God's Grandeur

God's Grandeur

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge & shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast & with ah! bright wings. 

The other day I took the long way home, my little car winding through rolling hills, budding woodlands, fields of dewy green. I looked up and saw a deer springing off through the grasses, full of energy and of life, and it came over me:

In the realm of nature, little has changed since time began. To the deer, this could be any century. Only human beings have bent time into a thing of fashion, mapping out the hours, the weeks, the towns and cities, the toll roads plowing through the forests, the togas in that millennium, the business-casual khaki slacks in this one.

And sometimes nature suffers from our brusque ownership, but more often, nature astonishes us by conquering our temporal constructions with its eternal anonymity. And the grandeur of God shines.

A Dream Within A Dream

 A Dream Within A Dream

By Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand --
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep -- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

I, too, have said goodbye and wondered: was any of this real? I can't feel you anymore. Where are you? Have I lost you forever? Were you ever mine?

The lover bids farewell to his beloved, calm, composed; a kiss on the forehead and he is gone, his words laden with quiet grief. In a flash, he is standing by the sea. There is nothing for him now but wind and waves, and in his fingers, the remnants of the unkeepable.

The Day We Walked Around With A Banjo And Everyone Stared At Us

Angsty hipster band, a.k.a. Ray Secondo and me on a normal Monday afternoon.

Springtime is for walks, yes? Ideally, aimless walks on the back streets of a small town.... with a banjo.

If you and your heavily bearded, banjo-playing pal also happen to have dressed like trashy hipsters that day, well, so much the better. That way you can take an angsty selfie with some old office buildings and street signs in the background, and everyone you pass will stare at you and think, What? Also you can make an artsy blog post about it later, because that's what we do here in the counterculture.


My friend Ray Secondo has a beard. Like, a real beard. And I have long, messily braided hair. And I was wearing black skinny jeans and a Michael Jackson Thriller T-shirt and Chuck Taylor shoes and off-red lipstick, and he was wearing a shirt with a football and the words STILL UNDEFEATED on it and a weird throwback '90s five-panel hat with a funky pattern and blue shorts and gray shoes.

Ray plays multiple instruments, so many that I've lost track. Today he kinda wanted to play his banjo, and I kinda wanted to go for a walk, which is how we ended up going for a walk while Ray played his banjo.

We set out from the university and walked several blocks south, wading in among the quiet, sun-beaten town houses with their cute little flowerbeds and lawn ornaments. Along the path, Ray was twanging away at banjo licks, switching back and forth between Scruggs and clawhammer styles. The quiet, happy music filled the air. I never thought of myself as a banjo person in the past, but hearing it played in person has converted me. The sound! It evokes a complete atmosphere, the essence of folk America.


Despite the beautiful sunny weather, at first we saw almost no one out in their yards or traversing the sidewalks. But then the encounters started happening.

Our first human (and canine) audience came in the form of a young couple out walking their dog. The dude had a beard, although not quite as epic as Ray's. I could feel his eyes on the banjo as we approached. In no time, his face broke into a brilliant grin. "Yeah, man!" he said, and I grinned back.

A few houses down, an elderly couple was out on their porch, and at the sound of the banjo, the gentleman got up and walked a few paces out onto his front lawn in our direction. "All right! Got a little country gospel," he exclaimed. We laughed and nodded. "There's a bluegrass festival over to Kendalville in a couple weeks," he added.

"Have a nice day!" his wife called from the porch as we continued down the street. We wished her the same happy fate.

And the faces kept staring. In car windows. Over garden walls. Everyone wanted to see the crazy college kids with the banjo. And we obliged them. No matter how awkward it got, Ray kept playing, and I kept enjoying it.


As our epic (and odd) journey neared its end, and campus was almost visible through the rows of trees and clapboard estates, I looked up and noticed a purple house with a lovely garden.

"Hey, I bet this is my creative writing teacher's house," I said suddenly.

Then I saw the little library box chock full of books and I knew I was right.

Ray stopped playing. "Any good books?"

We opened the box. Pride and Prejudice. A Boxcar Kids book. A biography of Rosa Parks. I picked that one up and leafed through it. Definitely a lot of good books. But I left them for another day.

Another day when the spirit moves me to stroll out into the sunshine and wander off the beaten path. Another day when I get the urge to take the ordinary world in front of me, and do something out of the ordinary with it. Because you have to take these opportunities where you can get them. Next time you have the chance to do something weird and wonderful, do it.

Although, admittedly, you may not have a weird and wonderful friend with a banjo to make things that much more bizarre and amazing.

Eternal Light

Lux aeterna, by György Ligeti

The first time I heard this music, I was in my junior year of college. Junior year was difficult for me. I remember the constant knot of suspense in my chest, twisting tighter and tighter, then loosening, then tightening again. I don't know why, but my stress levels were high, and every day felt like a possible prelude to a breakdown. In my heart there was an ever-present, piercing desire; I just wanted to get away from it all, to run and run and run until I couldn't run anymore, to lie down in the middle of an open field where there was nothing but sweet cold and healing silence.

I'm a music major, and one of the required courses for my degree is called music literature. For me, that class consisted of reading background information related to music history and music theory, then listening critically to the important masterpieces of art music throughout the centuries, and afterward being prepared to comment on what I had heard. One day in my junior year I sat down in class, my bones still buzzing with anxiety and fatigue, and the instructor turned on "Lux aeterna" by György Ligeti. 

And time froze.

From somewhere beyond the furthest reaches of reality, light breathes a cool eternal fragrance into the waking soul.

That is what I later wrote to describe what I had heard. Music came over me gently, like a delicate spray of mist; then it flooded the room, fog. I closed my eyes so I could see the voices. In my mind's eye, they moved like stars, an almost imperceptible drift across echoless chasms of space. I was transfixed, electrified. And, for nearly a sixth of an hour, I could feel the first filaments of healing beginning to whisper and to stir within my soul.

This music is strange, eerie, even somewhat troubling. For some people, it might only provide a headache, or might even create a knot of stress in the chest. But for me in those moments, it truly was healing... a haunting call from some altar across the universe: come forward and be saved. Come away, away, to the other side of the cosmos, and lie down in the open field. Let it soak through your body, seep into all the pinched twinges of pain and soften them into floating silken dreams.

Lie here forever for a moment, inside this silver song where there is nothing but sweet cold and healing silence.

Ways to pray:

Pray with your hands clasped together and your head down.
Pray with your feet on the cold marble floor.
Pray using words you've heard a thousand times.
Pray as one of many, a face in the crowd.

Pray with book in hand and follow the lines with your finger.
Pray with your knees on the velvet rug.
Pray with your arms outstretched, then folded.
Pray like you know what you're doing.

Pray like you have no idea what prayer even is.
Pray with your chin in your hand, thinking.
Pray with your hands on the wheel, driving.
Pray in a whisper.

Pray with the music cranked all the way up.
Pray in an empty building with the lights turned off.
Pray in dance moves when you can't think of words.
Pray by laughing uncontrollably.

Pray writing in your journal.
Pray lying in your bed.
Pray sitting up all night wondering if anything is real.
Pray with your face to the floor.

Pray screaming.
Pray when you're so mad you feel like your lungs are on fire.
Pray using language you wouldn't use in church.
Pray sobbing your heart out.

Pray when the sun comes up.
Pray by saying nothing at all.
Pray by breathing.
Pray by being alive.

There's So Much More

It’s hard to stay mad, when there’s so much beauty in the world. 
Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much; 
my heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst, 
and then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold onto it, 
and then it flows through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude 
for every single moment of my stupid little life.

- Lester Burnham, American Beauty

Before long, the anger burns out. It flares for a moment, white hot, then smoulders in orange for a while, but after that it is gone, a drifting haze that clears in the presence of the crystal light.

I try to hang on to it, but I can't. My hands weary of that limiting constriction, those knuckles and fists. I can't. My fingers burst from their shackles and tremble in the open air, spreading wide to freedom, to joy. There is so much more to life. My heart tries to treasure the smugness, the tightness, the implosion, the poison, but then there is no room for the beauty, the love. My heart denies me the pleasure of holding onto hatred. My heart screams, let me go, you tyrant. Let me be free.

And so I let it go, and it blasts through the barbed wire fences and flies out into the mountains, the meadows, the sea and the sky. I can't stay in that self-made captivity. I have to run out into the wind that breaks umbrellas; I have to dance in the rain.

Creation is calling:

Please don't stay inside. There is so much more for you, and you are so loved, so beautiful. Come and dance with us. Come and sing your song in our chorus of a million voices. Stop putting a cheap and easy end to what has only just begun. You can't see what we see. Get out here and look. You will be amazed.

Hope

At the end of the day, my heart will sing,

         and the song will swell to a symphony,

                  and the symphony rise till it fills the skies,

                           and the skies will shout, and the clouds take wing,

And heaven will blaze forth in healing streams,

         and the healing streams will wash over me,

                  and the hope I feel will at last be real,

                           as the dawn reawakens my childhood dreams.

 

I Should Be Sick Of This Song

Easy Way Out by Gotye

I once wrote a paper about this song. To be specific, it was a rhetorical analysis. I was taking a class called Rhetoric and Persuasion that semester, and our last major assignment before the final exam was to analyze something from popular culture.

During the writing process, I listened to the song over and over. I put the track on repeat and played it on loop in my headphones for hours straight while I typed. I like the song, but obviously, at the time I had some vague worries that I might be completely destroying it for myself by overplaying it.

This didn't turn out to be the case. Even after all that mindless repetition, I still get a kick out of listening to "Easy Way Out," and the video, which I also viewed multiple times, is still compelling to me. Perhaps it's because Gotye's message remains relevant to my experience. I doubt that's going to change any time soon.

This music video exposes something that I absolutely dread: the idea of life as a monotonous cycle, going nowhere, meaning nothing, an empty, dull, miserable excuse for an existence that never allows you a moment to breathe, to think, to feel. There is never time to reflect on what is happening, or whether any of it even matters. There is constant pressure to perform, but no one ever offers you a reason for this endless merry-go-round of madness. You just have to keep going, even if it costs you your health, your happiness, your sanity. In the end, it may cost you your life, but no one really cares, do they? If you can't keep up, very well, you'll just be left behind.

But of course, I already wrote the paper on this. If you want to hear some more dismal exposition, here's a link to that infamous rhetorical analysis, which placed in the academic division of my university writing contest:

The Dangerous Daily Grind

Just To Spice Things Up

Today I happened to be writing the word behavior. At the last minute, I made the conscious decision to spell the word the British way: behaviour. Here on my U.S. computer, that word appears with a red zigzag underneath it, but in the U.K., that's the standard spelling. I like British spellings, so I just thought, why not, you know?

I was writing that word as an answer to a test question. At the end of the same test, the professor included some bonus questions, including his standard fun one: "How do you spell my last name?" He has an unusual surname; a significant number of people have missed this question on the last few tests. I'm pretty confident of the spelling by now, so I decided to take the time to add some calligraphic flourishes to my inscription of his name, including a quick design sketch beneath it, just for fun. When people handed in their tests he immediately flipped to the back to see how many got his name right, and when he saw my little work of art, he laughed in enjoyment. I smiled. I was glad I'd taken the extra time to do something special.

There are so many opportunities to spice things up in life. When I took English composition at college, there was a question on the final exam about form in writing, and a random inspiration hit me: I could write my answer as a poem. So I did. I put the content of my answer into rhyming verse. It gave me a reason to laugh to myself, and man, you've got to take those opportunities where you can get them.

If I'm walking down the sidewalk and there are roses blooming beside the path, I'll pick one and put it behind my ear. If I'm trudging through the parking lot and notice there's a dog in the car next to mine, I'll take a moment and smile at its furry face. If I'm in some boring adult setting and suddenly there's a child wandering through our midst, I'll be sure to look into her eyes and share a split second of quiet connection. Honestly, the world is full of reasons to smile, but do we? Do we take advantage of the chance to make ourselves happy in all the little ways available to us?

It's easy to get weighed down by the stress, pain, and exhaustion of daily living. But I find that if I keep my eyes open, I discover a lot of simple pleasures along the way, and they renew my strength. Next time you're having a day that is miserable, or just monotonous, take a moment to step outside the box and look around at life with fresh eyes. You just might see a dance you can do, a joke you can tell, a rose you can stop and smell... just to spice things up.

Instinct

Sometimes I know things and I don't know why.

I can walk into a room and get an instant sense of the social dynamic and what is happening under the surface.

I can see a person around, and without ever talking to them, have an eerie awareness of who they are and what they are going through.

I can be friends with a person who seems to be genuinely happy, friendly, and sweet, but find it hard to look them in the eye when we talk, because I can't shake the feeling that they are actually not happy, not doing well; that there is a part of their heart that they have done their best to bury and leave for dead, but I can still feel it beating, like the tremors of a distant earthquake beneath my feet.

I always try to take such instincts with a grain of salt. There is often little to no concrete data to back them up, and I want to be careful not to make unfair assumptions about people or situations. So I wait, and keep those observations on file in my head.

Sometimes the only outward sign of my instincts comes in the form of decisions I make - decisions that may look odd or incomprehensible to other people, but to me, they make sense, because they jive with my gut feelings. I acknowledge my gut by making room for its observations in the realm of my lifestyle choices. That way, if the landmine I am sensing is real, if it blows, I am out of the way.

Yeah, I do my best not to rely too much on random instincts that come to me out of nowhere. But you know, it's getting increasingly harder to just ignore them point blank, because now I  have the benefit of hindsight on a lot of these experiences.

And so far, more or less, my instincts have been spot on.

Why I Call Myself A Christian Mystic

On several of my social media platforms, I describe myself as a Christian mystic. People sometimes ask me what this means. I always direct them to the nearest dictionary.

  

Christian 

noun 

1. A person who believes in Jesus Christ; adherent of Christianity. 

2. A person who exemplifies in his or her life the teachings of Christ.

Mystic

noun

1. A person who claims to attain, or believes in the possibility of attaining, insight into mysteries transcending ordinary human knowledge, as by direct communication with the divine or immediate intuition in a state of spiritual ecstasy.

2. A person initiated into religious mysteries.

So that's what the actual words Christian and mystic mean, but of course, I still haven't properly explained what I mean when I refer to myself as a Christian mystic. Here goes.

First of all, yes, I am a Christian, and when I say Christian, I mean simply that. I don't identify with one branch of Christianity over another; I feel like I am holistically Christian, rooted in the essence of the faith, but drawing inspiration from its many variations. Basically, at the end of the day, Jesus is important to me: his story, his power, his love. I honestly don’t know where I would be without him.

And secondly, yes, I do feel like mystic is a decent word to describe me, by the above definition. My experience of my faith tends to be marked by mystery, wonder, emotion, and a sense of direct connection to spiritual realities. This makes sense because it is, after all, the way I experience life in general. Of course, I also go through periods of dryness wherein I feel distant from these things. On the whole, though, I think I have an unusually high incidence of what could be termed "mystical experiences," moments where the unseen world seems to suddenly unfold before my eyes, or an intense, surreal feeling of love falls on me out of nowhere, or I hear a quiet, gentle, piercing voice deep within my heart telling me exactly what I needed to hear in that moment.

My spiritual life is very important to me; I consider it the central aspect of my existence. It defines everything else I am, everything else I do. I draw tremendous energy from it. My prayer is that I will be able to share this faith of mine with the world, sometimes in words, and sometimes merely by my presence. I want the deep love and vibrant joy I have from Jesus, to spread to those around me, like an atmosphere of healing, peace, and power.

People who listen

I'll remember the eyes that looked at me in light,
those gentle eyes that took in the dimensions of my mind without remodeling its space,
the eyes that simply
saw
me.

I'll remember the arms that welcomed me in peace,
those open arms that wrapped me up in wordlessness and helped me breathe,
the arms that simply
held
me.

I'll remember the hearts that listened to my own,
those loving hearts that didn't bother with the imposition of another rhythm or pace,
the hearts that simply
heard
me.

I'll remember the people who listen. Everyone else will fade out,
their noise turning out to be silence,
while silence turns out to be song.

My Philosophy

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard.
Do not let pain make you hate.
Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.

Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree,

you still believe it to be a beautiful place.

- Kurt Vonnegut

When people ask me if I'm a pessimist or an optimist, I always hesitate. Frankly, I don't identify with either label. I like to say that more than focusing on either positives or negatives, I aim for something I call emotional honesty. I very much value being aware of life in all its nuances, both happy and sad, good and bad, beautiful and frightening. I don't think of myself as an optimist because I feel like being cheerful about everything all the time is avoiding the reality of all the pain and suffering that exists in the world. In the same way, though, I can't be a pessimist, because if I am paying any attention at all, the world is also ridiculously chock full of beauty and joy. Ignoring either side of the spectrum would be like going half-blind. I'm not into that option.

At the end of the day, though, if someone put a gun to my head and required me to choose either pessimism or optimism as my personal philosophy (a freak occurrence which I am not expecting, but you never know), I would have to side with optimism. This is because, in my heart, I truly believe that the good of life outweighs the bad, that good is the dominant force in the world, and evil's attempts to corrupt that good will ultimately fail. So even at ground zero, with thousands of innocent people reduced to ashes, I see the beauty of life outweighing the ugliness. I see in those ashes a heartbreaking reality, but also an undeniable truth that these beautiful people did exist, and each one of their lives was an epic story all its own, and none of them were necessary, none of them even had to be born. But they were born, they were here among us, and their presence on this planet made infinite amounts of difference to all of us, whether we know it or not. And the glory of those lives, although cut tragically short, vastly outshines the ugliness of death that tried to extinguish their power.

I don't like the label, but in the last analysis, maybe I am an optimist. Because, in spite of all the pain, all the bitterness, all the world's clamoring attempts to convince me otherwise... I still believe it to be a beautiful place. Life, light, and love will triumph; in fact, they already have.