Old Stuff

I cracked open my journal from January 2008, the month I traveled to South Africa.  I have not thought about the trip in over a year; I think I was anxious to move on from it.  Today, though, I felt a desire to remember what I was thinking during those bewildering few weeks. The eclectic nature of the following 'snapshots' is a very truthful reflection of my experience of contrast throughout the entire country.  Here goes. 

Babes

 Today I sat with a woman dying of AIDS. Her name was Babes, and her smile was like a crescent moon in an otherwise diminished face. Babes asked me questions even though the process of forming words seemed laborious.  She talked more than I did, because finding language in my brain was like dipping a bucket in a dry well.  

 I perched like a nervous bird on her bed, awkward because of my backpack and because of the dirty sheets, and I am embarrassed to say that the first thing I thought as she reached for my hand was, "What if I have an open cut where the virus could creep in?"  (the answer was yes and no: yes, a small cut on my pointer finger, and no, her hands were eerily clean and elegant.)  

It felt like acting on television.  Was everyone in the room watching the white woman crouch over the dying coloured one?  My colleagues receded into the background. Visitors and nurses watched silent as gravestones.

Her fragility was luminous. Maybe people close to death get a little extra beauty, or maybe beauty ordinarily hidden by the trappings of daily life shines more clearly because it is all that is left?  Either way, Babes is (though now she is probably a "was") beautiful in the truest sense. 

How does beauty accompany death?

Cranky

I don't want to go back to the home stay where I feel awkward and cramped. I don't want to make conversation with our hosts. I want my bed and my blanket and to make my own food and not be around any people. I don't want to eat whatever the hell it is Touma is making.  I am tired of meat I don't recognize.   

I want an apple. 

Today I am sick of South Africa. 

African Hope

 The world is a cold gray ember (I read yesterday in Gilead) that God blows into a flame which flares and burns for a moment, or a day, or a lifetime, and then dies leaving no sign that it was ever related to fire.  But the flame does come, and it takes courage both to witness the transfiguration and to hope for another. 

Perhaps in Africa I need more hope, not less.  

I have been reading in Isaiah and the passages of restoration and redemption are almost painful for all that they seem so unfulfilled.  How does the person selling ostrich feathers and beads for a living interpret the rich promises of safety and blessing?  Was Isaiah a false prophet?  Or, for the more sophisticated, a prophet writing from specific context and history?  Or, did he dream of a future reality still undisclosed?  

Or maybe their lives have a richness that I in my relative wealth and busyness cannot fathom.  

Maybe hope has nothing to do with apparent reality.  

Naughty Monkeys

Andi left her window open and the monkeys got in.  They got the marshmallows and the instant coffee and left sticky, caffeinated fingerprints on her wall.  "Naughty monkeys," said Zama. "Damn rodents," said Andi.  

Two Poems

In comparison to the exploits of many literary giants, Emily Dickinson's life seems small. In her entire lifetime, historians say, she did not stray far from her bedroom window in Amherst, Massachusetts.  I am glad Ms. Dickinson stayed put.  We are indebted to the "soul upon a windowpane" that observed its world --however tiny-- with such microscopic precision. 

I really like these two poems.  

Success Is Counted Sweetest 

Success is counted sweetest 

by those who ne'er succeed. 

To comprehend a nectar

requires sorest need. 

Not one of all the purple Host 

Who took the Flag today

Can tell the definition 

so clear of Victory

As he defeated- dying- 

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph 

Burst agonized and clear!

I Had Been Hungry,

 All the Years

I had been hungry, all the Years- 

My Noon had Come - to dine- 

I trembling drew the Table near-

and touched the Curious Wine-

'Twas this on Tables I had seen- 

When turning, hungry, Home

I looked in Windows, for the Wealth

I could not hope - for Mine- 

I did not know the ample Bread- 

'Twas so unlike the Crumb

The Birds and I, had often shared

In Nature's - Dining Room- 

The Plenty hurt me- 'twas so new- 

Myself felt ill - and odd- 

As Berry- of a Mountain Bush- 

Transplanted - to the Road- 

Nor was I hungry- so I found

That Hunger- was a way

Of Persons outside Windows- 

The Entering - takes away- 

 

Top 5 Reasons Why a Self-Respecting Woman Might Opt to Work At Starbucks Rather than Attend Princeton

1.  People who come to Starbucks do not want anything from the barista except coffee.  They are satisfied with espresso mixed with milk, sometimes topped with caramel.  Some people even go so far as to want extra hot milk, and there are the very few who even want to make small talk.  Those people are rewarded with a smile and a chat about weather.  That is all. 

2.  Besides needing a pretty good memory and common sense, being a barista requires little intellectual stimulation.  This is nice for someone, say, who is tired from 16 straight years of school. 

3.  When one removes The Green Apron, the job is done.  No Green Apron, no more work.  Redundant?  Yes, but it is nice to emphasize the truth of the statement.  Even if the employee happens to be in the store but doesn't have the Green Apron, he or she is totally off limits.  Do customers ask her for advice?  No.  Does the barista need to make follow up calls and coffee dates to make sure the customer is alright? No.  Is there outside required reading? No!  Additional meetings or prep?  No no no.  You get the point.  

4.  Starbucks--in all its corporate glory-- runs like a machine.  No lulls, no lack of things to do.  Hours at work are efficient, busy, and productive (and the productivity is quantifiable: number of drinks poured, pots of coffee brewed, condiments stocked, floors mopped...).   

5.  Finally, it is pretty cushy to get a free pound of beans a week, 'specially if one happens to burn through about that much anyway.  It is a cost-efficient way to be addicted to coffee.  Thank you, Starbucks, for supporting the habit.  

Here's My Heart, O Take and Seal It!

This morning Richard Dahlstrom spoke about the prophet Joel, and the Lord's exhortation in chapter two that His wayward Israel, "Return to Me with all your heart", not with sackcloth and ashes and outer trappings of repentance but with an open heart given in trust to its Lord and King.  At this, Dahlstrom clasped his hands together, fingers intertwined, a picture of intimacy between God and His open-hearted people.  The gesture made my stomach twist with yearning. 

Don't I long to be intimately woven with Christ, living fully in the depth of His love?  Why choose otherwise?  Yet how often I nonetheless seem to withhold my heart from its only safe Keeper.  

What hubris keeps the heart's floodgates closed? What foolish, besetting pride whispers that God is not interested in the honest offering of a broken heart?  

I have railed at God for failing to be present in darkness, for seeming absent in pain and far away in the late watches of the night.  Is it possible, though, that I myself have kept Him at bay by clinging to control of the welfare of my soul?  

Do I/we have that much power anyway?  

Some days I think Ivan Karamazov is correct: free will is nice, Lord, "only I most respectfully return the ticket".  I wish God would bash through our frail volition and just give us what we really need.  What terrifying freedom we instead have to isolate ourselves from the reality of Christ's love, to suffer apart from the comfort of the Spirit, to lead autonomous, fearful lives flaunting the lordship of the Father!  

It is a superhuman work then, to bring the heart to the Lord in truth.  I rely on the prayer of whomever wrote the hymn Come Thou Fount:

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, 

prone to leave the God I love. 

Here's my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above

An Observation About Spring That Has Been Made Before

There is a tree outside my window that started to blossom the very beginning of February.  I thought the blooms were doomed to early death, but they have persevered through more snow, rain and wind than paper-thin petals ought to be able.  What a brave, tenacious tree.  I am glad for its bulldog determination to announce the new season, even in contrary weather. 

Everyone waxes poetic about spring and resurrection and baby chicks hatching and new life, especially pastors, who seem to be irrationally proud that the natural world coincides so nicely with the Church calendar and their sermons, as if Christ's resurrection actually caused chickens to burst forth from eggshells and plants to shoot out of the ground. (I sort of wish that IS what happened on that Third Day.  What a sight!  Baby animals, plants, trees, green things, popping into existence like fireworks!)  I am not claiming, therefore, to say anything very new about how springtime provides tangible reminders of that great New Life that is the crux of our human history.  It does do those things, but I am neither the first nor the last to notice.  

Nonetheless, it is nice to sit on one's front porch in the evening with some chamomile tea in order to watch the sun sweetly stain the Western sky.  It is also nice to see blooming cherry branches curled delicately in the day's last light.  No matter how many people have thought the same, spring is still hopeful.  

Hope : hope

Just have that secret hope 

sometimes all we do is cope.

Somewhere on the steepest slope 

there'll be an endless rope 

and nobody crying -- Patty Griffin

I have been hoping for a job.  That seems like a nice thing to hope for, not terribly far-fetched.  I have a proven ability to work.  I can make coffee, I can also help people.  I can think. Does anyone want to pay me to think?  I interview well, know how to dress, speak articulately under pressure.  

Juxtapose the aforementioned facts with the rat race that is the economy.  For example, I saw at least 60 people waiting to get a job at the restaurant to which I applied yesterday.  In the space of two hours.  Multiply that by the 4 open days of hiring, not to mention the people I did not see.  This makes my chances of getting said job 1/240, or maybe higher (or lower) given advantages (or disadvantages) I may have. 

If hope is an equation, then, I deduce that I ought to hope about 1% for this job.  Use 1% of my brain cells thinking about it,  1% of my time preparing for it, 1% of my disappointment, etc. 

What a weenie notion of hope. It deserves a lower-case "h".  

What is the undeterred hope that Paul writes about in his letters?   The patient hope of Israel through long centuries of exile?  What about Hope?  

And--

what does Hope have to do with hope?  

What does the resurrected Christ have to do with unemployment or aimlessness or singleness or weariness or disappointment?  When faced with lower-case "h" hopelessness, do we take refuge in a transcendent Hope that somehow glosses over earthly shadow?  Do we have to live divided between spirit and matter, hopeful on the one hand, hopeless on the other, or is there a harmony of the two?

I may not get a job.  Sure I am pretty capable and qualified, but so are 7,000,000 other Seattleites who check Craigslist and Starbucks.com voraciously.  I have been so used to getting what I need when I need it, whether that be job, education, grades, money, appreciation or friendship, but I am no longer a sure ground for my hope.  My small hope must be encompassed in the larger One, that the fullness of it may break into the mundane, musty corners of self-sufficiency and contend with disappointment and fear.     

Patty G has a nice thing going for her in Nobody Cryin', its a great song, but it speaks of coping now so that at the very end "there'll be and endless rope and nobody cryin'".   I want hope now, pressed down, shaken together and running over. Not meager crumbs but water turned to wine, and fish busting out of nets  that should be empty.   I want a single, great, resurrection hope as I approach the job market that is crumbling and bank account that is shrinking and future that is wandering.  The same hope now that is also to come.  

There is one body and one Spirit-- just as you were called to One Hope-- one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father over all... Ephesians 4:4-6

The Venerable Thomas Merton

Thank the Lord for smart people who think well about matters of life and faith.  Merton is a treasure trove of good thoughts.  

"To Know the Cross"

Thomas Merton 

The Christian must not only accept suffering: he must make it holy.  Nothing so easily becomes unholy as suffering.  

Merely accepted, suffering does nothing for our souls except, perhaps, to harden them. Endurance alone is no consecration.  True asceticism is not a mere cult of fortitude.  We can deny ourselves rigorously for the wrong reason and end up by pleasing ourselves mightily with our self-denial. 

Suffering is consecrated to God by faith -- not by faith in suffering, but by faith in God.  Some of us believe in the power and the value of suffering.  But such a belief is an illusion.  Suffering has no power and no value of its own [...]

Only the sufferings of Christ are valuable in the sight of God, who hates evil, and to him they are valuable chiefly as a sign.  The death of Jesus on the cross has an infinite meaning and value not because it is a death, but because it is the death of the Son of God.  The cross of Christ says nothing of the power of suffering or of death. It speaks only of the power of him who overcame both suffering and death by rising from the grave [...]

Suffering therefore, can only be consecrated to God by one who believes that Jesus is not dead. And it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of meaning.