I never write this way. I don't know why. I guess I'm afraid to. Maybe because I'm afraid of being told yet again that I need to lighten up. Maybe it’s because I feel guilty about the disparity between what I write on here and the (more) positive, “funny” me the people in my life interact with in person. I don't want to have to explain that both people are me, there's just more than meets the eye. I hate that I often hold back what I’m really thinking. But then sometimes I don’t, I guess. My thoughts are all mine, my at once captive but liberating friends. Anyway, I never write this way. But I think I have no good reason not to. I need to write more, I think.
It’s that moment when you just need to write but don’t know what to say. That is, you have so much to say you don’t know where to start or what to actually articulate or what to just…lascia andare. Then it all becomes incoherent ramble.
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”* Mmm, Hemingway’s been here before. He knew this moment…is that really all you do?
Well then.
It’s that period of time when you see that someone’s face everywhere, in what seems like everyone else. Where your mind is elsewhere, on some other thing, on some other person and your mind desperately wants your current reality to match your internal location—so your eyes play tricks on you. You could swear that you just saw them. But actually, it was just someone else that has a similar height, a similar gait. The snap back to the geographical reality usually comes with a pang of…what is it? Regret? Maybe. More just "tristesse." I think there's no good word for it in English. Or maybe “reality check” just pangs. And then the frustration too: why can’t I get my head out of this situation? Why is my mind so engulfed in this story that I can’t see past it, that I can’t even remember other things or notice when someone is talking to me? Is this normal?
But, so it goes. Isn’t that how Vonnegut puts it? Yeah. “So it goes.”**
It’s that kind of state where all of the sudden you find yourself just staring at a pigeon, wondering what his sentient existence is like. Presumably his existence is without all the complexities of yours, but is it? How can we ever know? Right now the pigeon’s only care in the world is getting the peanut shell out of the cobblestones. What’s that like? Then you realize that someone is watching you watch the pigeon. You get self-conscious, hoping they don’t talk to you…please no small talk. But they want to know where you’re from. They heard your accent when you spoke their language. Yet another reminder of your imperfections. And then you don’t even know where to tell them you’re from...it’s a complicated question. I’ll take my pizza and move on, thank you.
When isn’t it a complicated question? Only when life isn’t complex, I guess. It is therefore probably not a thing.
“This is just crazy!” I threw at my sister, who bent her ear to me yet again.
“Yeah, but from you I expect crazy.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad you didn’t get offended by that.”
“No, it’s true.” Another sigh. “But I won’t live any other way. I keep thinking of Moses. Noah. All the prophets….I won’t live less than crazy if this is what it is supposed to look like for me. I refuse.”
It. What “it” is supposed to look like. Such meaning behind those two letters. In this case “it” means everything I’m supposed to be. And two letters are supposed to carry that meaning. I don’t know if they’re up to the task.
But seriously, I do: I refuse. My thoughts then return to a letter I once wrote to Moses:
“What crossed your mind when you saw that burning bush? Did God ever just make you want to cuss? How often did He frustrate you and blow your mind?...I want to know Him like you did. You knew a God more emotional and intimate than I can even imagine at this point. I keep thinking of a molten bush that wasn’t really burning and a torrent of wind flying by a mountain--and you hidden in a strategic crevice so as not to die...Death by contact with holiness, would that be the most truly painful of all?”
He knew a God more emotional and intimate than I can imagine…and I imagine things. Oh, yes I do.
I want to know Him. I want to understand my Maker.
But then there’s that path to getting there.
I love the prophets. I resonate with them. I resonate with the crazy, with the messages, the stories, with the tears and heartache and spiritual--even relational--isolation. The prophets were always on a different wave-length and always asked to do crazy things. I've definitely told God more than once that I wanted that.
It’s so “funny” how when you ask God for things you just really don’t know what you’re asking for. You feel all spiritual and just in your request but, really, you have no idea what’s waiting for you. No, I really do want it but I think I’ll never stop verbally processing the road this genre of request catapults me onto…so hold on.
When I go back and look at my writing and I’m struck by how often I write about the emotion going on inside of me. Why is that? I value reason, but so often the subject of my writing is about my emotions. Why?
It’s because: internal war. It’s because: dichotomy. The most logical of us maybe are truly those that have learned to strike the perfect, or rather healthy balance of reason and emotion. It's not really objectively logical to live without emotion, so there must need to be some sort of synthesis of the two. That "logical folly," right?
But it's true that I used to be so much more black and white. So much more "sure" of everything and how God worked and what He wanted for my life. And then God, like, happened. Then things got real and I begun to figure out what this crazy, hard, amazing thing is that is an actual relationship with Him that engages every facet of my being. It’s something I can’t just pay lip-service to, it's actually this huge defining thing that I can just no longer ignore. Ever. If I’m to my write the truest thing I know…it’s Him.
But He might be the hardest thing I know, too. Hardest, but truest, and most worth it. I can’t be something I’m not. I can't think differently and I certainly can't and don't want to hold back my thoughts with Him. He gets me, after all He made me the way I am. For some reason. So I now know that I know that I know I can’t live my life ignoring the Voice of this Truest thing I know…I can’t abide it. I’ll keep going.
I hate being misunderstood. Every time it happens it reaches to the very core of me and I find myself, for example, gazing into the life of a street pigeon. I hate being misunderstood. It shakes me more than I care to admit. But that's the faith thing. It doesn't grow without shit like this.
I hope someday this all makes sense, Lord.
But I’ll make it. I always do. Only because the Truest thing I know is so much more than a sentence.
Thank God.
*Ernest Hemingway: A Moveable Feast.
** Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Five.
It’s that moment when you just need to write but don’t know what to say. That is, you have so much to say you don’t know where to start or what to actually articulate or what to just…lascia andare. Then it all becomes incoherent ramble.
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”* Mmm, Hemingway’s been here before. He knew this moment…is that really all you do?
Well then.
It’s that period of time when you see that someone’s face everywhere, in what seems like everyone else. Where your mind is elsewhere, on some other thing, on some other person and your mind desperately wants your current reality to match your internal location—so your eyes play tricks on you. You could swear that you just saw them. But actually, it was just someone else that has a similar height, a similar gait. The snap back to the geographical reality usually comes with a pang of…what is it? Regret? Maybe. More just "tristesse." I think there's no good word for it in English. Or maybe “reality check” just pangs. And then the frustration too: why can’t I get my head out of this situation? Why is my mind so engulfed in this story that I can’t see past it, that I can’t even remember other things or notice when someone is talking to me? Is this normal?
But, so it goes. Isn’t that how Vonnegut puts it? Yeah. “So it goes.”**
It’s that kind of state where all of the sudden you find yourself just staring at a pigeon, wondering what his sentient existence is like. Presumably his existence is without all the complexities of yours, but is it? How can we ever know? Right now the pigeon’s only care in the world is getting the peanut shell out of the cobblestones. What’s that like? Then you realize that someone is watching you watch the pigeon. You get self-conscious, hoping they don’t talk to you…please no small talk. But they want to know where you’re from. They heard your accent when you spoke their language. Yet another reminder of your imperfections. And then you don’t even know where to tell them you’re from...it’s a complicated question. I’ll take my pizza and move on, thank you.
When isn’t it a complicated question? Only when life isn’t complex, I guess. It is therefore probably not a thing.
“This is just crazy!” I threw at my sister, who bent her ear to me yet again.
“Yeah, but from you I expect crazy.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad you didn’t get offended by that.”
“No, it’s true.” Another sigh. “But I won’t live any other way. I keep thinking of Moses. Noah. All the prophets….I won’t live less than crazy if this is what it is supposed to look like for me. I refuse.”
It. What “it” is supposed to look like. Such meaning behind those two letters. In this case “it” means everything I’m supposed to be. And two letters are supposed to carry that meaning. I don’t know if they’re up to the task.
But seriously, I do: I refuse. My thoughts then return to a letter I once wrote to Moses:
“What crossed your mind when you saw that burning bush? Did God ever just make you want to cuss? How often did He frustrate you and blow your mind?...I want to know Him like you did. You knew a God more emotional and intimate than I can even imagine at this point. I keep thinking of a molten bush that wasn’t really burning and a torrent of wind flying by a mountain--and you hidden in a strategic crevice so as not to die...Death by contact with holiness, would that be the most truly painful of all?”
He knew a God more emotional and intimate than I can imagine…and I imagine things. Oh, yes I do.
I want to know Him. I want to understand my Maker.
But then there’s that path to getting there.
I love the prophets. I resonate with them. I resonate with the crazy, with the messages, the stories, with the tears and heartache and spiritual--even relational--isolation. The prophets were always on a different wave-length and always asked to do crazy things. I've definitely told God more than once that I wanted that.
It’s so “funny” how when you ask God for things you just really don’t know what you’re asking for. You feel all spiritual and just in your request but, really, you have no idea what’s waiting for you. No, I really do want it but I think I’ll never stop verbally processing the road this genre of request catapults me onto…so hold on.
When I go back and look at my writing and I’m struck by how often I write about the emotion going on inside of me. Why is that? I value reason, but so often the subject of my writing is about my emotions. Why?
It’s because: internal war. It’s because: dichotomy. The most logical of us maybe are truly those that have learned to strike the perfect, or rather healthy balance of reason and emotion. It's not really objectively logical to live without emotion, so there must need to be some sort of synthesis of the two. That "logical folly," right?
But it's true that I used to be so much more black and white. So much more "sure" of everything and how God worked and what He wanted for my life. And then God, like, happened. Then things got real and I begun to figure out what this crazy, hard, amazing thing is that is an actual relationship with Him that engages every facet of my being. It’s something I can’t just pay lip-service to, it's actually this huge defining thing that I can just no longer ignore. Ever. If I’m to my write the truest thing I know…it’s Him.
But He might be the hardest thing I know, too. Hardest, but truest, and most worth it. I can’t be something I’m not. I can't think differently and I certainly can't and don't want to hold back my thoughts with Him. He gets me, after all He made me the way I am. For some reason. So I now know that I know that I know I can’t live my life ignoring the Voice of this Truest thing I know…I can’t abide it. I’ll keep going.
I hate being misunderstood. Every time it happens it reaches to the very core of me and I find myself, for example, gazing into the life of a street pigeon. I hate being misunderstood. It shakes me more than I care to admit. But that's the faith thing. It doesn't grow without shit like this.
I hope someday this all makes sense, Lord.
But I’ll make it. I always do. Only because the Truest thing I know is so much more than a sentence.
Thank God.
*Ernest Hemingway: A Moveable Feast.
** Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Five.
