“When a man of peace is killed
by a man of war, he gives a light.”- wendell berry
gray bleeds orange
The deliverance meets me here
wedged in the movement of this town
wheeling around in distance, the birds—parrots mostly
squawk by to the dazzling skylight
The gray bleeds orange
surf wax, whiskey and the tree tops my company
i listen again, to the arid evening turning to this night
beardom has tested my thoughts and times I hold sacred
We are older here with hast taking its toll
blood and its marrow
holding to the ground
i think with the old garden
The deliverance meets me here
in the cold sweat of the day and dusty toes of twilight
we walk shy amidst the tombs
and the deliverance meets us here.
Be blessed, David. And dwell in the fullness of the love that so many have for you. Swim around in it until your fingers get all pruney and your lungs give out and you look for the edge with grateful, tired legs. (Though fair warning; you may find no edge at all)
— caroline clunk
todah, torah & thanks
The late great Rabbi Jacob Milgrom invited his colleagues from the Protestant seminary, where he was teaching, to partake in a Passover meal. When the Baptist students saw that there were several bottles of wine on the table they subtling drew back. But the chancellor reached out and inspected one of the bottles. He read the label and said, “Ah, its okay boys—it is sacramental!” Some time later Jacob was at a baccalaureate service where the climax of the event was the Eucharist. As the body and blood were passed to him he recalls the same awkwardness he noticed at the Passover meal, this time, it was him. The chancellor, sitting next to him, reached over and passed the plate over Jacob and whispered— “It’s not for you, its only grape juice.”
There is this interesting phrase that both Paul and the ancient rabbis often used, m’aseh torah. We often render it “works of the law.” What is interesting about this phrase is its closeness to the phrase m’aseh todah. This is another phrase that certainly rhythms with the former, but also, was to be used (specifically in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the rabbinic literature of the Talmud) to complement the former phrase. The two phrases were often mistaken even in translation because in Hebrew the consonants daleth and resh are nearly indistinguishable. It is noteworthy then that m’aseh todah means “works of thanksgiving” or even the “power of thanksgiving.” The Israelites were rescued from slavery in Egypt and their response to the “mighty work” of God was the work of thanks, which took on flesh and blood as they followed the way of God, the way of torah.
So much of what it is to follow Jesus is learning the way of God, the reality of God, in response to a work that has already been “finished.” To live on the other side of slavery, death, darkness is to live into a certain texture of reality—bright, free, alive. Law, the yoke and the burden—even when crushing—is lighter that we thought. It is as if we pass through the waters everyday and refresh covenant law with thanks. To make things right in a relationship or to go the extra mile is like a prayer floating on thanks and gratitude. This week some friends got together and gifted me some funds to replace the bike that was stolen just a week ago. I opened a letter yesterday and just started crying—I was so thankful. And there is nothing that I am to do beside hold that gift in thanks as I ride for the next several years on that bike redeemed be my friends. I know I can take the metaphor to far here but let me be clear. Thanks is a good work, work that fulfills all of the instruction of God.
yes, its true—it happened while i was listening to a sermon on encouragement this morning. i walked out of the building to a disturbing sight, if you have some leads around 200-500 let me know.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
bloody soul—partly a poem but a tune I wrote/record today
pieces lay bare
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
you is kind, you is smart, you is important
— the help
the impossibility of fully accounting for oneself is conditioned by the irreducible context of every narrative reconstruction
—
slavoj zizek, the nieghbor: three inquiries in political theology
unsettling
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.
from the porch, jets wishing pasadena a happy new year.
report of sorts
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.
the path is made by walking
— nora gallagher, practicing resurrection
babies & hearses
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.
