Here's the beginning of a poem...

She likes it when it's snowing.
It quiets cacophonus streets.
The barking dogs below us still
And watch the busy white intently.
My coffee mug is steaming
And warms the table beneath,
As suicidal flakes dive in
And swim a hastened lap while melting.

There's no place else I'd rather be right now;
A half-step of pristine on a serrated mile.
I don't want to consider forever out here...
Just to relish the cold and your smile.




Man, I love cold mornings on the porch. Do you?

Peace,
Justin

Long time, no blog...

That's the beauty of having a largely unread blog, I suppose...I can lay off for a little while, and nobody complains!

As much as I would like to fancy myself a logical fellow, it occured to me as I lay in bed trying to sleep last night that a great number...indeed, perhaps the majority...of decisions that I make in a given day are based on some sort of inner cue system. When I get up in the morning and I stare at my drawerfull of underwear, smelling like fresh linen and sitting idly in the dark blue light of way-too-early-morning, there is some inner voice that makes those blue boxers with the orange fish just feel RIGHT in my mind...and the red boxer-briefs with the gray waistband just feel OUT OF PLACE. So I pick up the boxers. I head to the kitchen, and, for whatever reason, sugar-heavy lemonade is the only thing that makes sense to pour over the dry lips and sour mouth of way-too-early-morning...water won't work, it tastes too much like mouth by the time it hits your tastebuds, and milk won't work because I can't help but picture it souring instantly on contact with morning-mouth, and beer won't work because, c'mon man, it's 5:15 in the morning. There's nothing more rational about lemonade...in fact, it's probably a terrible choice, that much sugar that early in the morning...but it just feels RIGHT and the others just feel OUT OF PLACE.

This feeling extends to where I sit in a restaurant, which way I face (toward the door or away from it?) in my dining booth, whether or not I take the cement walkway closest to my front door or the dirt path right next to it as I head to my car, whether or not my cell phone faces up or down while it's sitting in my car's cupholder, which pens end up in my shirt pocket, how the plates are arranged on my dinner table, and where the post-its go on my desktop. I don't think of myself as a neat-freak or compulsive or anything...I just have this feeling of what feels RIGHT to me and what feels OUT OF PLACE. That unexplainable RIGHT is where I park my car in the morning, it's which coffee flavor makes sense to me, and it's why the cups with little polystyrene dimples feel more like good coffee to me than the flat ones. I wonder if advertisers have figured this feeling out; if they have caught on to whatever aesthetic sense it is that tells a person which things are RIGHT and which are OUT OF PLACE. Perhaps that's why the blue dot over the Kix logo is positioned as it is, and it's what went wrong with the Michelin stunt-driver commercial. At any given time, it seems to me that any given decision either feels like it is more correct or more wrong, and for whatever reason, it's this internal sense that drives that distinction most times.

I've always fancied myself a logical guy, but the more I think about it, the more feeling-driven I am. Oh man, my mom would love to hear that.

Don't tell her...it will ruin years of my work.

Peace,
Justin

In the immortal words of Mr. Ferris Bueller: "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it."

OK, so it's just a glorified version of "stop and smell the roses" or "carpe diem" or "ramalamadingdong" (I can only assume that's what that means), and usually pithy little aphorisms like this tend to make you say, "huh...that's good," and then move on with things, taking your big cues from what your mom taught you about being polite to people and what that bully and the pavement beneath your cheek taught you about when it's OK to fight back.'' And this one is no different...it isn't until long after I've ceased to stop and look around that I realize I don't recall one valuable, long-lasting thing that I've done in months.

It's not that I'm not doing valuable and long-lasting things...the nature of my job is, at very best, that I am doing very significant things for people who I will never meet or talk with about what that ridiculous 3-minute video did for their lives. But I think that's part of the problem...I don't realize a whole lot of what I'm doing. I just sort of do it, and I continue to do it, and then the pressure comes and I do it twice as hard for half as long, and I get tired and I go to sleep. My stomach hurts, then it clears up, I drink a glass of whiskey or a glass of milk and feel my shoulders relax a bit and then I go to sleep. I go to a movie or I go to a bar or I go to my spot on the couch for a couple of hours and I breathe deeply and I fall asleep. It's like autopilot, but requires a lot more work and doesn't come with the pre-heated airplane Chicken Kiev.

I think the trick to Carpe Diem is applying it in measured doses. If I truly lived to "seize the day" every day, I would probably never refresh my Excel spreadsheets with recent log entries, or take out the garbage, or file my tax return. In fact, bathroom visits would seem like a tremendous waste of time. But to be able to seize, let's say, every other day, or every third day, or even just the one day a week...to make it your own, to choose its product and process, and to go to sleep from exhaustion instead of nervous boredom...those are the things that seem to stick. It wasn't until I started lifting weights again that I began to relish the Monday and Thursday mornings that I don't have to go to the weightroom. It wasn't until I started working long hours at the church that I really began to value the four hours at the end of each work day that I am at home, with Stacy on the couch next to me, reading and watching TV and talking and yawning contentedly a lot. I think I'll probably love the day that all the cicada corpses have been washed away by a strong summer's rain, but only because I had spent the last six weeks batting cicadas and scraping them off my windshield. I'm working late tonight...and I think the drive home with the window down and whatever the jocks on 89.7 choose to play will feel good...as long as I choose to feel it.

...Yeah, I think you do have to stop and look around every once in a while. Life seems to present itself most powerfully to me in the little pleasures...and, with the exception of microbiology, most of my college disciplines taught me that, when you take the time to REALLY examine creation of any kind, you'll see the beauty and feel the pleasure it its art.

Coffee feels like that to me.

Peace,
Justin

I always presumed that I would be a good writer...I don't know why, but my whole life I have presupposed that, when given the proper outlet, I would be able to write successfully, and with style.

In college, that "proper outlet" usually meant term papers and essays, but because they came with a given fit-to-mold five-paragraph structure (and don't forget your page numbers, kids), I was able to tell myself, "aaah, you can't be expected to write brilliantly with these kind of constraints. You just wait until you have the time and the medium to REALLY express yourself." Then I got to my job at the church, and I thought, "aaaaah, you can't be expected to write brilliantly with these kind of constraints. You've got to censor your stuff for a church audience, and besides, you don't want to write too flowery for a 3-minute video. You just wait until you have the time and the medium to REALLY express yourself." Then I got this blog last week, and I started coming in really early to work so I could write in it. Now I have the time and the medium. ...hmmm...

As it turns out, I am not intrinsically a brilliant writer. In fact, I am a mediocre writer...about as good as a 24-year-old is probably going to be. I've got this wonderful blank canvas facing me at 7:30 in the morning, with nothing saying I CAN'T pen the finest words ever written in the language...but, apparently, I am not equipped to do so. Hehehe...I suppose I should have learned by now that what I seem to THINK I can do and what I can really do are often two different things, and that ANYTHING worth doing well takes a lot of practice. I'm assuming that even the greatest writers required some practice...that's why they have all those books out on how to write. If it was all an issue of natural talent, those books wouldn't sell very well.

Anyway, all this to say, I look forward to improving. I'm not entirely unhappy with the way that I write...I think it is, at best, a rudimentary jotting of reasonably well-formed thoughts at a time when my coffee and my eyelids are fighting for dominance of my brain. I look forward to looking back on this blog, or on a journal, or on the post-its, or on whatever it is I write over the next five years, and see some sort of improvement.

On a related note, I ran a 10:00 mile this morning. Actually, it was a 9:56 mile, which is barely moving for most runners, but for me is a tremendous accomplishment. As a recovering fat guy with a penchant for wheezing and a tendency to get too hot too fast when I excercise, I am more than proud of my 9:56 mile. It is this kind of growth (a half mile almost killed me a couple of months ago) that suggests to me that, someday a long time from now, I may write something that really is very good.

In the meantime, read Randy Bohlender's blog at rbohlender.blogspot.com. That guy can write...

Peace,
Justin

There was a debate this week at the church...

I don't mean that a bunch of us stood around the water cooler and argued about something...I mean an ACTUAL debate was staged between two distinguished church leaders about one of the most divisive topics in the Church: women as senior leaders in ministry. The topic was debated by Rich Nathan, the senior pastor of the Columbus Vineyard (and, from what I hear, a former lawyer) and Paul Bradford, the senior pastor of the Lakeshore Vineyard in Holland, Michigan. Mr. Nathan argued that the Bible does not expressly prohibit women from attaining senior leadership positions in ministry, and that verses frequently cited by those who argue otherwise (such as 1Tim 2:11-15 and 1Cor 11) are actually being misinterpreted and mistranslated and, when put in the proper context of their ancient authorship, leave plenty of room for women to take senior leadership positions in ministry. Mr. Bradford argued that these verses, in addition to the story of Creation as told in Genesis, very strongly prohibits women from taking senior leadership positions in ministry, and that women were created by God to serve inherently different, though no less valuable, difficult or important, functions than men. The debate ran for over an hour-and-a-half, and was only stopped by its moderator when time ran out.

The results of the debate are not what concern me. Frankly, even if these guys argued long into the night and finally landed on the one and only possible answer, and that answer was underscored by a thundering approval from the voice of God himself, almost all of those who believe women should not be senior leaders will continue to believe that, and those who think they should be senior leaders will continue to believe that. And besides, how much should two middle-aged white guys be allowed to decide about the career restrictions of the female 51% of the world's population?

What stuck with me was how the debate was conducted. These two men were long-time church leaders; people who have spent the last couple of decades expounding decisively and with an authoritative tone to thousands of people about the biggest, most intangible, most wholly unknowable subjects that humankind has wrestled with. They spend their weekdays writing down their opinions on the nature of God, the nature of Man, and the nature of the latter as he struggles and fails to know the former. To come to a regional conference populated by other church leaders, pastors, and other churchy folk and debate a topic so steeped in politics and emotion would have, I think, caused a tremendous defensive swell of pride in their chests (not the good kind of pride...the kind that makes you keep talking long after you needed to stop) and the rosy hue of Christian self-righteousness in their cheeks.

...But it didn't happen.

These two pastors were tough, aggressive, and at times emotional...but every step of the way each man was supported by his research, by his stunning command of the English language (and, in Mr. Bradford's case, the Greek language as well), and by a thorough knowledge of the Bible. Each man was respectful to his opponent, and each man conducted the discussion in what appeared to me to be a fair and healthy way. Despite the incredible dogmatic weight of the topic and the social pressure of being surrounded by a room full of 200+ men and women of the Church, each man argued in a way that would have made my college Debate Team coach proud. By the end of the debate, the tight crevice of my skeptic's pursed lips had worked its way into a cheek-to-cheek smile that persisted for the rest of the afternoon. It was one of the most enjoyable and even thrilling experiences that I've had here at the Vineyard.

...the loose connection of the faithful, the pastoral, the dogmatic, the intellectual and the commercial that comprise the Church has, in my opinion, produced many shallow, shoddy, tawdry and ill-conceived methods of communication to those outside of itself...it was incredibly refreshing and encouraging to see something so thoroughly well-done and honest that I would be proud to show it to any of my friends who do not believe what I do. I would love to have a similar debate staged in our weekend celebration venue...perhaps on the topic of homosexuality, or abortion rights, or even the divine inspiration / fallibility of the Christian Bible.

I would watch from the back, and I think I would enjoy it very much.

Peace,
Justin

There's something about family that seems to transcend every other set of decisions or moral imperatives you've made for yourself. Family has this amazing way of being the one thing in your life that, no matter how grown up you are, no matter how married you are, no matter how employed in a job that involves memos and secretaries you are, can make you act like a five-year-old. I think your family ends up creating more of the you that you know as you than any of those decisions, any of those religious leanings, any set of New Year's Eve resolutions or wedding-day vows. In large part, both genetically and developmentally, you are what your parents decided you would be (whether they meant to or not).

The trouble is, when you get married, you and all of the Uncle Harry's Temper and Mom's Monday Night Meatloaf that you have living inside of you has to combine with all of the Dad's Incessant Smoking and Grandma's Penchant for Buying Purses that your spouse has living inside her. Or, if you're less like poor writing and more like real life, you have Uncle Harry's Lasting Bad Touch on the inside of your thigh and Mom's Sociopathic Co-dependence living inside of you, and your spouse has Dad's Lack of Affection and Grandma's Repressed Sexuality living inside her. Either way, when you stand up there and say the most insanely short-sighted (and, by some miracle, the most wonderful) thing any two people can say to each other: "From this day forward," you promise to combine your internal families for the rest of your lives. All of the pathology, all of the neurosis, all of the praise and all of the neglect, all of the years of practice of being Daddy's girl or Mom's Worst Nightmare or the Angry Kid Who Wears Black to Piss His Parents Off come together in a bizarre marriage which will be spent working on defying the nature of your ubringings, indeed a large part of your very beings, in order to make the partnership work.

And you may succeed. I know I will. I will, at least, refuse to stop trying to succeed. We may find out we have more in common than we do in contrast between our families. And if we don't, we may find that our kids can overcome all of the Us that we didn't mean to give them, and hold tightly onto all the Us that we did.

...after all, they'll have to carry us around, too.

Peace,
Justin

In about fifteen minutes, I get to head down to the stage for practice for the morning's worship set.

...man, I love playing the bass. I missed it. In the last year, I've probably spent a total of about five hours with the instrument strapped around my shoulder, fingers on the fat and ribbed strings, feet dancing around the cable while the almost sub-audible pulse thumps out from behind me. It's a wonder how I get away from it. It's a matter of priorities, I suppose, but when you find something so thoroughly fulfilling; so cathartic; so tempestuous and relaxing all at the same time...it's a wonder that you ever wander off long enough to prioritize something else.

I don't claim to be a great musician...or even a good one...but I love music. I love playing, I love listening, I love talking about it. I think there is a link between God and music that, even with all of our modern worship music and old-time Gospel and classical choral hymns, I don't think we've found even 1% of yet. When I put on those headphones in the morning and turn on Ben Harper, Lyle Lovett, Eminem, Sarah McLachlan, Extreme, Alanis Morissette, Over The Rhine, the Flecktones, Evanescence, David Lee Roth...I feel God then. I hear him sometimes, my eyes water and my heart pounds when he shows up in the music... I feel like he sneaks right behind that staggered backbeat and delights in the contortions of my face and the twisting in my gut as the guitar lags a sluggish half-beat behind the kick drum and that indescribable feeling of "funk" permeates my torso. I feel like he experiences joy as that solitary matching pair of tears rolls down my cheeks, squeezed out by Sarah's low, ambient regret that she "Forgot to tell you I love you." I feel like he loves to feel me feel the growing, pulsing energy of the distorted guitar and tight snare with a reggae backbeat as 311's "Music" takes me from whatever painted-wall and air-conditioned office mindset I was in to a place that feels a little bit like a dust-dirty version of the Eastern concept of enlightenment. How could that not be of him?

I love music. I've got to run, I'm supposed to be playing it in three minutes.

Peace,
Justin

My wife told me that it might help my stress level to write. I dunno...it might. So far, I'm two sentences in, and I don't feel that much better, to be honest with you. But that second sentence wasn't much of one...in fact, technically, I think it's a sentence fragment.

I've got Eminem blasting in my ears..."8 Mile" soundtrack. It's an unlikely pairing, I guess, Eminem and I. After four years of high school AP English, a college degree in English Literature, and a couple of years of working in an evangelical Christian church, and I've got rap's whitest bad-boy swearing in my stereo phones about how he can't seem to get away from his trailer-park background. It seems unlikely...but there's something about the way the guy writes, the way he rhymes, the way he pens like someone like with an amazing command of the language and pushes it out of his gut like a poor kid with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. I've got almost nothing in common with the guy, but I can't deny that I get the same thrill from Eminem's lines such as "like a cereal killer hiding murder material in a cereal box on top of your stereo" that I do from lines like Poe's "Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling / by the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore," and Browning's "She guessed not how / Her darling one wish would be heard. / And thus we sit together now, / And all night long we have not stirred, / And yet God has not said a word," and Dickinson's "If recollecting were forgetting, / Then I remember not; / And if forgetting, recollecting, / How near I had forgot!" I don't connect in any real way with Eminem's subject matter...(I have never, as far as I recall, locked my girlfriend in my trunk and driven off of the nearest bridge)...but good writing is good writing, and it's the emotion behind it that drives me, not the action itself. Why is this such a difficult concept for today's critics and English professors? Do we really feel like the story of the usurped king, marooned on a desert island with his daughter, who befriends a a tree-sprite and co-habitates with a witch really mirrors the experience of your average reader of Shakespeare? Of course not...most of Shakespeare's stuff was, at some level subversive and, at times, very silly. The line from Browning's "Porphyria's Lover" quoted above finalizes the short verse about a man who invites the love of his life into his apartment from the cold, and then strangles her with her own hair, pries her eyes open and lies there with her throughout the night, without the first tinge of guilt. Can most of us identify with this scenario? Of course not...nor can we identify with the man whose dead wife seems to haunt his every midnight thought and whose lonliness manifests itself in the form of a talking raven whose incessant single-worded mantra drives the man insane. But it's the emotion of the thing...it's the drive behind the story. Eminem has some of the most passionate, angry and insecure lyrics in popular music, written with a maturity and command that seems to extend far beyond his education. I hope that thirty years from now, someone is teaching this stuff to their English classes.

Maybe I will.

Peace,
Justin