Over the last few days, I read through 1 John and 2 John (along with catching up in Psalms and Numbers), and can barely contain my enthusiasm for starting on 3 John…
Ha.
But seriously, I just don’t get how did 1 John made it into the Bible. Everything in it is just so simple, so underwhelming, it’s like every sentence is followed by a mirror sentence with just the words said in a different order. I really hope that people don’t pick this up and assume all the epistles are like this…
And he likes to tell us some obnoxious absolutes, like: once you follow Jesus you’ll never sin, and if you do sin it’s because you never knew God in the first place. That feels like it could get super messy… Maybe he’s talking about murder or something heinous? Either way, where’s the grace, John?!
In the end, his letters seems so flippant, like he just wants to reduce the way we talk about our faith to a simple set of words: purity, faith and love. He seems to be controlling the masses, or at least hoping people will be just as lazy as him and not question or dig deeper or anything.
From George Orwell’s 1984:
Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?… Has it ever occurred to your, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?… The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
The variety of language and metaphors in, say, Isaiah and James and Romans makes me think that, yeah, maybe I’ll get a little smarter, my brain might process things in a new way, I might speak with a bit more enthusiasm because I’m reading this thing called the Bible. But 1 and 2 John…yeah, not today.
This is the fate of those who trust in themselves, and of their followers, who approve their sayings. They are like sheep and are destined to die; death will be their shepherd (but the upright will prevail over them in the morning). Their forms will decay in the grave, far from their princely mansions. But God will redeem me from the realm of the dead; he will surely take me to himself. Do not be overawed when others grow rich, when the splendor of their houses increases; for they will take nothing with them when they die, their splendor will not descend with them. Though while they live they count themselves blessed—and people praise you when you prosper—they will join those who have gone before them, who will never again see the light of life.
People who have wealth but lack understanding are like the beasts that perish.
Psalms 38-50 (because it looks as though I’m falling behind…)
I’ve been working on this zine for the last few weeks, and my mind has become both blank of inspiration and caught in the traffic of chaotic thoughts. I’ve become that person, all talk and no action, godammit. The thing is, I can paint a million animals in casts or children’s snowsuits or whatever, but making something for more than one particular person (let alone hundreds annonymous faces), is that a quality I even possess? Can I see something in my mind’s eye and make that happen, without the aid of flickr for reference points?
Last night I had a slight strike of inspiration, written in a fresh Muji notebook, and these twelve chapters in Psalms gave them a little boost of confidence in me. If anything, they affirm how small my reserve of faith is when I’m not reading through the Bible.
Do not withhold your mercy from me, O Lord; may your love and your truth always protect me. For troubles without number surround me; my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart fails within me.” - Psalm 40: 11-12
My heart fails within me, that’s exactly it. It’s just stopped beating for something pure, for something poetic and eternal. But these psalms are written with so much more magic than the book I’m reading right now, which feels like magic but in such a smaller sense. Anyway, here’s this odd bit of comfort (?) that I don’t think I’ve ever read before:
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the most high dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; He lifts His voice, the earth melts.” - Psalm 46: 4-6
So I’ve been thinking about a little art project, and it deals with God’s promises and our desire for them. Not sure if that idea will even come across, but there’s the one-liner.
His promises are good(ish)… from what I understand. They might not happen, but they’re there are they’re nice and lovely. Little dreams on clouds, really. But they’re distant for the most part. They are always everything wonderful and sometimes nothing tangible. Wait for him, remain in him, continue with him, that’s what the today’s chapters talk about. What was that again, you want me to do what?
I get it, I get all the other stuff that’s in there between these words that breaks it down, but it’s the question of that desire, the stuff that makes my arteries pump and my brain swell and my hands be a part of the things that are promised.
I mean, God’s people were right across the river, right about to walk over the water and claim the land that was promised for centuries. And they kinda didn’t wanna go. They though, this is good enough, so let’s just sit. I’m glad God got mad.
Who are we kidding when we say we’re doing just fine, right here is good enough. We’ve created levels of goodness that put almost everyone on the scale in some form. But if we’re all good, where’s the barometer? I’m glad there’s God, so big and holy and overwhelming and deep. Otherwise no one would say bullshit.
Numbers 28-31, Psalm 32-35, Isaiah 33-37, 1 Peter 5, 2 Peter 1-3
Yes, it’s been a month since I’ve been reading and writing, but for good cause. I’m helping create a zine that features Christian art. Appalled by the lazy creativity of the church these days, I hope that this beautiful compilation will actually be worth your time. Coming early summer…
While thinking about my contribution to the zine, I can’t help but consider God’s rich promises and our desire (or lack thereof) to hold them close in our hearts. To hold them closer than any other desire in our lives. God continues to allude to fig trees and the sweetness of this bizarre fruit in Psalms and Isaiah and a ton of other places, but is this an appropriate metaphor of His promise? Figs?!
Well, we gotta figure out a tactile way to understand His goodness, so why not.
And maybe figs (though not the fruit crowd pleaser these days… if there is one) are pretty dead on: they’re a Georgia O’Keefe painting - inviting, sexual and grotesque. We hear God’s promises and they sound nice, “mmmm, sweet fruit,” but do we want to bite into it and see the insides, eat the pink tentacles.
Does it seem as perverse to you as it does for me? Hmm, maybe I’m alone in this thought but it makes me want to pull out some paint and explore it some more. It even gets me wondering whether men see women as figs too, because promises + desires are all so messed up these days.
Numbers 27, Psalm 30-31, Isaiah 31-32, 1 Peter 3-4
“Each man will be like a shelter from the wind and a refuge from the storm, like streams of water in the desert and the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land.”
We’re a day into the new year, and if this blog was perfect, it would be already be a full-on reader’s digest of a year in the bible. But it’s not. It’s sporadic, spacey, and exactly what my pessimistic self had in mind when I started a year ago. The optimist hoped for more, but that didn’t happen and there’s no point in getting sad now.
But my 2010 new year’s resolution hasn’t been a total failure. Instead, I’ve just come back from being in a cabin with some of my closest friends, where I was practically drunk with exhaustion from the building of the last 12 months. While sitting there together, I didn’t have adventures to share or moments where I risked everything for a dream. But I lived, walked into a few storms, got wet and then continued on. And God was faithful and present. I’ve been partly cold with him this year, frustrated at both his silence and the veins of apathy running through my heart.
But there are the shelters of roaming friends. We are pitched tents and pots of steaming soup to one another. We are the ones we’ve prayed for, and we will be the ones to rip each other’s skin at the end of each year so we can start raw and alive again.
Where would I be without their favor? And God’s faithfulness?, flying overhead to protect me from even the shadow of a single raincloud. So here’s to all that, and to the new year, and to my continued attempt to make this one-year plan happen within this next year because I think that’s a bit more plausible.
We never think about holiness, the intensity of it or how much it shows that we just don’t belong. But Isaiah and James here are making a plea for us to get just a little deeper with the thought. Maybe not a little, because what are we waiting for if we’re not running through these words like they’re heavy trees, whipped by leaves and cold air.
17 As a woman with child and about to give birth writhes and cries out in her pain, so were we in your presence, O LORD.
18 We were with child, we writhed in pain, but we gave birth to wind. We have not brought salvation to the earth; we have not given birth to people of the world.
(and)
18But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.
19You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
20You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? 21Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did.
There’s a sort of foolishness in this world, a little smoke and mirrors, when it comes to thinking about heavy stuff. Salvation, faith, truth, all that. We’ve created algorithms for situations - if this and this happen and you’re feeling like this, then this is what our reaction should be - formulas as if we’re all that good at math. But words, wonderfully direct words, I love them.
Last weekend I went to my friend’s church here in DC, and there was a quote the pastor mentioned during his sermon, something to the effect of: “I want something holy left in the universe,” even if it will shut me out. And: if my love for God isn’t centered around his holiness, then what is it?! It is meant to be for the true essence of him, not what he’s done for me.
I woke up real early to write about death (the lake through the trees) from the angle of the angel. There’s the kind of angel that when I say Someone please push me out of the way Of this bad poem like it was a bus.—well, it comes running & tackles me and oh, it’s divine football—Or in the dream when the transparent buses came barreling towards us:—it was there. Half of all Americans say
they believe in angels. And why shouldn’t they. If someone swoops in to tell them how death’s a fuzzy star that’s full of bugles, well it’s a hell of a lot better than what they see on TV: the surf much too warm for December, and rollercoasters full of the wounded and the subconscious that keep pulling in—Who wants to believe
death’s just another life inside a box, tale-pale or more vivid? Not me. Like in Gladiator, when they showed the cypresses flanking the end-road—O set Your sandal, your tandem bike, into the land of shadows—of course I cried. Show me a cypress and I’ll just go off, but I don’t want that to be it. Or some kind of poem you can never find your way out of! And sometimes
I think I nod at the true death: when from a moving train I see a house in the morning sun and it casts a shadow on the ground, an inquiry and I think “Crisp inquiry” & go on to work, perfumed of it—that’s the kind of death I’m talking about.
An angle of light. Believe in it. I believe in the light and disorder of the word repeated until quote Meaning unquote leeches out of it. And that’s what I wanted to do with dame Death, for you: repeat it until you’re all, What? D-E-A-T-H? ‘Cause Amy that’s all it is, a word, material in the way the lake through the trees is material, that is: insofar, not at all. Because we haven’t yet swam in it. See what I mean? I see death, I smell death, it moves the hair on my face but
I don’t know where it blows from. And in its sources is my power. I’m incredibly powerful in my ignorance. I’m incredible, like some kind of fuzzy star. The nonsense of me is the nonsense of death, and Oh look! Light through the trees on the lake:
the lake has the kind of calmness my pupils’ surface believes…and this is just the thing that the boxed land of shades at the end of the remote doesn’t program for: the lake is so kind to me, Amy, and I’ll be so kind to you, Amy, and so we’ll never die: there’ll be plenty of us around to keep casting our inquiry against the crisp light. Light is all like, what’s up, I’m here I’m an angel! & we’re all: no you’re not, that doesn’t exist. We all laugh and laugh…
Or cry and cry. The point is, it’s words, and so’s death. Even in that silence there’s bird calls or meteors or something hurtling through space: there’s matter and light. I’ve seen it through the theater of the trees and it was beautiful
It cut my eyes and I didn’t even care
I already had the seeing taken care of. Even in the months I didn’t have a single poem in me, I had this death and this love, and how’s that not enough? I even have a quote: Love is the angel
Here we are, slammed with four crazy chapters from the corners of the Bible. And it makes you realize that the default human is obnoxious and forgetful, while the default God is kind and not forgetful. He’ll give you something to drink (out of a rock) right now because you’re about to faint and die, but tomorrow he’ll tell you that what you said and who you were a few days ago ruined your chances of dying a happy man. Well that seems a little passive aggressive…
