junkmail for blankets

order me around

so i'll be writing the 3rd part (and final, for now) sometime this weekend, after finishing with my students' personal essays. after part 3, i've decided that i'd like to write a series of 3-5 minute essays. frankly, i don't like to write very much, but it's much more exciting when i'm given an assignment. last summer, my dear friend michael decided to make me write, so he said, "write on this: you know that thing where you're on the phone with your mom and she adds in the 'i love you,' and you try to get in the 'you, too' right before you hang up? write on that." so i did, and it was a blast. so over the next few days, i want to collect around 10 things/words/ideas/quotes that people would like to see a random, short essay on. if it's a quote, i'll use that as the first line and go from there. and even though i'm not getting paid, i'll consider you patrons. i've always wanted a patron. (if you want to read the "i love you" essay, click below.) (pee ess: leave a comment on this post if you want to submit a thing/word/idea/quote)

Disdain

One million tiny risks—this is the math of my life. For instance, already today:

. . . didn’t have my alarm clock set . . .
. . . sloughed off the ace of hearts in a game of Spades . . .
. . . crossed Skinker Blvd. in the face of a flashing red hand . . .
. . . asked a stranger why she was reading Kafka . . .
. . . answered the phone . . . .

It’s just past noon now. I woke this morning (no alarm) just past ten. That’s at least five tiny risks in two hours. That adds up, at sixteen hours in my day, to 40 tiny risks per day. At 365.24219878 days per year, I will take 14,609.688 risks in my 29th year of life. I’ll take this as an average year. If my math is correct, I’ll hit my millionth risk on May 26, 2042. I’ll be 68, my mom will be 88, and it will be her birthday.

Don’t be too impressed by my math. We both know that these numbers represent the risks that I’m aware of. Who knows how many perfectly good risks I’ve failed to number because I haven’t paid attention? And these are just waking-hour risks—who knows what we risk in our dreams?

%

I suffer, on occasion, from Post-Trauma Concern Disorder (PTCD). PTCD doesn’t refer to those directly affected by a traumatic occasion (father loses son; pastor commits adultery; high school girl miscarries). PTCD affects those who care for the involved.

A few days after Jan’s divorce, the phone rings: her friend Paul, who asks, softly, “How are you holding up?” They talk for a few minutes, and as they prepare to hang up, Paul says, “Jan, you know that I love you.”

“I know,” she says.

Months later, after Jan has found a measure of healing, Paul calls. Jan answers the phone, and Paul asks, “Hey, what’s up?” They talk for a few minutes, and as they prepare to hang up, Paul says, “Alright, see ya later.”

“See ya later,” she says.

How do we account for the disorder? Or is there some order to account for here? Do we have a limited reserve of concern, and, thus, should we dispense it judiciously? Does urgency alone merit our concern? Should we govern our alarms, ration our words?

%

I’ve been planning this for a while. Maybe now’s as good a time as any. I’m going to auction off a love letter on eBay. The high bidder wins an original love letter. Understand, though, and I’ll try to make this clear in the auction’s description, that I won’t write a letter to the winner; I’ll write a letter for the winner.

I’ve been dealt a good hand—so many dear people who tell me they love me. Yet I’m afraid to match them. Get a good hand, and for who knows what reasons, I’m afraid to play it. I underbid, and I’m forced to slough off hearts.

“Dear God, thank you for loving me . . . (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication) . . . in Jesus’ name, amen.” I think this is what he wants to hear; he won me, after all. I say these things for him. For him. Slough.

%

Were it a man with a real hand, maybe a blue uniform and white cap (silver star shining), I wouldn’t be crossing. But it’s just a flashing red hand, bleeping current. They’re all the same, too: ten inches high, six inches wide, 28 small bulbs. So uniform, so standard, so obligatory—they mean nothing to me. There’s no meaning, no feeling in there. Might as well be a telemarketer on the other end of the line.

“Is Mr. or Mrs. Huggins available?”

“No, he or she isn’t.”

“Is there a good time to call back?”

“Try Saturday morning.”

“Great. Thanks for your time. I love you.”

“You, too.”

Click.

%

Excerpt from article, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Sunday June 15, 2003:

Local Man Run Down at Skinker and Delmar While Disdaining Flashing Hand

". . . after consoling Mr. Huggins’ friends, experiencing severe trauma, Cpt. Jackson of the SLPD shook his head, completed the accident report, and muttered to himself, ‘The sign means something.’”

%

A girl has been e-mailing me, and I can’t stand it—it’s those damn heart icons. One more and I’m out of here—I can’t take her seriously. If she were to walk up to me on the street, would she raise her hands and trace a heart shape in the air?

%

Maybe I’ll live to 80 instead and my mom to 76—it all averages out: one million tiny risks. Maybe mom doesn’t care for math. Or urgency, or overbidding, or routines. Maybe she’s my mom and just says things for me. But maybe not, and who cares? Maybe I should smoke one less cigarette today, pick up the phone, and replace it with “I love you, mom.”

“I love you, too.”

Click.

god, i want to be special, part 2

click "continue reading 'god, i . . .'" to continue reading "god, i . . . ."

::

My father is a generous man. Sacrifice beyond telling. I see the bags around his eyes and wonder if I’ll look the same 20 years from now when I’m 49. But I’ve not worked as hard as he, and when he was my age, he already had a 9-year-old me whining, sulking, demanding, and fighting between two sisters. So no, I will not need Noxzema. My father is compassionate, decent, and quietly discerning. He never complains, preferring quiet suffering instead; he cares too much to burden others with his grief. My father is a beautiful man. What my father is not is a violent man. From the first time I recognized him as my father, he has always been and not been these things.

1979 was a bad year for being me in public. I lit a couch on fire in the Haverty’s Fine Furniture show room. I stood on top of a lunch table at the Assembly of God school I attended and threw my clothes off. All of them. Apparently I landed a pencil to the right eye of Ronnie Greenwood, the charismatic child-drummer prodigy, future hope of pentecostal rhythm. I was warming up for the early 80’s, when I would disrupt weddings, purposely miss school buses so I could, against Altruria Elementary’s purple ditto-carboned policies, walk the train tracks home, rip curb-set, grass-full garbage bags with the back pegs of my GT Dyno, and, as I’ve mentioned, defecate in a neighbor’s pool.

My father didn’t have the heart to hit me. When he either witnessed or heard word of my misdeeds, he’d sit me on the couch and begin asking questions. He knew what I’d done, and he could easily have coaxed a confession out of me, but he was modeling for me what he tried to teach me: “Always give people the benefit of the doubt.” So he did, and though he knew I was in the wrong, still he’d ask me to tell him what happened. I would, and then, in the place of belt or hand, he’d finish me with a lecture. Regardless of what I’d done, and regardless of the length of the lecture, he’d always end with the same rhetorical admonition: “Now, do you want to be a special person, or do you want to be like everyone else?”

“I want to be a special person,” I’d say.

“Good. You know that I love you,” he’d say, and give me a hug. I always started crying when he hugged me, but I hid it, so he’d let go and walk upstairs, leaving me to consider the love that lets go of a crying son.

god, i want to be special, part 1

below (click on "continue reading god, i want to be . . . ") is the first part of an essay i've begun working on. i'm hoping to add a new section every other day until i finish with it, which may be friday, may be this summer. we'll see. and thanks, in a mass-produced sort of way, for reading my junk.

::

My dad and I were both 27 when we fell in love with a car, he a Porsche 944 and I a Dodge Dart, 1964. I’m not sure why I wanted a Dart, but I was sure that it had to be a 1964. I spent months checking the classifieds, browsing online, reading Auto Traders. Then, in February, I got an e-mail from my dad. He let me know there was a 1964 Dart up for auction on Ebay, and there were only a few hours left.

Two days later, I was in a rental car with a friend, on the way to Wichita to pick up my Dart: 28,000 one-owner miles, bench seats, all chrome and blue like stainless clouds. The drive from St. Louis to Wichita isn’t much in the way of eye candy, but it’s powerful country, nonetheless. The terrain is hard-scrabble and homely; with the windows down, the wind, unobstructed by geography, is powerful enough to blow your rearview mirror out-of-whack. And it literally whistles, violently, even boastfully, like it’s proud of the fact that this land doesn’t need anything to make it special.

We picked up the Dart, dropped the rental off at the airport, and turned around for the drive home. The wind was blowing so hard at this point that we considered pulling to the side of the road, the 40-year-old Sears bias-ply tires gripping the road as well as you’d expect glorified plastic to grip something. We decided instead to slow down, turn the stock AM radio up, and enjoy the drive at a slower pace. Maybe it was coincidence, maybe sheer wit, but the radio station was playing “They Call The Wind Maria,” and after the song was over, we were given a special news-flash. Matter-of-factly, the news-flash guy began reading off a list of animals, mostly small cats and dogs, that had been blown away from their homes and were now hurtling around the greater Wichita area. “These animals have been, well, ungrounded from their homes,” he said, clearly delighted with his euphemism. Apparently this is a normal occurrence in Kansas, and the report is normal, so, despite his apparent lack of concern for the animals of Wichita, we can trust that he really does care.

I don’t know how Robby Reed ended up being my best friend. His dad worked for Firestone, my dad owned his own computer business. Robby was the only kid I knew with fever blisters. His older brother Danny was the neighborhood bully, and his older sister was rumored to have masturbated when she was only nine – they were the most terrifying family in the neighborhood. They lived three houses down on Morning Light Drive, so we had geography going for us, but I knew other kids close-by. Maybe Robby singled me out, chose me, to be his friend, and I was too afraid to decline. I was his only friend, so even though he and Danny locked me in their closet and terrified me, even though Robby made me ride bikes ChiPs-style, side-by-side and entirely too close for my comfort, he named me his best friend, and there was no way out.

I can remember, with precise detail, many times when I was afraid that I would literally die at the hand of the Reed family. Danny threw a pool party one summer and told Robby he could invite one friend. By default, I was chosen, and I showed up in my Spiderman speedos. I recall, even now, the terror I felt when I realized that I had to go to the bathroom, the anguish of deciding whether to risk walking wet through Mrs. Reed’s living room. I’d heard that if she caught you messing up her house, she’d lock you in the basement and make you eat dog shit. I remember hoping, actually believing for a second, that no one would notice the small wedge of human shit floating toward the deep end. Danny wasn’t willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, so before he had a chance to line me against the fence and strip-check my speedos, I ran home screaming. My dad walked me back to the Reeds’ and made me apologize. Robby and I were friends again, and I wished my dad would know that I was terrified of Robby, that I didn’t want to be his friend.

If it weren’t for the fear that resurfaces when I think of Robby, 20 years later, I’d be inclined to doubt my memory – maybe things weren’t that bad; maybe my imagination got the better of me. I think back to the end of the summer where most of my memories come from, namely the morning Robby came to my house and wanted to play baseball. He said it was a “special inside baseball,” and he’d teach me how to play. If it weren’t for the intense shame I carried with me for 20 years, I’d be inclined to doubt that what happened to me that morning was any more than two boys messing around.

::

you will not see god's face

a while back i delivered a "lecture" at l'abri with denis haack. he asked me, as the "younger" generation, to discuss the paradigms (or an important one, in my view) that my generation uses as it views films, and the ways that older generations can use film to mentor the younger. he spoke for a while, then showed a clip from american beauty (it was more timely then), after which my part of the lecture picks up. i'd like to update and turn this into an essay, so i'd appreciate any response/feedback/criticism. if you've already read the beauty essay i posted a few days back, you'll recognize the first few paragraphs. but do read on, please. so if you have any thoughts, i'd be grateful. click below. if you please.

(start with notes i jotted down after seeing American Beauty in theater):

I like to go to the movies by myself. And I play this silly game where I won’t go see a movie if everyone is raving about it (still haven’t seen Schindler’s List, e.g.) – yes, I am a film snob. However, since my movie boycotts are based on nothing but numbers (forget theme, acting, cinematography), I usually just end up missing good movies. For a while, in spite of all the Academy Award predictions and acclaim, both popular and critical, I managed to hold fast to my principles, like a jealous lover, and refused to go see American Beauty.
But late this Thursday night, during its last week in theatres, my principles and I had a fight. I got angry, they got angry; I said things I shouldn’t have, they cried; I stormed from the room, they yelled after me, using my whole name, and said they wouldn’t be home when I returned, that it better be a good movie. I stormed to the theatre, a sweet pang of excitement in my gut – I was going to see a popular movie.

Regardless of the cinematic value of the movie, something happened to me, or in me, tonight:

Ricky, the Burns’ next-door neighbor, manages to memorialize much of life on his video camera. He decides to show his girlfriend, Janie Burns, the “most beautiful thing he’[d] ever filmed.” His video screen enlarged until it filled the theatre screen, and I was in his room watching with him. A clear plastic bag started swirling on the screen, now a red brick wall. Ricky narrates:

It was one of those days where it’s a minute away from snowing, and there’s this electricity in the air – you can almost hear it. And this bag was just dancing with me, like a little kid begging me to play with it – for fifteen minutes. That’s when I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid . . . ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know, but it helps me remember . . . I need to remember. Sometimes, there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.

There were only four of us in the theatre, but it wouldn’t have mattered if there were four thousand. The bag on the screen grabbed my eyes and ears and stomach and made everything and everyone else blurry and, eventually, disappear. I was stunned, had no other word but to agree with Ricky -- “beautiful.” It reached in and touched something tired and aching and deep in me, and I’m convinced that it did the same to others who saw the movie.
I’ve spent much of the last year of my life thinking about the nature of beauty – beauty is one of the few things that has kept me going during that time. So I write about it. Writing’s a poor excuse, I know, but it helps me remember . . . . I need to remember.

* * *

So, on occasion, I’ve found myself asking people, mostly people of my generation, what they thought of the movie, how it affected them, was it true? Often, someone would respond by telling me how it’s so realistic, that he grew up in a situation just like that, that she was a white suburban kid in a dysfunctional family. I don’t disagree that the film could have been powerful for those reasons, but I did doubt that it was even a significant reason (the film’s not strictly realistic, in terms of its genre and its intentions). In fact, most of the people I talk to didn’t grow up in a situation like that, and the film had the same impact on them as it did on the previous group – its impact transcends geographic and economic context. Its impact has been keen on my generation, maybe moreso than on any other. Denis asked me to think about this, so I present to you a few quiet moments’ worth of thoughts.

When we want to get a quick primer on the state of somebody’s soul, where do we generally look? I propose that we look into his face. When you meet someone for the first time, how often do you find yourself, or the other person, shying away from direct eye contact? I think, partly, that’s because it’s such an intimate act to look directly and purposefully into someone’s face, and we almost feel embarrassed to invite such intimacy with strangers. I think God has created our faces as "windows to our hearts," and as I talk to people, as I’ve talked to them about the themes in American Beauty, I’ve made it a point to study their faces, and when I have, what I think I’ve seen, overwhelmingly, is homesickness – capital H homesickness. I know that sounds a bit mystical, and I can’t do an adequate job of making that explicit to you, but let me challenge you to start paying attention to the faces of my generation, and see if you don’t detect the same. Along these lines, I came across this passage from Augustine. Just listen to the words, allow yourself to be vulnerable for a moment, throw yourself into the experiment that he proposes:

Imagine God appeared to you and said, “I’ll make a deal with you if you wish. I’ll give you anything and everything you ask: pleasure, power, honor, wealth, freedom, even peace of mind and a good conscience. Nothing will be a sin; nothing will be forbidden; and nothing will be impossible for you. You will never be bored and you will never die. Only . . . you shall never see my face.”

I don’t know about you, but when I hear that, and when most of my generation hears that, our hearts stop at that last line. Our hearts congeal, catonate (if I may neologize for a moment), for, despite all the other apparent joys offered to us, we realize that they are not our real desire. We want to see the face of God. We may not know it, but he is the cause of our homesickness. His face is home. We are searching each other’s faces for his face, and we are not finding it. And because my generation seems to be searching more urgently than the ones before us, we are desperate to avoid the traps that we have seen our elders fall into, those things that we see as distractions, unsatisfying answers – we do not want our homesickness to lead us to false-front houses.

There are meaningful connections to be found here in the failure of modernity, and, thus, the concurrent change in our questions. Postmodernism has issued, among other things, spiritual hunger. And, lest I turn this into a mini-lecture on Postmodernism, I will defer you to our tape library and to Jock McGregor, who will be happy to answer your questions.

Briefly, though, there are pros and cons to my generation’s dissatisfaction. Do not hear me setting up our dissatisfaction as an inherent virtue. We are cynical, we are sarcastic, we are slow to trust.

We have paid a severe price for having grown up in the previous generation’s consumer society. And it’s not just economic consumerism, though that’s a great part of it. We have seen emotional consumerism, familial consumerism (we view divorce as a result of consuming, or using, the family for status and achievement). We look at our elders and see C.S. Lewis’s (and Rilke's) dog: its owner is pointing to dog food, but the dog is satisfied to just sit and stare at the finger, maybe give it a sniff or two. We have seen the results of short-sighted devotion and attention. Had our parents not done this, we would have, but because they have, and that proved unsatisfactory, we are left to hope that there’s something beyond the finger. We want to get past the finger-pointing to the thing pointed at. I realize that this attitude, this cynicism, can and has led to rebellion and apathy that’s equally as useless as our parents’ mistakes, and one is right to point that out, but I also think that we have been tagged as lazy, rebellious, useless, and even this might be a result of a consumer attitude toward behavior.

We want something different, and we often deflect the difficult search with our own cynicism (a guy during the American Beauty leaned over to my friend during the bag scene and said, "They're just using a leafblower'), but we view our cynicism as more honest than what we see in our parents’ lives. We view our cynicism as a noble, honest cynicism, cynicism for the purpose of moving in a better direction.

The first clip that Denis showed is so good in this respect. The parents are pointedly sarcastic, quite cynical toward each other, and Janie, the daughter, can’t stand it. She storms into the kitchen, and Lester comes in to apologize. And don’t you know that she longed for a heartfelt apology. And Lester even begins to do so, but his words catch, and he turns his apology into an accusation: “You know you don’t always have to wait for me to come to you.” Poof – a heartfelt apology replaced by a consumer attitude toward forgiveness. Then he says, “It’s nobody’s fault, Janie.” That’s not what Janie wanted, either. Janie wanted someone to find fault. We want to be called out on our sin (there's a beautiful illustration of this in You Can Count On Me), and we want this because we know that without a higher honesty, without anything transcendent, we have no right to denounce our parents’ failures. We know that without something bigger than ourselves, life is meaningless. And that prospect makes us angry - we are hungry for meaning. And this is where our brand of cynicism has the potential to be more healthy than the previous brand. Whereas Janie’s parents were cynical only of each other – their cynicism is directed only to other people – Janie’s cynicism, my cynicism, my generation’s cynicism, takes one more step toward home – we are cynical of God, and we are cynical because we are desperate for a different God than we see in the previous generation.

Listen to a dialogue between the searching Knight and Death from Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal:

Knight: Why can’t I kill God within me? Why does he live on in this painful and humiliating way even though I curse him and want to tear him out of my heart? Why, in spite of everything, is he a baffling reality that I can’t shake off? Do you hear me?

Death: Yes, I hear you.

Knight: I want knowledge, not faith . . . I want God to stretch out his hand toward me, reveal himself and speak to me.

Death: But he remains silent.

Knight: I call out to him in the dark but no one seems to be there.

Death: Perhaps no one is there.

Knight: Then life is an outrageous horror. No one can live in the face of death, knowing that all is nothingness.

We are angry, rebellious, cynical, because we see emptiness and meaninglessness in our parents’ lives, and we know that there must be something more, but we don’t know how to access it, how to engage it. All we know to do is to sit behind a video camera and try to capture it on film.

And this, I think, is the point where my generation stutters, why we are so frustrated. My generation is pointed the right way, is looking past the finger, but we don’t know exactly what we’re looking for, and this is where we, as Christians, as those whose Home descended to earth and pitched tent in Israel, have the opportunity to lead people across the bridge that we share, to push them along to the rational conclusions of their Homesickness. This is why Denis keeps pushing for the principle that film is not merely entertainment, not merely art form, but a medium, a bridge, for embodying the stories of a generation, of a culture. This is why he wants us to engage these stories, not for the purpose of mere entertainment, but for the purpose of engaging our culture, of sharing the bridge with them and pointing them home.

That leaves a final question. How, then, do we engage my generation, especially in light of a film like this?

Listen again to the dialogue between Ricky and Janie as they’re walking home together:

Have you ever known anybody who died?

No. You?

No. When you see something like that, it’s like God’s looking right at you,
just for a second, and if you’re careful, you can look right back.

And what do you see?

Beauty.

I hear two important issues in this conversation: 1. Despite our intentions, we are failing to engage with reality (ever known anyone who died? a real person? something that affects your life?). And 2. I think that failure stems from a misunderstanding of beauty, a lack of true understanding/engagement with beauty.

I do think that this misunderstanding is an improvement on the earlier ones. Whereas modernity asked the question, “How does the world fit around me,” postmoderns now sit and watch a bag blowing around in the wind, realize that there’s something beyond them, and ask the better question, “How do I fit into the world around me?” And this is a step in the right direction, but it’s not far enough. The question is not inherently virtuous. It often leads to misdirected quests for enlightenment, for esoteria, as you can see reflected in recent films like Brokedown Palace and Holy Smoke, where people of my generation make pilgrimages to the East to find Enlightenment. But it’s not just in the movies.

I live in a part of St. Louis called The Loop. It’s right near Washington University (WashU if you ever visit), and it’s the cultural hotspot for my generation. Almost every day, I go to the same coffee shop and study and drink tea and talk to the people there, and it’s the same people day and in and day out, a remarkable community actually (more evidence, I think, of the longing for a home). I was sitting out on the sidewalk one day reading, and I got into a conversation with a girl my age, and she started telling me about her studies, about her boyfriend and what a beautiful person he was, and then she mentioned that she had been camping the previous weekend and went outside her tent one night to look at the stars. And she said that she was in awe, that it was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. I looked at her and said, “Wow, that’s pretty intense. What’d you do after that?” She looked back at me like I had a tea leaf sticking out my right nostril and said, “What do you mean? It was just beautiful – that’s it.” And we exchanged dialogue:

I said, “Why do you care so much for your boyfriend?”

She said, “Because he’s a beautiful person.”

“So his beauty makes you want to do something in response?”

“Yeah.”

“So how did the beauty you saw the other night make you respond?”

“But that’s different.”

“Why?”

“Just cause.”

Ah, the blasted “just cause.” That story is representative of our problem: we recognize beauty, but we don’t know what to do with it, how to engage it, how to move beyond our cynicism and questions. My generation sees beauty as an aesthetic concept and fails to recognize it as a state of being, as a behavior, as a moral imperative. If you played the opposite game with us, and asked us to come up with the first opposite word that pops in our head when you say a word, and you say “beauty,” we say “ugliness.” We’re searching for deep truth, but we’re searching the surface. In God’s reality, the opposite of beauty isn’t ugliness but brokenness, not-the-way-it’s-supposed-to-be-edness. My generation recognizes that things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be, either in our parents’ generation or in ours, but we fail to see that beauty actually heals the wounds of brokenness, that beauty is an act, that beauty is not a concept but a Person. We are Homesick for the one we call Beautiful, and this world that he created is full of fingers pointing to him, and while it’s okay for the moment to look at the finger, we are made ultimately to look beyond them to him.

So many students come to a place like L’Abri looking for answers, looking for a mystical, spiritual experience. What they find are lawnmowers, dirty dishes, raspberries, and difficult and wonderful people. And these are the fingers that God uses to point them to Him. This is real spirituality, real beauty, contact with reality. By engaging people’s lives, and by engaging the world with them, we are helping them to engage beauty, and we are pointing them home. We are saying, “See that beautiful bag dancing around over there? Put your videocamera down and go touch it, dance with it, sense it, see that it is good.”

So when you see a film like American Beauty, and you see the faces of the people leaving the theater, ask how you can engage the Homesickness you see. Ask your spouse when you can rent a movie and have someone over for lemonade and gardening and conversation. Open your home as a signpost for a more beautiful home, and when you do, that’s when you’ve begun to engage my culture and its stories, that’s when you’ve understood and engaged our Homesickness. That’s when you’ve rightly opened the door to the one who calls us to taste and see that He is good.”

sin in the eyes of the beholder

he's around 25. takes up half of a four-person table. maybe he's waiting on coffee. on a friend, i hope. 5 minutes, nothing. the music is obscenely loud. he hits my foot on the way to the barista. no, not him, but a stick he uses to give him context: blind. the barista leads him back to the bathroom. overweight and blind--two strikes--and has to ask to be led by a teenaged girl to the bathroom. who knows how long he'd sat there before i noticed him--10 minutes? 20?-- figuring out how to relieve himself, who would relieve his embarrassment. maybe not. i use the bathroom after him. urine haloes the toilet, staining the red floor. it makes me so fucking sad. and angry. adam's sin, yes, but just as much mine that makes him piss on the floor. as i cry, i think to myself how good and mature it is of me to be so sad and angry.

oh, god, show me my sin, yes, but if it's at all possible for me to see it without doing it, that would be better. one day, my eyes will see the glory. until then, you will have to clean up after me.

i brake for cricket

some assorted thumbnails from various trips, notably india and the west coast with rusty, the wonder taurus, and assorted postcards.

india

thanks to rusty

postal cards

old reflections on beauty

so i'm still sick. cheeks are sagging, nose is red, forehead is pale--i feel like mr. bean. no time to write. so i'll post something old. old skool old, like 2001, my first attempt at writing an essay. if you read, you'll realize it's an attempt, and not really an essay. but maybe there's something true inside the narrow philosophizing and sermonizing. god likes you too much to leave you dependent on words alone.

Reflections on Beauty
~ for jerram ~

I like to go to the movies by myself. And I play this silly game where I won’t go see a movie if everyone is raving about it (still haven’t seen Schindler’s List, e.g.) – yes, I am a film snob. However, since my movie boycotts are based on nothing but numbers (forget theme, acting, cinematography), I usually just end up missing good movies. Over a year ago, in spite of all the Academy Award predictions and acclaim, both popular and critical, I managed to hold fast to my principles, like a jealous lover, and refused to go see American Beauty.

But late on a Thursday night during its last week in theatres, my principles and I had a fight. I got angry, they got angry; I said things I shouldn’t have, they cried; I stormed from the room, they yelled after me, using my whole name, and said they wouldn’t be home when I returned, that it better be a good movie. I stormed to the theatre, a sweet pang of excitement in my gut – I was going to see a popular movie.

Regardless of the cinematic value of the movie, something happened to me, or in me, that night:

Ricky, the Burns’ next-door neighbor, manages to memorialize much of life on his video camera. He decides to show his girlfriend, Janie Burns, the “most beautiful thing he’[d] ever filmed.” His video screen enlarged until it filled the theatre screen, and I was in his room watching with him. A clear plastic bag started swirling on the screen, now a red brick wall. Ricky narrates:

It was one of those days where it’s a minute away from snowing, and there’s this electricity in the air – you can almost hear it. And this bag was just dancing with me, like a little kid begging me to play with it – for fifteen minutes. That’s when I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid . . . ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know, but it helps me remember . . . I need to remember. Sometimes, there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.

There were only four of us in the theatre, but it wouldn’t have mattered if there were four thousand. The bag on the screen grabbed my eyes and ears and stomach and made everything and everyone else blur and, eventually, disappear. I was stunned, had no other word but to agree with Ricky -- “beautiful.” It reached in and touched something tired and aching and deep in me, and I’m convinced that it did the same to others who saw the movie.
I’ve spent much of the last year of my life thinking about the nature of beauty – beauty is one of the few things that has kept me going during that time. So I write about it. Writing’s a poor excuse, I know, but it helps me remember . . . . I need to remember.

~ ~ ~ ~

I’ve been asking my friends for input on how to approach beauty. They say, “Why don’t you begin by defining beauty?” I say, “You’ve never met my brain, have you? Allow me to introduce you. Friend – brain; brain – friend.” “So,” small talks my friend, “tell me about yourself.” “I’ll tell you this,” replies the brain, “I don’t operate so propositionally.” So I’m beginning to respect the dictionary folks – how do you define beauty? I don’t think beauty, as a subject, is capable of such propositionality. And I call, as my first witness, Wordsworth and his poetry:

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, its fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

The beauty of the meanest (most common) flower has the potential to silence our definings, to dam words and unleash tears. It's like trying to define love or happiness. Beauty acts upon me; it, like all good art, judges me (Madeleine L’engle); it speaks of and through and to me more than I speak of it. However, give me some poetic, existential license, and I might begin to describe it – that's where I’ve decided to start with beauty. What do I feel, experience, dare I say know? How do we engage beauty, or, maybe more apropos, how does beauty engage us? Through the tears and the laughter and the awe-ful silences, what words do I utter in response?

I was watching a tv show the other day, and one character said to another, “You are so jealous.” The other responded, “I am not. I am so not jealous. I’m not sure what the opposite of jealous is, but that’s what I am. I am the opposite.” This is not always a helpful way to go about defining or describing something, by its opposite, but I think it's helpful here. I decided to put my friends to work again, this time asking them this question: "What is the opposite of beauty?" Without pause, they said “ugliness” (they implied, “You dummy”). Possibly, they are on to something with the implication, but I remain unsatisfied with the answer (I think that answer is a result of too much time spent looking at magazines in the checkout lines of grocery stores and Wal-Marts). The answer to this question (of the opposite of beauty), at least a more satisfying answer, is, I believe, terribly important, fundamental to the rest of what I think about beauty.

I began to approach an answer last year in a poetry class. My professor was lecturing (that’s so propositional – how about musing?) – yes, my professor was musing on the value of art – and he made this statement: “Beauty heals the wounds of brokenness.” Something dovetailed, touched me in that tired, aching, deep part of me, and I scrambled for a pencil and wrote this down: The opposite of beauty is deformity, brokenness, not-the-way-it's-supposed-to-be-edness.

Last week, I was studying at a local bookstore slash record shop slash café slash massage parlor; in the café part, people like to mark their territory by leaving their empty cappuccino thimbles and cream cheese packets on the tables when they leave. That way, when a hungry patron scavenges for a table, he can only cock his head, unsure whether someone's still sitting there. The table next to me was like that, and a guy came up and got that confused, helpless look on his face, so I decided to rescue him and tell him that nobody, it seemed, was sitting there. A sigh of gratitude swept his face, and he said, "Beautiful!" Given the scraps and scratched up layer of polyurethane covering the table, I safely assumed he was not making an aesthetic judgment on the quality of the wood grain therein. He was pronouncing his assessment of the goodness, the rightness, to him, of the situation. Similarly, the reason my postish-modernist friend can look at a Rembrandt and make childish gasps of disapproval and I can look at the same painting and smile in amazement is that everything about that painting is right to me, the way it should be; whereas he thinks the colors are deformed and the composition is not the way it's supposed to be, like something broke when the museum folks were hanging it. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, but deformity, brokenness. We must not paint beauty into the corner of simple aesthetics, or of the purely physical; it is too big, too grand; it is more than a pretty flower on the hill – it is the whole landscape, quite possibly the moment in which the landscape breathes.

Herein lies my view of the landscape, the ways I am beginning to positively approach beauty.

Everywhere around the world, as I write at 7:51 P.M. CST, men are stopping to pose slackjawed before sunsets and stars, women are smiling as they watch their children run, a little girl is bright-eyed at first sight of her new baby brother. Beauty is one of the most universal things going – not everyone acknowledges or even recognizes it, but everyone is subject to beauty of some sort.

And we long for it; beauty is desirable. I want it in my life. It's the way I love the smell of a new car; what I feel when I’m at the big game and the clock's running down and the rookie makes the big play and everyone's going crazy and I don't care who’s standing next to me -- I high-five my new best friend; it's the smile that covers your face when your Day-Timer is finally in order; why a volcano could erupt and hot lava could be cutting a fiery gorge through your bedroom right when you're having an orgasm and it wouldn't matter to you one bit.

I desire beauty so much that I impose it, often unwarranted, on others. One of my favorite songs, "Girl On A Train," exposes me. The guy in the song is sitting on a train, and he sees a physically attractive girl at the other end of the train car; that’s the extent of his knowledge of her. And he sings out his desire for her to be beautiful, "You’re a stranger, you’re an angel, you’re a brown eyed girl / I don't know you, but I love you." Similarly, Lester, the father in American Beauty, says in response to first seeing his daughter's friend, Angela, cheerleading: "I feel like I've been in a coma for twenty years and I'm just now waking up." His desire for beauty, for her to be completely right, the way things should be, beautiful, drives him to desperate lengths throughout the movie. He begins to kill himself jogging and working out because he overheard her making a reference to her affinity for muscular men; he sneaks into his daughter's room while she's in the shower, finds her address book, and calls Angela just to hear her voice before hanging up on her; he stands, sweaty-eared and puckish, outside his daughter's door one night when Angela is spending the night, to hear what she might be saying about him. Near the end of the movie, Lester finally wins her attention and the opportunity to speak to her face-to-face:

"You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
She responds, desiring more affirmation, "I think I'm ordinary."
"You couldn't be ordinary if you tried."
"I don't think there's anything worse than being ordinary."

Thinking back to the girl on the train, part of my desire for her is that she is mysterious, unexplainable. At the beginning of the movie, Lester says, "I have lost something . . . I'm not sure what . . . I feel so sedated . . . it's never too late to get it back." Encounters with beauty are those startling, ineffable moments when we are in the presence of something bigger than ourselves, and we can't explain it, and we don't necessarily feel the need to. You’ve probably seen the painting "Starry Night" by Vincent Van Gogh; this is what he says about it:

That raises again the eternal question: Is the whole of life visible to us, or do we in fact know only the one hemisphere before we die? For my part, I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream, in the same simple way as I dream about the black dots representing towns and villages on a map (Windows of the Soul).

We intuit that something’s there, but we also have to admit that there's more there than we know, something tacit, and we can't fully capture it or explain it. You are certain, gut-certain, that there's something right about the way you are affected physically when you hear a certain piece of music -- for me, the slow, gracious dive of my friend Lizzie’s violin; when you hear your child cry for the first time; when someone you love clasps your pinky finger beneath a startlingly black starry night. That's why we value poets and painters – they labor to capture those moments, to explain the ineffable with rhyme and color. But the best of them realize, as the composer Wagner said, that “the greatness of the poet [artist] can be best measured by what he refrains from saying, in order to let the inexpressible speak to us in secrecy.” So we will always have poets and painters, because beauty will always be inexpressible, mysterious.
At the end of the movie, Lester is looking back, still unable to capture the moments of beauty in his life, and says,

Sometimes, I feel like I'm seeing it all at once and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst, and then I remember to relax and stop trying to hold onto it, and then it flows through me like rain and I don’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.

Related to its mystery, whether cause or result, we experience beauty incompletely; it's partial, momentary, beyond our attempts to envelop it. Despite the best art of poets and painters and pianists, we can't hold onto it. I experience this when I'm reading a book whose words are directing every movement of my eyes and heart and imagination, and I become conscious that I don't ever want it, the book or the feeling, to end, but it's at that very moment that it does end and the plane lands and I have to go home and unpack. When we try to hold on to it, it's gone, and though we are sad, we are grateful for it, like Lester; when the orgasmic moment has come and gone, we are left with an emptiness, an ache, a haunting. This is the grief Robert Frost expresses in “Nothing Gold Can Stay”:

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I first encountered the notion of the hauntingness of beauty in Norman Maclean’s book A River Runs Through It and Other Stories. I was floored by the beauty both of his writing and his story, which ends with these words: "I am haunted by waters." That ache, that longing for beauty, to be taken up in something greater than self will not leave us be – I think it's why we become so easily bored and dissatisfied with life, because we have tasted these moments of beauty, of transcending our ordinary routine, and they whisper to us, like lost lovers, in the cubicle and in line at the fast-food restaurant and in front of the bathroom mirror. I was stunned last fall when I encountered these resonant words by Brent Curtis:

Someone or something has romanced us from the beginning with creekside singers and pastel sunsets, with the austere majesty of snowcapped mountains and the poignant flames of autumn colors telling us of something – or someone – leaving, with a promise to return. These things can, in an unguarded moment, bring us to our knees with longing for this someone or something who is lost; someone or something only our heart recognizes. It is as if someone has left us with a haunting in our inner-heart stories that will not go away; nor will it allow itself to be captured and ordered. The Romance comes and goes as it wills. And so we are haunted by it.

We remain haunted by this desire because the desire hasn't been satisfied. That leaves me with the question, then: Do I accept the situation and try to be reasonable, convince my desire for beauty that the situation is hopeless, thus becoming satisfied with dissatisfaction? And if my heart won’t be swayed by such rationalization, what then? Am I to live like an invalid, hoping the ache will find ways to occupy itself during the less-beautiful moments? Or, possibly most risky, do I dare entertain the idea that satisfaction exists?

~ ~ ~ ~

A few decades back, much of the country was in cars and sitting on picnic blankets and at birthday parties singing these words:

To everything turn, turn, turn /
There is a season, turn, turn, turn . . . .

The tune starts playing in your head; you know the words. And you know the author: Solomon. A man named Solomon wrote that song about three-thousand years ago (the Byrds just missed out on a copyright). And read the original version of the song, along with the lines that were edited for radio play:

There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven –
A time to give birth, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted.
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to tear down, and a time to build up.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance.
A time to throw stones, and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace, and a time to shun embracing.
A time to search, and a time to give up as lost;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away.
A time to tear apart, and a time to sew together;
A time to be silent, and a time to speak.
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time for war, and a time for peace. . . .
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, 11).

Does Solomon, does the Bible as a whole, affirm these adjectives, that beauty is universal, desirable, mysterious, partial, haunting?

God is concerned, and His word in its entirety is concerned, primarily, with the heart. God cleansed the earth with a flood because of the state of man’s heart (Gen. 8); He sent Abraham to sacrifice (to slaughter!) his only son as evidence of his heart’s position before Him (Gen. 22); the prophets denounced the religious leaders of the day not for their sacrifices (they were often fastidious with their religion), but for the hardness of their hearts (Jer. 4; Is. 58); Jesus blasted the Pharisees, without exception, for the condition of their hearts (Mt. 15:7-8). It is the heart that responds to beauty. Simone Weil says that “there are only two things that pierce the human heart: beauty and affliction [brokenness].” Think back to the opposite of beauty – deformity, brokenness – the Bible corroborates this, at least, that no one is exempt from deformity:

For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly . . . for the creation was subjected to futility . . . the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption [deformity] . . . for we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now . . . and not only this, but also we ourselves . . . are waiting eagerly (Romans 8:18-23).

Everyone and everything experiences some degree of beauty and its opposite, brokenness. For each person who revels in the beauty of sex, another person is sexually abused; for each beautiful sunrise, someone is devastated by a tornado; for each beautiful new baby born, someone is eaten away by cancer – deformity, and its opposite, beauty, are universal. It's right there in the song; Solomon gives the contrasts: birth/death; heal/kill; build/tear; laugh/weep; dance/mourn; love/hate; war/peace. They go together; they're inseparable -- we recognize beauty in light of deformity. Everything speaks of either beauty or deformity.

Sometimes, we experience them simultaneously: the “pain of beauty,” Sheldon Vanauken calls it. The way my ribs heat up when I hold a girl’s hand for the first time. The way my ribs heat up when the same girl holds my hand and looks into my eyes and says goodbye for the last time. The ache in my father’s eyes when he disciplined me, because he wanted me to be a beautiful person. The ache in my father’s eyes when we laughed together for the first time -- wild, intimate laughter, because he wanted us to have a beautiful relationship. Sometimes, we desire beauty so much that it hurts. There's a reason for that – God made us that way, created us, ultimately, for heaven -- infinite, eternal beauty: Solomon said, "He has also set eternity into their heart." C. S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory, compares our desire for beauty to a man who is hungry for bread. The man’s hunger doesn't prove that he’ll get any bread, but there is a reason for the hunger; the reason is that he belongs to a race that "repairs its body" by eating, that is created for, among other things, eating. In the same way, we have this hunger for beauty for a reason, because we belong to a race that is created for, among other things, beauty. Another way to put it is that our desire for beauty is just one manifestation of our desire for heaven.
Clearly, Scripture regards beauty as universal and desirable; do its pages, then, reveal beauty to be mysterious? Remember Lester's quote: "I've lost something. I'm not sure exactly what it is." Solomon says it this way: ". . . man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end." Yes, we can experience moments, glimpses, traces of beauty, even those patterns that the Byrds sing about, but we can't see the whole picture. We’re standing two inches away from the beautiful points and streaks of a Monet, and we know that something is right, but we can't see the whole painting, and we know, like Lester, that "something is missing."

So beauty remains a mystery, and we can't explain it, because we experience it only partially. If it wasn't partial, the Byrds wouldn't have had a song to sing – there would be no "turn" in "Turn, Turn, Turn." Solomon, when he wrote what he did, was the wealthiest man in the world, and he decided to intentionally seek to be consumed by beauty, to make his life an Old-Testament sized deluge of beauty. And this is his conclusion:

I said to myself, 'Come now, I will test you with pleasure. So enjoy yourself . . . . It was futility . . . . I explored with my heart how to stimulate my body with wine . . . . And all that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure. . . . Then I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold, all was vanity [meaningless] . . . (Eccl. 2:1, 3, 10 –12).

Why is that? We all know that feeling of unfulfillment – why doesn’t beauty satisfy us completely? The simple answer: because it can't. God created us to enjoy something better than beauty – He created us to enjoy Him. The beautiful sunset is but a reflection of His beauty – beauty is not God, and God cannot be consumed by or contained in beauty. He made us to find satisfaction in Him, the Consummation of Beauty, so if we seek fulfillment in reflections of Him, we’ll remain as unfulfilled as if we try to shave or put make-up on the reflection we see in the mirror. On December 28, 1998, I found myself at a small venue in East Manhattan listening to my favorite singer-songwriter. On that day, the muse smiled upon me, and, somehow, I managed to secure a dinner date with my musical hero. After the fact, I joked to my friend: “I can die now – I’m satisfied.” Maybe you’ve experienced something similar. You have had the experience of a lifetime – there’s nothing more beautiful left to experience. And, in the end, you say something similar: “I can die now.” And, in the end, it’s still a joke. I cannot express this better than Lewis, so I will use his words:

We do not want merely to see [experience] beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. . . . At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. . . . The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing . . . .

That's why we are left with this haunting quality of beauty, because we know that there's something greater and we don't know what it is or even how to know it. The Bible says that God is the something, the greater, and we can know Him – He is the solution. I do not offer these thoughts as a quick-fix, anymore than I can explain beauty, and for the sake of taking objections and problems seriously, I want to preface these conclusions by first addressing some of the difficulties with them.

~ ~ ~ ~

I was desert-strandedly thirsty at the bookstore cafe the other night. After my fifth cup of water, I realized that I needed to take a break. Which meant the restrooms. Now, as a rule, I try not to look so much at the restroom walls, but I detected the word “Jesus” in my periphery, and I couldn’t resist the urge. I found myself reading a dialogue between two fellows who had obviously been returning over the weeks, responding to each other's remarks. One of them was writing churchy things like "Repent and believe or die," and the other guy would mark out letters and change it to "Pee and be relieved, guy," or he would write "Jesus saves filth like you," and the other guy would scratch out Jesus and write King Kong in its place. Unfortunately, such behavior is not new in the church (when I say the church, I mean those who call themselves Christians, who verbally profess certain things about God, and what they do [which includes meeting a physical “church” building]). And this is minor in comparison to the objections I hear people typically raise -- things like the Crusades, general hatred and arguing throughout the centuries (why all the different denominations?), televangelists. I read a clip in the paper last month about a local youth pastor who was brought up on charges of sodomy. The point is this: the church does not always look or act beautifully – there’s a lot of deformity and brokenness going around. We, who claim to have an answer, who claim to know this God, the Consummation of Beauty, the Creator of beautiful things, are often deformed in our behavior, especially in our attitude to those outside the church, those who don't share our beliefs. Some of the comments I've heard Christians, close friends of mine even, make about American Beauty and the people who made it and the people who enjoyed it make me cringe, make me ashamed, at times, to be called a Christian, and these are people who didn't even see the movie. We spend a lot of time condemning people for seeking fulfillment in career and money and extreme sports and alcohol and pornography and nature; I often think to myself, “You fools – don’t you see how empty that is?” However, if I really understood my own brokenness and regarded others in light of it, I would be grateful that people are doing such things. G.K. Chesterton said that "[e]very man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God." Of course people are looking for fulfillment in beauty – it's the reason God created beautiful things, so that people would seek Him out – this is Weil’s double affliction: only beauty and affliction pierce the human heart. Once we are disappointed, left empty, by the thing we regard as beautiful, the fulfillment of our longings, beauty becomes to us affliction, and we are forced to look somewhere else for satisfaction. Who but God could design such a double-edged summons? “Any interpretation of life beyond the most naïve has included somewhere the observation that there [is] no birth except in pain” – this is why Greek tragedy still speaks to the heart, why Shakespeare’s plays are still being made into movies (Pelikan 129). And we, the church, have the good news, the missing piece of the puzzle, to offer, and instead of hiring a mariachi band to escort us around the globe as we share the news, we're often found retreating from the world or sitting back smugly, proud of ourselves that we at least know the answer. Do not hear me disavowing the church. Do hear me viewing it critically because I love it, because I want it to be more beautiful. The secondary point is that the church's attitude, itself, is more evidence of the partial, incomplete nature of things; the church, which should be the safest, wildest, dancingest, most beautiful place in a broken world, is incomplete, still deformed in many aspects.

Most people who leave the church do so for this reason – they can’t stand the “hypocrisy.” In the mid-70’s, that liberal, progressive decade (so I’m told), my parents left their church (for many reasons, but partially) because they desired to reach out to African-Americans, and the church would have none of it. They have only returned after twenty years. When my father told me that story, I was ashamed. I can’t stand the hypocrisy, either. Mostly, I can’t stand it because it has so much to do with me. It’s my hypocrisy that disgusts my family, disgusts the skeptics. So my only solace is this question: If all the hypocrites were to leave the church, would there be a church left? No one is completely beautiful, and no one is completely deformed – the church is a body of “glorious ruins”; no one is too broken for the church. This is the beauty of the Gospel (good news), that the church is the very place for hypocrites, for broken, deformed people like me.

I recently heard a story of a pastor who found himself out-of-town for a conference, unable to find comfort in his hotel bed late one night. So he folded up the city map lying next to the Gideon’s Bible, pocketed it, and proceeded to explore the city. A few hours of exploration makes one hungry, so he pulled into a dimly lit diner off a main strip. Unaccustomed to new faces at three in the morning, Harry, the owner, initiated conversation with the pastor (he didn’t realize the stranger was a “preacher”), and as they discussed Harry’s history, a pack of ladies strutted in, peacock-like. Harry soon informed the man that these were no ordinary ladies – they were “ladies of the night,” stopping by for replenishment after a long evening’s work. He noticed the languor in their eyes, the premature sadnesses; something smelled overwhelmingly animal, strong enough to dismiss the respectable patrons. But the pastor stayed, and he heard, between feigned amusements and the night’s totals, the voice of one of the pack, Agnes: “It’s my birthday tomorrow.” To which he heard, in return, laughters and “so what’s” and eventual silences. So the pastor outstayed the gathering, and he learned from Harry that they congregated every night at the same inhumane hour. The following evening, the preacher was back at the diner, and, as if on call, the pack strutted in, but this night, they met a dimming of fluorescent lights and a shining of candle lights. Harry and the pastor had a birthday cake for Agnes. The candles reflected on tired eyes and in the forming tears of a prostitute. Agnes wept so fitfully that she hadn’t the strength to blow out any candles. Nor did she have the strength to cut her beautiful cake – she wanted to take it home, careful with this holy grail of hers, to show her mother this first cake she’d ever received. Again, the pastor outstayed Agnes and company, and he began to pray for them as they headed back to the streets. Harry spied him, and resentment rose in his eyes like candle flame: “You didn’t tell me you were a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to?” “The kind of church,” the preacher replied, “that throws birthday parties for whores at three in the morning.”

God burns to see his church beautiful, like a bride, virgin, spotless. And He loves her in the process, though she is full of immorality. As the maxim goes, “Abuse does not negate proper use” – in essence, the church is not God; nor is it always an accurate reflection of God, so we must not finally discount God based only on those who claim to represent Him (this is a subject I’ll take up in another essay).

Setting aside (for the purposes of this essay) the relationship between “God” and Christianity, many will grant my response to this first objection, but they will follow with this question: “I do find some fulfillment in beauty, apart from God. Why do you have to be so exclusive?” It’s a good question. What is the problem with seeking fulfillment apart from God? In the beginning of the movie, Lester says that his wife "used to be happy," and throughout the movie, we see her trying to fill her life with beauty, whether it be with her flowers (American Beauties), her clothes (which match her gardening tools), her house (she's more concerned about her Italian sofa than fixing things with her husband, Lester), her aesthetically pleasing dinners, or fulfilling sexual fantasies with her rival real estate agent; and by the end, she's more broken than in the beginning. Why? Why does Solomon call such pursuit “vanity”? Because beauty is not an end in itself. Beauty is not an end in itself. When you buy a beautiful new car, what happens? It eventually gets dirty and some irresponsible hoodlum – “kids these days” -- sends a grocery cart into the driver’s side door right below the handle, and you spend years fixing dents and washing it and watching it get dirty and washing it again. When you see a beautiful sunset, eventually, it, well, sets, and you have to go home to a sinkful of crust-hardened dishes. When we live out our desire for beauty by seeking out fun nights in the club or good sex or a good job or a lush, green yard (my poor father can testify to this one) or a secure relationship or the next vacation (these are all legitimate desires, by the way, each bringing pleasure), we realize later that they don't last, and we’re left waiting for the next experience, the next round, the next cycle, just like Solomon describes life for us. If that's all I have, when I die and my senses are gone (the ability to see, smell, hear, touch), all that's left is deformity. So, you respond, "Then let's eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die." Again, Solomon said it first, and he tried that, too, and he still felt cheated. Hear Lewis one more time:

These things . . . are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

This is the reason for the exclusivity – I cannot watch a man settle for a McRib when prime rib is just around the corner (and free). I know the end of his seeking (for it is often my seeking), and I need to share what I know, the good news. And I want the company on my journey. Seeking this satisfaction that we desire, apart from God, is a futile effort – the desire is good, but God planted it in our hearts so that we would seek Him; He gave the mountains and the lakes and the snowfalls to serve as Post-It Notes to remind us to look for Him.

One more objection (admittedly, not the last). If Chesterton is right about the brothel, then why doesn't the man knocking on the door actually find God rather than a few moments of pleasant sensation? Why can't you know God through a rose? Why can't a minor chord fix your brokenness? Because the beauty is not God (similarly, the Bible says that “God is love” (I John 4:8), but nowhere does it say that “love is God”), and there's something about every one of us that's broken. You may not know what it is or how to describe it, but you know that something is broken, deformed, not the way it's supposed to be – that's what keeps you from knowing God – the problem is not with God or with the minor chord – it's with each one of us.

I was never more certain of anything than I was in the fourth grade spelling bee. I was certain I would win, and I was certain that my victory over my sixth-grade sister would be the sweetest that life had to offer. I was sending victim after victim to his spelling demise, whenceforth each broken will would seek out asylum up-state in a Special Home for the Once-Confident-Spellers. Hey, mom, how ya’ like me now? According to plan, I razed the less-developed spellers and blazed a trail to the final round (along with my sister), and I approached the microphone for, possibly, the winning word: “Jeremy, please spell ‘paprika.’” I thought to myself, “They’re kidding, right? This is too easy. I don’t know what paprika is, but I can spell it. Wait a second; they know how good I am – they’re trying to give me a trick word. My sister’s smiling over there; maybe she paid them off. Ah, I know what they’re trying to do. They won’t beat me.” “Yes,” I glutted with victorious confidence (I could actually hear the Rocky theme song in the background), “paprika – P, A, P, R, I, QUA.” To which I heard, “Oh, we’re sorry, Jeremy, that’s not right. Great job. Please have a seat.” Silence. Like Ivan Drago just entered the room and was standing directly behind me. “The whole world is against me now,” I thought. I stood and waited for someone to announce the mistake, or for everyone to start laughing at the good joke they were having at my expense. But it never came, and I sat down, bewildered. And my sister was still smiling. After the ordeal (my sister missed “alcohol,” so I felt a little better), I ran to my parents. “Why did I have to sit down?” As gently as possible, my mother said, “Honey, it’s I-K-A.” So I sprinted, knuckles clenched-white, to Mrs. Budlong, my teacher. “Yes, Jeremy, it’s I-K-A.” Et tu, Mrs. Budlong? It was true; they were all against me. “So it comes to this.” Boycotting speech the entirety of the car-ride home, I marched like a Black Panther, fist-raised, to my room and the security of my only ally, Mr. Webster. Anticipating righteousness, vindication, I was stunned to find that he, too, was against me, that I was the only person, in Tennessee, at least, who knew how to spell paprika. On a spelling exam two weeks later, the spelling gods, deciding to test my fiber, possibly looking for a good row, managed to include paprika on the list. And I stood my ground. Sixteen years have changed me and my spelling of paprika (something deep inside wants to hold on to the Q-U-A); I am learning to harness my dogmatism. I am forced to admit that nothing was wrong with the standard (Webster); rather, there was something broken in me that kept me from acknowledging the truth, and whatever it was in me that was broken made it harder and harder to accept the truth (in the face of stronger and stronger evidence), even though I couldn't explain what it was. Someone or something else was going to have to do it.

So I am a disciple after all. I have thought to myself, “If I could just see Jesus, then I would really believe, I would be a fine Christian.” Then I read about Jesus’ disciples, who saw Him silence a storm one minute and doubted Him the next. Who had the audacity to reprimand Jesus for talking about His own death (which, they just couldn’t understand, was for them). Did Jesus leave them with reason to doubt Him? Was the disciples’ faith – broken, not the way it was supposed to be – Jesus’ fault? Again, there's nothing wrong with God, but there is something in us, something broken, that keeps us from acknowledging the truth, and whatever it is that is broken just makes it harder and harder to recognize the truth, even if we can't give any other explanation, so that someone else has to do something.

~ ~ ~ ~

Someone else has done something.

~ ~ ~ ~

For all the deformity and brokenness, the pain and tears and insecurities in our lives, what we're sensing in those glimpses of beauty, what we’re unexplainably drawn to, is a God who has done something to fix the deformity, to fix us so that we will experience lasting, permanent, eternal beauty. So what has He done? What could He do, this perfect, infinitely beautiful God, who can't mingle with or take part in deformity, much less spend eternity with it?

What He did is He pulled off the most beautiful switch in history. He became a man, Jesus-bar-Joseph of Nazareth, the subject of 2,000 years of art and poetry and musings, and He lived in Palestine for thirty-three years, and His life was beautiful, one-hundred percent of the time, infinitely beautiful.

The God whom Christian faith worshiped and Christian art adored has not been some Timeless who lived in endless self-contemplation . . . , but the Holy who was available within our bounded existence through the boundedness of Jesus of Nazareth. Christian art has concerned itself with the absolute and the Eternal not as He was in Himself – for He is a consuming fire – but as He had revealed himself in Jesus the Christ (Pelikan 161).

He revealed Himself as beautiful -- there was nothing deformed or broken about Him – His thoughts, emotions, dealings with His neighbors – He alone, of all people, filled time with beauty, and He alone, of all people, deserved eternal, timeless beauty. Everything was the way it was supposed to be in this one life, this one person. This incarnation of God was the incarnation of beauty.
In this person, the world found beauty. From prostitutes to tax-collectors to “Gentile dogs” to military leaders to thieves on crosses – universally – this person was beautiful. Israel panted after Him for centuries; crowds risked starvation to hear him speak; men climbed trees and lowered themselves through roofs to catch His eye; widows spent their life-savings for His sake – desirable seems too weak a word. As a pre-teen, He wowed the religious experts; His family couldn’t explain Him to the neighbors; His own followers misunderstood Him – He was mysterious to this world He volunteered to be born into. Pelikan calls Him the One who “is not the answer to every riddle but [Him]self the enigma in every riddle – that Holy has been made flesh and has dwelt among us in Jesus Christ” (171). I contend that He is both the answer and the enigma, but we both agree that he is beyond our ability to exhaust; He is, because of that broken something in us, somehow unexplainable. So His presence (dismiss, please, your campfire notions of haunting) haunted the deserts and by-ways and synagogues of His day, as it does the cities and highways and buildings of our day.

But here is the difference between beauty and beauty embodied, fulfilled, in Jesus Christ: the only adjective from the list that fails to apply to both is partial – unlike the waterfall and the goldenrod and the sex, Jesus is not partial. He is whole. In this lies His wholeness, that, unlike the beauty that we experience outside of Him, He alone has the ability to satisfy our every desire, to fulfill us, to sate our longings. As my friend Ned wrote me:

For the first time in the history of the cosmos (at least since the fall), beauty was not partial (yet we experience it as such because we are broken). For the first time we see the fullness of beauty. . . . Jesus had a way of insisting that He was the embodiment of all our ideals (“I am the way and the truth and the life” [John 14:6]). Jesus is beauty embodied. He is beautiful and He is beauty.

Everything was the way it was supposed to be in this one life, this one person.
Until He offered to be canvassed to a cross, hung up like a terrible painting, and He was physically broken. Some see in the cross a beautiful act, a beautiful example of the human spirit. Such a view of the cross, though true, is only a partial view – the Monet two inches away. Something actually happened amid the ripping and writhing and blood of beauty crucified. Why an incarnation when it led to a crucifixion? Herein lies the universal, desirable, mysterious, haunting – and complete – paradox of the cross. Jesus suffered, on the cross, the consequences of all the deformity and brokenness that I have ever known, that would keep me from a beautiful, holy God even now. I deserve the brokenness; He deserves only beauty. But He experienced infinite brokenness so that I could experience lasting beauty. And He made this switch voluntarily – my deformity became His, so that His beauty could become mine. This is where words fail me. I, like the disciples, have a hard time believing it, after all. I cannot fathom the ways of Beauty. Eldredge says, “I am at a loss to say what I want to say regarding beauty. Somehow, that is as it ought to be. Our experience of beauty transcends our ability to speak about it, for its magic lies beyond the power of words” (Journey 191). If my growing older has meant a growing suspicion of magic, then I need only look at God incarnate, broken, blanched, and bleeding on splintery wood for me.

~ ~ ~ ~

Where did that leave Jesus, then? In a tomb for three days until He was raised from the dead on account of the ultimate beauty of what He did, because of who He was – Beauty embodied. For three hours of sinew-popping and heart-breaking, for the first time in historical time, deformity met beauty. Again, as Ned reminded me, “The man will wear His wounds for all eternity . . . [and] we will call him Beautiful One and declare [that] there is no one fairer.”

That's what He did. And that leaves one question: What does that mean for man? If that's true, why wasn't everything fixed in an instant? Why is there still brokenness? If, with Jesus, partiality died, what's left, missing? What He left is the opportunity for me to do the most beautiful thing He could ask of me –to trust Him. What will that mean, then?

I must own up to my deformity, my brokenness. In American Beauty, the neighbor, Ricky, is explaining his father to Lester; the father has no idea that Ricky is supporting himself financially by selling marijuana -- he refuses to admit, because of his excessive pride (part of his brokenness), that his son is doing anything wrong, that there is any deformity in his household. So Ricky says to Lester, "Never underestimate the power of denial." It’s so strong. Why is it so hard to own up to our brokenness? Among other things, even if we recognize that career and sex and money and nature don't completely fulfill us, it's just easier to keep going back to them because they don't ask anything of us, don't demand that we change for them; they make us feel good about ourselves – what the cross of Christ does is show us what we really look like, what our deformity really means, and it isn't pretty. It’s easier to live with a Monet than with a crucified God.

So what is the fundamental difference between the beauty of an object and the Object of Beauty – Jesus? I may experience the beauty of a flower, even try to possess it and preserve it, but it always, and eventually, leaves me. I may experience the beauty that Jesus secured for me, but, ultimately, I am in His possession, under His preserving care, and He will never leave me to wither in my brokenness. That’s the reason for His incarnation, for His life, for His death, for His vindication: to possess my heart, responding to my affliction and His beauty.

And that beautiful possession, what He did for me on the cross, is contingent on this response -- that I own up to my part (my brokenness) and believe (trust) that He died for me. And that trust, that beautiful trust, makes me forever beautiful to Him, secure because I will spend eternity with Him.

And the last part of trust, the most difficult part, is waiting – it is a serious cost to take into account. As long as we live, we live partially, among beauty and brokenness (our own and others’), we live during the time wherein God continues to give broken people an opportunity to trust Him, to know Him. Yet another reason it's easier to deny the truth, because we can receive instant gratification – temporary, but instant – from those other things – they don't require us to wait. We must be willing to remain haunted by beauty, but during the haunting, we have a promise, and it looks like this:

It strikes us that to hope in the kind of goodness that would set our heart free, we must be willing to allow our desire to remain haunted. This side of [heaven], true goodness comes by surprise, the old writings tell us, enthralling us for a moment in heaven's time. They warn us it cannot be held. Something inside knows they are right, that if we could do so, we would set up temples to worship it and the Sacred Romance would become prostitution. We understand that we must allow our desire to haunt us like Indian summer, where the last lavish banquet of golds and yellows and reds stirs our deepest joy and sadness, even as it promises us they will return in the fragrance of spring (Curtis).

The Bible says it this way:

For momentary, light affliction [brokenness] is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal . . . . We groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly . . . [f]or in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one also hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it (I Cor. 4:17-18 ff.).

That last phrase is important, as it clears up our misconceptions of hope. Biblical hope is not like wishing; it is a confident, eager, preserved waiting, sure of the result, sure of the God who has made it possible.

That's what faith is – the Bible says that faith is the "substance of things hoped for." Sight is good, for God has given you physical beauty and eyes to behold it (and He delights in your enjoyment of it), but faith in what He did for you on the cross is what enables you to recognize the sunset as God's invitation to enjoy something far greater, far more beautiful – Him.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased (Lewis).

In refusing to acknowledge God incarnate and God crucified, we’re like a child who ignores a beautiful gift from his father on Christmas morning to go play in the alley out back. God invites us to indulge, as children, in His beautiful gift to us, to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. 34:8).

My professor is right, after all, that “beauty heals the wounds of brokenness.” At the cross, I am freed from my debilitating, futile efforts to heal myself, to fix my brokenness. No longer must I demand fulfillment from objects which can’t fulfill me; no longer must I suffer the disappointments and frustrations of temporary satisfactions; no longer must I strive to convince myself and others that everything is the way it’s supposed to be in my life. Because I am broken, I still struggle with these things, but the difference is that the struggle is no longer inevitable. Jesus looks through His hands into my heart and smiles, because He knows what awaits me in eternity – because of what happened in time and space history. “Perhaps that is why it is so healing – beauty is pure gift. It helps us in our letting go” (Eldredge).

~ ~ ~ ~

As I sit in this coffee shop on a Tuesday evening, typing words onto a computer screen, I am painfully aware of the beauty that surrounds me. The faces are mostly smiles, and the hearts are all pincushions of beauty and affliction. Little do these people know that I can smell, all interwoven with Colombian decaf and gooey butter cake, their brokenness and fear. Little do they know that they are reaching into my chest and pulling tears up into my eyes, because I know tonight what they long for. It’s everything I can do to keep from standing on the table and telling them what God has done for me. And I am more aware than ever before of the Beauty in this place, the Christ who created the Oak outside the window; the same Christ who dragged a tree to His death. I am broken, and He is healing me. And that healing extends to the wholeness of my being – my ribs are suddenly warm like candles, and my mind is burning this moment into itself: I need to remember. Sometimes, there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.

~ jeremy huggins
30.01.01

found poem: the pacific northwest inlander, feb. 19-25, 2004

I SAW YOU

absolutely the most beautiful woman in Spokane
but I was nervous
I had salad
tall, red sweats
well-trimmed beard having fajita pita
(hopefully you noticed too)
I saw you nearly every day for over a year before I actually saw you--
"temporary lack of confidence"--
went to Starbucks
Staind concert
accosted by drunken troll
the highlight of my day
makes me want to bank
would like to get in touch
dance forever
everyday
when I tan.
Together for drinks?

. . . the nyquil is wearing on,
jeremy

gymnastic nutlog

the name of our trivia team tonight. i spent all class today thinking up team names. GN just beat out Bunions 'n Gravy, which edged out Pork Chop Socket, Hash Brown Carousel, Oatmeal Cleavage, Toe Jam Symphony, Baby Ruth Riot Gear, Humpback Pageant, Ear Flap Gristle, Salty Butter Nub, and Cold Sore Casserole, among others. never let it be said that my creative writing degree is going for naught. sorry for the lack of posting. mucusfully sick the last few days. unphotogenic. cut my own hair yesterday. bad move. then burned it tonight during trivia thinking too hard about a question with my hands in my hair while smoking. tissue up my right nostril presently. until my brain is functioning again, read this:

from Life After God, douglas coupland

really the rest of india

again, click.

In the evening, we changed clothes, and I was able to comfortably wear a long-sleeved shirt for the first time in two months. It was glorious. We sat around a fire, and I gave the second lesson, on taking seriously the cost and conclusions of calling yourself a Christian. After the lesson, I asked them how many of them had ever taken the time, either before becoming a Christian or after, to honestly count the cost of following Christ. 90% of them said that they had never considered it. I was shocked. Upon later reflection, I wondered why. I might expect something like this in America, though I don’t think people would own up so readily. Maybe they’re just being more honest. Or maybe I thought that because they live in a place where the Gospel is hard-won that their faith would also be hard-won. I just assumed that the church in foreign lands was more committed than the American church. That there are no nominal or unthinking Christians in mission-type places. Turns out that the heart, and sin, do their business irrespective of geography. All said and done, though I was a bit dis-heartened by their answer, I was genuinely encouraged by their honesty. At least it’s a workable starting point.

How to become homesick:
1. Wake up at three in the morning in a tent in the mountains in south India.
2. Have diarrhea.
3. Find your way down a hill to the bathroom without any light.
4. Howling monkeys are aware of your presence.

The second day of camp went well, and the lessons, on the difficulties of following Christ, on dealing with doubts, suffering, anger, seemed to be well-received. Many of the campers wanted to talk with me throughout the day, and I was both honored and encouraged by their openness. One of the guys, whose family is Hindu, said that after he told his parents about his conversion, they asked him in all sincerity to commit suicide so as not to dishonor the family name. And I was attempting to teach them about the cost of being a Christian. It’s all very humbling.

Later that night, which was the last night, we spent time around the fire drinking Milo (something close to hot chocolate), laughing, doing impersonations, etc. I put together a brief skit about the pastor and assistant pastor, and though I didn’t think it was really that funny, they were in stitches. In fact, they were in stitches the whole night, and the jokes didn’t really seem that funny to me. I was sitting on a bench with Robbie, a northern Irish guy who was volunteering at the camp (he said things like “ah, mebbe” and “I’m shottered,” so I knew he was really Irish). I asked him if he thought the jokes were funny, and he agreed with me that they weren’t. We began talking about what it would be like if these were American or Irish youth groups, and we were sure that there wouldn’t be as much laughter, that a lot of the kids would refuse to join in the fun for no good reason, that people would have their feelings hurt, etc. We came to the conclusion, simultaneously, that the main difference between this group and ours back home is the presence/lack of cynicism. I thought back over the last two months in India, and I could honestly say that I hadn’t detected a trace of cynicism in all my encounters. It’s really startling when I think about it. I hadn’t heard one sarcastic remark, one snide retort, etc. Here is one of the understandings I had been seeking: I am a slave to cynicism. The church, in large-part, hasn’t separated herself from her culture’s cynicism. With the surge of Western influence in India, I hope that America’s cynicism is a long-time coming to the Indian church.

:: 05.05.2003, Bangalore ::

Last night, we had our last youth meeting at the church. Earlier that day, one of the girls from the camp came to church for the first time in a year. She said that she finally felt free, as a result of my lessons, to come, even though she feels like a “bad Christian”—that made the whole trip worthwhile for me. At the youth meeting, after singing some songs and having a short talk, we sat around and joked and ate. They brought Coke and Aloo Bonda (potato-type pastry things) in my honor. And they gave me a beautiful brown Indian garment. It was deeply moving. These people have been so generous with me and so sincere in their displays of concern and welcome. I’ll miss it.

Today, I had lunch with one of the guys from the camp, who wanted to meet separately with me to talk about some of his problems with Christianity. We had lunch and talked for a few hours, and he said it was helpful to him; it was certainly encouraging to me, though not light fare. A few years ago, his father saw his mother in line at the movies. He later accused her of being out with another man, and he forced her to prove her innocence. At his request, she did so by lighting her face on fire. What can you say to this? He blames almost all of his family’s problems on the demands and customs of Indian culture. Both of us recognize the good things about India, but we were able to discuss the fact that while we are to honor culture, we are not to worship it, despite the consequences—one of the costs of being a Christian. Such discussions make me think more about issues like arranged marriages, traditions regarding family honor, etc. I tend to restrain myself by saying that I’m not an Indian and I don’t understand. I’m beginning to think, though, that in situations like this, it doesn’t matter whether I’m Indian or South African or Djiboutian—some things are clearly un-human, and I don’t need to feel bad about criticizing them just because I don’t live here. The hard part, though, is that I don’t live here, so there’s not much I can do about it. What to do? I don’t know.

:: 06.05.2003, last day in Bangalore ::

So I start my journey home today, which means that this is my last chance at the computer. My flight out of Bombay doesn’t look so good (I’m flying standby), so I’m not sure when I’ll actually be home, but I don’t think I’ll have another chance to write before I arrive. I considered writing one more update from home, after I’ve had a few days on trains and planes to think about the last two months. But I decided that mostly I’m gonna sleep, watch movies, and eat peanuts. Also, I don’t think that a few days will produce any significant deep thoughts. So, for the sake of some sort of finality, I’ve borrowed a few deep thoughts from the esteemed philosopher Jack Handey in order to frame some sort of parting shot.

Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, you'll be a mile from them, and you'll have their shoes.

I had some idea why I was making this trip to India, though I couldn’t know what would actually happen. For the sake, simply, of better understanding another part of the church to which I belong, the trip has been valuable. Though it’s not necessary to visit India to be able to speak meaningfully about the church in India, it sure does help, and besides losing weight (17 pounds for me, now), you’re sure to get something out of it.

The people in the village were real poor, so none of the children had any toys. But this one little boy had gotten an old enema bag and filled it with rocks, and he would go around and whap the other children across the face with it. Man, I think my heart almost broke. Later the boy came up and offered to give me the toy. This was too much! I reached out my hand, but then he ran away. I chased him down and took the enema bag. He cried a little, but that's the way of these people.

I bet one legend that keeps recurring throughout history, in every culture, is the story of Popeye.

Again, as an American, there are things I can’t fully understand and speak meaningfully about, but there are some things, the enema bags of a culture, that I can legitimately evaluate regardless of my own background. This keeps us from excusing our lack of global-consciousness and willingness to minister outside our boundaries simply because we haven’t been outside America.

The memories of my family outings are still a source of strength to me. I remember we'd all pile into the car - I forget what kind it was - and drive and drive. I'm not sure where we'd go, but I think there were some trees there. The smell of something was strong in the air as we played whatever sport we played. I remember a bigger, older guy we called "Dad." We'd eat some stuff, or not, and then I think we went home. I guess some things never leave you.

If you ever teach a yodeling class, probably the hardest thing is to keep the students from just trying to yodel right off. You see, we build to that.

Who knows what of this trip will remain with me. I have most of the same questions I had when I left for India, and I can’t be sure that I’ll answer any of those questions anytime soon. But I have begun adding new words to my vocabulary, and even though I don’t know what this trip will mean to me, I know that I’m building to something, and for me, who so easily falls into apathy and un-thinking, that’s an encouraging thing.

Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.

If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet you could shoot beer out of you nose.

I have much thinking left to do regarding Eastern thinking, philosophy, spirituality. What I can say for sure, though, is that despite all of its other-wordliness, esoteria, etc., no matter how hard they try to escape, adherents of Eastern religions simply cannot escape the real world in which they live, breathe, cry. Few of the people I’ve met here have found consistency in such thinking; when they’re hungry, they look for food rather than denying the hunger as a spiritual deficiency. Truly, some are consistent, and I respect them for that, and it’s a challenge to the inconsistency of Christians. But abuse does not negate proper use, and the difference is that Christianity, and only Christianity, has answers for the physical-ness, the earthi-ness, of our daily lives. I will continue to try and understand and respect those who hold to eastern thought-patterns, but I do so in an attempt to help us both understand the logical conclusions of denying the skin we live in.

As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.

In one of my early updates, I discussed the phenomenon of driving in India. I came to the conclusion then that America’s driving conditions weren’t better than India’s; rather, they’re just different. After more thinking, however, I have concluded that America’s driving conditions actually are much better, and it’s okay for me to criticize a culture in some regards. My tendency is to veer away from criticizing others because of my litany of problems. But just because my culture and I have problems doesn’t mean that I am dis-allowed from making criticisms. I must be patient, thoughtful, and compassionate in my criticism, but I have the right and the obligation to be critically thoughtful, still. Otherwise, I allow myself to fall into a gutless relativism.

If you're robbing a bank and you're pants fall down, I think it's okay to laugh and to let the hostages laugh too, because, come on, life is funny.

I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people.

Amid the heaviness of attempting to think through serious issues, I continue to learn the proper place of not taking myself too seriously. Despite all the real sadness and real poverty, there is real room for laughter, and without the willingness to take myself less seriously than I should, my life would be a dull sermon.

If I ever get real rich, I hope I'm not real mean to poor people, like I am now.

I’m coming home largely the same person as the one who left home. Doing “missionary” work doesn’t change your fundamental make-up. There’s nothing more spiritual about doing something outside of your familiar context. The church loves to throw around the saying that we should “get outside our comfort zones.” I think this is a good warning against apathy, but I’m afraid that when people hear this they think that they can only grow and become more thoughtful if they leave home or apply themselves to something that they consider spectacular or global. For my part, such thinking is a result of a misunderstanding of the “common,” the “mundane.” So often, I think that the only way that I can be “special” or get people to love me is to do something “special,” which I wrongly interpret as doing the unexpected, the un-done, the exotic. When I do this, I disrespect the normal places in which I have been placed, the normal, beautiful people who surround me. My circle of friends in St. Louis, the streets where I walk, the tea that I drink, though everyday phenomena, are far too beautiful to insult with such thinking.

You know what would make a good story? Something about a clown who makes people happy, but inside he's real sad. Also, he has severe diarrhea.

I can still recall old Mister Barnslow getting out every morning and nailing a fresh load of tadpoles to the old board of his. Then he'd spin it round and round, like a wheel of fortune, and no matter where it stopped he'd yell out, "Tadpoles! Tadpoles is a winner!" We all thought he was crazy. But then we had some growing up to do.

Two months in India have been helpful, in ways understood and not, in my growing up. But I’m ready to be home. I miss family and friends. I miss speaking normal English and using polysyllabics. I miss my Dodge Dart. And Arby’s. These are things I love, and I want to be surrounded by them. I know them, and they make me who I am. I’ve written a lot over the last two months, and most of you know me well enough to take it with a grain of salt. So thanks for listening anyway. Knowing that you’re out there has kept me safe.

Hopefully, I’ll make it home sometime soon. So keep an eye open, and keep the beer cold.
Love,
Jeremy

the rest of india

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Later that night, I returned to Barista and took my usual seat. At the table next to me were two Westerners: Julian and Jeremy, Frenchmen, as I found out. We were having a lovely discussion on Indian culture, Western influence, and jazz fusion when someone said the dirty word: “war.” To my delight and surprise, we agreed largely on the situation, and we were enjoying our little coalition, when another Westerner overheard us on her way to a table and started spouting off, obviously in disagreement, and clearly in a foreign language. Turns out that she was actually speaking English, but it was French-tinged Poly-Sci talk; it might as well have been Angolian. I told her that she must have missed the first half of the conversation, that we were probably more in agreement than she was leading on, that she could join us if she wanted. She said she had writing to do and left us to our ignorant propaganda.

Please forgive the following, apparent lack of respect for French culture (this was intended as a compliment, and taken as such), but as Julian and Jeremy were leaving, I said to them, “Well, friends, I can now say with integrity that not all Frenchmen are complete wankers” (I have always wanted to use the word “wanker” in conversation). To which Jeremy laughed and replied, “I can now zay, wiz, uh, integ-ru-tee, zat not all Americans are complete, how you say, pees-pots.” Damn, why didn’t I think of “pisspot”?

As I was preparing to leave, I gathered up my courage and approached Poly-Sci girl (who was, like Rapture-girl, quite beautiful). Destroying my expectations, she kindly offered me a seat and introduced herself. Marie Eve, Canadian, fringe feminist, traveler. She had just arrived in India from Iran, from Thailand, from Cleveland, or something like that. When she found out that I was in India to do some travel writing, she talked for ten minutes straight about how that’s what she really wants to do; how amazing to meet a fellow travel writer; “Oh, you’ve been to Montreal”; why can’t Americans learn foreign languages (I tried to offer my Greek and Hebrew skills, to no avail); this coffee stinks; and “Do you have any advice for an aspiring writer?” I felt like a first-year Med-school student being asked for advice on vascular cardiology. Not letting on that I’m not really a professional writer, I thought about replying, “No, I don’t, but I know a nice place to get a cup of something and talk about wildly interesting things.” Then I remembered that we were already at a nice place having a cup of something, and I decided that her question probably wasn’t the pick-up line I was hoping for.

In the middle of our conversation, we were drowned out by a table of ten or so teenage Indians, in unison, attempting to master “She sells sea shells by the seashore.” I am finding that Indians are crazy for tongue-twisters. I started to show off my skills, but stopped, deciding it probably wouldn’t be very impressive. I’m still trying to say “red leather, yellow leather” three times fast. And “How much pork should a pork shop chop since a pork shop should chop pork?”

Walking to find a rickshaw home, I found myself excited and grateful to have engaged real-live French people. My previous exposure to French culture consisted of Pepe LePew, fries, and a frightening, soggy kiss in twelfth grade.

Thinking the night couldn’t get any better, when I found a rickshaw, the driver winked at me and proceeded to fold the top down—I had found the elusive convertible rickshaw. So we headed north on Brigade Road, and I realized that the convertible rickshaw is exciting the way that cruising the strip in high school was exciting, or watching most women’s sports is exciting: after the first three minutes, I’d just as soon be reading an in-flight magazine with a name like Sky-Kitsch or Stuff That Only Retired Jewish Golfers Buy.

Halfway home, we were forced to wait on an endless train, so the driver took a shortcut, whereupon we ran into a broken-down ox, so another shortcut. I didn’t know where we were, but I recognized the type of place. We were driving down Martin Luther King Boulevard, and everyone was staring at me. I might as well have been driving through East St. Louis late at night in a car with neon-ground effects and a Ku Klux Klan hood ornament.

I tapped the driver on the shoulder and asked, “You sure this is the way home?” He smiled and nodded his head, the way that Indians nod their head. The Indian-head nod is, to an American, a complete mystery. It’s not like a tennis-spectator nod; it’s more like a loose metronome, or a bobble-head doll, and it can mean anything from “of course” to “maybe” to “no” to “you sucker.” This is especially appalling when you’re preaching, as I found myself last Sunday. When I said that “Jesus has a special love for the hopeless,” I realized that he must have been loving me especially at that moment, as I couldn’t tell from the head-nods whether people were “Amen-ing” or misunderstanding or ready to throw me out the window and hurl rocks at my skull. Having to listen to myself while I preach is good for me. Eliminating gerunds and participial phrases on-the-spot forces me to make sure that I am communicating—no, to communicate—the Gospel in a lucid—scratch that, clear—way rather than to communicate to the people that I know the good English.

*(For a better description of the above situation, read David Sedaris’ essay “Jesus Shaves,” wherein a multi-ethnic class in France is asked to describe Easter in English. Concerning the crucifixion, one of the students says that “Jesus, he must to die on two, um, morsels of lumber.”)

In the morning paper yesterday, I read the daily account of yet another Romeo-and-Juliet suicide, wherein two lovers were forbidden by their families to marry outside of their arrangement. Whenever I talk to locals, I try to get their take on arranged marriages, and I have been trying to sort through the issue myself for some time now. There are no easy answers, as arranged marriages seem to be an issue of adiaphora, one of those things that the Bible neither condemns nor commands. Certainly, the examples of marriage that you read in Scripture, especially the Old Testament, are arranged, but these are descriptive rather than prescriptive, as the incidents described took place in a culture where arranged marriages were the norm, much like India. Increasingly, however, arranged marriages are being rejected by the younger generations, and the older generations are correspondingly disturbed, and I don’t have an easy answer why.

Statistically, I need look no further than my own circle of friends to see where the Western style of marriage so often leads. But I read about and talk to many Indian families and see where arranged marriages so often lead. Though the divorce rate here is infinitesimal, this doesn’t necessarily reflect on the quality of the marriages. To divorce in India entails cultural shame that is largely absent in America. And the word “arranged” itself, to me a cold word, often shows up in the marriages, where compatibility and companionship appear more arranged and methodical than heart-felt and passionate. The only thing I can rely on to help me think through the issue is the old maxim: “Abuse does not negate proper use.” Just because 50% of American marriages end up in divorce doesn’t mean the “system” is bad. Just because Indian marriages appear to me more mechanical than American marriages, likewise, doesn’t indicate a bad “system.” For now, I suppose I must accept the fact that when it comes to marriage, or anything else in the adiaphora category, I must be quick to respect and meditate patiently on thousands of generations of tradition, slow to criticize with my 28 years of American tradition. I refuse to accept something based simply on tradition, and I must allow biblical principles to be the ultimate rubric, but I must not condemn an institution based on its ill-effects. For my part, I cannot imagine being in an arranged marriage, but, on the other hand, I can hardly imagine choosing one person to spend the rest of my life with, either. So, I suppose I’ll have another beer.

This morning, maybe because of that pamphlet, I woke up thinking about Revelation, specifically the section near the end where John describes the new earth as being inhabited by the leaders and people of every culture, who will bring with them the best of their culture to serve as furniture and art and radio stations and flowers and soft drinks. This realization makes me look at my surroundings differently, wondering what will make it in, what will be thrown in the cosmic trash compactor. I’m fairly certain that t-shirts with witty sayings on them won’t be included. Like the shirt I saw this morning: “I’m not stupid. I’m a Bachelor.” I’m a big fan of double entendre, but only to a point. When people say that the West is influencing a place like India, that young Indians want to be like Americans, this is the kind of thing they mean. To my dismay, Western influence on India means things like Top-gun sunglasses, awful music (Cher, Damn Yankees, Bryan Adams, Britney Spears), Hallmark cards, and fanny-packs. It takes a lot of pride-swallowing to admit to an Indian that I’m from America. I try to explain to them that Kevin Bacon is not our best actor, but I just get that head-bobble.

On the other hand, India does seem to have a decent eye for American movies. Right now, the only American films that are showing are Chicago, The Lord of the Rings, and Catch Me If You Can. If you didn’t know this already, India, affectionately dubbed Bollywood, is the leading film industry in the world. Note, however, that leading involves only quantity, not quality. Trust me. It seems that every Indian film must adhere to a specific formula, and there is only one formula. Good guy falls in love and dances, the girl he loves gets into trouble and the bad guy dances, the good guy distresses and dances and sings about it, the good guy defeats the bad guy and dances on his slain body, the credits roll, and the audience dances. And there’s no gratuitous, or even the opposite of gratuitous, nudity. Thus, 9 ½ Weeks would translate in India as 9 ½ Minutes.

I went to see Chicago today, both as a break from Indian culture and an investigation into Indian theatre furnishings. The first thing I noticed, besides paying $1.40 and being issued an assigned seat, is that I was actually able to walk to my seat without losing my sandal in a pile of carbonated butter glop. The floors in theatres here are immaculate. This is largely due, I suppose, to the omnipresent signs reminding the patrons “Please Not To Spit on the Floor.” I could see where this might present a problem in Arkansas, but I haven’t seen any advertisements for Beech-Nut in Bangalore. Regardless, the floors remain clean, as do the seats, which are all protected by Velour slip-covers, like the ones I sat on in Brett Giannini’s El Camino (Brett was my one of my older sister’s high school boyfriends, my favorite, only because he drove me to buy baseball cards and let me play with the tacks holding up his sagging ceiling-fabric).

As I left the theatre, I recalled a travel tip that I had read in my Lonely Planet travel book. If you go either to Mumbai or Chennai, the main film centers in India, you can tour the movie studios and wait around, hoping to be spotted and hired as an extra. I began giving this serious thought until I recalled another article I read in the paper about financial backing for Indian films. Unlike America, where films are often backed by large corporations or a conglomerate of smaller ones, Indian films are usually backed by large men in dark suits with out-of-issue military arms. I imagined being interviewed as a potential extra. I am led into a dark room in the back of a seedy kebab house, where a man looking like Marlon Brando asks me to have a seat. Upon which I decide that maybe I should stick to writing and suggest that he give Kevin Bacon a call instead.

As a result of the last few days’ experiences and meditations, I have focused my thoughts to the relatively simple topic of eternity. In trying to imagine the new earth of Revelation, I wonder which parts of Indian culture will be present. I wonder if the American culture that is present in India will be counted as American or Indian, and I wonder who gets to choose: God or teenage Indians. Lord, I don’t ask for much, but please, please, don’t delegate this one.

It’s hard to judge an entire culture based on a few months’ traveling, when the most you can hope to see is its outer-garments, the bright colors and frayed hems and smiles. How does one get to know the real culture, the tucks and sags, the culture in its tighty-whities?

I miss you all,
Jeremy

:: 07.03.03, Bangalore still ::

I thought I had seen rain before. I might have guessed when the first raindrop bounced five feet off the ground. I should have known when the second raindrop I saw, five feet away, made a u-turn and flew straight at me and up my left nostril, the RPG of raindrops. I thought I would pretend to be a local, unbothered by a little moisture, and hold fast at my table. But when my unabridged copy of The Lord of the Rings trilogy flew off my table, I knew it was time to seek shelter.

I ran (or slogged, as my sandals aren’t conducive to running) to the nearest building, a large corporate complex with a courtyard inside. There were entryways at both ends of the complex, so that the rain-quickly-turning-monsoon-preview had a nice passageway through my shelter. I felt better when I saw about 50 locals running for cover.

As I hinted, the monsoon laughs at gravity, and seems to choose its course based on the presence of tourists and freshly dried perms. It’s hard to describe the math of the monsoon (if “aftermath” is when it stops, is it “math” during and “pre-math” before?), as I couldn’t really see anything or, for that matter, hear anything. And it’s not because I had my eyes closed and fingers in my ears, but because there was so much water and dirt and concrete chips flying around that every uncovered orifice I wear was clogged with mortar. To top it off, a cow nearby began screaming (I swear, it was screaming), not because it was wet, but because all of its straw began flying around, and a lot of it landed in my hair. Now, I’m drenched, clogged and allergenic.

When it finally stopped (20 minutes?), I decided to walk and find a rickshaw home. Apparently, my $6 Indian sandals weren’t designed for monsoon aftermaths. I lost half of the bottom half of my right sandal—there’s a happy goat somewhere in Bangalore right now, licking my footwear.

I expect, in the days to come, that I will see more of the monsoon, but I am beginning to prepare myself by jotting down the lessons I learn.

1. Watch your step: It’s not so much all the flotsam swirling around the streets, but the water carrying it. I was actually enjoying the water flowing in, around, under my sandals (a bit like Lutheran communion), when the water between my toes turned noticeably warmer and steamier. I shudder to think. The drainage system is about like the house I lived in during seminary, where several hairy guys shared the same bathroom. Thus, the water piles up at street corners, and city busses don’t really care to avoid it. It’s best to hold your umbrella out in front of you.
2. Pardon my French: When the monsoon comes, there’s not much to do but stand still, either laughing or swearing, depending on the mood of the locals. So I laughed. Standing there, digesting a mouth-full of mud and straw, for the first time, I thought I might literally shit a brick.

I’m still meeting interesting people during my daily forays into the city. I few days ago, I visited a local restaurant, Koshy’s, where I had eaten a few weeks back. My previous waiter spotted me immediately, ran to me across the restaurant, greeted me a bit over-warmly, and began leading me to the same table I occupied on my first visit. Only this time, there was someone seated there. I smiled at the waiter, to ease his regret, but he just smiled back and said, “Sit, sit. You must to meet good friend of mine.” I can’t imagine this happening at Burger King. I ended up talking with Srinivas, Bangalore’s leading, and only, Latin-dance teacher. His dream is to study dance in Cuba and win the World Championships. I told him I’m satisfied just to avoid ever being dragged into the Electric Slide. Wednesday night, I’m going to observe one of his classes. There’s little I’d rather see than a Hindu couple learning to Lambada.

Hoping to find more of the local atmosphere, I decided to visit the Bangalore Family Fair, a two- to four-week (depending on the monsoons, I suppose) carnival. I found that the attractions (the rides, over-sweet food, guns that shoot water up clowns’ noses) are familiar, but the ticket lines are very Indian. I swear, if one more person cuts in line, I may go American-postal (Indian postal will only toss you around, bend your corners, and eat whatever food you have). I became hopeful, however, when I saw the freak-show booth off in the corner. Fortunately, there was no line, and I could observe India’s finest freaks for only two cents. To my dismay, however, I found that bearded women in India look just like bearded women in Indiana, except maybe better dressed.

Continuing my journey to observe local culture, I went on a seven-mile walk a few days ago, hoping to capture native flavor with both pen and camera. It’s a bit of a dilemma, though, as it’s entirely too hot to walk during the afternoon, but there’s not enough light to photograph in the evening. So all I accomplished was walking seven miles.

The afternoon heat here is similar to what you’ll find in Mississippi; but unlike the Mosquito State (apologies to Minnesota), rather than climbing in the evening, the temperature actually drops at night, and it’s quite pleasant, especially when you have a large flat roof and a cup of tea. The difference, though, between Bangalore and Mississippi is that Mississippi actually has seasons (well, summer and not-summer, at least), whereas it’s pretty much hott-ish year-round here. I’ve been thinking: without winter, how can Indians appreciate the novelty of an on-coming summer, even a summer as nostalgic and upbeat as the Summer of ’69? Which brings me to a more disturbing matter: why do so many Indians love Bryan Adams? It’s driving me mad. I can possibly understand Pink Floyd or Eric Clapton or even the Scorpions on a benevolent day, but Bryan Adams? If Canada is serious about international relations, it ought to consider sending Bryan Adams as its ambassador to India. It’s a good thing he wasn’t around hundreds of years ago, or the national sport would be hockey rather than cricket, and then there’d be some serious issues. And instead of saying “Cheers,” Indians would be “Eh”-ing all the time.

The Indians seem to like their Victorian English, though, mixed with local culture and dialect, it can be pretty confusing for an American, especially given the Indians’ love for word-play and experimentation. I’m always writing down new words, phrases, clichés that I find during my travels; just this morning I noticed some new ones.

--If an event is delayed, it is “postponed,” but if it is moved up, it is “preponed.” Am I the only one who hasn’t heard of this?

--Painted on the side of a building: “Stick no bills. Stickers will be prosecuted.” How do you frisk and handcuff a sticker?

--“Familiarity breeds children.” Okay, that one’s actually pretty good.

--On the inside of most rickshaws, you’ll find this helpful advice: “If driver demands more fare than meter gives, report to Ojsdom!~skdn3 EOIS.” I’ll be sure and get in touch with them soon.

I found out recently that Bangalore is one of India’s main centers for Laughter Therapy. I’m outraged that my guide-book didn’t mention this. Apparently, a visit to Bangalore without a Laugher Therapy session is like visiting New York without getting yelled at. So I’ve done some research and found a Laughter center nearby. I e-mailed the contact about joining the group for a session, and this is the response I received:

Dear Jeremy Huggins,

Ho Ho Ha Ha

U r most welcome to visit us and be part of the laughter family. U can contact us at *******, our residence no. before 10 a.m or between 2 p.m to 5 p.m or after 9 p.m. or u can call me at **********--my mobile no.

Looking forward to spending with u many laughters moment

Laughing yours
Ho HO Ha Ha
Mamata
daughter of Mr.Satyanarayan

Seems that they’re very flexible, and that I may find myself sitting in a stranger’s living room laughing my brains out, though for what reason I’m not sure yet.

I hope you’re all well back home, and I’ll be sure to report back on the upcoming week’s events, including my visit to Puttaparthi, home of Sai Baba and his worldwide devotees. If you don’t hear from me in a few weeks, please come looking for me.

Laughing yours,
Jeremy

:: 15.05.2003, fresh from the roadways ::

A lot has been happening to my body the last week. This sounds strangely like one of my early teenage diary entries. Let me re-phrase that. My experiences this week, and the grid through which I view them, seem to have a markedly corporeal aspect to them. Whether things happening to me or outside of me, my thoughts keep turning to the body.

I don’t think that helped any, and I don’t think I can explain any better, so maybe it’s best to move along and tell you about last-week’s India.

About three weeks ago, I read a notice in the paper about the first all-woman garage opening in Bangalore. Last week, after asking directions from eight different people, which led me respectively to an antique shop, a fruit-juice stand, a man with no teeth, and a restaurant with a picture of the direction-giver over the door, I managed to stumble across the garage.

After introducing myself and talking with the owner for a while, I unpacked my camera to get a few shots of the mechanics. They obliged by pulling out some fancy tools and acting like they were fixing a scooter. I have found, in my photographic forays, that it’s almost impossible to get either a candid shot or a candid-looking shot, at least. The entire time I was trying to get a good shot, the girls were giggling and blushing and whispering things I couldn’t understand. I tried to picture a mechanic-shop in St. Louis, the greasy men sitting around with their lug-nuts and torque wrenches, giggling and blushing. That made me start laughing, and all I accomplished was sitting in an auto-garage with a bunch of women, laughing. I suppose it was a good warm-up for my upcoming laughter therapy session.

After finally getting a decent shot, I tried to thank the owner with what little I know of her language. More laughter. She said I need to work on trilling my “r.” Darn my speech impediment. She informed me that instead of saying “The picture was nice; thank you very much,” I said, “Picture good; you look like a cow.” I did manage to correctly say “I’m awful sorry.”

On the way home from the garage, I stopped outside a liquor store to take a picture. As I was packing up my camera, two men came running out of the store to greet me. One of the men was carrying something in his hand. I was hoping for a fifth of scotch, but it was his left sandal. He asked me for my good (first) name and said, “You from America, no?”
“Yes, I’m from America, no.”
“No, yes, or yes you are no America?”
“What?”
And so on for a few minutes until we established residency. He asked me if I support Bush in the war, and I started into a lecture on just war, etc., when he interrupted me: “You American, you must support Bush like me. See, I no American, no, and I support your Bush.” As he finished, he held up his sandal, yelled “Saddam,” spit on it, and started whacking it on the ground. He started pointing to my feet, but, fortunately, I had on shoes with a double-knot so that even he could see how inconvenient it would be for me to support Bush at the moment. The other man turned to me and said, “You from America, no?” But before I could start the “Who’s on first” spiel with him, he continued, “Yes, from America, no, and I support Bush, too, no.” He started grabbing for his sandal, but I stopped him and said, “I could really use some scotch, no.”
“Yes,” he said, “we drink to your Bush, no.”
“Drink to my Bush, yes no, let us,” after which a third man, fully shod, fortunately, came to our little coalition, grabbed the camera, and took a picture of me with my two new friends. If only all such pro- or anti-war gatherings could be held outside liquor stores, I think everything would be better.

After the scotch, I decided to take a rickshaw home. Rickshaw drivers, like many Americans, advertise their beliefs with stickers, though in India, the stickers usually adorn the windshield—not the best place if you ask me. On my driver’s windshield was this prayer: “My hands in yours, Lord Jesus, as I drive this vehicle. Let me be concerned for the safety of others as well as my own. Amen.” “Now here,” I thought, “is some real, down-to-earth, bodily spirituality. No nebulous prayers for world peace, but an immediate, tangible, localized plea for a safe ride home.” I was comforted by the sticker, but I wondered, halfway home, as we almost skewered a dog, if he shouldn’t pencil animals into the prayer, as well. There’s nothing too mundane for the Christian to consider or pray about. This is in considerable contrast to the “prayers” of the pantheistic religions, whose chants and meditations, ultimately, have no real object or goal besides an impersonal, inexplicable melding into something out there. I find a safe ride home more compelling than an “experience” when a bus is approaching my taxi head-on.

I realize, in thinking about it later, that it’s both difficult and unkind to characterize Buddhists and Hindus as I find myself wanting to do. It’s easy both to be tricked by and to trick myself with word games here. Strictly speaking, the label “pantheism” isn’t an adequate one, because the root “theism” implies personality. With an impersonal beginning and an impersonal goal (to eliminate personal desire, or to merge into the ultimate “life force” or “energy”), there’s nothing theistic about pantheism. Rather than dismissing all pantheists on this semantic ground, however, I observe them and their worship, and I am forced to conclude that they have staked their personality firmly into the impersonal swirl of their religion. No matter where I walk in Bangalore, or any Indian town, for that matter, I’m confronted with temples and shrines. Sometimes they’re monumental, elaborate, and awe-inspiring; sometimes they’re niches hammered out of brick walls, filled with pictures, flowers, flames. The pantheistic deities, tangible forms of the impersonal, are adorned with flowers, scents, tears, drafts of incense. People throng to street corners and holes in the wall to worship, and at every point, they are investing their person into worship. From the colorful clothes they wear to their smeared foreheads to the way they smell, their worship is a personal, bodily thing. It is at this point that I grieve for them: they are acting out, rightly, as creatures created for worship, but as creatures created to worship an actual object, a personal object, to see them attempting to deny who they are (and failing wonderfully) by worshiping something impersonal is confusing and sad.

I see such colorful, personal worship, and I am confused and sad for the church, as well. Of all people, we should be the last to worship in such impersonal buildings, with such generic passion, with nothing to distinguish us from the business adjacent to us in the strip mall. It makes me inspect my own view of worship, and I’m forced to ask myself if I’m bringing my personality with me on Sundays, or just my Bible and my words.

Ultimately, Christianity is a personal faith, rooted in a personal object. Having faith, by itself, is no more efficacious than having marital love by itself. The value of faith lies in its object, as with marital love. Ask a Christian about the object of his worship, and he should respond by saying that he worships the one who calls himself “I AM.” Ask the pantheist about the object of his worship, and he must respond by saying that he worships “IT IS.” The difference means everything, and should result in everything’s looking different, but it isn’t always so clear cut. I, for one, rather than being quick to short-circuit the pantheist’s semantic games, do well to remember the personal, even the bodily, side of worship, to question my own integrity first. From there, let me and the pantheist go for a glass of scotch, and let us talk about God as our bellies grow warm::

A few days ago, as the change in my pocket began jingling, I realized that I had met either an over-friendly kid or my first pick-pocket. Assuming the latter, I grabbed him by the wrist, waved my pointer finger in the air, and said, “Saddam will catch you and make you lick his sandals.” He laughed and ran off with one of my rupees.

Fortunately, the kid grabbed for my right pocket, where I keep the small change. Had he chosen the left, he would have got my movie money. Sunday night, I went with my friend Santhosh to see my first Indian movie. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and Santhosh, ever-thoughtful, anticipating some sense of anxiety, treated me to typical Indian pre-movie festivities, which ended with the two of us sitting on some storefront steps drinking over-large bottles of Kingfisher beer. Now I understand why all Indian movies have an intermission.

The theater itself was surprisingly nice. The seating was ample, the screen was decent, and the sound was almost comparable to what I get in St. Louis. As I gaped at the insides of the theatre, 500 Indians were gaping at me, wondering why a Westerner was at the Hindi movie. They had no reason to fear the language barrier, however, as I purposely picked a movie that didn’t require great language skills: The Hero: Love Story of a Spy. I figured that I would probably be better off if I didn’t hear the dialogue.

When the protagonist made his first appearance on-screen, everyone began clapping and whistling; opposite for the bad guy. Indians are not afraid to get involved in the movie. Following custom, when some scenes of New York City appeared, I yelled, “Woo-hoo, America!” Santhosh nudged me and said, simply, “Not good idea, yes.” I wasn’t trying to be nationalistic; I just wanted to join in the fun, to be a local, and I didn’t know when to clap or shout otherwise, so I took my shot. Alas, will my noble purposes always be misconstrued such?

As the movie was drawing to a close, people started standing up, some of them leaving. By the time the hero gave the heroine the last kiss, 75% of the crowd was at or out the doors, and by the time the credits came on, everyone was up. Not only did no one wait for the credits, but the movie was cut off before they even began rolling. I tried to imagine not sitting through the credits after a movie like Schindler’s List. I thought, surely, that Indians must have similarly thought-provoking films, The Hero aside. As we stepped outside, I understood. Every moped, motorcycle, and car driven by the audience was stuffed into the back parking lot, an area about the size of the typical American patio. And there was one small exit, as wide as the typical American grill. Sitting there, surrounded by 500 poorly lubricated engines and their exhaust, I considered stuffing my mouth with 20 filtered cigarettes, lighting them, and inhaling frequently, only to protect my lungs::

Turns out that the policemen here are like your typical small-town Louisiana policemen. I was riding around, quite innocently, on my motorcycle, w

sai baba and me

an extract from my india travel journal (which is 50 pages long but attached at the end of this message in case you're an insomniac), with a baba bumper sticker and a photo of my first haircut in india. enjoy. oh, yes, and if you're a fan of nag champa incense, you can thank sai baba.

. . . . Shopping for postcards a week ago, I stumbled across a picture of an Indian sitting in a Yoga pose, smiling. It was nothing extraordinary, except for the fact that his hair, a legitimate afro, fills half the postcard. I giggled to myself, snatched as many as possible, and mailed about four or five. Later, I found out that his name is Shriya Sai Baba, and he is possibly the most influential man in India outside of the Prime Minister and Sachin Tendulkar, the Barry Bonds of the cricket world. He has allegedly performed thousands of miracles, often producing gifts for people out of thin air. He has a following rivaling that of any celebrity in America, and he has ashrams (communities) and homes set up throughout southern India. The equivalent of what I have done is like an Indian visiting America and signing up for Oprah’s Book Club because he thinks “Oprah” is a funny word. Anyway, if you receive a postcard with this man on it, count yourself blessed, and give him a prominent place in your home—who knows about miracles? . . .

sai baba

and me

so apparently there's a limit on text. if you read the attachment and want to continue reading where it cuts off, send me an e-mail or leave a comment and i'll send the rest.

:: Friends, family, countrymen—

Greetings from a small, fan-cooled room in Bangalore, India. A few quick travel notes:

::More disturbing than the difficulty of understanding the script above an Indian toilet—or, as the case may be, a hole—was my terribly unfortunate seat assignment on the flight from New York to Paris. By most accounts, I had no sane reason to protest (reclining chair, miniscule neighbor, Harry Potter on the telly), until, with maddening non-chalance, the pilot announced that if I “happened” to be sitting on the left side of the plane, I could get a “nice” view of the Northern Lights. For all of us who weren’t on the left side of the plane, and who were Aurora Boree-virgins, I raise my tray table in disgust and kindly request that the pilot take his “nice” view and shove it.
::2 March, 10 AM, Charles de Gaulle Airport

::The transfer from the plane through customs (the green line) and out of the airport was relatively painless. Finding the driver holding a sign with my name on it was like trying to spot your third cousin at graduation. What were all those people doing at the airport at 1 AM? Luckily, my driver was a mousy man, and he managed to gnaw his way to the front of the fence holding back all the faces. I deciphered two of my driver’s first 40 words: “front” and “rear.” Assuming he wasn’t asking how my digestive system was holding up, I guessed and went with “front,” after which he opened the front door for me, and the video game began. Forget merge, throw out right-of-way. Biggest car wins. You would rather lose your horn than your steering wheel. Felt like I was in Frogger.

Finally arrived at my hotel, both terrified and delighted by the ride. Had to knock on the door to get in. The manager tried to charge me more than agreed upon in the online reservation, but, being both anal and grossly quick with math, I managed to dispute the total within 1.7 seconds. I saw the fear in his eyes as he realized that he was dealing with the Rainman of tourists. I only saved $3 in the transaction, but that $3 would prove valuable later on.

How do these light switches work?

I have already seen more people in two hours (and after midnight) than I see in my neighborhood in two days. So many stares—am I greeted or potentially usable?

My hotel room in Mumbai has cable. Apart from some Banghra and Indian MTV, I found only some embarrassing American sitcoms. Apparently, Indians have more sympathy for shows like Dave’s World than Americans do. Who knew Dave Barry was so translatable? Much to my dismay, I changed the channel to find a disturbingly recognizable crystal pulpit and sweat-drenched televangelist—Creflo Dollar is making it big in India.

Things are different here. America sure is a backward place.
::5 March, 2:45 AM, Residency Hotel
Mumbai (Bombay)

::5 March, 7:55 AM to 6 March, 9:00 AM, Udyan Express train to Bangalore

1—box of chewy Spree
1—box of chewy mini SweetTarts
1—cup of tea > what I’ve eaten in the last 24 hours
1—bag of train-station Ruffles
2—Lomotil

Found my train with relative ease. Situated in a 2-tier, 4-bunk sleeper cabin. Industrial linoleum floors, egg-blue vinyl benches, fold-out table at the window, windows non-slideable, funny smell, mirror, no companion yet.

The train station walkway was like the pantry floor of a puppy-in-training, except the dogs here are made in the image of God, the image of God crawling on fours, losing urine and dignity together. Who’s at-fault here?

*Note: there are things I want to avoid in these updates. One, I do not want to be sentimental. As I read recently, or something akin to it, poverty makes a good story, but not a good neighbor. It’s difficult to discuss such things without sounding trite. I am here to learn, especially to make connections between Hinduism’s caste system and India’s social condition, to understand better the connections between Christianity and America’s social condition. To learn how myopic my faith is. To be still. I have many teaching opportunities, indeed, but I have made it clear to my host that I want to be as quiet as possible. Two, if you ever hear me use the word “charming,” please feel free to rebuke me. Charming is reserved for crocheting parties and fairy tales. Charming is a demeaning thing to say about a culture—how can you capture depth with such a mono-valent word?

The fold-out table on the train is two-inches too low. I find this out after I notice the grey stains on my pants. When I left from Memphis, my left eye had been itchy and irritable. Keeps getting worse. I have been winking at a lot of grown men.

Please, Lord, let me share a cabin with a beautiful, witty girl with matches. For evangelistic purposes, of course. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, just not single when I get to heaven.

There’s a large bullet-hole in my window. Patched by a big black blob—I’ll probably have a good view of the Northern Lights tonight—right where the blob is. I’m not bitter.

Finally, my companions. Harish, Avinash, and (I can’t pronounce his name, so we just smile a lot). Harish and Bob-I’ll-call-him are importers-exporters. Am I in a Seinfeld episode? They import, install, and service MRI units. We chatted for a while, but when I congratulated them on India’s World Cup cricket victory over Pakistan, our friendship was sealed. Over the course of the day, we discussed cricket, Lagaan, Daler Mendhi, the king of Indian pop, and the difference between Indian and American tobacco. We played a lot of rummy, as well. Harish bought me an Indian omelette for breakfast. Such generous men. Everytime tea or coffee or food came around, we reached for our pockets, like we were in a western shoot-out—he wanted to pay for all of my food.

Avinash is a younger, more western Indian. He likes Pink Floyd, Metallica, and Bryan Adams. Hmm. . . .

Indian men are good spitters. Wild boars wander through the streams, and cows stand on the rail-lines. They (the men) use wax matches—very cool.

My new friends are impressed with my taste in tea (“Ah, yes, Assam—good taste.”)—at least I think they were complimenting my taste rather than the tea’s. I knew all those hours at my coffeeshop drinking Darjeeling and Assam were preparation for some grand moment.

Taking a respite from my cabin to lean out one of the entry doors to catch some un-glassed landscape. The wind hurts my eye, but it’s worth it for a while. Met Eduardo, an architect from Buenos Aires. He was a good man. We had a great discussion on the caste system, on the meaning of happiness, on American ethnocentrism (esp. Americans’ appalling lack of geographical knowledge).

Some initial conclusions upon arriving in Bangalore: It’s all about the seat you’re in.
Also, I must remember not to wipe my eyes with my curry hand.::

::William (his Christian name), my host in Bangalore, took me for breakfast after picking me up from the train station. Thus far, I have had many liters of water and tea, along with four full meals, and I have yet to hear rumblings from my stomach. Thank you, Lord. All of my worries and warnings revolved around my digestive system, but it turns out that I’m suffering from an eye problem, and one that I got in America. William took me to an eye doctor. After a few minutes in the waiting room, I went in. The doctor stuck a piece of wood in my eyeball, and when I flinched, he yelled at me: “You will hurt your eye if you do that.” I refrained from telling him that he was already hurting my eye, so I lose either way. Then he shined a blue light in my eye and noticed a large infection on my cornea. A full-blown eye infection. So he prescribed me some eye drops and eye cream and wrote up the bill: 150 rupees. What would have cost $50 in St. Louis cost me $3 in Bangalore.

So, because of my eye, which keeps me from being able to see for more than 5 minutes at a time, I’m pretty much relegated to staying around the house in Bangalore, which is frustrating. It was nice for the first day, to be able to recuperate, but now it’s somewhat maddening. Hopefully, my eye will be better by the weekend.

So, assuming my eye is on the way to better, I am headed to Muttom Saturday, the fishing village on the Indian Ocean. I’ll help lead some devotionals that first week for the Christians in that area. After that, I’ll be on my own for another week, studying and writing. From there, another day-long train trip back to Bangalore, where I’ll be March 7 to the end of April. While here, I’ll preach a few times at the local church, as well as give six talks at a youth camp during the middle of April. I do appreciate your prayers for these teaching times, that I would learn my place, that I would be relevant rather than clever, that God would teach me things I don’t even realize I need to learn. Then on to the Mudumalai Game sanctuary for three weeks in May. Back to Bangalore for a few weeks, then on a train trip to Bangladesh and into the Himalayas. Back to Bangalore for a few weeks, then back to the States sometime in late June. I recognize already that two to six months isn’t enough to begin to understand India; but I’m not here, I don’t think, to understand India. I’m here, among many things, to understand my place in a global church. Jesus is here.

Please forgive the stream-of-consciousness feel of these e-mails. I have basically reproduced some journal entries, and have tried to avoid redaction. Obviously, I have made some remarks in retrospect, but I think it best, for the purpose of communicating the learning process that I’m undergoing, to allow you to feel my thoughts rather than read a nice, edited travelogue.

The Super Six matches of the Cricket World Cup start in 15 minutes. I don’t want to miss a minute.

Again, please pray for me. For health, for ministry, for an understanding of what Jesus means when he elevates the last seat over the first seat. Sometimes we are handed our seat, but most of the time we have a choice, and if we would honor God and serve men, we must be willing to forego the sensational, even the Northern Lights.

Feel free to write, or even to e-mail, and don’t be afraid to send candy.

Take care,
Jeremy
7 March, 12:30 PM, Bangalore

:: A few days later

My eye seems to be getting better, enough so that I decided I would give the motorcycle my first spin through the neighborhood. Theoretically, keeping in the left lane is simple, but throw in twelve years of driving in the right lane, no lanes, dogs and cows in what would be the lanes, and a motorcycle with bad brakes that requires constant revving to keep from stalling, and all the sudden I’m in a bad episode of CHiPs. I’m John, of course, but with my new moustache and tan, you might mistake me for Ponch.

I woke up this morning swimming in last-night’s drool. It was my first night to sleep all the way through, at least until seven this morning when the neighborhood Indian chipmunk thingies woke me. My beard was 76 degrees with 100% humidity. For the sake of the host family’s pillowsheets, I decided I better shave. So I walked down the street to the local barber, who sized me up, sat me down, and began his art. Indian barbers are terribly proud of their craft; they are taught from childhood, and they don’t have to attend academies with names like Barbazon to receive a piece of paper that does absolutely nothing to make the customer feel better about sitting in a hair place with superlative nomenclature like “super” or “great.” He looked at me with his scissors, and I said, simply, “Short,” pointing to my head and beard. It was the most meticulous cut I have ever had. Nothing electric, just keen scissors and deft hands. After fifteen minutes of cutting and shaping, I had the kind of hair that you see on an old man wearing a ribbed t-shirt in a 50’s magazine advertisement. Or on a serviceman’s sepia-toned photo. Before starting on the beard, he began doing some sort of shiatsu on my head, like a drive-thru car wash for my scalp. He put away the hair scissors and grabbed beard scissors and a straight blade. I began having movie-scene visions, where the beady-eyed, crazed, eastern fundamentalist has a blade to my throat—then I caught myself, laughed, and prayed. After shaving my gnarly beard, he dabbed the nicks with something resembling an ice-cold, room-temperature bar of soap (a stypic?), which stung like mad, then he soaked me with some soothing, minty aftershave, which smelled strangely like the dessert I had eaten an hour earlier at lunch, then applied some sort of cologne that stung like nettle and smelled like the middle pages of a really bad fashion magazine. I opened my eyes to see the finished product, and I realized that in India, when you go for a cut, it is assumed, unless you say otherwise, that you would rather keep your “moose,” or, as Americans know it and mock it, the moustache. And my moustache, which has been growing for a considerable time, bent over like my motorcycle’s handlebars—I looked, by all respects, like a colonial Brit.

Off for Muttom tomorrow—do pray for my weeks there, that they would be beneficial to the people I serve, to the church at-large, and to me.

In case anyone cares, India won its first Super Six match in the World Cup of Cricket, and I am thoroughly hooked.

Take care,
Jeremy

:: Sunday, March 8, 2003—Bangalore :: It is my first Sunday morning in India. As in America, the TV is full of worship services, though much of the worship is suspect as worship. The Health and Wealth Gospel is creeping into India, the result being that much of what has constituted for Christianity here (Catholicism, Syrian Orthodoxy, Anglicanism) is being slain in the spirit of Pentecostalism. I don’t know what to think.

Just like America, the children in my host’s house held on to the last possible second of morning cartoons before tucking in shirts and heading out for church. On the drive over, I realized that I may actually be getting used to driving conditions in India. The temptation for me is to consider Indian roads disorderly, unorganized, and generally suicidal, but I begin to realize that this is an American critique. Rather than comparing the two and making judgments regarding propriety, I think it’s best to see the beauty in diversity, so to speak. The fact is, for all of the honking and swerving and putting my hands over my eyes, I have yet to see anyone hit anything, including animals, and I have seen no middle fingers shoot out of windows. This is a paradigm that I’m becoming acquainted with and beginning to value for its own terminology—much like, I’m sure, worship in India will become to me.

Bangalore Presbyterian Church, the only Presbyterian church in South India (imagine one Presbyterian church in the state of Texas, and you have an idea), sits in the upstairs of a store-front, renting the property from a fitness organization. The externals, both of the building and the behavior, correspond to much of what I’m familiar with back home: an old lady with glasses plays the piano; the praise song leader is gregarious and sings the chorus too many times; I check my zipper on the way in.

I found, during the service, that the people at this church seemed just as apathetic and lethargic as the people in the churches I’ve visited back home—this is a parallel that I didn’t want to discover. Most of the reports that American churches receive of overseas churches are that they are passionate and Spirit-filled and infectious (some of them are, I’m sure, but not all). This makes us, at home, feel apathetic and lethargic and not the way we’re supposed to be. I think, though, that to expect the church in America to look the same as the church in India or South America is to make the same mistake as to expect the church in Bangalore to behave like the church in St. Louis—if they do, maybe that’s okay, but to expect it is to cookie-cut the accidents of worship. The essentials should be universal, but the accidents should be cultural and individual.

The pastor of the church here says that the main problem is that people don’t see church as a regular thing. The problem in most American churches is that people, both church-goers and non-, do see church as a regular thing. The church is so steeped in cliché and is so predictable that she has lost her ability to shock her neighbors with creativity and goodness.

The idea of caste is so ingrained in the Indian sensibility, that even it, a Hindu concept, one officially outlawed but still practiced, has crept into the church. Many of the potential leaders in the Christian church want to be elders, not for the purpose of serving, but for the purpose of being of a higher “caste” of Christian leader. This is not my own observation, but that of church leaders here.

In opposition to Hinduism and Buddhism, however, Christianity offers a unique hope to those whose loved ones have died. Hindus hope that a loved one’s karma carries him/her to a better life next time, one that will likely be separate from his own; Christianity, however, assures the widow that she will both recognize and fellowship with her loved one for eternity. Pastoral visits, and the ability to minister to the grieved biblically, are some of the most important tasks for an Indian pastor. I only hope that their version of seeing loved ones again doesn’t degenerate into the universalistic “we’ll meet again” mentality that every American seems to feel that he has the right to claim.

The Christian church here seems largely disconnected from the progressive, younger generation. I wonder who will love them.

For all of this, I’m excited to better understand the church in India, to continue to understand what worship is supposed to look like and feel like, both in its particulars and its universals::

::Travel Tips::

::If you want one coffee, or one ticket or one of anything, do not hold up your index finger; otherwise, you may be inviting someone to go do number one in your coffee, or on your ticket. Likewise, do not hold your pinky up, as number two is much worse. Hopefully, America will never send a large delegate to an Indian sporting event; if this happens, and the fans begin cheering and holding up the “we’re number one” fingers as they usually do, the stadium officials may begin to panic::

::On an Indian train, if you are caught riding without a ticket, you will receive either a $10 fine or 3 months in jail. Hopefully, you get to choose::

::If you purchase a bottle of Coke from a street vendor, you are expected to drink it on the spot and return the bottle. I was not aware of this until I had walked off with my bottle a few times. People kept pointing at me and saying “bottle” as they laughed. Walking around with a bottle of Coke is like taking the ashtray out of your car and walking down the street with it for personal use::

:: March 10—13, Muttom ::

Muttom is a small fishing village on the southern tip of India. I am staying at the Rock Bible Center, a facility overlooking the Arabian Sea. There is not much to do here besides walking and standing in the ocean. The sand on the beaches is a marvelous brown-and-black swirl, like marble rye.

Walked to the neighboring village early on my first morning to watch the fishermen come in and sell their catch. The whole village was there, everyone crowding in and bidding for fish that I’ve never seen and couldn’t name for you. A kid named Bop-San came up to me and started talking in Tamil. I can say only “hello,” “sorry,” “thank you,” “please,” “bus,” “help,” and “please, no more food,” so our conversation was a bit one-sided. Bop-San was clearly the clown kid of the village, the only one not afraid to engage the white man, possibly the first in the village in years; this kid had the same mannerisms, control of audience, and bravado that you see in class clowns in every classroom in America. He kept trying out his English on me (something that most Indian children seem desperate to do), shooting off a word, waiting for my approval and repetition of the word, then trying another. He saw a motorcycle and hoped that “Suzuki” is an English word. I just smiled and said, “Yes, Bop-San, Suzuki, Suzuki”; I didn’t have the heart to break it to him.

The two children who live at the Bible Center are great kids. The older, Danny, follows me everywhere and has exceptional English. He repeats words over and over until he says it just like I, and he keeps trying sentences until he gets it right. Generally, when it comes to children and language, I feel that I’m getting a rare glimpse into the patience of God and a divine love of monotony—patience and love that I don’t find much in myself.

I feel like I could become a stand-up comic in India. 40% of the people I meet laugh when they look at me, the other 60% join in when I begin speaking. These people think I’m hilarious, and I will allow myself to believe that I am the funniest American comedian in Muttom, India.

I stumbled upon about 30 village kids playing cricket this afternoon. I’ve been wanting to play since I got here, so I yelled out “Suzuki,” and they waved me onto the cricket pitch. I had been playing for five minutes when I looked up and realized the whole village had gathered to watch the American play cricket.

Apparently, my host picked the wrong fish in the morning. I’m sick. I spent the afternoon and evening filling my bathing bucket with partially digested rice and bread and curry. Most vomit burns when it comes up, but curry vomit is the worst. There’s nothing like vomiting in an un-air-conditioned room, alone, on the southern tip of India to make you homesick, which is a much better sickness, at least at the time. I had frighteningly vivid dreams between my round of bucket-fillling. I dreamed that I was sitting on the couch at my childhood home drinking Coke and watching the Dukes of Hazzard, my mother folding clothes. I dreamed that my childhood crush tracked me down in India to tell me that she always had a crush on me. I dreamed things that touched the most familiar, lonely, and longing parts of me. When you’re on your back, in a hot room, alone, vomiting, and you feel like you’re right up against everything, up against your flesh, your longing for something familiar intensifies, and its absence intensifies the loneliness, and the homesickness is almost unbearable. I admitted to myself, during that time, that it’s okay for me to love America. I spend a lot of time trying to think of the things that I don’t like about America, but I need to spend more time listing the beautiful things—it’s okay to love my culture. And I have a new-found respect for single missionaries.

I also dreamed that I went home, collected eyeglasses, and brought them back to Muttom for the villagers. I saw no one in Muttom wearing eyeglasses, and I’m positive that not everyone has 20/20 vision. Maybe that’s why they laugh when they look at me.

Fortunately, my sickness only lasted through the night, and I spent the rest of the next day in bed reading and napping. When I felt safe enough to get out of bed, I walked down to the beach with Paul, Danny’s father. Paul and I can’t speak with each other, as neither of us knows the other’s language well-enough, but when a huge wave ran in and crashed over us, we looked at each other and started laughing, and I understood common grace better than any verbose theologizing could have communicated.

At night, I stand on the roof and listen. The quality of the silence here is thick, the only sound coming from the light of the stars. It is a foreign darkness, and it’s magnetic::

:: March 16, Nagercoil, the Church of South India ::

All the Christians in the town attend here. There are probably 500 people here, the men and women sitting on separate sides like, to my western mind, a junior high retreat. All of the people I’ve asked about this agree that this is a custom that must change, but centuries of doing are not easily undone, especially in an Anglican system where the bishop takes the heat for upsetting whole towns.

When the pastor sat in his chair on the podium, a gecko shot out from behind his seat and ran up the wall and hid behind a clock. Nobody gasped.

I had no idea what was being said, but when the people stood, I stood, and when the organist played a familiar tune, I sang in English. The Tamil singing was beautiful, something like the singing in the movie The Mission. One song had a refrain that included the word “Amen,” which I belted out everytime it came around. I felt like Mr. Bean in the episode where he mumbles through the Gloria Patri until the “Hallelujah,” where he sings with great passion. This thought made me laugh. A crow was flying around in the rafters, and I was praying that it wouldn’t number two on me, like some divine judgment on the Westerner.

People yawned and nodded during the service, just like in America. Though it’s obvious, it hit me, meaningfully, for the first time, that there is no pure church anywhere. And, thus, I wondered, what am I hoping to find in India that I haven’t found already? That there is no pure church is good news if you have a realistic, biblical assessment of the church, bad news if you are a cynic who hates the “hypocrisy” of the church, because a pure church doesn’t exist, and if you are a cynic of the good variety, the kind who is cynical in hopes of finding a better answer, then you won’t, because the church was, is, and always will be full of hypocrites—it’s the only safe place for them. I find that I am guilty of the bad brand of cynicism, criticizing the American church for the sake of lifting myself up rather than hoping to find ways to make it more glorious.

The only English words the pastor said the whole morning: “Christ forgives sins.” He looked right at me when he said them::

I went out for some sights today. Visited Kanyakumari, the Lands’ End of India, where the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, and the Bay of Bengal meet. I stood in line to take a ferry out to some Hindu monuments, one of which is a huge statue of a venerated idol, the Statue of Liberty of India. It was here, waiting in line, that I realized something new about Indians at-large: they’re terrible at standing in line. This, for me, the perfectionist, is something that I am unwilling to label as culturally okay. I stood in a line at a roadside vendor for five minutes waiting to buy a bag of chips because I didn’t have the heart to criticize the ten people who successively cut in front of me. When I dropped my head in defeat, the seller felt sorry for me and yelled for me over the heads of the line-cutters. I don’t know what to do about this. Some 12 years of primary and secondary schooling keeps me from allowing myself to be a cutter.

I visited a small church in the middle of another remote village. The church is now Syrian Orthodox, but it was supposedly the first church in southern India planted by Thomas, Jesus’ beloved believing doubter. Years after he left for Madras, the church suffered and eventually lost its members. For centuries, the building sat unused save for lizards and wildflowers, until a new group of villagers decided to use the building. The new group was Hindu, and when local Christians heard of their plans, they decided that they better not let their historical marker become a temple. For years, the two parties argued over who had rights to the building, until one of the locals cleared out the foliage and exposed a foundation stone, which had a cross clearly engraved in it. When I stepped inside and saw that cross, my knees buckled a bit, and I was moved by that small cube of rock more than any of the lavish, historical temples and monuments that I have seen elsewhere::

On my last night in Nagercoil, I was asked to lead a Bible study for the local YMCA chapter, which is still a Christian organization. I was told that I had 45 minutes, which I gladly took advantage of, as I would be required to speak in half-speed. Moments before walking to the meeting, I was told that I would have 20 minutes instead. Try chopping 60% of your well-planned, intricately connected talk, and you end up with a stand-up routine consisting of one pastor entering a bar and no punchline. For someone who places, wrongly, so much of his identity in communicating from the pulpit, it was a rare and much-needed moment of utter humiliation. It only confirmed for me how important indigenous leadership and training is. Of all the problems associated with missionary endeavor, I can think of none worse than insisting on planting your own culture along with the church::

The train ride back from Nagercoil to Bangalore, a 17-hour trip, was one of the most beautiful road-trips I have been on. Most of the time, I sat in the door-frame between cars, legs hanging out, watching the greens and the people blur past. I hope the train system in America will be revitalized soon. At large train stops, you usually have five minutes to get out and stretch or find food. I was in desperate need of a Coke, and it took me a few minutes to reach a vendor with a cold Coke in a plastic bottle that I could safely take with me. Then the whistle sounded, and I had a 500-yard run down a crowded platform to jump back on my car. I made it just as the train reached my maximum-running speed, and I jumped on without losing my sandals. I gloried in the moment, one I’ve dreamed about since childhood. Safety regulations are almost absent here. For instance, I saw the other day a little girl riding on the gas tank of her father’s motorcycle, a newspaper shielding her head from the rain, flapping in her father’s face—this is a child’s paradise::

::Sample Price List::
Internet access - .40/hour
16-oz. Coke - .30
new CD (American CD) – 7.00
beer - .70 for a draft pint
gas – 3.20 a gallon
leather sandals – 6.00
postcard - .10

In other news, for those of you who don’t know, I found out that I was accepted into the graduate school I applied for. I’m going for an MFA-Creative NonFiction, and the school, Eastern Washington University, is in Spokane, Washington (if anyone has any connections in Spokane, please let me know, as I’ll want to look into housing as soon as possible). I was delighted and surprised to be accepted, but, unless I receive a teaching assistantship, I can’t afford to go. I found out a few days ago that I have been given, along with 4 others, a recommendation for the assistantship. It’s not a done deal yet, but it seems very likely, and if I receive it, then I will likely be heading to Spokane in August; I’ll let you know about the assistantship when I know. With these new developments, my travel plans have changed a bit. After only two weeks here, I realize how much I depend on and value my community of friends in St. Louis (certainly, I depend on and value all of my friends and family, but the ones I live with play a more time-consuming role). If I am leaving for Washington in August, I want to spend as much time as possible in St. Louis before I leave. Thus, rather than staying here four months, I’ll likely change that to two or three. Add in the fact that my money probably wouldn’t last four months, and I am sure that I will be home by late May.

So, my tentative schedule:
March 19 – April 12: Bangalore
I’ll preach here on March 30 and do a series of six talks at a youth camp the second weekend in April.
April 13 – April 26: Mudumalai Game Sanctuary
April 27 – April 30: Bangalore
Preach on April 27
May 1 – May 24: travel to different cultural centers in India, visiting different churches. Right now, the only place that I’m sure I want to visit is Calcutta, which is the literary and cultural capital of India. Obviously, some of this depends on the state of the impending war, which would make it relatively unsafe for me to travel in some of the northern, Muslim-dominant areas.

Today, I bought a book of poetry by Rabindranath Tagore, one of India’s leading literary figures. The poem I’ve typed here strikes me deeply. I don’t have time to explain here, but read it (aloud, preferably), and try to import the sensuality and imagery.

“Day’s End”

Day’s end has come, the world is darkening—
It is too late for further sailing.
On the bank, a girl, I ask her with a smile,
‘On whose foreign shore am I landing?’
She leaves without a word, her head bowed,
Her full water-jar overflowing.
These steps shall be my mooring.

On the forest’s thick canopy shade is falling,
I find the sight of this country pleasing.
Nothing stirs or moves, neither water nor leaves,
Birds throughout the forest are sleeping.
All I can hear is bracelet on jar
Down the empty path, sadly tinkling.
I find this gold-lit country pleasing.

A golden trident of Shiva glitters,
A distant temple-lantern glimmers.
A marble road gleams in the shade,
It is sprinkled with fallen bakul-flowers.
Rows of roofs lurk amidst groves,
At the sight, my traveller’s heart quivers.
A distant temple-lantern glimmers.

From the king’s far palace the breeze brings a melody,
It floats through the sky, a song in rag Purvi.
The fading scene draws me on—
I feel a strange detached melancholy.
Travel and exile lose their appeal,
Impossible hopes no longer call me.
The sky resounds with rag Purvi.

On the forest, on the palace, night is descending—
It is too late for further sailing.
All that I need is a place for my head,
And I’ll end this life of buying and selling.
As she winds her way she keeps her eyes low,
The girl with the jar at her hip, overflowing.
These steps shall be my mooring.

:: Please forgive the length. My time here is composed of silences punctuated by movement. I am forced to run raw into the world, the way that time runs for children, where boredom is so immediate and profound. Time seems endless here, unfolding, the antithesis of flashbacks, and I begin to feel like a scientist, noticing the smallest movements of an ant, the buzz of traffic lights, the chaotic patterns of mopeds—not because I have to, but because they are there, and I feel connected. Writing all these things, though they are snippets, incomplete thoughts, and not particularly well-written, is a hiatus from the long stretches of silence, of thought turned in upon itself. Some of this is good, but I find that I tire of analyzing everything, especially myself, and by sitting and typing, I know that another party sits on the other end, and even if I can’t hear you, I know that we are interacting with familiarity, and I miss that more than anything.

All my love,
Jeremy
:: 19.03.2003 :: Coffee Day Cyber Café, Brigade Road, Bangalore ::

:: 22.03.03 :: Bangalore

I’ve begun settling into a routine here in the city, both routine in its consistency and routine in its similarity to my life in St. Louis. On the average morning, I wake at 8:00, check for new mosquito and ant bites, brush my teeth, eat some Spree, read the paper (back to front, as most Indians do, primarily to check in on the cricket world), and pack my bag. I walk to the corner and find an auto-rickshaw, which takes me to the MG (Mahatma Gandhi)/Brigade section of town, the bookstore/food/clothes center for the young and progressive in India. The rickshaw costs me about .80 for a ten-minute gauntlet-run through the traffic, and the excitement’s worth every penny. Adrenalin-junkies would do well to abandon their bungee cords for a steady diet of Indian city-driving. I do have access to a motorcycle, but that requires taking a driving test, and I would rather postpone my ulcers for middle age. I also have a bicycle, which I’m prone to use from time to time, but riding a bicycle through the city, without glasses or a military-brand gas-mask, is like, as I have mentioned to a few, getting smacked in the face with a vacuum bag. I just finished reading a book by a local author, who describes riding through the traffic in Bombay as getting slapped in the face by a dirty diaper. I suppose the cities do have their differences.

So I arrive in town, go to my favorite internet café and check my empty inbox, then find my favorite spot to sit, drink tea, read, and watch people walk by watching me. Then I walk around and end up talking to a few locals on the street, covering everything from the war to Ricky Martin, neither of which is my favorite subject, but when Ricky Martin comes up, I try to steer the conversation to war, often by asking if Saddam’s living la vida loca, as well.

When the sun begins to set, I find my way home, where I’m greeted by the Cartoon Network. I had an especially tiring day Thursday, and when I returned home, one of my old, forgotten favorites was on the screen: The Laff-A-Lympics. For those unacquainted with this work of animated genius, the Laff-A-Lympics is the All-Star of cartoons, wherein the great characters from different cartoons gather together for a shot at glory. There are three teams: the Scooby Doobies, the Really Rottens, and the Yogi Yahooies. As a child, I was partial to the Scooby Doobies, mostly because I was partial to Velma, who has, herself, replaced Daphne as the sexiest cartoon character. Among the participants in the Laff-A-Lympics, for the nostalgic among you, are Doggie Daddy and Augie Doggy, Quick-Draw McGraw, Wally Gator, Huckleberry Hound, Grape Ape and Daffy Doodle, Captain Caveman, the Blue Falcon and Dyno-Mutt (Dog Blunder), the Dalton Brothers and Daisy Mayhem, and SnagglePuss, everyone’s favorite Howard Cosell of the cartoon world. Fortunately, the cartoons are aired in English, because it’s hard enough to understand Scooby in English, moreso in Hindi.

I have met a number of lovely people on the streets, and I’ve set up lunch times with a few of them; today, I’m meeting with Ravi Shankar, a medical student from Sri Lanka, who wants to talk more about the war, digital cameras, and MTV, in no particular order.

Shopping for postcards a week ago, I stumbled across a picture of an Indian sitting in a Yoga pose, smiling. It was nothing extraordinary, except for the fact that his hair, a legitimate afro, fills half the postcard. I giggled to myself, snatched as many as possible, and mailed about four or five. Later, I found out that his name is Shriya Sai Baba, and he is possibly the most influential man in India outside of the Prime Minister and Sachin Tendulkar, the Barry Bonds of the cricket world. He has allegedly performed thousands of miracles, often producing gifts for people out of thin air. He has a following rivaling that of any celebrity in America, and he has ashrams (communities) and homes set up throughout southern India. The equivalent of what I have done is like an Indian visiting America and signing up for Oprah’s Book Club because he thinks “Oprah” is a funny word. Anyway, if you receive a postcard with this man on it, count yourself blessed, and give him a prominent place in your home—who knows about miracles?

In the evenings, I usually report to William, my host, on the day’s events. For instance, two days ago, I spotted a large group of twenty-somethings playing cricket near the MG/Brigade area. I walked over, sat down, and watched for a while, hoping madly that they would invite me to play. After twenty minutes, I invited myself, and they welcomed me with smiles and uncertainty. This was my first cricket game with guys my age, and, like a first date, I was both nervous and delighted. After playing the field for a while, my team went to bat, and they stuck the bat in my hand first (if you don’t know, a cricket bat is usually a bit shorter than a baseball bat, and it’s rectangular, like a big, thick blade. It’s about 5 inches wide and two inches thick, the handle, like a baseball bat, about 8 inches long.) On my first pitch, I sent the ball flying for a six (the equivalent of a home run in baseball). On the second ball, another six. I was in. During my at-bat for the next game, I had reeled off three sixes in a row, whereupon all the guys started laughing and chanting “Sachin, Sachin,” the highest compliment to be payed to any cricket batter. Another bowler (the pitcher) was due up, and he refused, claiming that I was an American baseball player. Eventually, he agreed, and I smashed his first offering out of the yard onto MG Road (the equivalent of Delmar in St. Louis or Union in Memphis), the longest ball they had ever seen hit. Afterwards, I was congratulated by all the guys, named man of the match, and invited back as often as I like. I felt as powerful as Sai Baba. So, in a show of gratitude, I took one of the guys, the leader of the group, to the local pub and bought him a beer, whereupon we drank Kingfishers, talked as much as we could, and watched India’s semifinal match against Kenya, which it won easily. Tomorrow, Sunday, is the final against Australia, the hated, cocky, most talented cricket team on the planet. Tomorrow, in effect, is Super Bowl Sunday, and all of India will be watching. It’s such a stroke of grace to have come during the Cricket World Cup, as I’m able to use my interests and talents to connect with people through a native offering.

I share stories like this with William, and we talk about how nice it would be to have native guys doing the same thing that I’m doing as a form of outreach for the church. Unfortunately, Presbyterian Theological Seminary in north India, where his potential church-workers train, has little to no teaching on worldview and cultural engagement. This, as William told me, is the main reason he wanted me to come, to develop a love for India, to understand the culture better, to do exactly what I have been doing of my own accord down in the city, so that I would consider coming in the future for a few months at a time to teach classes on worldview and cultural engagement at PTS. Most of the guys who come out of there have adopted, intentionally or not, a “Christ Against Culture” mentality, to use Niebuhr’s terminology. They end up with a hostile stance toward pop culture and apologetic issues, which is detrimental both to the church and those outside the church. What they need (we all need) is a better understanding of common grace, of the image of God in man, of the way to treat non-believers with dignity and respect, to affirm the things that are good about them, to engage people on those levels, not as a form of manipulation or agenda-hiding, but as a way to learn to love people different from themselves. This is my constant struggle, and I’m glad to have a chance to learn what that means in another culture, to see, most importantly, how universal those principles are.

Yesterday, I saw a guy walking around with a big swastika on his shirt. I had no idea that there are neo-Nazis in India. A few hours later, a delivery truck drove by; on the side was an advertisement for Swastik Milk. Who knew the Third Reich had such power over the dairy industry?

Also yesterday, I decided to visit City Market, the busy, colorful, nasal violation of Bangalore. There are basically three purchasing options: shirts and socks, suspicious electronic equipment, and insect-tenements, which they call fruit stands. If you have watched National Geographic specials on Indian bazaars and general city life, this is what you have seen. It was absolutely astonishing. Unfortunately, my cavalier attitude toward traveling, wherein I get excited at the prospect of getting lost, wherein I assume nothing bad could happen to me, almost got me into trouble. It has become apparent to me that my dearth of clue-tracking, mystery-solving skills disqualifies me from riding in the Mystery Machine with Scooby and the gang (which is unfortunate only as it would disqualify me from flirting with Velma). I should have been suspicious at the millions of glass fragments paving the streets; at the man in an off-center, back alley waving his finger at me and yelling “no city market, no city market”; at the noticeable lack of westerners in the area (I looked like a grain of salt in a pepper shaker). This morning, reading the paper, I saw the headline: “Riots Rock City Market.” Apparently, after noon prayers, local Muslims began rioting, protesting the war, burning George Bush in effigy. Jinkies.

I wondered this morning what I would have done had I been in the thick of things. If Muslims started spitting toward me or throwing rocks at me or something worse, how would I have reacted? My idealistic, unrealistic side says that I would have felt only sorrow, regret, and pity over the hatred of the Muslims and the wrongdoings of both Christians and Americans, that I would have spread out my arms, stammered “I love you,” and taken the blows. The realistic side of me, however, admits that I would have probably been angry and resentful, as well—who knows how the Spirit works in such moments? I do not know what to think of the war, and I do justice to no one involved by offering an either/or answer to the situation. War, religion, individual souls are too complex, glorious, and polluted to offer a good or bad label. The ability to love a person who calls me his enemy is not within me—I do not, as Coupland writes in Life After God, have it in me to love. It must come from somewhere, someone else.

Off for a Scooby Snack,
Jeremy

:: 26.03.03, Bangalore ::

Back from a two-day road trip to Chennai (Madras). I know now why the trains here are so popular. Traveling the main roads in southern India is like, well. . . remember as a child when your uncle, the fun one, picked you up, turned you around so your back was facing him, sat you on his knee, grabbed your rear belt-loop, and said something about “riding the horsey”? When he started knee-jarring your brains out? That feeling, and I’m not exaggerating. On the brighter side, I finally saw my first monkeys, and I instantly became, again, every child in America who wants a monkey for a pet.

Last week, after another round of cricket with the boys, I met a guy named Daran. We stood on a pile of dirt near a busy intersection and talked for an hour, well past sundown. His English was surprisingly good, even if he talked more rapidly than most auctioneers. Actually, the pace was refreshing, closer to my actual speech than most. Still, it’s labor to listen, to strain my eyes and ears to make out individual words, often recognizing them a sentence later before I can incorporate them into the discussion. That’s what’s so difficult about conversing in India, in any non-native speaking context, I think. And I realize again how carelessly and selfishly I listen to most people much of the time. Listening, being quick and careful to hear, is so easy to forget when the words, their cadence, their tone, are so familiar. The parallel with the way I read Scripture, hear sermons, and pray is painfully clear. Here is one of the lessons I’ve been looking for. And this obviously difficult, obviously obvious listening is the reason, Daran says, that he wants to keep talking. It was painful to hear him tell me that I’m the first American he’s ever had the desire to talk to, because the ones he has met all have their attentions and ears turned self-ward. I can think of nothing more hospitable than asking someone, who has nothing physically apparent to offer, a question, and actually taking the time to listen to his answer, listen well enough to produce new questions in response.

Daran and I have spent much time together, talking, riding the bus, eating. He’s 26, an avid reader, a graduate of business school, unemployed. While he looks for work to be able to take care of his brothers and father, who is grieving from his wife’s recent death, he spends his time meeting with me. Of all that has happened to me thus far, this is the first time I have felt honored (though I have been honored and haven’t listened well enough to realize it). We’ve covered everything from books to sex to religion. We’ve had wonderful discussions about the nature of man (what it means to be human), the nature of God (whether He loves all the same), the nature of religion, the nature of nature. He asked what I thought about different religions, whether we’re not all seeking the same God, and will God take that into account? As creatures created for worship, this is an important question. Rather than lay on him a big theological answer, which I’m prone to do, I began asking questions in return, and we got to the point where we were able to talk beneficially about universalism, the role of sincerity and whether it’s enough for God, about the classic “walking up the same mountain” illustration. In response to the illustration, I asked if he were asking this question, as well, which he affirmed, and I asked him what he was certain he could assume about the question. The only certainty, he said, is that he’s asking the question. The uncertainty, he admitted, with refreshing honesty, is that the only way to have such knowledge is to be above the mountain looking down on the converging paths, and to do so would imply being “above” humanity—in essence, divine himself. I left the question there, and praised God for the opportunity to talk about important things, real questions, to answer to a God who is sovereign, so that I don’t have to try and force answers down someone’s throat when the silences between discourse beg for time to think.

Later that day, Daran took me to a friend’s house to watch the cricket final. The house was a ten by ten foot room above a mechanic shop, ten guys sardined on the couch and the floor, eating, drinking, smoking, betting on batsmen. I hadn’t stepped two bare feet into the room before they were pulling up a chair for me and handing me a plate full of food. So much hospitality. India lost the match, but the five hours were joyous and generous, and I am grateful. Do pray for my meetings with Daran, for ears to hear, for respectful questions, for a discerning heart, for Daran’s heart. Daran’s a Muslim, though mostly nominal, and I’m thrilled to learn from him. Also, do pray for him to find a job and work toward a passport, which he’s eager to do.

I went to my first Indian tiffen a few days ago, the Indian version of a buffet. I sat in the waiting room with about 50 other people and began wondering how long it would take before they got to my name on the list, especially as nobody seemed to be getting ushered into the dining room, and why everyone was taking so long to eat. “Such slow bussing,” I mused to myself—I could have had a chicken-fried steak and a bowl of soupy ice cream by now. Then a man called a number, and everyone jumped up, another case of not knowing how to stand in line and wait turns, I thought, proud of my local knowledge. Then, in my second auctioneering parallel of the day, the numbers were flying around the room—25, 33, 45, do I have a 45—and the whole of us stampeded into the dining room. Apparently, everyone enters at once, eats at once, is supposed to leave at once. Daran and I sat down at a four-person table, I taking the seat across from him. Then the host came over, smiled, and pointed to the seat next to Nisar. I guess Indians are supposed to sit side-by-side to talk during a meal. Interesting.

On the road to Chennai yesterday, we stopped for a bathroom break, which, in southern India, involves standing on the side of the road. During my break, I heard some surprisingly beautiful noises: two or three hundred children singing at a school some distance off the road. I was mesmerized, left standing unzipped on the side of an Indian roadway, staring at children, listening to them sing. After I realized the potential impropriety of the situation, I fixed myself and scanned the crowd of children. Near the back, in the corner, stood a boy, shirt un-tucked, giggling, making fart noises with his hand and armpit. I laughed. Some things are universal.

So we reversed the car to get back on the road, and I heard what I thought were the notes to a familiar hymn, midi-like, a bit too fast. It was the car’s reverse song. Apparently, Indian cars are equipped with synthesized music to alert drivers to their reversal. In contrast to the annoying, over-loud beeps of industrial reverse notes in America, it was a nice sound. And most cars are equipped with a selection of songs. William’s car has three options, and I look forward to moving the switch when he’s not looking, to hear the other songs. The other day, in the city, I saw a souped-up, neon-laden car reversing, and I swear I heard the notes to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”—a fitting tune for the occasion.

Yesterday, slogging around Chennai, I passed this building sign: “Excellent Circumcision Center.” In retrospect, I should hope that the “excellent” is superfluous, but, in the city, who knows? I suppose, though unnecessary, it is both attractive and comforting. After that, a kid came up to me and started singing “Sweet Child O’Mine,” a Guns ‘N’ Roses song that was popular in the late 80’s. I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, punch him in the teeth, or videotape him. I decided to get out my video camera, but he stopped singing. So I put it away, started the tune back up, and we honored Axl together.

On the drive home, I saw a man grab his kid by the legs, turn it upside down, and dunk it into a roadside pond, for a bath, I suppose. Goat farmers do things their own way.

One of the difficulties in speaking the local language, apart from my limited vocabulary, is that most Indians have trouble pronouncing the letter “r.” When it comes out, it sounds like a “d.” Thus, what I read in my book as “nanri” (Tamil for “thank you”), is understood here as “nandi.” I started thinking about this, and I began sounding out “r’s” as “d’s,” trying to figure out the lingual connection between the two—why the difficulty? I ended up trying to roll my “r,” and when I couldn’t, as I never have been able to, I realized that if I were a Mexican, I would have a speech impediment. This changes my whole outlook on things.

This coming Monday, I’m taking a train to Kolkatta (Calcutta) to visit for a week or so. Apart from being the literary and cultural center of India, Kolkatta is home to Rose Aylmer, who died because of an addiction to pineapples. I fully intend on visiting her grave.

On a somber note, I covet your prayers for a family member of mine who was recently diagnosed with cancer. This person is, outwardly, optimistic and calm going into initial chemotherapy, but it is a terrifying thing for all involved. I have been reading some poetry by R.S. Thomas, and I came across a piece called “Which,” which is a fitting place for me to stop writing and begin praying and reflecting.

“Which”

And in the book I read:
God is love. But lifting
My head, I do not find it
so. Shall I return

to my book and, between
print, wander an air
heavy with the scent
of this one word? Or not trust

language, only the blows that
life gives me, wearing them
like those red tokens with which
an agreement is sealed?

Fondly,
Jeremy ::

:: 27.03.03, Bangalore::

Warning: Due to the graphic nature of the following, you may want to put down any food you’re eating. Parents are advised to send their children to play with something.

Yesterday, I became a local. I have done many things here to begin to accumulate local status, but yesterday may have put me over the top, or at least the bottom, as things turn out. Despite all my best intentions and packing plans, I managed to find myself in public, in a state of intestinal panic, in a bathroom, without the tree products to which I’m accustomed. In short, my left hand ceased to be a mere formality. My left hand, if no other part of me, became Indian.

To update you on plans, I’m preaching in town next Sunday, then trying to catch a train Wednesday to Kolkatta, where I hope to spend a week. Then back to Bangalore for a week and a half. After that, off to Mudumalai Game Sanctuary for a week and a half, then off to Mysore to help with the church’s youth camp. I’ll be arriving back in Bangalore the 4th of May, shortly after which I plan on flying home. I appreciate your prayers.

I’ve been sending out catch-up updates to many people, and I’ve found, to my dismay, that a couple of my documents, the first and second updates, at least, aren’t working too swell. I think the computer ate some bad fish. If you find, in reading, that things don’t seem to flow too well, it’s quite possibly my writing, but it also may be a bad file. If that’s the case, do e-mail me, as I’m in the process of re-typing the first two so I can send them out again.

Sorry for the short update, but I have a cricket match to attend in 11 minutes.

Take care,
Jeremy ::

::
Though, as I've explained already, I decided against taking the road test for my motorcycle license. I did, out of curiosity, look through the written portion of the test to get a feel for what I would have been up against. I know pressure, as I took the ACT four times and actually went shopping for an engagement ring once, but none of that prepares you for sitting in an un-air-conditioned room, breathing coconut-tinged diesel fumes, trying to identify Indian road signs. Also, some of the questions and answers don't fit my paradigm. For example, one of the test questions reads as follows:

"If you are issued a traffic violation, how should you feel?"

A: to change your attitude and do better next time
B: unconcerned
C: proud

The answer, and I triple-checked, is C. I won't offer my reaction, but let you figure out what to think.

As I was driving home last night, I passed a street named “McPherson.” In addition to being surprised at such a Western name, I became nostalgic, as McPherson is the name of my street in St. Louis. Right down from McPherson is a pork shop named “The Pork Shop.” I thought of barbecue, and I wanted to be in Memphis. One of these days, I think I'll walk in and order a Pork Shop pork chop, if only to amuse myself. So you know, my favorite Indian staple is the chapati, a greasy, wheat-based flat-bread.

I see many foreign things during my daily travels, one of which is expected and still-shocking squalor. You’ve probably noticed my failure to speak much of it in the updates. Among other reasons, when people, especially missionaries, write home about squalor, as I’ve read from missionaries before, the effect (on me, at least) is that it somehow obliges people to listen to your moralizing: how it changes one’s perspective on life. Because I tend to be ungracious, I sometimes wonder if these people don’t look for squalor, thinking that it’s the only way that a trip to a third-world country could possibly change them. I realize, as you do, that poverty of any kind is awful, grievous, and sobering, and, thus, not to be taken lightly, but I know this without being in it myself. I look into my own heart and see it. I look at the incarnation, and I begin to understand it. While affirming the seriousness of physical poverty, and at risk of sounding crass, I feel that I have so much squalor of my own to deal with that I can’t speak meaningfully about others’ poverty, at least not more than you already know or surmise. It’s too much for me to handle. This is why we have a Savior.

Despite the abundance of poverty, I am always being blind-sided by beauty. The area where I hang out and play cricket, etc., is surrounded by Bangalore Army complexes. A few days ago, two men in camouflage walked through the middle of our cricket pitch. No one said anything to them, which wasn’t surprising. What did surprise me was the fact that the two of them were holding hands. I knew, before coming, if only for having watched A Thin Red Line, that this happens, but I figured it was only little kids. I almost wept when I saw it. Now that I am looking, I see it more and more, and it gets me every time. I don’t know what to say. In addition, I see rough-looking teenage guys walking down the street with their arms around each other’s shoulders. I’ve always been a sucker for an elderly couple sitting in the park holding hands, but this confluence of intimacy and anti-western-phobia is simply lovely. For my friends back home, do not fear: I promise not to try and slip my fingers between yours when we walk to the coffeeshop. I promise to try.

For some reason, the time zone here runs in thirty-minute intervals. Thus, when it’s 3:00 PM here, it’s 4:30 AM EST. Even now, as I sit drinking water, one of you is waking, perturbed, stumbling across jeans and an ill-placed dresser trying to find the bathroom. The possibilities make me smile.

Another thing I’ve begun to notice more and more is the commonality of facial features. I have begun making a list of the times I have spotted Indian versions of my friends. Yesterday, I spotted the Indian Paul Savage (my roommate), and I almost walked up to him to ask where I could get a good vodka tonic.

Though he’s not my friend, I did spot the Indian Willie Nelson. His face was on a sticker on the back of an auto-rickshaw, apparently a local swami: Swami Nelson. I began singing tunes in my head like “To All the Gurus I’ve Loved Before,” “You Were Always Cutting In Line,” and “Chapatis on My Mind.”

To all of you, I miss you and am looking for you in India.

Love,
jeremy

:: 02.04.03, Bangalore ::

As I’ve noted before, I spend much of my reading and writing time sitting at a flimsy table at an outdoor café called Barista. The coffee is bad and the music is worse, but the location is just right. From my table, I’m able to keep an eye on my surroundings, especially the busy walkway and chaotic street in front of me. Barista is located on Mahatma Gandhi Road, the equivalent, in US terms, of Martin Luther King Road. Except, in comparing the two, you would be convinced that Gandhi were a pacifistic, affluent businessman and Martin Luther King were a violent mis-manager.

One of the reasons I write here is that its location affords me an opportunity to interact with both locals and tourists, the locals wanting a taste of Western culture and the tourists wanting a safe cup of coffee. A few days ago, I found myself at a table next to a middle-aged woman and a striking far-from-middle-aged woman. I tried to focus on my reading, but my eyes decided they needed a break every third line to make sure the younger woman was enjoying her coffee and conversation. After the seventeenth check-in, the younger woman checked in on me, and I knew that the gig was up. She stood from her table, approached me (eyes and nose dug-deep in my book now) (to call me a pervert, to ask me to kindly stop checking in on me, to offer me a tic-tac?), and said, “Here, when you’re finished reading that, you can read this,” and handed me a small pamphlet. I said, “Oh. Thank you,” as if her presence were a complete surprise, stashed the pamphlet away so as not to look too eager, and continued reading. A few minutes later, after a desperate round of speed-reading, I closed my book and looked at the pamphlet. I knew right away—the exaggerated font, the exclamation points, the apocalyptic figures—that I had been given an end-of-the-world-you-better-make-sure-you-can’t-find-the-number-666-on-your-body-anywhere gospel tract. It is cruel to use beauty such.

After thumbing through the pamphlet, instead of canceling all my credit cards, disavowing anything global and electronic, and repenting of my gross misunderstanding of the tribulation to come, I decided to go find a pub. If the world is going to end soon (and I can’t possibly meet this pamphlet’s requirements), I might as well knock one back, Ecclesiastes-style.

Do not hear what I’m not saying. Though I detest the majority of such pamphlets, I do not detest its givers; nor do I have the right to question their motivation. The problem is that most of this literature appeals to a person’s fears, rather than his longings. Biblically, there is a place for fear, but the burden of Scripture, and of Jesus’ work, appeals to the deep-seated hunger and thirst, the implanted longings that we share as creatures hungry for worship. To engage someone’s heart at this level is a serious thing, and people deserve more than grisly cartoon drawings and a pre-printed confession if we are to engage them respectfully and realistically.

Such an evangelistic method is, I imagine, a largely Western invention, and I am both ashamed and afraid for the Indian church if she thinks that’s what India needs. People have universal longings, but if we begin to engage people with pre-packaging rather than individual care and attention, we might as well abolish cultural differences and seek to establish The Church of Christ Robotic.

Enough preaching.

Later that night, I returned to Barista and took my usual seat. At the table next to me were two Westerners: Julian and Jeremy, Frenchmen, as I found out. We were having a lovely discussion on Indian culture, Western influence, and jazz fusion when someone said the dirty word: “war.” To my delight and surprise, we agreed largely on the situation, and we were enjoying our little coalition, when another Westerner overheard us on her way to a table and started spouting off, obviously in disagreement, and clearly in a foreig

franz wright and frothy chops

from The Beforelife

on an unrelated note, i shave the first day of each quarter that i teach freshman comp at the local university. come midterm, i, full-bearded, tell my students that if 85% of them passes the midterm portfolio, they get to choose what my facial hair looks like the rest of the week. last quarter (see below), they chose the hard-core strip chops. this quarter, they saved me from the sexual offender look and went wolverine instead. and still, the female students couldn't look me in the eye. picture soon.

your brother in christ and stalker at night, jeremy

from the cutting room floor

due to considerations and requests and a fortune cookie, i'm reposting the foreskin essay. with caveat. do not read if (1) you have a weak stomach (2) you find flippant reference to the anatomy offensive, or you struggle with sexual imagery (3) you're eating. thanks.

To Be My Friend, You Have to Make the Cut

Were I to forced to narrow things to a point, I would have to say that my search for the ideal friend started with Lyle Hamby.

I drove to St. Louis in the Fall of 1998 to begin seminary training. I had been notified by mail that I was assigned to live in a 3-story house on-campus with 7 guys; I was, understandably, somewhat disturbed at thought of sharing a house with 7 pastors-in-training. I was certain that we’d be holding hands at breakfast, praying so long that it were highly possible that Jesus would come back before the sausage got cold. I anticipated titillating fireside chats about infralapsarianism and covenantal circumcision. I pictured a TV with a V-chip that filtered out everything but the Trinity Broadcasting Network. So, slightly terrified and mildly insecure, I arrived at the house and knocked on the door, not wanting to barge in on any suggestive hand-holding. No one answered, so I walked in and began looking around the house (which appeared to be empty), checking out the rooms to choose from, looking for the one with the least industrial carpet, preferably with a big closet for hiding scotch. The first room was clearly inhabited, so I moved to the second, the third, the fourth, all of them filled with books and bibles and bad Christian cassette tapes. Apparently, I had been the last one to arrive, so I ended up in the room that no one wanted. I set my bags down and sat on my limp mattress for a moment, bemoaning my condition: “Well, I guess Jesus was just kidding when he said to “take the lowest place.” Obviously he wasn’t talking about choosing bedrooms. God, what the hell am I doing here?” That’s when Lyle Hamby came into my life.

I hadn’t thought to check the bathroom, the first place to look, as I was to find out, if Lyle were needed. And I needed Lyle at that moment. He transferred his copy of Men’s Health from his right to left hand and introduced himself. I was so glad to have human contact, someone who looked nothing like a pastor-in-training, that I was willing to go along with anything, as long as it meant not being alone. That’s how we ended up at Taco Bell.

We swapped stories, made a mess with our burritos, laughed, reveled in our shared Southern heritage. We really hit it off, and it seemed I had found a true friend, the kind of person who makes you wonder how you possibly got through life without him to that point. Here, I hoped, was the friend I’d been searching for.

One of the traits that I’d always looked for in a good friend was honesty, vulnerability. A few weeks into the semester, when Lyle asked me if I’d ever had hemorrhoids, I began to second-guess my criteria. When he asked me, over lunch, if I still had wet dreams, and should one confess that to God, I knew I had a lot of re-calculating to do. But I wasn’t ready to give up on my friendship quest just yet. Maybe I just needed to tweak my criteria a bit. What’s wrong, after all, with honesty, with severe intimacy? It hit me, then, that maybe my upbringing, and society in general, had subversively convinced me to distrust male intimacy. Which is why, when Lyle walked down the stairs and showed me his newly shaven chest, I sucked up my intimacy issues and told him it looked really pretty. He responded by thanking me and telling me how his chest hair was no match for my electric razor. The one I used on my face.

We spent the next 30 minutes arguing over whether chest hair counts as pubic hair;
that’s when I realized that the search for the ideal friend was going to be hard work.

Generally, I am not a vengeful person, but in Lyle’s case, I was delighted with the events that unfolded one week after the pubic predicament. Almost every day, a Brazilian student named Armando would come to our house for the “hanging out with you guy.” Armando was, for all purposes, our butt friend, the guy we could count on to say something funny without realizing it, to do inappropriate things, to be the prime butt of our jokes. Armando was in love with his penis, not in the way that every penis is endearing to its owner, but in a disturbingly public way. Maybe we should have put an end to his visiting privileges the day he showed up in our kitchen in his Speedo, “as all good Brazilian mens wear. You should to come to Carnivale with me somestime.” I had no desire to go anywhere near Brazil with Armando, nor anywhere near his Speedo and its shrink-wrapped Carnivale performer. Armando is uncircumcised, “a natural mans,” as he said, and he took great delight in regularly detailing the daily ritual of peeling, rolling, and lubing necessary to prevent infection and smegma (How does a guy who confuses singular and plural know the word “smegma?”) Looking to put our newly learned knowledge of Old Testament customs and cultures, we began to call him the Brazilian Philistine. Lyle, especially, took great delight in euphemizing Armando’s penis—Rio de Bonero, C&C Sausage Factory, the Brazilian cheesecake, and, simply, the turtleneck—but he grew tired of having his member maligned, which is why we later found him in Lyle’s bedroom, sitting on Lyle’s pillow, disinfecting his foreskin.

I never actually saw Armando’s foreskin; I only heard about it from Lyle, who was, for the first time, hesitant about sharing personal information. So I’m not really sure exactly what, eye-to-eye, an uncircumcised penis looks like. But I have done a lot of reading. And let me add here, lest any woman reader feel left out—because girls need friends, too—that I’m speaking synecdochally—this applies to you and your clitoral flaps, as well, the penis foreskin being the full-scale model, the clitoral flap the little Lego version.

I began doing serious research as my friend Andy agonized over whether or not to have his infant son circumcised. His wife was eight months pregnant, so he didn’t have much time left to make a decision, so he began the foreskin forum. He figured that personal witness is an important factor in the equation, so he began asking his group of friends to testify about our foreskin experiences, our disappointments, victories, hopes, dreams, regrets. Unfortunately, all of us had been circumcised, so the results were a bit lopsided. In an effort to try and provide a balanced voice, I began to research.

I found, for instance, that the foreskin, which is pigmented, protects the unpigmented helmet (not the scientific nomenclature, but I forget it) against sunburn, which is why, I concluded, Brazilians, who spend lots of time on nude beaches, hang on to their foreskins, and keep them lotioned with nothing less than 30 SPF. I also read that hospitals use discarded infant foreskin as skin grafts for the inner lining of the mouth. Call me conservative, but I don’t like the thought of my firstborn’s foreskin inside another man’s mouth. On a more practical level, I read that an intact foreskin can be used to safely store contact lenses. Did you know that, and I quote (I’ve lost the source), “One foreskin contains enough genetic material to grow 250,000 square feet of skin”? That’s 5 ¾ acres of foreskin, enough foreskin to stretch across the Brooklyn Bridge. Then, as Armando reminds me, there’s the whole issue of smegma. Thomas J. Ritter, M.D., co-author of Say No to Circumcision, warns us that “[t]he animal kingdom would probably cease to exist without smegma.” I’ll take my chances. I also found, to my horror, that there’s a swelling black market for foreskin; that, as I read somewhere (which I forget, again), “The marketing of purloined baby foreskins is a multimillion-dollar-a-year industry”; that one foreskin can retrieve upwards of $100. In related news, plastic surgeons are receiving increasing requests to perform a circumcision restoration, do a foreskin job, or, as Armando would, with condescension, say, give somes guy a fake turtleneck, a dickie. I guess the real issues for me are who’s getting this done? Do you get to pick your foreskin out of a lineup? Are they available in assorted textures and colors? Is there a money-back guarantee? Can you tell fake hoods from real hoods? If something were to go wrong, would anyone really be willing to testify and provide evidence in court?

I doggedly pursued these questions, looking for answers from NOHARMM (The National Organization to Halt the Abuse and Routine Mutilation of Males) and NOCIRC (The National Organization of Circumcision and Information Resource Center), and I was so intrigued by these findings that my studies continued, on and off, until yesterday. It was then, after all these years, that I finally unsheathed the dilemma, removed the veil, solved the mystery of friendship.

I was sitting in a coffee-shop downtown balancing my checkbook, which made me think about Darcy Sloop, my first friend here in Spokane, Washington. I left St. Louis three months ago to begin work on an MFA, and as I drove across the country, I began to experience the same misgivings that I had when I was moving to St. Louis to get my theology degree. I imagined a dimly lit pub, a group of guys in black-rimmed glasses debating the intricacies of post-structuralism while extolling the virtues of Pabst Blue Ribbon as a slap in the face of pseudo-intellectualism. I expected to hear the words “passe” and “trochee” and “synecdoche” a lot. This time, however, I would be moving into an apartment alone, and I wouldn’t have to hide my razor.

The first few weeks here were miserable. I tried making friends at the neighborhood coffee shop, but I was under 40 and actually had a job, so I never felt like one of the guys. Two weeks in, I met Darcy Sloop. She seemed keenly interested in me, easy to talk to, asked me a lot of personal questions about my finances and other personal things, and she gave me a 9”x12” Pyrex casserole dish, a very thoughtful house-warming gift. I found myself stopping by Darcy’s workplace every other day to check in on her, to ask her how things were going at the office, to ask her opinion on financial issues. “Here is a friend,” I thought, “who’s interested in me as a person,” but that changed during one of my visits, when she let me know that my checks had come in, and that I wouldn’t need to come by the bank anymore, that my checking account was completely set-up. That’s when I realized that she had really only been interested in me for my money. I became mildly depressed, even considered going back home, back to my old life, to my real friends, to my roommate Paul Savage.

I moved in with Paul after graduating from seminary. He seemed to fit my post-Lyle Hamby, post-Armando, re-configured equation of the ideal friend. By that time, I had decided that the ideal friend adds up to 40% dependable, 30% funny, 20% insecure, and 10% less attractive than me. I was sure that the math language was the way to go, the solution to my problem. And Paul appeared to corroborate my theory. I soon learned that Paul has a third nipple, and, based on the things he was able to intuit about me, it seemed that he might have a sixth sense, as well. And that made sense to me, that one third nipple equals one half of a sixth sense. It all seemed to add up.

Any good friendship involves giving and taking, pushing and pulling, stretching, pain, and pleasure, all of which I experienced as my friendship with Paul blossomed. But just when you think that you’ve learned everything about a friend, he pops a big one on you. Paul decided it was time to come clean. When he was 8, he told me, he and his 6-year-old brother Peter were sitting in the kitchen, generally not expecting for their lives to change suddenly. Their dad walked into the kitchen and asked them if they wanted pancakes. In the Savage household, when dad offers pancakes, that means that he has something important to say. But no amount of batter, no sticky stack of flapjacks, could have made the impending announcement digestible. “Paul, Peter,” their father said, “I’ve decided that the Savage men are going to be circumcised. The three of us. Together. Whattaya say?” Shortly after the Savage cuttings, Paul began smoking.

Years later, after the physical scars, at least, had healed, Paul and Peter found themselves in the back seat of the car, on a family trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. By this time, both of them had taken up smoking, but their parents hadn’t caught on yet. Realizing that they wouldn’t be able to make it 8 hours in the car without a cigarette, Peter took the initiative to score a nicotine patch for the ride. The patch being a low-demand item in his circles, he was able to procure only one. Paul and Peter, patch virgins, unaware of the inner-workings of the time-release system, but both in need of a fix, decided to share the patch. They cut it in two, and, pleased with their ingenuity, proceeded, half-patched, in the backseat of the car. Somewhere around the state line, they began to notice the low ceiling in the car, the space between them shrinking, each other’s face ripening, climaxing to nausea.

Paul told me these things in his car on a road trip to Las Vegas. We were somewhere in the middle of New Mexico, on a highway that he had driven years before on a similar road trip. He and his college friends were on the way back home from Vegas, and Paul, being a good friend, volunteered to take the late-night shift, the rest of them passed out in the back of the Suburban. Paul recounted looking into his side-view mirror and seeing a hovercraft gaining ground on him, and no matter how fast he went, he couldn’t shake it.

I wanted to hear more of his past, didn’t care where we were going or why; I was happy, because it felt like finally, after years of looking, I had found the elusive true friend, the kind of guy who will tell you his deepest secrets in a car on the way to Las Vegas. But I didn’t want Paul to feel like he was doing all the giving in the relationship, so I decided to match his intimacy and tell him about my penis.

During the summer after my second year of college, I found myself working for an inner-city ministry in New Orleans. My girlfriend at the time was working there as well, and we had begun having serious talks about commitment, even the possibility of marriage. We had already engaged in the past-relationship/sexual involvement talks, but the details were a bit sketchy. I was debating whether to tell her that my only sexual interaction had been unprotected, but I figured that if my penis were healthy, then there would be no need to worry her. It had been three years since my last penetratory involvement, but, still, I had read that AIDS has a window period of up to 4 or 5 years, so I wanted to be sure (I was confident that STD’s were out of the question, as their windows are much smaller.) Thus, I found myself in the waiting room of a free HIV/STD clinic in downtown New Orleans.

I sat on a bench outside the waiting room, listening to five older black men laughing and joking, and I was attracted to them, the way they interacted with familiarity, the obvious bond between them, and I wanted to be part of it, to be their friend. Sure, they were all homeless black men over 40, and I was a white, 21-year-old college student, and sure, they probably learned about foreskin from movies like Foreskin Gump, Boys With a Hood, and Arkansas Luggage (The Uncut Version), but I knew that true friendship can overcome things like that. So I listened in, trying to get a feel for their humor, for something I could say that would endear me to them—you have to earn friendship. Clearly, they saw each other at the clinic often, as they talked about the different doctors there, which ones to avoid (“the BIG sista”) and which ones you could only hope for (“the little Asian”). I knew that it would be hard to penetrate their circle, but I was willing to try. After thinking for a few minutes, I came up with a joke that I thought would surely win me their trust, their lasting friendship. I was working up the courage to ask them if they considered calling the big sister Urethra Franklin, who will I N S P E C T, find out I got HIV, but I never got a chance, as the receptionist called my name.

I signed a form and waited for my inspector in a cubicle roughly the size of a voting booth. The curtain drew back, and, to my relief, it was the small Asian doctor. He said, “Ah, Mr. Huggins, how are you?” I couldn’t think of anything to say, so he cut to the chase and asked me to drop my pants and boxers. This made me a bit uncomfortable, since I was nervous and now had no pockets to put my hands in, and I imagine the doctor sensed this, because he gave me something to do with them: “Okay, please hold your penis.” I cradled it with my left hand, waiting for further instruction, when he said, “No, you hold with both hands, straight out.” Wasn’t it clear to this man that both hands were a bit superfluous in my case? But I managed, and there I was, standing in a small booth with a small Asian man, stretching my penis straight out with both hands. I should have known my life was about to change. He reached inside his lab-coat and pulled out a foot-long metal rod, which he handled as deftly as a samurai, swiftly ramming the rod up my urethra and re-inserting it into his labcoat. It all happened so fast. I didn’t have enough time to compute what had just happened before he reached back in and pulled out invader number two, a foot-long wood skewer with a q-tip on the end. That one really hurt. Clearly this man was not my friend.

Thirty minutes later, I was called into the results room, and another doctor asked me to sit and answer a few questions:
“How long has it been since you’ve had intercourse?”
“Um, about 4 years, but you know that whole window thing.” He started laughing; I had signed up for the STD test instead of the AIDS test, which only required a blood sample. This man was not my friend, either.

That was pretty much the end of the story I told Paul in the car; I chose that one because I had heard that the strongest friendships are born of adversity and grown amidst mutual suffering. But Paul, like the doctor, just laughed, and kept laughing through Northern New Mexico. Not a word of sympathy, a grimace, not any display of understanding, which is the way I thought a true friend would respond. I realized, then, that no matter how badly you want it, you can’t ram a friendship down someone’s throat.

Thus, I considered moving away, severing my close friendship with Paul, at least partially, for an MFA program where nobody wears black-rimmed glasses and a coffeeshop where, until yesterday, I’d sat alone almost daily looking at pictures of foreskin on the internet. So it was that I realized that no matter where I go, whom I leave, whom I meet, what synthetic criteria I try attach to people, I won’t find the ideal friend. The world is full of Lyle Hambys, Armandos, Paul Savages, people who will never live up to my expectations, never be exactly who I want them to be. I could go to Brazil or Israel or stay here in Spokane, and I’d find the same thing. I can sit in a coffeeshop and think on and write on foreskin for hours. Some people had and continue to have foreskins (sleepy.net): Armando, Walter Cronkite, Erik Estrada, Boy George, Andy Griffith, Jesse Jackson, Tom Jones, Ian McKellan as Gandalf, Truman Capote, Jack Kerouac, Rod McKuen, Ed McMahon, Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Alex Trebek. Some people don’t, like me. When it comes down to it, beneath the surface, below the skin, we have only one thing in common: nobody’s perfect—the Platonic penis doesn’t exist. I can come up with equations and percentages all day, but ultimately they won’t lead me to the ideal friend. Do you have foreskin? You do? Hey, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. Before yesterday, I couldn’t say that, because I was after something that doesn’t exist, the foreskin I could completely wrap my head around, that I could control and fit to my own needs. I was looking for the perfect friend. But Lyle and Armando and especially Paul have taught me that’s impossible, that all along I’ve been selfish and demanding and unrealistic, that I want a package that doesn’t exist, that I want it all. So this is what I’ve learned: When it comes to friendship, you can’t have your foreskin and eat it, too.

Jeremy Clive Huggins
November 2003

sunday meditation - ps. 126

a meditation i wrote a good while ago. in case you need something to read today.

Like Men Who Dream: a meditation on Psalm 126

When the Lord restored our fortunes, we were like men who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter, our tongue with shouts of joy. Then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’
The Lord has done great things for us –
we are glad.
Restore our fortunes, Lord, like the streambeds in the Negev.
So those who sow with tears shall reap with shouts of joy.
The one who goes out weeping as he sows shall return home with sheaves, shouting for joy.

::

The dirt itself would cry, but it is too dry for tears. This Negev, “parched land,” feels itself forsaken. The streambeds are dry -- hard like the bones littering its surface, barren as the womb of a camel strewn on the desert’s floor. The earth cracks like plied parchment – the only sound save the distant echo of sun slapping the surface of the Dead Sea. Not even the laughter of the jackal. The Negev is captive to sorrow, and in this summer of its discontent, it is sorry for its existence.

::

Adonai, my God, what have we done? I have seen it with my own eyes: this grown man splayed in the dirt, saturating the ground beneath him – whether tears or urine I cannot tell. He has seen his daughter raped in his own kitchen; his firstborn son bestialized by men with muddy faces. He doesn’t feel the hook ripping his nostril; he shall feel the shackles shred his ankles for six-hundred miles. We are being taken to Babylon. I am sorry for our existence.

::

Clive Timothy Huggins – he is my father.

He called me from an airport last night to ask how I’m doing. He loves me, just how much I cannot tell – it’s hard to measure a man’s heart. I know where he eats his meals, how he looks at his wife as she nourishes him with food and smiling. I can imagine the way he held me when I was born. He must have cried and laughed, which, I suppose, was the same note, but for the life of me, I cannot remember what that must sound like. I do not remember. So I’ve been searching for my father; specifically, I am searching for his laughter.

I was twelve when he taught me how to wrestle. He placed my left hand on his shoulder and his on mine. I think I giggled, but it was a nervous giggle – such intimacy between a man and a boy. He told me to lean my head into his right collarbone, to push my feet away from the center of gravity and trust the weight of his leaning against me. We began to move, circumscribing the center of this warm circle, a peculiar dance as we swiped at each other’s knees with our free hands. I was a wisp of a boy then; he could have pitched me to the ground.

I spent the next six years captive – to peers, to acceptance, to the search for a home, to silence. A silence like my father’s. Whether he caused it or I, I cannot tell. Is silence passed through our seed? Is it the shame and sorrow that empty our mouths of laughter?

I was seventeen when I left home, eighteen when I was converted, nineteen when I returned home, now a man, the same as my father. Head full of books, heart full of blood, bones full of laughter. It must have been some holiday – the whole family was gathered in the living room. We were all surprised by the scene, I think, such an unfamiliar stage for our family. So I acted. I stood, moved to the center of the room, flexed knees, pumped shoulders like pistons, and called my dad to the ring. We would wrestle.

It was a beautiful silence that tethered: dad startled by the call; mom tickled by the invitation; sisters embarrassed by the testosterone. It was a call to restoration, a revival of joy lost to the misfortunes of my adolescence. I placed my left hand on his shoulder; he on mine. Leaned in, his collarbone imprinting my forehead. I pushed slightly with my feet, daring to trust the weight of our dependence on each other. My right arm tensed, remembering the lessons from years ago, ready to swipe as we circled each other. He squeezed my shoulder, a silent summons to begin the dance, but as I swiveled to step, left foot suspended for a split-second, my father forsook the formalities of childhood. He swept my crossed-up legs and tried to swat me to the ground, but I was grown then, a wisp no more. I regained my footing, clothed him with chest and arms, and began spinning, an awkward bundle of father-and-son flailing clumsily. The room became a blur of brown rug and oak veneer and my father’s hair and I could smell his sweat and hear my mother’s gasping and the blood rushing into my cheeks and I was in love, wildly as we fell to the floor in a beautiful heap, free from form and pattern and expectation. Free from silence: my father was laughing. Such unexpected joy, it sounded like home. It was like a dream.

::

On some winter day, a shadow blankets the camel’s carcass, then colors a ravine with shades of brown and darker brown. A piece of rain drops on a bone, and then another. The shadows are spreading, clouds falling on the Negev like some god has split the seam of time. And the drops strike the bones, a steady staccato, clapping and clinking and rattling like they’re coming to life. And the drops turn to rain, and the rain unites streams with streambeds. The streams soak the sides of the gulleys so that the mud is too much weight to bear, and the sides are splitting and the Negev cannot contain the flood of noise, and if anyone were there to hear, it would probably sound like laughter.

The sun rises three days later, and with it, the head of a crocus. It’s pink like the wild mustard and hollyhock across the stream. The Jerusalem sage grows near the water’s edge, reclining like some resting prophet. Its sibling, the Jerusalem spurge, carpets the nearby ground, mingling with asphodels and narcissi and purple irises, crown anemones, corn poppy, adonis, buttercup – all red, and the red everlasting, the “dam hamakabim” – blood of the Maccabees. Cyclamen crawl on rocks and stony hillsides. Wild oat and barley and quaking grass are already growing, preparing to nourish the gazelle and ibex and goat and sheep that have smelled the water and are sniffing the red carpet. Even the jackal will be allowed to drink.

This is the Negev, restored to glory, sharp in its redness. The air is sweet and thick like the pomegranate, bell-shaped, stitched across the landscape.

::

In the year 537, we were released from captivity, free to go home. It was impossible. Impossible.

When the Lord restored our fortunes, we were like men who
dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter, our tongue with shouts
of joy.
Then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great
things for them.’
The Lord has done great things for us – we are glad.

It was so unexpected, so unfamiliar, so intimate, so right – we blushed in its abundance. At first, we laughed like a barren-wombed Sarah, the shock of it so steep, but that gasping turned into giggles and shouts, the sound of Sarah thick with child: Isaac, son of laughter. We were in love.

That day is a memory now, a moment of deliverance so remarkable that even our enemies were constrained to confess the name of our God. That name, that name, “Adonai,” so hard to pronounce these days – I think we have swallowed it with our pride. That day is gone. We are left with a small remnant, so many stayed in that land, and of those who decided to return, well, we were lucky to survive the desert. We have tried to rebuild, but even the dung and the mud seem sad, and they cannot hold things together. We have managed a temple, but it is not Solomon’s. It is so plain. And we have sinned in our complaints.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, though, is the tenth day of this seventh month, and the high priest will seek to make atonement for our sins. Yom Kippur, and we are frightened, but we are in need of restoration.

Our priest will prepare the sacrifice, and he will prepare himself: an ephod of gold and a band of blue and purple and scarlet, fine twisted linen. Stones so colorful you can taste them: ruby, topaz, emerald, onyx, jasper. And the robe for the ephod, all of blue, the hem stitched with bells and pomegranates. When he hears the bells, our God will know that he’s approaching. And what of the pomegranates? I do not know, only that the Lord wants them there.
Adonai, my God, please accept this sacrifice:

Restore our fortunes, Lord, like the streambeds in the Negev.

::

The day we laughed, my dad and I, seems so far away, a memory that sows tears in me. I saw the laughter of my father, but I saw, too, the God of my father in the laughter of my father, and I need them both, if only the memory.

::

When the priest entered the sanctuary, we were quiet, and as he descended deeper into the sea of curtain, quiet turned to silent, save only the echo of some flailing bells. We stood there, a sorry family, tethered to God by a man daring to approach the face of God. He would know either violence or glory, and probably both.

The bells had all but abandoned our ears when they began to ring louder: the sound of shaking. And as each curtain parted, the bells pealed louder, and the priest, his glorious robe stained with blood, stood before us again, and he pronounced our restoration. God accepted our sacrifice.

I fell into laughter, embarrassed by the goodness of it all, by the character of my Lord and God. We are loved. And this joy, this joy is no mere emotion – it is so much bigger than that. So much bigger than nostalgia, so big that it clothes all our sorrows and doubts and shriveled dreams. This joy is a story. It’s a story that will captivate the memories of my children and their children after that. A story planted in the character of our God. Now and tomorrow, this is our hope.

So those who sow with tears shall reap with shouts of joy.
The one who goes out weeping as he sows shall return home with
sheaves, shouting for joy.

::

Five hundred years later, those children, now grown, sat on a beach. An intimate gathering, thirteen men, close as brothers. They had been scattered for two weeks: healing the sick; setting free the oppressed; restoring the fortunes of the outcast; wiping mud from the eyes of lepers, men who grunted like beasts. The men were scattered, but not alone; they traveled in pairs, and they took nothing with them but the joy of each other’s company, and the joy of the one who sent them out. They sowed seeds, sometimes on fertile soil, sometimes on hard; they laughed and they cried; they skipped and at times shook the dust from their feet.

But they were back together now, reclining on a quilt of sand cooled by the wind from the lake. They formed a circle, and the fire in their midst warmed their shins. They cast ash-red shadows on the beach as they broiled fish, and when they finished eating, they began to tell their stories. And each story was a small miracle, whereupon they laughed in amazement. And of all the men, the one who laughed the most, his name was Jesus. Such a deep laugh, deep enough to split his sides, and he pitched backward into the sand and laughed until he cried, unabashed, unashamed. And he looked at the stars, and he remembered a promise made to Abraham and his seed after him. This was his story.

This was the story that led him, one year later, to a barren hillside. No grass, just dirt. Cracks radiated and scattered from a piece of wood staked into the earth as if this place were the center of gravity, and all the world were tethered to it. It was no surprise to Jesus when a soldier placed his left hand on his shoulder, leaned in, and drove a spike through his wrist. No surprise when he was lifted heavenward and air flooded from his lungs. This man of sorrows, well-acquainted with grief, knew it was coming. His eyes glazed over like drawn curtains, and he was meeting face to face with his God and Father, but his hands, splayed to the wood, were empty of sacrifice. Only himself. No bells to announce his arrival, just the deafening decibel of death – sin is loud as hell. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And he died.

The same soldier speared his side, and a stream of water ran down his thigh and through his toes and into the cracks in the dirt, and some blood, red like pomegranate, stained his waist, and the curtain of the temple was torn in two.

::

Two thousand years later, and I sit in some pew, the wood groaning beneath my weight. All these beautiful people around me, these brothers and sisters, but my insides are parched, and from the looks on their faces, theirs are, too. Staring at the colors on the map in the back of my Bible, tracing my finger around the Dead Sea and into the Negev. It’s brown, just plain brown. This is obviously the summer map. But I’ve heard the story of the rain and the pomegranates, and if I could find a red pen, I’d color it, and I wouldn’t worry about the lines. I’d make it a deep red, redder than pomegranate, redder than the words on page nine hundred eighteen, one page after death:

Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your heart?
See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; touch me and
see . . . . Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and
rise again from the dead . . . ; and that repentance for
forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all
the nations . . . .

Jesus, the memory of exile imprinted your bones, but it did not silence your joy. You knew that there is no resurrection of the dead without death; no reaping without sowing; no return without exile. And this forgiveness, this restoration, this joy – this story – is staked not in the way I feel about myself; it is grounded firmly in you. You, Jesus, are my story. And these sighs and longings and tears are my intercession, my wrestling with you, bound on one arm by memory and on the other by a trust in the weight of your promises, and, in the midst of the wrestling, you have restored my laughter.

::

Dad, I’m twenty-six now, and I’ll be headed home soon, shouting for joy. I’ll place my left hand on your shoulder, lean in, and whisper to you, “The Lord has done great things for me, and I am glad.”

1 chron. 14, after wangerin

David bared himself before the Israelites. The whole world was his, because the Ark of the Covenant was his, because the God of the Ark was his. The fixity of things was unfixed and restored, and David bared himself before the world. David was king, and, minus a wife with no need for dancing, the world was good.

One month before his fixture, an envoy approaches the king, timid but trusting, and delivers some unsettling words: the enemy is back. The king bares his brow on the lad, fixes him with a grin, and says, “If there is no enemy, then I am either mad or living in a madhouse.”*

David and his mighty men, as the lord of Judean hills only, were no worry to the Philistines, but David and his mighty men, as the lord of Mt. Moriah and all lands north and south, were worrisome indeed. In this country, the land makes the man, and the Philistines feared such might. King David was fully aware of the enemy, but enemy cannot displace calling, especially that calling bound in covenant.

As sundown approaches, the Israelites are calling their families together for eating, and the King of Israel is approaching his God. Abiathar hands David the ephod, and David inquires of his God, “Shall I go up against the Philistines? And wilt thou give them into my hand?” Such humility for a slayer of giants. Like filtered thunder, Yahweh answers, “Go up, for I will give them into your hand.”

That evening, the uncircumcised Philistines were standing behind rocks and in caves, pissing with their left hands and gripping their uncircumcised gods with their right, and they were not afraid. The waters and the taunts spilled through their camp the night-long, and in the morning, they gathered their swords into their sheaves, strapped on their grieves, and prepared to desecrate Israel. They looked down on the Valley of Rephaim, and their mouths watered at the spoil that would soon lie before them, and at the valley that their gods would call home.

A Philistine officer paces to the east side of the ridge, peers to his right and left, ducks off behind a crag, and drops his garments. Before the water hits the ground, an Israelite sword lops off his foreskin, and the mighty men of Israel spill into the Philistine camp like the rain of seven seasons. David and his men storm into their camp and hack everything that smells of desecration, both men and gods.

That evening, the Israelites consecrated the hill by making a fire of Philistine idols, and the foul wood whipped and cracked in the fires, and David worshiped his God. He yelled out to his men, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One, and whoever dares to call Him by any other name is like a man without seed.” The men roared, and David continued, “Yahweh has broken through our enemies like a hand through water, and they will have no children to speak the names of their gods, these gods who now warm our shins and light our faces. How can a god whose image is ashes fight for his people? We shall call this place ‘Baal-perazim,’ for Yahweh is the Master of Breaking-Through.”

The enemy is a fool, and he seeks to avenge the ashes of his gods. He wants to rise from the ruins, and he expects his gods to rise with him.

One week later, and David’s envoy, less timid but more trusting, approached the king. News that the Philistines were returning, news that sent laughter through the mouths of the mighty men. News that sent David to the mouth of God. That evening, David inquired again of God, and God said to him, “You shall not go up after them; circle around behind them, and come at them in front of the poplar trees. And it shall be when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the trees, then you shall go out to battle . . . .”

At the second watch, David finds a sleeping Joab, having followed his bear-ish grunts. For all his resiliency, Joab has trouble commanding sleep, and David finds this amusing. He jogs Joab’s shoulder, dodges Joab’s reflex, and, having wakened him, calls him aside.

“Joab, I told you before that the Lord our God would have us fight again. Now, he has given me peculiar direction. We are to position ourselves behind their camp, beneath the poplar trees. And –“

“Yes, David, I was thinking the very thing. I have a mind for such things. I’ll get the men read—“
“Joab, wait. We’re to wait beneath the poplars—“
“Yes, David, until the mongrels turn their backs, then we—“
“No, Joab. We wait.”
“Fine. We wait. We wait until—“
“We wait until we hear the sound of marching in the treetops. . . . Then we go out to battle.”
Joab stares at David, then past him to the woods – his silence speaks respect more than agreement. He walks off and rouses the men, who all agree that the king should be getting more sleep than he does, but Joab’s voice obligates obedience, and the men position themselves beneath the poplars. Such strange directions, but a silhouette of the king on the hill, eyes turned to the sky, is enough.

The night sky resolved to purple, then crimson, until the night watch was fulfilled, and the air was still, and each man, the king included, stared at silence.

The sound of leather and metal resonates on tree trunks, and the Philistines are advancing on an inefficient Israel, sitting stiffly like trees beneath the leaves. Joab breathes an anxious sigh, and his sigh is trailed by a longer breath, and then the exhale of an entire army, and all of Israel looks at each other, and they spot David, eyes turned to the sky, smiling at the rustling of a host of leaves, flailing like fire, and the leaves are bowing like beneath the weight of marching. A scream breaks on the wind, and the mighty men know it as a Philistine cry. They rise from their stoop, quit the canopy of poplar, and witness the enemy flailing and falling on the left and the right, and blood-stained leaves cover the ground. The host of the Lord is before them, and what it leaves alive, David and his men strike down from Gibeon even as far as Gezer.

And the fame of David, and of his Lord, went out into all the nations.

*from The Second Coming, Walker Percy

bitter candy

for my single friends on valentine's day, some candy i made for you:

love and awkward frontal hugs,
jeremy

i don't have kids, but if i did

i've been making a list of things i'd like to do with my kids on sunday, and only on sunday, to attach delight to the sunday section in the memory drawer of their brainboxes. like lighting sparklers on sunday. my friends and i used to make kickball cards (based on the actual templates of the day). it would be fun to make (insert child's interest here) cards with a kid on sunday afternoon. like mudpie cards. imaginary friend cards. coloring cards. acting cards. knee-skinning cards. tattletale cards. eat-all-your-food cards. for instance.

on another note, i'm bringing back the painter's cap.

yours truly,
the kickball kid of bartlett, tennessee.

50 things that just hit me that i'd like to say to a girl someday, in no particular order:

we should go to the doctor. i bet our brains weigh the same.
we should eat with our hands tonight.
that’s the worst shirt i’ve ever seen. let’s get it.
i don’t know.
you taste like clouds.
good morning, bird.
no, i don’t like your parents, but i like you.
“i can taste your lipstick on the filter.” wait, why are you wearing lipstick?
i think we should spend our 75th on a train.
god is not so tame.
the wonder is not that he gives us no answers, but that he gives us any at all.
since when do you like latino melodrama?
yes, even more than franka.
do we have enough sparklers for the kids to light on sunday?
that was the worst danish opera i’ve ever seen.
thank you for saying my name.
hey, you, come here.
i know my holly hobby pillow smells bad. i’m sorry.
i’m proud to be standing on this sidewalk with you.
no, you may not pluck my eyebrows.
i don’t care, either.
i’m glad you drank more than i.
hey, let’s skip work and go to india.
you want me to make you a smoothie?
thank you for wearing blue and brown.
happy autumn.
no, i’m glad you’re a bad driver.
yes, let’s adopt.
but i couldn’t have finished the crossword without you.
we just ran out of gas.
my friends adore you.
we own this place.
are you flirting with me?
two movies in a row? you’re turning me on.
your shirt is on inside-out.
i like pencils, too.
yes, i’d like to skip church today, too.
sleep tight.
i’m glad we have no idea what to do together.
the movies have nothing on us.
i know, i know, my perfectionism again.
can i say something trite?
do it again.
i can’t believe god lets me hang out with you.
i don’t understand that painting, either.
i think we should sit on the steps for a while.
will you read to me tonight?
please, quit being a genius.
is this supposed to be warm?
he has your lips.

appendix:
i am trying not to hide so much behind imagery.
will you forgive me?
thankyouthankyouthankyou.

when i get rich, i'm buying Tang -- encomium

i hope somebody got fired over it. i'm so sure--they're supposed to be in some swanky hotel ("we've entertained presidents, actors, royalty" blah blah blah), and the guy is in one of the storerooms in the kitchen, and he's standing there trying to look all scary, and there's a shelf behind him, and on the shelf are 10+ industrial cans of Tang. granted, Tang's no inexpensive dry drink-mix, and i wish i could afford it--oh, that sweet sweet dehydrated orange--but come on.

scene: waldorf astoria
waiter: "mr. huggins, i hope i'm not out of place, but the writing you did for that informercial was brilliant. i gather the family around everytime the PAX network airs it."
me: (coyly) "really, you like it? wow, thanks. it was a good time in my writing career."
waiter: "the best. so will you have your usual?"
me: "yes, and could you bring another glass of Tang? Franke Potente will be meeting me here shortly."
waiter: "of course. i had no idea that Germans like Tang."
me: (feigned, humorous facial expression) "who doesn't like Tang?"
waiter: (laughs, though for courtesy or with sincerity we don't know) "i suppose you're correct."

thus, The Shining will not make my Top 100 Movies of All-Time list.

on another note, i was sitting in the Dart this morning, warming her up for a trip to a church, and i saw a guy staring down the sidewalk in cowboy boots, holding bags full of rattling-looking things. he had just missed the bus. he looked back at me, and i, assuming that he was going to ask me for a ride, automatically prepared to not notice and drive off, and just in case he came to my window, i put my bible under my seat so he wouldn't see it and think, "asshole christian." as soon as i took my hand off the bible, i thought to myself, "asshole christian." he stood outside the window and made the universal roll-down sign, so i rolled down, and an all-night mad dog smell slapped me. cold sores. casserole dishes in the bags. i smiled and told him to hop in. i shook his hand and asked his name, he told me, i put my hand on the steering wheel and felt it smear. i drove him downtown while he talked about a girl with coal-back hair, and as he got out of the car, he thanked me, i said no problem (which it ceased to be only after i stared my worship of convenience in the face and realized that my hand belonged in a hand seeping liquor and last night's sex more than it belonged on a bible). the wine at the church meant something. and tasted better than tang.

how do you break up with a folk singer?

A folk singer said to me, “I want to fall in love with you.” Of course I bought his CD.

I didn’t know he was coming. I was sitting in my coffeeshop downtown, doing research for my foreskin essay, when he came in. I marked him as 58 years old, married to a blue heeler, owner of 11 8-tracks and a stained Mr. Coffee. He had a denim handle on his guitar case, if I remember correctly. It complemented his cap.

I don’t know why I feel responsible for people. Had I sandwich-boarded downtown for a few hours that afternoon, I could have ensured that more than three people would have been in the coffeeshop by the time he started playing. I had no idea he was coming in to play that evening, but surely I could have prepared just in case? Thus, when one person left after the first song, and the second left after the third, I, who wanted to leave after the fourth, felt obligated to see it through. No way I’m leaving this guy. I owe him.

Folk singers like to tell stories between songs. I learned in counseling classes that, for the sake of communicating concern and attention, the optimal seating position is 45 degrees, slightly leaning in. But it was hard to do that while trying to hide pictures of foreskin on my laptop. If he sensed lack of concern on my part, he hid it well. He just kept singing, kept telling me stories about rivers and pea gravel between songs. He was there for me.

I’ve never been in a relationship longer than 5 months. I think I know why. Among other reasons, I get anxious when anyone dotes on me. I hate feeling obligated. So when, for his 11th number, the singer covered Chris Isaak—his cobalt gaze into my soul, his beautifully intoned and oily “. . . and I want to fall in love . . . with you”—I began to get that wanderlust, began thinking of ways to break up without damaging his psyche. I was afraid that calling things off might lead him to a life of misery, or worse, that he might fuel a steel drum with his guitar.

I decided to place the burden on him by telling him that maybe I needed a smoke break. He took it well, saying that he thought a break might be a good idea, and went to the bathroom. I sat outside, smoking, feeling awful, and I’ll be honest—I wanted to run. But my laptop with the foreskin pictures was inside, and I didn’t want to have to call him later and ask him to return it.

I ended up going back inside and listening for a few more songs before suddenly coming down with diarrhea. I think he believed me. In a final attempt to assure him that it was me, not him, and knowing that most coffeeshop folk singers like to leave CD’s behind for the shop to sell, I asked him, “So will you be leaving some CD’s here? I don’t have any money on me now, but you’re really great.” As a matter of fact, he wasn’t planning on it, but he would be glad to leave one there for me, and he would pick the money up later in the week.

I packed my bag and left, vowing never to get involved with a folk singer again.

to be my friend, you have to make the cut

i have taken the foreskin essay off the site as public reading, but if you came looking for it, and you'd like me to e-mail it to you, get in touch at eprentiss@aol.com

Poetry Gets Me Hot and Sad

If you're afraid of poetry, or just disgusted by the dearth of lovely lines delineating fallenness and wet dreams, then perk up. Dennis Nurkse is your sub-redemption:

"The Rules of the Game"

A sticky thread between my fingers.

God knows what happened.

I'd been dreaming of baseball--

Dodgers vs. Giants
at Ebbets Field, Snider at bat
hitting .379, a 1-2 fastball
about to nick the inside corner--

then this spasm
and all my pennants
hung slightly crooked.

A breeze blew inside me.
It no longer mattered
if the drive cleared the fence.

Mystery. I asked my mother:

and she sighed and began searching
in the highest shelf of the bookcase.

-from The Fall

"my pennants/ hung slightly crooked"--too good. I hadn't thought, before reading this, how correlated sports and sensuality have been in my life. And maybe not sports in general, but specific, fantastic, sporting moments. Like fighting and sensuality--the daydreams that got me through Shadowlawn Middle School: Wendy sits on the front steps. Robbie and his fish-netted friends sit around her, turn the Bon Jovi up through the jambox. She scoots over. They scoot over. I see her through the Science Lab window, walk evenly down the hall and out to the steps. I say, quietly, "Hello, Wendy," and proceed to jam-box their faces to a more pizzaish state. I wake up, and the top bookshelf is empty.

The Abortion Journals, Pt. 1

“You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy . . . .’’

Tuesday, February 27, 2001
6:00 PM, home

I’m not sure why I’m going tonight, frankly. An assignment, yes, but the abortion issue? It’s a “relevant” issue, I know, but it feels so trite, and the Scriptures sound like cliches in my head, and, honestly, I’m tired of the whole thing. Yes, I know my Psalm 139’s and am aware of the hungry activism of the opposition. Christian media is pregnant with slogans and marches, and the bumper stickers are thoughtless and embarrassing – “it’s” not a child; “it” is an impersonal pronoun.

Does anything ever change? Does anyone ever change his mind? Does one ever change sides? I wonder what it’s like on the other side. I wonder why there are sides, and who erected the boundaries in the first place. I wonder if anyone else shares my wonder. And I wonder why I’m going tonight.

7:00 PM, Webster University, Webster Hall foyer

I’m here to watch “Live Free or Die,” a film documenting the conflict between small-town religious leaders and Dr. Wayne Goldner, an abortion provider in New Hampshire. I know little else of the film apart from this; I did, however, do some research before coming, and I found an online forum for those who have seen the film. So I wandered in, hoping for helpful discussion. Five minutes of scrolling through comments and retorts and re-retorts and slander and vilification only affirmed my wonderings. And as I read, I watched the bulwark of abortion being buttressed by vitriol and venom . . . and the poison hardens on the ramparts of “righteousness,” and the hatred piles high, and we can no longer see each others’ faces or hear each others’ voices, so we send lethal electronic messages past the defenses of ears and eyes, and they lodge deep in our hearts.

I was embarrassed, at least, angered, truly, by the hateful, disrespectful posts of those claiming to be Christians, those who, by that same claim, ally me to their words. So I made the decision to break company. So I discharged myself from the war. Who knew AWOL could feel so good? And I sent notification to the other side:
apology from a christian
Date: Sat Feb 24 [1:33 PM]
Posted By: Jeremy Huggins (eprentiss@aol.com)
I'm a Christian, and I'm going to watch this film at a school nearby as part of a paper I'm writing for a class I'm in. I decided to do some pre-search and ended up on this "bulletin board," and I'm almost in tears as I sit and read the disrespectful, ungracious comments of so many who claim to be Christians. Though I can't reconcile vicariously, I wish I could apologize for the terrible behavior of so many on this list. As a Christian, I believe that all of us are made in the image of God, and as such, there are things that are good and true about all of us, and as such, you all deserve my respect, first and foremost. Beyond that, even if we disagree, I have no right to malign or slander you -- I am in no better shape, on my own, than anyone else. So please know that there are some Christians out here, though pro-life, who do care. I'll react to the film more specifically after I see it. Jeremy

So here I am, and the film begins soon, and this foyer is full of noise and pamphlets and the hands attached to them. Black-and-white and sepia-toned presidents glare from the walls, and I’m not sure if it’s disapproval or fatigue; the water fountain has a leak and the drips form a cadence on the carpet; and the perfumes and leather and anticipation have joined ranks to form some familiar smell. It’s unexpected, yes, but it smells like hope.
RE: apology from a christian
Date: Tue Feb 27 [4:18 PM]
Posted By: Ken Carman
It's gentle folk like you, especially amongst the younger generation, who can resolve this issue; as much as it can be resolved, along with those on the "other side" who also have more open minds AND respect. While I cannot count myself as a true believer for EITHER side, I have hoped more like you would join the dialogue. I'm afraid "fighting fire with fire" both verbally, and in reality, has become the madness in our methods of rhetoric and action. Occasionally, I have been guilty of such on this topic and others...you shame me and many of the thread makers...Thank you...

9:30 PM, Pony Expresso Café

“What am I doing here?” has ceased to be a legitimate question and is becoming a rhetorical joke-of-providence. Of course I’m here, a Pro-Life, Orthodox Calvinist Seminarian at a private party for friends of NARAL (National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League). Of course.

Before the film, I was busy collecting printed matter from display tables and eavesdropping on conversations ranging from RU 486 to the devil/George W. to the protestors outside the building. I had seen those people (the protestors, not the devil and George W.) on the way in, their faces stormy and whorled like malignant clouds. I assumed they were disgusted with the weather. Turns out they were disgusted with the mass of cold-hearted folks inside.

Turns out I was one of the disgustees. And I received an unsolicited visit from the president of the outside people. I was leaning over to read the fine print on a pamphlet entitled “Spiritual Comfort: Before and After an Abortion” when I felt the breathings in my ears, breathings-turned-words, cold and distant: “Nobody asks them to raise the child; just let the child live.” I raised my head and met the profile of the speaker, now facing away from me, muttering something about misnomers and lies of Satan. And as quickly as she planted her seeds of disgust in my ears, she had grabbed stacks of pamphlets (to be disposed of outside) and left me to rejoin her comrades in the frigid drizzle outside.

Initially, I felt guilty, like the Benedict Arnold of all-causes-holy, but as I looked around the room at the smiles and hugs and hospitality, the warmth of it all melted the icy accusations lodged under my skin, and I was sure that whatever I was doing in there, it was a new thing, and it was good.

Among the mostly middle-aged, mostly female crowd, a few people my own age, one of them a guy like me, attracted my attention. I wanted to know who they were, why they were there. So, like the new kid on the block, I shuffled over and introduced myself to the group, which, it turns out, was in charge of setting up tables and facilitating the film-viewing. I unfolded and offered my hand and met A.J. Theoretically, and doctrinally, I was prepared to meet a homosexual, but my heart was still thawing, so the unflinching warmth I intended sounded like slightly flinching interest, and I blurted out the first meaningful syllable I could manage: “Um . . . .” And I um’ed in and out of a thirty-second dialogue, and A.J. was patient with me.

Maybe I thought that simply talking to someone else would clear everything up for me. It didn’t, but intertwined with my mono-syllabic grunts and head-nods was a genuine and new desire to listen, to hear what someone different than I, someone else, anyone else, had to say. And I managed to ask if there would be any sort of discussion or forum after the film. There wasn’t, but there was a private party if I wanted to come. Of course. And I did.

So here I am, drinking coffee because everyone else is, one person at a two-person table, scribbling notes about the film. Dr. Goldner was portrayed as a normal, warm, loving family man; happy music played when he was on-screen. The religious folks, whose threats-by-letter served as an introduction to the film, played to a consistently minor-key soundtrack. They looked and sounded like fools, like the would-be butts of all the film-viewers’ jokes. Dr. Goldner’s family was willing to risk its father’s life for what it thought was the truth. The church wasn’t willing to risk association with sinners for what it thought was the truth. They had heard it said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy . . . .”

So I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable in the theater. Part of me was afraid of what all those people in the theater would think of the church, of me. Part of me was afraid of what I had heard said and what I thought was the truth. And part of me was afraid that the people outside might try to bomb the building. As I was in the theater, so I am now in this coffeeshop: feeling out of place, angry, afraid, and somehow alone . . . .

11:41 PM, home

As I was leaning over my coffee, writing, I felt the breathings in my ears again. But warm this time. Inviting, friendly, hospitable: “Hey there, I’m Celeste; do you mind if I join you?” Celeste, like A.J., is a volunteer at the Hope Clinic for Women in Granite City. Celeste, like A.J., could see that I was feeling somehow out of place, so she began to ask questions of me, questions about my name and how my coffee tasted. So I began to answer, and one of my answers betrayed my cover – I was Jeremy Huggins, Christian. And instead of turning me over to the Abortion Regime, she extended a heart of gladness and words of curiosity, an anthropologist who had just found the missing link, or a new species, at least. “So you’re a Christian, and you’re at this party? I don’t know what to say.”
“I don’t, either,” I said, “which is why I’m alone, sipping on cold coffee.”
By reaching out to me, Celeste dignified me, gave me back my voice, and I wanted to use that voice to begin to know her, to understand her, to understand the “other side,” the “enemy.” I wanted to know what it would mean to hear, and, thus, to have the ability to love. “I didn’t really plan on this, so I don’t have anything prepared, but do you mind if I ask you some questions for my paper? And you have to be totally candid with me.”
“I would love to,” she said. So I began to discover the beauty of honest questions and honest answers, a combination that I have been hard-pressed to locate in the church’s involvement with the abortion issue. In my involvement with most issues.

Throughout our discussion, Celeste made me aware of so many misconceptions, so many false assumptions I nurtured, so much truth that I thought the church had monopolized. “Nobody thinks abortion is good; I’d love to work myself out of a job,” she said. We wanted the same thing. She’s tired of the temporary solutions that many Christians provide; I’m tired of the same “solutions.” Though we found common ground on many issues, we also stood our ground on a few basic ones: “Celeste, I think abortion is wrong. But if I sit here right now and tell you that, and in the same breath tell you that I want to learn what it means to love you, and to love you, do you believe me?” The silence between my question and her answer was thick, tangibly weightier than any words that had been spoken; we realized that what lay in the answer was the power either to deify or destroy the wall of separation between us.

“Yes, Jeremy, I believe you’re sincere, but part of believing you is looking for consistency. I need to know that you understand me.” Yes, it was hope that I smelled earlier that evening. Yes, it was possible to disagree, to have opposition on an issue, but to love still. “I need to know that you understand me” – that line lapped in my head the rest of the evening. How can I understand behind a wall of assumptions and hatred? Without respect and compassion? Without asking questions and actually waiting for the answers? It was, after all, the reason for her surprise: I was the first Christian to sit down with her and ask her what she believed rather than assuming what I wanted to, rather than demonizing her with my agenda. It was the testimony of almost everyone I talked with that evening – as Celeste and I dialogued, someone would walk by, overhear, and sit down to join in. Eventually, she would leave and bring someone back, and the two were made three. On her way out, Allison Hile, Hope Clinic’s Director of Information and Education, stopped at my table, warmly introduced herself, and thanked me for “the bravery to come and talk.” The bravery to come and talk? The foyer of Pony Expresso was kinder and more inviting than most church foyers I have found myself in this year.

Before she left, I asked Allison a question I had asked Celeste earlier: “If you could tell the church one thing, what would it be?” She answered, “Don’t let abortion rob a woman of her religion.” Celeste answered, “You should help the girls before you try to proselytize them.” On the surface, the answers are different, but fundamentally, they are both indicative of the church’s sin: we only love when someone satisfies our definition of love. We have qualified our love, and the qualifications have piled up, and a wall now separates us.

I left my room five hours ago, knowing only that I was to write a paper on the abortion issue. I’m beginning to realize that maybe we have mitigated our responsibility and deflected the reality of our failure by calling it an “issue.” What’s at issue is our failure to love. Have we unwittingly mis-defined love, or are we so afraid of its consequences that we would rather erect a wall and, in so doing, keep out those whom we would rather not love? We preach with zeal our love for the unborn babies, and I am glad for the zeal. Though we do so imperfectly, we seek justice for the oppressed, which often results in a desire to minister to the women who are considering abortion. But we have erected the wall in the faces of those who support abortion rights, whether the doctors, the spokespeople, or the volunteer escorts, people like A.J. and Celeste.

Five hours later, and I find myself writing a paper specifically on loving abortion providers and supporters, but I am beginning to feel like the principle here is too big to fit into the theological boxes I have constructed for myself, too big to allow me to feel comfortable, so big that the wall looks ridiculous in comparison.

I feel safe here in my room, but I can raise my window and stick my hand outside, the air cold and bracing. The snow on my hand is pure, like flour sifted from heaven, and it feels medicinal, like restoration. God is doing something new in me, and He has extended the face of humanity to me tonight, warm beneath my skin. The faces are named A.J. and Celeste, and they have given me something. They have given by taking, and what they have taken from me is my lack of hearing, my inability to love. And I don’t want it back.

“ . . . But I say to you who hear, ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who revile you, in order that you may show yourselves to be the sons of your father in heaven. Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. . . .”

(appeared in the first issue of Ghetto Monk)

Meditation on Jesus as Prophet

Years since goodbye, I call to hear her voice on the answering machine—she used to finish my sentences, and I loved her for that. She knew my heart. She didn’t demand words.

Tonight, across the street, some man, desperate for words that hint at intimacy, will pick up the phone and pay by the minute.

Across town a psychic is doing well—three appointments today. A widow, a mother, and an orphan are hoping for words from the other side. They feel that they cannot go on without them.

Right now, a man, confident in his new bride’s love, or at least in her commitment, lays a finger over her mouth at the consummation. His pupils are dilated enough so that he sees gazelle and fruit and cedar trees. Only later will he tell her what he has seen—the words mean more after the fact. Though the words can’t prove his love, he’ll speak anyway and eventually, but only because she asks for them, feeling that she needs proof.

I sympathize. The insecure lover, the phone-sex addict, the bereaved—we are waiting, dictionary in-hand, for a word or two to translate, some spoken thread to hold us together.

My bite-sized Japanese-English Dictionary gives me the words for “priest” and “king,” but not for “prophet.” I settle for “mouth” instead. The Japanese symbol for mouth surprises me at first. I expect ornate labyrinths of line, like a temple or wheels inside wheels. Or a small intestine. Instead, I get a box. Four clean lines almost right-angled, connected at the corners, like a book, or a robot mouth, as if I could shove a loaf of bread through it.

The German word for “creator,” Schopfer, also means “scoop, or ladle.”

One word and the stars unfurl. Another and the moon unfolds, voids the darkness, its corners curl. A tree rips through the ground, an apple drips from a limb, bones from dust. God spoke the world into being, Moses told God’s people, but they weren’t there when it happened, so I don’t blame them, who kept looking for a mouth. They heard the LORD’s voice from the desert cloud, from pillared fire, from Sinai’s stained mountain crown. Moses broke the back of the golden calf, and still the people scanned the clouds, pointing out profiles. They looked for tongues in the fire. They said that if you squint small enough, the mountains look like chipped incisors. All they wanted was a mouth, a set of lips to lock onto.

The evidence—lintel blood, manna, the mountain’s tremble—should have been enough. Still he gave them words; they should have been and were not enough. Again, then, he condescended: To Moses sent Elijah, Amos, Isaiah, Jonah, Jeremiah, Malachi. To smashed tablets cast parched land and dry bones clinking, altars drenched and flame-consumed, one ass bared, bicuspids full of dirt and grit. “Go on. Pick a mouth, any mouth.” Locusts, honey, scratchy shirt.
That wasn’t good enough.

God sighed, put-out, and once more emptied his pencil box: How should they appear, Jesus’ lips? Chapped, cleft, moustached, wax. We don’t care if they’re glossy, puckered, or pouty, we want to see the words drip from your lips, they said. We want to see your mouth move. Our bones are drying up for lack of syntax. Vowel us to death, they said.
So he did. For thirty-odd years.

At 33 years old, the Creator, the Word incarnate, was summoned to defend himself before a man, Pilate, a product of His own word:
Pilate’s robes are gaudy and turbulent, his hair shiny, the marble floor. Sweat. Having heard that this man Jesus is a prophet, he asks, “What is truth?” For a moment—ten seconds maybe—the prophet just poses, blinking, silent. This is the best answer, and Jesus can tell that Pilate, though irritated, finds this a bit sexy. Then Pilate snaps out of it, and the prophet speaks. Pilate will wish that he hadn’t demanded these words—once they are spoken, there is no going back. He must put Jesus to death. So Pilate has him crucified, the lips of God writhing, ripped, then limp—they are, then, sealed in a tomb. The people become too afraid to speak. For once, words are pointless.

For so long this cycle—His people felt that they needed more proof; He gave it to them; they didn’t like it; they asked for something else; He gave it—until they proved Him into the ground.

But that was 2,000 years ago. We know the story. We know what happens—Jesus is not dead after all, not finished speaking. As long as you’re talking to us again, well, we’re still not sure. Maybe you could just give us a sign? Nothing big, but make it clear.

Maybe lips are just boxes for shaping air. Maybe we quit demanding form and trust content. Damn the predictions, the tea leaves, nebulous signs from above, telephone prophets, Benny Hinn and his honey-forked tongue. Stick your holy pearly whites in our hearts. Grab my head and jerk it back. If it’ll do the trick, break my stiff neck. Expose the jugular, jack my jaws apart, reach down—hell, bypass the heart and ladle the words straight into my gut. If I tell you I won’t listen, don’t listen to me. I’m telling you, right now, I need you to speak, words or no. For God’s sake, I’m tired of living on bread alone. Forget the finishing. Start starting my sentences. Speak. Please. Speak.

(appeared originally in Critique)

Lamarcus

On Saturday mornings, the children would wander through the Brookville Gardens Housing Project, congregate on my stoop, and wait. I wanted to make them long for, talk about, wonder what happened inside 11-C before I granted them entrance to my home—ritual is good for the children. But ritual could never compete with the muffled giggle outside my sheet-metal door, so I gave, and they flooded my home. I like to think they came because they liked me, their white Moses. Maybe so. But I know that they came because they liked the my kitchen, devoid of adults and pouring forth chips and pop: a river of energy, mighty, eternal. It was my peace offering, a taste of reconciliation, I hoped.

When they finished the chips I fed them Bible stories, after which they would offer up prayers for granmamas and no more fighting in the world, amen, burp, giggle, and leave. And 11-C became my sanctuary again—curtains fingered with grease, pop puddled on the linoleum. But I didn't mind. It was their ritual, their benediction to me.

After the curtains were degreased and the linoleum dried up, I entertained my own ritual: sit in my rocking chair and quietly eat a banana. It was not glorious, but it was my own. And, usually, it was all that was left unmangled—one holy bunch of bananas on top of the refrigerator.

On one of those Saturdays, soon after the children returned home, and during the last bite of banana, my door rattled (It would rattle at the slightest breeze until I opened it and re-jammed the wad of napkin in the top-left corner.) This rattle, though, was not a breeze—it was Lamarcus, a four-foot-three bundle of Africa in my doorway.

“Lamarcus, hey, man, what up?” (Maybe he didn’t get a pop earlier; the bigger kids were not afraid to cash in on their bigness.)
“Chillin’.”
“Chillin’? You wanna come in?”
“A’ight.”
He stepped in, and I squatted eye-level with him and scrunched my nose, thinking maybe he had come for the Bible I promised that morning, preparing to tell him that he needed to wait until next week for that, and I would see him then.

Lamarcus hadn’t come for the Bible. Lamarcus had come for the kitchen. At least that’s where he went. So I returned to the den, sat slowly, exhaled audibly, and practiced smiling, pretending to be glad for his presence. During the third smile, he came in, sat, hands empty, lips slightly closed, and fixed his eyes somewhere between the brown-shagged floor and my chin.
“So, Lamarcus . . . what’s up?” (Maybe he just needed a little prodding. Some prodding is good for the children.)
“Nuttin’.”
“Me, neither. Wutcha’ wanna’ do, Lamarcus?”
“Nuttin’.”
“Me, neither.”
I felt bad, but if he wasn’t talking, then neither was I. So we sat in silence for seven minutes, like ghetto monks observing the rule. He began rocking, deliberately and deeply, as if moved by some beautiful ancient rhythm. But I was just annoyed.

Then they changed—his eyes—they turned down like the peel in my hand, brows curved like questions, aimed at my banana.
He broke the silence.
“You know . . . sometimes . . . people be sayin’ I like bananas.”
“Lamarcus, do you want a banana?”
“Ooh, you got some bananas?”

Lamarcus. Beautiful, seven-year-old, four-foot-three Lamarcus. How you mortified your desires then so that I could rest seven more minutes. Such sacrifice for a child.

Lamarcus stopped coming with the rest of the kids. He began coming on his own, sometimes at 6:00 in the morning, waiting for the bus, sometimes late at night, wearing a ski mask, hoping to scare the white man in the project. But faithfully he came, often just to sit, always to eat our bananas.
He came for his promised Bible. A rattle at the door.
“Lamarcus. What’s up, man?”
“Chillin’. I could have my Bible now?”
“Yeah, Lamarcus. Come on in for a few minutes.”
He sat and fingered the pages of his Bible as if the black-and-white of it were alive. Then he raised his eyes to meet mine, and his lips split like the Red Sea as he pronounced his benediction: “Tight. Dat’s tight.”

You know . . . sometimes . . . people be sayin’ I like Lamarcus. I loved him, and I love him: Lamarcus of the ashen skin and sacrificial heart. He would be twelve now, and one day soon, I’ll look over Jordan and see him—glorious, skin burnished bright black, asking Jesus for a banana.

(originally published in Re:Generation Quarterly)

after chesterton

The Kingdom At Hand

This is no time
to start a relationship.

“Someone jam the condom
machine?” He hadn’t even seen
this man
seeing him
knock three quarters into the slot
intently—
the Texaco ain’t no place
for small talk. Not the bathroom, anyway.
Graffiti’s fine.
Choose which urinal you’ll use, fine. Look up. Piss—
how long had he been seen?
“You were thinking about fucking, but you were looking
for me.”

I'm not Native American, but I am homesick, too.

How do you open a tin can without a sharp-edged dream? How do you sleep in your post office box using junk mail for blankets? How do you see past the iron bars someone painted on your U.S. government glasses? How do you stop a reservation tsunami before it's too late?

:: Sherman Alexie, from
"Captivity"