The Unbearable Fabric of Being

For many years now, we've sort of described our church as a people who want to do nothing more than to create spaces for God to show up. Interestingly enough, we tend to do this not by filling a space with our theology or beliefs or music or what have you, but instead, quite the opposite. We've found purpose in pushing away dogma and direction in favor of making empty spaces in order that they might be filled. This via negativa approach to metaphysical space has proven effective, at least in our perspective (which admittedly limited geographically and ideologically speaking). We've tried to remove the trappings of religion in order for community to thrive in an environment of radical freedom and grace. It tends to be welcomed by the non-religious among us, while simultaneously feared by those dressed up in the shiniest faith clothes. Without a dogmatic creed to hide behind, we're often left just exploring the messes of each other's lives in search of wisdom. It's unorthodox, I admit; and yet after 20 years it just seems to be who we are.

So a couple of us get this brainstorm early in 2010 regarding using the historic Grove Theater as nesting ground for creative expression, one that we're adamantly devoted to protect from heavily sharpened agendas designed to gouge and poke and corral people into theological, or philosophical stalls. Anyone that knows us, knows the real paradox of High Places is that as haphazard as any given moment with us can seem, it has been utterly bathed with thought before it saw the light of day. We'll meet and debate for hours behind closed doors about the theological, philosophical, existential, and political ramifications of almost every course of action. Usually by the end of it, we've not advanced too far into any proverbial rabbit holes, so we tend to err on the side that says, "Let's just do it and see what happens. Use the good and bad of it as a learning experience."

So back to the nesting ground of creative expression… a couple of us thought it would be nice for Oak Ridge to have more opportunities for average citizens to just share their thoughts, writings, artistic creations, and songs in the form of an "Open Mic Night." Discussion began in earnest as to what such a thing might look like. Do we invoke censorship? Or does anything go? If anything goes, do we set age boundaries on attendance? How do we ensure that the event doesn't put a spotlight on HPCC and make it about us? Why should we expend time, energy, and resources on this event? What are our hopes, dreams, and goals?

We'll kick these questions around in staff meetings for months and the discussions are good for the soul. Yet, when it really boils down to it, we almost always return to this general feeling of "Just do it; let the chips fall where they may." I think this sort of thing that creates the empty space around which so many of the activities evolving, and revolving around us and/or the theater seems to get created.

Saturday night, we took the gloves off. We decided we'd just let things be what they were. I'm not sure who's reading this now, I know my blog uplinks to FaceBook and that seems to be where these "notes" get read the most; still, I do know for certain that it is impossible for any more than 12 of you to have had a direct experience with "Open Mic Night," because that's what we ran in attendance all sum total. I wanted to relay to any who missed this event that Saturday night was pretty incredible – I'd even go a step further and say it was miraculous. And if you've heard me preach, you know that the word "miracle" is a tough one for me. We live in a world where seemingly God can heal diseases under the surface of the skin (like cancer), but for whatever reason, amputees don't grow new arms and legs. God doesn't heal amputees, at least not any that I've ever seen. As a reasonable person, this casts a huge shadow of doubt on many things for me that I might explain later, using old sermon notes in case you missed that one.

This huge shadow of doubt comes as no surprise to those who know me; I make no real bones about my journey of faith and tend to not hold back my personal struggles from the pulpit. The depths of my struggles run pretty deep, so naturally, a big part of having an "Open Mic Night" for me would include reading some of my own poems that have over time, housed my doubts and simultaneously sheltered my faith. Having picked a long poem, maybe a life-long work of mine, it pretty much turned out that I was the guy doing the self-censoring for the sake of upholding "community standards." I love irony, really I do.

But the real irony of the event Saturday wasn't the preacher with painfully indirect poetic metaphors in need of censorship. The 'miracle' of the evening was in the lack of censorship by eleven other souls, because the space we created for community expression was met with a "no holds barred" humanity that I could not have imagined prior to seeing it with my own eyes. Let me be as specific as I can without attendees feeling like I am blogging their lives for them.

We began a bit late because no one was there. When we finally started, we had two guests. And elderly gentleman named Jim, and his wife. Of all the crazy coincidences, his wife happened to be my freshman algebra teacher from high school. She left my freshman year after tragically losing her son in an automobile accident. She pursued three doctorate degrees after that in physics, mathematics, and administration. But she also wrote a book, readings from which she shared with us. It was beautiful – just reconnecting, sharing losses, living our humanity out loud. As she finished up, three more people came in. As if one crazy coincidence wasn't enough, a second lady separated by a generation from the former shared poems she had written during the loss of her son a few years ago. Now I recognize that statistically speaking, this is possible. Mothers do lose sons early in life. I don't know, maybe one in a hundred experience this kind of loss… maybe one in five hundred… maybe it's more like one in a thousand if we go by health department data. So our first two participants were mothers who lost sons. Certainly unlikely, but also not out of the realm of possibility.

During a transition, a friend named Joe read a bit of prose he had thumbed through in my algebra teacher's book about her standing at her mother's funeral. He said that portion of the book jumped out at him. Well, it just so happens that third person who arrived late I know very well. He lost his mom during that week – I was there, and I knew the depth of the impact it had on him. So in four readings, by approximately 9:15 pm, we had two incredibly powerful shared experiences of identical loss. I don't know, people lose moms… it happens to most all of us at some point in life. Maybe statistically speaking, it would be not so amazing that a young man who lost his mother unexpectedly would happen into a room where a guy was reading a piece of prose about a lady who lost her mom; and that all that could happen about the time that a lady who lost her son shared with a group her experiences of losing a son – completely unaware that that the lady who shared before her had also talked about losing a son. I guess it might could happen, statistically speaking.

But in between it all was wedged this massive poem I had written on science, skepticism, and faith. It was about loss and death and the inability, or at least difficulty, in giving those concepts the same space as a God who claims omni-benevolence. There was more – including a young lady who did two beautiful numbers on a guitar using similar metaphors to describe loss, and the power of faith.

I never met these people – or at least outside of my experience 25 years ago with my algebra teacher, I had no real expectation that this thing would end up being such a tightly weaved fabric of being. The amount of healing and compassion that circulated in that room, in that, statistically speaking, highly improbable assembly of souls, was totally uncensored and overflowing with divine energy. If you were there, you know what I am saying is the truth. Something was happening that defied explanation. The walls had been pushed back through a dozen planning sessions, and in the empty spaces of these moments, grace abounded. The grace was so thick and experienced so personally for me, that I had to take back out my litany of poetic doubt, if for no other reason than to note the heavy lipstick of God as he had playfully kissed each stanza in a friendly mockery of my so-called evolved sense of logic and reason. He had in those moments addressed the doubts by weaving together an unbearable fabric of being. I saw it unfold, reveled in the moment, and took my community home to cover my own nakedness with something much more pure and unfettered than a theological fig leaf. I was reminded that Grace is the primary spiritual meal that we've all been invited to consume -- the meat and potatoes of life and community. I took away from Saturday night, a garment of being. And I stood in awe at the power of the seamstress.

Acts 17:28, my favorite verse in all the Bible… well, there could have been no greater demonstration of its veracity than what I saw in those moments. I am truly sorry you missed it because it was beautiful. Nearly unbearable in its power and beauty.

On Dirty Minds

I was reading tonight about a study presented in San Diego at the American Society for Microbiology. It seems that there is a curious little critter lurking in your flower bed that just might make you smarter. You can read all about it here. Its name is Mycobacterium vaccae and early indications reveal that a steady dose of this stuff can not only reduce anxiety, but make you smarter too. Well, at least in mice.

If you've spent much time with me then you know my affinity for that deviant poet Walt Whitman. It seems that there is a truth in poetry after all, as if any shoddy materialists out there still dare to question:

Smile O voluptuous cool-breathed earth!

Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!

Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty-top!

Earth of vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!

Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!

Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!

Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth!

Smile, for your lover comes!

—Leaves of Grass, 1855

If this study is even partly correct, then the case should again be made with earnest: our kids need to be outside. Locking them up in a sterile classroom may be doing them more harm than we realize. Teachers, get them outside! Let them poke in the mud or dip the tips of their fingers in – from the garden expulsion to the best of poets, artists, and musicians – and now even from our scientists we see that dirt indeed has a power we shouldn't ignore.

So if you're the wet-wipe type (and I can be sometimes too), then think again as you applying liberally to soiled areas. Because you might be looking all spic 'n span, but shaving off an IQ point or two in the process. Not to mention making yourself an even bigger worry wart.

If there's ever been a better case for having a dirty mind, I can't imagine what it is!

LOST finale, I was blind but now I … ?

I read a story recently; maybe it was true story, maybe just a parable, I don’t know. It went something like this:

Once a man was walking in a park on a beautiful spring afternoon. Along the way, he was stopped by a group of blind women having a picnic. They heard him passing by and asked the man to take a photograph of them. He agreed. As the women huddled closely together and he snapped the photograph, he inwardly mused about the cryptic nature of a group of blind people wanting a photograph of themselves that they would never see. As he continued his walk, it occurred to him that as human beings we are fashioned in such a way that having shared experiences which ultimately rest beyond our human faculty to enjoy could ultimately be enjoyed through others. The photograph, that these women would never see, could be enjoyed by others who could see it -- and the enjoyment of those who saw it would be shared by those who lived and experienced the moment in a very different way.

I think LOST kind of fits that bill for me. I walk away from the show undecided if I am one of the blind women wanting to share an experience that I could never see directly, or if I am a holding a picture of something that I can see and trying to relay it to a group which has known it much differently than me.

That alone made the finale ‘worth it’ to me. I didn’t come away feeling ripped off and some have, most of my disappointments with the show emerged during the writers’ strike and all the plot problems that stemmed from it. Ultimately the ending brought a redeeming quality to the work itself and maybe that redemption, at least for the characters, was the point all along.

Interestingly enough LOST seemed to be geared toward the characters and not the fans from the start. I can appreciate that much about it; at least until the massive advertisement campaign started bleeding into my artistic appreciation of the show. So much of the cliff-hanger design was about neither the characters nor the fans – it existed to bait advertisers into spending more money to keep things rolling.

Cynicism aside, what the finale demonstrated was that all along the story of LOST existed for the characters and not the fans. We are each called into their story and emerging perhaps with little information, we’re left to our own individual imaginations as to the role we might play in it as existential beings.

It’s true that there are likely several dozen different theories about what happened. As a Christian, the old saying from John’s gospel, “No greater love has anyone than this: that they lay down their life for their friends” pretty much washed over the final scene. So did a line from T.S. Eliot – “My end is my beginning.”

Even so, Jack emerged from the tunnel of light in nearly the exact same place as the man in black. His body was contorted in a very similar fashion as the man in black. Could Jack be the island’s new smoke monster? Was Hurley’s selection as island guardian meant to guide Jack back? Is that why everyone else was waiting for him?

Or was it that Jack’s commitment to science and reason that kept him emerging into the afterlife much slower than his peers? Undoubtedly the issues of faith and redemption have been, and will now be codified, as the show’s primary themes.

It was through the theme of faith that everything else on the show will probably be forever interpreted. From the attempt of science to control religious faith (Dharma), to human self-righteousness manifested via the need to own religious faith (Ben), to the battle between good and evil to establish a foothold in religious faith (Jacob and the man in black), to the flirtation between this world and the next (Desmond), to ultimately crafting a human dialogue of purpose and meaning between two opposing ideologies (Jack and pre-monster Locke). The themes are there whether or not we choose to examine them as such.

LOST is a basic metaphor for our culture, of this I have little doubts. Volumes are going to be written about what it meant, and probably already have been, in that this is but one of thousands of blogs on the matter.

So five blind women having a picnic asked a stranger to photograph them… If you can understand the vicarious human nature of such a request, you’re close to becoming a candidate… and of course being a candidate, well, that’s a terrifying beauty all its own.

Earth is crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning


Meet you all on the other side,

DA

Goodnight my friend...

I can't sleep... what's new? Was thinking about my friend Jane as she slips away, then I remembered this prayer I wrote last year. Was nice to re-read, contemplate, and absorb. Thought I was overdue for a post anyway, so here it be.



On These Our Wings of Lonely Lifted Peat

On these our wings of lonely lifted peat
we see from heights above our waiting graves,
the alabaster jar has doused the feet

Of Him whose holy pertinence retreats
and leaves the chaise of human lawns to slave
our thresh upon the floor as sifted wheat.

And what rough beast strolls calmly down our street
and asks those fears to kindly go behave
with perfume poured upon our tombs and feet?

The parlors of the box are not discrete;
nor do the words upon these stones engrave
the kernel of our hope in planted wheat.

To Him whose holy pertinence retreats,
our doubts upon this cross we ask You waive;
take humble jars of fragrance bitter sweet

Raise broken heels above our vain conceit,
trade blessings for the burdens of our graves
until such time Thy work is last complete
on these our wings of lonely lifted peat.