the hired hand

image credit: popcrush.com/2013-sxsw-survival-guide

 

***

Every year during Spring Break, the multimedia festival known as SXSW descends upon Austin, and in its wake come hundreds of thousands of visitors to the city. In 2015, the total number of registered participants in SXSW events was roughly 400,000, and while undoubtedly this number reflects some duplicates in terms of event attendance as well as a substantial number of resident participants, it also cannot account for the huge number of unofficial or unaffiliated sideshows that are put on for free all across the city. The cast of characters that floods our downtown during this week is as diverse as it is numerous, and included in this host is no small number of drifters, vagabonds, street performers, and otherwise just generally directionless individuals. They are asleep on sidewalks and in doorways; they are lined up around the block for some arbitrary musician dujour; they are posted up on a street corner with a guitar and an amp and two chords at their disposal; they are literally everywhere.

This situation seems to come to an unattractive head on St. Patrick’s Day. Along with the aforementioned crew, downtown gets littered also with people who feel the best way to celebrate the patron saint of Ireland (dubbed so because he brought the gospel to that country) is to find a place to get as inebriated as possible.

My walk from my downtown office to the train station a few days ago was infuriating. I had to step over self-proclaimed Rastafarians sitting cross-legged in the street, dodge a guy who fell over while holding a none-too-discreet sign asking for intercourse in exchange for a dollar (or vice-versa, it was hard to tell), and elbow my way through barriers of people who were milling around as if someone had just kicked the giant downtown ant mound. By the time I got to the train, I was actually livid, and this was exacerbated by the way people were trying to pack into the train going from whoknowswhat concert to whocareswhat irrelevant other show.

I suppose perhaps the most maddening thing about this experience is that, of course, none of these people seemed to care even the slightest that they were invading the space of people who wanted nothing to do with this whole fiasco, myself included. It is as if we, those who live and walk and eat in this space every day, were actually the outsiders, as if the space were actually theirs to begin with, and how dare we think of sullying their prized collective debauch with goings to and from work and home.

My wife has told me that I am prone to a certain condition, a certain tendency or proclivity for, oh, let’s call it grouchiness. Really, it is just being flat miserable. I call this condition C.O.M.S.: Crotchety Old-Man Syndrome. I may have even used the word “youthes” in my internal rant that day.

In the moment, I was truly enraged. But after a few days reflection, I began to feel very differently. There were a few important truths that I was overlooking that day, and as I thought more deeply about them, I began to develop a different perspective, and even feel convicted about my attitude towards this event and its participants.

First of all, even if it is true that the city doesn’t belong to these people, it doesn’t belong to me either. Thinking of it as my space was just as fallacious as them thinking of it as theirs. It was, in fact, an identical attitude. The perceived attitude of ownership and selfishness I encountered that was causing me so much resentment was actually the very same attitude in my heart. In reality, the city, as all things, belongs to all of us collectively, and more importantly, to the Lord. Everything I see as “mine” is only mine to steward, not to possess, and this includes my living space and my public transportation. It also includes my heart, and on this day I was stewarding none of them well, least of all the latter.

This leads me to my next point: this mindset of selfishness and of being “inconvenienced” by all the oblivious visitors to our city was causing me such great frustration that I was blinded to the immense and abundant opportunities around me to make a difference in the lives of those I encountered. Compounding my frustration was the fact that not only were so many people in my way, but they were in my way for something utterly stupid: songs. I mean, songs are great and all, but how in the world, I thought, could they be so great that anyone would be able to put up with this nonsense: with the crowds, the noise, the smells, the abject debauchery, etc.?

But this should not have been a cause for frustration for me; rather it should have been a cause for deep concern and sympathy. Why would they put up with all of this for what I deemed nonsense? Well, because that is where their hope lies. Those who come for the music do so because there is some sort of beautiful spirituality in songs, a sense of connection perhaps that touches something in them that nothing else can. Those there for the films? About the same, I imagine. Those there for just the “experience” of it? You see where I am going. Everyone there was looking for something. Something unforgettable. Something, in a sense, defining. A moment in their lives that would have significance for as long as those lives lasted. The participants wanted to discover something new about art, and consequently about themselves. The musicians on the street playing wanted to be discovered. Everyone there wanted something tangible, something genuinely, truly real.

Many of them, it was easy to see, has been searching for this a long time, and had perhaps given up hope on ever finding it. I don’t know if I have ever seen more dejected, desperate, lonely faces in one place in my life. Faces whose names I didn’t bother to know, didn’t want to know. Faces that I just wanted to forget as quickly as I saw them.

Of course, I know that what they need is not in fact music. It is not art. It is not a chance to “make it” as a musician or a filmmaker. It is not to have their technology go viral. Because none of these things, even if they shout loud promises that they will, can fulfill us. But again, neither can avoiding them. Just as their peace cannot be found in making or experiencing all these wonderful crafts, mine cannot be found in an unmolested walk to the train, or in a quick escape from the city.

In John 10, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Shepherd, highlighting the differences between his relationship to his sheep and everyone else’s. One passage in particular stands out as pertinent here: “He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.”  (vv. 12-13)

As a steward of my life and my body and the place where I have been given to live, I am the hired hand. And all of the people I pass every day, and all of the people crowding the streets during these festivals, are Jesus’s sheep. They belong to him, and yet they are in my path. They are given, in a sense, into my charge, even if just for a few seconds. And yet, on this day, all I could think about was fleeing to safety. I was surrounded by people who needed, most of them desperately, to hear the gospel, to find at last the real thing they had been seeking, the saving truth that far supasses all success and relevance and creation; and yet, somehow, though the harvest was so ripe, I had no desire to work the field. Though it pains me to say, I must confess, I care nothing for his sheep.

Contrast this with how Jesus in the same passage speaks of himself in verses 2-4: “But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.” And in 9-11: “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture…I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” And yet again, in verses 14-18: “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.”

Consider the language he uses here: he calls his sheep, he goes before them, he leads them. He comes to them. He will bring them to good pasture. He wants to give us life, and abundantly. And how does he do so? He lays down his life of his own accord. Language of such rich and profound care, such grace, such sympathy, such utter and absolute love.

All of this is in such stark contrast to what I do, what I did in fact, and how I felt on St. Patrick’s Day. Jesus would not scoff at these people. He would not avoid them. He would not shoulder his way through them to get where he was going. In fact, they would be where he was going. They wouldn’t be in his way, nor even on his way. They would be his destination. He wouldn’t retreat as quickly as possible to the safety of the suburbs. In fact, I believe he would do the exact opposite. He would retreat from the suburbs as quickly as possible and rush to care for his sheep.

My offhand thoughts about the way people celebrate St. Patrick’s Day now seem fairly hypocritical. Perhaps intentional intoxication is a foolish way to honor the great evangelist, but it is no more or less foolish than ignoring or being downright hostile to people in dire need of a message of hope.

This must be what it means to have a heart of stone. I can honestly say I felt nothing for these people on that day. My only thoughts were of myself. My only feelings were discomfort and inconvenience and anger. There was no love in anything I said or did on that 15 minute walk. My heart was a cold, dead, rock. And I know of nothing, no physical force, no substance, no book, no activity, that can change a rock into flesh. Only a supernatural miracle, only a heart transplant, can accomplish that. I don’t just need my heart softened; I need a new one entirely. This one is ruined.

So I pray, and I ask that you will pray with me, and for me, that God will perform this surgery in me again. I pray that I will become like the Good Shepherd: someone who runs toward the mess, and looks for ways to serve those in it and lead them out of it. I cannot continue to be someone who simply serves my own needs and stony desires. Jesus wouldn’t run from the mess. He would walk right into it and try to love it as much as possible. Even if I didn’t know this from the Scriptures or from the book of John, I know this from my own life. Because that is what he did for me. He entered into all of my unholy, disgusting mess and loved me intensely, genuinely, undeniably. I want to love like that. Because if I “have not love, I am nothing.”

***

an ode for you

photo credit: “Bach Invention 13″ by Debra Hurd (http://www.dailypainters.com/paintings/240853/Bach-Invention-13-music-classical-painting-art-by-Debra-Hurd/Debra-Hurd)

 

an ode for you

 

Tell me something that you

love.

 

Be it a bread I will

bake it,

a gift I will

bring it;

a craft I will

make it,

a song I will

sing it,

 

though I am

not much

of a craftsman,

I can

read instructions;

 

and though i am

not much

of a chef,

I can

follow a recipe;

 

even though I am

not

much

of a singer,

yet still

I can

carry a tune.

 

***

 

Psalm 0

***

i think trust must be

knowing

that someday i will be

standing

somewhere a

good ways off (a

good time hence),

and not

wishing

it was all different.

***

 

After XIV, 2005

***

And somehow I wonder how we

ever managed to live before we knew

adenosine and scapula and macrophage

and watched with curious invasions the

mitoses of a million unknown brethren and then

further – as in all things, all thrills, all deep hungers, never

satisfied with the joy already in front of us – as we began with

feverish indignation, with righteous entitlement, to uncode, unfold,

unravel the very letters and words of our

deepest identities –

                                 and yet somehow we

did live. We ate, breathed, slept, and made

love to our wives, who carried for us hundreds and thousands of

children, new lives always springing from old ones, joined to, joyed with

one another –

                        and all this without knowing

how it all worked, was it was all “called.” We did not need to “call” these things

at all. They came to us

unbidden

in the first place.

***

Is anyone still there? We shall see. Regardless, I am here. Even if I am the only one. Hope everyone is well.    – R.E.W. 

in the morning, immutable

***

the face peeks

just out from the shadow of

stiff brisk brick.

nineteen degrees.

the head – its squinting eyes, its

blistered lips, cracked from wind and

overuse, its gray jelly belly –

warmed by hints of day.

the rest, though, the

body, stands motionless in the shade.

blood still moves, but flows

floe cold. toes frigid,

rigid in iceberg shoes.

hands in empty pockets, holding

nothing, warming nothing but

themselves.

***

praying bernhard reimann was wrong

 

we’ll see how this goes. whimsy often betrays.

 

***

last night i was certain

that i wanted

some scorching black drink brewed

fresh and only for me

 

and when it was done and

all the grounds were coursed through and

all the oils and sacred secrets had been

sucked out i

poured it into a cup and

set it somewhere new, different,

seemingly benign

 

heat scores and

time wears and apparently

together they conspire to draw

rings in unsuspecting innocent wood

 

at last when

undeft fingers clumsily looped into

ceramic rings to

rescue planks of ancient trees it was

too late

 

and already carelessness had

spent its fortune on

making some mark that

no one but me would

ever see

 

i hoped, more

dearly than i hope that

euclid was right, and that five hundred

billion years hence no one

still

will have heard my name

 

***

it’s been a while. challenges are welcome. please, shout to the heavens the horrors of this poem. it will, in all honesty, be appreciated.

Reunions

***

Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.  – Psalm 36 : 5

***

Not long ago i had the joy of attending a reunion of some of my friends from high school. Initially i had quite mixed feelings about the event. There were, of course, a few friends who i was very excited to see, knowing that our friendship from school remained (mostly) intact and untainted. Overwhelmingly though i felt a tremendous sense of dread about encountering many of the attendees; i had not left a good impression on many people while in school, and i could only begin to guess at how much this would still be a factor.

The evening was quite pleasant at first, comprised primarily of the standard exchange of updates. Conversation centered around jobs, children, living locations, and other sundry pieces of data about each person’s current situation. It wasn’t long, however, before talk naturally shifted to more nostalgic ground, and tales from our time together 15 years prior began to surface. This, of course, was the part of the evening i had been dreading all along.

i will spare you the details, because some of the stories i heard about myself are truly too embarrassing to pen, but suffice it to say that even i was shocked at the level of callousness, selfishness, and utter depravity that the character Rich Wilson exhibited in some of these stories. With no exaggeration, i can honestly say that i was such a pompous and disgusting ass in high school that i had forgotten some stories that most people would remember with cringing horror. In essence, i had done so many awful things to people that my memory could not contain them all.

Reflecting on this later in the evening, i found myself shaken to no small degree as a result of these encounters. This event revealed two things about my heart, things which i knew to be true but clearly needed to be reminded of. First, it still matters to me a great deal what people think of me, so much that i believe it is somewhat idolatrous. While it is true that i should be concerned with how i come across to other people, i should only have this concern in the context of my identity in Christ. My primary concern should be reflecting Christ’s love to the world, and not what opinion people may have of me. If anything, my self-image issues frequently get in the way of this reflection, and often i find myself less bold about the gospel than i ought to be for fear of seeming crazy or silly. Secondly, i have a tendency to dwell on the mistakes of my past, so much so that sometimes this becomes my identity. My mistakes and inadequacies also have relevance only in the context of the gospel: they display, if i allow them to, how deep is the Father’s love and how powerful is His redemptive might. If He can love even me, He can surely love anyone.

Somewhere between the abject blind selfishness i showed in high school and the co-dependency i exhibit in current relationships lies the proper place for my heart. This place creates a man who is aware of his failures and yet not afraid to show them because in them Christ’s ultimate grace is displayed. This place creates a man who is concerned with how others see Christ, not himself. In this place, my image is of no consequence; in this place, i am not afraid in the least of looking like a fool so long as it is done for the sake of loving God and loving others well.

Outside of this place, there is only worry, guilt, shame, and dark, weary stories from the past. i do not want to forget these stories entirely, because they remind me of who i was, and they remind me of who i would be without Christ. At the same time, i need not fear these stories nor run from them any longer. i may concern myself with how others feel about them for the sake of healing and amends, but i myself can be free to feel nothing about them. That man, praise God, has been and is being put to death each day.

Ultimately, the only opinion of me that matters is God’s. It would be great if these people learned to love me, but if they do not, God has chosen to, and that is not only enough, it is everything. i would be lying if i said i understood it, and even to say such is humbling beyond words, but for purposes of His own He has chosen to see in me His child. i pray that i will learn to see myself in the same light.

***

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end.  – Lamentations 3 : 22

fifty-one

***

i am not he

any longer

 

and yet my shadow is

as angular, black as

his was, my voice as

scratched and rasped as

his was, my words

carelessly swung

swords as were

his words, my deeds

like plowing barren fields, like

breaking rocks into

dust, sad and pointless and

empty:

 

so too were

his filthy sick

 

hands.

 

his folly is my

sadness, his failing becomes my

habit, his silliness my frivolity; his

each new birth means

my death

 

and he is born

anew

 

daily.

 

(but so too

am i;

 

his is merely of

air,

dust,

 

wind;

 

mine of

water, of

fire, of

 

spirit, unnameable un-

tameable, un-

quenchable.)

 

 

(amen)

***

Honey from the Rock

There’s no falling back asleep once you’ve wakened from the dream  – from “February Seven” by The Avett Brothers

***

Is it possible a scent can actually hurt? That the right particulate olfactory matter can actually translate through some registering synapse into legitimate pain?

I didn’t go there with any purpose other than to kill time. Get out of the house for a while. Stretch my legs. Live up to some other clichéd phrase about wanderlust or boredom or some such sensation. I certainly, at least on the conscious level, didn’t go there to catch fire or to have life breathed into my stagnant malfunctioning lungs. I hadn’t been there in months, in fact. Used to go every day it seems. Did some of my greatest work there, though greatest is at best a relative term and at worst a complete misnomer. My portfolio, to date, hardly includes anything that merits the creation of a ranking system.

But the smell. It burned like icicles on bare hands. I’ve been to coffee houses many times since, and I drink coffee every day, so it couldn’t possibly have been just the coffee. Instead it must have been some amalgamation of that scent mingled with the aromas of unread novels and newsprint that did the killing; or rather, undid it. I found myself almost unwittingly back in the bookstore which during my fervent writing days I often haunted. Now instead it was I who was the haunted: potent, almost feverish, memories of those days when I felt right with my purpose and place in the universe now plagued me as I wandered from shelf to shelf. I felt like an amnesiac almost; there was a lingering and perfect sense that something significant had happened here, but I couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t lay hands to it and hold it tangibly, lift it to the light and inspect it. Instead I could only walk from floor to floor in the store, wondering, fearing. I was covert, on the sly, sneaking almost, either hiding from something or desperately searching for it. Rows of books that I had never read assailed me like the faces of people I thought I should recognize, yet I was adrift in a crowd of strangers.

I settled on a book, almost at random (although I have my doubts that anything is truly as arbitrary as it may seem) that was a compilation of essays by various successful writers about their motivations for pursuing the craft.

Not one of them said they did it for the money.

I would love to claim that I didn’t know the reason I stopped writing, but that would be a lie. I know exactly why and when it happened. Truthfully, I didn’t actually stop writing altogether, I merely stopped doing it for myself and began doing it for someone else instead. There was an immense and seductive thrill in this: someone actually wanted to give me money in return for borrowing my skills. Isn’t this, after all, what we all dream about? What we all think we need? Finding someone who is willing to pay us for doing what is our passion?

I have awakened from a dream that was not mine, as if while I slept my mind was transported into someone else’s body. In truth, money is a beautiful and alluring mistress, and an absolute, horrid lie. I probably run the risk of alienating my employers by even saying all of this, but nevertheless I felt snapped out of a coma in that store. I have left something essential, fundamental to who I am behind to pursue something that is not only unsatisfying, but ultimately unreal. I haven’t felt so sad and wonderful at the same time in a while. It is the blessed delicious hurt of tonguing a sore tooth or pressing on a knotted muscle. I feel bruised and bloody, like a survivor of a building collapse or a car accident, and I have the same sense of contrite gratitude at still being alive, the same sense of having narrowly escaped a crushing and tragic fate.

Who can say why the Lord gives us what He does? The obvious answer, of course, is that we need whatever He supplies, but sometimes it seems He gives us those things not so that we may be satisfied by them, but so that we may truly know that they do not satisfy. It is hard to say, but it seems this might have been the case for me as far as my recent “jobs” are concerned. I will undoubtedly continue the “professional” gig for a time, at least to fulfill my contract, but I am beginning to be possessed of the notion that said path is not for me. After all, money comes and goes, but the impressions we make upon our brothers may echo many lifetimes into the future. This is what writing should be about. Forgetting that was like forgetting my own name.

And I already hear the clamor: Rich, you have said this before. In fact, I can recall several posts, (this one and that, among others) in which you stated nearly the same thing. What can I say? My heart is fickle, and a liar. No doubt in a few months I will need to learn this lesson again. In the meantime, while this correction is fresh (and since this prose is awful and meandering and utterly indicative of someone who is out of practice), I will stop boring you with all of this and get on with some real writing.

May the results matter not nearly so much as the reason for the act.

***

I am the Lord your God,
who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.

“But my people did not listen to my voice;
Israel would not submit to me.

So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts,
to follow their own counsels.

Oh, that my people would listen to me,
that Israel would walk in my ways!

and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”

Psalm 81 : 10 – 13, 16b

Stranger, and more beautiful

***

Fiction has long been a part of my life. There have been books historically which i have read and re-read incessantly throughout my life. When i was a child and a teenager, most of these tales took the form of fantasy or science fiction. Even fancied myself a bit of a fantasy writer at one point, and i still feel as though i could set down a rather rousing epic if i put my mind and (more importantly) my heart to it. Some period of time into my early adulthood i started shifting my reading and writing interest to more “literary” fiction, whatever that nomenclature signifies. i have begun and left unfinished no fewer than five novels, having never caught sufficient steam or momentum, or perhaps having never had the requisite discipline, to see these projects through to completion. My reading in this arena has been, for a time, rather diligent at least, and there is certainly a tremendous and nameless appeal that the fictive voice holds in my heart. It is not out of the realm of possibility that i may at some point dig up from under the earth of time and business these efforts and breathe life into them anew.

Poetry has also competed for dominance in my aesthetic sensibilities, and though i have not quite had the patience to study it as thoroughly as i ought, there are still times when it seems that the only mechanism which will do a subject justice is the poem, thus as you can see i have written my fair share of them. Most of them are at the very least elementary, and some even go so far as to be downright terrible and asinine.

Recently, however, despite my traditional attachment to these slightly more artistic forms of communication, i have begun to suspect that perhaps my gift really lies in the area of non-fiction. i have never written very much of it, save on this particular blog, and even though the bulk of my posts here can be classified as non-fiction, they still feel fictitious, at least in the sense that they are driven by narrative rather than by research. i must confess i owe at least a portion of this suspicion to my wife, who first pointed out that she found my non-fiction to be my best work. Lately i have toyed with idea of working more exclusively in this domain, and it is starting to gain sway for me. i suppose what always steered me away from writing non-fiction was a lack of qualification. i am an expert in precisely zero subjects, save perhaps the subject of myself. But perhaps this is enough. Perhaps there is enough of a story in my life – and i suspect there is, not because i have lived a particularly adventurous or meaningful life, but because i have lived a particularly rebellious one – to merit its writing. After all, God has written a rather amazing story already, having provided for me time and time again despite my unwillingness to receive that provision. i think perhaps i will stay away from fiction, at least for the time being – God is, after all, a better story-teller than i will ever be – and stick strictly to writing about my experiences with Him and the recovery He has seen fit to mercifully bring into my life. Maybe in this, at last, after a year of dabbling in essentially every variety of writing and succeeding at none, i have found my calling. Time however, will tell.

The well-known adage “truth is stranger than fiction” has a less-familiar second clause, which i find even more profound than the first. “It is because,” Twain says, “fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” If you had asked me 30 months ago what i dreamed would be “possible” for the coming years, for my personal and spiritual life, for my career, and for my marriage, i would not have been able to even begin to guess at the current shape each of those elements has in my life. i believe that the purpose of writing is to provide insight and wisdom into the life of another, and by doing so, be a force for peace, for reparation, for reconciliation. Fiction gives us a certain view of truth through its exploration of possibilities, and poetry another through its propensity for ambitious metaphor, and both can provide some measure of universality, and thus each may, in part, accomplish the objective of establishing commonality. But God has written a truth, full and glorious, that no human word can sufficiently capture, and in my case, as it is for many of us, that truth is more compelling and more exhilarating, and thus ultimately vastly more unifying, than any story or device which we have ever conceived of or read. These stories, our stories, with all of their ugly and rambunctious and supercilious components, are the stories which people most need to hear. These are the stories that will heal, because ultimately they are not about us at all. Tell yours, and i will do mine.

***