medical update

Well, here's the scoop. Some time ago I found myself experiencing significant difficulties in a variety of life areas, and after a period of research and testing, was diagnosed with what has come to be known as Oymbr Syndrome. It's an affliction approximately as old as dirt, but most of the currently available remedies are still in the experimental stages. I did some looking around and decided on one called Imncleuiaseomo. (What, did you ever hear of a prescription med that was easier to pronounce?) It came highly recommended, and the fine-printed columns of possible side-effects and fatalities weren't noticeably longer than average. Plus it was cheap. Good deal, right? The only thing is ... it isn't working. Not only is it not taking care of the Oymbr Syndrome from which I already suffer, but it has turned against my system and added to my calamities a developing case of Toad Disease. The longer this goes on, the slimmer grow my chances of surviving - and, frankly, they weren't that great to begin with.

Now, confession time. Pretty much everything written above is, in its own way and to its own degree, true. However, the following points should be taken well into consideration when evaluating these claims:

1. The Oymbr in Oymbr Syndrome is shorthand for the ailment's more scientific description, Oh, You Must Be Right.
2. The original name of the drug mentioned was also judged overly lengthy - I Must Now Commence Learning Everything Until I Am Strong Enough On My Own - hence the acronym, Imncleuiaseomo.
3. Toad Disease is named after its three most distinguishing symptoms: Tired, Overwhelmed, And Depressed.

Let's flesh this out a little. First, Oymbr Syndrome - closely related to, but not to be confused with, its very healthy counterpart, Wycbr-Icio Condition (Well, You Could Be Right - I'll Check It Out). Patients afflicted with Oymbr Syndrome typically begin their self-inflicted descent into poor health by setting their foundations in the unqualified proposition that the self knows very, very little indeed. The patient goes on to observe the vast quantities of knowledge and wisdom available in (and beyond) the universe, as well as the apparently unshakable confidence of many of its inhabitants. The patient then concludes, rather hopelessly, that by simple virtue of being other than itself, the bulk of the intelligent-seeming members of the human race whose ideas come into conflict with its own, must by default be correct about most things. Faced with an argument or opinion to which the patient has no immediate answer, the instinctive response is owl-faced uncertainty of potentially indefinite duration.

Except in rare, often terminal cases (in which the patient is rendered practically non-functional by an absolute failure to stand on any kind of principle in the face of any kind of contrary breeze), the most severe symptoms of Oymbr Syndrome manifest themselves only sporadically, and generally in response to semi-methodically selected types of stimuli. Ideas out of sync with the mob are frequent targets, as are subjective or ambiguous topics, and assertions made about the patient's own self.

This may be why the antidote known commonly as Imncleuiaseomo has gained such popularity in the general public. The alluring promise of the Knowledge of Everything is hard indeed to deny, and who is there among you that does not hotly desire the glorious defense of being Strong Enough On [Your] Own? It solves handily the double problem of knowing very little indeed, and of uncertainty in the face of disagreement. If you know Everything - I mean, seriously. What could go wrong?

Well, this is where Toad Disease comes in - an ancient, pervasive, and extremely contagious ailment if ever there was one. It has more causes than science has yet been able to number, but it's been confirmed that one of them is as a side-effect of the drug discussed above. Because, you see, To Learn Everything is a tall order. Really tall. Like, ain't-no-way-in-a-million-billion-years kind of tall. And even if the patient somehow did manage to miserably live that long, the cold fact is ... s/he will never be Strong Enough On [His/Her] Own. No can do, sorry. 

Faced with those statistics, who wouldn't be Tired, Overwhelmed, And Depressed? For real.

So Imncleuiaseomo doesn't cut it. I'm trying to come off it even as we speak, but it's kind of habit-forming. Death'll make me come clean, though - no worries. Still, in the meantime, what do we do about this besetting Oymbr Syndrome? I can't just live that way, for Pete's sake. So do I have to die that way?

Answer: No. 

There's a cure. It's called Grace, which for once isn't an abbreviation of anything, but its whole glorious, beautiful name. Grace brought home in this instance by steady application of Wit (sorry, one more acronym and I'll quit) - What Is Truth? And how will we find the answers? Read the Book, plead with its Writer, and I think we'll find that, in His time, He gives liberally to those who seek. 

You don't have to know Everything - you just have to know Him.

a life

little tiny heart

thumping, thumping

little tiny beautiful body

resting in the quiet dark

waiting

growing

little baby heart

lurching and crying

lights are bright

air is cold

voices are loud, ecstatic

everything bangs

tiny soothing heart

quiet, trusting

warm skin on warm skin

learning of mother

of safety

of love

treasured little heart

beating stronger

exploring a bright world

crawling, walking, leaping

sometimes falling

the world is also hard

selfish little heart

ears plugged

crowns its own kings

beats its own blood

brushes off loving wounds

charges reckless on

broken heart, undone

discovers an unkind world 

pounds in anguish

it will not yield

if we are not king

who is?

empty heart and soft

finds it filled, restored

held in rhythm

by a strong enough hand

grieved indeed

but rejoices

little beating heart of flesh
pulses to serve, yet fights
little beating heart
whispers how long, how long
it is fragile
and knows it

weary burdened heart
a road so long
a sky so dark
it is too much
too much to bear
alone

precious ransomed heart
you cannot be alone
I promised
would I lie?
do not waste these last days
live well
and then come home

something to offer

It was a Sunday evening, and there were four young adults in a small car with a manual transmission. They were on their way to church, but as it happened, they went left instead of right, and started looking for a place to turn around. They missed a driveway hidden under a blanket of snow, but found a gravel road instead. Unfortunately, the darkness and the falling of many snowflakes made it difficult to see, and what was meant for a U-turn manifested itself instead as a small car parked neatly in a snowbank on the side of the road. The small car was valiant, but not very heavy, and not very strong. It was stuck.

The four young adults climbed out of the marooned vehicle and discovered a snow shovel in the trunk. For a time the only masculine personage in their midst applied himself to scooping snow with it, until such a time came as seemed fitting for two of the feminine bystanders to apply their weight to the front of the car while he tried to back it out. Unfortunately it turned out to be what they call a no-go.

One of the girls said, How about if I try driving, so he can push. (Guys are stronger than girls, you know. Usually.) She had started to learn to drive a stick once, after all, she said. Sadly, this mission had also to be aborted in its trial run, in spite of the best intentions. It was becoming a sad situation in the middle of nowhere, with only the sub-zero winds and lots of snow flying around, and no parents answering their phones.

Then the girl who had been standing by the side watching (because she only had summer shoes and no socks on her feet, and in such a condition objected to wallowing around in snow drifts) - this girl said, How about that other girl, the one that's my sister? She can drive a stick.

And the girl who was her sister froze, and she looked out of the corner of her eye for a bush to hide behind. There weren't any, though, so her thoughts flew around in the open air: I can, she thought, but I haven't known how for very long, and I don't do it very well. What if I do it wrong? What if I get it more stuck, or what if it comes loose and I fly it right across into the other ditch, or what if I run over someone? I can't do it, I mean I can, but I ... but all she said was, Well, I can, but ... well, okay.

So she tried, and it took some time, but in the end it was she that sat behind the wheel when at last the small car was dislodged and went spinning happily back onto the beaten path. She was happy, but not very proud. That was no path to heroism - to get volunteered in the homestretch for a job you should have taken up at the gate.

Maybe you've guessed by now that that girl is me, and that the story in which I so ingloriously participated is true. Well, it is, and it's actually not even a week old.

I do that a lot. I stand in the midst of a Situation, and I hold what could (or could not) be the Key; but I'm afraid. I feel so very young, so foolish, so inadequate. I think I'm probably wrong. I'll mess it up. I'll hurt someone, and it'll just be better if I stay out of the way and let someone else take a risk. So many doubts, like so many snowflakes, or maybe so many gnats - What if what I think is the right thing to say, turns out to be insensitive and hurtful? What if my idea falls flat? What if I offer my opinion, and everyone disagrees? What if we end up worse off than we are now, just because of my input? I haven't been here long enough yet to be useful ... I'm too small ... too weak ... I don't understand.

But I'm realizing that if I wait for myself to be big enough to help, I think I'll wait forever. All I can do is grow smaller, as I realize who I am. Yet, in spite of all my nagging doubts, if I stop moping at my miserable reflection and look down at what I hold in my hands, I find that, of all things, I do have something to offer. I've been entrusted with more gifts than I can quite wrap my mind around, now that I look - an entire life (as far back as I can clearly remember) lived in a solid, loving, Christian home; a phenomenal family; a so-far peaceful lot in a so-far prosperous nation; friends, neighbors, and a church family like most people only dream about; an un-boxed education, and a few minor talents - just to tick off a few. And the crowning, unforeseen glory: the blood of God's own Son poured out to save me from eternal fire, and the promise of His Spirit to indwell, comfort, and sanctify me for as long as I walk this earth - and the sure hope that this gift is freely given to all who believe.

None of these gifts are mine, I can't take any credit for them - but they've been given into my hand, which seems to make me an intended vehicle for their distribution. What shame if I held such inestimable treasures, given to me for a reason, and I only clung to them useless forever, too afraid of stumbling to venture out into the dark to give them away. Certainly I lack wisdom, but if you read the first chapter of James, I think you'll find that He can take care of that difficulty, too.

In fact, I have yet to hear of a difficulty He can't take care of. Not a single crooked stick He can't use to draw a straight line, if only we'll yield ourselves to His touch, and stop trying to stand up on our own.

How about you? Is there a gift you've been clinging to, afraid to seem arrogant in raising your hand, afraid of falling short? Do you know the truth of the gospel? If you've been given something to offer, offer it! Don't wait, like I did, for someone else to do it for you. Life is too short, and time is far too precious, to live that way.

Pray about it earnestly; and then, like those shoe people say, Just Do It.

my morning in a nutshell

This morning, when the little ticker in my alarm clock set the people on the radio to yammering about whatever they were yammering about, I laid in my bed and thought, "Dude ... I worked hard last night. I didn't get home until late. I took a shower and nursed my sore throat. I didn't go to bed until like 1:00. Nature forbids that I leap yodeling from my bed at this unearthly pre-dawn hour."

So I laid there for awhile, and the radio peoples' talk didn't make any sense at all, because I kept dozing in and out of it. Something about 'defining spiritual moments' and chainsaws. I already said it didn't make any sense.

Then, suddenly. A great big, huge, exciting Something broke in upon my unstable consciousness - a memory of something really fabulous, something momentous about this day, for which it was not only worthwhile, not only imperative, but absolutely thrillingly delightful to get out of bed and stay awake all day. It was really exciting. I flicked on my reading lamp and laid there smiling, ignoring the radio people, mulling over this pleasant surprise.

If only I could remember what it was.

dust

I stood on a little mound of dirt under the tree, shivering and clutching my camera; intense; studious. The sun was setting, and it was glorious ... glorious ... glorious ... I knew there was glory, and I could see it, smell it, taste it ... soaring in, strewn careless and exquisite all across the horizon - as if sunsets were a dime a dozen, so here, have one on me. But who would have dreamed up such colors, and splashed them just like that all over the sky? Who would have thought to splay the clouds out like feathers, and to bathe them in a glow that took your breath away? Whose idea was that? It was an awfully good one, I'll tell you. And I wanted to go swimming in it, to open up all my pores and drink it in, I was so thirsty - I wanted to melt away in it and learn it and become it. But I knocked up against the glass. There was a window there, and I could only look through at the glory. I wanted through, I swayed back and forth a little with the depth of breathing, the longing ... but the sun sank, and the clouds faded, and that was it. Muddy twilight, and I turned around and walked slowly back to the house.

I stood in the salty white sand and I sank, while the waves played around my ankles and took the sand out from under my feet. I stared out across the water, and I knew it was vast ... I knew it. I pictured a globe, and I pictured a map of the world, and I pictured all the blue, all the blue. I imagined how far it must go, how deep, how angry. The waves rolled in from China, and I wondered what they brought with them, and where they found it. You could touch the waves, you could grab them, and it was like you were never there. You could dig up the earth and blow holes in it and stack it up with skyscrapers and draw spiderwebs of highways all over the map - but you couldn't touch the blue. It just was, and it just had been, since the beginning. Who decided it would be a good idea to put so much water on our little planet, and who filled it all full of salt? I could feel the years rolling in through the waters, ever and ever, untouchable; I heard joy in its liberated roar; and I wanted to dive in, wanted to roll away with the sea foam, wanted to dissolve like all that salt. But it was an ocean, and I was a girl, and I stood on the sand, and the waves surged on.

I laid on my back in the damp, dark grass, flat on my back on the crust of the earth, spinning through the universe, and just laying there. I looked out at the universe, while the earth clung to me and kept me from flying out into it, and I shuddered when the damp crept in through my sweatshirt. There were fireballs out there in the sky, roaring, towering, convulsing with brilliance and power, too bright to even think of looking at, too hot to survive, too huge to understand. I should have been terrified. But when they looked at me from the universe, they looked from so far away that all I saw in return were little glitter-flecks strewn across the blackness, little pinpricks in a thick velvet curtain, bright and cold and shaking with life. You know those times when you stand before something amazing, or realize something astonishing, and all your insides fall away and there's nothing left but wonder? I missed it that night. I looked out at that universe, and my heart beat against my ribs, and I knew there was glory ... but my beating heart didn't understand. It looked up at a painted ceiling and it didn't understand.

And now you're going to laugh at me, because the analogy that comes next is so very foolish - it really is. But that's fitting, isn't it? Look at the western horizon in the evening, look out across that unbounded sea, look up and try to imagine the vastness of space ... and look to its Creator ... and then look at me, my plaid pajama pants, my stained sweatshirt, my sleepy eyes. I'm pinching my lip right now while I think, and I have a sore throat. It is fitting that my analogy should be foolish, is it not? His strength is made perfect in weakness.

Because I think that, in all of those instances, when I looked out at the glory, and reached for it, longed for it, sucked in my breath - I stood on the edge of a spiritual sneeze. It was coming, I felt it build; I waited, and my heart pounded ... but nothing. A pause, no breath. Nothing. And that was it; and I had to turn my back and keep walking.

I don't know - I like sneezing. It reminds me of standing on mountains and by oceans and under sunsets, and almost catching that glory. It reminds me that when my heart pounds after something I can never quite latch onto in this life, it's only because my quarry is in the next. It reminds me that in just a few short days my sneeze will come through, and I'll fly away into His glory, and I will be caught up in it ... and of all wonders ... this creature of dust will become like Him. 


Who would write a story like this? Hallelujah.

the young girl and the sea

Deep in the abyss it slumbers,
heavy, black, immense -
so still.
Slowly heaves, slowly undulates,
wider than nations,
deeper than thought,
ponderous and ancient.
Rising, spreading, growing,
burdens slipping away,
sucking in life from the tangy air -
it roars, and feels its strength.
Shifting and surging,
ever changing, unchangeable,
thundering its own mighty echoes
to the empty sky,
swelling to meet the clouds,
to embrace them and change them
and send them back
in vapors.
Raucous under violent skies,
crashing, divided,
a cacophany of powers
at war over nothing,
pounding and shredding,
it falls back at last,
unhurt.
Quiet, then, under furling reflections
of bluest sky,
the journey's length finds an object,
solid foundations,
and thrills at its nearness.
The rocky, sandy floor rises gradual,
tossing crowded waters into the air,
speeding on exuberant,
foaming, spraying, thundering
with joy uncontainable,
rolling over and over themselves
in ecstasies of liberty -
to spread themselves
at last,
hissing,
grateful,
humble,
spent across the sand,
prostrate at the feet of a girl.
A girl with a tan rubber heart,
rolled-up jeans and windy hair,
dipping raisin toes in the edge of the deep,
side-stepping back clumsy
when it races in to meet her.
Her tan rubber heart
looks out across forever,
feels the waves crash against it,
one by one,
surging out of the deep, forever,
falling back dripping,
coming again.
She stands on the edge of it and looks,
touches it, tastes it,
and scratches her knee,
and spits out a grain of sand.
What a piece of work is man,
the playwright knew.
Tousled, stumbling, a passing voice,
dust held together with invisible hands,
yet deathless,
a mirror of eternity,
made to magnify the One
that formed the deep from nothing,
and filled it,
and sends it charging with homage
to its inexplicable master,
and smooths it meekly
at her sandy, anointed feet.

the painted veil

What is the strongest love?

Is it there when the flames leap wildly from a fresh-hewn torch swept through darkness, when passion's blood courses freely through channels of discovery, when only two lovers in all the world exist, and all else fades into oblivion?

Is it hidden in the gentlest touch, the softest murmuring voice, in the quiet romance of flickering candles reflected in dreamy eyes and fine crystal, when love's exalted object soars through a haze of gold, and vows of undying faithfulness spill easily from adoring lips?

Love may begin here, or it may not; but how can it be strong when it has only just been born - bursting perhaps with life, but oh, so very young?

Of all the strange and uncanny things made manifest in this wonderful, broken world, one of the strangest may be this: that the love that is strongest is found in the warm, quiet fire burning steadily in a well-worn hearth - in the one who finds good amidst the badness in another and embraces it all and is bound to it; who hurts this love and is hurt by it mortally, and yet - beyond all reason and beyond its own strength - forgives and goes on loving until the end.

The Painted Veil tells the brief story of such a love, foolishly begun, and cast foolishly aside at the first test. The film follows one utterly disenchanted couple into the heart of China, where cholera ravages the countryside, and where Walter (angry husband of an unfaithful wife) has volunteered to take charge. Intense suffering and hardship will not abide the wearing of masks, and wretched Kitty (the wife) soon learns that she has betrayed a better man than she deserves - has cast aside a treasure in her haste to snatch at glittering pebbles - perhaps beyond recovery. But the simple beauty of the story of their difficult and honest path to forgiveness and real, selfless love is well worth the pain of the journey.

The one gaping hole I found was that a story of such profound reconciliation could leave God so thoroughly out of the picture - except for one disappointing conversation in which a disenchanted nun refers to Him as a negligent and disinterested husband, to whom she feels bound out of duty, rather than love. In a story so full otherwise of redemption and truth, this is the staggering lie it pretends to be able simultaneously to believe. This is how close we can come on our own, inexcusable because we know what is good, but we cover our eyes against its true Source.

But if you can take the good and leave the bad, and fast forward through a couple of scenes, I would recommend putting The Painted Veil on your list next time you go to Video Warehouse or Netflix.com. It's a fallen world we live in, and it's good for us to see the beauty God can grow from the ashes of our own devestation. He can change everything - even our own stubborn hearts.