My Recent Dive Into Existence

To fill you in, I finished school on Tuesday. Unfortunately being a graduate nurse doesn't count for much, so, now I have the state licensing exam hanging over my head. Alas, this exam is all that really matters. They wouldn't care if you finished medical school, no nursing license, no job offers. Yet in spite of this small detail, life over the past three days has proved quite interesting.

Tuesday night, I was finished with school and tired, but went over to Jacob's house to have 'foreign film night'. Yet, to the dismay of all present, foreign films don't like American DVD players. So, we found that our attempts at touring the culture of Kurdistan (the non-existing nation of Kurdish nationals) via media were thwarted. We were culturally deported back to America. Things were not looking good, when suddenly Jacob popped in I (heart) Huckabees. I had heard a little about it, mostly the gross scenes, but had no idea what it was about honestly.

Three hours later I was convinced I had just witnessed one of the greatest pieces of cinema ever produced. God bless Americans who make movies like foreigners! I don't plan to tell you much about the movie. It's an attempt to portray existentialism in a comedic fashion. I love it.

Prior to seeing the movie I didn't truthfully know anything about existentialism except that it was form of philosophy that required some degree of attention to understand, and I had never bothered to give it that. I threw the word around as a euphemism for lines of thinking that made no sense to me.

Wednesday morning I set out to B&N with the intention of wrapping up the last 40 pages of Hans Kung's On Being a Christian, and to gain a basic understanding of existentialism. After a few hours I had achieve the former and a little of the latter, and I was evangelized twice. The first was an old and slightly peculiar man who made basic conversation with me and then slipped me some tracts for the local Baptist church. An hour later a kid a few years younger than me, dressed with the typical 'indie' attire sat down and pretended like he was interested in talking about the existentialist books I had brought to the table. I was excited. I don't tend to meet people who enjoy talking about things such as philosophy. I began to talk about the little bit that I understood, admitting my ignorance insofar as I was aware of it. Then, the kid informed me he had read Albert Camus' The Stranger. Evidently that was all one needed to do to grasp all the contours of existential thought, because he then proceeded to tell me he thought existentialism as a whole was 'crap' and I should try Jesus instead.

I attempted to make an appeal that theology and existentialism might have some things to say to each other. I began to talk about God, at which the guy got uncomfortable and excused himself saying he had a meeting to go to. He gave me a tract and walked away.

. . . His meeting, as best as I could tell was hanging out with three of his friends a few tables away. He avoided eye contact when I got up for water. I realized how much I truly hate evangelicalism; not evangelicals(!), just the shallow faith that they follow. I was sad. I really had hoped to openly discuss something, but evangelism isn't about discussion; it's about power. People seeking to use fear and doctrine to control other people. Yet, I didn't hate the guy or his friends. In fact, I wish that they had felt the freedom of the gospel in a way strong enough to speak openly with others.

I've been reading a guy named Martin Buber lately. He's a dead Jewish theologian who was also an existential philosopher. Probably still 'crap' if viewed in evangelical eyes, but to me it is one of the greatest things I have ever read. It's a guy who primarily sees himself as a Jew, but writes as philosophy that is spiritual to its core. He challenges us to not objectify people. To take there existence as something unlimited, and to see every person as a presence, a synergy of the wide variety of the components that make them up. We are called to treat them not as He or She or It, but to speak to them as "You". Someone who is more than an object.

How much more could me and the evangelical kid have gained if he had seen me as a person. What if he had honored my presence in such a way as to listen thinking I had something to say? What if I hadn't been just a potential pew-sitter for his church and a tally mark for his baptism chart. What if my ideas about God were treated with the same seriousness as his seminary professor's ideas? I think the world would be a better place. So far existenital thought is teaching me better how to see others as not mere humans, but true humans who are not the object of my perception, but who are like me selves graced with free will and great potential.

A Poem

Seasons

Texas' autumn echos in brevity
and your creativity burns like its leaves
now falling from up high
What if life were as brief or vague as a poem?
What if it were a book of poems where no continuity was required?
Yet, our desires are much too strong to find contentment in such lack of plot

Texas falls leave unanswered
whether I love or hate the winter here foreshadowed
Is the passion I feel now, the joy of change?
or the last embers of speech burning desperately as cold waits to overwhelm?
Does autum become someone better?
or only mark the yearly farewell of the summer sun,
Dark days are ahead
Perhaps they are sweet nonetheless
for winters past were only survived by dreams of warmth
the warmth of the supposed 'we'.
A desperate hope, bitter in recent years, still realized in this word . . .

Cliche words of faith always much to cheap to palliate
The hollow thoughts of future where faith seemed false
Despite this legacy of doubt, One swept you into this all-too-familiar place
. . . . and I'm healed
When December's cold slips unwanted fingers beneath my clothes
even should it find way into my bed,
It no longer haunts me and taunts fail to disturb
I will sleep at ease,
for your warmth is real and no fleeting hope.

And for this maybe the seasons have ceased to change