I cannot take credit for actually having read the following, it was passed along to me by a friend and written by Dostoevsky in the Brothers Karamazov.  I know, I should read it.  Someday.  

"You ask when the kingdom of heaven will come to earth.  It will come, but first the period of human isolation must conclude."

"What isolation?" I ask him. 

"That which is now reigning everywhere, especially in our age, but it is not all concluded yet, it's term has come.  For everyone now strives most of all to separate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life but full of suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation.  For all men in our age are separated into units, each seeks seclusion in his own hole, each withdraws from the others, hides himself, and hides what he has, and ends by pushing himself away from people and pushing people away from himself.  He accumulates wealth in solitude, thinking: how strong, how secure I am now, and does not see, madman as he is, that the more he accumulates, the more he sinks into suicidal impotence.  For he is accustomed to relying only on himself, he has separated his unit from the whole, he has accustomed his soul to not believing in people's help, in people or in mankind, and now only trembles lest his money and his acquired privileges perish.  Everywhere now the human mind has begun laughably not to understand that a man's true security lies not in his own solitary effort, but in the general wholeness of humanity." 

Silent Night

it is so quiet at camp that i have nearly forgotten summer's chaos.  

when a full moon rises on silent davis lake, and the cold air is still still still, 

who remembers sound?  

but the peace would not be poignant if not for its opposition to mayhem.  that is, i like the peace because it reminds me of what is absent: warm, live noise.  

i am not entirely sure i believe that, even i if i did write it.  who am i kidding?  i get to stay in room 108 under clean sheets, with a clean mind, and not one staff member, camper, or stray guest will bother me.  i will make middle-aged women their lattes and will fix myself a tidy little snack in the dark kitchen when the cooks have hung up their aprons, and will tuck in at a reasonable hour and be my own counselor.  no sheep for this shepherd to tend tonight.  there is not one person who wants one thing of me beside the occasional roll of toilet paper.  

and i would be the worst kind of liar if i told you i did not miss crawling in to bed with cut feet and a bruised heart, barely ready to wake up the next morning to tend to the ministry of the day.  

what a sick joke.  

 

Call Me

And now this very One is calling you and me also: where are you? Do you hear me? Yes, you can hear me perfectly well!  There are many other people and things that you cannot hear and even need not hear.  But you must hear me.  And in fact you do hear me.  You simply would not be human and I would not be God if you could not hear me. 

But what does he say to us if he calls us?  By and large, only this one thing: Call me!  That is the gracious permission that I give you.  But it is also the strict command which comes to you from me: For this I make you; for this you are free.  You may, you shall do this--but only in the proper way:

 Call me in the day of trouble. 

-Karl Barth, "Call Me", Deliverance to the Captives

Adulthood

You could cry or die 

or just make pies all day

I'm making pies

-Patty Griffin

Adulthood either looms like a fearful, black wave about to break on shore, or seems to be the dark water I already tread.  With leaky water wings.  Without a snorkel. 

Today, it waits in the distance and is indeed bleak, a storm of human disappointment. 

And what is the proper response to the reality of failure? And what is reality anyway?  Is it most realistic to expect that in the end everything will disappoint?  The word disillusionment is often attached to the experience of let down; what is the illusion-- trust in goodness? 

What I want to know, I suppose, is whether adulthood is a synonym for disillusionment, and disillusion a synonym for realism, and realism the only honest way to live.  

But for one who is called to be rooted in the Resurrection, is it permissible to consider hope an illusion, and failure ultimate?  Or, does the Resurrection point its broken believers to a deeper reality that in death there is, nonetheless, life? 

Is hope a choice? 

That is a lot of question marks for a short burst of writing.