white blazes

windy scenes of the aftermath, gripping huddle of the survivors

and hollow sounds of excavating misfortune 

here in the scattering the claims lay heavy

weighted by time and the erosive distance from event

the pieces lay bare

glimmering under the bright sky, held by the cold ground

they congeal as i look over them—hoping they hold

in the resemblance of memory, bursting in light

a scene so subtle and yet new

There is this quote that rings in my head lately as I read for class and make my way through the Torah. It goes something like—scriptures are unsettling but it is because of the unsettled Character behind the text. It is quite a claim, I am realizing, that Someone is not only with the most challenging of texts but also within the content of these stories of desperation, judgment, humanity and grace. It is unsettling right?

It feels as if I am the one who should describe the world—me tell me how to live into this whole thing, but it seem the unsettling has a way of giving opportunity to trust in something beyond my own experience. God is the one with whom all experiences are given voice and redemption. God is, in some ways, a giving back to human experience—having absorbed your ache and fear and hurt and trust, God is the one in the text that is coming alongside characters like Hagar—the one enslaved, impregnated and sent away. This Character is on the move as well, surrounding a situation with the thickness of presence and then having to turn an ear to hear the cry from what seems to be too far sometimes. 

Another quote, offered by the same author in a different book, has a pinging echo in the mix of these thought. That is that home—landedness—is not so much a place but a place on the way with YHWH. That is, God is the one with-us, even now—the God of the living. That is settling and unsettling. So, as I find some new rhythm and rhymes in this new and old place, I have this sense that the story is going somewhere. That the events, desperate wanting collections of human existence, are the unsettlement we situation ourselves in—with hope and honest vigor—that tomorrow meets us today, that God’s wind inhabit our lungs so that we might sing a song with our lives, from the unsettled crevasses of soul—thick with blood, healing the plains.

I just got back to Pasadena a few days ago. I’m crashing in my buddy Adam’s old bed and using his pillow until I move into a new place this Saturday. The “Six Man Crew” pad is nearly on Colorado Blv, where the Rose Parade marched by just hours ago.  And so it begins, a new year, a re-engagement with school and a new cell number (616.258.9004).  The journey from Michigan to here was a good time. I stopped off in Minneapolis for a few days and hung with the Diehl crew, it was great, minus Caila getting bit in the face by a dog. We spend our first day together in the ER. She has healed up fine with a stitch or two and a good story. As we sat waiting for the doctor (for hours) we talked about how this is life, and how we are glad to be doing it together—it feels like home when we are in the same place.

Everything seems oddly new. I’m not sure what to make off it yet. I stopped by the café I would current and the menu went an’ changed on me. However, the newness is familiar. Caila and I had ourselves a date for our 16 month, at a pub of all places. But we had never been and it seemed just right as we roamed the quiet town of Sierra Madre. This is my last quarter at Fuller, I have very little to my name, I gave myself a haircut today—I’m feeling nimble in a way I haven’t for some time. Nimble yet planted. My buddy Sean and I are both jumping headfirst into writing projects these next few months, which feels rad and might influence some thoughts that land here. So this is sort of an update, a report of sorts. 

Every moment, every subtle touch and each hellish thought finds placement in the Divine economy. It is subsumed, eventually. And so, it is that our human longings, as shattered as they are, were worth trusting at some deep level. At the vocalization of lament and sorrow, we find God—when the rug’s pull lands us on our back, we have a view to the stars. And maybe I am the pathological optimist, granted, but, death’s door is a stones throw from heaven’s gate. 

Babies are born into the fight, this raging world of ours, and it seems to often a sort of death sentence. From the shopping mall to those living off its waste, death is often dressed up like life. When you get really old you move as slow as when you were born, you unlearn everything, you can barely see and you land back in the hospital, on your back, next to a room where a baby was born just the day before. Life and death are neighbors—they share a wall.[1] Babies and hearses are a stones throw away from one another.[2]

I turn 27 years today. This is late-twenties if we are counting. And age has a way of marking a life, defining seasons and giving description—dark and bright strokes their significance. It is no surprise that with age you grow in thought, slowly creeping in and out of adulthood. You learn the rules the first half of life while the second you learn, not how to apply them, but rather, what it is to transcend them. Rohr talks about both transcending and including this first half of life. The mark of maturity (or better—a realized placement) is that one has passed through to a different view, new perspective, phase, season or general differentiation. In this time, that seems to always come in cyclical patterns—year after year, we get better at identifying the life that the container holds, rather than confusing the container with the life it holds. I have lots of containers, these are the projections of my world that I’d rather live in all to often, sometimes preferences sometimes I use the word ‘tradition’ for this sort of thing. These rugged buildings look like my town, the place I am from and the people, moments and stories that have shaped me. It is a template that encourages me to draw outside the lines, but is a rather safe place. 

Leaving a place helps you see it for what it is. I left California and found that it is a place I like to venture and explore but feel burned, lost, disregarded by the whole thing—as I’m sure many do in a place as transient as L.A. The beautiful thing is that it is a million places at once—a bunch of gardens blooming in a concrete jungle. But, like leaving high school to walk the trail, I can only feel liked but not loved, held but not placed. Monday, I go back. And a lot has changed, in me and in friends. Plenty of death and life have redecribed the landscape. The new contour of a place is what I noticed first landing in G-Rap. I was back in the place I was born, born into the fight of broken hearts and bleeding soul. Community was dispersed, people have died, some are dying to live, but it all felt like a tilted picture frame. The new norm has set in and all the containers seem to be frustrated that I’m finding life beyond their bounds. Maybe this is what it feels like to be sent, your roots trusting better than you that things will be all right taken up into the story of this moment and the next—the death and life, these leavings and returnings being apart of the same plot and passage.

the wick is silently breathing in

it’s afraid to end its humble moment

when light filled the room with praise

And the calm clear orange fluttered in space

oh vexing brightness time not concerning

you bend with the wind and collect at the heights

giving what you must and what we all see

exposing the depths and the ways we might be