How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints!---I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!---and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"...feeling out of sight for the ends of Being and ideal Grace."
Who has not felt this pull to the "ends of Being"-a desire to stretch out to the corners of the sky and dissolve into the pure receptive fecundity of the ether? And yet we want to keep a part of our own particular loves-our soul feels it a scandal to relinquish its little objects of affection. We know they must one day go if we are to incarnate "ideal Grace", but we don't want to let them go yet. We decide, then, to seek the kernel of heaven in our gripping, fevered loves. We decide to love "with the passion put to use in [our] old griefs." How can we not then hope to love "better after death", having knowingly added our grief induced passions to the mix? I'm not giving the Orthodox stamp of approval to these sentiments, just pointing out that they seem an accurate representation of the soul's movements from a romantic to a spiritual love.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Saturday, September 8, 2007
?!
I cherish my soul,
Though it be but an aching, liquid longing,
That will not dry
Until the Sun,
And not its image,
Has finally ascended.
Though it be but an aching, liquid longing,
That will not dry
Until the Sun,
And not its image,
Has finally ascended.
Friday, September 7, 2007
From This Very Moment!
What a sea that night! The islands were black shadow humps swallowing the moonlight. The wind didn’t touch us there, when we passed by them. We knew we were passing by when a dead calm settled on the deck. We knew we had passed when the wind started up again. But, back to the sea: what a tossing marble of black, hiding all, revealing only what was reflected on the surface! The moonlight could not penetrate it. My eyes could not penetrate it, but I was lost in staring all the same, looking down, down at the water but only seeing our little steamer lit up with foggy, dirty lamplight. Perhaps I saw a flash of a whale belly, but no, it was only the moonlight and my poor vision.
Staring, staring, and then the voice from below, a little bit of warm golden light, light that you could hear, light that could talk. That voice had called me down below for two nights and was calling me again. No more murky staring, not anymore this night anyway. I left my post and snuck below deck, following the voice to the corner of the bunk room. There he is, behind the hammocks with the off-duty men ranged all around. A little golden lamp burnt calm and small, safe behind glass. His eyes were twinkles. His fingers were little matchsticks, skinny and red at the tip: if they pointed at you, you burst into flame-maybe you were embarassed, maybe ashamed, but you were warm. And always the voice, golden and lulling like the sun on the blue water of the afternoon. You could bake in that voice if you were not careful. Or you could melt like ice if you were just careful enough to listen and not speak, to be loved and not love back-he would melt you if you would freeze in your place at his gentle rebuke.
So, leaning back on the hammock, I froze, looking at the dark shadow cast on the ceiling by my bulky body. I answered his questions in my heart, or let the other men speak for me. It was not my wish to be seen, but he saw into me anyway.
“Gentlemen, what do you love above all, and what will each of you need to be happy?”
“I want money. Enough money, just enough.”
“Good. And you?”
“One day I will be captain of my own ship.”
“Maybe you will. What about you, sir?”
“She is beautiful, and she is all I think about. Here is her picture.”
“She is a beauty to be sure. May you love her well. And now that you have all spoken in your own honest way about your various loves, are we not brought to one conclusion: that whatever a man approves of, whatever he himself and nobody else considers the highest, the most worthy object of his attentions-that is what he loves?”
“How could it be otherwise?”, one man said.
“It is always otherwise with us. Listen and answer: Is not he who fashioned us, made all of these beautiful things we want and gave us our desire for these things, he who nurtures us, sustains us, loves us because he is love-is not he, our Jesus Christ, the most worthy object of love for any man?”
“Yes!”
“And would you say, then, that you love Jesus Christ?”
“Yes!”
“ ‘Yes!’, you say. May it be as true as it is heartfelt! I myself have been trying to love God for forty years and I still do not love him completely. You are looking at me now. Good! If we love someone we always remember them and what they want-we try to please them day and night and are always picking a flower and sighing or seeing them around every corner. Is this the way you all love God? Do you turn to him with such ease and hope? Do you pray to him and fulfill his commandments with love’s zeal?”
Not one man among us said he did. Perhaps for fear of being refuted, perhaps because he saw what he was for a moment. I was frozen in my hammock. I would not have moved if you had a gun to me. The air in the room was shot through with dangerous thought and teetering wills. What would each of us be in this moment that none of us really wants? Where would we choose to walk when the steamer hit land and we went back to our wandering lives? There is no thought in a moment like this-it is too dangerous-like every thought is a step on a path and every path leads either up or down.
“Then let us look to our own good in this moment! At least promise yourselves that from this very moment we will try to love God more than anything and to fulfill His Holy Will!”
Staring, staring, and then the voice from below, a little bit of warm golden light, light that you could hear, light that could talk. That voice had called me down below for two nights and was calling me again. No more murky staring, not anymore this night anyway. I left my post and snuck below deck, following the voice to the corner of the bunk room. There he is, behind the hammocks with the off-duty men ranged all around. A little golden lamp burnt calm and small, safe behind glass. His eyes were twinkles. His fingers were little matchsticks, skinny and red at the tip: if they pointed at you, you burst into flame-maybe you were embarassed, maybe ashamed, but you were warm. And always the voice, golden and lulling like the sun on the blue water of the afternoon. You could bake in that voice if you were not careful. Or you could melt like ice if you were just careful enough to listen and not speak, to be loved and not love back-he would melt you if you would freeze in your place at his gentle rebuke.
So, leaning back on the hammock, I froze, looking at the dark shadow cast on the ceiling by my bulky body. I answered his questions in my heart, or let the other men speak for me. It was not my wish to be seen, but he saw into me anyway.
“Gentlemen, what do you love above all, and what will each of you need to be happy?”
“I want money. Enough money, just enough.”
“Good. And you?”
“One day I will be captain of my own ship.”
“Maybe you will. What about you, sir?”
“She is beautiful, and she is all I think about. Here is her picture.”
“She is a beauty to be sure. May you love her well. And now that you have all spoken in your own honest way about your various loves, are we not brought to one conclusion: that whatever a man approves of, whatever he himself and nobody else considers the highest, the most worthy object of his attentions-that is what he loves?”
“How could it be otherwise?”, one man said.
“It is always otherwise with us. Listen and answer: Is not he who fashioned us, made all of these beautiful things we want and gave us our desire for these things, he who nurtures us, sustains us, loves us because he is love-is not he, our Jesus Christ, the most worthy object of love for any man?”
“Yes!”
“And would you say, then, that you love Jesus Christ?”
“Yes!”
“ ‘Yes!’, you say. May it be as true as it is heartfelt! I myself have been trying to love God for forty years and I still do not love him completely. You are looking at me now. Good! If we love someone we always remember them and what they want-we try to please them day and night and are always picking a flower and sighing or seeing them around every corner. Is this the way you all love God? Do you turn to him with such ease and hope? Do you pray to him and fulfill his commandments with love’s zeal?”
Not one man among us said he did. Perhaps for fear of being refuted, perhaps because he saw what he was for a moment. I was frozen in my hammock. I would not have moved if you had a gun to me. The air in the room was shot through with dangerous thought and teetering wills. What would each of us be in this moment that none of us really wants? Where would we choose to walk when the steamer hit land and we went back to our wandering lives? There is no thought in a moment like this-it is too dangerous-like every thought is a step on a path and every path leads either up or down.
“Then let us look to our own good in this moment! At least promise yourselves that from this very moment we will try to love God more than anything and to fulfill His Holy Will!”
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Truth!
I want to see the Truth naked, without the qualifications, questions, doctrinal reservations.
I want to see naked Truth and I want you to see it too.
I want to taste joy without a mediating mind of "nos" and "yesses". And God forbid a "maybe".
Should I be ashamed? Who cares!? Ask the Truth about shame.
Why are we not all in love with each other?
I want to see naked Truth and I want you to see it too.
I want to taste joy without a mediating mind of "nos" and "yesses". And God forbid a "maybe".
Should I be ashamed? Who cares!? Ask the Truth about shame.
Why are we not all in love with each other?
The Bachelor Life!
John threw a huge piece of cornbread at me this morning from ten feet away. I was drinking a Diet Coke at the time. The bread hit the can hard enough to dent it and send coke flying all over my shirt and the floor. It was a really good throw. We were both pretty impressed. Just now he threw a bouncy ball at me. It hit me directly in the face. I have to learn to watch out for flying objects. That, or I need to start fighting back.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Joy!
Something I just noticed about joy: it wants to share itself with other people. Maybe that's why everyone gets married-so that even when things look really bad, you can still share the burden with whoever knows you best and in doing so remember the joy at the heart of creation. Sounds like a Hallmark card, but ain't it the truth!
Too Many Chicken Nuggets!
Ugh. I just ate two McDonald's cheeseburgers, a large fry and five chicken McNuggets. What the hell is a McNugget? Oh shoot, it's a fasting day! Oh well, what else is new? The commercials that McDonalds put on when I was a kid were much better than the ones they do nowadays. "I'm lovin' it!" - that's so bland. The last one wasn't much better-"We love to see you smile!" You liars, you don't care one bit whether I'm smiling or reeling from a grease overdose.
I don't remember what the slogan was when I was a kid, but I do remember little dancing talking McNuggets. They were perfect in their freakish way: McNuggets are so different looking from anything that is normally considered edible that you expect them to start singing to you. At least back then McDonalds was having a little fun with their image. Nowadays, on the cups and bags they invite you to their website to learn about their ever changing menagerie of "global casting stars". They also have a little profile of a "global casting star" on each bag. The profiles are the most condescending little pieces of drivel: one person is some extreme sports nut, another person is a deaf sign language teacher, another one is a housecleaning fool and on and on. I think the idea is to emphasize "diversity" or something, but all it ends up doing is making everyone look equally disposable: like their personality can be jotted down in a few lines on a greasy bag. But what do you expect from a place like McDonalds: A place that devotes itself to churning out an endless string of uniform food products?
So, why do I go there? Because I'm addicted to it! Help!
I don't remember what the slogan was when I was a kid, but I do remember little dancing talking McNuggets. They were perfect in their freakish way: McNuggets are so different looking from anything that is normally considered edible that you expect them to start singing to you. At least back then McDonalds was having a little fun with their image. Nowadays, on the cups and bags they invite you to their website to learn about their ever changing menagerie of "global casting stars". They also have a little profile of a "global casting star" on each bag. The profiles are the most condescending little pieces of drivel: one person is some extreme sports nut, another person is a deaf sign language teacher, another one is a housecleaning fool and on and on. I think the idea is to emphasize "diversity" or something, but all it ends up doing is making everyone look equally disposable: like their personality can be jotted down in a few lines on a greasy bag. But what do you expect from a place like McDonalds: A place that devotes itself to churning out an endless string of uniform food products?
So, why do I go there? Because I'm addicted to it! Help!
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
A Grim Laugh!
The Spirit works in our darkest heart, to make our joy complete.
Though pain rips out from our deepest parts, the punishment is meet.
For no one gets what he doesn't want, though what he wants may burn.
And looking back, no one will think that he recieved less light than he earned.
Though pain rips out from our deepest parts, the punishment is meet.
For no one gets what he doesn't want, though what he wants may burn.
And looking back, no one will think that he recieved less light than he earned.
Monday, September 3, 2007
The Passion of the Christ!
I must confess the scenes of torture, at first very moving, got a little boring for me, except for when they were mediated through the eyes of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. The Virgin truly was co-bearing Christ's sufferings in this movie.
The most affecting part of the movie for me was just before Christ died when he said "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" I have never felt that question to be so apt as when I watched it here. That question before his death brought home to me the whole point of the Christian tradition: to know and love God with our honest rock-bottom heart, the part of us that is beyond physical and emotional suffering, beyond the reasoning mind. If we did not believe with this part of us that Jesus Christ is the way to the Father, then despite all of the suffering and the drama of the story, we would owe it to God to turn elsewhere. When I heard that question in the movie, I felt like I was standing next to the cross with all of humanity asking God the same thing. Not in an angry, rebellious way, and not because my emotions had gotten the best of me but with full sincerity and with the blessing of heaven. It was like all of prayer was in that moment.
Before watching this, I had never realized how radical a charge it was that Christ not only told Mary that the Beloved Disciple was her son, but also told the Beloved Disciple that Mary was his mother. It seems if Christ's only concern had been to see that Mary was cared for, the first statement would have been enough. It would have been like saying(I am writing my own script here): "Mother, I can't take this man's parents away, but if you want protection, you may look to him." In the movie John nodded when Christ said "Behold, your son", and you believed that John knew his responsibility. But Christ also told John(once again writing my own script): "She is now your real mother." Christ, it seems, was concerned that John cut his ties to his parents in a more radical way than John had envisioned when he confidently agreed to care for Mary. In other words, John was being asked to throw his own mother out on the street, if caring for her came into conflict with caring for Mary. To be stewards of the church is to take on a quiet, but strict ascesis: to stop nodding so confidently and naturally when Christ asks us to love the church: we must look deeper in ourselves, to the part of us that does not offer God assurances, that does not know in a natural way how to love, but that trusts God to love through us.
The most affecting part of the movie for me was just before Christ died when he said "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" I have never felt that question to be so apt as when I watched it here. That question before his death brought home to me the whole point of the Christian tradition: to know and love God with our honest rock-bottom heart, the part of us that is beyond physical and emotional suffering, beyond the reasoning mind. If we did not believe with this part of us that Jesus Christ is the way to the Father, then despite all of the suffering and the drama of the story, we would owe it to God to turn elsewhere. When I heard that question in the movie, I felt like I was standing next to the cross with all of humanity asking God the same thing. Not in an angry, rebellious way, and not because my emotions had gotten the best of me but with full sincerity and with the blessing of heaven. It was like all of prayer was in that moment.
Before watching this, I had never realized how radical a charge it was that Christ not only told Mary that the Beloved Disciple was her son, but also told the Beloved Disciple that Mary was his mother. It seems if Christ's only concern had been to see that Mary was cared for, the first statement would have been enough. It would have been like saying(I am writing my own script here): "Mother, I can't take this man's parents away, but if you want protection, you may look to him." In the movie John nodded when Christ said "Behold, your son", and you believed that John knew his responsibility. But Christ also told John(once again writing my own script): "She is now your real mother." Christ, it seems, was concerned that John cut his ties to his parents in a more radical way than John had envisioned when he confidently agreed to care for Mary. In other words, John was being asked to throw his own mother out on the street, if caring for her came into conflict with caring for Mary. To be stewards of the church is to take on a quiet, but strict ascesis: to stop nodding so confidently and naturally when Christ asks us to love the church: we must look deeper in ourselves, to the part of us that does not offer God assurances, that does not know in a natural way how to love, but that trusts God to love through us.
The Most Beautiful Woman In the World!
What is this? How could this be? Is she smiling? Oh God, yes. She's smiling. The sun just broke through. Ouch. Ouch! Damn, that hurts! I wish I could die right now. Back into the cave! Anything but this piercing light! Oh, don't stop! Maybe I died. Did I die? Maybe I was just born. I'll have to find my parents and ask them. They won't recognize me anymore will they? I'll be smiling with her smile, breathing her air. Don't look at me! Don't talk to me! I have nothing to say, just let me look. Stop right there, but keep moving! Just go about your business, nothing to see here!
Oh my gosh, she's petting the dog. She loves him. Pet me please! But she's allergic! Oh, her eyes are watering, she's sneezing and laughing. She's flipping her hair back! It's like in the shampoo commercials! She must be using something better than Pantene though! Here she comes! Quick, behind the tree! What should I be doing? I'm tying my shoe, that's it!
I can hear her walking by. She makes the air whisper! Is it safe to look? Hah! Was it ever safe? Look and look again you fool. Here eyes! Is this what you wanted? Take your fill you gluttons! This will be the end of you and the rest of my senses. No need for you anymore where I'm going. I've seen what I came to see!
She's gone. If she's gone, why does everything look like her? Why is every song about her? Walking living death! Am I resurrected? Then where is she? Where could I be? The sky is still blue. Still blue? It's bluer than that. You're done for, you fool! To the bottle!
Oh my gosh, she's petting the dog. She loves him. Pet me please! But she's allergic! Oh, her eyes are watering, she's sneezing and laughing. She's flipping her hair back! It's like in the shampoo commercials! She must be using something better than Pantene though! Here she comes! Quick, behind the tree! What should I be doing? I'm tying my shoe, that's it!
I can hear her walking by. She makes the air whisper! Is it safe to look? Hah! Was it ever safe? Look and look again you fool. Here eyes! Is this what you wanted? Take your fill you gluttons! This will be the end of you and the rest of my senses. No need for you anymore where I'm going. I've seen what I came to see!
She's gone. If she's gone, why does everything look like her? Why is every song about her? Walking living death! Am I resurrected? Then where is she? Where could I be? The sky is still blue. Still blue? It's bluer than that. You're done for, you fool! To the bottle!
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Terry Jacks - Seasons In The Sun
"Skinned our hearts and skinned our knees?" Great name Mr. Terry Jacks, I don't know about your lyrics.
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