Thursday, January 2, 2014

Only to be Jesus

Steady as a preacher, free as a weed. That's my motto. Do what's right and live in the freedom of Christ. My motto is currently being challenged by the idea that freedom in Christ is secondary to submitting to one another out of reverence for Him and fostering unity among man. I'm getting married in a week, and there's no doubt that this has all come up because of God. I don't know if I'm supposed to be learning to submit my life to others or hold to my principles and beliefs, or somehow both, but it has completely disrupted my plans for a stable and zen time of preparation for married life. In a way, I'm being prepared for marriage better than I could have ever planned. I a quickly needing to learn exactly what I believe about Jesus' character and what God says is right and wrong as well as how to submit to others in love. Unity and truth are going to be key in marriage, and Jesus is giving me a crash course in their wisdom. I started writing earlier tonight and this is what came out: 


My life is a breath in time.
Quickly it goes. Swift enough to be forgotten.
So what am I charged with in a fleeting existence?
To do good.
Serve God. Serve God as though you have no goals for your own life.
Die to yourself: give up everything that you claim rights to. Sacrifice yourself for the sake of making your entire being into the workings of Jesus.

My hands, only to be the hands of Jesus.
My mind, only to be the mind of Jesus,
My words, only to be the words of Jesus,

In every moment ask yourself: “How can I do good? How can I be Jesus here and now?”

Commune with God and pray without ceasing.
Keep your ears and eyes open for needs that need filling.
Speak words that are the words of Jesus.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Like a Thief in the Night

Alaska Legacy intramural volleyball at 10pm. I'd missed a lot of games lately and as I teetered on the edge of decision making, decided it had been too long. I should just go.

We started like we would any other game and as per usual within the first ten minutes it was clear who was going to be having fun and who were going to be the joy suckers. I was being a joy sucker.

There was no unusual energy. We had some great plays and screamed in each others faces. We had some pathetic plays and internally smoldered. We could have beat the other team but there was no sense of urgency. Just another game on another night. We played three games and lost in the third. I was mad because my setting had been off but I figured there's always another night. Whatever. Better luck next time.

We gathered around for team high five's and my team mate came over and put an arm around me. 

"That's the last of the Alaska Legacy," he said. I was confused.

"What?" I asked.

"You're the last Alaskan on the team. Next year there won't be anymore Alaskans," he answered. I stared at him. 

"What?" I repeated lamely.

"Did I not tell you guys it was the championship game?" He asked. None of us had known. The silence was palpable. I wondered when I would ever get the chance to play again. That might have been it. For years. Was that how I had wanted to spend my last moments on the court? Of course not. If I had known that this was it, it would have been different.

Like a thief in the night. 

It hit me as I drove home. This is how He's going to come. No one is going to warn us that He's on His way so that we can clean our houses, pay off our credit card debts, and call our mother's to make things right before He gets here. Suddenly He'll be standing in front of you, ready to review who you are right in that moment; who you were the five minutes before He got here; who you've been in the week before He showed up on your door step. 

There is no other time but right now to be excellent. At any moment I could turn around and be faced with the One who is giving me the chance to be excellent. Who has asked me to be excellent. Given me the tools and told me to create excellence with them. 

Who do I want to be when I come home one day and He's sitting at my dining room table with my life printed out for review?

"Your faithfulness is going to be judged by your actions from the last hour," He'll state. And I'll think of the times I denied my family, or faced demons, but none of that will matter. It will be too late to live with urgency. To late to know that this day and this moment are all I'll ever have. What do I want him to see when he looks at the last hour of my life?

Excellence.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

My Life as Baked Macaroni

The kitchen was the organizational equivalent of a child's play place. It was the moment when she looked around at the cheese stains splattered across the stove top, the bubbling mass in the pot turning brown, the overflow of half chopped, grated and spilled ingredients strewn across the countertops that dinner reached its climax. The pasta was turning into one large sticky mass in the strainer. The onion with one chunk ripped out still sat in a partially peeled mass on the cutting board. The one knife in her apartment was a three inch dull blade stuck loosely into its handle and nothing would cut. Not even her finger in fact, when she failed to recognize which side of the metal was sharp and tried to cut with the wrong side, her finger over the upturned blade. Had she doubled all the ingredients like she had planned? She couldn't remember. How much was a roux supposed to bubble before it thickens? She was entirely unsure. Desperation and confusion began to set it and that's when she thought, "I don't know where to go from here. I have no idea what I've already done. I should just scrap it all: its hopeless."

What a dangerous thought.

What is it that makes us believe lies? Confusion and chaos? They can take over our senses until all that's left from the whirlwind of stimuli is a black and white decision made out of desperation to gain control. Candy coated half truths? So close to what we know is good, to what we know we want to taste and see that we latch on and eat our fill, hoping the candy coating will never give way to the reality of the half truth: the lie. Our perceptions. Overstimulated or offered something so close to what we desire, we perceive it is a certain way and we act. What is it that makes us believe lies? Ourselves.

Still, what is it that makes us stay hopeful? What do those optimistic people persons know that the rest of us do not? It would seem they have embraced the sentiment that life is not what it seems. Their perceptions do not build truth. The girl in the kitchen, lost in her college age cooking confusion, was not perceiving anything beyond the confusion, the chaos, and the seductive thought that this could all end if she just turned off all the burners, dumped it down the drain, and ate grapes for dinner.

God, in his ultimate wisdom, knows better than the girl in the kitchen. Knows more about how to make a good roux than she ever will. The fact that he knows what a roux even is has already put him miles ahead of her culinary prowess. God is in the business of knowing truth, of seeing the reality, and working our confusion and chaos out for good. He is in the business of giving us hope, which is precisely why he does not let a good Baked Macaroni go bad.

So, when her roommate and his girlfriend came through the door, God demonstrated the fact that life is not what it seems. The girl took no time admitting her faults. "I need help," she confessed. The first dinner she was going to make as a successful independent woman was going to have to wait until another day, because God had a roux to save.

Her roommate flipped on the fan.

"Did you double the flour?" Semi horror ensued. No. Of course not.

He began to painstakingly dice the onion.

"Did you want this whole onion chopped?" That would be ideal.

She began to follow the recipe again. The milk seemed to drown the sauce and the cheese wouldn't seem to melt, but she kept going and followed the directions anyway. The pair of optimists both kept saying that things have a tendency work out and it would be fine. She trusted that maybe, this wasn't how it seemed, and when she finally got the macaroni in the oven, it was over. No more chaos. No more confusion. It was done.

Sometimes dinner takes two hours instead of the projected fifty minutes. Sometimes pots boil over and sauces start to turn brown. Countertops will inevitably get cluttered. But the truth never changes, and the truth is that God cares about baked macaroni. Beyond our perceptions is a life that is not what it seems, because God plows through our chaos, confusion, and every half truth, and works out our lives for good. He is capable of turning us all into optimists if we're willing to let go of our perceptions and know that he works out all things for the good of those who love him.

The baked macaroni was delicious. A little pepper. A little garlic salt. If God cares about baked macaroni, how much more does he care about our lives? I anticipate the end of my life being like that first bite. Looking back it will all seem a bit traumatic, and maybe a bit overdramatic, but I'll be savoring my resurrected body because of the power and love of Christ.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Exploration


Where are the secrets:
The secrets for me?
Where I’ve never been
There do they be.

It doesn’t much matter
If someone’s been there before,
If I’ve never seen them
They’re wonders galore.

I’d much prefer danger
And treasure; intrigue!
But I’ll settle for furniture
Desks and latrines.

Cause the world’s out of magic
It’s retired, it’s done.
What’s left: occupied spaces
Owned property: it’s succumbed.

I’ve never been much
For putting my life on the line,
Or getting arrested,
Or accruing a fine.

So I’ll settle I guess
For new places to me,
Guess to make my own magic
I must learn to see.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Hide-And-Seek


            They all filed out of the church; women in long smart dresses with feathers in their hats, and men in dark clean suits. They crowded out the doors into the hot sun in couples and families, talking politely with their heels crunching methodically on the dirt roads home. Squeezing between a young woman’s soft blue skirts and the doorframe, hurried a young boy in overalls and a grimy maroon shirt. He skipped to the sidewalk and seeing a large branch on the ground, he scooped it up and went on his merry way, tapping and whacking the fence posts and bushes as he went. The congregations disapproving eyes followed the boy as he headed home in a different direction from the rest of them.
            As usual, the rambunctious young boy had hidden crouched in the back of the church, listening to what the pastor’s sermon was about and fidgeting loudly with a hymnal and Bible. He served as a constant distraction to the last three rows of pews, but week after week he had been showing up to hear what the pastor had to say. Something fascinated him about the church setting: the building so much bigger than his home, the people dressed so different from his family and the words spoken, so foreign compared to the conversation he heard between the workers on his father’s farm.
            As he danced away from the church, oblivious to the opinions of the others, he thought about what the pastor had said in the church. The boy had only begun putting together his concept of God for a couple months now, and his thoughts worked hard to assimilate what the pastor had said today with everything he’d been hearing on previous Sundays. The pastor had talked about how we can’t see God, but if we seek him, than we’ll find him. The young boy pondered this concept as he hopped along. He began to work through the problem aloud. “How am I supposed to find a God I can’t see?” he asked no one in particular, bopping a pink flamingo on the head. The boy had played many a game of hide and seek, and considered himself quite proficient at finding hidden things, and so he found the prospect of this game with God enticing.
            “Challenge accepted,” he said with feeling.
            He began to search: behind rocks and underneath pots. He stood on his tip toes to glance at the rooftops and jumped around corners to catch Him by surprise. After looking over the side of a woman’s fence, a rustling in her hedge startled him from his search. He flinched away from the long hedge, looking to see what was there. He could hear the rustling of wings coming from inside the branches, and as he continued walking, the bird continued to flutter through the twigs, speeding up to get away from him. The boy was curious: he looked hard, but still the bird eluded his sight. The rustling began to get away ahead of him and he picked up his pace, looking hard to find it, but all he could see were leaves and sticks.
            He caught up to the sound at the end of the long hedge, but it had gone silent. He leaned in, searching with his eyes. “I’m sure it was there!” He said to himself.
            “What was there?” came a voice from behind him. The boy jumped and turned to see who was there. A woman was standing on the sidewalk behind him with a gentle smile.
            “There was a bird,” he pointed into the hedge. The women curiously bent over to look into the hedge.
            “I don’t see it,” she said quizzically, leaning in further to get a better look.
            The boy rolled his eyes at her and with an exaggerated sigh said, “Well I could hear it and the bush was moving, so it was obviously there,” he replied, matter-of-factly. The woman laughed good naturedly, and the boy picked up an air of disbelieving courtesy in her tone as she nodded kindly and began continuing on her way.
            “Well good look finding your bird, son,” she chimed, and continued on.
            The boy felt seriously offended. How dare she treat him like a child. He began thinking her very unwise to not understand that you did not have to see something to know it’s there. The thought stopped him in his tracks. He looked back at the hedge and a birdsong high up in a tree came wafting down to him. He didn’t have to look to know the bird was there, interacting with the world, making hedges move and songs resound: showing its presence in the way it subtly changed the world around it. They boy gave up looking around corners and under pots on his way home. Instead he began to listen and smell and touch the world around him, curious in a new way about what he could learn by the impressions made by the things he could and could not see. 

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Contact

Intro: my sister is five years older than me and has been writing since I was a kid. I've always read her stories with a sense of awe and felt a deep connection with the themes conveyed. She's been writing chapters for her story Contact for years, and after reading her latest chapter, when I sat down to write, this is what came out. 



* * *


       They were lying on the couch together: her with her back against his chest and him with his back against the armrest. They were eating triscuits out of a box sitting on her lap, talking about what had happened in their hours apart between the morning and evening, when he made a joke, and she chocked on a triscuit, and they both began to laugh: spurring each other on by the jolt of another body laughing against their own. Their secret is this: as he does the dishes with her hands wrapped around him to rest in his front pockets, and she’s eating breakfast with her toes discretely tapping his under the table, and they’re innocently laughing body to body on a couch, they’re living out the true meaning of existing as one flesh with another human being: contact. 

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Man-made

I originally wrote this story my freshmen or sophomore year of high school for my creative writing class. I think we had to write a story that modeled the way an old myth would be told. I've lost the original since then and have repeatedly told it to friends, who have encouraged me to write it down. So here it is: it's not the same as it used to be, but the important parts are still there. Enjoy.

***


 There was once a man who lived deep, deep in the woods. He had lived there for many years and had not seen anyone since he was a small child. His mother had raised him in the wilderness but had gone away when he was very young: all his memory contained of her was a feeling of warmth and the soft sounds of laughter. He had been carving since he was a teenager. It started as him repairing the log cabin he had always lived in. As he needed new tools he began to make them, as he needed new furniture, he began to sculpt it.
            The man carved forks and spoons, tables and chairs. He soon had everything he needed and had begun to carve what he saw: birds and bears, flowers and trees, and over time he had carved every plant and every animal many times over. He needed a new challenge, so he carved a river and then he carved the wind. He carved the stars in the night sky and the sun that shone in the day. He carved the flight of the bumblebee and the slow and steady rise of smoke from a warming fire. The man was a master at his craft and after many, many years he found that there was nothing that he could not create.
            He pondered one night: what could be the most challenging and impossible object to carve. Would it be something that flowed or floated, a sound that swam in the wind, or a smell that brought back memories? Then it came to him: he would carve the human soul.
            The man chopped down a tall tree, cut out a portion, and began to carve. He worked day and night, neither eating nor sleeping. He took out large chunks and chiseled fine details, he scraped away at edges and gouged out angles. After several days and nights of meticulous work the man put down his mallet and chisel and stepped back to observe his work. Having never seen but one, and having no memory of even she, he had unwittingly carved a woman. He stumbled to his bed and lost consciousness, too exhausted and starving to go on.
            It was a long time before the man woke up. When he opened his eyes he realized he was tucked into his bed. He did not remember getting beneath his covers. He looked over at his fireplace where a fire was burning, warming up the cabin and cooking something that smelled delicious over its flames. The man pushed the blankets off of him and walked to the fire. He took the large wooden spoon and stirred the stew that was simmering over the fire, taking a sip of it: even if he hadn’t been starving he would have appreciated the taste. Just then the door to the cabin opened. He looked up.
            In walked his carving: his perfect sculpture of the soul was smiling with red lips and tan skin. She was walking and moving and living before his very eyes. She was dressed in his clothes and talking to him as she crossed the room to stand next to him. She smiled.
            “What?” he croaked.
            “Sit down and I’ll get you some stew,” she repeated. She pulled out a chair at the table and he sat down in it hard. He watched her as she filled two bowls and set one in front of him and one in front of herself. They ate in silence and he could not take his eyes off her. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It was a long time before he was able to speak.
            “How does it taste?” She asked.
            “Good.” He answered. He stared at her long blond hair. “Thank you.” He added.
            Life went on after his soul came to life. The woman joined him outside to hunt, trap, and do all the chores of everyday living. A few days passed, and the more he watched her, the more uncomfortable he grew. She was gorgeous. The most perfect thing he had ever seen. She shouldn’t have to work outside, sweating and straining like him. One morning when she dressed in his clothes and went to join him outside, he told her to stay inside where it warmer and she wouldn’t have to exert herself. She told him it was okay, she didn’t mind the work, but he wouldn’t hear it.
            The woman made the cabin immaculately clean. She organized and cooked so that the man always had a warm meal when he needed one and could find everything he needed in a timely fashion. One day as they sat eating dinner together, the man observed the woman in his old rugged clothes. They were baggy and bland compared to her smooth skin and her bright eyes.
            The next morning he began carving again. He chiseled many dresses in flattering styles: slicing the wood so thin that it was like fabric hanging over her frame. She thanked him adamantly, telling him how beautiful the gifts were, but he still was not satisfied. He worked much harder than normal for several days, stock piling extra food and wood. Then he told her:
            “You deserve much more than this. I’ve carved with the wood here in these woods for years, but you deserve much more extravagance than what these mountains and forests can offer you.” He left the next morning on a long journey. The woman waited patiently in the cabin for many weeks, keeping everything clean and in good working order for the man when he returned. When he finally came back she rejoiced at his returning, and he proudly presented her with what he had found. He had brought back exotic stones and jewels, and having carved them into all manner of rings, necklaces, and earrings, he presented them to her as gifts. She told him they were beautiful.
            The woman stayed inside, a vision of beauty and extravagance; clean, warm, and dressed in gowns and jewelry of a kind indescribable. Every day the man came back from his long hours working outdoors and ate dinner with her. He was infatuated. But there was still something wrong. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. She was pristine, stunning, magnificent. She was a vision of perfection. A reflection of heaven. A goddess.
            It struck him, with his spoon halfway to his mouth, and she looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to finish the bite as the broth dripped off the spoon.
            “I know,” he told her. “I know what I need to do. You are everything. You are spectacular and inspiring. You are gorgeous and perfect. You are as immaculate and eternal as a goddess, and that is what I will make you!”
            She reached out to try and stop him, but it was too late. He was already up and out the door. It wasn’t long before he came back with a large, ornate pair of carved wings. He placed them on her back and instantly they took form. She stretched out her shoulders, and flung wide the new white feathers. The man stumbled back, in awe of her glory. She turned from him and ran from the cabin, and he followed her outside. Glowing in the sun, she looked at him squarely.
            “All I ever wanted was to live my days next to you! To work hard with you; to experience life with you! But you kept me inside and shielded me from your world. You left me waiting for you and simply admired what you could see. But you made me to be more than a body and more than what the eye can take in. The only gift I wanted was your love, but even that you traded in for lavish trinkets and clothes. You made me a soul, a woman, and now a goddess. So that is what I’ll be!”
            The man watched in horror as she beat her wings powerfully against the air, and flew up and away into the sky. He stayed kneeling in the dirt for a long time. He lived the rest of his life alone, never forgetting his goddess and forever yearning after her beauty. 

Friday, March 2, 2012

Hallelujah



The following eight parts make up the story "Hallelujah." After listening to the song "Samson" by Regina Spektor and every rendition of the song "Hallelujah" for years, I had formed my own picture of what happened between Samson and Delilah, and decided to write it down. I realize it doesn't follow the Biblical account, but it's based on a true story, so this seems to be a welcome place for it. It's set in modern day, or something like it, and I did my best to paint them in a modern light and make who they were back in the day, what they would be considered now. It's not done, and it may change, but this is what it is after five months. Quotes are from "Samson" by Regina Spektor, "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen, and the book of Judges from the Hebrew Bible, the New American Standard Bible translation.

Enjoy. 

Chapter 1 - Outrdrawn



“Maybe there’s a God above,
but all I ever learned from love,
was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you.”

            She looks in the mirror before she leaves. She blinks slowly underneath thick mascara and eye shadow. She looks at her thin bare arms, at the bones in her chest and her thin clothes. She gives her ankle a few twists and a small stomp to place her heel in just the right location. She swallows, she takes a deep breath, she adjusts her breasts and pulls her shirt down a little lower. She gives herself a knowing smile in the mirror, throws herself a wink, and flounces out the door.

            He looks in the mirror before he leaves. He looks at his dead eyes, the downward curve of his lips, and his unkempt hair. It’s grown long and dreaded in the time he’s stayed in his apartment. He is impartial to his plain t-shirt and his plain jeans. He is impartial to the garbage heap that his home has become. He is impartial to where he will end up. He does not plan on coming back, he does not plan on how to get where he’s going. He does not plan on smiling. Ever again.