Being Closed to Openings

by Margaret, with apologies to Chris for also using a Google chat transcript.

On Monday night, I stared at my friend’s back as we pedaled up Beechwood Boulevard. His back was getting smaller at about the same rate as my airways.

I made it eventually, and it felt good to know that I really am capable of biking up to Squirrel Hill. If I want to be able to do it by myself though (i.e. without the motivation of certain ridicule), then--asthma be damned!--that kind of pain needs to become routine until there is no more pain.

The next morning, I thoughtlessly took the elevator up four floors to my office, and the idea of integrating my pursuit of endurance with my pursuit of R&D study approvals took hold.

That was Tuesday. On Wednesday morning, I walked into the building and was greeted by this, complete with friendly ‘Ding!’ sound:


“It’s for me!” I thought. So up I went, guilty and resolving that it would be my last elevator ride for a while.

After lunch, it happened again.

me: so twice today, I got to the elevators just in time to hear it ding and open--with no one inside--as though it had come just for me.
this last time though, I said no.
"maybe it is tempting me to be lazy," I thought.
------------------------------------------------------------------ 32 minutes
S: you're weird

This morning? Same thing. I confronted it, hands on hips, and rounded the corner to the stairs.

me: the elevator opened for me again.

(No response.)

Open

by Chris Pipkin

In the shopping district of Dresden, Germany, I spotted a Communist. He wasn’t too hard to identify. Maybe it was his resemblance to Karl Marx, or his apparent goodwill toward his fellow-man that marked him out. Or perhaps it was the large red hammer-and-sickle flag that he was holding as he passed out communist literature. Hard to say. His presence surprised me, partly because you don’t see many starry-eyed Marxists in Eastern Europe (not for about the last half-century), and if you do, they’re not usually holding the Soviet flag. I decided I had to talk to this man.

When you’re a foreigner, it’s always a bit of a relief to meet people who seem to blend in even less than you do. I had a friend with me who spoke German, and I suggested that we talk to the man with the flag. He proved an easy enough man to get an audience with.





My friend asked the gentleman, in German, why he was standing around with a Communist flag there in the middle of the commercial district. His answer surprised me, and even I could understand it: “Weil Jesus liebt mich”—That is, “Because Jesus loves me.”

I see. I began to suspect the authenticity of this man’s Communism.

My friend tried to ask why he would say that when he is a Communist. Does he believe in God? He assured her that he didn’t believe in God...but he insisted that Jesus loves him anyway. My friend tried pursuing the subject further, but his logic was, apparently, quite beyond our own. We realized at a later point that the man had probably brought up Jesus because my friend was wearing a pin with a small picture of Viggo Mortensen, whom the man had apparently mistaken for Jesus.

He handed us information, however--a few booklets, a few discs. One he pressed into my hands saying, “DVD,” very proudly. We thanked him (he was very nice), and began to leave with the propaganda. The man stopped us, very politely, and, pointing to each item again, said, “Five Euros. Two Euros. Three Euros.”

I told my friend to tell the man that I didn’t think he was much of a Communist. Not exactly doing the old regime proud. In fact, under the system that he was (albeit hypocritically) proclaiming, he probably would have been locked up very quickly. As a weirdo, if nothing else. We took leave of him, smiling, me wishing that I could have talked to him sans the language barrier. It probably wouldn’t have made a difference. Some people are so open that they’re very, very closed.


Journal Entry, 6/10/2008

About two weeks ago, the French kids moved out and I got new flatmates who keep early hours (like me!) and who I don’t feel at all uptight around. There is no sense of dread as I come upstairs to Flat #7, no crowd of students making noise at midnight—just a guy from California (the most normal Californian I’ve ever met) and a girl from Moscow. They both work, like me, and I can talk to the Californian in normal, non-slowed-down English...

The three of us were talking at the kitchen table maybe a week ago, and I was rehearsing to Victoria (the Russian) my very limited knowledge of the literature of her country (she was quite gratified—“Russia has best literature in world...”). She then began to talk about how now that she’s studying she has very little time to read for fun, but she makes a point to continue reading “about energy.” She explained to us then that life is all about energy, and everyone gets good and bad energy from space, and how her goal in life is to rid herself of bad energy and acquire the good kind.

I become uncomfortable when people talk about such things, not because they threaten or frighten me at all, but because my faith (and honesty) obliges me to disagree. The postmodern maxim, “That’s great for you; so glad it’s working in your case,” just can’t be uttered, even if I'm interested. And yet here she was, sharing something personal and important with us, taking the risk of our judging her. I wanted to be interested, not just act interested. So I asked questions.

“Is that kind of energy linked at all to energy having to do with how tired someone is, for example?” She said it was, but the cosmic variety of energy is more important than the kind you get from food. I remarked that on some days I felt I had a lot more “positive” energy than others, noting that this seemed to me inconsistent with the idea of steady karma-esque losses or gains of energy. She said, “You know, I could tell that about you from the time we met—that you are negative and positive, up and down. I can tell things about people sometimes.”

It wasn’t what she said that tipped me off that there was something real at work here (I mean, who isn’t negative and positive?); more the way in which it was said. I began to speak in tongues behind my teeth and under my breath, feeling not-so-weird for doing so. She may have sounded wacky, but she was talking about a world we both knew, to an extent, and (with some enjoyment, I’ll admit), I felt the two-dimensional agnostic atmosphere of Prague and the West suddenly acquire that old sense of spiritual depth.

“I can tell,” she went on, “that some places have very good energy, while Vaclav (Wenceslas) Square, for example, has very bad energy.” I knew exactly what she was talking about, and I agreed with her, though I was worried for Andrew, who was probably thinking that both of his new flatmates were insane. I was thinking, with a tiny bit of alarm (only enough to wake me up), “Oookay. I’m living with a Russian white witch.”

“I try sometimes to take from people the bad energy, for example when they get sick or headache. I’m very interested in learning to do this by putting my hands on them.”

Wait a minute.

“I put my hands on my friend once when she had stomach ache, and I took bad energy away, and she felt better—but then I had stomach ache!”

Okay. There it was. I had to say something now. It wasn’t fair that she was telling us everything about her beliefs, risking being seen as crazy, and I, who had Good Reason to say what I believed, remained quiet. The lines were scripted out for me. I held my breath and dove in.

“I’ve seen really similar things happen,” I said, getting up to go to the sink and trying, trying, uncomfortably trying not to preach, “but it was more of a religious kind of thing.”

“Yeah, like faith-healing?” chimed in Andrew. “I’ve seen some of that stuff myself.”

“Kind of,” I said. “I’ve put my hands on people with headaches, stomach aches, other things, and seen the negative energy come out, seen them get better, but I take the negative energy, and I put it on Christ. He takes it.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond. Shoot. But Andrew said, “Yeah, I grew up Presbyterian. That was well-put.”

We haven’t really talked since then, about that stuff. I wish she’d been comfortable to go on talking about her beliefs. I would have listened, but I couldn’t be open to it, even if I was open to her. I know that sounds cheap. Maybe that was all she had to say, anyway, or maybe my mentioning Christ made her uncomfortable. Maybe she didn’t want to be “impolite” and say that she disagreed with me. In the end, though, it is better to say something.


The Following is a Googlemail chat from June 5

me: I had an interesting debate about abortion with one of my students today.
That was crazy.

T: oh really?
what was she saying?
6:17 PM she is probably FOR it

me: Of course. This is Europe, after all. I asked them to write a paper on a controversial topic, and she picked that one.
And I was trying to be all neutral, because, you know, I'm the teacher.
I'm there to teach English.

T: :/

6:18 PM me: But then, going around to get them to talk, I was asking what they thought.
And after that, she asked me, "Well, what do you think?"
And I was like, "Shoot. The game is up."
So I just kind of outlined my position as tactfully as I could, trying not to get too heated.

6:19 PM T: and what did they say?

me: Oh, we all kept calm. I could have taken her in debate easily, but it wouldn't have been fair, because I'm the teacher.

T: fair

6:20 PM me: And I speak better English, and I'm not there to talk, they are.
But I outlined some of the basic pro-life stances, and she outlined some of the basic pro-choice stances, and the other two students kept pretty quiet.

6:21 PM T: So how do you feel about the discussion now?

6:22 PM me: I felt like it was fine. I think sometimes the argument itself might not matter as much as the fact that people are willing to say what they believe. So that no one has the idea that it's a bunch of idiots taking this view.

6:23 PM I said, basically, that it comes down to the question of "is this a human life or isn't it"?

T: hm

that is great

me: And if it is, then the government has the responsibility to protect it.

6:25 PM T: sometimes, it is in situations like that that people start thinking deeper about the issues we are all thinking about

6:26 PM me: Yeah. I could have gone into so many arguments, but it honestly would have just upset her, and been other than what I was supposed to be doing as a teacher.

T: that also usually leads to some beautiful conclusions about God

6:27 PM me: We were able to carry out the discussion in friendliness, despite the tension.
So that was good. Sometimes maybe you have to leave room in your arguments for people to think for themselves. That's the challenging thing.
I need to read more Plato.

T: it is

me: Or to read him at all.

T: :)

6:28 PM i miss all those guys

6:29 PM me: Arguments should be places in which I can understand my own position more fully. Should be.
And of course the other person's.

T: yeah

me: At least for the most part.

6:30 PM T: yeah
I like talking about things like that with people that are open about other people's opinions about the given issue
6:31 PM i recently talked with my other roommate about the end times
and she got SO angry with me

me: I wish I was more that way. I just get emotionally agitated because I'm so relational.
I mean, more open.
Why did she get angry?

6:32 PM T: well, she was upset
6:33 PM that i was saying things that she got very personal about
she got very emotional and all
and that was NOT my intention at all
and i thought "oh, crap"
6:34 PM but then we talked and everything was alright
i like asking questions
and i like when people ask questions

me: Good for you.

T: and so together we try to find answers
not i am right and you are wrong

6:36 PM me: Yeah. It's really hard, because at the same time I know that there IS right and wrong...but not to identify myself with the right. Not exclusively. But to still be honest.
To believe in the possibility of Truth.
The reality of truth.

T: yes!

6:37 PM me: And the attainability of truth.
But not the ownership of truth, maybe.

T: and trying to get away from all the subjectivism, which is really a challenge, sometimes

6:38 PM me: Tell me about it.
Hard lines to walk

The Heavens

The Mystery of the Floating Priest

Chris Pipkin

"The Heavens are the Heavens of the Lord,

But the earth he has given to the sons of men."

Scouring the online news for an article to hand out to my English students, I came across an interesting piece about a Brazilian priest—a certain Rev. Adelir Antonio de Carli.

It seems that Padre de Carli, as part of a fund-raising stunt for a mission to truck drivers, strapped himself to hundreds of colorful, helium-filled balloons, intending to fly to another city hundreds of miles away. In mid-flight over the ocean, the priest lost contact with his flight crew, and only the balloons have been found since. His former flight instructor, who described the priest as "rash," said something like, "I can't really say this tragedy was unexpected."

I would like to imagine that, at some point in his journey, the priest shared the fate of Enoch—rather than that of Jonah—and was simply snatched up by a Monty Python-esque hand reaching down from a passing cloud—carried higher than plastic and helium could afford to take him. We'll probably never know exactly what happened (the Brazilian coast guard called off the search for his body a few days ago), but drowned or not, I'd like to think he no longer needs party favors to walk about the sky. Which brings me to this month's topic:

How did we ever get the idea--common enough nowadays, whether encountered in Dante or Disney--that when we die, our souls go up into the sky? For thousands of years, most cultures seemed to believe the opposite. Expired Greeks and Romans traveled like loose leaves among the caves of Hades, Norsemen went to "Hel" which worked along the same lines; Egyptian and Chinese equipped imperial graves with food and earthen slaves, and even Hebrews seemed to believe that the soul--good or bad--always went "down to Sheol."

Heaven (with very few exceptions) was not the final resting place of mortals, but the realm, rather, of the gods. Valhalla, Asgard, Olympus, and "The Heavens" of Jewish Scripture were bright and beautiful, in contrast to the shadowy underworld(s), and bursting with lights and glory, but they were alien, inhospitable, and even hostile to mankind.

There are various accounts of unhappy humans who, in their pride, refused to accept this fact--who aspired to transcend their sphere and reach the bright haunts of the immortal spirits. The Greeks write of Bellepheron, who tried to ride Pegasus up to the gods' domain until he was struck down by Zeus himself. The builders of the Tower of Babel were similarly (though less severely) punished, as was the King of Babylon (Isaiah 14:13-15). Even when God-fearing prophets of monotheistic Judaism are permitted a glimpse into Heaven, they are terrified at the sight of its immortal inhabitants (closely associated and clothed with the glory of the one God) and have great difficulty describing them. Their reaction, most usually, is to fall down "as though dead," and feel, despite angelic reassurances, that this is no place for them.

The mere sight of the sky, during a moment of insight, causes poets to tremble. "When I consider your heavens," says David, "The work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place...what is man that you give a thought to him?"

Modern science, as far as the material, visible heavens are concerned, has proved these ancient ideas to be, in a way, correct. The higher we lift ourselves off the earth, the less capable we seem to be of living. We now know (do we?) that this is not because of proximity to any sort of gods, but due to terrestrial conditions which keep our bodies together.

There seems, then, to be an agreement here between ancient and modern thought: The sky is no place for humans. And yet modern failures and successes at flight, and ancient study of heavenly beings and bodies is a testimony to the continued human desire to "slip the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of God." Nevertheless, the hulking winged machines, precarious balloons and now-weightless pieces of iron (mined, embarrassingly, from the very place we wish to escape) frustrate this dream even as they help us (partially) to achieve it. We would prefer, if we could, to soar naked on the back of the wind, to float on pixie dust or angels' wings to an alien realm beyond; to somehow find a home there with the gods and sip ambrosia at their table, and to feel, in doing so, that we have come home. This we still cannot do, for we are insubstantial crumbling clay, not solid light.

The latter half of the book of Daniel brims with bizarre showings. Unearthly beasts and bright warring spirits appear to a wise but bewildered Jewish eunuch already caught between rising and falling world powers. Yet, terrified as he is, he keeps "looking in the night visions," and there, sees "Coming in the clouds of heaven...One like a son of man."

Now here is something new. The clouds, especially for a Jew forbidden to associate the Divine with the created, are not the place for anything resembling a man. The Cherubim, those dreadful, shape-shifting spirits surrounding the Throne of the unseen God, have been glimpsed among the clouds. God, it is written, clothes himself with "clouds and thick darkness," riding upon them like a chariot. And here we have "One like a son of man" using the clouds in this way.

At the end of the Gospels of Mark and Luke, and at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, you have the risen Jesus, the self-named Son of Man suddenly "lifted up, and a cloud took him out of [the disciples'] sight." Jesus had died already. He had, according to the widely-held beliefs of his early followers, "descended into the lower parts of the earth," like all people--but while there, the Divine Man had--somehow--conquered the Grave itself, and brought souls up from it. We see him two days after his entombment, glorying in his victory. But when, forty days later, he floated up into the air, where did he go? Outer space? Another planet? Another dimension? Another time? America?

And so, as if the good Father de Carli didn't leave us with enough questions, here we have the mystery of another floating Priest. This past Sunday was Ascension Sunday, so I reckon now is as good a time as any to puzzle over it. Christ had told his disciples before his crucifixion that he was "going to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, so that where I am, there you also may be." Many of us, hearing this, imagine Jesus the Carpenter, spare nails in mouth, hammering away at a billion or so celestial mansions in some as-yet-undiscovered cloudy city. We all know that's probably not what he meant, exactly, but it's hard to shake the picture from our imagination. The difficulty is, of course, that Jesus didn't just evaporate. We believe he still lives in his physical body--and if he has retained a physical body, he has to be in a physical place--even now, long before a new heavens and new earth are created. But no one knows where. It's as ambiguous, to us, as the date and time of Christ's return.

So now the good news. In a sense, we do know exactly where Christ now is. The Gospels, the Creed, the Epistles, Stephen's vision in Acts, all have him "seated [in Acts, standing] at the right hand of the Father." Whatever else that may mean in terms of actual physical location, etc., the "right hand" of any ruler is the place of favor. Christ, following his Death, Resurrection and Ascension, was revealed as the Father's favored one, as the Priest, on creation's behalf (because sharing man's nature), to God (because sharing God's nature). "Right hand," when it occurs in the New Testament, is an allusion to Psalm 110, which Peter quotes in Acts 2: "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool." The Ascension, like the Resurrection which preceded it (and let us not be too stringent in our division or prioritizing of Christ's acts), marks Christ out as our unique Advocate before God, and God's chosen Minister to humanity. Most of all, it marks him out, once and for all, as God's beloved Son, in whom he is well-pleased.

Second piece of good news: Christ said, "I go there to prepare a place for you, so that where I am, you may be also." In other words, if Christ is at the right hand of the Father, so, undeservedly, inexplicably, marvelously, are we. We do share a table with not only the gods, but with God himself, and we are there in the place of favor. The inability of humanity to exist in the same place as the Divine--the estrangement itself, which all ancient civilizations felt deeply--that has been put to death instead of us. Now it is given--not reached by merit of our own fuel, but given--to us to dwell in the abode of the gods, and not be burnt up. For in Christ, we are safe, and we ourselves are becoming gods and not ashes as we follow him through fire and beyond death.

Christ summed it up pretty well as he predicted his ascension to Mary Magdalene on that holiest of Sundays: "Go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"

In his humility and generosity (and joy) he makes no distinction here between his relationship with the Father and that of his "brothers," though it is obvious enough that he is, by nature, the Only Begotten Son, and ourselves sons and daughters only through him. At present, we are (even priests) prevented from following Christ's glorified corporeal body wherever it went, because our own bodies have not yet been changed. And yet we are with him, in him, and he is with and in us, just as he is with the Father. The laws of physics have not changed, but other laws, in a way even more absolute, have been transcended, for we are being transformed within. And the day now approaches when even our physical bodies--faces, skin, fingernails--will rise into the air and meet, there, Him.

under the heavens

india, January 2002.

The plane ride was long enough. After some eight hours of being strapped into a flying metal tube in close proximity to a bunch of strangers I am glad to stretch my legs in the New Delhi terminal. Devin and I see what looks to be our party at one end of the oddly smelling baggage area and a group of four men approach: Vijay, his brother, two friends and lots of smiles. We gather our belongings and they lead us to the taxi. Even before we sit down, my legs know there will be trouble. There are only five small seats. What with the six of us, the taxi driver, our hefty suitcases, and a miniscule trunk space hardly worth mentioning, we have a brutally long journey ahead of us. For most of the journey we speed and bounce along unpaved dirt roads at breakneck speeds. The night is dark and unfamiliar. Suddenly there are lights, and we slow. It seems to be a police checkpoint. We inquire.

“This is normal. They check the driver’s papers. But they may want money.” As in… bribery?

The driver slows to a crawl, but curiously doesn’t stop. We hear muttering and a flashlight is shining through the back window. If this were Texas, I imagine we’d be promptly unloaded as illegal immigrants. Suddenly there is loud crack and shattered glass is flying everywhere.

“Dou-ven! Get do-ven!” and we are speeding away, tires peeling.

“The driver did not have his papers. Or did not want to pay… not sure.” Vijay says with a shrug. “Sorry about that,” and a chuckle. I am wide-eyed and tense.

Nine hours later, the morning sun shining brightly—with moans, at least from me—we unpack our bags and ourselves from the taxi in the small compound of huts that was the home of pastor Vijay Golden, his parents, his younger brother, his older brother, and his older brother's wife. The noisy greetings initially distracted us from the otherness of the surroundings. What was the smell? I am fairly delirious from lack of sleep. With Vijay's near fluency in English and our complete lack of Punjabi, it was an unspoken rule that he would be our translator for the duration of our visit.

"Hey!" with a flurry of hellos.

"Praise the Lord!" and hubbub.

"Brother, this is..." and Vijay was pointing to someone else, and we were all shaking hands and embracing.

"Hallo!"

The family cow, for its part, mooed a greeting as well. Vijay's mother beemed a large and toothy smile. Wearing a dusty purple saree with long gray hair captured by a purple scarf, the deep, dark wrinkles on her hands and face spoke of a life very different than I have ever known. The smells are more shocking than the sights. Listening to the seemingly endless introductions the smells assault me, confuse me. Shortly we stow our belongings in one of the small huts made of brick and concrete-mortar—just big enough for the two rough but sturdy cots that would be our beds for the next eleven days.

"Devin, these covers are dirty… and they stink."

bathing.

We are both thinking of showers after our frustratingly lengthy taxi ride on top of our flight from Austria. It has been a long day.

"Vee will get it ready for you vight now."

Vijay's admirable English falls a little short in pronunciation. The "bathing area" was built only very recently. The roofless brick enclosure rises maybe 4 1/2 feet and the simple square design is roughly 5 feet by 5 feet wide. On one side is a rickety gate made of cheap metal, not wide enough for the opening which allows it. A passerby on that side would get an eyeful. The cracked concrete floor was at a slight angle so that the water or refuse would spill into a channel, taking it into the open sewer-ditch on the street leading into the compound. Conveniently the entire "bathing area" doubled as a bathroom area. The air is now chilly enough for me to see my own breath as I awkwardly stripped down inside the bathing square. The wall doesn't even come to the top of my chest, and as I quickly learn--white attracts. I am attended by the neighborhood children, several of whom have been watching us since our arrival from neighboring rooftops, and who run and hop to nearer buildings to get a better view. While three or four of them giggle and dart forward and back, I squat lower, feeling rather like a monkey, and splash myself with water from the a tin bucket. Though the Golden family had graciously stoked a large fire over which to hold the bucket and heat the water, by the time it has hit me and run off I am freezing... I am ever so glad I brought a bar of Dial antibacterial soap and my Pert Plus shampoo. They afford me a brief sensation of clean in a strange universe of dirty. Splash. Scrub. Freezing! Splash. Scrub. Freezing! Laughter from somewhere above and to the my left... my right.

Conveniently, we later learn, the entire area doubles as a large toilet.

under the heavens.

Even though it’s late now, it's challenging to get alone time for prayer or solitude or simply sanity. Personal space, people, personal space. Sandeep, Vijay's sixteen year old younger brother, tends to follow me closely. Literally. In conversing I often have to inch away because his face gets uncomfortably close to mine. He is precious, but his breath is rank. Sandeep also enjoys impressing me with his English. This evening I try to explain that I'd like to find a quiet place to pray alone.

"Okay, I come with you and show!" he says with great enthusiasm. His bright, irresistible eyes brook little disagreement. Like myself, he is tall and lanky and he nimbly climbs the homemade ladder to the flat roof of one of the taller huts. There are no electric lights to be seen save the wobbly beam of my flashlight as we ascend. Electric power was introduced to the area a few years back, but rolling blackouts prevent much usage for the better part of the evening. The heavens are so bright here, and so familiar. For a moment, a brief moment, we share the silent wonderment of being under the stars. God, this is the same moon I had looked not too many years ago, when I was six and camping in my backyard in Bowling Green, Virginia. And the consistency of this moon and the hope to which it alludes—the odd familiarity of these heavens, is but an echo and moon-reflection of the glory of all Your consistency and the worldwide hope which you make blazing clear.

"Look! Vhat is the name of that coon-stuhlation?" Sandeep asks, stumbling over the new word I have only recently taught him.

"Maybe I could... time to pray... you know..." I half-heartedly stammer.

So much for alone time.

"Look, look! Here! Look!" he exclaims, laughing and grabbing my arm—pointing to a constellation... or distant building... or bat...

Antennae To Heaven

by Amy Mann

The theme of “heavens” for some reason made me think of a song I first heard years ago at a concert in Houston. The band is called Godspeed You Black Emperor! and the song is called Storm from their album Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven. I’m listening to it now. It’s a really amazing song—instrumental, and classified under the “avantgarde” genre in my iTunes music library (it’s the only album there—all by its lonesome self).
(if you want to hear, it, and I think you should, go here but maybe ignore the video some kid made to the song—just enjoy the song itself—I haven’t watched the video, actually)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bwz7lUaJDU0

The song begins in silence, and slowly, as a lone electric guitar quietly repeats the same few measures over and over, builds itself up in volume, speed and intensity, adding instruments in the following progression:
electric guitar--two trumpets--another guitar--xylophone (or something like it)--I think a french horn—some violins--more violins--a bass drum--a lot more strings--cymbals and snare drum

When the snare drum kicks in around 3 minutes into this 6.5 minute long song, I can’t think of any other word to describe the sound except exuberant. It’s elating. The whole song itself builds you from a still and serene place to the point where it’s undeniable that music is making you feel something, something joyous and inspiring. This is the song that, when I think of the movie that I someday hope to write, I want to be the music playing during the dramatic beautiful resolution at the end of whatever horrible events I put my characters through.

My mind jumps. The next time I really remember hearing this song was in my church back in Texas. It doesn’t seem to fit. This band’s name doesn’t seem to resonate “play me on Sunday morning,” but it did fit. A series of black and white photos were shown on a projector screen, this music playing behind it, and we were just asked to look at the pictures, and think and pray. It was really quite moving. I was so surprised to have this moment during worship that involved this song I had heard a year or so before in a smoky, hot, Houston music club.

Mind jump #3. I’m in Kansas City watching the band Waterdeep play their “farewell” show—it’s amazing. They begin upstairs in the sanctuary of this church and do over an hour of their acoustic stuff, then we take a 30-40 minute break and move downstairs to this coffee bar / concert area where they play for at least another hour doing their electric stuff. It’s all incredible. And in the middle of the second set, Don Chaffer starts talking, and it seems as if he hadn’t planned this in advance, but he just starts talking about truth and beauty and love, and how we as Christians think that we can only find these things in Christian creations (music, literature, art, whatever), and whatnot, but that he thought this wasn’t true. That God created beauty, and truth and love, and so whenever and wherever someone seeks to make that or create that, there is something important there—something that can connect us to God. If someone, Christian or not, wants to make something beautiful, God is connected to that because beauty is God’s. And if they produce something beautiful, it can connect us to God because again…beauty is God’s He was really into it.

And I think he has something there. I haven’t really thought of it to the lengths Mr. Chaffer did, but this song makes me think of that. And the name of the album aside, I feel that there is something uplifting in this song. Something that takes my mood and my emotions and my thoughts to something higher. Something beautiful and maybe even a bit transcendent. Something that connects me to God.

Try it out. My favorite places to listen to this are: alone in my room with my eyes closed, outside laying down with my eyes opened, or looking out the window of public transportation at the city and people around me.

Extraordinary and Quotidian

by Margaret Krumm

Dolphins swim in these waters of Fort Myers, Florida. To Northern eyes, they are quite a sight, so Dad and Grandma and I marveled at them before our two-bit pontoon boat cruise left the dock yesterday evening.

The co-captain/emcee made jokes into a microphone as we puttered a little deeper into the Caloosahatchee, and my dad—as an apparent result of his recommitment to the Lord—made his usual remarks about how incredible everything was.

I say "usual" like that because he is always saying the most quotidian of things—my finding a satisfactory parking spot, for instance—are "very cool", "awesome", or "just amazing", and I wonder sometimes which words he uses for things that really are.

At eight o'clock, we watched as the sun sank into the water.

"This is our second sunset in a row! Isn't this amazing..."

My grandma chimed in. "Beautiful." She says it like "beauty-full."

Of course it was gorgeous, but "Come on," I half-wanted to say. "The sun sets everywhere almost every day."

Additionally:
the sun also rises (zing!) everywhere almost every day
the moon is full every 29 days
and stars and their constellations are always there (though Pittsburgh clouds only occasionally reveal them).

Why such awe for objects so constantly present?

May my awe for their Creator surpass it.

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by Margaret Krumm

Seeing footprints between rows,
I knew I had been wrong
to roll on over late last night
and keep weeds from being sown.
And at harvest time, don't trust me
to rightly hold a rake.
These weeds are looking fine for food,
but oh! for God's sake. . .

They Pruned But Did Not Rake in Eden

by Mark Kazmier

At the commencement of this spring I had a very nasty flu. It was mostly the fever that was so unbearable. For about 24 hours, my fever was 103 degrees Fahrenheit. That night I was delirious; the ceiling seemed to be spinning for about 10 hours. It reminded me of the time when I was seven years old and my Mom let me watch the Disney film Dumbo when I had a fever. That night I was deliriously tormented by pink elephants. Dancing Pink Elephants are scary enough without delirium.

Have you noticed that it always seems to be the most glorious weather when you are bed-ridden? Well, this time I rebelled against my bed and forced myself to lie on the wooden porch of the Monastery (our community living house in which the abbot, myself, happens to have a wife) in the sun. After my fever was reduced to 99 I decided to do a bit of gardening. A logical decision, of course. See, I had been staring at our little patch of flower and herb garden from the deck that has not been touched for two years and was naturally (or perhaps un-naturally) overrun with dead leaves, dead grass, and weeds. It was kind of depressing to stare at actually. So I grabbed the only rake we have in our shed, a rake with sharp metal ends spaced rather wide, not your average leave-rake. I moved very slowly because of bodily fatigue, but after two afternoons I cleared the bed with my metal rake of most all of the dead debris. It was actually quite odd now that I think of it, how passionate I was about clearing the bed of dead stuff so that the living daffodils and rose plants and herbs could be free from it. I had not communicated with the outside world for about six days because of my illness, and yet the only thing I could think to do was to clear that little patch of ground of death and make it neat and orderly.

God put Man and Woman (she was not actually named Eve until after that whole fruit-eating thing) in a Garden. Not a palace. A garden. And they were commanded to tend to it. And that command was pure joy to them. Making things beautiful is the real job of every man and woman. That’s why gardens are so attractive to us: the atrraction is merely a remembrance of our original occupation. Even in perfect Eden, the trees and bushes and plants would get unruly if not attended. There is even a sense in which nature was wild before death entered the world. If it was not wild, then why would have God given us dominion over it?

But there were no rakes in Eden because nothing died. Principally, rakes are needed only to remove death.

Oh that the Master Gardener would now take up His rake and remove the death that is suffocating the new growth in my heart. After all, when Time worked itself backwards and the Second Man rose from the earth, Mary mistook him for a Gardener.