Timshel

Days carry their own texture, clinging to forms of rage or reluctance like canvas draping marble, and we run our hands along the weave to know it, but not how it came to be. These days are addled with simmering resentment calcifying into violence against our neighbor. Furtive glances at the convenience store, the reeking cauldron of online town message boards, an epidemic of mistrust; reality itself the heavy shroud. 

If we cannot trust our neighbor and we cannot trust our own faculties with the burden of truth, what ruthless animal crawls forth? What primal tribal instinct obscures civility in favor of survival? If we believe one another the enemy while the world unravels around us, eroding the merits of goodness, of neighborliness, what remains other than fear? Fear, which primes us for the elimination of virtue. Fear, which deprives us of hope. Fear, that thread which, when dragged through our assumptions and intents, leaves nothing but a frayed heap of regret.

I recall the pivotal moment in East of Eden when Lee discloses his long held revelation regarding the various translations of the Hebrew word “timshel”. “I’ve wanted to tell you this for a long time. I even anticipated your questions and I am well prepared. Any writing which has influenced the thinking and the lives of innumerable people is important. Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, ‘Do thou,’ and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in ‘Thou shalt.’ Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But ‘Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”

This stuck with me through the years. As Steinbeck masterfully threaded this conversation it feels revelatory of our agency as we are reduced to our basest selves in this turbulence. We have a choice. Fear does not deprive us of hope without permission. There is no “you must” or “you will”, there is only “you may”. With conviction, we may abate the existential dread that permeates our culture and braces our battle lines; we may choose unity over brutality, the evanescent truth over certain devastation.

Circus

It was a big church with a big steeple and a big sanctuary; whitewashed and numbly modern in the way anything from the 90's tried to be modern, with practical cushioned chairs and generic low-pile carpet and stage lighting and enough room toward the front to stand a group of teens in a semicircle while a pastor gesticulated and slapped their foreheads. Spotters (parishioners who catch those keeling over, presumably overwhelmed by the holy spirit) lined up behind each youth who, in turn, toppled into a trust fall as soon as they were palmed. Unfortunately for the room, I did not take the hint and stood there like the simple beast I am as the man blew plosives into the microphone and put a hand on me. It was mildly embarrassing for everyone. When the spotters had no body to catch they fumbled their hands, unsure of what to do. Impossibly, the scene grew more awkward when the man asked how I felt and put the microphone to my lips. Now everyone knew I was a spiritual carcass, possibly evil, and an idiot who said things like "great" in the presence of the heavenly host, who was busy whirling my peers into a frenzy on the floor. I do not recall much else about that night other than the brisk air washing away the desperation of that place, like stepping out of a river.

Honey

You were saying how you adored the wild native colors and grasses when a flurry of red touched - just barely held - a reed that bowed deeply. And it felt auspicious; Cardinal red, a punctuation against the sand and stone of our northern hill. We imbue dimension into mundane (but beautiful) happenings so that birds are more than birds. They are spirits, fathers, grandmothers, messengers, winged disruptors. And why not? Beat down to believing life is waking and working until hope is just a gasp between days instead of a glad assent to sunrise and hope-soaked moments, thickening time like raw sweetness off the honeycomb.

Help My Unbelief

After all the years of unburdening and reverse engineering and truth seeking, I am here at the beginning. And yet, everything is different. Truth may not change, but context does, and perception does, and I am a product of time, standing on the other side of my certainty, perplexed by its dissonance. I am back in the sanctuary like there’s something I missed. I have exhausted this space; flipped the pews, and read the books cover to cover, gnawing on the poetry, the anecdotes, the prophecies, the histories, the stories. 

I was never against it. Coming back, I mean. Those who resolve to chase truth are committed to the actuality of it; meaning they assent to finding the ecstasy of the divine or the bleakness of the void, or any permutation between the two; also meaning, I was leaving and the only way to really leave a place is to know you are never coming back. 

But I did. 

And it’s not the way it was.

And I’m not the way I was.

I believe, help my unbelief.

I have concluded this circling back has something to do with the misalignment of kingdoms and kings and the incongruity of power. This disrupted cohesion is evidence to me. This disagreement satisfies the questions like why does everything here have a tilt to it, like we’re not quite on axis (we’re not) and everything is sliding, slipping off; gravity threatening to loosen its grip just like every other promise. The incompatibility of what is and what should be is my Polaris and is the answer to disorientation in a place that is supposedly my home.

Certainty is a compromise of nominal faith, a luxury of assumption, and true believers (in anything) have to acknowledge the absence of absolutes. This conflict has a peace about it once we untether ourselves from our desperation for clarity. It took shoving off from shore into the wild open waters for me to willingly return to land, otherwise I would have lived in animus toward the familiar, having never tried for more than the shallows where my feet could still touch bottom. 

I believe, help my unbelief. I am certain only of my uncertainty. My unbelief contours the belief that was, is, and will be. I am at peace in pursuing truth rather than weaponizing what I want truth to be. My assurance is incomplete, my nature is pliable in the way most things bend and writhe across the fabric of forever, my convictions are always wandering away from expectations.

There is no place for those like us here, but then again, there was no place for the son of man to lay his head and that, too, is a comfort. 

Wishing Well

If we are on the topic of wishing, and a wish can be anything, and it doesn’t mean it’s the end of more wishing tomorrow, then I will heap my dreams into this river like some giant wishing well. That’s what they call it? Any body of water which drinks our spare change and the full bodied hopes of children who teach us all the meaning of believing and of course the world is possible, it’s ours isn’t it? All of ours? And conflicted people stare casually at grace and let it slip to the bottom.

Think on These Things

There’s a verse from my childhood that hangs on the door to my mind so that I read it each time I pass through (which is often). It says to consider only that which is worthy; saturate yourself with what elevates you. In the many caustic renderings of religion, beauty is tarnished by reckless people and we are so dismayed with the whole damn mess that we discard truths caught in the tangle. But some words cling to the corners and don’t shake out. The mandate to set our minds toward the truest, most honest, just, pure, lovely, and good - assumes an elemental truth of humanity: we require goodness to flourish. The fumes of fear and hysteria yield no hope. The dysphoria in our world may well be tacked down to our obsession with lesser things. But the lovely and good are reflective by nature, perhaps even viral. And it is only by their nourishment that we will thrive. So the next time you see a dogwood in bloom, or the next time a song reaches deep into your heart, or a story raptures your imagination, or the sunset kisses your cheek, “think on these things”.

Skyline

I have a bad habit of looking up in cities, that’s how you know I’m not from one. A skyline for scale; asphalt fairways for dimension. The world I’m from undulates with the slowness of organic resurrection; glacial landscapes, ancient lakes. It’s an old world that cycles through centuries like breathing. A city beats like the heart of an infant, and rests on the breast of the land.