when we no longer know what to do

almost always, whenever i am going through the throes of life, i begin the task of letting words fall on me. not words to say or to write, but words to listen to.



so while a mr. paul holds his hand in the space between us, amid sink and stove, and says, “you know what happy is? happy is this little finger. happy is using my hands,” i take his words in like bread and butter. and when i saw the stretch of his pinky, i found a bit of happy in my own.



and at the burger joint on the corner of walnut and oakland, a lucky boy tells me about an old man, who after walking out of a restaurant, comes back and says he forgot his cane. lucky boy says, “well if you forgot your cane, you don’t need it.” you. don’t. need. it. the phrase echoed liberation. that is to say, freedom from the crutch. i recall the moment i heard his story, and knew this was somehow for me. it came as a moment of revelation over the strength of my own two feet. 

and then when in the dark of the plaza, from the lips of a perfect stranger, a series of poignant remarks fell over me. this man, who i now know as a fifty-something year old mr. michael, says, “The world, it belongs to you.”  the declaration in his voice told me how true it was for him, and how true he thought it was for me. he traced his life from age twenty-three and told me, "Be strong," and then added, "I don't know you, but I can tell you've got wisdom beyond your years." and whether i believe the veracity of his statement, it’s there, in those first words, where i am making sense of the world and all its possibilities.



i am a romantic. sometimes i feel that makes me naive. and other times i feel that makes me more brave.  i want happy to be found in the work of my hands. i want to feel ease in the distance between what i want and what i have. because what i want is most often not what i have... but hell, i have got to be more damn persistent in committing myself to what i want. Of the same token, i want a contentment for what i do have, because i realize what i have is still the gift and beauty i do not deserve. but to continue in the list of what i want... i want to find the intention of my being lived out in every essence, in mind, body, soul, work, and place.  i want an art and craft that marks my existence, a community of people to bear witness to and upon, and the liturgy of daily rhythms to pronounce a life that died well. i want to lead a romantic life. 

and i want it all to happen not in the shadow of a man, or a woman. not in the shadow of a family, nor in the shadow of society. because i find the shadow of all of these to be too small. if in any shadow, may it be in the shadow of God, because She is much bigger and much more gracious than the whole of humanity.

“It may be when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.” | Wendell Berry

It's happening again. That welling up inside that calls me to put pen to paper. Soon friends, expect a post on the things I am processing-- or rather the way in which I hope I am becoming.
 

the up and down and over

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall. | F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby



The view from my bedroom window overlooks a city, and when I start on my routine bike ride down the mountain from my house, I can see the steepness of the pavement dropping beneath me. And then at the end of the day, I feel the breadth and heaves of the mountain as I take my bike up. Morning and night, I am confronted by my smallness.  It is good.

This is the way I have been starting and ending my days, with my smallness in mind. Though there are days when it feels painstakingly hard to pedal against the rise of the mountain, I can't help but feel much gratitude in the stop of this reality.


Being surrounded by a cityscape and living in a technology infested world, there is the assumption that all westerners are born into believing, and that is our own mightiness, and from our own flats we like to say this is mine. We attempt to mirror the night sky with electric lights strewn about the city streets and mimic the silhouette of the ever changing horizon; like the plunge of plateaus or the curve of hillsides, we exact its likeness by building skyscrapers to create our own skylines. We easily forget our frailty, but this halting mountain, saves me from this forgetfulness. And watching its ascent toward the heavens makes me human again. 



The movement of this thought peaked when, months ago, I sat down in class, and feeling overwhelmed by the list of things I needed to do, my professor began his lecture by giving a few words on similar sentiments (on forgetfulness, and our humanness). He talked about our thoughts, and shared openly the one thought he turns to so frequently, which now has become instinctual, and prayerful.  The thought came in a question, the way the Father of Lights asked it: Adam, where are you? The question feels the echoes of our genesis story as in the garden when Adam sinned, and ashamed, he hid. But it's less about the act of sinning, and more about the loss of something. The question breathes a sigh of longing, begging, where are you, you have lost what it is to be truly human.

I think part of what Adam lost was the awe of things more mighty and majestic than he. And it was at that thought, all my anxieties were diminished. I am small, but oh my God, those mountains? Those stars? This world? Do they feel the weight of my worries? I don't know, but I feel the gravity of their existence ground me back into the dust and dirt that I am.

Oh let my eyes be set on goodly things. To the Father of lights, Amen.