Taking Off and Landing
Why I Hate Texas Weather
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Last night, I went to bed sweating.
This morning, it’s sleeting.
If I’m dead this afternoon, it’s because my roommate and I just ate a box of cream of wheat to stay warm.
Did I mention that this Cream of Wheat expired in 2002?
The Homestretch
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Note to self: next time I plan my semester writing projects, make sure of the dates. As it turns out, that paper I thought was due on December 12 is really due December 6. I find this out today, that my major term paper for my Aquinas class is due in, yes, 6 days.
No sweat.
**
There comes a point when dealing with stress when the whole thing turns into one slough of apathy, one monumental sludge heap of despair so deep that it really starts to feel pretty joyful. I mean, we’ve got friends here, everybody’s drunk on the pressure, and we’ve all given up enough hope that the situation really feels pretty laughable. And I sleep a lot better when I’m apathetic. In six days, I plan on taking a sleep aid and dozing for about 48 hours straight. Don’t call me; I’ll call you.
Or, call me. Seriously. I’m feeling a little deprived of basic human companionship these days.
Paper #3: The Conversion of Oscar Romero Revisited
Letting the Angel In
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I’ve been drowning in this album the last few days:
If you’ve not heard it yet, you must buy this now. It’s more original than anything I’ve heard in a long while, and when you get over the hypnotically simple music, the lyrics will blow your mind.
Really: the lyrics are worming their way into my soul.
**
“Tonight”
My mind is like an orchard
Clustered in frozen portraits
Blossoms that bloom so fine, just to drop from the vine
I’ve seen them all tonight
Who’d keep a silent orchard
I’ll shove it all to the floor boards
Her rusty heart starts to whine, in its telltale time so
For freedom tonight
Life is a measly portion
A light on good friends and fortune
It strips you away inside, drawn all your blinds
Conceal it all from sight
You took that final courter
Shot the boy, no quarter
We’ll skip to the final line of some suicide note well publicized
Or give it up tonight
Carry with bursting order
To the options you’ve layed before you
The needle, the dirty spoon, the flames and the fumes
Just throw them out tonight
The time that you’ve been afforded
May go unsolved, unrewarded
Some nameless you cannot know, may be coming to show you
Unbridled love and light
Should you grow an orchard?
Covered in dusty portraits
Blossoms that bloom so fine, just to drop from the vine
I’ll listen up tonight
Don’t keep it silent orchard
Shove it all to the floorboards
Your rusty heart will be fine, in its telltale time
So give it up tonight
Pure Gratuity
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One of the gifts of Christian theology is knowing that God didn’t have to create the world, which makes what there is pretty much gravy, goodness, good.
So, in lieu of a Thanksgiving post:
10 Thanks
10) Books. I have too many, but they’re good stuff.
9) Music. Without it, I think I’d have to start screaming. This is written listening to Ben Gibbard.
8 ) Sweat. Came in from a run, and things are looking up.
7) Coffee. Sweet Lord, where was I before I knew about this? Too young to know better, too foolish to care.
6) Suit pants. They’re the most comfortable clothes I own, and look pretty alright.
5) Edyumacation. I’m a nerd, and growing okay with that skin.
4) Baseball. Less than two months until the college season starts, and none too soon.
3) Family. They’re good people. I plan on spending the next three days doing nothing but being with them.
2) Friends. Surrogate family.
1) You, who lift me out of the miry clay, three in one, God-with-us.
Describing the Wind
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The best example I have for my relationship with God from Scripture is that of Jacob wrestling the angel in the dark. At some point during the match, both parties realize what’s going on, and yet, they keep struggling, and striving, until eventually, day starts to break, and both of them know the jig is up. Jacob comes away limping and blessed. And thus, the paradoxical life with God continues: the one you love is the one that can kill you.
God, what was once a fight to the death turned into a playful tussle between friends. Why then the need for silence? Why all the quiet and elusiveness? Why this comedy of timing and spaces? You wrestle with me for….what? Submission? To make me stronger? To capsize me? I need some words here, some hope and future.
Time will tell. But, sweet Lord, do not sink me now. My arms are weak; my heart is tired; my legs are low. And I have many, many days left to hang on.
On Fear
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Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II.125.2
“All fear arises from love; since no one fears save what is contrary to something he loves. Now love is not confined to any particular kind of virtue or vice: but ordinate love is included in every virtue, since every virtuous person loves the good proper to his virtue; while inrodinate love is included in every sin, because inordinate love gives use to inordinate desire. Hence in like manner inordinate fear is included in every sin; thus the coventous man fears the loss of money, the intemperate man the loss of pleasure, and so on. “
In reading Thomas this semester, the thing that rings out over and over again is that everything we do, we do because we are seeking the Good. Sin is always done in the pursuit of something good, be it pleasure, or love, or food, or safety. But apart from the grace that perfects the reason by which we seek these things, we go awry.
Even fear has its place, warning us that something we love is in danger, be it our own life or that our team is about to choke down another loss. For Thomas, nothing is outside the grace of God, and nothing cannot be redeemed. God give us the grace to admit that even our fears can be redeemed, pointed in the right direction, to warn us that we when we are out of pocket, when we are moving far from that One we love.
I’m Just Saying
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It’s promising to be another light week here at the Landing strip. My birthday celebration this weekend put me a wee bit behind, and coupled with an amazing conference on campus, not much work was done. All this means is that, because I’m headed to DC next Friday, don’t be surprised if the witty banter is kept to a bare minimum.
In the meantime, if you go here or maybe here, you may or may not find a two-disc collection of Ryan Adams acoustic material. No promises, but your chances are better than average that the above promise is, indeed, truthful.
Holy Spirit with a Side of Fries
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Paul writes a letter to the franchises. Hilarity ensues.
House, and Home
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“And all you see is where else you could be when you’re at home
And out on the street are so many possibilities to not be alone.”
**
A friend long ago compared Hell to a shoppping mall, the endless pursuit of choices, without ever buying a thing. After a semester spent reading Dante’s Comedy, I’m sure there’s something to it. The afterlife of Dante is populated with a thousand stories of people who spent lifetimes chasing after the Good, to greater or lesser degrees. Some allowed that chase to turn totally inwards, to chase themselves, and by that chase, to eat themselves alive. The depth of Hell, where Satan, Brutus, Cassius, and Judas lie, is for those that have abused the most outward of relationships: that of loved ones.
The saddest image in all of the Comedy lies at the very beginning, though, in the ante-circle of Hell, what is often referred to as Limbo, for there remain the people whose lives warranted neither Heaven nor Hell. In their lives, they lived so little that for eternity, they will remain strapped between something and nothing. The worst part of it all is that doing nothing gets one the outermost rim of Hell, but a part of Hell so remote and innocuous that it’s barely worth mentioning. To have spent a life not even worth punishing: this is the saddest picture of the entire corpus, that one might have been so little alive that one could not even be dead.
I don’t know why I’m connecting this image with Election Day, except that with the Democrats winning the House, and at the time of this writing, possibly the Senate, and so little will change. I could hope for a massive overhaul of social policy, but truthfully, the political process as it stands–so horribly broken and static–is much like ante-Hell: moving incrementally, in a 6th-grade slow dance, swaying in place.
So many choices, so little to show for the multiplicity of options. What good does it do us to have sixty-five cereals if we still starve ourselves to death; what good is done by having a democratic process when the process fissures between opposites who really have so little to offer by way of difference?
And so, I voted Democrat, partly because I feel like they represent where the body of Christ needs to go at the moment, and partly out of boredom: maybe this year will be better than the last.
The Puppet Made Me Do It
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The guys at Third Chair Trombone are complete strangers to me, and complete geniuses.
Be sure to watch the clip from the day after this.
I might have cried from joy.
