one month to live--a no-regrets life

It has been one of those years lived in the both the rear view mirror and in the crystal ball. Grief does that. Is one moment I am asking, "This time last year, what were we doing or thinking? Did we have any inkling that we would lose my husband?" Or, trying to look into the impenetrable future,
"Should I live here, live this way, go to NGO work, concentrate on art, write more?" These points of discontinuity in my life have caused me to focus on the things I really know to be true. So, it's not surprising that I picked up a book titled, "One month to live: thirty days to a no-regrets life" by Kerry and Chris Shook. Its been like a life-check up. I suppose this is sort of my "Statement of Beliefs":

I am learning that relationships are a priority and so I am having to sort through and throw out some old attitudes. I'm also tearing up my old schedules to allow for time to sit on my front porch swing and to be available for relationships. I believe in the power of prayer, so I am trying to build bigger blocks of time for that, and to record what I am praying and I am taking retreats to strengthen my faith. I believe in the power of God's word, so I am lengthening the time I spend in it, studying it, copying it into calligraphy, so i can slow down enough to let it enter my heart and take root in my mind. I believe in the centrality of worship--so i sing hymns in the morning and through the day to turn my heart toward Jesus and to look in His wonderful face. I believe in the existence of that invisible kingdom, and so am trying to be a good steward of the material gifts I have been given in this one. I believe God has formed Himself in every person who lives, and so I am searching in every face for that part of the Imageo Dei that it bears. I believe that the entire universe was made by Him and through Him and For Him, so that I must seek out His glory and wonder and intelligence in every thing that exists, and that I have a special relationship to this material world, to shape and beautify it and to preserve it. I believe that the peacemakers are happy, so i am trying to work toward all kinds of reconciliation. I believe that every person is given a choice--what will they do with Jesus and His sacrifice--so i want to give them a chance to hear that good news that they are forgiven---what they do with that is up to them. I believe that everything i have or am is a gift from God and I've given it all back to Him for whatever His purposes in and with my life. My car, house, stuff, talents, time--energy--they are all His, to command. I believe I am to obey Him even if it's not convenient or easy, or safe. I believe Jesus resurrected to give us the power to live transformed lives--radically different lives--and I want to be willing to be thought "different, strange". It takes so much reshaping of my thought to conform to a new worldview that I literally have to stop and take every thought captive. I believe that God ordained marriage to be a picture of unity and love within the Trinity itself, and then to be a picture of Christ's sacrificial love for His bride--the church. So I am committed to remaining chaste and being dedicated to serving the church. I haven't taken orders--I'm just a regular person in the pew, who wants to serve and live for Jesus. I don't think I have the gift of celibacy, but I can still live a pure and holy life, rich in relationships within and outside the church. I believe God has set the "solitary"- lonely, in families, and so He has given me mine. These are wonderful, "peculiar (particular) people" given to me to cherish and to nurture. I want to give myself to living out abundant, meaningful life in whatever spheres of influence i may be given--art--poetry--aid or rescue work. I will need all the power of God to live this and to accomplish these things...and "I hope by God's good pleasure---safely to arrive at home."

Talking Mathematics and Quantum Mechanics

He looked more like an artist, tall, slender, long fingers, earnest expression. Most of the "customers" at the M.D. Garage in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park are bikers, wearing pointy hats and neon-colored spandex. He wore jeans and an oxford shirt and spent time in front of nearly every painting. After some conversation we learned that he is a mathematician, working in the field of quantum mechanics. And all of the sudden there was a silence. Because Math is like a special language. All I know about quantum mechanics is summarized in a collection of poems I wrote that really borrow metaphors and a set of vocabulary words that excite me, but which i use in my own personal , idiosyncratic way, and I'm afraid, probably not properly. There is a precision about math that I admire. And there is a fascination I have for the world of quantum mechanics. Such a strange world of quarks, and strange-attractors. I know so little about this world that I can't even arrange an intelligent question. Yet, I have this realization that the whole of the universe I know and love and am a part of is under laid by its principles and states, and actors But if I ask him, he can only tell me numbers. Or at least, numbers would be the most precise way to tell me what he knows, what physicist suspect may be true about the nature of all the possible worlds. And i want pictures and diagrams or failing that, words to describe it and to tell me what it means--what it portends--and what its implications are for my life, for my decisions today and tomorrow. If the very order of the universe has a message I want to hear it for myself--and here I am with a brush, and a pen when I need at the very least, calculus. It seems unlikely that such an important message would be encrypted for only the elite--when all of nature seems to speak to us in every language--every culture. Even art, the language of the human soul, speaks across language barriers as we discovered on a recent trip to Spain and Morocco. We artists created many different kinds of visual art there, and regardless of language, people of many ages and backgrounds could respond to the quality of line and color and to the symbols, to the textures--to the Jungian shapes of dreams and fears --so where is-- the "babel fish" that sits in your ear and explains math--so that you can see its shape and hear its message. I want to understand string theory-and chaos theory and to discover those bits of truth that are held by the mathematicians.

"The Traitor" suggests "start with Salaam"--

Just saw "The Traitor"--a wonderful and thoughtful film. True enough it has action, but the really defining element is the character and development of the protagonist..is he good or is he a terrorist? What I really like was the honest portrayal of the worldviews of the Taliban and the terrorists and the "ordinary Muslims" who get recruited to blow up a bus. While it challenges people of all faiths to act out of compassion and respect for each other, it is not naive either about the extent to which radicalism has taken over true Islam. And to be fair, In a pivotal scene the protagonist quotes Martin Luther King--a challenge to Christians to live for something worth dying for...So I think it has value if it encourages open dialogue and discussion. In an interesting observation, one of the key figures says that in asymmetric warfare, the object is to play to an audience. He goes on to identify the audience as the American people whom he wants to convince that "it is not safe anywhere." He also expresses the sentiment that all Americans everywhere are permissible targets because they are responsible for their government's policies. That is precisely what many of the Fatwas have said, and this is not understood by many of us. I thought it fairly represented the resentments that many Middle Easterners feel about Western presence in the land they hold to be holy. It is such a complicated situation, but this film works hard to try to explain--without being exhaustive. The last line is the greeting--Salaam Aleikum--Start there--start with friendship and a hope for peace. Blessings!

Kenya- Coming alongside

I met the Kenya team for the first time tonight. Mostly guys in the band at my church. Great musicians. The church in Nairobi has sent a representative to help us get oriented and to prepare us for this trip scheduled for next March. He is an earnest young film maker. Son of a pastor. With a heart for his people. He is in the US to study film making. He was part of a team of Kenyan musicians who came to Hudson a year or so ago. He tells us about the inner city of his town. Poverty that takes your heart away in minutes. He sees the horrors his country has been going through and wonders if we know enough to care. He speaks of the way the Christian pastors in Kenya went from town to town together--Kikuyu and Ooloo, and confessed and asked forgiveness for the terrible things that happened --and the reconciliation they were able to bring out of the disasters. I wonder how we can help. I'm just a "roadie" --I may be able to find something to do to just walk alongside my sisters in that center of the city--the girls with HIV/AIDS--the ones that need to learn job skills to support themselves and their children. Maybe we can join hands with our sisters and brothers in the church, struggling to speak the peace of Jesus to their troubled people. Maybe we can lift up their weary hands, like Hur did for Moses. There is a Kenyan sister who has started a foundation to preserve Kenyan art. Maybe as an artist I can listen to her and hear her passion and see her vision. In the next few months we will read everything we can and prepare ourselves. In March we will join hands and voices to worship and to celebrate our Lord and the peace He brings--together- in one, LOUD, wonderful, rockin' NOISE!

Thanks a lot!

Saying "Thanks" is not so simple a gesture. I was thinking about my friend who is teaching her little girls (3 and 5 years old) to be thankful. That's a radical idea in a culture of entitlement. They are learning that what they have comes from outside of themselves, from parents, or ultimately from God. They neither create nor provide for themselves independently of family or community. They are learning to appreciate what they have, and will learn one day to appreciate the effort, thought, or work that went into the provision of material things or in the actions that sustain and support them. Saying thanks acknowledges our mutual dependence on each other in this world, and in the special case of prayer, in our dependence on a being with more power and wisdom than we have to solve our own problems.

Thankfulness is pretty rare when every billboard and most TV ads are aimed at making us dis-satisfied enough with something, or our lack of some essential thing or essence, that we should want to go out immediately and purchase something. Giving thanks is a counter-cultural gesture that affirms joy and contentment with what we have been given. I want to savor each and every gift I am given--juicy, ripe, fuzzy peach or golden cloud. Because part of thankfulness is just recognizing what is a gift. A traffic delay can give you extra moments of silence. An unexpected visitor at the door may become a friend.

The Apostle James said "You have not because you ask not." --I wonder about the times I've missed a hug, or a kiss, or a friendship, because I didn't have the humility to ask someone, eyeball to eyeball, for something I needed or wanted. Thanking my friend, connects us. I acknowledge that she has something I don't have, that I need, that I depend on her to grant. I used to be uncomfortable with the power this gives others in my life. Now I feel like the beggar who greets the day with an empty bowl. I lift it upward and say thanks for what I know by experience, and apprehend by faith, will come into it. Thank you! I thank God, from whom every good and perfect gift comes. And I thank you all, through whom so many spangled gifts have come.

A Poem will come on Thursday

Just the tips of the maple trees are turning orange. It's not a bright orange, more like a russet submerged in sap green, so that you aren't really conscious of its presence. The color hits your eye in the periphery, the way a stray movement catches your attention. Coupled with the cooler nights, there is a growing awareness of the end to summer and the start of something new. For me, the sap rises in the Fall, when I look about me for a campus and some subject to tackle. This Fall, I am taking Poetry II again, at Kent State. I have this thing for poetry. It grabs me, when its good, like Samson's hair, in a headlock.

So I am here again in the small classroom in Satterfield, seated at a conference table, with sixteen other journeymen. We are nervous at first, reluctant to speak our names. Our teacher is quiet, calm, and passionate about books, and poems, and words. She honors bravery and we start to relax. She honors the ordinary life. We sit straighter in our seats. Some of us recognize each other from previous forays into this world and we honor each other for the people we have become in the intervening years. This is an elective. Everyone is serious about writing. When the teacher requests that we begin writing in class, there is not even a pause. Heads go down and pens begin to move, flowing or scratching away at the scabs from recent wounds. One male students bring in the four-letter words he knows dearly and the booze and oral sex. He starts us off in his world. It is no easy thing to open up the door and say--"Here it is. Come and see."

I read to enter other worlds. I think I write for the same reason. I've thought that I might use this blog as a place to write what was once a journal requirement. It is optional to keep a journal, she says. (She can't imagine not keeping one.) And I journal every day, but it IS too personal to share. This is a step toward sharing, my life, my world.

Even as I write these words I wonder if anyone would really want to see, my world; would care to have a window into my life. If you are reading, you must have your reasons. They interest me.