Place

I will return to this place,
where my spirit rests, this
frame of reference for my soul:
time can make of me
someone else completely, I think,
and I must remember
who I was if I am to correctly see
what this “becoming” thing
is all about. Without
that I see the trail behind me,
how can I know if I’ve gotten anywhere?
Meaning requires history.
And this place is not a place,
but a way of seeing things,
but I think that even every place
that is verily a place can be
a means of seeing oneself:
where are you now?
And you may even ask your own self,
where have you been all my life?
Then, this last one knows you better
than you know yourself:
where are you going to?

I think I finally understand something about why things go the way they go. If you recall, I have been flirting with the idea that some sublime goal of mine was within reach — and this got me, if nothing else, real scared. Now, John Lennon said that life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans — yes, but then there are these rare moments of clarity, when you can see what is around you, when you can be full of the moment, here, now, and live as one is meant to live. To seize the day, to be at the place you wanted to be, to be doing what you wanted to be doing — not by being or doing anything different, but being at peace with what all that happens, to find in you the rhythm to life.

What I understand now is that what I was seeking was not what I was seeking, that my plans were not what they seemed to be, nor were its goals. I realize that going on the journey is just as good — in some ways, better. And it may be that I was wrong when I thought I was on the brink of achieving something great, but it was just enough of a taste to make me realize what a good thing I have going in finding my way there. I realize, finally, that this is the good stuff, the throwaways of life, the filler material, the stuff happening every day while one usually pines for a brighter day. The day is plenty bright when one has eyes to see. Sometimes the only change we need to be happy is a new perspective.

And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I’ll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm.
“Come in,” she said,
“I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”

– Bob Dylan

A. G. Rizzoli: La Regina Della Vista Dolores

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Live like you were meant to. Don’t ask how — you’ll find you know already.

I find I am still prone to bs, to lie, if you want to be harsh about it. I don’t know how to get around it, wonder whether even saints can be absolutely honest all the time. I make up stories. I have been making up stories since I was quite young; perhaps 12 years old or so. And I wonder, could I tap this for a good cause? Is there some bs in me that I might use creatively, or does my mind only really get going in this vein when I am pressed in real life, when I might get some immediate, substantive benefit for it? I know I have not tapped into it like that as of yet, for I have written short stories, but not even the best one matches the characterization, the plot, the thematic genius of some of my lies. Or… hm. Maybe my memory exaggerates, and they’re not so great either, my bs stories — it’s just that they have worked so many times, given me many conveniences…. (I am made to wonder how well Dostoevsky could lie. Or Shakespeare. I bet they told doozies.)

When we are saved, we are at home in the universe; and, in principle and in the main, feeble and timid creatures as we are, there is nothing anywhere within the world or without it that can make us afraid.

I once wandered to the outer border of the dreamtime.
Oblivion was nothing like I ever had imagined it:
the impenetrable, immovable, the null of death’s door.

I have understood only barely of tragedies that assail one’s faith, bring him to the brink of giving up, of “It is too much; I can no longer believe.” Now, it was not the recent tsunami that made me think anything along these lines, but the case of the BTK murders, still in the headlines. The tsunami, however huge, was an impersonal thing; because of the sheer number of people that were killed in one fell swoop, it seemed almost surreal, something that the mind could not comprehend — so big that a finite consciousness could not properly wrap his mind around it. But the BTK murders, that someone could consciously, purposefully do that to another human being — it was incomprehensible in quite another way. It was a personal thing: I could picture it, if I wanted to; we all have seen enough movies to be able to see in our heads something as gruesome as this with little or no problem. I could say that the tsunami affected me in a similar way as 9/11 did — I was unable to assimilate something that was that much larger than me. But what one human could do to another individual, and then another, however heinous: that was within my province of knowing, if only in scraps of horrid imagination.

In between the flashes of twisted fantasia, the thought of how God could allow such evil to happen briefly brushed by. It made me think, made me see how it could happen, how one could have seen enough wrong and wronged not to be able to prop up within himself the idea of a God who was all good. I found I could not myself find fault in the sincere doubter, the one for whom the problem of evil, the problem of so much pain, made him not able to keep kindling in his heart the last embers of his faith. But then, however, a thought came upon me, from the mouth of Paul: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” [Romans 8:18 NRSV] And I thought, Paul was not one who was trivializing the pain, but glorifying God — on the correct scale. Thus, if you could imagine it, was the true glory of the Lord: that these incredible sufferings that happen (and they were no lighter in the time of Paul): they are not worth comparing to the good to come. And I hoped within my heart I could remember this, if it ever came to me, if my faith were ever so tested. Even if it meant only to hold on, desperately.

As I travel as I may down these volatile paths, it is only a fool’s hope that tragedy never will strike me, that there will never be pain — but I may pray, still, for something: that I be strong enough to withstand when it does. For that would be a piece of the glory, right there. Hallelujah.

Things are going very well. I am suspicious: perhaps it is going a little too well, methinks. These things I am working on — after much cultivation, they have the appearance that they will soon bear fruit — bear great fruit — and I know not what is to come in these my vicissitudes, but I find myself somewhat afraid. Perhaps it is nothing, a foreboding of a success that is not to come in any day near, if it ever is to come at all. But it could be something, after all, and I am not that young a man anymore, to whom such grand actualizations would be mere delightful consumables to his ego. I have done my share of suffering, my share of shying away from the world, and my persona is not as ready to take on the world. In me, I do want these things, I think, to be real ascertainments — but I am taking it easy, of late, for that desire is fraught with consequence. I know not the future, but this present is sweet enough as it is; let me enjoy what there is to enjoy, take it as it comes. It may all be nothing. Whatever may be. Today is a good day.

Dreams are good, but then… I have never danced in a dream.

A. G. Rizzoli: 1st Anniversary

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Door in the Sky

A door in the sky opened,
and through it, light poured down
upon the waking world.
And the world saw things
that had always been there, only
never before had the eyes
been able to see, as if
a great darkness had lifted, as if
all things had been created
anew, as if time had ended
and begun again. I was there,
I remember how the
known was strange, and I
carefully wandered through
neighborhoods I had
walked through all my life, yet
now, it was all adventure,
all as if the distance
between every last thing were erased.
And I remember when
the door closed, and
everyone wondered, not a minute
later, if they had dreamed
the whole of the experience,
afraid to ask each other
what they had seen,
for fear that it had never happened
at all, or had only happened
to them alone, a private
glimpse of Heaven
no one else would understand.
Yes, I was there, and I
remember it, and I think
there are others who do, too:
a light once shined
in the world, and nothing
we are, nothing we do,
nothing we think or speak, none
will ever be the same again.

I have dreams that drive me, even when I wish not to be so inspired. It is so that I have been told: if your dreams don’t degenerate (almost immediately) into hard work, they are merely convenient illusions. You’d never get there if you never actually started going. If you bear the path long enough, you begin to understand what it means for one to have a commitment to something. Something noble and good — that is the purpose of life, is it not? To quest for the Holy Grail, to have a destiny that one would call a destiny, a calling that is not merely one’s desire? Yes, I tire along the way, but I never stopped being human, and am capable only of very finite things. So I must chip away, etch my place in the world. Not everyone has a dream, and I should count my lucky stars, especially in the wee hours of the night, struggling with my ideas, knowing I’ll have to wake up early for that wage job I still have to have. Yes, it is luck, I must tell myself, however much it resembles this hard, lonely work….

To the dim and bewildered vision of humanity, God’s care is more evident in some instances than in others; and upon such instances men seize, and call them providences. It is well that they can; but it would be gloriously better if they could believe that the whole matter is one grand providence.

Time brings us along, whether we want to go there or not.
So kicking and screaming, but straight into the future you do go.
To live in the past is like dreaming, but then, without the hope.

We look crazed, don’t we, we Christians? As if the picture of us is that one with the wild look in his eye, the Believer, who thinks that there is not but one absolute morality (his), everything being a sin if the Bible does not expressly permit it, who wants your children to learn that God created the world in six days (and ban the mere concept that evolution could possibly happen), and basically wants to convert the world according to the fundamental church doctrine. Oh, yes, and who thinks that the Harry Potter series of books promotes literal witchcraft. I know there’s more, but that’s the sketch of things, is it not? And yet, when one looks at the figures, one finds that he of us who holds himself so morally high is nothing but words — his divorce rate, his charitable giving, his potential for criminality is the same or worse than those who hold not that Christ is the Lord, who saith nothing of how one is to be if he would be saved.

Thus, the image of one crazed fits us to some degree, one who speaks as if he were riding on a cloud and sees not the mud it is in which he wallows. We forget that we are sinners, first and foremost, that any of us, all of us fall short of the glory. The best of us is no better than any of them. It is easy to forget that. For however many saints we have, there are just as many of ones just as holy in other faiths. Easy to overlook that one, too. We forget what it is that we truly have going for us, we Christians. It is not the quality of moral character. Nope. All we have is Christ Himself. Whereas the founders of the other faiths told us that they were not gods, Jesus said that before anything was, “I am”. That He did not fall short of the glory. Maybe it is that we need to remember that speaking much and doing little (and being little) is one of the main things He was against. We don’t want to be crazed. We want to be real.

It is not to say that we do not need to declare Him to the world, for He left us with that charge, but that we need to do it in vastly different terms than we have been. Perhaps we should remember the words of St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words when necessary.” Be and do, first. Show, don’t tell. Speak as if knowing we are sinners, who should be grateful for any opportunity. Because we are.

brisk chill, and wonder
awake may yet be stillness
mid-air, a snowflake