"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." - Henry David Thoreau
We’re still pumping the brakes after a string of long, difficult meditations last week; don’t worry, I’m not done “chewin’ on roots,” but I need to slow down and get lost. Tonight, in Ironic Advent MediCATION #11, that’s what we’re going to do.
Here’s how it works. Adam Young of Owl City released a bunch of scores this year. Grab some headphones, find a comfortable chair, or relax on the couch, or hop in your bed, and listen. Pick whichever score suits you (the artwork is enchanting). For my part, I'm choosing The Endurance (I'll let you know that Project Excelsior is incredible). They run about half an hour. Don’t do anything else. Don’t check your phone, don’t cook dinner, don’t get on the treadmill (not that you were going to do that anyways). Just listen to the music (woahoooowoaahhhhh listen to the muuusic).
I hardly ever do this. I listen to music every day, but it’s almost always while I’m engaged in some other activity - working out, playing chess, writing, cooking, mowing the lawn, driving, etc. Tonight, on the 11th day of Advent, that stuff can wait. Tonight, we’re going listen and get lost.
Here we are, the 10th day of Advent. I went ahead and spent $15 on a new Christian seasons calendar for 2016-17 (and retired my calendar from 2013), so I can confirm, independent of my meditations, that this is, indeed, day 10. Double digits. We’ve made it. I’d offer a poetic account of the weather to help set the mood, but there’s only so many ways I can think to describe cold and rainy. Walking outside literally hurts, and if that wasn’t bad enough, Mother Nature spits on my glasses. Hard times, daddy. Hard times.
We’ve spent more than a few meditations chewin’ on roots and kickin’ up dust so I thought we’d do something a little unprecedented and read the Bible (what? Don’t look at me like that). My calendar tells me to read Matthew 3:1-12 and I spent $15 on that thing so that’s what we’re going to do.
I won’t copy and paste it. Instead, I’m going to give you the highlights.
John the Baptist was a preacher-man, sort of a mix of Radagast the Brown and Hillbilly Jim (that’s how I pictured him in 7th grade) to go along with...let’s just say Henry David Thoreau - it seems too easy, but it works and I’m tired. He went about the countryside and the villages and bars telling folks, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This, according to Matthew, is who Isaiah was talking about when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” To make matters worse, John didn’t care much for fashion, and he wore camel’s hair and a leather belt to keep it all from falling down to his bare feet. He ate locusts, like Pumba, and wild honey, like that silly old bear (though I doubt he ever disguised himself as a rain cloud to steal any of that wild honey, he was probably on good terms with the bees, anyways).
The way Matthew tells it, John was a successful preacher, and many folks came to him to be baptized in the river Jordan (no relation to the guy on the futon from earlier this week). John, however, didn’t take kindly to the Pharisees and Sadducees. He’d tell ‘em, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” Or, as Eugene Peterson puts it (I’m paraphrasing his paraphrasing), “What do you snakes think you’re doin’ slitherin' down here to the river? Do you think a little water on your snakeskins is going to make any difference? It’s your life that must change! Not your skin!" (sounds like something Thoreau might say, er, did say). He warned ‘em that their family lineage don’t mean squat in God’s coming kingdom, that God could make children to Abraham out of a pet rock, and that God’s got an ax and he’s prepared to use it on every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit.
It gets worse. John told those snakes that while he baptizes folks with water, there’s a man coming who’ll baptize them with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Wheat and chaff, baby. Wheat and chaff. The wheat will be saved. The chaff will be burned with unquenchable fire! A little later on, in verses 13-17, Jesus comes to John and John baptizes him. Now, there are a couple details I haven’t mentioned. 1) When John told the Pharisees and Sadducees that the man of fire was-a-comin, he mentioned that he wasn’t fit to carry that man’s sandals, and 2) when Jesus did come and went to John to be baptized, John said it ought to be the other way around; only after Jesus insisted did John the Baptist live up to his moniker. The Bible doesn’t say if Jesus asked John to hold his sandals.
Here’s what I’m prepared to give you tonight: a little hard wisdom, in the words of that modern-day prophet, Ice Cube the Baptist: you better check yoself before you wreck yoself. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what the hell that means for your own life. I’m too damned tired to save you from yourself and it’s a full time job keeping my own mind sane. Advent makes me wonder if Jesus really came to rid the word of hate, or if, perhaps, he came to teach us how to live in a world full of it. Maybe it’s a little bit of both. All I know is that I’ve got maybe 40 years left on this planet, and I have no doubt this place is going to be as hateful in 2056 as it is now (and I’ll probably still be too cheap to buy a liturgical calendar every year). I’m a self-absorbed ENFP and I could give a damn about your hashtags and your hysteria and your Orwellian “fake news.” Me, I want repentance. I wanna be baptized in the fire. I wanna hear that voice crying in the wilderness and I wanna listen to what it has to teach.
"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."
I took a long siesta this afternoon. I slept for close to 3 hours. Rookie mistake. Make sure to set an alarm when you’re napping. It was unusually warm and partly sunny on this 9th day of Advent so I wanted to get in some outdoor work. That didn’t happen, not to the extent I hoped it would. I’ll believe it was worth it until I’m outside in the freezing rain and cold sweeping out storage units. But I digress.
We’ve hit on some heavy subjects the past few days and I need a break. This is going to be a laconic meditation (am I allowed to call my own post laconic?). I’m going to share that Robert Frost poem I’ve been meaning to get to. It’s called “The Wood-Pile.” Here's a reading of it I rather like. Here's the text:
“The Wood-Pile” by Robert Frost
Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day, I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here. No, I will go on farther—and we shall see.' The hard snow held me, save where now and then One foot went through. The view was all in lines Straight up and down of tall slim trees Too much alike to mark or name a place by So as to say for certain I was here Or somewhere else: I was just far from home. A small bird flew before me. He was careful To put a tree between us when he lighted, And say no word to tell me who he was Who was so foolish as to think what he thought. He thought that I was after him for a feather— The white one in his tail; like one who takes Everything said as personal to himself. One flight out sideways would have undeceived him. And then there was a pile of wood for which I forgot him and let his little fear Carry him off the way I might have gone, Without so much as wishing him good-night. He went behind it to make his last stand. It was a cord of maple, cut and split And piled—and measured, four by four by eight. And not another like it could I see. No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it. And it was older sure than this year's cutting, Or even last year's or the year's before. The wood was gray and the bark warping off it And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle. What held it though on one side was a tree Still growing, and on one a stake and prop, These latter about to fall. I thought that only Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks Could so forget his handiwork on which He spent himself, the labor of his ax, And leave it there far from a useful fireplace To warm the frozen swamp as best it could With the slow smokeless burning of decay.
C. S. Lewis has a lot to say in The Screwtape Letters about the horror of the "Same Old Thing" and the demand for absolute novelty as contrasted with the steady rhythm of God. Stephen West, host of Philosophize This, describes life and moral identity in the 21st century as a "70 year neurotic dance from hashtag to hashtag trying to bring about a better world." Ha. #BringBackOurGirls #Kony2012 #StopGamergate #YesAllWomen #OscarsSoWhite #BoycottClippers #CancelColbert and on and on and on. Stop. Slow down. Rest.
I see Advent in this poem. I see Christmas in this poem. My hope is that we worship a God who doesn’t live in turning to fresh tasks, but sees his old projects through to the end, even the bitter end, if necessary. If the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is indeed the God who reigns over all the earth and came to the planet as a man to sort out this mess, then I’d say we’re in good hands. In that case, we aren’t the wood-pile; we haven’t been made and abandoned to creeping death and slow decay. If the stories are true, then God is the feller who came back for the labor of his ax.
If that’s not your cup of tea, or if you’re a coffee drinker, then you might take away from this poem the sacredness of slowly, deliberately, wholeheartedly completing old tasks and chores and projects. Respect the labor of your hands, respect the time you’ve been given, do what needs to be done, mindfully, and then rest. Just make sure to set an alarm.
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A note: If you have some thoughts to add or some interpretation to offer about this poem, please let me know. I’d love to hear from you.
Another note: Frost knew how to take a walk. Those first few lines (I'm paraphrasing), "Maybe I'll turn back, maybe I'll keep walking, I don't really know. I'll walk a little more until I figure it out." That's the spirit. That's the art of sauntering.
Half of Daniel's head, Jordan, and me, on our hotel balcony at Cedar Point in August, 2016.
A quick note: I’m assuming in this post that you’ve read my other meditations. If you haven’t, go back.
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I woke up with a sore throat today. I expect the reason is that I’ve been staying up too late and not getting nearly enough rest with all this writing. Somehow I’ve got 20 more of these things. Well, 21 since this isn’t finished. But never mind all that. Today is the 2nd Sunday of Advent. It’s also the first snowfall of the year. It’s coming down in big, fluffy snowflakes that drop to the ground like rain. I think I’ll go out for a drive before long. But first things first.
I’m going to use smaller paragraphs tonight, as a courtesy to those who’ve stuck with these meditations. I think I’ve made my point, that we should be willing to push through long blocks of text and stay connected to an author’s feelings and thoughts. This isn’t Twitter. It’s Pilgrim Dude. Pilgrimages aren’t pithy, and they aren’t limited to 140 characters, dude. If you have something worth saying, write it out, and give your voice a little more respect than a tweet, or, God forbid, 17 tweets, all in a row, trying to make some Really Important Point. True, you might not get as many likes or favorites or retweets or whatever, but good work doesn’t usually involve constant positive reinforcement or daily self-esteem boosts. Sometimes, we have to keep our heads down, do the work, and trust. So much for smaller paragraphs.
Last fall I went on a date with a poet. She was from Maine and doing graduate work at Ball State. I drove to Muncie and we met there for a walk. She introduced me to her cats (literally, this isn't innuendo) and we went out and got pizza and beer. I warned her ahead of time that she’d have to read me at least 2 poems. She was working a project about words in other languages that have no direct English translation. One of these is a Welsh word, hiraeth. She read me a poem about hiraeth.
Hiraeth is a kind of homesickness, but that’s too weak a word. Hiraeth is the grief, longing, nostalgia, and yearning we have for a home to which we cannot return, for the places of the past, and, sometimes, for places which have never been.
Writing these meditations, last night especially, my heart has been squeezed by hiraeth. I suppose the best way to deal with it, as with all emotions, is to just feel your way through. Me, Jordan, Jon, Ben: we grew up, as teenage boys do. That old futon didn’t do much for my sleep and it was replaced by a proper bed; I sold that Camaro and bought a truck; Halo got a little stale and the PC games we played outpaced our computers; Big Yellow Taxi girl and I broke up and I stopped going to that Nazarene youth group where we met. Not long after, we all graduated from high school and I moved to Huntington and began a new chapter.
I realize now, looking back, that my heart has been squeezed for over a decade. Hiraeth. I feel it. I’ve felt it ever since I left Bluffton for Huntington University in the fall of 2005. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt at home the way I did in those years from 2002 to 2005 with Jordan, Jon, and Ben, and all my other friends who found life at the house on 350 south. I’m not sure I’ve ever been able to articulate that, to be vulnerable about that, until now.
Or, if I have, I’ve been too eager to find a solution. Instead of sitting with it, chewing on it, taking a pilgrimage, I’ve seen the answer up in my head and jumped at it; I’ve tried to move from Act 1 to Act 3; I’ve tried to master the force sitting in Yoda’s swamp. It doesn’t work that way. I’m learning that growth and roots and dust and seeds and change, they just don’t work that way.
Those days are gone, but I’m alive, and so are Jordan, Jon, and Ben. I see Ben regularly, Jon semi-regularly, and Jordan and I went to Cedar point with Daniel this past August. These bonds are as strong as ever. These friendships are life to me. I am filled with a new sense of commitment to these dear, old friends. We can’t go back, but we can live with gratitude and intention and hugs for the people we’ve known and loved since we were kids. Hiraeth is real, but so is Advent.
Circa 1998. Jon is wearing the jacket with the "M." Ben is in the red t-shirt. Jordan is the only one with his mouth open. I'm on the bottom in the nWo Wolfpac shirt.
Another picture from those years. It got a little weird sometimes.
Winter is settling in. My weather app is showing a lot of 20s and 30s. Usually this time of year I add Warroad, Minnesota to my saved locations so I can look at all their single digit days and feel better about Bluffton. I’m not saying it’s healthy, I’m just saying I do it.
I’m pulled in a few different directions for tonight’s Ironic Advent MediCATION #7. Last night’s MediCATION was about dust, and confession, and ghosts, and that’s not an easy thing to write, and I doubt it’s an easy thing to read. Trouble is, I’m still sitting with it, or as Ben Camino would say, “chewing on roots.” So I think I’m gonna keep chewing, but I’m gonna come at it from a different angle.
I posted an old picture last night of 4 teenage boys. Jordan, me, Jon, and Ben. Let me tell you the story about those boys, that picture, and that room. (I’m going to use shorter paragraphs tonight. You’re welcome.)
Jordan, me, Jon, and Ben.
I’ve known them for about as long as you can really claim to know anyone. Jordan, I met in t-ball. Jon and Ben, I met in 3rd grade at Bluffton Elementary, then called East Side. I say Jon and Ben like they’re one person because they’re brothers and until we graduated high school I’m not sure I ever spent much time with one and not the other. They’re a package deal. Ben is a bit older, but it never made a difference back then.
Jordan always reminded me of Tigger. He was hyper and bouncy and hilarious and sort of lived in his own world, but he also kinda looked like Tigger, too. The eyes and the chin. Jon was a little blonde boy, shorter than me until high school when he caught up. Very intelligent. He graduated from IU med school this year. Sort of looks like John Lennon. (You wouldn’t know it now, but for a brief time, maybe the second semester of 6th grade, I was one of the taller boys in my class). Ben was always bigger and taller than the rest of us. I’m not sure he ever got anything lower than an A in school, except for maybe a B in P.E. or English. He’s a computer programmer now and keeps me up to date on all the latest happenings on Reddit and 4Chan.
Jon and Ben were the best part about middle school at Bluffton. On Fridays, after that last bell, I’d hustle around the corner of the 5th grade hallway and run to the door to watch for my mom’s van. She’d pull in the parking lot and pick the three of us up and take us home to play GoldenEye and StarCraft and Legos. That entrance/exit I talked about yesterday, with all the ghosts, that’s where we waited.
Most of the time, Jon and Ben got permission from their parents to spend the night. Back then, whenever I found a time I could be comfortable and unafraid, I’d cling to it and wish it’d never end. Friday afternoons and nights with Jon and Ben were like that. They were a sanctuary. So were Sunday evenings, when it was just me and mom and I’d sit on the floor covered in blankets and she’d sit on the couch behind me we’d watch a movie. I wished those movies would never end, because once they did, it was time for bed, and that meant school in the morning. I lived with a lot of fear in middle school and I put a lot of hope in the night. Time moves slower in the night. Maybe I saw some possibilities.
I left Bluffton-Harrison Middle School for Community Christian School in the middle of 6th grade, during Christmas break. There was a blizzard that year (1998-99). It hit us in early January, just when all the area schools were supposed to re-open. Instead, they stayed closed for another 2 weeks. All told, we were probably out of school for over a month. Every kid remembers that winter. All my friends remember it, because my dad used the snow plow on his big red truck to form a small mountain off the edge of our driveway and we built a snow fort strong enough to hold the weight of several boys.
I don’t remember why exactly I left Bluffton. As I recall, 5th grade was worse than 6th. But I think I’d just had enough. I think I was ready for a change. It so happened that Jordan was, too. He transferred to CCS about 4 weeks after I did. One day, out of the blue, he showed up in Mrs. Compton’s 6th grade class. “Jordan!” It’s a good thing he did. I don’t think I was adjusting well. But he was even weirder than I was and it made me look sort of sane by comparison.
I was delighted to see him. We were close friends in 3rd grade, where we used to create our own comic books and perform wrestling moves on Stanley, a stuffed scarecrow our teacher, Miss Biggs, won in a raffle - we literally beat the stuffing out of that thing (eventually Miss Biggs had to throw it out), but we didn’t share any classes after that until Fortuna brought us together at CCS.
Me, on the far left, standing next to Jordan, on Wacky Hair day in Mrs. Compton's 6th grade class at CCS.
We became best of friends all over again. I watched Jordan beat Metal Gear Solid in its entirety, which means I more or less watched him crawl around in a cardboard box for 14 hours. But I loved it. I remember it vividly. That little white house on the outskirts of town where Jordan and his single mom lived, I did some growing up there. I never had a hard time making friends in school. But I learned something about real friendship that semester. We were 12 or 13, I think.
As I recall, for a little while I fell out of touch with Jon and Ben - new school, new friends, new challenges - but once we turned 15 and got those permits, all bets were off, and we reconnected. I showed up on their front doorstep one day, wearing prescription glasses for the first time since I knew them, and Jon answered the door, “Woah! Brandon!” I’m not sure he recognized me at first.
They invited me to their youth group at a not-so-little Nazarene church with an enormous parking lot. I met my first long term girlfriend there, who happened to like the song "Big Yellow Taxi." I also met a lot of folks who weren’t sure if they were fundamentalists or something else. That church (and that parking lot - oh, baby - that parking lot, I found paradise on that parking lot) became an enormous part of my teenage years.
When I turned 16, Jordan, Jon, and Ben were my closest and oldest friends. That futon, we spent a lot of hours on that futon, sometimes playing Halo, sometimes prepping for a night of mischief, like toilet papering houses or kicking flaming toilet paper or holding toilet paper out the window of a Camaro and letting it unravel (you can have a lot of fun with toilet paper). I did other things on that futon with Big Yellow Taxi girl. That room, from 1986 to 2009, that was my bedroom. Blue carpet. White walls. Brown trim. Those Led Zeppelin posters, I won them at our local street fair. There’s a Calvin and Hobbes book on the arm rest. I recognize the cover. Something Under the Bed is Drooling. I recently moved my pile of Calvin and Hobbes comics and that same book is on the top of the stack, right next to me, right now. Ironic.
Okay. It got alota weird.
I miss that room. I miss those years, from 2002-2005, Jordan, Jon, and Ben were there almost every weekend. A lot of other friends came to that room, too. My mom came to that room, to check on us, make sure everything was alright, to see if we needed any drinks or if we wanted cookies or maybe money to order some pizzas. Years before that, she came to that room to read to me before I went to bed, when I was a child. Sometimes she’d crack the door to that room to let in a little light from the hallway.
She’s divorced now. She’s hurting. She’s living in a little apartment down the road from me. I see her regularly with work and all, but today I went to her place for the first time since she moved there. It’s been a little over a year. I needed some time to heal. I wanted to check on her, make sure everything’s alright. I brought her some red velvet cupcakes. She was very surprised and happy. I hope she eats them. She said she will. I believe her. Next week I’m going to help her figure out what sort of health insurance she ought to get for 2017. I’m doing the best I can. Mental illness, anorexia, she’s got some demons and they’re not her fault. My mom raised me to have a big heart and to be a forgiving person, so much so, that when I was younger I believed that one of my biggest weaknesses was my inability to hold a grudge (and I don’t mean that in a pious way, I mean it seriously). There was no way to know that all that work she was putting in would end up salvaging her relationship with her son. Ironic Advent. I am my mother's son.
It’s the 7th day of Advent. Here I am, waiting for Christmas, but I’m not waiting impatiently. I’m not even sure I’m really waiting at all, not like I waited for mom to pick me up from middle school so I could go spend some time with Jon and Ben. You might say I’m afraid. Because Christmas is going to come, and when it does, nothing will be different, and my mom will still have these demons and if that’s the case, then what’s the point? Maybe if this meditation could be a prayer, if God could let in a little light from the hallway and into her room, then all this writing might be worth a damn, and the birth of Jesus won’t just be something for the spiritually disciplined, but actually, really, for once, something for those who need him the most.
Ever and always a Led Zeppelin fan, that's me second from the left. Age 16ish. 2002-03.
Here we are, the 6th day of Advent, or night, rather, since the sun disappears so early this time of year. It was cold a one, purple-gray and a little rainy, as it should be on Dec. 2nd, as it should be during Advent. This is Ironic Advent MediCATION #6 and I promise, dear reader, that I’m going to get better at using irony.
I did a little substitute teaching today for some 5th graders. When I say, “did a little,” I mean that literally. The teacher’s assistant did most of the work while I sat and re-read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. She knew the class routine, so it made more sense that way. Bluffton-Harrison Middle School still has the same smell it did when I spent some of my pre-teen years there in 1997-98. It’s not a foul odor or anything like that. It’s just a smell...a familiar smell, the kind that hits you and a part of your body and heart feels torn between two worlds, and time...gets weird. Sort of like Advent, waiting for the coming of a king who’s already come, to defeat an enemy that’s already been defeated, to save a world that’s already been saved. We know It Is Finished, but we also know it’s not (sorry if I’m getting too Eastery for you). “Time is a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, stuff,” so sayeth the Doctor. Walking into that west-facing entrance/exit at BHMS, when that smell hit my nostrils, I could see my 12-year old self standing there, in a 90s Starter winter coat and Converse sneakers, and I felt a pull towards old friends, also there, spectre-like, who no longer exist as I remember them (they’re doctors, and programmers, and farmers now, or dead), and I felt a pull towards times which have already had their say; times that, truth be told, weren’t so great to actually live, but somehow seem so lovely to remember.
As a student, I didn’t get along too well at that school. I guess a piece of my subbing there is a way to mend fences, not with any particular person, but with myself to that place. This all feels too much like Sisyphus. What’s the point in chasing down these ghosts and grabbing them by the shoulders and screaming at them, “Look at me now! I’m still here and I’m okay!" My therapist and I were talking about waiting for a savior and he asked me, “What do you want to be saved from?” I gave him the sort of embarrassed smirk you give someone who’s asked the right question. “My past,” I said. My chest burns right now, thinking of what to write next. I want to be saved from whatever mistakes I made that have turned my older brother against me; I want to be saved from growing up in a house where I was given most anything I wanted; I want to be saved from all the fear I felt in middle school and the bad habits I learned; I want to be saved from reading Ayn Rand in high school instead of playing sports and learning how to belong; I want to be saved from spending my first 3 years at HU writhing in loneliness and adjustment and heartbreak; I want to be saved from a particularly painful stumble into codependency when I was 19; I want to be saved from the caffeine binge of my mid-20s; I want to be saved from those times where I didn’t love enough and the shame I feel towards those times where I might have loved too much.
Okay, that’s a lot to ask of a savior. So I’ll compromise: I want to be saved from the feeling that my problems are insurmountable or unique or even all that serious. My Ironic Advent compatriot Ben Camino has been writing about roots. I think that’s as good a way as any to come to terms with the life you’ve been given, the places you come from, the things that were out of your control, and the things that were in your control but you bumbled anyways because you’re a flesh and blood human in need of two scoops of grace in a waffle cone. Don Henley’s got a song about life outside our control:
Who knows how long this will last Now we've come so far, so fast But, somewhere back there in the dust That same small town in each of us I need to remember this So baby give me just one kiss And let me take a long last look Before we say good bye Just lay your head back on the ground And let your hair fall all around me Offer up your best defense But this is the end This is the end of the innocence
“Somewhere back there in the dust,” that’s where I went today. Maybe it’s a place worth visiting, but it’s not a place I want to live. Trouble is, I do live in that “same small town,” and that dust is kicked up all around me. But I’ve gotta figure it out, or eat a gallon of grace straight from the carton, because this is where I am, this is where I work, this is where I cook sweet potatoes and sit in my papasan chair and write about Advent. I never expected my old middle school, which I hated so damned much, to teach me this sort of thing at age 30. But I guess that’s irony. I guess that's Advent.
Welcome to December. The hope that November might stick around for the next 5 months and winter would take the year off and we’d go straight into April has failed once again (I do this to myself every year). If I had my druthers, we’d all wake up tomorrow in shorts and cut-off crop tops. But that ain’t happening. We can’t skip the middle. Luke didn’t master the force sitting in that swamp on Dagobah. Frodo couldn’t destroy the One Ring in the fire of his hearth at Bag End. We can’t get Act 3 without Act 2, we can’t get summer without winter, and we can’t get Christmas without Advent. Speaking of which, it’s day 5, and this is Ironic Advent MediCATION #5. Still on schedule.
In 2008, Barack Obama became president after running a campaign on hope and change. In 2016, Donald Trump was elected president after running a campaign on !@#$% and change. Change is a helluva a drug, the idea of change is damned powerful, sometimes to the neglect of obvious and important questions, like, what are we changing into? There’s an old Sam Cooke song about hard times and change, which various social movements have adopted as their anthem.
I was born by the river in a little tent Oh and just like the river I've been running ev'r since It's been a long time, a long time coming But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will
That’s how it begins. Here’s how it ends.
There have been times that I thought I couldn't last for long But now I think I'm able to carry on It's been a long, a long time coming But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will
One of the great surprises of growing older has been the realization that I belong to a species which has the potential for bouncing back, for overcoming, for resilience. I learned that in college, I think. I know I don’t have a fraction of the resilience which some people in this country need just to get by. But I do know that resilience is forged in the volcanic fires of Mount You Just Got Your Ass Kicked And You’re Still Alive So Deal With It. Resilience doesn’t come under the tree on Christmas. It’s one of those Advent gifts that you get by despairing, and sitting, and breathing, and crying, and learning how to cuss when you pray.
Ch-ch-ch-changes on planet Earth can be hard. Sometimes they’re too hard. Sometimes they’re more than we can handle, given who we are and what we know when they hit us. And sometimes changes kill us (they’re killing my mother) or they kill the story we’ve been using to make sense of life and we finish the job with pills, or alcohol, or resentment, or cake and ice cream, or buying a new TV every Advent. Sometimes we’re just too damned afraid of everything to make it through. I know I’m afraid.
Change can also be what we need. Last year around this time I went through some changes and I started a new journal. The old one still had some blank pages in it, but it felt so heavy and stale. New wine, old Moleskin. The first entry in that new journal was a quote from Thomas Merton, “Those who think they ‘know’ from the beginning will never, in fact, come to know anything.” Followed by another one, “We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners.” Maybe if I wasn’t such a beginner at this sort of writing I could tie those quotes into the thread I’m working with, but I’ve got some Thoreau stuff to get to, so consider those a stocking stuffer. The real under-the-tree-presents are coming, and I want to talk about clothes. [It should be noted that at this point the author got up from his spot at the coffee shop and gave his phone number to a girl that looked at least 24.]
I’ve been re-reading Walden. I used Amazon used books to buy an old hardback print with good sized font published by Bramhall House. I recommend it. For those who don’t know, Henry David Thoreau was a 19th century American writer and philosopher and I read his books and essays like a guilty Holiness boys reads the Bible. I first read Walden when I was 25 years old and it affected me in a profound and lasting way (and this change, I find, is still unfolding). Thoreau was no armchair philosophiser. You don’t just read him. You go and do likewise. I’d feel a little more blasphemous about that last line if I didn’t interpret Saint Henry’s project as falling more or less in line with what I take to be an authentic expression of Christianity. From Thoreau:
None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, not even to found a school, but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.
For Thoreau, exercising the mind involved a spade and a shovel, beans and potatoes, and a little cabin in the woods. There’s Descartes and his infamous proposition, “Cogito ergo sum.” Then there’s Thoreau, which basically amounts to, “I go on walks, therefore I am.” You can’t just read Thoreau and say, “Yes, I support walks.” You have to go on walks and learn the art of walking, and of trespassing, and of napping in strange places, and what it means to care so little about your possessions that if you decided to just keep walking, you’d feel no anxiety about the life you left behind. It’s extreme. But I prefer to live my life in that direction than in any other.
Right now civilization is in the throes of what it calls the “shopping season” (a reminder: we are in the season of Advent). “Go out and shop,” said the emperor, when the dust and ashes of the World Trade Center were still rising from the earth. Me, I need a little bit of truth tonight. I need to remember that change can mean living through hard times, that change usually requires resilience, and that change comes slowly. It’s not a good pitch for H&M, but a change of clothes does not equal a changed man, no matter what the peddlers tell you: I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather, something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. [...] Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind.
I said to my therapist the other day, “I guess we’re just waiting for a savior.” He asked, “What do you want to be saved from?” I saw the question coming, but I still flashed an embarrassed smirk, couldn’t make eye contact, teared up. It’s easier to ask for some vague, disconnected idea of help or salvation than it is to admit specifically what I fear and what sort of help or saving I need. What do I want to be saved from? I’ll answer that, but not right now. I do, however, think that question leads to another: What kind of savior do I want? And perhaps: What kind of change do I want? Change. I wish I could sit in Yoda’s swamp and master the force. If I could destroy the One Ring in the warm fire at home, I would. But maybe that’s the challenge of Advent. Act 2. The fight, the journey, the adventure, the trek, the mission, the race. All this time we thought we were just sitting around waiting but really a change was taking place. A change is always taking place. A change is gonna come. Small, still, slow, steady change. Or maybe it's not small or slow at all. Maybe it's a little dangerous or maybe it's a pilgrimage out of Babylon. No matter, by the ADVENTure’s end, we’re different, and we aren’t quite sure how it all happened. Then, and not before, can we go buy that new suit.
