Sam is teething

Teeth Monster

What this means?  It means that I am a basic mess.  It means that everything else in the universe is suffering and the epi-centre of suffering is Samuel's lower jaw.  It means that we are all weak, vulnerable, made of very precise, delicate, and easily disrupted material.  It means that we are human.  It means that I likely won't give that great of a lecture on Islamist strategy and Strategic Nonviolence.  It means that I will try my best to secure employment for the summer and the time that follows this week, but it will be even more stressful than normal.  It means that I need a nap.  It means that I want to beg out of Worship Committee.  It means I shouldn't be blogging (even a long paragraph) and I certainly shouldn't be on Facebook.  It means that I should be thankful for a supportive partner, a great babysitter, for patient house-mates (who buy me chocolate bars.)  It means that we are once again buried under our weight in dirty clothes.  It also means that Samuel will have teeth and be able to eat meat someday and that I am gonna go take a nap.

Looking for a robin

When I was in Atlanta I bought a little stuffed "beanie baby" Robin for my Mom, who loved spring more fiercely than anyone I have known.  I forgot to give it to her.  The things has tossed around with me these last 10 years or so.  Sucked on by toddlers, thrown into toy bins, rolled into a pile of laundry; again, and again, it turns up.  It is a lovely reminder of my Mom and the way she clung on to hope and love even when her mind and feelings were betraying her.

The Sparrow in My Eaves

I first noticed her
               in the spring--
Building her nest in my
                 back eave.

Little and busy.

All summer she
                cares for her babies. . .


Bringing them food
               and helping them along.


I worked and played.

Without me realizing
   it, one day she was gone.

Next summer she'll be back.


              And I've made a promise.


 Mary Molyneux Hatlem

On half-gods and vocation.

Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive. 


This bit from Emerson has been running through my mind off and on for the last week or so. This academic thing does not seem to be working.  I have given much to pursue this academic path; I never gave everything.  I took long breaks to care for a dying Mom and for chubby kneed babies, to preach, and to start a Christian community, and sometimes just to take a much-needed nap.  I have worked hard, but I know many who work harder.  There have been days that I have enjoyed my work--in libraries, in the classroom, presenting a paper, chatting.  But, there have been more days that I have bitterly despised.  My devil is in the details--the footnotes, the grammatical precision, grading schemas, getting the nuts and bolts of the syllabus right, emails;  I have felt the sting of not being able to fit the mold of the effortlessly perfect.  I have felt chastened for thinking that loving ideas is as important as publishing ideas or for perfectly footnoting ideas.  I can't seem to ever figure out what is current or the currency I am suppose to possess.  I miss.  I try.  I miss.  I hit the target sometimes.  I have postured.  I have tied my worth up into a very small package. I don't read poetry enough or think enough.  I have gossipped.  I have competed over very small honors.  Sometimes I have competed with viciousness....  I have learned, but I have lacked wisdom....  This is from someone that has always tried to not make the academy an idol...  Who has at many crucial junctures put other things--other very important things-- first-- with my best energy.  But, I have failed.   I am tired of giving this chipped Shiva sitting on my desk my blood and soul.  I am tired of feeling bad for failing to render it adequate service.  

Half-god go!

I am waiting.

Going Home

Three years ago at this time my Mom was dying. We didn't know it at this time, but by the end of January she was gone...  Her funeral was held at the chapel at the funeral home.  Some kind Quakers offered their clapboard church, but in the end we decided to just come together on the couches at the funeral home and sit and share for a spell.  Johanna read the 23rd Psalm, My Sister's friend sang, Doug preached, My Uncle read some of my Mom's poems....

I heard someone comment recently that when your parents die the umbilical cord is finally fully cut.

During my Mom's sickness I spent several months in Buckley, but I never once returned to the church of my childhood.  Many of the people I knew from church are older now and would have been in Florida anyway.  Moreover, the church is now fast on its way to becoming a mega-church, which I guess means that it is "successful." However, for what ever reason, I just couldn't deal with its new "slickness,"  the coffee bar, the hipster vibe, the snazzy new name.  Of course, the place exists for those folks who live in Buckley and it needs to respond to their needs......

But, I have to admit that I would like to  be able to finger that prominent ridge in the middle of the hymnal and open the book predictably to "Trust and Obey."  If only there was some eternal present where Barb Warner could teach my children about Sunday School Charlie. . .

 I couldn't care less of the website's self-serving numeracy from 50 to 500!

This Summer my Dad moved away from Buckley.  I still own a home there, but have been seriously considering severing that last time.

Life just marches forwards and you can't always go home.

When my Mom died two old ladies came to the funeral from the old Buckley Tabernacle.  They hugged me fiercely like they did on the day I was baptized.. .  In their fellowship, I will remain all the days of my life.  We spend our lives shedding shelter after shelter, from womb to womb, until we stand naked as we came before the judgment seat of Christ.


But on this journey we have companions.....  Pilgrims who seek a permanent dwelling place.

For Clarity's Sake

Doug following his moral binoculars :)

I am having a lot of trouble with focus.  I blame the computer.  I blame the children.  I blame Doug.  I blame an over-busy schedule.  On a practical level this means that I am having a hard time finishing up the thesis, of writing--yet another--job application, of getting my courses prepped for the Spring;  On a deeper level this means that I am having a trouble keeping my spiritual, ethical, religious feet on the ground.  I flit and flee and fly along from this passion or to this one (or was it 'that one.")  I am not thinking as well as I would like, caring as deeply as I would like, choosing wisely enough between options.

I could write a bibliographic essay that discussed all the books written on this kind of problematic of the (post-)modern soul--without moorings, without buffers, atomistic, bumping along after that last Hobbesian desire....  But, I won't.  I'll save that for my dissertation. I will just re-assert my continued battle against this kind of self-fracturing.  I keep fighting.

 

 

Advent

The tree is ready to be trimmed. (The cats have been skulking around it all morning.)  The gingerbread house is constructed on the table.  It is good to begin marking the time by marking our space.  Time again moves towards that birth: at times trudging like kids in "too big" boots, at times carefully and  slowly (like Simeon and Anna must have walked,) at times in the too-busied steps of harried adults (impatient with the meanderings of kids and old folks,) at times marching, on order, unclear if the orders are from Herod or not.  We move in all of these disjointed ways, and yet we hold out faith that as we dither and circle, and walk and drum that time actually moves on as steadily and unfailingly and as ploddingly faithful as those donkey's steps.  Moving us again towards incarnation and deliverances and the renewal of hopes too easily dashed.      

Charlie Brown

When the little tree falters and droops pathetically
under the weight of that innocent-looking
but fatal ornament, and Charlie Brown wails,
I’ve killed it, everything I touch gets ruined,
I feel for the guy: I know the sad prison
his heart’s doing time in. I know how it feels
to be King Midas’s evil twin,
Destructo-Man careening through the world,
smashing houses, reducing highways to rubble,
levelling whole cities with my evil-eye laser beams
and mega-grenades. If only I could hold
a cute little bunny without crushing the breath
out of it with my unrestrained strength, if only
I could embrace a woman without inspiring
in her the sudden desire to obtain
a restraining order or move to Cleveland.
I wish I could have a drink with Charlie
Brown — he must be old enough now,
he probably goes by Charles, or Chuck —
and tell him it gets better, Chuck, or, really,
it doesn’t, but you learn to live with it,
and you learn that what you destroy comes back
to you, not always, but sometimes, refreshed
and reassembled, almost as good
as new, and sometimes — sometimes — bearing
the willingness to forgive. And he’d take
a long, mad gulp of his vodka gimlet,
stare off into a world that only he
is tipsy and broken hearted enough
to see — some planar Midwestern town
with repeating trees and ink black night skies,
and, forgetting that I was there, he’d shake
that globe of a head and sigh and mutter,
You know, the truth is that Linus was right.
It really wasn’t such a bad little tree.
-Troy Jollimore