Jesus Is The Answer

The bumpersticker reads, "Jesus is the answer." I pass the car in the parking lot, en route to my own car, at day's end. The car is a four-door sedan, a pinch smaller than a land whale. I'd guess it dates from the late 80s or early 90s. The car isn't in bad shape, but the paint no longer has a new sheen. There's a fair accumulation of stuff inside the car, a bit more than my car – which often serves as a traveling briefcase.

I want to ask the driver, if Jesus is the answer, what's the question? It's like a perverse Jeopardy question.

I can imagine that person would respond that Jesus is the answer for all life's problems.

Which immediately reminds me of a portion of Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Breakfast of Champions. The narrator is talking about his mother, who committed suicide by drinking bleach. He notes that this precedent makes suicide seem like an elegant response to many hard questions; for example:

What is your great-grandmother's maiden name?
I think I'll kill myself

A train leaves the station, traveling north at a rate of 60 mph; a car is traveling west at 35 mph. When will the crash occur?
I think I'll kill myself

Why is a mouse when it spins?
I think I'll kill myself
Post #1462

Idée d’jour

A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman.
— Wallace Stevens, poet (1879-1955)
Post #1461

The Little Altar

Picking up from my previous entry, this is an "altar" I made the first weekend of February at a "Nurturing Weekend" for "Sunday School" teachers. The base is a glazed ceramic dish — similar to the base for a potted plant. The stones are intended to represent major life events.

Slightly below center is a clear stone, which represents my birth. To the right of it, at about the two o'clock position, is a red stone — representing the years immediately following W–'s attempted suicide. Continuing counter-clockwise, there is a large black stone which represents dark times in my life - especially times I have been tempted by suicide.

At the nine o'clock position is a blue stone, representing the hope of a blue sky. Just below it is a white stone, which symbolizes the presence of the Holy Spirit (or generic divine, if you prefer) in my life.

The final elements in this little altar are the shell (nearest five o'clock) and the dirt everything rests upon. The conference took place at St. Crispin's Camp, a place I have mentioned several times the past few days (and weeks). I found the shell on the camp grounds, and used it to dig dirt from the river bank.

My first experience at St. Crispin's, when I attended the camp as a teenager, was not entirely positive. Believe or not, even kids at a church camp can have a herd mentality programmed to attack a weak member. For some reason, I was chosen as the weak member that week.

However, I have been at St. Crispin's several times since then, and new memories are supplanting and superseding the old.

If you compare this picture with the image in the previous entry, you might notice one subtle addition: another shell. This shell represents St. James' church, which was a profound part of my return to the Christian tradition.

Post #1460

My Home-made Altar

1. Mom and Apple Pie, or, Pandora's Ark ; a "Scissor Dance" by Dr. Omed
2. Altar built in church camp, circa 1967
3. Sacred Heart prayer card
4. Anglican prayer beads, made in February of last year
5. Christus Rex, purchased in late 1960s
6. Angel
7. Little Altar (more to follow)
8. Fossil from Dr. Omed
9. Small statue of St. Francis, also purchased in late 1960s
10. Another fossil from Dr. Omed, which had been a part of his labyrinth. He gave it to me as a "seed" toward my own labyrinth.
11. The program from Padre's funeral

Post #1459

Idée d’jour

Courage is not the absence of fear, it's the control of fear.
— Dickey Chapelle

Post #1458

Infant Jesus of Prague

Over the past few days I have been sharing photographs I took in early February, when I attended an event at St. Crispins', a camp in southeast Oklahoma.
This most recent photograph reflects an indulgence I allowed myself on the way home from this conference.

I have driven east on I-40 several times, most often to visit Elsie. Almost every time, I have noted a weathered sign advertising the "Infant Jesus of Prague".

Prague (pronounced with a long "a"), Oklahoma, does have a kinship with the capital of the Czech republic (pronounced with a short "a"). As the linked article mentions, the town was founded by Czechs, and many in the town are of Czech descent. In fact, the town hosts a kolache festival every May.

Something about the sign – perhaps its somewhat beleagured condition – intrigued me, and I've always wanted to go to Prague to see what it was all about.

As it turns out, the closest north-south highway to Seminole is Highway 99, which also goes north to Prague. The map indicated that Prague was only 19 miles north of I-40, which did not seem like an extreme detour. So I decided to drive to Prague on my way home from St. Crispins'.

Happily, the "National Shrine to the Infant Jesus of Prague" was on the highway, which was also Prague's main street. The shrine is at St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church.

I suppose the statue (pictured above) is modeled on the statue described in this article. The article says the original statue has a bird in its right hand. The Oklahoma version of the statue is definitely holding something in its right hand — at first, I thought it was the cosmic egg. This close-up suggests that there might be a bird in there.

In any case, I gave the young king the proper homage, and am pleased to share him with you now.

Post #1457

Today's Disciples — Oklahoma Style

On March 3rd and 4th , Oklahoma's Department of Christian Formation sponsored an overnight conference titled "Today's Disciples in Today's World — Oklahoma Style." This conference is the third of its kind, patterned on a conference held in Kansas City, Missouri, in the spring of 2005.

These conferences model a new way to consider Christian adult formation. This model has several dimensions. First, it asserts that people are in a continual process of being "formed" as Christians, and confronts the misconception that our "education" ends shortly after confirmation. Second, it recognizes that many of our members are previously unchurched . Last, it recommends a dynamic program, with at least one class (or Learning Opportunity) for every 25 members — which would necessitate a break from the traditional norm of one adult class being led by a clergy person.

The conference began Friday evening with a Faith Sharing exercise patterned on the Quaker model. It continued Saturday morning with a presentation by Vycke M—, which introduced the participants to basic educational concepts, as they apply to Christian Formation. During the remainder of the day, participants had a number of sample "Learning Opportunities" to choose from. Individual small groups met three times during the day, so members could compare notes and discuss which of these Opportunities might work in their individual church communities.

The conference was attended by 37 people, representing churches from Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Durant, Muskogee, Norman, Shawnee, Ada, Bartlesville and Seminole.

Post #1456

More on "The Lost Son"

Luke 15:11-32

On Sunday, I posted a version of the parable of the prodigal son which I originally wrote a little over 20 years ago. I made some minor alterations as I typed it, but it is essentially unchanged from the original.

The post inspired a rather strongly worded comment from Dr. Omed, to whit:

In my experience, the prodigal son doesn't get a big welcome home party when he comes home. One must renounce one's prodigiousness, I imagine, to get the steak dinner. But the story of the prodigal son is one of the biggest pieces of Horsesh*t in the Bible — if he crawled on his knees his Dad might give him the job as a hired hand, and a chance to work his way up. And the faithful son would be his supervisor.

The evangelical atheist has a point. The story is not believable today, and I doubt that it was any more "reality based" when Jesus told it. My version has a fairly obvious "fairy tale" quality — "There once was a farmer" is certainly a variation of "Once upon a time."

Although the notion of fairy tale might have been foreign to Jesus' audience, they did know what a parable was. Parables were popular teaching device with prophets as far back as Elijah. They would not have expected verisimilitude in the same way we might.

You'll notice that, in my reworking of the story, I title it "The Lost Son" rather than "The Prodigal Son". The parable is one of a series in Luke 15 which have to do with lost items: first the Lost Sheep (a.k.a., "The Good Shepherd"), then the Lost Coin, then the Lost Son. This context suggests that the emphasis is on finding what has been lost, rather than the son's prodigality.

In fact, there is more than one prodigal in the parable. The son is prodigal is the sense of being "recklessly wasteful"; the father is prodigal in the sense of being extravagant, or profuse in giving. The first instance of the father's prodigality in the original story is the fact that he gives the son his share of the inheritance so willingly. I suspect this would have been contrary to the experience of any in Jesus' audience. At the very least, the father would have argued the point.

The father is then extravagant in welcoming the son home. The best of everything — the best clothes, the best food, a big party. This by itself defies all reason. And, as Dr. Omed points out, it's highly unlikely the father would have welcomed the son back as a full member of the family without some kind of test or means of proving himself.

We are often tempted to read parables allegorically; which is to say that each character in the story exactly represents something else. In this case, we might say the Lost Son represents the average sinner, the Older Brother represents the judgmental Pharisees, and the father represents God. I think this is an accurate, if incomplete, reading.

One of the draws of the parables is the fact that the roles may be fluid; in other words, we may find ourselves playing different roles at different times in our lives.

It must be admitted that most people seem to identify with the younger son in this story. I think part of this reflects the fairy-tale quality of the parable. Fairy tales always seem to favor the smallest, or the youngest, or the plainest. And, as participants in the tale, we are more likely to identify with Cinderella than the stepsiblings or stepmother.

Additionally, many people of my generation share the experience of turning their backs on organized religion for a time. Some of these may indeed perceive themselves as one who has strayed and been reclaimed. Others may have had times in their lives when they felt distant from God, for example during major life challenges (deaths, divorce, etc), and they now feel close to God again.

I just mentioned that we are unlikely to identify with the "villains" of a fairy tale — the stepsiblings, et al; we are equally unlikely to identify with the Older Brother in this parable. But it is a role many of us play, from time to time. We may want to set standards for inclusion in our denomination. We may expect newcomers to quickly adopt our beliefs and customs. We may feel resentful of a newcomer who is quickly entrusted with responsibilities.

We may feel reluctant to even broach the idea of identifying ourselves with the Father in the story. It might feel sacrilegious, if indeed the Father represents God. Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus tells the disciples to be perfect even as God is perfect (Mt 5:48). While this may seem an impossible goal, we are certainly called to strive to imitate God (or, to paraphrase Thomas a Kempis, Imitate Christ). So, it may be that we are to imitate the father in this parable. Rather than focusing on how we have strayed and returned, or on how others need to measure up to certain standards, perhaps we are meant to rejoice for those who join (and rejoin) us on the journey.

Post #1455

February Dawn

Another picture taken in early February, a few miles east of Seminole, OK.
Post #1454

The Story of The Lost Son

[Rewritten from an old notebook; the entry is dated 29.June.1980]

Now, there once was a well-to-do Kansas farmer who lived with his two sons. He loved them both very much. One day, his youngest son came to him and said, "I want my share of the year's receipts." And the farmer gladly gave it to him, and it was no small sum.

The next day, the youngest son packed his belongings and ran away to New York City. He was in such a rush to get out of Kansas, he didn't even say goodbye. Now, he learned his money could buy him many things in New York City: booze, to make you silly; drugs, to make you crazy; and a woman's favors - if only for one night. But, as often happens in the Big Apple, his money quickly ran out. It wasn't long before he got himself in trouble with the law, and was sentenced to a year's hard labor on a Correction Farm in upstate New York.

One day, as he was slopping the hogs, he thought to himself that he'd gladly eat their leftovers. The meals on this farm left much to be desired. Then he remembered his father's farm, and how the hired help never went without. It was then that he came to his senses. "I will go to my father, and ask him to hire me as a farm hand. For I don't deserve to even be called his son."

So, when his sentence was up, he went back to Kansas. But as he came to his father's farm, his father saw him and recognized him. In his joy, the farmer ran to his son and hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. Then the son said, "Father, I have wronged you. Hire me as a hand, for I have no right to be called your son."

But the farmer called to his housekeeper and said, "Go get my clothes some clothes to wear." Then he called his hired hands together and said, "Slaughter the finest calf, and make merry, for my son who was as dead is alive, and returned to me." And all was done as he had asked.

Then his oldest son came to him, saying: "Dad, why do you carry on this way? My brother nearly broke your heart, and cared nothing for you as he spent time with whores and drunks. On the other hand, I have stayed with you, and helped on the farm, and have asked nothing. Yet, you never killed the finest calf for me, or threw me this kind of bash."

The father answered: "Why are you so jealous? You know I love you, and always will. It's a good thing that we celebrate this way. For my son - your brother, mind you — who once was as dead is living. He who had strayed from me, has returned."

Post #1453

Sign o'the Season

Post #1452

Idée d’jour

It's hard to feel middle-aged, because how can you tell how long you are going to live?
— Mignon McLaughlin

Post #1451

February Sky

I took this picture in early February, at St. Crispin's just east of Seminole, OK. It's about 6:00 in the evening.

Post #1450

Somehow

Somehow, it seemed like a good idea to stay in bed this morning. Sure, I woke up at 5:30. But I went back to sleep. Sure, I listened when the alarm/cd player spun 30 minutes worth of Isle of View. But I went back to sleep. Sure, the cat was using my bladder as a launching pad as she ran to the east window-sill. Sure, I got up and used the rest room. Sure, I turned on the overhead light. Sure, I read my daily meditation, and caught up on yesterday's. Sure, I sat up in bed for a few minutes after I read those meditations. I went back to sleep anyway.

It's not that this past week was all that tiring or stressful. Pretty much the opposite, truth to tell. Only worked four days. Didn't have any deadlines during those four days, so I could take things slow. Heck, I fell asleep in front of the tv Thursday and Friday both. Wouldn't think I was sleep-deprived.

But, the week before was hard. Insomnia several nights in a row. No rest Friday night. Sleep-walking through Saturday.

Then there was the conflict with a friend and respected mentor on Tuesday. That was an emotional tsunami. We were equally at fault, and by Friday we had equally admitted our fault.

Maybe that was it. Maybe that's why the bed felt so good this morning. Maybe that's why I curled under the covers. Maybe that's why I drew my right arm over my eyes.

Maybe that's why I slept until 10:00 this morning.

Somehow, it seemed like a good idea.
Post #1449

Friday Five: Hair

As suggested by Songbird

1. Do you like your hair?
   Yes, although I'm sad that my hair is thinning. One day, I fully expect to have a natural tonsure.


2. Have you ever colored your hair? If not, would you consider it?
   I have never colored/dyed my hair or beard. I have chosen to allow my beard to go natually grey. No grecian formula for me!
      Padre asked me once if I died my beard, because my beard was dark and my hair is blonde. My beard just happened to come in dark!
      Now, the grey hairs in my beard out-number the dark hairs - so I appear to have a goatee or soul patch. There's a certain irony to this, because - when I first started trying to grow a beard (senior year of high school) - all that would come in was a goatee.


3. What's the longest you've ever worn your hair? The shortest?
   From highschool graduation through the first few years of college, my hair was shoulder-length. Once I became a wage-slave, I adapted the traditional "business man's" cut - above the ears, and blocked in back.


4. When and what was your worst. haircut. ever?
   I guess the worst haircut might have been when I let the young lady at the style shop talk me into a mullett. This was in college, and I was young & foolish.
       Worse than that might be the style I adopted a couple of years ago, when I decided to finger-comb my hair back. It took me a while to realize this looked less like a natural duck-tail than it did a bad comb-over.


5. Tell us a favorite song or scene from a book or movie dealing with hair.
   The first thing that comes to mind is the title song from the musical Hair. As I recall, the scene in the movie was fun.

Post #1448

Cat Friday

Post #1447

Of Time and Leaf

This is another image which was orginally posted at my temporary Typepad site. It is essentially a composite: the background is a building in Oklahoma City's Leadership Square, and the foreground is a leaf which had blown into my driveway last August.

Aside from compositing, I have not altered either image in any way. The building has mirrored windows, which are reflecting another building.

Post #1446

Typographics

There are a few poems in my back-catalogue which I consider "typographics". By which I mean, that at the time I wrote the poems I was very concerned with where the words fell on the page. These poems were originally printed in notebooks, then recorded using a Selectric typewriter.

It's a challenge to reproduce these poems on the web; the difference in pixels-per-inch from one computer screen to the next make it impossible to predict where the words will appear from reader's point of view. Aside from complex coding to cover all potential platforms, I can think of three potential solutions: Flash, image (or PDF), or accepting the limitations of HTML and cascading stylesheets. For the poems in my on-line chap-book, The Saturn Sequence, I have chosen the last solution — creating something on my personal screen that I find satisfying, and accepting the reality that it will not appear exactly the same on every other screen.

These typographic poems seem to fall into two categories. The first category cover instances where a word or phrase begins a new thought, but I want it to be "counted" as part of the preceding line. This is a technique I picked up from certain editions of Shakespeare's plays.

As you are probably aware, Shakespeare's plays are written in iambic pentameter [see Wikipedia entry]. Occasionally, one character's line will consist of one part of the line of pentameter, and another character will complete it. These editions of Shakespeare's plays make this clear by printing the lines thus:
One: Blah, blah, blah.
Two: Ah, but blah blah blah blah blah.

In "Farmer of the Night", an attempted sonnet, my motivation for word placement is the same:
Now I am autumn.
 And I was the sea.
Whether the two halves of this "line" combine to produce true iambic pentameter may be debatable, but there is no question that the second half introduces a new idea.

A free-verse poem in which I use this technique is "Never Thunders in Hades". Here, the word "watching" serves as one of several repetends, and seems to float back and forth across the page. The intention is that different subjects are "watching" throughout the poem — "when the night is full" in the first four lines; "for starry evenings" in the third paragraph (assuming the indention of the word "watching" defines the beginning of a new paragraph).

Two other poems use typography in a different way. Both "Poetry Tonight" and "The Green House" have blocks of words which appear in different areas of the page. These block of words are stanzas. The intent of the technique seems most obvious in "Poetry Tonight," where the stanzas are juxtaposed with black-and-white photographs, as if to suggest the stanzas are themselves a type of emotional photograph. In fact, the penultimate stanza reads, "Just faces in a crowd scene / Painted in gouache / By George Grosz."

"The Green House" is the most experimental of this set. Sentences are broken apart. One line is spread across the page/screen. The title appears at the bottom of the poem, rather than the top. One might reasonably charge that the typographic format is more self-conscious display than poetic device.

As in "Poetry Tonight," the stanzas are grouped by sense-unit. The scattering of these sense-units might reflect the fact that the history of the house in question is scattered and fragmentary.

The poetry I've written over the past two years has been more typographically traditional. I suspect this is primarily because I do most of my composing on screen, rather than on a page.

1445

An Eyelash of Time

I heard her story last night.

Her greatest concern, as a mother, was who would care for her children if she died. She has no doubt her husband had the same concern – who would care for their children if he died – but it is her story, and she can only speak for herself.

She had suffered a stroke. She was taken to the hospital, then to the ER. While on the operating table, she died.

She described that period between life, death, and return to life as "an eyelash of time."

She did not exactly see Jesus, but could sense his presence. She could feel Him through her whole body, through her whole being.

He did not speak, but she could hear him.

He said, "Wait. Do not be afraid."

In that moment, she was no longer worried about her children or her husband. She was content to remain in His presence.

He said, "Wait. Do not be afraid."

But she did not want to return to the world she had known. She did not want to return to her children or husband or house. She wanted to remain with Him, to know his pure love.

He said, "Wait. Do not be afraid."

She described that period between life, death, and return to life as "an eyelash of time."

Her experience of life has been brighter since then. In every step, she recognizes the echo of his voice: "Wait. Do not be afraid."

She told the story. I heard her tell the story.

It has been said that the most common phrase in the Bible is "Don't be afraid", that it appears 365 times. I don't know.

All I know is, I heard her story, and glimpsed an eyelash of time.
Post #1444

Idée d’jour

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
— Anne Lamott, writer (1954- )

Post #1443