Γράφω ὑμῖν, τεκνία, ὅτι ἀφέωνται ὑμῖν αἱ ἁμαρτίαι διὰ τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ
I John 2:12
Friday, March 28, 2014
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Remember
Do you remember the way the sand
feels in your hair? Just breathe out
for a quick minute and recall. The sun
dances like a crazy man and throws beams
into the ocean. Take me back there,
please. Things make sense there. So
much simple sense. No more cold
and no more bundling. Tanktops
and sweat. I'll take it.
feels in your hair? Just breathe out
for a quick minute and recall. The sun
dances like a crazy man and throws beams
into the ocean. Take me back there,
please. Things make sense there. So
much simple sense. No more cold
and no more bundling. Tanktops
and sweat. I'll take it.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Job On Fire
Have you ever been asked to comment on something and find that you're just spilling out your thoughts on everything else that's been rushing and stuffing itself into your days? Have you told someone they can improve their paper by doing this and that, and just realized that you're talking about your own brain? This piece is the result of all that. It is the thoughts that have been dripping out onto papers and paragraphs and sentences I have written this week. It is all those things centralized, thrown out in one moment. I have no doubt it will be a Jackson Pollick imitation. I expect nothing more. But there; now you've been warned.
The reality of things we speak of is distant it seems. We can discuss in polite society and around quiet coffee cups the dirty things of, say, the Bible because we keep it far off. I'm sure that it's all good and noble (that's what they call it, right?), but I am tired of polite Scripture talk. The world is not polite. Excuse me good sir, but I know women who have been raped. I know people who have watched their father die. I talk to people who had the ocean swallow their infants and pound them to death under the waves. They are real. Their pain is real. My own words, these words, feel thin and pitiful. Pardon the truth, but the shittiness of the world feels too heavy sometimes. More than sometimes. All the times.
So let's be real on this one. Let's look at things honestly for maybe just once. If it insults you, alright. If it's already insulted you, fair enough. Victorian propriety makes little sense to a man on fire. Socio-economic status speech means nothing to a woman with a gun to her head.
I remember reading in Job that God comes, after 40-something chapters of brutal hell, to the filthy king in a storm. Sure, it's not the first time he's done it. But it's the only time Job has seen it. Rain on raw skin is one of the worst pains. It is brutal. It is like lighting yourself on fire, soaked in gasoline. And as if rain on his boils wasn't enough, Job is sitting in the desert. Hurricanes stir up the earth. I've seen them pick up houses and boats and pile them on top of bridges and neatly designed hotel pools. There is no reason for the storm that Job finds himself in to be anything calmer. It is the storm of Yahweh, the God who ripped open the ground and swallowed a thousand men. Real men. Actual people. I think their bones must have shattered into infinite pieces when it closed back up. That God is the one who comes to a Job covered in raw skin and burning from the whipping sand and the screaming rain.
And Job yells into the hurricane. He screams with every failing muscle in his broken, sleepless body. And he is as real as I am. His flesh burnt the way mine does when it buckles and blisters. His veins bled when he scraped a shattered clay over them, when the sand stuck to the thick mucus that crept out his pores. His real pores.
I see the three accuser standing in the rain. They're in neat ponchos and well-waxed rubber boots. The wind blows against them. So they turn their umbrellas into the gusts; their black umbrellas, clearly the ones they're planning on using at Job's grave. Proper images need to be kept. Sensibilities and classy preconceptions ought to be maintained. Let the king die, and make it quiet. Shut him up under ripping accusations that pile as high as these clouds. He's screaming into rain. Don't stop him. Maybe it'll finally kill him. He's already dead. It's only a matter of time. Look, what's left of him? He looks like hell. Goodness he's practically naked. Button up the ponchos higher. Don't let the black funeral suits get wet.
Thunder claps in a hurricane are louder. Lightning is just closer. It's all faster. The clouds drop like hammers. They stoop so low, it's almost like the ground cringes at the electricity running, crackling in the blackness. And the dropping of the sky makes every sound run farther and reach deeper into our cramped skulls. The rush of rain-wind, the actual sound it makes when the first sweeps of a hurricane come are terrifying. They are like the breathing of some monstrous animal. They are the rumbling of Leviathan. The heavy air clearing the scene for the storm. And it comes. It is so huge, so very, really massive that you can feel it in every thing. The trees cower and the grass runs like frightened birds. It is so big that it is cold. The thing tightens your bones. The water dances away from the wind and jumps like desperate men onto the shore. There is no thing like the voice of the storm, no beast like the Leviathan that seems to rip apart the world with its very echoes. It is real. It is like flameless fire.
God spoke to Job and His voice was louder than the storm. What man in his right mind hears a voice so loud and so huge that it makes a hurricane small, that it makes a typhoon look like a calm waltz, and does not die? Is that even possible? What man could listen to a God that terrifying, that devastating, that real? And here is where my mind just cannot understand Job the King. He is no fool. Very simply, he is no ass of a king. He knows who God is. He knows what righteousness is, what it actually looks like. It looks like this storm. It has the weight of infinity and the reality of forever. And he asks for this. No. He begs for it. He screams and weeps and tears his clothes for this. This is the power of God, and it is wonderful to Job. It is beautiful. Every wild lightning bolt only whispers when the voice of God questions the King, and they are gorgeous. They are the fingertips of a God who clothed horses with thunder. Beauty is terrifying, and it is deadly. It is so real that death makes sense beside it.
How can any man live lit on fire? How could a real and fleshy, shuddering and frightened, stand in front of a furnace that would melt his skin? Not burn it, melt it right off. Did you carry the sea in your arms and then tear it in pieces, throwing it like seeds into the ground? Did you look into the eyes of a tornado and say "No further,"? Did you watch the blood of a billion people soak into the dirt and tell a single rose to crack through that filth, and know that it was good? Has your anger threatened in all righteousness to sever mountains from their roots? Hell, what are the roots of mountains? Why should it not be that demons are caught under them, breathing into the volcano? Did you even touch a volcano? Could you put your arm into the curdling heat and draw out a diamond?
No? Then stop asking why. Stop thinking yourself holy enough to need to know. You get it, you say. But you don't get it. Listen. Stop. It must be nice to be able to contemplate which coffee to buy. It must feel good to plan out your day on your e-calender. Organization, that's great isn't it. But when you get caught up in your 9-5 efficiency, go and tell a childless father he should get a planner. Tell Job he should probably have planned a 401K, should have gotten life insurance for his kids. That would have been prudent, right? How about you grab this black umbrella and polish up your rubbers. You can stand right beside those other three. They'd be glad for the company. It gets lonely when the King covered in plague keeps screaming into a storm. Be thoughtful. What are they suppose to do while he's being a fool?
Here's a prayer: God, light me on fire. Burn me like King Job. I cannot endure it. It will kill me. It will consume me, like Moses' bush. And I need it. What is man that you care enough to blow flames under his skin? I am no man of grace, no patient and beautiful Job. But my hands are pierced. I chose the nails. I will live in the hurricane. I will scream into the typhoon, and the sun is sparking in my eyes.
The reality of things we speak of is distant it seems. We can discuss in polite society and around quiet coffee cups the dirty things of, say, the Bible because we keep it far off. I'm sure that it's all good and noble (that's what they call it, right?), but I am tired of polite Scripture talk. The world is not polite. Excuse me good sir, but I know women who have been raped. I know people who have watched their father die. I talk to people who had the ocean swallow their infants and pound them to death under the waves. They are real. Their pain is real. My own words, these words, feel thin and pitiful. Pardon the truth, but the shittiness of the world feels too heavy sometimes. More than sometimes. All the times.
So let's be real on this one. Let's look at things honestly for maybe just once. If it insults you, alright. If it's already insulted you, fair enough. Victorian propriety makes little sense to a man on fire. Socio-economic status speech means nothing to a woman with a gun to her head.
I remember reading in Job that God comes, after 40-something chapters of brutal hell, to the filthy king in a storm. Sure, it's not the first time he's done it. But it's the only time Job has seen it. Rain on raw skin is one of the worst pains. It is brutal. It is like lighting yourself on fire, soaked in gasoline. And as if rain on his boils wasn't enough, Job is sitting in the desert. Hurricanes stir up the earth. I've seen them pick up houses and boats and pile them on top of bridges and neatly designed hotel pools. There is no reason for the storm that Job finds himself in to be anything calmer. It is the storm of Yahweh, the God who ripped open the ground and swallowed a thousand men. Real men. Actual people. I think their bones must have shattered into infinite pieces when it closed back up. That God is the one who comes to a Job covered in raw skin and burning from the whipping sand and the screaming rain.
And Job yells into the hurricane. He screams with every failing muscle in his broken, sleepless body. And he is as real as I am. His flesh burnt the way mine does when it buckles and blisters. His veins bled when he scraped a shattered clay over them, when the sand stuck to the thick mucus that crept out his pores. His real pores.
I see the three accuser standing in the rain. They're in neat ponchos and well-waxed rubber boots. The wind blows against them. So they turn their umbrellas into the gusts; their black umbrellas, clearly the ones they're planning on using at Job's grave. Proper images need to be kept. Sensibilities and classy preconceptions ought to be maintained. Let the king die, and make it quiet. Shut him up under ripping accusations that pile as high as these clouds. He's screaming into rain. Don't stop him. Maybe it'll finally kill him. He's already dead. It's only a matter of time. Look, what's left of him? He looks like hell. Goodness he's practically naked. Button up the ponchos higher. Don't let the black funeral suits get wet.
Thunder claps in a hurricane are louder. Lightning is just closer. It's all faster. The clouds drop like hammers. They stoop so low, it's almost like the ground cringes at the electricity running, crackling in the blackness. And the dropping of the sky makes every sound run farther and reach deeper into our cramped skulls. The rush of rain-wind, the actual sound it makes when the first sweeps of a hurricane come are terrifying. They are like the breathing of some monstrous animal. They are the rumbling of Leviathan. The heavy air clearing the scene for the storm. And it comes. It is so huge, so very, really massive that you can feel it in every thing. The trees cower and the grass runs like frightened birds. It is so big that it is cold. The thing tightens your bones. The water dances away from the wind and jumps like desperate men onto the shore. There is no thing like the voice of the storm, no beast like the Leviathan that seems to rip apart the world with its very echoes. It is real. It is like flameless fire.
God spoke to Job and His voice was louder than the storm. What man in his right mind hears a voice so loud and so huge that it makes a hurricane small, that it makes a typhoon look like a calm waltz, and does not die? Is that even possible? What man could listen to a God that terrifying, that devastating, that real? And here is where my mind just cannot understand Job the King. He is no fool. Very simply, he is no ass of a king. He knows who God is. He knows what righteousness is, what it actually looks like. It looks like this storm. It has the weight of infinity and the reality of forever. And he asks for this. No. He begs for it. He screams and weeps and tears his clothes for this. This is the power of God, and it is wonderful to Job. It is beautiful. Every wild lightning bolt only whispers when the voice of God questions the King, and they are gorgeous. They are the fingertips of a God who clothed horses with thunder. Beauty is terrifying, and it is deadly. It is so real that death makes sense beside it.
How can any man live lit on fire? How could a real and fleshy, shuddering and frightened, stand in front of a furnace that would melt his skin? Not burn it, melt it right off. Did you carry the sea in your arms and then tear it in pieces, throwing it like seeds into the ground? Did you look into the eyes of a tornado and say "No further,"? Did you watch the blood of a billion people soak into the dirt and tell a single rose to crack through that filth, and know that it was good? Has your anger threatened in all righteousness to sever mountains from their roots? Hell, what are the roots of mountains? Why should it not be that demons are caught under them, breathing into the volcano? Did you even touch a volcano? Could you put your arm into the curdling heat and draw out a diamond?
No? Then stop asking why. Stop thinking yourself holy enough to need to know. You get it, you say. But you don't get it. Listen. Stop. It must be nice to be able to contemplate which coffee to buy. It must feel good to plan out your day on your e-calender. Organization, that's great isn't it. But when you get caught up in your 9-5 efficiency, go and tell a childless father he should get a planner. Tell Job he should probably have planned a 401K, should have gotten life insurance for his kids. That would have been prudent, right? How about you grab this black umbrella and polish up your rubbers. You can stand right beside those other three. They'd be glad for the company. It gets lonely when the King covered in plague keeps screaming into a storm. Be thoughtful. What are they suppose to do while he's being a fool?
Here's a prayer: God, light me on fire. Burn me like King Job. I cannot endure it. It will kill me. It will consume me, like Moses' bush. And I need it. What is man that you care enough to blow flames under his skin? I am no man of grace, no patient and beautiful Job. But my hands are pierced. I chose the nails. I will live in the hurricane. I will scream into the typhoon, and the sun is sparking in my eyes.
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