I am the conscience clear in pain or ecstacy
and we were all weaned my dear upon the same fatigue
staring at the sun
oh my own voice/cannot save me now
standing in the sea/it’s just one more breath and then down i go–”Staring at the Sun”
**
Because I will be your ambulance if you will be my accident
And I will be your screech and crash if you will be my crutch and cast
And I will be your one more time if you will be my one last chance–”Ambulance”
**
TV on the Radio has some of the most potent lyrics today for my money. Don’t get me wrong: Bill Mallonee’s early stuff and pretty much anything Jeff Tweedy ever put down hold special places for me, but if you sit down with either of TV’s albums and let the lyrics wash over you, you’ll find it hard to get up again. In their words is death and life, hope, resurrection, the whole package, leaning toward the listener.
I picked up Modest Mouse’s new album this week, and while it’s pretty catchy and a more solid album on the whole than their last one, give me some TV in a quiet room with a lyric sheet and a journal. I have to confess that the exercise to read Scripture every day of Lent has been less than successful. In fact, I don’t remember a Lent that was a complete success. Most of them have been largely marginal, a few peaks and a lot of waiting out the season, and then praising its virtues in retrospect. But in the meantime, words like TV’s remind me of Scripture, point me toward Scripture, echo the words of prophets and psalmists.
Am I just lazy? Probably. But geez, I love these guys. After all, Scripture doesn’t say everything. It says enough, but it doesn’t say everything. Otherwise, our own voices would be superfluous. And these, dear children, God delights in as well.
It’s March Madness, and it usually takes about eight hours for my excitement to turn to dismay as I watch my perfectly-coiffed bracket turn to shambles. You have to pick a few upsets; the problem is that sometimes those upsets don’t happen, and Long Beach State doesn’t actually make it to the Sweet Sixteen.
***
I’ve decided not to do the Race for the Cure this year, for the first time in about five years. It’s not that I don’t think breast cancer research is a worthy enterprise; I’m just tired of entering these races halfway prepared, only to be disgusted with myself in the homestretch. I’m not entering another race until I’m ready to race–not just run, or jog, or walk, but race. They don’t put timing chips on your shoe for no reason; the number’s not pinned to your shorts for winks. The purpose of a race…is to race. And I’m tired of entering things just to see what happens.
Augustine writes in Confessions that there are two types of pursuits of knowledge: the pursuit of the true, and curiosity. The former is directed to a goal, aimed at a target, concerned with becoming more able to recognize the true and the good and the beautiful. The latter is there for no reason, looking only to weander, and if the road leads this way, to wander off course, and stop. Curiosity is driven by the novel, the titillating, and if a thing ceases to be that, the curious will just leave it alone. The old collects dust while the curious sock away oceans of shiny, new junk.
This isn’t to say that there’s not something worth exploring in that which is a new question, a new opportunity, and often times, our directions change radically as a result of these novelties. But our lives cannot consist of novelty; we cannot live on starkly new things without becoming exhausted and rootless. The Spirit, while appearing in ways that are fresh and new to us, is not new, is not novel, is not faddish. The Spirit’s leading is older than time itself, and deeper than our imaginations can bear. And so, following the Spirit, in pedantic and rote ways, leads us in tried and true ways to that which is beyond what we could have dreamed of, beyond short-circuiting novelty, beyond shiny, beyond junk, and into a life which is ever-rich, ever-surprising, ever-new.
I’m Shreveport-bound this morning, to enjoy pine trees and coffee on a porch that doesn’t have garage-sale couches on it. It’s the first weekend of Spring Break. No, my plans for the remainder of the break aren’t any more exciting. Most likely, it’ll be spent in the library and in a day trip to Austin, drinking free beer and listening to free music. The beer part applies to Austin; never tried it in the library, though I imagine Spring Break would be as good a time as any to try that out.
About three years ago, I gave up reading Scripture regularly. After a minor in Religion, three years in seminary, and two years of a Theology degree, you might say that it became a little too familliar. It no longer retained, as Karl Barth put it, the sense of a strange and unfamiliar world. When Scripture becomes that which we readily identify, we should take stock as to whether we’re actually reading it anymore. Scripture should approach us as something from the moon, recognizable and yet bringing with it something of a life we’ve not yet seen.
Part of my Lent, thus, is to read something of Scripture daily. I’m not saying that it will stick past Easter, but it’s time for Scripture and myself to start dancing again. I don’t believe that Scripture is that which sits on top of us, nor do I believe that God intended it to be such. But Scripture is the written account of God’s dealing with the people of God, the heart of the worshipping community who has been arrested by this God, and the guide by which this church might give voice to its encounter with the Spirit. To not know these Scriptures is to divorce onesself from the church; to divorce onesself from this church is to divorce onesself from the instrument of our formation as believers; to not believe is to miss the Kingdom of God as it breaks through all around us.
After being in bed for a week, I went for a run through the neighborhood. The first signs of summer are breaking in already; summer in Waco, after all, runs from about April to October. There’s really not such a thing as Spring, save for the two weeks when the bluebonnets come out.
It was the first run in three weeks that my lungs have felt clear. It’s amazing what spending a week in concentrated coughing fits will do for your breathing. Running down to the river, under the bridge, up the hills, past the middle school–it’s a run–not the most scenic one, but it does in a pinch. And this being my first run in nearly two weeks, it was pretty horrible. A mile and a half in, my pulse pounded, my stride was jerky, my will weakened. Sweat poured into my eyes, and salt stung my lips.
This is Lent: the strengthening of one’s breathing, the correction of one’s stride, the sweating of one’s brow. Life is by grace, and salvation by grace upon grace, and the living of it the long process of learning how to run. We walk; we crawl; and then, by God’s grace, we run without growing weary.
