Go Slow in Snow

We had planned on attending the Good Friday Service this evening.

The snow, however, had started at 2:00 PM and was still going strong on into the evening.

It took more than an hour for me to drive home from work–a drive that normally takes only twenty minutes. The speed on the highway, because of the snow, was limited to 35 miles per hour. And accident at the 127 Interchange brought traffic to a standstill, as did an accident at the Okemos Road exit. Traffic was blocked on Dibie Road because two city buses crashed into each other at the railroad tracks. One bus was pitched off the road and was resting with its nose in the ditch. The other bus sat sideways across the road.

Pagedropping

PAGE DROPPING

in conversations.
what have I learned?
what am I wondering?
what strikes me as funny?
what moves me to tears?

what kind of knowledge
can bend the
conversation

in some new direction
–not spinning–
but challenging
thinking
seeing
feeling
newly
differently

And then going back again
for a reassessment

growth is recursive

Working from the Notebook

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

I didn’t wear green today. I forgot, actually. I wasn’t the only one.

I’ve been composing most of my entries in a notebook. My intent, of course, is to post them later, although most of what I’m writing these days should be left in the notebook. It’s either too personal or lacks sufficient quality.

I’m letting these entries cook a bit. I like top-’o-the-head kind of thinking: It certainly has its value. But I also think a well-worded note as a summary of an entire day is worth more to the creative mind than a dump of every single detail. Time will tell, of course.

“Vision Reconciliation.”

Just testing…

Easter is Early

Yesterday–

The predictions of snow
filled conversations
“Six to eight inches,” they said.
“With freezing rain thrown in
just to make things interesting.”

Only a couple of inches on the
car when I left this morning.
More snow coming, though,
won’t stop until afternoon.
At least, that’s what ‘they’ said.

And, so it continued,
even again,
for most of today…

It’s more lament than complaint,
a simple sign of impatience–
more sigh than gasp–
more existential inconvenience
than semblance of dread.
Winter’s days are numbered!

Sunshine and warmth will
arrive in due course.
Easter is early this year;
Easter is early!

For now we can see that
the darks days of Lent
and the last days of winter
are being dragged
towards the early Easter
sunshine.

On Writing in a Journal

Ernst Junger On writing in a journal:

“I would advise anybody who takes part in a war or any other unusual experience for a long period, to keep a consecutive diary, if it be only a succession of jottings which serve later on to give memory its clues. [...] They force the writer of them to seize upon the essence of his experiences and to get above - if only for a few minutes a day - the familiar surroundings and to put himself in the position of a spectator. The daily experience will appear in a new light, just as a well-known landscape changes as soon as you try to sketch it. [...] It takes more energy than one might think to put a few facts together day by day when it is not a matter of life and death. [...] In any case the effort to observe goes with the habit of making notes, and when a man is in a situation like this that only these few years can offer and that can never recur in the same form, he ought to keep his eyes open and try to seize its unique features.”

I’ve seen and heard comments about the fact that I’m always writing in a notebook: “What, losing your memory for things?” they’d say.

I thought maybe I should quickly develop some talking points for myself:

1. Notetaking (or notemaking) keeps me engaged in a way that keeps me accountable, even if only to myself.
2. The act of ‘noting’ things keeps me as objective as possible, the primary goal being to capture the essence of waht is actually said or thought and not my opinion about what is said or thought. I try to avoid, whenever possible, rendering judgement on whether that thing is either good or bad. A premature judgement on such matters is usually wrong.
3. And, as a jogger of memory, the notebook does play a role. I have a written record to which I can refer. I suppose the criticism that we should remember things is valid enough–but as time passes and things happen, thinking gets replaced by more thinking.

Creativity and the Blues

Eric Maisel is interviewed about his book The Van Gogh Blues. He says this:

For more than 25 years I’ve been looking at the realities of the creative life and the make-up of the creative person in books like Fearless Creating, Creativity for Life, Coaching the Artist Within, and lots of others. A certain theme or idea began to emerge: that creative people are people who stand in relation to life in a certain way - they see themselves as active meaning-makers rather than as passive folks with no stake in the world and no inner potential to realize. This orientation makes meaning a certain kind of problem for them - if, in their own estimation, they aren’t making sufficient meaning, they get down. I began to see that this “simple” dynamic helped explain why so many creative people - I would say all of us at one time or another time - get the blues.

This is interesting, especially about the “making meaning” part.

It seems to me, though, the older I get, the “meaning” is not something that can be “made.” I don’t know, though.

Prayer: Week 6

“O Word of God Incarnate”

O Word of God incarnate, O wisdom from on high,
O truth unchanged, unchanging, O light of our dark sky;
We praise thee for the radiance that from the hallowed page,
A lantern to our footsteps, shines on from age to age.

The church from her dear Master received the gift divine,
And still that light she lifteth o’er all the earth to shine.
It is the golden casket, where gems of truth are stored;
It is the heav’n-drawn picture of Christ, the Living Word.

It floateth like a banner before God’s host unfurled;
It shineth like a beacon above the darkling world.
It is the chart and compass that o’er life’s surging sea,
‘Mid mists and rocks and quicksands, still guides, O Christ, to thee.

O make thy church, dear Savior, a lamp of purest gold,
To bear before the nations thy true light, as of old.
O teach they wand’ring pilgrims by this their path to tace,
Till, clouds and darkness ended, they see thee face to face.

William Walsham How, 1867

Prayer: Week 5

The ideal, of course, is to pray our prayers from the heart at all times and in all circumstances.

In our best moments, we can do this and should do this. But, to paraphrase Pascal, “Let us not think that we can do always that which we can only do sometimes.” We are subject to what C. S. Lewis called the “Law of Undulation.” Our existence is made up of peaks and troughs.

During our best moments-the peak of the cycle-we can pray right and pray well. During our un-best moments-in the trough of the cycle-we find it difficult to even pray at all.

Invariably, while in the trough, I think, “What if this trough turns out be an inordinately long period of time?”

Might I, by not praying, add time to the trough? And, how can I pray without words? And might I, during those times, use another’s words?

Perspective

The temperature was in the 20’s today. Snowing slightly.

Walked around with my coat open thinking the weather quite mild compared to what we’ve had. Zero is the new cold. It’s 20-some degrees warmer today.

I guess it all depends on your perspective.

Stuff Near My Desk

In my workspace at the moment, I have:

• A pocket briefcase filled with 3 x 5 index cards

• a reporters notebook

• Three Moleskine Cahier’s notebooks filled with really bad poetry

• Legal Pads (White and Yellow, just in case)

• A standard Blueline journal

• A small sketchbook

• A large newsprint poster-sized sketchbook

• A digital voice recorder

• An inexpensive .mp3 player loaded with podcasts

• A portable CD player loaded with J. S. Bach’s 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd Brandenburg concertos

• File folders with printouts of .pdf’s I’ve been meaning to read

• A desk lamp

• A table lamp

• A dictionary, thesaurus and Strunk and White’s Elements of Style

• Fowler’s Modern English Usage

• Strong’s Concordance

• Young’s Concordance

• Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words

• Five translations of the English Bible

• Thirty-seven different pens

• Twenty-three pencils

• A large coffee mug filled with….something

• Notes from a lecture series

• A two gigabyte flash drive

• A novel by Larry McMurtry

• The Book of Common Prayer

• Various CD ROMs with PowerPoint Presentations going back to 2001

• A cigarette lighter

• Two small binder clips

• A goose call

• An archery glove

• An old hospital wristband

• A Tony the Tiger Baseball signed by Tony the Tiger

• Five smooth stones

• A painted rock

• A replica of the Stanley Cup made out of tin foil and toilet paper rolls

Managing Creatives

Bullet points as ideas about how to manage creative people:

• Jokes are serious business
• Play is work.
• Unwarranted criticism is DEATH.
• Silence is DEADLY because unwarranted criticism is implied.
• Philosophy is important, but is to be held loosely.
• Rhythm rules.
• Bending is necessary.
• Insist on quality.

These will probably change.

Prayer: Week 4

Philip Yancey wrote this in his recently published book, Prayer:

“Jesus valued prayer enough to spend many hours at the task. If I had to answer the question ‘Why pray?’ in one sentence, it would be ‘Because Jesus did.’ He bridged the chasm between God and human beings. While on earth, he became vulnerable as we are vulnerable; rejected as we are rejected; and tested as we are tested. In every case his response was prayer.”

We talked earlier about prayer as spiritual gymnastics.

“Jesus spent hours in prayer?” I might ask. “But, I’m not Jesus.” Prayer as spiritual gymnastics is discouraging. That is, of course, only if I’m right about the idea that I should always and in every circumstance log prayers like runners log miles. I’m probably not right.

Yancey, a couple of pages later, quotes Abraham Joshua Heschel:

“Contact with Him is not our achievement. It is a gift, coming down to us from on high like a meteor, rather than rising up like a rocket. Before the words of prayer come to the lips, the mind must believe in God’s willingness to draw near to us, and in our ability to clear the path for His approach. Such belief is the idea that leads us toward prayer.”

This week: I will try to remember that I should pray because Jesus prayed. I should also remember that “contact with Him is a gift” and that my role is “clearing the path for His approach.” In other words, I’m striving for a less performance oriented approach towards prayer this week.

Certain Kind of Joy

A certain kind of joy, here.

Smeared ink staining my
fingers as the scratching
of the nib makes a lonely
kind of music.

Writing-pen to paper for
the first draft-maybe
the only draft-of
something left
of some
unread,
untranslated,
barely thought out,
barely digested,
nascent memory.

A certain kind of joy, here.

The feel of music and
wasting time, eyes adjusting to
the eerie light. Fighting off the
pre-dawn delirium.
The half-light of the morning moon makes
the steam rising from the coffee thicker,
somehow.

A certain kind of joy, here.

Remembering
through the scratching
of the pen
something from
long ago
from those first twelve years
from the city
of the cracking
January
ice.

A sip from the cup and
my mind is braced
and the wary glimpse
is gone.

The pen still scratches across the page.

A certain kind of joy, here.

Longing
Desire

Fuzzy Focused Stills

They say, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” or “Every picture tells a story.”

but…

camera shots
and angles
and fuzzy-focused
black and white stills
are only snapshots
in freeze-frame.

movement is implied.

Anti-Drifting Practices

We spent time in our Life Group discussing spiritual disciplines.

There’s some push back on this. Seems we equate the idea of practices with spiritual gymnastics. But, like anything else, we must seek our own level, here.

Reality is that everyone in the group practices a spiritual discipline whether or not they recognize their practice as a discipline.

Not Much Different

writing
speaking
computers
and
pens

not much different than:

pencils
crayons and
chalk

Intellectual (?) ideas
presented
using tools
from a Child’s
ART BOX

Always Writing Down

J. mentioned that she looked over while we were singing in church and saw me writing on an index card. She laughed. I was embarrassed.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “That’s just so you.”

Changing Stuff

Looking for some kind of rhythm-change after the 1^st of year forces one to make adjustments in the way things are done. Every transition brings a new pattern, a new rhythm. Putting the mind in the background becomes uncomfortable because all the markers have changed, all the landmarks have been re-painted. The body cannot just move because the mind must guide it. Looking and listening.

Attention to new markers takes time and energy away from the pen.

But necessary.

Prayer: Week 3

E. M. Bounds wrote thousands of pages on the subject of prayer. I’ve always been of the opinion that if you’ve read one of those books, you’ve read them all.

That said, he does have something to say. Dipping into a copy of his Complete Works the other day, I found the following quote. Please remember that Bounds wrote his books long before the idea of political correctness took hold and long before the model of the mega-church came into being:

“We are constantly on a stretch, if not a strain, to devise new methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the church and secure enlargement and efficiency for the gospel. This trend of the day has a tendency to lose sight of the man in the plan or organization. God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else. Men are God’s method. The church is looking for better methods. God is looking for better men. [...] What the church needs today is not more machinery or better; not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Spirit can use–men of prayer, men mighty in prayer.”

Individualism in the Christian Faith

This subject came up for discussion in our Life Group this evening.

It was especially relevant for me because I’ve been reading The Free Church and the Early Church, a collection of essays edited by D. H. Williams. In the second essay, D. Jeffrey Bingham critiques the idea of individualism in today’s American Evangelical churches.

Bingham defines individualism as the tendency for the “self to become the fundamental reality.” He lists four dangers of this kind of approach: