Advent 2017 Journal #13: Freaky Midnight Christmas Animals

It's Christmas Eve, except it's midnight, which according to people who pay very close attention to numbers and clocks means it's Christmas Day. I'm not one of these people. It isn't Christmas Day until the sun rises or I wake up from a good sleep. That's when today becomes tomorrow, and no sooner.

Legend has it that Jesus was born at the stroke of midnight, and now, all these years later, the supernatural shockwave of that event causes farm animals and households pets to gain the power of speech right around this time. My cat, Pancake, isn't talking to me (yet). A quick Google search tells me that this story may have emerged from an old belief that the animals in the stable bowed down to their infant king after the virgin birth. Some say that on this night mis-treated pets take vengeance on their cruel masters (uh, Pancake?) and others say that animals become able to foretell the deaths of their owners. According to a cartoon from the 1970s called "The Night the Animals Talked," on the first Christmas goats and cows and lambs and other livestock began to spread the word of the miraculous birth of Jesus (this is not considered part of the biblical canon). New England folklore has it that bees assemble and hum Christmas carols.

I have not witnessed anything like all this tonight, though earlier today my cat finally warmed up to my girlfriend and I consider this a small Christmas miracle.

But this is not a post about animals, and I'm not going to stay up much longer, so let me get right to the point (that doesn't happen often here). It's Christmas (I'm conceding the point for the purpose of this conclusion). This is the night we remember how God dressed down, put on flesh, put his feet on the planet and redeemed all things that feel, cry, eat, hate, kiss, smell, and all the rest. The Creator, here, getting to work setting things right, though I'm not exactly sure how he set things right.

"I only know it is, I know not how or why." 

Wisdom and love, love growing under wisdom - the Great Spirit, God, g-d, doing something wild, paradoxical, maybe ironic, and fearless. Though Jesus probably did get afraid from time to time. I'm sure his mother did. I don't often feel like I'm living on a planet that God's ever really visited (then again, miserable things happened while he was here, to him even, the stories don't deny this). But with my candles burning and the snow piling up and my city so very quiet, I can come up with a picture of what that might feel like. Stillness and peace, peace growing under stillness.

I want to share with you a passage I found tonight while reading through an old collection of Thoreau's works, this from a section called "Love."

"There is at first thought something trivial in the commonness of love. So many Indian youths and maidens along these banks have in ages past yielded to the influence of this great civilizer. Nevertheless, this generation is not disgusted nor discouraged, for love is no individual's experience; and though we are imperfect mediums, it does not partake of our imperfection; though we are finite, it is infinite and eternal; and the same divine influence broods over these banks, whatever race may inhabit them, and perchance still would, even if the human race did not dwell here."

My cat still hasn't said a word to me, save for a few squeaks, but she's taken the last couple of minutes to curl up on my lap and is now happily stretched out over my arms. Thoreau has some good words about love, but it's nothing a purring cat can't tell you. I've long appreciated the earthiness of the Gospel stories, how Jesus doesn't wave a wand or cast spells, but spits in the mud, draws in the dirt, hugs, touches, and puts his hands on people. A pilgrim I know once said that this world is charged with "divine electricity." Earth is the place where the finite and the infinite collide. And sometimes it causes freaky things to happen, like old-fashioned repentance and talking animals.

Advent is over. Christmas is here. Thanks for reading, Holy Landers.

Advent 2017 Journal #12: The Advent Beach Diet

It's been a few nights since my last post, some sleepy and peaceful, some restless with grinding and gnashing of teeth. Yesterday I barely moved, didn't emerge from my bed until the afternoon and then stationed myself firmly on the couch. I declared it Migraine Day, even though it wasn't really a migraine. But it was close enough.

That's how we do things around here: close enough. It's our motto. Or at least it's usually our motto, except for tonight, because tonight I'm going to talk about paying attention to detail. That's something my father always told me. "Pay attention to detail." But why, dad? When the big picture's so much easier to look at, comprehend, control? Because details matter. The little things matter. "The secret to all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious," wrote Henry David Thoreau on Dec. 19th, 1847. Well, actually it was Marcus Aurelius (according to Google), and I have no idea when he wrote it.

My paramour, Heather, is a health coach and a few weeks ago I started whining to her about how difficult it's been for me to keep my weight down - I slowly gained about 15lbs this year, despite running 250 miles since September.

She asked, "Do you want me to coach you?"

I said, "Yes, but give me another minute to whine."

So I whined for a bit and then said, "Okay, lay it on me."

"It's your portion-sizes, your potatoes and the dressing on your salads," she said.

I've always zeroed in on the quality of the food I eat. Eggs, veggies, fruits, and roots. That's been my go-to, but I've rarely thought about the quantity. That's my background, that's the world I come from. All about the big picture. Macro stuff. Maybe it's a personality thing. But something about her advice clicked.

I thought about all the running, 2 miles here, 3 miles there, 5 miles now and then, and it all added up to 250 miles in just a few months. The little things matter. They add up. Cutting back on my diced breakfast potatoes from 2 to 1, replacing the space in the skillet with broccoli and carrots and mushrooms. Ordering my salads with light dressing instead of normal. I've lost 10 pounds in 3 weeks. From 186 to 176. Paying attention to detail.

But it's not just that. We shouldn't make a fetish out of strategy. It's about something deeper, more human. We must believe it, trust it, breathe it in, feel it, and know it in your bones. We must buy in. We must learn to live Spartan-like, with restraint and courage. We must be deliberate about identity formation and establishing a personal mini-culture.

I track everything, log all my food, and I drink at least 60 ounces of water per day. I eat between 1pm and 7pm. Routine 18 hour intermittent fasting from 7pm until 1pm the next day. Rise and repeat. And sometimes I'll take a Sunday or a Monday and just drink water. I don't eat when I'm bored. I don't eat to entertain myself (unless it's between 1pm and 7pm, but that cuts out late-night snacks). I'm trying to establish the habit of restraint. It's the organization of the non-obvious. The little things matter.

I don't hate hunger. I don't rush to fill my stomach the moment it groans. I've learned to accept it, to appreciate its proper place in my life. I want to bring balance to my attitude towards food. I have a family history of wildly unhealthy eating habits, all over the spectrum. Morbid obesity and anorexia. It is against this backdrop that Heather got through to me about not eating so many potatoes. Sometimes, when I'm tempted, at the table or in the kitchen, I'll say to myself, "The details matter." It helps.

Paying attention to detail is a great strategy, but if you don't have the culture, the intentionality, the heart, then it'll always just be a strategy and never anything real. Good ideas need something to stick to. They need nuttiness, flavor, richness, zest. There must be something between the idea floating around out there and the man or woman to whom it must attach. Culture is the gravitation pull. It brings the idea home. Culture is the honey the good idea sticks to. "Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner," wrote Thoreau. Or not. You can have all the good ideas in the world, but if you lack stickiness, the ideas are all you'll have.

Here's something Thoreau actually did write:

"Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one."

If you believe it, do it. You are in control of everything you put in your mouth. That's the best weight loss advice I can offer.

As for Advent, well, this is the season of details, of little things - of baby Jesus in his manger. Of mustard seeds, flower petals, candle flames, distant train horns, Christmas trees, nativity scenes, winter moonlight, and other little signs of hope. Human beings are little things, too, and we're reminded of this perhaps too often. The world moves fast and things fall out of fashion and interest so quickly. For some, it may be easy to feel not just old, but passed by. Life moves fast, too. Our great grandparents die, and then our grandparents, and then our parents, and we're given that not-so-subtle reminder: "you're next." "You'll never stop this train," wrote Thoreau. Or not. "Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future." Until we're forgotten. Our planet is an infinitesimal spec, a "pale blue dot" in an endless, ever-expanding universe. But then there's Advent, a strange, angsty blend of despair, desperation, and hope, that we, the little things, might matter.

I'm blowing out my candles, Holy Landers. Keep walking, and thanks for reading.

Advent 2017 Journals #10 & #11: Paul Michelson Saves the World, and Instructions on How to Survive a Wolf Bite

"I am a wolf that follows the sun, and I will catch him ere day be done."

Today is Friday, December 15th, 2017, the 12th day of Advent. Yesterday was the Memorial of St. John of the Cross, who, if you ask me (and who's asking me?) is an appropriate figure to memorialize during Advent. Advent, that time of waiting, for Christmas, for God - is it real waiting? Or is it make-believe waiting? Is it something in between or is it the sort of waiting that makes us question if there even is a difference between the real and the make-believe? Christmas will come, but things will mostly be the same. We all know it.

We'll give presents and drink Starbucks Christmas blend and maybe some eggnog. We'll visit with relatives we aren't sure actually like us but probably have to love us because we've been around so damned long, doing this Christmas thing over and over, with grandma, and big dinner spreads, and sometimes snow and sometimes not, throwing wads of freshly torn gift-wrapping paper at each other until someone gets hit in the eye or a stray shot knocks over a candle or a can of Diet Coke.

Yes, things will be the same. And another Christmas will come and go, we'll all be older, and we'll do Advent again next year. Then we'll wait, through Christmastide, and Epiphany, and Lent, and Holy Week, and Easter, and Ordinary Time, until we're back here, waiting again, even older, with another wrinkle on the forehead - Advent, the waiting, shoots through all the seasons like a root. This all makes no sense to me, but it also makes complete sense and I love it with every fiber and cell and atom of whatever it is that I'm made of. I suspect that you do, too, which is why you're here.

But why St. John of the Cross? Well, if you've been reading these meditations/mediCATIONS/journals, you're aware that I've talked a bit about the Dark Night. Talked about it more than I'd like, since it's not easy to talk about. The writing gets disjointed and you're never really able to say what you've felt or experienced. The best word for it all is "oblivion," which St. John uses at the end of his well-known poem.

I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself,
Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.

Oblivion is the best word, but it's still not right. That's why we have poetry and song, so we don't get tripped up on the "facts" and lose sight of the truth. The best any word can do is provoke the same sorts of feelings in the reader as the writer also feels. But I am guilty, I believe, of "expressing myself with too great fullness and detail," as Thoreau calls it. "It is the fault of some excellent writers [...] They give the most faithful, natural, and lifelike account of their sensations, mental and physical, but they lack moderation and sententiousness." I'm not an excellent writer. I'd be satisfied just being a writer, but I'm not sure I'm that, either. I'm definitely not a poet. But somehow god/God/g-d saw fit to give me the gift of speech, of language, and so I owe it to my existence to use that gift responsibly, to use it well, to put it in the employment of truth-seeking. It is, in this light, a tragic thing to mistake "fact" for truth.

St. John of the Cross dug deep. He was a mystic. His preoccupation wasn't with the "facts" or the perfect description, but the life, the spirit, the creation, and the durable things behind all that. Thoreau talked about nuttiness in writing. By nuttiness he meant sentences pregnant with morals, suggestions, hints, and provocations (although you could say he was nutty in other ways, too). Back in college, my old history professor, Paul Michelson (also nutty), made us look for "snappy quotes," a punchy line from the author that really drove home the point, a sentence that did a lot with a little. Thoreau's journals and books are full of snappy quotes and nuttiness, which is an accomplishment given that he spent most of his time growing potatoes and watching bugs (or perhaps potatoes and bugs have more to tell us than we think).

C. S. Lewis had names for men who could see nothing but cold facts, who would look at the Atlantic Ocean and see only "so many millions of tons of cold salt water," or look at a horse and see merely "an old-fashioned means of transport." Trousered apes and urban blockheads, he called them. These masters of "fact," these men of "science," claim the mantle of "intellect," but in fact, according to Lewis, "their heads are no bigger than ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so."

"We must dig deeply in Christ. He is like a rich mine with many pockets containing treasures: however deep we dig we will never find their end or their limit. Indeed, in every pocket new seams of fresh riches are discovered on all sides." - St. John of the Cross

The chest. The home of nuttiness. Where we mine for treasures, where search the recesses of lived experience and squeeze them like lemons, chew on them like roots, drink them down slowly like a hot, bitter cup of winter morning coffee with whiskey for grip. The chest is where we come to terms with existence, with God or Dog or Glob or Blog or god or g-d or whatever it is that made poetry and cats and Advent. The trouble with nuttiness is the same trouble with Advent. It's slow. It doesn't engineer in us politically correct reflexes or hysteria. It forms in us a different way of seeing. It is the work of St. Lucy, the patron saint of eyes. It is the work of St. John of the Cross, the patron saint of the contemplative life. There's nuttiness all around. "Pay attention to detail," as my father always says. "Details matter," as I've started saying. "Football is a game of details," as Michael Lombardi says. 

"Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a card. He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools." - C. S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I punched "Eustance Clarence urban blockhead" into my Google machine and clicked on the first link. Ironically (or not) it took me to a paper by Dr. Michelson (who can be seen from time to time dressed up as Bilbo Baggins). Here's how he describes the "urban blockhead."

"Your urban blockhead is a person who has training but not education or learning, whose information is technical without being real knowledge -- a person with an engineering mentality. The urban blockhead is a person who reads books, but not for enjoyment. He is usually spiritually impoverished, often stunted in imagination. He is one who has been taught to mindlessly debunk anything that smacks of sentiment or philosophy or moral reasoning. In short, he has learned to be rationalistic without being truly rational."

Last year I substitute taught for a middle-school science class, and even though it's not in the Official Education Standards of the State of Indiana, I sang to them Tom Bombadil's nutty poem. It's a poem that saunters, (if a poem can saunter).

Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo!
Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow!
Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!

Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! My darling!
Light goes the weather-wind and the feathered starling.
Down along under Hill, shining in the sunlight,
Waiting on the doorstep for the cold starlight,
There my pretty lady is, River-woman’s daughter,
Slender as the willow-wand, clearer than the water.
Old Tom Bombadil water-lilies bringing
Comes hopping home again. Can you hear him singing?
Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! and merry-o,
Goldberry, Goldberry, merry yellow berry-o!
Poor old Willow-man, you tuck your roots away!
Tom’s in a hurry now. Evening will follow day.
Tom’s going home home again water-lilies bringing.

Hey! come derry dol! Can you hear me singing?

The students gave me an ovation. Clapping, shouting, hooping and hollering. Something about the nuttiness connected with a piece of their souls, it settled in their chests. What the hell is Bombadil talking about? Who cares? Students need nuttiness. Human begins need nuttiness. As a young man, I needed it, and I found a blend of nuttiness, scholarship, spirit, and heart in the Huntington University Department of History. As I write this, I'm surrounded by good books, Walden and The Abolition of Man on the floor, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by my leg, Walking by Thoreau and an Orthodox Bible spread open on the table next to me, Virginia Wolf and Madeleine L'Engle by my armchair (well, not them literally, but you get the nuttiness of what I'm saying). It's taken some time, and some life, but I think I finally get the nuttiness (the richness, the flavor) of what the liberal arts is about.

I subbed again last week, this time for a reading class. I read them a poem by C. S. Lewis called "Satan Speaks," which he wrote immediately after his service in the First World War, before his Christian conversion. I informed the students that this poem has a sense of irony. It's upside down. It's not what Lewis believes, but it conveys a truth.

I am Nature, the Mighty Mother,
I am the law: ye have none other.

I am the flower and the dewdrop fresh,
I am the lust in your itching flesh.

I am the battle’s filth and strain,
I am the widow’s empty pain.

I am the sea to smother your breath,
I am the bomb, the falling death.

I am the fact and the crushing reason
To thwart your fantasy’s new-born treason.

I am the spider making her net,
I am the beast with jaws blood-wet.

I am a wolf that follows the sun
And I will catch him ere day be done.

That's a poem with nuttiness. "I am a wolf that follows the sun, and I will catch him ere day be done." With a little imagination, that is I think the best description of the Dark Night which I have ever read. You are lost. Hunted. Tracked by something ferocious, but also twisted, something ironic. A wolf that follows the sun. Folks have a life story. There's a place for that. The facts matters, but the facts don't tell the truth. For a time, I was hunted by a wolf. You know what I mean. Where the only escape is a good nap, or a sleep you hope you don't wake up from. Because when the sun rises, the wolf is there, at your bedside, smiling, licking his lips. Waiting. Like Advent, but upside down. I can talk about divorce, chronic illness, anorexia, feelings of betrayal, years and dates, names and places, and on and on. But when I tell you that I spent years running from a wolf that follows the sun, dammit if you don't know what I mean. There's nuttiness there. You know it with your chest, if you've still got a chest. because that's exactly the part of you the wolf sinks his fangs into. I am grateful tonight for Thoreau, for poetry, for the liberal arts, which produces men with chests, and plants deep within them the soulful nuttiness to move forward, to soldier through, to keep with their sauntering, even after suffering a nasty wolf bite. We are Holy Landers. No one ever made it to the promise land without a few scars.

Advent 2017 Journal #9: Paradoxology

"Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful." - Henry David Thoreau

I told my therapist once that family problems always seem to unfold with a strange, tragic sense of irony.

Years ago, my mother watched as one of her family members slowly grew to over 500 pounds. I have vague childhood memories of this extremely large woman, her floral print dresses, and her funeral. This experience, plus a joyous mix of trauma and disappointment and things I won't mention, contributed to my mom's anorexia.

Her illnesses, physical and mental, played a role in the "dissolution" (as the newspaper put it) of her marriage, and I saw this, and I was going through a mysterious, chronic ailment of my own, drowning in family darkness, and I told my (now-ex) girlfriend, "I don't want this to happen to me, to us, I don't want to become my mother." But it did, and I did.

I remember the moment when irony laughed right in my face. I was standing in my kitchen, my dad on my right, my mother in front of me, and my newly exed-girlfriend on my left. They were talking, but I was quiet, mesmerized. There they all were: my mom who didn't like my ex, my ex who hated my mom (and I certainly shared that feeling at times), and my father who was filing for divorce and had moved out and left me to clean up his mess. A matrix of broken relationships and irony howling. All the chances that I'd had over the past year to get out, dancing like sugar plums in my head (hey, it's almost Christmas). But there I was.

"How did I get here? What terrible decisions did I make in my life which lead me to this point?"

But just when it seems like tragedy and irony have had the last laugh, there's paradox. Someone or something rips open the curtains and lets the bright winter light come pouring in through the windows of your black room. The chain breaks. Your lover leaves you. And suddenly, perhaps with the help of St. Lucy, you see clearly all your shit and all your misery and your life for what it has become. And purpose and strength come surging back into your body and your spirit rises. You get a grip, you remember who you are, you stand straight, Spartan-like, and you see The Road once again.

Sometimes the best way to help those we love is to not try to help those we love. Treat adults like adults. Give back lost dignity. A little respect goes a long ways. It isn't "tough love." It's love done right. I mean, I'm no expert, and I don't know if it works, but the only time lately I can remember my infinitely stubborn, irrationally contradictory mom not challenging me on a point is when I said, "Hey, I'm going to try something new. From now on, I'm not going to ask if you've been eating. You're an adult. You have the right to eat what you want, when you want, in whatever quantity you want. You come as you are." Things changed between us for the better after that.

It's Advent, it's almost Christmas, and there's a lot of talk about Jesus and gingerbread and hope and "love." That ex-girlfriend liked to talk a lot about "love." I get it. It's an important part of the faith. But it's not the only part of the faith. The old virtues still matter. Catholic virtues, Greek virtues, American virtues. They're important! They're vital!

It's the difference between love as the only thing and love as the greatest thing. The old "cheap grace" sermons of traveling holiness preachers are jingle-belling in my ears, and dammit I won't sit here and while a mob of candle-holding, carol-singing "We are the World" minions destroy the planet by trying to save it.

When love is the only thing, it looks like sweet words, mindless affirmation, "helping people," the "humanitarian with a guillotine." Isabel Paterson's classic line comes to mind: "Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends."

When love is the greatest thing, it inspires courage, compassion, rootedness of life, attention to detail, self-respect, and beautiful life-keeping. It observes the image of God in our brothers and sisters and puts their dignity first. I guess what I'm saying is this: let's learn how to love without trying to fix, save, or control everything and everyone with our oh-so-impressive mind powers and own our shit first. That's the paradox of Advent. That's the...hell, there are so many paradoxes in Advent and the manager and the cross and all the rest of it that I'll be up all night if I go any further. Just know that there's a paradox bubbling under all this.

I hope your Feast of St. Lucy was a blessed one. My apologies to G. K. Chesterton, whose picture I used for this post but never mentioned. He is the Paragon of Paradox. I'm blowing out my candle, reading a chapter from Walden, and heading to bed. Good night, Holy Landers.

Advent 2017 Journal #8: Walking with Our Lady of Guadalupe

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Come, all ye Holy Landers, Walkers, Readers, and Lovers. Come all ye who don't walk near as much as they'd like, who don't get around to reading like they should, and who want to love but find that people are much easier to stomach when they're disguised as a social cause. All ye Holy Landers, who change diapers, grade papers, and work with your hands, but nonetheless find yourself on a Road, your hearts burning within - come - and remember that Jesus disguised himself on the "oh-so-ordinary" road to Emmaus, that Our Lady of Guadalupe came to St. Juan Diego on his "usual" route. Today is December 12th. This is Advent. There are no ordinary roads anymore. We are sauntering to the Holy Land.

Come, all ye Holy Landers. We do not saunter alone. Luke and Cleopas were not alone on the Emmaus road. St. Juan Diego was not alone on Tepeyac Hill. We know this now. They did not. That is, until they did - until Jesus broke bread and Mary surprised poor Juan. It doesn't seem like we're walking anywhere when we're going about our daily chores and it doesn't seem like anyone is with us when we're so damned powerless all the damned time - but we are walking and there is someone here. When I'm at my best, I believe that, and even when I don't believe it, I believe it. Things can get a little paradoxical on the Road.

"No estoy yo aqui que soy tu madre?"

"Am I not here, I who am your mother?"

This is what Mary said to Juan on her fifth visit. It comes as a surprise to me, a Protestant turned Mennonite, to learn that I have a second mother. It's also a bit of a relief, given the tenuous mental and physical health of my earthly mother. That Maria will be here for me after my mother dies is a small comfort. Perhaps one day it will become a very, very big comfort. I did, after all, write a Day of the Dead meditation. I think I'll ask Our Lady of Guadalupe for some prayers, ask her to remember my family. I'll find some roses for my mother. They will guide Maria to this place. "Mary is a woman who fights to give flesh to the Gospel," says Pope Francis. Well, I want some Gospel flesh. We all need Gospel flesh. My mother needs Gospel flesh - literally.

Her legs hurt, especially with the cold weather. She doesn't do much walking these days. There's all different kinds of walking. Cardio walking. Woods walking. Walking on the moon. Walking for a cause. Walking across the street. Walking with a limp, which my father did for years before his knee-replacement. Power walking. Tip-toe walking. Walking the dog. Bob Seger wrote a song about strut walking. Jackson Browne wrote a song about quiet walking. There's walking this way and walking on the wild side. There's walking 500 miles, walking to New Orleans, and walking on broken glass. There's walking alone, there's walking not alone, and there's walking like a man. There's even walking on water, which I believe even when I don't believe. There's also a "cakewalk," which is what my mother called cancer.

"Cancer was a cakewalk compared with this disease."

"This disease" being anorexia. She had cancer. Now she has anorexia. The English language has a lot of synonyms for "sad." Sorrowful, mournful, harrowing, chilling, agonizing, painful, dreary, bleak, disheartening, dispiriting. All of these touch on it. But there are no words for how I feel about that line. Even my feelings can't quite register the darkness I see there. There's something so despairing, so dreadful, so terrifying about that line. Something in between our feelings and our words. Maybe this is what older writers and Jesus and Mary and Juan and Luke called the demonic. I believe in the demonic. Even when I don't believe in God or miracles or Advent, I believe in the demonic. The demonic loves paradox, but it's always sneaky, always in the most corrupt of all possible directions. That's why I'm calling on Maria tonight. To come and walk with me on my ordinary road. To help me find some unexpected flowers. To give the Gospel flesh.

Advent 2017 Journal #7: There Goes a Holy Lander

The Christmastide Vespers Office Psalm:

For you have rescued my soul from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living (Psalm 56:12).

During the warm months here in Bluffton I enjoy a good evening walk - usually before sunset, near the school and suburb where I live and work. There's a park nearby and it's good to see the children playing. There's a factory, too, humming and clanging and beeping, with orange lights that fill the warm, friendly summer twilight. I pass the old ball diamond where my little league team used to practice. If I keep on straight for about half a mile I'll be at my mother's apartment. If I turn right I'll pass the elementary school and some familiar teenage streets. A summer walk is good for the heart. A spring walk lifts the spirit. An autumn walk grounds a man.

Thoreau believed that Walkers were a special breed. He called Walkers "a fourth estate, outside Church and State and People." The freedom, leisure, and independence which are the capital of the Walking profession cannot be bought - they come only by the grace of God. "It requires a dispensation from heaven to be a Walker. You must be born into the family of Walkers." My work requires that I find time to myself. A lot of time. I'm at the beck and call of my customers 24/7. My phone is (almost) never off, which is perhaps the greatest tragedy of my day-to-day existence. But a good walk helps me put the work out of my mind. And when I'm really in the spirit I'll go for a saunter. These don't happen quite as much, but these are the sorts of walks Thoreau is really talking about. You get off the road, away from the sidewalks (and the phone), and you walk wherever you please - through woods and fields and over hills, free from the world. If you feel tired, you lie down on some soft grass or against a suitable tree and take a nap. You lose track of time. I'm certain that Jesus took some walks like this, and John the Baptist, too.

According to Thoreau, the word Sauntering is:

[B]eautifully derived from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre, to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Saint-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere.

Kings and rulers (and Satan) all have seats and thrones. The Jesus of the Gospels did a lot of walking. He walked into the wilderness where he met the devil, walked along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, walked into synagogues, walked up the mount where he preached, walked through crowds in Gergesenes, in Capernaum, in Cana and "all the cities and villages" (Matthew 9:35). John the Baptist was a traveling preacher, a rover, he walked the barren wilderness of Judah and lived an ascetic life, baptizing people in river water and shouting "Prepare ye the way of the Lord!"

Today is the 7th day of Advent, which according to everyone, ironic and/or otherwise, is about preparation. This time of year, walking requires some prep, some layers, some heavy socks, a hat and a scarf. But it's worth it. And if you run, put on your gear and hit the road. I've been on a handful of Advent runs this month. Some short, some longer. I don't often stop and take pictures but there's something about running down an old stretch of railroad (abandoned, I think, the one pictured above). The crossties are level with the ground and green moss and weeds grow up around the tracks. It's a soft place to run. And it's narrow and straight. It guides you, almost takes each step for you. This is how some holiness preachers would describe entire sanctification.

You won't find sanctification on an Advent run, but there may be a benediction out there, in the cold, in the glow of cheap Christmas lights. I read this once: "The ancients believed the Earth was the center of the universe. We believe that we are." A good run or a cold walk under a dark, expansive Advent sky cures the soul of this notion. "Make His paths straight." Go now, you pilgrim, you Holy Lander. Go get some repentance. I'll spare you the inspiration porn and tell you what I told you last year: You better check yo'self before you wreck yo'self.

I'll leave you with this passage from Thoreau:

So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn.

I think I'll stick that atop the page. Maybe give the whole blog a little facelift. Thanks for reading, Holy Landers.

Completely Un-Ironic Advent 2017 Meditation #6: The Ghost of Guadalupe

Walking outside the city
Walking from my home
My usual path
Under the hot sun
My feet upon the sand
And unto me an apparition did appear
The Ghost of Guadalupe

I'm a man of no importance
I'm a man of little means
Tasked to build a church
To relieve the burdens of her people
Flowers she did give me
As a sign
The Ghost of Guadalupe

During Advent
We are not safe from miracles
Or ghosts
Or signs
Even an ordinary man
Walking an ordinary path

"No estoy yo aqui que soy tu madre?"

"Am I not here, I who am your mother?"

Non-Ironic Advent 2017 Meditation #5: The Legend of Saint Agnes, or How to Bury the Lede

The cold has settled in, my candle is burning, and I can hear the 11pm Norfolk Southern way out in the dark, Southwest of where I'm sitting. Today is December 9th, the day where hungry, faithful Catholics celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. I'm going to talk about that in a minute. First I want to tell you about this cup of coffee I'm sipping on. I poured in a little Jameson to give it grip. "Grip" is the best way I can think to describe what whiskey (or bourbon) adds to a cup o' joe. You take a sip and after that hot coffee goes down and you feel the liquor hit the back your throat, you squeeze the mug, your cheeks and jaw tighten, your tongue presses against the roof of your mouth. You swallow it in deep. Satisfaction.

Advent can have that same effect. "Prepare ye the way of the Lord," cried John the Baptist. "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Translation: Get a grip. On yourself, on your sin, on your bull shit (maybe I like that Jameson a little too much). No one's ever had that Old Time Gospel Repentance without getting a grip. I asked a friend the other day, "Do you love Truth? Can you put the pursuit of Truth above everything else? Above comfort, security? Can you accept the pain that sometimes comes with Truth?" Enneagram Fours (Eric Wolfe) will recognize this as an obvious, fundamental question. Everyone else will think I'm insane or misunderstand what I'm asking.

"If you only knew what darkness I am plunged into," wrote St. Therese, the Little Flower. Here's the thing about the Dark Night of the Soul: when you're in it, it doesn't feel like a "night," the implication being that the sun will rise and "day" will come again. It feels like the end. So when/if it does end, you'll cry and celebrate and dance like you didn't know you could or ever would again. The sun came up on my Dark Night in late 2015. I remember, about that time, sitting in Sunday School, I felt impassioned, hungry for hard truth, reawakened by an "infinite expectation of the dawn." It was a transcendental moment, which has become a not-too-unfamiliar thing for me. I felt a push to "drive life into corner," to live "sturdy and Spartan-like, to put to rout all that was not life," to dispense with identity and ideology and wounds and be burned by holy fire. I sat in my chair, my eyes closed. I wrapped my fingers around the arms, I squeezed them tight. I got a grip.

A peregrino named Ben Camino wrote this during Advent 2013:

I’m talking about hope. Clinging. My vocation is to encourage clinging. With bloody fingernails, if need be, with teeth, arms, words, poetry, advent laments, late night arguments, church reform, hearing confession, the bread and wine, visiting the sick, love, especially love.

Hope's never made much sense to me. But if it involves all that, if hope is clinging, if hope is getting a grip, then maybe I'm better at it than I thought. Hope always sounded like holly-jolly propaganda, like a Macy's benediction under tinsel and glitter, but what's the point of all this preparing and repentance if we aren't, at some level, expecting God to come down remind us that life is definitely worth living, and, more than that, that's it's awesome to be alive and, maybe one day, be alive again? That’s got to be hope.

Okay, I've made you wait long enough. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception. I think highly of my readers. I believe you're all well aware that this does not refer to the virginal birth of Jesus, but rather, to Mary's being conceived without inheriting Original Sin. If you didn't know that, then get a grip. Now, because the Eastern Orthodox Church doesn't believe in a genetic or passed down Original Sin, they celebrate the Feast of the Not-Really-Immaculate-But-Still-Impressive Conception. It should be noted that this is not a commentary on Mary's status as All Holy or on her virginity. And this brings me to the point of this completely non-ironic Advent Meditation: St. Agnes of Rome, the patron saint of chastity and virgins (and many, many other things).

The details are fuzzy, but the tradition of the Church holds that St. Agnes was martyred at the age of 12 by Emperor Diocletian. She was a beautiful, wealthy girl and young men came from all over to propose to her, but she turned them down, as she believed that she had a heavenly spouse in Christ. One scorned man turned her into the authorities as a Christian. She was arrested and dragged through the streets naked but miraculously her hair grew long and covered her body. When a mob tried to rape her, the assailants were struck blind and the son of the prefect who condemned her struck dead. The authorities tried to burn her at the stake, but the wood would not catch fire. A soldier then drew his short-sword and stabbed her through the throat. Would that I had a grip on the faith as strong as this little girl.

According to a half-assed Google search, the name Agnes is derived from the Greek name Hagne, meaning pure or holy, and the Anglo-Saxon name Harnish comes from Agnes. For this reason, I can't help but feel a special connection to St. Agnes, even if she couldn't legally drink the coffee I most enjoy. Her feast day is January 21. At the risk of sounding relevant, I dare say that as the patron saint of rape survivors St. Agnes should perhaps be remembered a little more loudly these days. Maybe next year she'll contend for the cover of TIME.

I'm blowing my candle out and heading for bed. Thanks for reading, pilgrims.

Advent 2017 Meditation #4: The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, or How to Overflow with Genial Mirthfulness

The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, The Call to Prayer

Keep a fire burning in your eye
Pay attention to the open sky
You never know what will be coming down
I don't remember losing track of you
You were always dancing in and out of view
I must've always thought you'd be around
Always keeping things real by playing the clown
Now you're nowhere to be found

It's another midnight Advent meditation after another miserable game of Madden football. I read once that people need meditation the most precisely when they desire it the least. What I'd really like to do right now is fall asleep, but this is the stuff Advent's made of, fighting off tired eyes, keeping watch when you'd rather not, pushing through the angst, waiting, waiting for the oddly-real frustration of a make-believe video game to dissipate. If this all seems silly, consider: you're playing chess, and you've got a move planned, and you make it, you move your Queen across the board and suddenly, for no reason at all, she stops working and breaks and you lose her. That's what playing Madden football is like. I'm committed to the remainder of this season, but after that, I think I'll not play the game again. When life hands you an easy choice, make it and be grateful, pilgrim. There are hard ones coming down the pike.

Today is December 8th, 2017, and we here in Northeast Indiana received our first snow. Loose flakes swirling in frigid winds, but no accumulation. Tomorrow I'll go to my brother's for some welding. Right now I'm listening to Jackson Browne and thinking about time. Time is a funny thing. Time's been weighing on me heavy. I've lost some people this year. Older folks, but not that old.

Brian had cancer. He fought it for a while, a decade I think, but it finally took him this year. Killed him dead. He stored a Camaro here at the storage facility for years. He told me a couple times that building a garage addition was just too expensive, what with all the permits. His wife called me some weeks after the funeral and came and got it and I cleaned the space out for the next tenant. Unit #813, I think it was. Sometimes during the warm months he'd bring his golf club and practice his swing in the big yard to our east. He'd park his red Ford Ranger and hit wiffle balls. But not anymore.

Ralph died suddenly. Also cancer, I think. It was far along by the time they caught it and he went fast. Couldn't have been more than a month after the diagnosis. I ate breakfast with him quite a bit (and Brian, too) at a big round table with lots of other old, retired Republicans. Ralph was the GOP chair of our county and we disagreed on most things. Ron Paul, Israel-Palestine, police violence, etc. But I enjoyed drinking coffee and listening to the early morning banter. He had an infectious laugh that sort of wheezed and lifted as he smiled and his big body rocked back and forth. It's harder to hear in my mind now than it was a year ago.

The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, The Hymn

I don't know what happens when people die
Can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It's like a song playing right in my ear
That I can't sing
I can't help listening

Remember the last few minutes at the end of The Sandlot when the kids fade away from their old ball diamond and grow up and the narrator tells us what they went on to do? That's what it's like eating at the breakfast table with old men, only it's the exact opposite: they've already done what they came here to do (or perhaps missed their chance) and the fade-out isn't a child growing into an adult, it's an old man going to the grave, returning to the dust. Slowly, one by one, like the ball diamond in the movie, the table gets emptier.

Brian and Ralph are both gone, but I'm still here. When people die, I feel like I'm left waiting. Waiting on something. Waiting on them, maybe. Because if we're not waiting, then they're just gone, and I don't know if that makes sense. Maybe we're waiting on death to take us, too. Or maybe we're waiting on resurrection. I know don't. But we're waiting, and if there's a human being anywhere on this planet whose stuck in The Waiting, then Advent lives. "The waiting is the hardest part," wrote the recently departed Tom Petty. He knows.

The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, The Refrain

Keep a fire for the human race
And let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily, it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don't let the uncertainty turn you around
(The world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound

I said to a friend tonight that if you've had a painful life, with abuse and suffering and want and trauma, it's easy and natural to look back and mourn that these times ever happened. And if you've had a pleasant life, with friendships and family and celebrations and excitement, it's easy and natural to look back and mourn that these times are past. We've been dealt a losing hands, my friends. The best remedy I've ever found for this predicament is cliche, boring, and profoundly difficult: pay attention. To the subtle things, the nuances, the details. To the people you love, to the planet, to music. Lose yourself in it, when you can.

On October 26, 1853, age 36, Thoreau wrote in his journal, "When, after feeling dissatisfied with my life, I aspire to something better, am more scrupulous, more reserved and continent, as if expecting somewhat, suddenly I find myself full of life as a nut of meat - am overflowing with a quiet, genial mirthfulness." As if expecting somewhat. I heard once or twice or a thousand times someone preach that Advent had something to do with "expectant waiting." Something about "has already come, is coming, and will come again" (I never get that right). Time is a funny thing. So is Advent. So are Advent meditations. I don't have much of a conclusion for you. I'm just trying to make a joyful sound, trying to find some genial mirthfulness here in the middle of the night, with my cat on my lap, my candle burning, and Jackson Browne on the radio. Thanks for reading, pilgrims. I do deeply appreciate each and every one of you who share your limited time on this planet with me by reading these meditations.

The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, Closing

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive but you'll never know

Advent 2017 Meditation #3: A Google Search into Essential Time Management Skills for an Excellent Career, or How to Murder Thoreau

I'm getting yet another late start. This time it's 10:30pm. I've spent the last hour demonstrating remarkably poor time management, doing things like watching a Church league basketbrawl game, and practicing a song for an open mic on Thursday, and fixing drywall, which could easily be done tomorrow or the day after or any time that I'm not supposed to be meditating on all things Advent. And I wouldn't be a "bad time management person" if I hadn't just complained to my therapist today about how I'm terrible with time management. I feel like there ought to be a word for "bad time management person" Maybe an "Edwin." Let's try that again: And I wouldn't be an "Edwin" if I hadn't just complained to my therapist today about how I'm an "Edwin." Oh, yes. That definitely works.

So now, to get with this meditation, I'm smoking (tobacco, for all you miscreants out there) and drinking, but not as much as I did during meditation #1 when I more or less hit "publish" before it was actually finished (I went back and cleaned it up).

I just Googled "time management." I clicked on the first link and it took me to a remarkably uninviting page. Like a house you might walk into and, for some reason, before anyone speaks a word, find that you feel completely unwanted. Maybe there's stacks of clutter, or it's dirty (not messy), or there's strange decor, or children. To my surprise, that link contained an eye-opener: Good time management requires an important shift in focus from activities to results: being busy isn’t the same as being effective. (Ironically, the opposite is often closer to the truth.) What?! Ironically?! Ben Camino has that trademarked! And yet...and yet...I guess that is ironic. I mean, I think it's ironic. Maybe it's only ironic because I'm an Edwin and I have no time management skills and so what's obvious to non-Edwins comes as a surprise to me. Being busy isn't the same as being effective? Bosh. I'm certain that in order to be effective you must be busy. Let's move on. What are the benefits to time management?

Greater productivity and efficiency. Makes sense.

Less stress. I get that.

Better professional reputation.

Hmm. Now I'm suspicious. I spent about an hour today on the phone talking with Eric Wolfe. I don't regret it one bit, but I'm certain it was poor time management and there's not a chance it did a thing for my LinkedIn account. "Better professional reputation." Thoreau would vomit up his carrot and potato garden if he heard a phrase so abhorrent. An appropriate Thoreau quote:

"The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?" 

I am certain of it, that Thoreau had scarcely a sense of time, let alone "time management," and the idea that he should learn it for the sake of a "better professional reputation," well, well, it's absurd. 

I read a bit in Thoreau's journal just now, a small break from writing, and I discovered this, from Sept. 7, 1854, age 34:

"I do not so much wish to know how to economize time as how to spend it." 

He goes on:

"The scenery, when it is truly seen, reacts on the life of the seer. How to live. How to get the most life. How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my every-day business, I am as busy as a bee about it."

AHHH-HAAA!!! To be busy, busy as a bee! In pursuit of the good life, of what is true and beautiful and right!

"I ramble over all fields on that errand, and am never so happy as when I feel myself heavy with honey and wax."

He's really rolling with this bee analogy.

"I am like a bee searching livelong day for the sweets of nature."

That settles it. I'm going on a run tomorrow. Getting outdoors and searching for life. Too much screen time these days. Too much phone. I want to run down this old weedy railroad track I discovered a few weeks ago. I want to jog around the downtown and run past what old brick is left and see what I can see. I want to smell the grease wafting from the lunchtime kitchens. I want to hear the traffic. I want to feel the concrete under my running shoes and find the rhythm of my breath. I want to hum around this city, paying attention. I was made for this. Some years ago when I really wanted off the grid I bought a 49cc moped, the sort that doesn't require a driver's license, and I'd crawl around town at about 30mph. Life slows down on a moped. You start noticing houses and trees and shapes and colors your eyes never caught before. I've missed that moped now for about 3 years, but since taking up jogging in the summer I've enjoyed getting back to that slow move.

I love a slow move.

Advent is a slow move, when I stop and give it a chance. Advent isn't for the Effective Time Manager With A Better Professional Reputation. Or rather, they aren't for it. I don't think they'd get along. Me, I want to be busy being slow. Last Advent I tried to shut 'er down and take a nap. This year I think I want to start buzzing. Cooking potatoes, cleaning the house, fixing things, lifting things and going on runs, learning new music, drinking new drinks, loving what ought to be loved and hating what ought to be hated. Oh, and I want to read more of this Thoreau journal. I'll fit a nap in at least a few times, no doubt. But tonight I can't stand the thought of letting good honey go to waste. There are new moons, howling wolves, and strange skies out there. "If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being," wrote Emerson. This is Advent. We were made for this. Tonight I am ready to brave this city and this life and this season. Tomorrow I will make my way through my day like a bee, zipping from flower to flower, I will manage my time like a 19 year old manages a Waffle House at 3am. I will be an Edwin.

I'm blowing out this Advent candle for the night and falling asleep with this journal. Be well, pilgrims. Be slow.

The Christmastide Vespers Office for Tuesday of the First Week of Advent, The Hymn

O God, creation's secret force,
Yourself unmoved, yet motion's source,
Who from the morn till evening's ray
Through every change does guide this day:

Grant us, when this short life past,
The glorious evening that will last;
That, by a holy death attained
Eternal glory may be gained.

Grant this, O Father ever one
With Jesus Christ Your only Son
And Holy Ghost, whom all adore,
Reigning and blessed forevermore.

Advent 2017 #2: Why do people punch holes in walls?

Last night I didn't get to sleep until the nearby Norfolk Southern blew its 2am whistle. This morning I woke up hungover and a little high. And today, well, today was an all-around bad day. I feel it, too. Precious frustration. It must be precious for as tight as my mind and body hold onto it. Out of control and out of ideas. Afraid. Nervous. Weak. My cat won't stop squeaking and she's driving me mad. And it's all compounded by the fact that I'm struggling to hit my Advent stride. Is it really Advent? It was 50 degrees today. This can't be Advent. And I can't write. I can't do anything. My self-help books tell me: don't catastrophize. That's the ugliest word I think I've ever read or said.

There's this damnable hole in my wall that I've been trying to patch for close to 3 weeks. Way back when, during a really bad day, I put it there. I always think about that day when I listen to Jackson Browne's "In the Shape of a Heart."

There was a hole left in the wall
From some ancient fight
About the size of a fist
Or something thrown that had missed
And there were other holes as well
In the house where our nights fell
Far too many to repair
In the time that we were there

I've ignored that hole since 2014. For a while I covered it with a long scarf that hung from a hat rack. Eventually I stopped using the room and didn't have to look at it. Now I have some plans for the room and so this month I decided, finally, 3 years later, it was time to fix that hole in the wall (which is, indeed, the size of a fist). This hole is a bitch to drywall. It's been impossibly uncooperative. Sanding issues, drying issues, spackling issues, putty issues. Enough issues for multiple hour-long therapy sessions. My girlfriend, after watching me re-spackle the hole for the 4th time, asked if I regretted putting it there. "What even is regret?" I asked. I looked down at all the dust and paint and mess and I shouted, "YES, I REGRET IT."

Why do people punch holes in walls? When we were all much younger, teenagers, my cousin punched his floor. Family shit, I think. He broke his hand. If you have to choose between punching a floor or punching drywall, always go with the drywall. When I was 20 I punched a cheap fake wooden door. The heart controls the fist. The way I see it, you buy drywall putty for two reasons: 1) after a clumsy accident or 2) after a killer heartbreak (and it could be any heartbreak, not necessarily romantic). An important note: people don't punch holes in walls to solve their problems, so "what did that accomplish?" isn't speaking the correct language. They don't do it "out of anger," either. That sounds like something from one of my Buddhist self-help books. No, they do it because there's not a damned thing else left to do. Some might call it "catastrophizing," but when there's no way out, you make one...with a hole...in a wall. Like Andy Dufresne, who put one big hole in the wall of his prison cell and crawled to freedom through 500 yards of shit-smelling foulness and came out clean on the other side. Lucky for him, he didn't have to patch the thing.

Monday's Christmastide Vespers Office Refrain

He will judge the world with righteousness and the people with his truth.

I wonder if this hole in my wall isn't alive, if it isn't rejecting my feeble attempts to repair it because, like out of some sci-fi/horror movie, the real wound is festering, in some heart, in a life, and hasn't been healed. This house is young, built in 2009, but it's seen its share of pain. Maybe places and homes need truth and righteousness as much as people.

When I hear that Jackson Browne song, I think about how I put that hole in my wall because I love my mother and couldn't help her. A hole in the wall in the shape of a heart. I think of the cross and the sacred heart of Jesus. I don't mean to mix our liturgical seasons here, it's Advent, not Easter, this ain't the time for crucifixion talk, but if we're out here waiting in the dark, with our candle lit, then it helps to know that the god we're waiting for might just be willing to punch out a hole in the universe for us

in the shape of a heart.

Amen.

Advent 2017 #1: Thoreau's Danger

Hello, friends and Joes (plumber Joes, G.I. Joes, regular Joes, cups of Joe, and pilgrim Joes). Today is the first day of Advent and I'm drinking and smoking and writing to forget a horrendous game of Madden 18 where I threw a pick-6 tied 14-14 in the 4th with under a minute left on the clock. Football doesn't get me in the writing mood, win or lose, but definitely lose, and especially a loss like that. I'd be better off going to the gym, working out my temple of the Holy Spirit, but I've already ran 2 miles today and if I don't start this now I'll be up until the second day of Advent.

I think it might be easier to take a loss like that on a beach in Kona, Hawaii as opposed to a small town in Northeast, Indiana where the quaint, historic downtown has more sheet metal than freshly pointed old brick. But thems the breaks. And now it's December, and it's colder, and darker, and I have to write each and every night until Christmas comes. Last year I followed a $15 liturgical calendar which I think I ordered again last week but it hasn't arrived yet. This year I'm using Christmastide by Phillip Tickle to Sherpa me through Advent.

I also have Walden and part of Thoreau's journal next to me, just in case. In his Dec. 6th, 1854 entry (age 37) he wrote:

After lecturing twice this winter I feel that I am in danger of cheapening myself by trying to become a successful lecturer, i.e., to interest my audiences. I am disappointed to find that most that I am and value myself for is lost, or worse than lost, on my audience. I fail to get even the attention of the mass. I should suit them better if I suit myself less. I feel that the public demand an average man - average thoughts and manner - not originality, not even absolute excellence. You cannot interest them except as you are like them and sympathize with them. I would rather that my audience come to me than that I should go to them, and so they be sifted; i.e., I would rather write books than lectures. 

And so I blog. And I try to avoid Thoreau's danger, and I do not cheapen myself, and I deal with no stares from disinterested audiences, or yawns or glances at the watch. I write for me, not for consumption. But come as you are, read if you wish, join me on this pilgrimage. Journey through Advent with me, pull it apart, test it for yourself, until Christmas morning comes and we can put it all behind us for another year. But for now, God is coming. God is on the move.

What would you do if you received news that "God is on the move"? Thank you Amber from this morning's Advent sermon for this Lewis-esque imagery.

God is on the move.

I read Lion and the Witch a few months ago but suddenly I feel the need to read it again.

If I heard that "God is on the move," I know what I'd do. To borrow a phrase (nay, a judgement) from my friend, Jennifer, I'd let the mystic inside me finally win out against troll. That's not just some saying she came up with, that's her sermon for me, that's her "repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand." That's lady Jennifer the Baptist tellin' me to check myself before I wreck myself. And it's Advent that maybe gives us the eyes to see a Facebook comment as something more than a Facebook comment, maybe a sermon, a cold drink after a run under the Thanksgiving sky, a "come on down to the river to pray," where you can relax those jaw muscles and let your paramour love you as much as she wants, all the time, whatever it takes. That's the danger Thoreau doesn't discuss, of cheapening yourself - not for others, but for yourself. To avoid, to protect, to get on with life. Advent is not the season for "getting on with life."

Jesus said to his disciples: "Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come."

I'm nowhere near as good at this as Ben Camino, who had me clapping along with his Ironic Advent Meditation as he insulted some Ordinary guy from Ohio. "You insulted him a little bit, [Ben], you got a little out of order yourself," so sayeth the great Robert De Niro.

Ben, I read a book called Perks of Being a Wallflower when I was 16 during Life Science class and "Landslide" was a big part of the penultimate driving-a-truck-through-a-tunnel moment in that gay, emo, early 2000s paperback novel, or at least that's how I remember it. A girlfriend I was trying to impress always carried it around in her bag and so I read it. That's not where I first heard the song, mind you. I was a classic rock kid. Creed and the other 00s bands were shit to me. I wanted Zeppelin, The Eagles, AC/DC. I knew "Landslide" was from Nicks, formerly of Fleetwood Mac (I listened to "Go Your Own Way" when that same girl was both breaking up with me and when I finally broke up with her). Ben, "Landslide" is really important to Millennials. It meant something to us. It may be the only thing I remember from Life Science.

"Can I handle the seasons of my life? I don't know."

Maybe the best thing about that song is the guitar picking, or Stevie Nicks' ghostly voice.

"I've been 'fraid of changin' 'cuz I built my life around you."

That sticks. That really sticks. Can I build my life around no one? In a cabin? In the woods? I want to. I don't know if I can. I don't know if I'm called to that. Or maybe I'm called to that and more. In the space in between. Between the woods and something else. Between the waiting and the arrival. That's Advent. This weird space where "Landslide" means something and doesn't mean anything at all and you find the meaning in the beauty and you listen to it on YouTube and Tom Petty starts playing, a voice from beyond the grave, another rock star I listened to when I was 17. "Learning to Fly."

"The good old days, may not return, the rocks might melt, and the sea may burn."

I don't even know what that means, but I learned something from it. Sometimes it helps to have a songwriter point out the obvious. And at least it wasn't Creed.

In Christmastide Vespers Office for the Sunday of the first week of Advent, there's a prayer:

Almighty God, give all of us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in that last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

If you're in this with me, if you're reading your way through Advent, burning your candle, then I guess we ought to prepare for life immortal, "The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoots upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted himself firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?" That's the quote from Thoreau I put at the top of this blog a year ago. We are made for these times. If you think you aren't quite right, remember: you were made for this. That applies to basically everything, unless, I guess, it's sinful, in which case it doesn't apply, and if you feel like you're made for something sinful, well, you've got bigger problems than this Advent blog can handle. But it definitely applies to Advent. We were made for this.

Today was the first Sunday of Advent. We made it through. Maybe hope sustained us, maybe it was the veggie omelet from Johnny's in Huntington. I hear a 2am train in the distance and it's lulling me to sleep. Be well, pilgrim. I'll see you tomorrow.

~~~~~

Pilgrim Dude is in love and this is the sort of thing he writes when it's late and his identity is down. I rather liked it and thought it worth sharing.

You are my amante. I love you. Tomorrow/today is Monday. Have courage. Life is good. You are good. You are better than good. You are a woman made to wait on the Lord and worship and serve and love and lead and you do these things well. You are an inspiration to me, your overcoming, your cooking, your advice. I am 2 beers, 5 blunts, and 2 cups of coffee into this first Sunday of Advent and I tell you baby that if it ain't you it ain't no one, you're my amante, that's Spanish for lover, and that's a good thing. You're a good thing. In 7 minutes it's gonna be Monday, the first Monday of Advent, and I love the feel of your cheeks, your face, on my lips, under my nose, and how your face moves into a smile when I kiss you there. Today is Advent and I'm waiting on myself to be the man I know I can be for you. Amen.

Thanksgiving 2017 Meditation: Enough

Today is Thanksgiving and I'm back with a Thoreau quote.

I went on a 4 mile run this evening and as I circled back I passed the parking lot near my home. The sun had set below the woods and a deep orange glow hovered over the countryside. The parking lot lights were strangely beautiful, almost holy, and the old corner restaurant didn't feel quite so ugly as usual. Parking lots are empty on Thanksgiving. The emptiness adds something queer and transcendental.

I edited a short essay last week. I had to trim it back from 500 words to 300. I don't do much editing, what with this being a blog and all, but it was a rewarding experience. I think we should all benefit by taking the time to remove superfluous things from our lives. If a parking lot can suddenly appear holy without all the traffic, how much more could a human life become? What new and glorious things can we add to our existence by removing the unnecessary?

"I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite, only a sense of existence." - Henry David Thoreau

Ironía Dia de los Muertos Meditación

It’s the first day of November 2017 and I’m drinking a Samuel Adams Maple Red Ale from a snifter, a proper beer glass, usually reserved for stouts and brandies and other things worth smelling. The writers on samueladams.com talk about this beer like it’s a $300 sweater from the J. Peterman catalog:

As vibrant in color as fall's liveliest foliage, this deep red beer's hints of caramel and vanilla are rounded out by a smooth, rich maple character. Warming enough for a chilly fall day, its distinct notes of maple dance against a slightly sweet malt background and make this complex beer the perfect bridge into cooler weather.

Around here, in northern Indiana, maple is a March flavor, when the air freezes during the still-long nights and warms up during the crisp sunny days. That’s when the local maple mill runs. Then and only then. About two weeks, four if they’re lucky. So I’m not so sure about this “perfect bridge into cooler weather” business. For me, it’s the opposite, when the green grass pokes through the thin crust of icy snow and the gray winter clouds give way to cold blue afternoons, dad calls and tells me he’s going to the mill and I lace up my mud boots and join him in the middle of a small woods. If you’re looking for the perfect bridge into cooler weather, you don’t need the Maple Red by Sam Adams, you need Advent.

We're coming up on the 1 year anniversary of Pilgrim Dude and I'm trying to remember what this blog is for. I'm doing something here, I just can't think what. Last year, at the end of November and well into December, this writing space became a sort of liturgy. For 18 consecutive nights (until I took off for Hawaii), I sat at my computer and wrote, drank, smoked, and cried. I wrote about death. I wrote about life. I chewed on roots. Ironic Advent MediCATIONS, I called them, unashamedly ripping off the Ironic Advent Meditations of Ben Camino (which are now trademarked). I do what he does, only worse, and with less irony, and without a half century of life to look back on (or however old you are, Ben). Those MediCATIONS were about treating the anxious, desperate, exasperated, reaching, uncentered life we too often live with some naps, walks, poetry, patience, music, and friendship. We’re about a month away from Advent 2017, which begins on Dec. 3rd. If I manage to write a full set this year, it’ll be 22 meditations in all. I don’t have much to teach, but I have a lot to think about. Truth be told, I should have started yesterday with an Ironic Halloween Meditation, like Ben. I’ve wanted to write one of those for a while now. But I’ll have to settle for an Ironic Day of the Dead Meditation.

There's a quote I came upon recently (not from Thoreau, from former NFL exec Michael Lombardi): "Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner." I've spent the last month unpacking it. I'd think about it on long afternoon runs, while mowing the lawn, or cooking eggs and potatoes. When I was a student at Huntington University (a history ed. major), the education profs talked a lot about teaching strategies, behavioral strategies, and classroom management strategies. They had semester long, 3 credit hour classes dedicated entirely to strategy, but I'm not sure I ever once heard anything from the educrats about culture. To their credit, culture is a tricky thing. It's hard to quantify, harder to teach, and it doesn't tackle classroom problems in a specialized or "rational" way. That sort of thing isn't bound to be popular and you can't really expect it from education departments. The trouble is, you can't build anything of significance with strategy alone. So, this year, Pilgrim Dude is going to do a lot of thinking about culture. Thoreau might call it soil. We aren't quite as far removed from the rest of the planet as we like to think, we aren't a special category unto ourselves; the seed requires good soil to grow, and so do we.

I had a walking conversation with my partner Heather a few weeks ago. I’m an external processor, so sometimes I’ll just start talking, finding my way through thought and counter-thought via the spoken word until I trip over something I think might be of worth (she’s a trooper and she’s got insight). On this day, I was casting out demons. I was thinking about love and death. Throw out the idea of marriage as “forever” and replace it with “until death do us part” (if we’re lucky). Throw out of the idea of marriage as “finding happiness” and replace it with “change and growth” (if we’re lucky). “Forever” isn’t real. “Happiness,” as some permanent state, isn’t real. Christianity at its best is a religion about reality - bloody, dirty, slimy, decaying, hopelessly terrifying reality. Any conception of marriage that doesn’t account for fear and decay is...unsatisfactory, and for whatever good it might do, logically, it can’t equip you for marriage on this planet, in this bodily existence, where we all die and only some of us grow old.

Of course, I’ve never been married, so I don’t really know what I’m talking about. That’s why I’m deferring to the experts. I visited the Michelsons a couple months ago and they asked me if I was dating anyone. I said yes, and Jean asked if we prayed together. I told her no, but just the question persuaded me that we needed to start. If it’s worked for Paul and Jean, then who am I to disagree? Just to participate in the same ritual has been culture-changing and centering for me and Heather (Jean told me that during life in Romania prayer together always gave her and Paul a sense of unified purpose). We aren’t much for extemporaneous prayer, so Heather and I pray out of the Divine Hours and the Book of Common Prayer and other like-texts. In Mexico, during Dia de los Muertos, offerings are made to the dead. For me, to read old prayers, to participate in old rituals, to join in the same rhythms and traditions as those who’ve lived and died is a kind of offering, and it’s grounding. To get the most out of life and love, I think we need to stay connected to death and old things and folkways that exist because they’ve been proven useful, even if they don’t always seem rational. That’s part of establishing a culture (for a marriage or a household), I think. A culture that respects life by respecting the dead, and by seeing your partner as a human being, mortal, with feelings and needs, not a means to an end, or on the planet to “make you happy.” I-Thou rather than I-It.

When I was in my mid-20s, I read the book Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch and I internalized this quote:

When you're oblivious to the ways marriage can operate as a people-growing process, all you see are problems and pathology -- and the challenges of marriage will probably defeat you. Your pain will have no meaning except failure and disappointment; no richness, no soul. Spirituality is an attitude that reveals life's meaning through everyday experience; however, don't bother looking for sanctuary in your marriage. Seeking protection from its pains and pleasures misses its purpose: marriage prepares us to live and love on life's terms.

There’s an old sports adage I tell my chess students: “You can’t figure out how to win until you learn how not to lose.” I don’t know how to do a relationship right, but I sure know how to mess one up. Here’s some bad advice: 1) believe that intimate life with another person is a smooth and happy hiding place away from the terrors of the world, 2) view conflict/argument/disagreement as an unnatural, horrible thing to be avoided at all cost, 3) always be willing to sacrifice your integrity if the alternative is discomfort or growth, 4) and never, ever change your values, beliefs, or behavior or put your partner’s goals on par with your own. 

When I was younger, I excelled at these mistakes. Now, at 31, I’ve learned how not to defeat myself so outright and to really enjoy the growth process, even when it’s difficult or irrational. This isn’t a strategy or technique, it’s a personal culture-shift. It involves staying connected, rooted, centered, to something bigger than yourself, to an ideal, to an old tradition, to music, to poetry, to prayer, to the life inside you and your partner. This is the soil. We need this. We need the gifts of the dead, of our ancestors, of those whose bones are buried in the crypts and cemeteries, their prayers, their songs, their rules. I have given up entirely trying to do life on my own. There is nothing I know or have or have done that is not to the credit of some older, prior sinner like myself. If during this blogging season I learn only how to better love the dead (and my elders), I'll consider it time well spent.

The pilgrimage continues. Thanks for reading.

An Ordinary Superstition

I want to tell you a story about a customer - an ordinary-looking woman with ordinary blue jeans, an ordinary t-shirt, ordinary sneakers, and an ordinary hair cut. She came into the office looking for a self-storage unit - an ordinary request, given that we're a self-storage facility. I sat down in my office chair behind our big, oak, Amish-built desk and she took a seat on the other side. My friendly cat, Pancake, jumped up to greet her with some head bumps and a squeak. She took to Pancake, as most customers do. I explained the rental contract, the different prices and sizes, and generally how it all works at the Wells County Lock-Up (an unfortunate play on words my father felt was quite creative back in 1999). She sat and listened, like any other customer. She decided which size was best for her needs and I assigned her unit #1310. "It's in building thirteen, and it's the tenth unit down, on the south side," I explained routinely.

"Oh," she said solemnly. "Thirteen is an unlucky number." Her eyes met mine with a shy but piercing sincerity. She was in a double-bind - afraid of the unit, but unable to really ask for a different one without bad manners and giving the game away. I offered to change the unit (which in retrospect may have been too forceful), but I'd already drawn up the rental contract and the pressure to be ordinary was just too much for this superstitious lady, "No, it's okay, I don't want to make you fill everything out again," she said, trying to keep her cool. I could see she was struggling. A few seconds passed. It was too late. She knew that I knew. Her body shifted in discomfort, her secret deviation in plain view for this lowly self-storage manager to see and judge.

"It's a good thing Pancake isn't black!" I said, looking over at my gray tabby/calico cat, trying to loosen the tension. "I used to own a black cat," she replied, doubling-down, "they keep away the dark spirits." When it rains, it pours. Perhaps she thought it wouldn't be so awkward if she just dumped it all out there (it was just as awkward). I pained to act as if this was a completely normal point of view. "Sure! Those dark spirits. Some customers worry about mice, others about dark spirits, it's all the same," was the attitude I tried to give off. I mentioned that #1310 isn't really thirteen - it's one thousand three hundred and ten. She politely agreed but her superstitious heart could tell I was trying to get one past her.

Very superstitious, writings on the wall
Very superstitious, ladders bout' to fall
Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin' glass
Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past
When you believe in things that you don't understand
Then you suffer
Superstition ain't the way

There's a solar eclipse today. I can't help but wonder if it doesn't bring out the weirdos - not that I'm superstitious or anything.

An Ordinary Rabbit's Head

It's close to noon here in Bluffton, IN. A dry summer day with large fluffy clouds in a bright, almost white sky. It could rain, but it probably won't. I should be outside at the storage facility putting red locks on the doors of delinquent tenants. Instead, I'm at my desk, on my computer, drinking a frothy cup of French pressed Starbucks dark coffee with coconut oil and butter. I learned in Kona last December that warm weather people don't know how to make dark things (you older readers probably already knew this). Coffee, beer, and coffee-beer, they're all the same: the flavors are weak where they should be strong and light where they should be dark. What you wind up with is an unsatisfying, watery, almost magnanimous brew. Sort of like tropical islands themselves. There's a reason Starbucks comes from the dreary American Pacific Northwest and Guinness from just below the Arctic Circle. Kona Brewing Company even makes a banana beer called the Hula Hefeweizen, a foul and offensive concoction.

I drink dark things all the year long, through Epiphany, Lent, Pentecost, and Advent. Especially Advent. The coconut oil and butter blend is a compromise to my Northern principles. A near moral failing. But at least it's not sugar or milk. It also helps smooth out the caffeine effects. It's a great winter morning 6am pre-workout, especially if you stack it with a magnesium pill, an Ibuprofen, and a big swig of water. Thinking of Hawaii makes me miss all those European college kids I met at the beach hostel. We mostly drank Bud Light. I prefer a good stout, but they didn't serve those at the Americanized luaus. Old, wealthy, leathery-skinned tourists in sweat-stained Tommy Bahama Hawaiian shirts like syrupy mixed-drinks heavy on the ice and free-flowing light beer to go along with fake entertainment.

Ben Camino tells me it's Ordinary Time. The liturgical color of Ordinary Time is green, the color of salads and avocados and not-yet-ripe bananas. I'm eating a lot of bananas and avocados and salads these days. I grew tired of sweet potatoes and roots. That was a diet for Advent. Seasons pass and seasons come again. I also grew tired of church. Thoreau said something about living each season as it passes. In the last chapter of Walden, he wrote that he left his cabin in the woods for as good a reason as he went there: that it seemed to him that he had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one. It's cliche to talk metaphorically about life and change and seasons, but what better liturgical season to appreciate a tried and true cliche than Ordinary Time?

More than piety or justice, the religious life requires wisdom. I reckon we can't even discuss piety or justice without wisdom (though that doesn't seem to stop folks from trying). Wisdom, I think, involves understanding the difference between a perplexing, unfamiliar, challenging season of life and a life in smoldering ruins. Wisdom can mean taking a posture of non-judgement towards those who experience the faith in strange ways. It can also mean patience, and trust, and believing in that blessed assurance my grandmother used to sing about. Seasons pass and seasons come again. A time away from church service doesn't mean a life away from church service. This is true of writing, reading, prayer, meditation, exercise, social events, friends, cooking, and other things. We all have the right to step away for a time. To everything there is a season. There's probably something in Ecclesiastes about this.

I think this is the real lesson of Thoreau's project: not to move to the woods or quit your job or buy a tiny house or stare out at trees for hours on end, but to live with confidence, to move slowly in a direction that is true, to strip life bare, to find your road, follow your road, to bend with your road, to feel the sun on your skin when it is bright and shining, to wear a coat when there is frost and chill.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we could substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality.

I've shipwrecked myself on a vain reality a time or two or three. Maybe I'm shipwrecked again. It's hard to say. Reality is tricky. Maybe that's why we need Ordinary Time. To breathe in the ordinary, to remember that without the ordinary there can be no miraculous - no virgin birth, no resurrection, no kingdom come; and while the Teacher of Ecclesiastes mourns that there's nothing new under the sun, maybe Ordinary Time is also, and paradoxically, a reminder that this doesn't make the birth of a new baby or a teenage love or a softball championship or a cup of rich, savory, dark roasted coffee any less the work of a miraculous God, even though they will one day be lost to all memory. "All is vanity!" says the Teacher. Ordinary Time looks the Book of Ecclesiastes in the eye and replies, "so what?"

In a typical year, the Indiana countryside by this time would be as golden-brown as a November cornfield, but it's been a wet summer and so the roadside foliage and city lawns all remain a deep, dark green. I'm mowing the grass at least once a week here at the storage facility and as sometimes happens the other day I hit rabbit. I was making my usual passes, running the mower in straight, vertical lines, when I looked to my left and saw it: a decapitated rabbit's head, cleanly cut, resting in the fresh lawn, blood running out into the ground, a distinct mix of chlorophyll green and crimson red. This is an ordinary thing to the earth, but death is a peculiar thing to me. Moments like that sit with me because even though they feel strange, I know they're not. There's lots of dead rabbits in the ground, and mothers and their babies, too. More than I could ever count. I've written somewhere on this blog that death wins all it seeks. What are our small acts of kindness and mercy supposed to achieve against an enemy like that? What good are "inclusivity" and "empathy" and "love" against the god of death? Here's a thing I think I think: death is universal, love is particular. Universal love is a fool's errand, playing death's game on death's terms.

There's a fine line between the poetic and the superstitious. I once heard a story about a woman who watched a hawk devour some small creature and as it flew away blood dripped down from its talons and onto her forehead. That week she was diagnosed with cancer. Marked for death. Ben Camino told me that sort of thing is ordinary, we just miss it. Ordinary Time asks us to pay a little more attention. I'm not sure what it will accomplish, it may not conquer the grave, but it's better than resignation - and I think that's more than we have the right to ask of ordinary things, that they help us beat back the looming shadow of resignation, surrender, capitulation. If a dark, foamy, buttery cup of French pressed coffee from Seattle is what it takes to delay the inevitable, then I'm alright with that.