Birds and Airplanes

The birds are calling from my backyard this morning to their neighbors across the street. The crickets and bullfrogs create a constant chirping hum in the background. I am accustomed to electric and mechanical noises, to computer fans running and cars driving by.

But today, the sound of nature outpaces the sound of humanity.

There is this complex relationship between the sounds of humanity and the sounds of nature. Both noises (at least in the places I have inhabited) coexist at all times, and it is up to our brains to distinguish between the two and choose which one will hold our attention.

This morning I am blessed by the near and urgent calling of the birds. Its volume, cadence, and conversational tone have caught my attention and the opened up my senses to hear the rest of the natural world around me.

But if I allow my ears to lose this focus, I can hear the hum of the cooling units from the bank a half a block away and an airplane overhead.

In the real world, these sounds all coexist and blend together to make up the background noises to our reality. While I'll give no argument against the idea that we have probably far too often paved paradise and put up a parking lot, at the root their is a harmony to these background sounds of the world and no need for us to create a false dichotomy.

The same is true for the human and divine.

Perhaps it is too much drinking from the moonshine of the mystics, but if the incarnation holds meaning, it must show us that God intends no false dichotomies between the human and divine. Those previous boundaries are swallowed up in the person of Christ, the One in Whom Everything Belongs.

In Christ (both in his earthly life and now through His spirit) there is a beautiful harmony present in the world, being sung by the Creator over the creation, with parts written widely for creation to join in.

But so long as we are concerned with whether or not others are singing the right parts, we will miss the primary Voice that holds all things together, creating harmony where there should be cacophany and peace where there should be tension.

For my part, I hope that my ears will be tuned to hear that Voice, whether it be faint or loud, so taht I can join in the song. I think we all have this longing to be a part of something greater than ourselves.

In each moment, I am presented with that opportunity.

Thanks be to God.

Attention to the Now

I talk often (probably with anyone who will listen) about God existing neither in past nor in future, but only in the present. But it is difficult to pay attention to the present. Throughout the Lenten season, I've been trying to figure out how to focus on the now, how to pay attention to what matters, how to live into constant prayer. The distractions are plentiful, and they want to drag us all down into meaninglessness. But there is real life in the present, if only we could pay attention.

So, I've decided these past few days to try to write a bit of poetry (though it borders on prose). I'm going to share here some of that, over the next few days, as I seek to keep my head out of the clouds or other places and keep my heart centered here.

The Rocking Chair


The rocking chair
is underused these days
and the world suffers for it.

The only creaks and moans it makes these days
are faint echoes, teased out by the blown wind across empty spindles
that no longer bear the weight of the tangible,
but bear the weight of sorrow, emptiness, and loneliness with the same gentle comfort.

Across the world, bombs explode.
Hearts explode with sorrow as the anger of ideologues
is played out through the spilled blood of those who serve
what they believe has to be the greater good.
The cries of children call forth with expended energy the rumbling of their distended bellies
as the belches of the gluton fill the world with the noxious gas of indifference.

Why make a being with such a capacity of hate?

Wars are waged, one after the other.
The apocalypse is at hand and the rocking chair sits empty.

The problem may seem global, but the porch is the battleground
of indifference where the large problems of the world might still be subverted
by the gift of empathy born out of community.

The rocking chair cries out -
We belong to each other.

But its voice is blocked out by locked front doors
by devestating headlines
by blaring televisions.

In church, a place with its own mixed track record, we
used to call each other brother and sister.
We used to define neighbor expansively, if homogeneously.

Now, even the deoxyribonucleic acid in the blood in our veins that makes
us the same is not strong enough to defeat
the magnetic draw of soul-less individualism.
We all march to the beat of a different drummer with no regard
for the way our rhythm fits with the rest of the world.

We've lost our way, the rocking chair cries, and I pause to look upon its loneliness.

I sit.
I sit and begin.
I sit and begin to rock.
I sit and begin to rock, and the rhythm that emerges belongs to us all,
provides the backbeat to the hope of our words and hearts with one another.

In the creaking and sliding I belong to you and you to me,
the rhythm ready to call us back home to where we belong with one another,
siblings under the same roof,
more same than different.

All is not subsumed or lost but found in this rhythm,
beginning with me.

Getting Lost

Earlier this week, a dear friend posted on my Facebook wall the following statement, "only 1 thing -- oct?" My reply was, "Hm?"

That's right, it's been so long since I have written here, what was going to be a fairly regular blog, that I had no idea what she was talking about. It was almost like I had forgotten that I even had a blog. I certainly didn't remember what the name of it was. This is one of the purposes of community, to remind us of the goals we set for ourselves. Sometimes that's the only chance we have of succeeding at all.

Of course, I shouldn't be surprised that I failed to follow through on the whole blogging thing. In my basement, on top of one of my bookshelves, there is a group of journals about a foot and a half wide, held upright by bookends, each one equally void of completion. It's only by my consumeristic drive that there are so many of them. If I was smart, I'd keep a journal until I was finished with it, and then only buy another after I had finished the first.

If that was the way I had done it, I'd probably only have one journal. Even if all the wonderful entries had been combined from all the different journals, I'd only have enough for the first third of a decent sized journal. Or at least that would have been the case until recently. I've just finished filling up my first whole journal. It's a black Moleskine, unlined, that I keep with me at all times and fill with various musings, prayers, drawings (like the sketch of the sweet tattoo I'm thinking of getting), and wedding and funeral services. I don't remember when I bought it, but I do know that it has been well used - it's coming apart at the seams. I don't intend to brag about finishing the journal, but it has taught me something about myself that applies to this blog as well.

I have learned that I like new journals because they are unburdened by the failure of the past entries in old journals. Let me explain. When I make a journal entry (or most any entry), I put the date in a box at the top. It seems as good a way to do it as any to me. The trouble is, when weeks or months go by between posts, I feel like a failure. Like I've let myself down once again. So, the easiest solution, much easier than facing my own inability to stick with such a venture, is to buy a new journal so I can get it right the next time.

That's not how life works, fortunately. If we could trade out our perceived failures for "fresh starts," we'd never get very far. Now I know we've all been told that Jesus wants to give you a fresh start, but I don't think that's really it. When he saves a woman from adultery or a gives a man born blind his sight, he doesn't negate with his action who they were before.

Instead, he embraces it.

Jesus offers hope, but it's not a clean neat fresh start. It's a hand up to get going again.

It's that we take that hand that is important. So long as we stay on the ground, or refuse to face the reality of our own inability to be consistent (I'm assuming my problems are normative, right?), we will refuse to move forward into grace and instead seek the magic bullet of a "fresh start" in order to avoid learning from our past perceived mistakes.

So, I'm taking that hand. This time it was offered to me by the words of a friend wondering why I hadn't posted to this blog in so long. And I'll try to make it a little further on my feet this next time. But when I fall down, I won't start over. I'll just get back up - one stumbling step at a time.