Did I Ever Say Sorry?

Through troubled times and wasted years
Hurried goodbyes: your summer tears.

Fog is all this vision can muster.

But tell me, if you please,
Did we ever whisper what was needed?
What of it? Can we stop this pain tonight?





The backward glance, the empty hand,
the ubiquitous fog. Forlorn souls. And why?

Your lost touch.

The Dark Mountain approaches.

Again?

And with it all, I stop. The road turns.

I will follow.

Tethered

Always on the eve,
When do we ever unravel?

"Then the Righteous Will Shine Like the Sun in the Kingdom of their Father…"

Or, perhaps more accurately, what I learned from a holiday at the sea… and other adventures.

~*~

The sun was sinking into the horizon, the ocean darkening with mystery, and I was suddenly stabbed by joy – the sensation of being wicked, wild, and wonderfully in love. A very old book, full of precious reminders about the sanctity of this inspiring burst of existence we call life, was sitting very comfortably next to me in the sand. Maddened by too many words, not enough movement, I’d had too much talk… too little life – I was ready for more. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, but I knew that I wouldn’t find it here sitting down. Whispering all sorts of crazy things to myself, I finally gathered the courage and leapt into a great unknown.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton has taught me to view life as a cosmic shipwreck in which a sailor awakens, blinded and bewildered by the dazzling sun, only to find himself stranded on an unknown island. Remnants of a mysteriously wonderful past lay strewn about the coast, relics from a better time. He has forgotten who he is, what the mission was, and why everything went horribly wrong. He curiously wanders about gathering these relics, these clues from a distant past, each one hinting at the meaning of his struggle. But amnesia stunts his progress, marring his potential, keeping him from action. He is content toying with wood chips when a golden palace awaits him just beyond the shore.

I am that man.

Earlier in the summer you would have found me laying face-down on a surfboard, a hundred or so feet from shore, waiting with eager expectation for what I knew was already over – the day had ended with a few worthy rides, but very little satisfaction. In the moments that followed I learned an amazing lesson. In the quietness of the departing sun and softening sea it came to me as if the brightness of spring had overtaken the melancholy of fall in only a second’s notice. "It" was the arrival of a flurry of emotions that few men could put into words. My mind works better with images, so I will see if pictures can make sense of what I stumbled upon… or, perhaps more accurately, what stumbled upon me.

"Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains."

For all my moral-uprightness, all my prided victories, collected friends, possessions, and memories – from all these things I was forced suddenly to take a step back, observe my empire, reassure my needy narcissistic affections. But what I saw did not meet any of these gluttonous demands. Again, think of the child content with building and rebuilding his own unfortunate little sandcastle, when a real one of gold and marble and love is awaiting him up atop the nearby hill. I was the child for an instant – muddied hands, tear-stained face, but bright beaming eyes full of hope and joy and wonder. The crushing revelation that all of my life, in comparison to the glory of God, could be nothing more than a collected empire of dirt, so easily dissolved in the mindless crashing of an ocean wave was simply undoing for a moment… but, thankfully, it only lasted a moment. For the very next instant brought with it the kind of serenity that most men would give their lives for.

I find myself by losing myself.

White is a hard color to keep clean; innocence is a shell likely to crack. The older I get the more convinced I am that most people spend the majority of their adult lives trying to reclaim and restore their childhood. It is the all-encompassing fear of loss that haunts most of us. But there is another way.

Perhaps this is why so much scripture speaks of child-like faith – that those who will inherit the everlasting kingdom must first deny themselves, and become like children again. Ah, but I do not want to die! How can death and denial to myself be good? What could ever motivate a generation to cast themselves into the sea? What if His arms are in the ocean?

It is the worship of self that makes men mad; it is surrender that brings serenity. It was George MacDonald who reminded me that the one rule of hell is "I am my own." We are all broken gods, we cannot handle divine power. Make a child a king and watch the kingdom fall. We become demons as gods. I believe the essence of hell is the removal of the common grace of God – that we are finally given over to our own unwise, independent rule, and are haunted tirelessly by the specter of guilt that continually brings up mistakes and failures and regrets. We fall short of glory and land in endless self-annilation. We hate the ruin we recklessly cause yet are unable to hand back the scepter to whom it rightfully belongs.

To get one’s eyes off oneself is a task that can not be accomplished by merely natural means, as the child can not stop the ocean – it is not his to command. The Spirit of God must awaken a mind and a heart with a burst of light and heat so intense that it fills one with a passion both to live and to die - death unto the flesh, alive unto God. And now I see – the beauty and brokenness, the wonder and woe, all in its rightful context. I die so I can live. This is why I abstain from sin: it robs me of joy, it mars my mind, destroys my ability to worship and to wonder. I desire exaltation and expansion – a world to stretch myself in… but evil of sin is that it enslaves me to lesser things, darker gods, false pleasures. I become my own, build my own prison, lock myself, and give the key to some lesser god. I must kill the side of me that, strangely, desires my death.

"Lord, open not too often my weak eyes to this...
Quick, show me that sweet thing
Which, 'spite of all, more deeply I desire."

"Our valley is His golden cup
And He the wine
Which overflows
To lift us with Him as He goes."

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
after righteousness
for they shall be filled."

Do you see it now, how loss can be gain, how pain can be precious?

Were I never hungry, never would I have sought the Bread of Life. Were I not these wings once broken, never would I truly appreciate flight.

Grace is the sweetest of words to a broken man

There… and it was done. As the vision slowly blurred back to reality I remembered the dark ocean still stirring beneath me. What lurked under the surface I had not the slightest idea. But something I did know – One greater than myself commanded and controlled the sea and everything in it. What, then, was left to fear? I knew the God of gods.

Every man is a rebel at heart, craving independence and unmitigated affection for himself.

"And from these sprang the dream I dare not chase,
Lest, the long hunt being over, I embrace
My shadow. Furies wait upon that bed."

~*~

I have come to believe that perhaps the greatest reason why the Great King willingly breaks a man of his loves and his dreams – of all the ones he has come to cherish – is to crush the rebel inside of him – to bring him back to God. To make him a child, who depends fully on parental provision and sustenance and guidance.

I am not my own.

Behind each frowning providence I find a smiling Face.

As each ruin falls I must remember that it is the ruin that is falling. Something greater and grander remains hidden and secure under the ancient debris – the promise of an inheritance.

A new world awaits:

"… the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God…"

A smile suddenly crept across my face. I quickly paddled back to shore, placed the surfboard on the glowing sand; then turned and ran as fast as I could.

"those who wait upon the Lord will gain new strength
they will run and not grow tired…"

My feet collided over and over again with the incoming waves, flicking foamy water up into the air and painting them against the sinking sun; they were instantly lit aflame in a beautiful collision of purple, orange, black, and blue. Faster and faster I ran, joy stabbing me all along the way. I had never been so alive.

~*~

Good things come to those who wait.

I Was the Lion

Can this chaos turn to light?

My eyes again fail to see,
How the path came this way,
And where the worn road will lead
Next as dark mountains break the vision
So I am weary; I sigh complaints as
Life flickers away with each passing day
I’m haunted by a thousand dreams
Swallowed in a roaring sea
Submerged ‘neath the rolling waves
Of past regrets and pressing fears.

This empire of dirt –
it’s everything
Of all I hoped would come about.
Like a child’s sandcastle
Slowly dissolves in the ocean’s grip
It falls apart as sadness
Runs a river down my face.
Weighted down with scales of pride
Torn and bleeding from worldly wounds
Innocence soiled by seeds of despair.
The bloom is black
My lack, my lack.
I curse the cosmos for these constant sorrows,
My loss.
Loss.
I compose my soul in the morning light
As He
like a lion - He breaks all my bones.

Quiet!
Out of silence comes the answer:
No answer.

Wait.

The Dark God approaches.

Heavy clouds cover the spoiled empire
Light races
across the immovable sky.
The earth shakes, the mountains melt
The ocean stills.

The Terror of the North
With ancient hosts
All in flight, all in might
Come raining down
In torrents of glory
Consuming what I used to be.
Fire and fury, sound and silence
Echoes from the other side!

The Great God speaks:
“I WAS THE LION.”

Something sweet and solemn drips
Heavily off a golden mane
I dart my eyes away
From His undoing gaze.
I will not,
I can not breathe.
This, this can not be
Louder, faster,.
Closer He strides,
Further up
and further in
To me.

Still.

He comes in fury, He comes in warmth
He comes in glory.
He comes to me.

And I surrender.

Joy.

Joys that Sting

"Oh doe not die, says Donne, for I shall hate
All women so. how false the sentence rings.
Women? But in a life made desolate
It is the joys once shared that have the stings.

To take the old walks alone, or not at all,
To order one pint where I ordered tow,
To think of, and then not to make, the small
Time-honoured joke (senseless to all but you);


To laugh (oh, one'll laugh), to talk upon
Themes that we talked upon when you were there,
To make some poor pretence of going on,
Be kind to one's old friends, and seem to care,

While no one (O God) through the years will say
The simplest, common word in just your way."

--C.S. Lewis

Thee

As many of you know, I went through a rather difficult season of life from about the end of September to February of this past year. Though I have not emerged unscathed from the battle, the Lord has taught me more than ever before - about myself, my place in His Kingdom, and what to do with this marvelous gift called "life." Below are a few lines I scribbled down during an uneasy night; they're all about moving from sin to grace, fear to trust, dust to glory. I hope you're encouraged; I'd like to know what you all think!


THEE

When white-washed walls and sleepless nights
Bid death to dreams and hide His face
My hope stands firm, my soul clings fast
I slip into the sea of grace.

When endless storms and worldly gales
Capsize this ship of broken praise.
The ballast broken, undone, and yet:
I lean on Him who calms the waves.

Oh how I wish the sun would dawn,
and chase away these clever lies,
to brighten all the colors here,
and strip me of this cruel disguise.

I think of things yet to be,
Like a canvas for a bright, new day,
Yet lurking 'neath my humble hope
are fears untamed, a heart dismayed.

I've had enough of jaded dreams,
and waking to find misery
I'm sick and sorry for all I've done,
Please come again, and rescue me.

Pardon me with springs of grace,
With showers cleansing ever stain,
Calm the fears that tempt new tears,
Till the false gods wither and wane.

~*~

Thee, my Lord and my God, I find
Thou changest not when hope is blind;
You do not run when tempests roar
Or faint when fear is at the fore.

My mountains slipped into the sea
And terrors seemed to swallow me.
Still You stand in sovereign light
Yet kneel with me before each fight.

No more black dragon of despair,
No more hot breath and heavy air,
Can pierce my conscience or hold death's night
His day has put my dark to flight.

“Take heart, my son; you’ll soon be home,
Fresh courage take from heaven’s throne.
Though joy sits begging on empty streets,
Forever she will not orphaned be.”

On Dragons and Communication

The following is an essay I wrote for my COM100 course; the assignment was to write a paper explaining how I influence communication and how communication influences me. I tried to be a little creative with the rather boring topic and here's what happened (oh, and I added some pics for good measure):

Communication is arguably the most influential force in managing human identity, interaction, and activity. In fact, just about every event in a person’s daily life could be demonstrated to be related to how that person sends, organizes, interprets, and responds to the verbal and non-verbal messages that he or she receives. From phone calls to kissing to waving goodbye there are very specific messages that are being relayed from person to person; therefore, it is easy to understand why healthy communication is an essential part of living a flourishing life in society. This brief discussion and analysis will focus primarily on how communication influences the individual and how an individual influences communication; since this essay is intended to be partially autobiographical, statements that refer to the author in the first person should not be perceived as egotistical, but should rather be understood as his attempts to offer a sincere explanation for what he believes and how he came to believe it. Furthermore, I will use a dragon (call him “George”) to illustrate my ideas about how I understand and influence communication; George should be understood as a hypothetical character who, although he exists in a dragon’s body, actually thinks and interacts as a human being; therefore, his examples can be applied to real people (such as myself, assuming that I am not a dragon). The purpose of this brief essay is to demonstrate that an individual’s worldview (as defined below) is ultimately what influences his identity, which in turn shapes the way he communicates, which then determines how he interacts with other individuals, and that those interactions will either reinforce or readjust his worldview depending on whether or not he chooses to apply or ignore the new information gleaned from his interactions.

For the purposes of this essay, I will define a worldview as a complicated network of related assumptions (regarding the nature of time, space, reality, origins, humanity, and so on) that determine how an individual’s knowledge and awareness is interpreted. Although every person possesses a worldview, not everyone will actually reflect upon its content or be consistent in applying it – but they have one, nonetheless, because of the impossibility of the contrary. For example, George the Dragon may respond to me, “But I do not believe that I have a worldview, because I am a dragon, and dragons do not believe in anything,” when the fact of the matter is that his statement is, in and of itself, a worldview because he has just admitted to having a number of related assumptions that is affecting his perception; he is at least assuming the following things: 1) that he does not has a worldview, 2) that he is a dragon (a safe assumption, and one that would be dangerous to argue against since dragons pride themselves in what they are and are known to respond to any opposition with claw, flame, teeth, and other unpleasant interactions), 3) that dragons do not believe in anything (but George is a dragon [assumption 2], and he must believe that his statement about not believing in anything is true, otherwise he would not have said it [or he makes him self to be a liar or perhaps just ignorant]), 4) that I can understand his response, 5) that language exists, 6) that time exists (it took him about seven seconds to give a response that was ordered in a sequential manner), etc… Therefore, since George the Dragon has a network of related assumptions that are determining his perception and interpretation of knowledge, he indeed possesses a worldview.

Since it has been established that every individual (including George) must have a worldview, we must now understand how that worldview will order, shape, and affect identity, communication, interaction, and reinforcement. George has already admitted that his primary identity is related to his “being” (that he is a dragon), not to his “doing” (that he is a village-pillager). Although his “doing” (eating peasants, burning villages, and swatting away those pesky knights in shining armor) may constitute a secondary identity, we can safely assume that his worldview forces him to think of his value and worth as stemming from who he is, not what he does. Because of this, George will have an easier time managing his identity and avoiding an identity crisis. Let’s say, for example, that one day George accidentally flies into a tree and he ends up crippling his wings, breaking a leg, and losing his vision. Since George’s primary identity is not based on his ability to fly, walk, or see, he will not have to go through the painful process of readjusting his worldview (a component of an identity crisis). Although perilously injured, he remains a dragon. Furthermore, because George sees himself as a dragon, he will communicate in accordance with the social norms associated with how a dragon should interact. He will probably be loud, violent, aggressive, inhospitable, rude, and demeaning towards others in both his verbal and non-verbal communication. Finally, George’s interactions with others will either reinforce or readjust his worldview (and therefore his identity). If, one day, a fellow dragon sees George soaring high into the clouds, freefalling all the way back down to earth, and then doing it all over again and again (a ceremony in which dragons communicate with their “soul” [a non-material entity]) and the dragon says to George, “there’s no point in communicating with your soul, you see, because all you are is a biochemical mass existing in a material universe.” George will probably see this as an attack on his very worldview (and therefore his identity), and so he must either demonstrate that his worldview can handle this new information, or he must readjust his worldview in order to accommodate it. So George responds: “I actually agree with everything that you just said, except for that word ‘all.’ I agree that I am a biochemical mass, but I do not believe that that is ALL that I am.” This new information that he received from a communicative interaction with another individual could be accommodated into his worldview, thereby reinforcing who he is and what he does.

[I hit the word limit here, so I had to stop... :( ]