totality and moments

Scene 1: The Hospital. The layout is an oblong rectangle of narrow corridors. Windowless. Dim lighting. Along with myself there are 4 other consistent characters to the nightly comedic drama. There is a rotating side cast of nurses who have periodic roles. Patients are unique side characters, often undeveloped. Apparel: scrubs. Mood: fluctuating between apathetic despondence and light-hearted amusement. Activities consist of pacing hallways, preparing medications, ordering and reordering priorities of action, mindlessly filling out papers. General conversation topic: sex.

Scene 2: Coffee Shop. A boxy, business friendly coffee purveyor. Enter. Couches on left. 3 tables against right wall. Coffee bar with 4 stools. Drink: espresso macchiato or iced americano depending on weather. Sit in padded chair, staring out panneled windows. Across the street, university museum and classrooms. The sky behind it seems like a canvas. The world is conveyed in two-dimensional backdrops. Rotating cast of baristas. Apparel: casual, comfortable. Mood: introverted, set on reading, wishing this coffee shop were cooler. Activities: reading, infrequent writing, drinking coffee, occasional conversation with employees. General topic of conversation: university life.

Scene 3: Bike Shop. An old car garage, converted to small town bike business. Lynn is the owner and sole employee. Conversation: whatever he has to say to get me to buy things.

Scene 4: Wal-Mart. Necessary hell.

Scene 5: Sligers Fruit Market. Merchants of locally grown produce. Successfully sold me mint plants, moonflowers, and the best grapefruit I've ever tasted. Cast: Farmers and Sunday gardeners; old people in general.

For another episode: Various friends' apartments. Taco Bell (for local flavor . . and no I don't mean the food). Church. The campus. Bike riding routes.

Other seasons: retrospective looks at life in Dallas, Arlington, Fort Worth, or various other locales where I have fallen into similar ruts.

I guess today I stared out the coffee shop window and realized how ridiculous it is being an adult. When I was a kid my parents rarely let me out of our neighborhood without adult accompaniment. So, therefore I got really good at wandering around my neighborhood, and I remember it feeling enormous. I thought there was an endless plethora of things to explore. Now, I've grown up, and the world is bigger, and yet so often it seems there's nothing to explore anymore. I stared across the street today at this strange building and it looked like a mere painted silhouette, like there was nothing in it or behind it. The hospital I'm employed at also carries the feeling of a movie set. It fulfills its function, but makes me feel as though the world outside of it is but a figment that we hear about in elementary school.

When I'm not working or drinking coffee, I'm usually driving around the commercial circuit here in brownwood, trying to buy whatever it is I think might sooth my sense of need or want. Fortunately there's less here to throw my money away on, and still I manage quite well. I was born to consume.

Life isn't all bad. I've been riding my bike much more recently. The spring weather is too good to pass up. So, I've been riding to get in shape, and just as much, to break away from the ruts I always feel I'm wearing into the concrete of any town I live in. I've been taking Lynn's recomendations on good roads to ride. He, in turn, takes my money for some other gadget I need to make it as a bike rider. I guess it's been worth it. Yesterday I took a 25 mile loop out of town that took me through some breath-taking hill country. The hillsides were coated in wild flowers. Yellow and red patches covering the duskily shaded slopes across valleys. One-lane farm roads narrowly carve their course as divinely arranged hedges push in on the pavement. And, winded as I am, I feel my own breath evolving. It's as though the fragrance of spring found a way to overwhelm the cynicism of my spirit's winter. Then I emerge and am drawn back to the town where I live by the gravity that society holds.

I often find my heart panicked to leave everything behind in the search for greener pasture. I think I've realize lately how guilty I am of fleeing whatever becomes familiar. And not that I lament the action of leaving, only the spirit in which I have often done so. If I haven't burned my bridges, I certainly have habitually neglected them and left them in disrepair. I guess it springs from a sense I have long had that my past, anyone's past, is chasing at my heals waiting to engulf me. To drown me. At every different stage of my life I have arrived by an utter break with the stage I am emerging from. I don't know why other than an unrelenting fear that meaninglessness is preceded by familiarity. So I run. Again and again, I run. Then with every new season of my life, I carry a disquieted heart that waits for a sense of anything usual, or common. And at such apprehension I shake violently and restlessly until I am free. I am thoroughly aquainted with the frigid loneliness this brings. I would choose it anyway.

In this way I find myself like some mythic action hero, constantly finding narrow escape from that force, that monster one step behind me, waiting to take my life. I am a rider desperately straining to outrun what I can best name as "the old". I know that if it catches me everything will be rigid, lifeless, sterile. At least that's what I've always thought.

I also recall feeling that "the new" was the place of freedom. It was the belief that life was a commodity "out there", somewhere apart from the drudgery of my current state. Here in the midst of my numbered routines I merely suffered helplessly as everything grew old, and the avalanche gained power waiting to destroy me. Every day fell through the waist of the hour glass, and left me striving to escape my own burial. If I could grasp this rope and pull myself into the newness of the day. Times came where it seemed possible, and no doubt this was a subtle form of insanity but also the only hope I could manage to find. Doubtlessly there were countless wise men and sages, with Jesus leading their chorus, telling me of the futility of this longing, but their words never made it beyond cognitive approval; my heart remaining in a desperation and disbelief. I was burdened by the insatiable thirst to be truly free, and in freedom to find the newness of the day that purported to bestow meaning into my life. Inevitably freedom remained illusive, and newness grew old, and I was weary with the increasingly ominous shadow that the past threw in my path. I ran harder, and the dark ceased to fall behind. It's length increased in front of me as every moment marked its mass increasing. In the calm before its calamity I felt a nostalgic whisper, numbness, saying become nothing more than what you once were. My soul was faltering, and tired.

Then I find myself on a bicycle, cresting hills into beauty that is beyond my ability to grasp, and I don't stop. I look behind me, and peripherally I catch nothing dark, only the same beauty that engulfs the road in front and the road behind. And there I know that the past is not so fearful, nor is the future near as promising as I have always supposed. Clarity rises in the faith that salvation is not past or future, but always now. It is not memory nor looking forward that should serve me as hope, but only and always what I am looking at.

I descend one last hill and cross the highway onto Austin Avenue. I slide comfortably into one of my usual concrete ruts and ride back to my house. I will leave these circles of familiarity one day for something else "new". I realize though, now, that life will not fall on me upon escaping this place, and inhabiting another. Every place has the same potential for two-dimensional reduction. The scenes may change, but the storylines always carry the potential to seem scripted and monotonous. Life though, carries a potential for a freedom beyond all this. It is a freedom not from past or future, but from the desperation of control. It is a freedom leading into the present, the immediate. This is where life is found: as I walk these streets, or tread beyond them, suspended graciously, weightlessly between a past and a future.

Breathing

I went to a Christian college. People there had this way of characterizing certain people as exceptionally "spiritual". These were the people who closed their eyes really hard when they prayed and included the word "just" in every sentence, preferably multiple times.

Spiritual leader: "Lord, I really just want to pray for Jim. He just needs you right now. I just think he just (extra Jesus points) doesn't understand how . . just awesome you are God. I just want to lift him up. Just be with him Lord . . . "

Others present, under their breath: "Man this guy is just so spiritual".

I found it funny that we started out every prayer telling God we wanted to pray for someone, as though there were situations where speaking to God did not qualify as a prayer. If felt like we were in a prepetual court room and we told God we were praying when we were ready to be on the record.

"God, please bless my finances"

God: "Sorry, do you want this to request on the books or no? I never heard the magic word."


In Hebrew the word for spirit is 'ruah'. It is believed to be an imitation of the sound of coughing or taking a deep breath. Now, "spirit" is not a different usage of 'ruah', it is the same. In other words, to any who care to not force categories upon the OT anachronistically, to say someone is spiritual is the equivalent of saying they are breathing. The only unspiritual people were corpses. So consider when Paul talks about having a 'spirit of power', this is tied quite specifically to a daily experience: any time one wished to exert force showing their physical power they would 'ru-ah' - take a deep breath. Any athelete knows that power is in one's breath. A boxer's punch is considerably harder when preceded by a deep breath. Or, consider Paul's use of the opposition of flesh and spirit. I don't think this is near as abstract as we tend to make it. You have a body which when breathing is alive, and when not breathing is dead. Thus, the flesh minus the spirit is literally in a state of death and decay. It is reSPIRations that keep one in this state we refer to as living.

God is Spirit, so we are told. To Jews the primary distinction of YHWH against other gods was that he was alive, or was life, meaning he is Spirit (I once heard someone point out that Y,H, & W are the breathiest letters of the Hebrew alphabet). The gods did not breath. They were manifest in idols of lifeless wood and metal, but the God who had no image was indeed the breath that sustained all living things. As Dallas Willard points out, the original Judaeo-Christian idea of heaven was not a mythical land beyond the clouds, but in fact the air which surrounded us. A heavenly being is a one which moves about in the air.

When people had a bad spirit it was often what we would refer to as a cold, or pneumonia, since their breaths were effected. It was believed that something intangible in the air they were breathing was causing them to suffer. Bacteria fit the description. If one chooses to believe instead that it was demons, I respect their right to interpret it as such, but I'm not convinced.

My belief still is that there is more to human experience than molecules interacting. I think that ancient people, before we became concerned with the infinite weight of empirical data, knew the subtleties of existence much more immediately than we do. I don't believe they were in a better position than us necessarily. I don't particularly buy into a degenerative nor a progressive view of history. Still, I think they were better positioned to recognize the deeper connections of existence. Living in the crisis of Enlightenment ideals we have come to realize that in knowing as much as we do have only come up to the limits of human knowledge. Certainly we should seek to know more, but who standing in a library does not feel the degree of their own finitude. Staring at bookshelves, realizing our life would be spent to only comprehend a fraction of the knowledge they represent. Then we realize how even the most progressive and innovative books are only taking guesses at the nature of things which might not even come close to the 'bottom of our rabbit holes'.

In belief in a God who is Spirit, and a spiritual realm we are discussing an aspect of experience which requires our utmost creativity to understand. And more than understand ancient men realized we have an essential need to communicate with it and find our "selves" in relation to it. Foremost is the holistic sense that all things live within and unto an Ultimate Reality, which the ancients found best understanding for in the Monotheistic God. In the highest metaphor they came to see this Ultimacy as the air providing us with the breath that keeps us alive.

This has even more extensive implications in the reformation which Jesus of Nazareth brought to Judaism. The Law which had been spoken through Moses (speaking = an activity requiring spirit/breath) was said to be the way, the truth, and indeed the life. Since it was spoken by God, being imparted by his breath, it was just as vital to life as one's breath. The Law was Spirit (literally: the Law was God's breath) and Truth. Jesus on the other hand, in the face of religion, claims to be all the things that had up to then been attributed to the Law. From that point forward being spiritual, indeed be the breath of God, was redefined. All the laws were made relative to the measure of their life-giving power. Jesus' actions were charactized as those which restored the lowest of the low to humanity. All who were caught in society and religion's oppressive cycles were liberated. Sin was broken. Not sin in the mold of guilty consciences, but rather that which deprives life from others. Quite literally Jesus set out to redeem people from everything that stole their breath, that reduced them to flesh and denied the divinity in them.

The criteria of spirituality is not how one prays or acts during sacred worship times. Instead, it is the degree to which one affirms life in others. The spiritual man is one who by his actions and character shows holiness in the way he treats others. Spirituality is a stance above the unholy social games and distinctions we all fall into. It is a holistic living towards life for all people.

. . . and stuff

- advice: should you ever find yourself caring for old sick people, and you know a nasty thunderstorm is on the way, run. the other night i had one patient rip out an IV and a fully inflated foley catheter (avoid mental pictures), another 90 year old delerium patient was making attempts at breakdancing while fully restrained with a vest and wrist restraints - she assumed I was the telephone repair man and questioned me on the intricasies of making long distance calls from the phone booth in the corner of her room, a few rooms away another patient was clearing her GI tract for a morning procedure . . . let's just say I cleaned the floor a lot . . . my hospital prefers to not pay for enough housekeeping, thus I am also a liscenced maid. oh the joy is mine . . .

- brownwood officially sucks

- i woke up today to my house shaking violently in a 30 minute thunderstorm, my street is kind of built on top of what would otherwise be a creek, so in times of heavy rain it makes a great river. I waited for a while, but when you need a caffeine fix, no mere rushing torrent can hold one back, can it? I think not.

- on a positive note, the lake is back up to a healthy level, my uncle took me out the other evening on their new wake-boarding boat. it was quite fun, lake brownwood is actually a pretty awesome place.

- i led worship for the community church i inconsistantly attend the other night. it was good. their regular leader had gone to the invisible children deal down in austin, so I was filling in.

- i have paid off close to half of my school debt. that's nice.

- lately I have no drive to be a nurse. not that I plan to quit since i'm still too in debt to do anything else. we've had really high acuity patients lately which has made it fairly miserable to work on my floor. i wonder if this is really what i want to do long term. the other night i think God was saying something like it will be good in the long term, and i'm just hitting the inevitable difficulties of being new at something.

- i really want to travel. I realized today how much it sucks not to have summer vacation.

- lately i've been driven to begin living more simply. i think i've begun feeling the weight of owning too much stuff. i've realized how it's much better to hold on only to what you need and what you love, and to let everything else go.

- i've had lots of thoughts lately on spirituality. i'll probly write a blog on that soon.

- i like my mandolin.

- if you haven't listened to The Format yet, you should for the sake of world peace and the ecological betterment of southeast asia . . . but more so just because they're amazing.

- i think summer vacation starts next week for the college kids here . . . this means I will probly be the only person within 50 miles between the ages of 20 and 35.

- i attempted to grow mint for tea last year but my balcony faced directly south and the plants never grew much, and after i grew tired of watering them they quickly died one hot july day. now my porch faces more east giving my new mint plant enough shade, in 3 weeks it easily doubles the size of my previous attempt at gardening activities.

- not shaving is the best decision i have ever made. . . . . . . . . . . seriously.

- i'm debating if i want to move back to dallas at the end of the summer.

ok, that should do for now