Posts Tagged ‘Christianity’

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 33: The Way of War does not work

September 4, 2013

Why do I keep getting into political arguments with a particular family member? I posted a photo of a “Love Thy Neighbor” T-shirt, with a listing of specific neighbors; a listing that many seem to not include in the definition of ‘neighbor.’ My relative pointed out a protest sign in the background I ignored; and took an entirely different view of the posting that I intended.

I know that my relative and I will probably never agree in these matters; we have entirely different viewpoints on the world, and how it should work. I am trying to suggest to the world [the limited world that gives a rip about my thoughts] that the Way of Jesus will bring us closer to a Way of Peace than a consistent application of the methods that have been used for the last century, that haven’t worked. My relative blames the problems of today’s world on “Liberal bias”; and longs for a reincarnation of Ronald Reagan for President [I wonder what he thought, back in the 80’s?].

As I write this PBS is covering Congress’ debate over whether or not we once again enter into a war. Somehow there are political leaders who believe we can ‘sort of’ enter into a war. A limited war. That somehow we can enter into a Civil War of another country, and not enter into a Civil War. We can kill people in another country indiscriminately with bombs, and somehow not enter into a war. We can bomb, but we won’t use troops on the ground. Sounds to me like the idea of sending ‘military advisers’ to Vietnam, the war that wasn’t really a war…

CONGRESS VOTES
$200bn has been spent this week on ‘smart phones’ and cellular technology; and apparently there is a money problem in this country. I wonder how much in taxes has been paid in regard to the generation of that $200bn… $200bn invested in phones we want but do not really need, when half of the world is starving.

From Nadia Bolz Weber–

Sermon About How Totally Uncool We Are


“When it comes down to it, we just do so much damn pretending. Pretending we don’t really rely a little too much on alcohol. Pretending that we are more confident than we really are.  Pretending that we care more about people than we really do. Pretending we are not afraid. Sometimes we even overcompensate so much about the things we are trying to hide, that no one ever suspects the truth… and then we are left in the aloneness of not ever really being known.
“On some level, we are continually trying to pretend some things about us are not true and other things are…
“The 2000 film, Almost Famous tells the story of a young man who finds himself as a reporter on tour with a famous rock band. His conversation with an older writer at the end of the film captures this perfectly: “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we’re uncool”
“IN the kingdom of God we need not cultivate a persona to hide or overcompensate for the lame, poor, blind and crippled parts of us.  The unflattering photos. The parts which have nothing to offer, the parts of us which need help navigating our lives, the parts of us which must rely on others for help. In other words the uncool parts of ourselves are exactly that which Jesus invites around his table.  As though the only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with God and each other when we are uncool, lame, blind, poor and crippled. And as uncomfortable as it might be to be seen in such a stark and uncompromising light, there is also just so much relief in it. You just don’t have to pretend, or over compensate or be shrewd. You can just be. And in just being you can, in the fierce and loving eyes of God be known, be whole and maybe even rest a little. Because keeping it all up is just exhausting.

The Way of War does not work. It only brings death.

Fhff7-2

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 31: Do Overs

July 11, 2013

My birthday. Technically it was yesterday, but I haven’t been to sleep yet, so it’s still today. My Mother-in-Law was 30 years and one day older than I; this would have been her 91st birthday…
An odd week. A member of our ‘adopted family’ died a couple days ago. I didn’t like her very much, but we’re the only ‘family’ she had in Oregon. My wife was a voluntary care-giver for her, and by the Grace of God grew to like her. She wasn’t a very likeable person; angry most of the time, and feeling sorry for her poor health, and the way people took advantage of her. In my honest moments, I realize that ‘there, but for the Grace of God, go I.’ It’s humbling.
Encouraging a person’s positive traits wasn’t normal procedure in my family, growing up. A lot of put-downs. When I got to college, and was finally out of my Dad’s influence, I was a real smart-ass. I enjoyed insulting people in such a way that they mostly didn’t realize they were getting insulted.
I found that people didn’t really enjoy my behavior. Being an Only, I desperately wanted people to like me, so I decided I needed to change my behavior. Didn’t really know how to make that happen. By the time I’d finished my 5th year, the Creator had come into my life, and I had become a different person.

I can’t say that I understand how this came about. I had no religious upbringing. The Creator became PRESENT for me in a tangible, but subjective way. No burning bushes, no getting thrown off my horse and blinded. But it feels like a similar experience. I became a very unwilling convert to a way of life I didn’t really realize that I had been looking for. I can’t NOT believe, even if I wanted to; I’d have to ignore too much that I’ve experienced.

In college I became torn between majoring in Art or majoring in Architecture. I wanted to major in Illustration, but had neglected to find a college that enabled me to do that sort of thing. The concept of majoring in “Starving Artist” seemed silly, so I decided I’d ‘draw houses’. Never wanted to be an architect. I became contractor, a building designer, a Building Plans Examiner, and then, 15 years ago, I opted for Starving Artist…when I’m not being an architectural consultant.
If I’d been given the opportunity of a Do Over, I would have chosen Starving Artist as a career much earlier on; and possibly changed my life forever. I might have not taken the road where my ‘burning bush’ was burning…There’s a very good chance that I would have become an angry, self-absorbed person, like our recently departed ‘family member’. I can see that kind of storyline in my family history…

Five years ago I gave myself a birthday present–a hand-tooled, custom-made leather belt, with the words, “Mercy Response NOLA 2008” to commemorate a trip to New Orleans with Medical Teams International, to help with Katrina Recovery. At the time I was giving some serious consideration to moving to N’Orlens for several months, in order to give the young couple directing Mercy Response a break. They were clearly exhausted, and as a former contractor, I realized that I was skilled in doing what was needed.
Life got in the way, and then the neuropathy hit. By the summer of 2009, it became very clear that working on houses was no longer going to be part of my life. It’s dangerous working with tools when you’ve lost the sense of touch and pain… Four years later, I’m wiped out by making dinner, or walking up our hill. I know I’m not going to use my shop full of tools, but I have trouble getting rid of them–an unwillingness to let go of a very important part of my past. So, I’m pleased when my kids borrow them and I have no need to have them returned.

When my doc tells me that aside from the neuropathy I’m in good health, and have a long life ahead of me, my inner response is, ‘oh shit. I don’t want to do this for a long time. Morning [my ‘morning’] sucks. Can’t I go Home?’ I want a Do Over, but I’m not sure what I would have done differently…

Jim_DellaThese two showed up in my life recently, and quite unexpectedly…
Writers often talk about how their characters often take on a ‘life of their own’ and end up writing their own stories.
I started illustrating a short story in 1996. I worked on it fairly steadily for a time,  and over time it became less and less of a priority. The two main characters looked quite different:

Jim's GiftFifteen or so years later, I have trouble working at a drafting table, so I now draw in my recliner. My visual acuity sucks, so I have to draw at a much bigger scale. Since I never finished drawing the faces, I need to do all of the faces again, so that they’ll be consistent. Pleasantly surprised by the two people who showed up, I now have to keep working to make the rest of the faces of the same quality… I’m unused to having to keep doing them over and over.

As a freelancer, with typically short deadlines, I rarely have the opportunity for a Do Over.  In all of the children’s books I’ve illustrated, the images went from first draft to finished drawing with very few changes. This doesn’t mean I hit my target every time;  I simply didn’t have time to correct the mistakes. Consequently, all of my children’s books [‘all’ sounds like a large number, doesn’t it?] have a couple bad images–incorrect perspective, inconsistent appearances, FLK [Funny Looking Kid]…ones I’d really like to have done over. But it wasn’t an option.

Since the current book has been ‘cooking’ for nearly 20 years, several Do Overs really won’t be a problem. As long as I don’t lose any other parts of my body in the near future…

61 years…where did it go?

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 29: The other days…

May 10, 2013

Medicine BottleI don’t usually like to deal with my depression in public. Some mentors once told me that if the person you are talking to can’t do anything about the problem you’re having, then it’s somewhat pointless to tell them about it. Unless you are wanting to share your misery.
I’m not really wanting to share my misery, but other mentors have explained to me that shared pain can sometimes be helpful.

Of course, another part of the story is that the gentleman above was facing a hanging in the days ahead. True story. Late 1800s, photo by Edward Curtis. He was called Medicine Hat. His crime? His skin was the wrong color and he lived on land that American settlers wanted. The Westward Migration.

While in relative terms, my challenges are far less than those of Medicine Hat, nonetheless, I’m ‘calling in sick’ for a few hours; possibly the rest of my day. One of the challenges of self-employment is that I have no paid sick leave. I don’t necessarily lose my job, but I don’t get paid if I don’t produce. I’m supposed to be working on some house plans. They are weeks overdue. I’m working at an amazingly slow speed; apparently. I seem to be very busy, but don’t seem to be able to produce with any speed.
I’ve been burning my candle at both ends, and have started on the middle, and I’m not as resilient as I was in years past. If I ever really was. I think that perhaps I self-medicated, and pretended I was resilient.
Tonight I feel sick, sort of. One of the problems of idiopathic polyneuropathy is that I never really know what I’m ‘feeling’. I have a broken toe–the bone at the end separated at the joint– that I’m only am aware of the damage a few times a week, and only in the sense that I have a sensation in a toe that normally has no sensation. I ‘should’ have sciatica, but that nerve doesn’t function correctly either. After 30+ years of chronic pain, much of what I dealt with in the past was predictable. I still feel ‘shadows’ of being out of whack; but those things mostly don’t hurt.

What hurts now is ‘nerve-pain’ — pain that isn’t really associated with visible injury. Biopsies have determined that I have damaged nerves; no clue why. We have millions of nerve endings in our bodies. I’ve lost a few million nerve endings. I still have a couple million left. I’m learning to be thankful for what I have left–it’s more profitable than whining about what I’ve lost. I think I can guess what people with ‘phantom limb pain’ experience. My feet have little external sensation, but they ‘burn’, almost constantly. Particularly when they decide they are cold. Burning cold. Like a REALLY bad sunburn. Go figure.

Among other things, my gut changed 4 years ago, this month. I’ll spare you the messy details. Today it’s worse. My doc of 30 years retired about 2 years before the neuropathy started. I’m on my third doc since [not counting ‘specialists’]. A new doc has no history beyond what’s on paper. Since most of my symptoms are subjective, a new doc has nothing to compare with, and no particular reason to accept my assertion that my life was much different 4 years ago.

Four years plus a day or two ago, I begged my Creator to let me come Home. I was at my nephew’s wedding, and after a couple of hours filming with my pocket camera, my hands were shaking too much to shoot anymore, and I ached everywhere. I made a deal with the Creator, a couple of decades back, that I wouldn’t try to speed my progress Home. A few weeks from that wedding night, the neuropathy took over half of my body. Never make demands of the Creator–it’s extremely dangerous. That painful past, that I often complained about internally, was better than my ‘new normal’.

Most people are unaware of my physical challenges; I can fake ‘normal’ for a couple hours at a time. I prefer the ruse. I have some trusted friends that I share some of the challenges with; it lessens the burden. But the reality is that so far, no one has a clue as to how to address the slow decline. Since the people I’m normally around can’t help much, I try not to make a big deal about it.
Tonight I feel like whining. Maybe someone will understand that they aren’t alone.

Maybe the reason for the pain is so we would pray for strength
And maybe the reason for the strength is so that we would not lose hope
And maybe the reason for all hope is so that we could face the world
And the reason for the world is to make us long for Home
Well I know you’re past the point of broken, surrounded by your fear
I know your feet are tired and weary from the road that you walk down here
But just keep your eyes on Heaven and know that you are not alone
Remember the reason for the world
No ear has heard, No eye has seen, not even in your wildest dreams
A beauty that awaits beyond this world. When you look into the eyes of Grace
and hear the voice of mercy say, ‘Child, welcome to the reason for the world’
Matthew West

The hurt that broke your heart, and left you trembling in the dark, feeling lost and alone
Will tell you hope’s a lie
But what if every tear you cry will seed the ground where joy will grow
And nothing is wasted; Nothing is wasted
In the hands of our Redeemer
Nothing is wasted

It’s from the deepest wounds that beauty finds a place to bloom
And you will see before the end that every broken piece
is gathered in the heart of Jesus and what’s lost will be found again
And nothing is wasted; Nothing is wasted
In the hands of our Redeemer Nothing is wasted

From the ruins, from the ashes, beauty will rise
From the wreckage, from the darkness, Glory will shine.
Nothing is wasted
In the hands of our Redeemer Nothing is wasted
Jason Gray

piggy back draft 5
A detail from an illustration for a book I never had the chance to finish.That’s Hiroshima in the background; the little girl is going to die in a few minutes from radiation poisoning. True story. Thousands of parent-less, home-less children wandered the ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombs were dropped, looking for family or friends. Most of them died horribly alone and in pain, hours and days after the destruction. A teacher returned home from an out of town trip, and went to search for her sibling’s children. All of the children she found wandering died in her arms. She survived, and published her diary.

We did that. The good guys, the God-fearing, freedom-loving, rights-preserving US of A. Supposedly we killed hundreds of thousands to prevent the killing of thousands that would result from an invasion of the Home Island of Japan. My gut feeling is that the issue was really the nationality of those thousands who were ‘spared.’
The rest of the world remembers Hiroshima and Nagasaki and views us as either hypocrites or really stupid. We blame it on the past, and other people. But the true horror is that there are still idiots in the world who consider nuclear weapons as viable alternatives. Some of them live very close to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The reality is that while we are no better than the rest of the world, we also are not that much worse.

Home would be good.

Time for another hero movie.

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 27: Crimes Against Humanity

March 31, 2013

sorrow

I watch a lot of movies.
Some movies I watch for entertainment; some for education in the Human Condition. Sometimes they overlap.
The Whistleblower.
[http://www.thewhistleblower-movie.com/]
A movie based on a period in the life of Kathryn Bolkovac; a midwestern cop that went to Bosnia to work as an International Peace Keeper. Employed by a Defense Contractor, given Diplomatic Immunity, as were her counterparts, she uncovered an organized crime ring of sex slavers–‘human traffickers’–to make it sound more polite. The Organized Crime ring leaders were UN cops and diplomats, immune from prosecution. Guilty of torture, rape and other crimes against all that is considered human. Kathryn was kicked out of Bosnia, and fired from her job by her Defense Contractor boss. She turned to the BBC, to tell her story. The incident led to the movie.

Slavery is as big an industry today, as it ever was in the 19th Century. And very little is being done to stop it.

I know of many women who were raped as children by male relatives. I know of mothers who have refused to aid their brutalized daughters… again, and again and again. Not women in the slums of Bosnia, but in Portland and its suburbs. Middle-class families respected in their communities. No better than sex slavers in Bosnia and India, and countries throughout the world.

Today was my 40th Easter. Before that I had 20 or so ‘chocolate egg easters’ but they don’t really count. They were as meaningful [candy] and meaningless as most of the other ‘cultural holidays’ we celebrate.
This morning Pete talked about the ‘religion of the box’–the box in which we store our religious texts and practices, available to pull from out of the closet whenever they are needed, and returned when we get on with life.
He also talked about Jesus, who was born, lived, died…and rose from the dead. He is still alive today. The Creator of the Universe entered time and space, and lived as a human being. To prove to us that He understands life as a human. He’s not a God who lives in a box, or in a church. He lives in the hearts of human beings. He’s alive, He can’t be controlled;  and sometimes messes with our lives.

Pete talked about the guy in Zanesville, Ohio a year or two ago, who upon his death released all of his ‘exotic’ animals. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my…
We like our lions in boxes at the zoo; we don’t look over our shoulders in the parking lot to see whether or not we’ve been followed by the lions. For a time, in Zanesville, one could see a lion on one’s doorstep.

Jesus is the God who refuses to stay in the box; He messes with our lives. He’s been messing with my life for 40 years now.

When I hear of stories like The Whistleblower, and I hear pronouncements like I heard on the radio this morning, driving my sister to church, that all of our problems can be solved by taking responsibility for our actions [partially true], I can’t help but wonder about those for whom no one is taking care, through no fault of their own. This last week has involved us in the life of a woman who refuses to accept responsibility for her situation; who grew up in an abusive situation, and may not even comprehend the concept of human responsibility. The temptation is to rescue her; the reality is that she is a very unpleasant woman who drives help away from herself, and sees no reason to change. There seems to be no comprehension that she is her own worst enemy.

When the Church advocates so largely and so vocally over some Issues, and ignores so many others I get angry. Part of me wants to do a ‘John Wayne’ and take the law into my own hands. Becoming lawless in order to deal with the lawless. Performing a LOT of castrations with or without a rusty knife…
Politicians getting rich while Seniors agonize how they will pay a $30/month rent increase in low income housing, when they barely have enough money to buy groceries. The extolling of the American Way of Life.

I get angry because my body no longer supports my ability to go build homes for the homeless,  or even to help cook Easter breakfast…

…so I write of the Man who healed the sick, fed the poor, and blessed the poor in spirit. Who lives, and who lives in the lives of His people. Just not enough.

garden gethsemane rev2

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 26: Four Decades…

February 27, 2013

heroes

Today was my 40th Rebirth-day. Four decades in this walk of faith, a walk called Christian. My life has a soundtrack, as it is with many others. I think my life began in high school—Senior English—when ‘Captain Bob’ played for us the soundtrack to “Man of La Mancha:”

“I shall impersonate a man. His name is Alonso Quijana, a country squire no longer young. Being retired, he has much time for books. He studies them from morn till night and often through the night and morn again, and all he reads oppresses him; fills him with indignation at man’s murderous ways toward man. He ponders the problem of how to make better a world where evil brings profit and virtue none at all; where fraud and deceit are mingled with truth and sincerity. He broods and broods and broods and broods and finally his brains dry up. He lays down the melancholy burden of sanity and conceives the strangest project ever imagined – -to become a knight-errant, and sally forth into the world in search of adventures; to mount a crusade; to raise up the weak and those in need. No longer will he be plain Alonso Quijana, but a dauntless knight known as Don Quixote de La Mancha.”

Church and faith were never a part of my upbringing. My parents, according to legend, were active in the church until their early adulthood. I was told once that my Dad was a lay preacher at some point in his early adulthood. Something drove my parents away from The Church. I was in my twenties when I first walked into a church sanctuary.

Listening to the story of Don Quixote was my first real lesson in the concept that one could live for something beyond one’s own life. I found the album during my first months at Oregon State University, and listened to my bootleg recording for years. In those years I learned to spot Christians from great distances, and to avoid them. My only real knowledge of what they had to say was that they said too much. We had ‘coffee houses’ in college; they had little to do with coffee, and much to do with folk songs. I could always tell when the Christians were about to sing, because they always had to explain the meaning of their songs; as if the song were so poorly crafted that it could not tell its own story…

I remember lying on my bed, for hours in the dim, listening to the songs of Judy Collins, Rod McKuen, and so many others. Dreary songs that matched my newfound understanding of just how crappy the world has become. Rescued by the Draft Lottery from a possibly short life in Vietnam, I lived among war protesters, dopers and murder. A young girl who lived two floors below me, was murdered one night; as it turned out several months later, she was murdered by a high-school aged kid whose emotional development didn’t match his intellect. She was murdered because she wouldn’t have sex with him…

In my third year of college, having transferred to University of Oregon, I was introduced to the concept that the Creator of the Universe had entered life in the form of Jesus Christ. At some point I made the connection that this incarnation was similar to when I picked up a rock, and found a bunch of wriggly creatures trying to escape the light. Unpleasant little creatures; what would it take for me to love those creatures enough that I would give up my life as a human to become a wriggly creature, so that I could share what I knew about Life with them… Multiply this by Infinity, and one comes close to the story of Jesus.

February 26th marks my ‘official’ entrance into the Kingdom, but it’s really the date that I audibly accepted the concept that I was willing to accept the Creator’s presence in my life. The journey of my acceptance into Faith took years.

the universe in his hands_1

Having come to an understanding of the concept that one could be “so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good,” I decided I wouldn’t walk that path. Many believers walk the high road that parallels the ‘Valley of the Shadow.’ I decided to find a path along the wall of that valley. Similar, I suppose, to my scaling the banks of the Sandy River as a young boy, looking for the ‘right’ place to fish. I never fell; I came close many times. I was carried downstream by the current one time, because I had stepped further out into the river, again looking for that ‘right’ place; my grandfather running alongside the river, trying to reach me with his pole…

You know what I’ve put myself through
All those empty dreams I chased
And when my body lies in the ruins
Of the life that nearly ruined me
Will You pick up the pieces
That were pure and true
And breathe Your life into them
And set them free?
And when You start this world over
Again from scratch
Will You make me anew
Out of the stuff that lasts?
Stuff that’s purer than gold is
And clearer than glass could ever be
Can I be with You?

A slight paraphrase of the Rich Mullins song. This life has nearly ruined me. Thirty years of pain, once again increasing, as I battle neuropathy. My balance is shot, my endurance is shot, my hands are beginning to shake enough that more and more of my art has to be digital…I can hold onto a mouse, and move it with my wrist, when my fingers won’t hold still. The computer at the school where I teach a digital art class has a stationary mouse with a track ball; there are days when I have trouble convincing my fingers to locate the correct place to grab a file. Empty dreams I’ve chased…

I’ve learned that this life, this long and short time here, is merely an eyeblink in the timelessness of Eternity. I’ve learned that I’m not a body with a soul, but a soul with a body.

Maybe the reason for the pain
Is so we would pray for strength
And maybe the reason for the strength
Is so that we would not lose hope
And maybe the reason for all hope
Is so that we could face the world
And the reason for the world
Is to make us long for Home
Well I know you’re past the point of broken
Surrounded by your fear
I know your feet are tired and weary
from the road that you walked down here
But just keep your eyes on Heaven
and know that you are not alone
Remember the reason for the world
No ear has heard, No eye has seen
Not even in your wildest dreams
A beauty that awaits beyond this world
When you look into the eyes of grace
and hear the voice of mercy say
Child, welcome to the reason for the world

Thank you, Matthew West, for putting words together that I haven’t been able to…

the universe in his hands_2

 

 

 

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 23: Sustainability

November 20, 2012

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I just finished watching Ken Burns’ “The Dust Bowl;” chronicling the 30 or so years that it took to turn a self-sustaining savannah of Buffalo Grass into what almost became the Sahara Desert revisited. Land that should never have been cultivated, because it can’t sustain agriculture. Rain is infrequent, but Buffalo Grass had roots that grew 5ft into the ground. The ‘Dust Bowl’ happened because wheat ranchers over-cultivated land that should have been left for grazing. I didn’t keep track of the numbers; but the narration speaks of millions of tons of topsoil that was blown away. At one point in the mid-30’s, Oklahoma dust fell on a tanker 300 miles at sea.

The area where the Dust Bowl once existed is now used for “corn” production, which requires even more water than wheat. The water for this production is pumped out of the Ogallala Aquifer. Not only does the aquifer provide water for irrigation, but it also provides drinking water for much of the central plains.  Some estimates say the aquifer will dry up in as few as 25 years. The Dust Bowl will very likely return. Drinking water used for hog feed.

Why are we so stupid?

The farmers came because they wanted to own land, and to make a life for themselves and their descendants. A valid desire. The Ken Burns story references the writings of Carolyn Henderson; a woman who came to Oklahoma looking to build a life for herself and her husband, and their family. I have relatives who are Hendersons, probably not related; my father expected to be a wheat rancher, here in Oregon. The Ken Burns story pushed ‘buttons’ that I prefer keeping un-pushed.

In America we have the freedom to ruin the land that sustains us. We do things because we can; not because we should. This too, is the American Way.

There are those who had the ability to create a ‘dust bowl’ of our economy. Not just the American economy; but much of the Western world’s economy.  The homeless [both on the street, and those who now live with family and friends, having lost their homes] are the ‘Okies’ of today. Victims of our own foolishness and/or lack of foresight. We over-cultivated our economy, in the same manner as did those who created the Dust Bowl. The parallels are frightening.

I am heartened by individuals in my children’s generation; people who want to repair the land, and live in a more sustainable manner. It requires a divorce from consumerism; which drives our economy. So, we not only need to live a more sustainable lifestyle when it comes to agriculture and energy production; but we also need to wean our economy off of consumerism, and into sustainability.

A large portion of the population of our world live in tin shacks or mud huts. They have internet access in this world of dire poverty; the contrast is also staggering.

Black Friday is coming, this week; and retailers are excited. During the time of the Dust Bowl, there occurred a Black Sunday. Walls of dust, thousands of feet tall, blocked out the light of the sun for hours on end, for much of the Plains states. I wonder if our upcoming Black Friday is also leading to a Black Sunday in the future.

Cover art for Scholastic’s “Oregon At Last”

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 18: Dark Matter and Faith

July 24, 2012

I was watching an episode of PBS’ “Scientific American Frontiers” the other night; an episode created while the Large Hadron Collider was still under construction. Physicists believe that the majority of the mass in the Universe is composed of ‘dark matter’–subatomic particles we cannot see or really understand. As you sit here reading this, thousands of neutrinos, again subatomic particles, are passing through your body, without your awareness of them.

At the atomic level, most of our bodies are composed of ‘nothing’–gravitational force whose origin isn’t really understood. The center of the atoms that compose our bodies is like some grains of sand in the middle of a football stadium, with a handful of electrons whirling around in the seating area. Our solidity, the solidity of your keyboard, is an illusion of gravity.

Physicists now believe that our expanding Universe is expanding at a faster rate than it was 5 billion years ago; the expansion being the result of the forces called ‘dark energy’–the companion of ‘dark matter.’ String theorists suggest that in reality, Reality is composed of 11 dimensions; 4 of which are known to us. The three dimensions of geometry plus time.

I know a lot of Christians who have a very hard time swallowing all of the above comments; as if they were stuck somewhere past Galileo; or perhaps stuck in the 19th Century…

I don’t have a problem with modern Physics and Faith. Having been interested in science long before I came to faith, for me it was a matter of integrating the teachings of the Church into what I already believed to be true. As a result, for nearly 40 years I have been walking down a long and winding road between the world of The Church and the world of The World. The Apostle Paul wrote about our being players on a stage, viewed by an unseen audience. I once heard a description of neutrinos, from a physicist in Antarctica, that sounded like a description of angels… I believe that I am a soul who has a body, rather than the reverse. No one has yet measured the soul. Some find that a reason to believe we do not have souls. I am of the opinion that somewhere among those 7 hidden dimensions is a dimension of the soul; the dimension of oneness with the Creator.

People get all bent out of shape over stories like Jonah and Great Fish; as if the most important part of the story was the fish. This story was told around campfires for ages before it was written down. There were no ‘eyewitness news’ cameras around to capture the event; no investigative journalists… How often have I heard the equivalent of ‘I felt like I was trapped inside a great fish’ become ‘he was trapped inside a whale for three days!’ Just read Facebook on any given day… The important part of the story is the Creator reaching out to the people of Ninevah. Who cares whether or not there was a big fish that could swallow a man for a long time and spit him out again? That’s not the point. The real story is just as True regardless of whether the details are factual.

Perhaps it’s my artistic temperament; I’ve never believed that Truth has to be factual. There are a lot of believers who somehow think that Truth only comes packaged in Facts. The entire point of the Newer Testament is that the Creator of the Universe entered time and space; and said that we really don’t have to live like the idiots we are… The rest is commentary.

The landscape should be far smaller; and the universe much larger. In truth, our full-blown, pain-filled lives are the scale of wood lice under a rock; the size of an ant farm, enlarged by a magnifying glass. Or probably more like the scale of the mites that crawl around on the heads of houseflies–I have a photo of these mites in my office, taken through an electron microscope. In the fabric of the Universe, our sometimes awful and barely-bearable lives are as miniscule in scale as the mites on the head of a housefly.

and yet…

Scripture says that we are created a little lower than the angels. More of the Universe that we usually can’t see. As we know it today, energy never dies; it merely transforms. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter, James and John saw Moses and Elijah standing with Jesus. Again, there was no ‘eyewitness news’; the Jewish faith forbade visible likenesses of that which was Holy. How did Peter, James and John know these guys were Moses and Elijah? They’d been dead for centuries. Name tags? A formal introduction? They apparently weren’t ‘dead men walking.’

The Bible and Faith make a lot more sense if one understands the concept of Eternity and Infinity from the standpoint of modern Physics. It’s only when one tries to fit Scripture into little wooden boxes, so that all of the questions can get answered,  that things start getting messy.

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 17: This is what I am here to teach—a mystery!

June 4, 2012

 

 

As I write this, I’m watching a biography of Audrey Hepburn. Watching the images go by on the screen, there are so many that are familiar. I illustrated a biography of hers several years ago; a ‘work for hire’ job for which I was paid; but never saw in print. One of my projects that did not go well. Portions of the illustrations went well, but overall, the book’s illustrations flopped. As usually happens when I illustrate a book, I became immersed in her life, searching the Internet for photos, and watching her films; all in a space of a few weeks. Watching her story after all these years is a strange déjà vu.
Judy and I were on our way to Denver, Colorado, to attend Rob’s graduation from Johnson & Wales University. I planned on working on the illustrations with my portable drawing board, scanning the drawings at Kinko’s, and manipulating them on my laptop. My laptop decided to crap out on me during the trip; and most of the illustrations had to get finished after we returned home, by working 16 hours a day for 2 weeks, in order to meet my deadline. As it happens whenever I have to work in a rush, things did not go well, and I had no time for making better versions of the images… I delivered my illustrations on time, I got paid, but received little satisfaction from the project.

    “All of life is a mystery, but the answer to the mystery is outside ourselves, and not inside. You can’t go on peeling yourself like an onion, hoping that when you come to the last layer, you will find what an onion really is. The mystery of an onion is still unexplained, because like man, it is the issue of an eternal creative act. I stand in God’s shoes, but I can’t tell you any more. Don’t you see? This is what I am here to teach—a mystery! People who demand to have all of creation explained from beginning to end are asking the impossible. Have you ever thought that by demanding to know the explanation for everything are committing an act of pride?  We are limited creatures. How can any one of us encompass infinity?”

Pope Kiril I, The Shoes of the Fisherman; Morris L. West

…I got paid, but received little satisfaction from the project… I wanted a ‘do-over’, but didn’t have the chance. A lot of the people in my life are going through difficult times right now; myself included. Doesn’t seem right, doesn’t seem fair, we want a ‘do-over’. As they were growing up, I often told my children that ‘life is hard; then you die’. This is my third career, the first two not ending as well as I’d have liked. The line, “…and they lived happily ever after…” hasn’t been the story of my life. Until I reflect upon the lives of others…
    A scene from a Hiroshima Diary, another project that didn’t work out; again because of an unreasonable time line. The above illustration was a gift. I was compelled to create the drawing above, the product of a drawing marathon, and I felt the Hand of the Creator guiding me. Unfortunately, I had to earn a living while working on the project, and I could not devote the concentrated time that I had with the first illustration. The story, written from the reflections of a woman still living in Japan, tells the story of a teacher who returned to Hiroshima a few days after the bomb, looking for her niece and nephew. Throughout the story she meets other children, all of whom die in her arms, from radiation poisoning. Children everywhere, separated from their parents or huddling by their deceased parents. The teacher brings a final blessing to their short lives. A part of our ‘proud American history’ that never gets told…
One of the reasons why I watch so many movies is to enter into the stories of other people. I prefer living my life in my cave, rather than interacting with others; at the same time I realize that my Creator made me as a person who needs other people in my life, in order for me to grow. When I was in college I was told repeatedly that “God has a plan for your life;” and I’ve always wondered whether I was really following that plan. My desire has been to follow that plan, and my desire has been to live the life I felt led to follow. My assumption, based on things I’d heard from platforms and pulpits, was that my life was supposed to work out well—by my definition of well. In truth, my life has worked out well; but I suffer from the Human Condition, I suffer from envy. I want my life to work out like some other people’s lives have worked out. Funny how we rarely envy those who live in tin- or cardboard shacks. I’ve met people who live in tin- or cardboard shacks, and have been learning that happiness does not depend upon the things with which we clutter our lives.

Some people are content with not asking questions about their lives; some people have no questions to ask.

    These lives remind me of the fact that I am blessed. I’m angry with my dissolving body; I’m angry about the stupid financial decisions I made when I didn’t realize that the economy was going to collapse. And yet, I have a roof over my head; my children have roofs over their heads; I’ve been married to Judy for 36 years [in a couple of weeks]; my career with the City earned a small pension that pays a lot of our bills. I can create images that have meaning for me.
Life is a mystery. Sherlock Holmes isn’t around to answer all of the questions for us. We have to live with the questions until we get Home. A lot of people claim to have answers to the questions, and I suppose it’s a good thing that these answers work for them. Unfortunately, a lot of the answers aren’t as universal as they believe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 16: only you can know if the price is worth the stress

May 20, 2012

Every now and then I get paid to have fun. A client wanted some ‘bots’ for his PowerPoint project, so I was able to design ‘bots’. I wanted to avoid ‘feet’ since we’re in the 21st Century, but the client didn’t seem to understand plasma jets. In the time-honored tradition of animated robots, all of my bots were created from ordinary household objects…

Our pastor reminded us this morning of the importance of joy in our lives. That’s why Christ came to space/time as the incarnated Creator; to help us find joy in our lives. The Church has messed that up for the last couple of millennia, because rules are easier than freedom. I needed to hear that message today, because I’m still beating myself up for once again succumbing to one of my perennial temptations–one that has cost me dearly over my life. I have the ability to willingly abuse my body with overwork, in order to accomplish goals that I set for myself; substituting self-medication for common sense. This last week it was 6 hours of sleep in 48, I think, in order to finish a project by a totally unreasonable deadline. But I wanted the money that the job would bring.

Richard Jesse Watson, a very wise man, once told me, “You can get quality, speed, and inexpensive but not all three at once. In other words, if they want it fast and cheap, fine, but they can’t expect quality. If they want fast and quality, fine but it won’t be cheap. If they want cheap and quality, that too is possible, but it shouldn’t be expected fast, as it might be more of a favor or gift.
If it is something that you feel you need to do for you, then only you can know if the price is worth the stress.”

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 13: the predicament of nuclear man

February 27, 2012

Today is my 39th Re-Birthday.

The first part of Henri Nouwen’s “The Wounded Healer” [The Search of Nuclear Man] describes my theological quest for meaning in life: “When we look around us we see man paralyzed by dislocation and fragmentation, caught in the prison of his own mortality. However, we also see exhilarating experiments of living by which he tries to free himself of the chains of his own predicament, transcend his mortal condition, reach beyond himself, and experience the source of a new creativity.”
Using Nouwen’s categories, I was a Mystic in a time of theRevolutionaries during the first half ‘the seventies’. Too bound by my upbringing to truly become a Revolutionary–I considered emigrating to Canada to avoid the Draft, but didn’t have the nerve. I was ‘saved’ by a very high draft number. Had I been born 4-6 hours earlier in my 10-month gestation, I would have probably become a 2nd Lieutenant in Vietnam, with a 20-minute life expectancy. I had no religious beliefs nor upbringing, so I could not become a conscientious objector; even though that was an appropriate definition.

I came to life in college.
I really have very few memories from childhood. Memories from our family cabin on the Sandy River, near Brightwood, Oregon. Some hormonal experiences/dreams. Some boring trips to my grandmother’s house in Condon, Oregon. Memories of my Grandparents’ house. Helping my ‘Grandfather’ [great uncle] build their last house. Riding my bicycle/jumping off of my bicycle onto our lawn. Playing in the back yard of my across-the-street neighbor/best friend, Bobby. There are more memories from high school, although not a lot. Memories of my best friend, Pete; and my other best friend, Mark. Pete remains on the periphery of my life; Bobby and Mark are absent.
For many years, I felt as though I could clearly remember every day of my two years at Oregon State. Discovery. The beginnings of an understanding of who I am. Chronic despondency. Hours and hours in my darkened room, listening to the dreary music of Rod McKuen and other folksingers who saw the problems of life, but had few suggestions for improving the situation.
“In the absence of clear boundaries between himself and his milieu, between fantasy and reality, between what to do and what to avoid, it seems that [he] has become a prisoner of the now, caught in the present without meaningful connections with his past or future. When he goes home he feels that he enters a world which has become alien to him. The words his parents use, their questions and concerns, their aspirations and worries, seem to belong to another world, with another language and another mood. When he looks into his future everything becomes one big blur, an impenetrable cloud. He finds no answers to questions about why he lives and where he is heading. [He] is not working hard to reach a goal, he does not look forward to the fulfillment of a great desire, nor does he expect that something great or important is going to happen. He looks into empty space and is sure of only one thing: If there is anything worthwhile in life it must be here and now.”

At University of Oregon I encountered The Eternal. I lived across the hall from two of those ‘annoying Christians,’ who in time, became close friends; Brad remains my spiritual ‘father/big brother’. After months of asking, I finally agreed to go with them to their Sunday night meal and Bible study at the pastor’s house. One gathering sticks in my mind; the group was kneeling in a circle at the end of the evening, praying; and I realized that these people were not delusional, they actually were in contact with someone I did not know, nor had ever heard about.
“For the mystic as well as for the revolutionary, life means breaking through the veil covering our human existence and following the vision that has become manifest to us. Whatever we call this vision-“The Holy,” “The Numinon,” “The Spirit,” or “Father”-we still believe that conversion and revolution alike derive their power from a source beyond the limitations of our own createdness.”

While I consider today to be the anniversary of my rebirth, it really didn’t happen on an individual day. It probably started in my second year at Oregon State, when I told my good friend, Jeff, to quit bugging me about his newly-found belief in Jesus: the story of the druggie that had an overnight conversion and became a street preacher. Our 2am sessions in the dorm hallway, Jeff singing Crosby, Stills and Nash in a voice like Neil Young; and then singing strange Christian songs in the same voice. He moved his ministry to University of Oregon after I wrote  a lonely letter describing my living among strangers. The conversion process continued actively for my next three years at U of O and my first couple years after college. By the time I was 28 I was indelibly altered.

After nearly 50 years of an artist’s life, I really can’t find a single image that represents my coming to faith. Which is probably why I consider myself an illustrator rather than an artist. I don’t do well with creating abstract images; and the conversion to faith is an abstract process. The Apostle Paul’s description of life as a battle may have something to do with my fascination with Asian martial arts movies, even though I’m a pacifist. One of the reasons I could not honestly become a member of the Society of Friends [Quakers]; even though their beliefs are probably more along the lines of my own than the conventional Protestant church.

“…and the monstrous creatures of whales” [below] probably represents my faith most adequately, although I really don’t know why.  The Eternal cannot be described in an image; the wonder of Creation can perhaps best be described by the ocean of the South Pacific [I’m not familiar with the South Atlantic]. Warm, teaming with life, teaming with Wonder. I invested two years of my life creating the full-size image from which the image below is derived; in the *interesting* nature of my life, I can’t justify the expense of printing the image in its glory…

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