too. I wish to sing again.

The quick and dead.

Here's the skinny of it.

My headache has reached a peak so terrible that even the great Ranier is caught in its shadow. It is slowly converting my soul to a sort of Golgotha, an execution ground for everything I hold dear. If I seem hopeless, it's because I feel it.

Here's the narrow of it.

I cannot persist in this. Something has to give and I dearly hope it is not me. I praise the Lord that I studied enough philosophy to know that whenever a problem seems unanswerable, that you must merely change the standard you are using to answer it. While imagination amidst migraine pain is a challenge, it is not an impassable problem.

It's time again to set my self, by hypostasis and ousia against this enemy. It cannot win against me. I will not let it.

I will not die.

Vintage 2009

I think perhaps the great David Hume must've had headaches too, for temples held in vice-like grips make good bedfellows for doubt and skepticism.

When massive crab claws (most certainly unearthed some Lovecraftian abyss by the force they can exert) squeeze my head most tightly, the pressure can like grapes crushed beneath heels and toes produce an acidic but addicting drink.

God and Christ and unbelief are smooshed beside my boiled brains and hazy eyes, spurted out and pulped (skin and all) and left to ferment in a cask for 2 years (give or take a month or so). This process will produce unerringly a potion best not quaffed by the faint of faith.

They say that David Hume was a connoisseur of these variegated vintages and the hangovers needed to produce them. It would seem that I've inherited the palette, and accompanying production line.

Heels up and bottoms up, good friends. Here's to the vintage of 2009.