Wednesday, June 30, 2004

At some point, you gotta slow down...

America is ridiculous about working, I think. It has been said of Americans that we are lazy and fat...I'll give the nay-sayers the latter, but I certainly don't think Americans are lazy. In fact, I think we are way too focused on our jobs. I think we spend too much time at our occupations, and too little time doing whatever it is that makes us feel truly alive. True, you have to pay the bills...and your job should expect you to work hard while you're there...but if your central life occupation is that thing you do for money, you're missing it. I'm missing it, I think. Quite a lot.

I've been working on the house quite a bit. It's envigorating for me...it's energizing (save for the fourteen trips a day to Home Depot). Do you know what I like most about it? It feels like I'm doing something that really matters, you know? That's permanent...or at least semi-permanent. The trouble with work at work is that there's always more...there's a continuous stream of it; as soon as you're finished with one piece, you're on to the next. I don't feel that way when I'm working on the house. I feel like, "That screw that I just screwed into the wall will be there for years...it will be there until I choose to change it." The paint, the sanding, the hinges, the doors, the closet racks...they will all be there for quite some time. I like that. It feels like I'm really getting something done.

...but at some point, you gotta slow down and enjoy it. I've gotta stop for little chunks of time and enjoy it. How many 40-year-old professionals have died of a two-artery coronary before they've stopped to enjoy what they've worked for all that time? I don't want to end up there. I want to enjoy life now, and stop putting off celebrating all the crap we already have.

I think tonight I may go home and sit on the couch and stare at my unfinished floor, my uncovered walls, and the china hutch I've yet to put back in the right place...and I will drink a beer and I will choose to enjoy it.

Peace,
Justin

Friday, June 25, 2004

If I had it to do over again, I would laugh with Stacy more.

I’ve been married for nigh two years now, and as I look back on these quick eight seasons, I wish I would have laughed more with Stacy. It’s not a morbid regret thing or a guilt thing…I’m just trying to beat myself to the whole regret process. I heard Allan Fuller give a talk yesterday entitled, “10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Was 16” to a captive audience of teenagers. It was surreal to hear a man who is double the age of his audience try to forewarn them of what they may someday regret. I know people did it to me when I was 16, too…and I didn’t listen to them, for the most part. So, now, I figure, I’ll beat myself to it by about 14 years, and hopefully begin to correct whatever it is I would have regretted at age 38.

All that to this…I wish I would have laughed more with Stacy during these last two years. She is a very funny person…very clever, I think. I may just think that because we have similar senses of humor…but, regardless, I think she’s hilarious. We’ve had a few “big winners” as we call them…some funny moment that makes you laugh until you cry until you hurt until you have to force yourself to inhale. Then, ten minutes after you started, your still enjoying those uncontrollable stalling giggles that troll around your diaphragm like an old boat engine. Those big winners are unforgettable, and I wish I had more of them. I wish I had spent more time being silly. I’m not sure how to accomplish that, exactly…the world’s a busy place and irreverent silliness with your spouse doesn’t fit well into your average salaried position…but I wish I would have found a way. I suppose it’s sort of like saying, “I wish I would have made twice as much money for the same job,” I mean, it would have been great, but I’m not sure how to make that happen. How do I let go of tension? How to I choose to be jovial? Is it a matter of ignoring all the things that sit, immovable, in your shoulders and lower back like Scottish fare sits in your stomach? Is it a matter of seeing a masseuse, an acupuncturist, a prayer practitioner, drinking more tea, drinking less coffee, scenting my pillow like lilacs and buying softer towels? Do I learn meditation, practice my breathing, and create a mantra? I want to laugh more with Stacy…she’s very funny and it’s one of the things we do best…but I’m not sure how to let go enough to do it.

Here’s a joke that make me laugh out loud…maybe it will do the same for you:
…what did the zero say to the eight?
…nice belt.

…….hehehehe….
…she likes that one.

Peace,
Justin

Thursday, June 24, 2004

As Stacy and I prepare for our big move three miles away from our current home, re-locating to the beautiful suburb of Norwood, we find ourselves opening up boxes that we haven't opened since we packed them to move in to our apartment two years ago. Do you have boxes like that in your home? I hope so...I'd hate to think we're the only people on the planet who would go two whole years without ever unpacking a few boxes. As I unpacked the stack of boxes in my basement, I found the huge box that I have been lugging from dorm room to dorm room, apartment to apartment ever since I graduated from high school. It is filled with all of my various high school memorabilia...pictures, newspaper clippings, awards...and hundreds of notes. Notes from my friends, notes from the girl I had an ignorantly sweet crush on for four years, notes from my parents, teachers and classmates...and a few dozen notes from the two girls I dated before I met Stacy. It was these notes that got to me the most.

You know what struck me the most about these notes from these high-school flames? How incredibly passionate about each of these two [then] girls when I was in high school, and how not passionate I am now. I welled up with tears on several occasions as I read...not mourning the way my relationships with these girls worked out...God knows I got the best of all things...but simply sentimentally reminiscing. I relived four years of powerful living in the course of about an hour...that'll git ya every time. I realized how far away that time seemed. So much has changed for me in the last seven years...so many good things have happened (Stacy being the top of the list there), and I've been hurt and humbled enough to begin to realize how much more I need to be hurt and humbled before I really begin to know much of anything.


Reading these old notes was like sitting for an hour with a young man I've known for a long, long time, but can barely identify with. Even though he is only seven years my junior, I feel quite removed from this guy...I love him; I find him charming, well-spoken, and a lot more handsome than I am, (though I will concede that I mostly like him because we think and talk the same way), but I don't know that I could be great friends with him. He is insecure, he is overzealous, and he is quite needy. He fancies himself very smart, I think, and unfortunately, I get a sense that he doesn't realize that there is an entire world full of people much smarter and more charasmatic than he is, each running around with bigger ideas and better words to express them. He is idealistic to a fault, and seems to have his entire world built on the premise that, in the end, everything fits some kind of order that he will eventually find or be given. I love his enthusiasm, though, and I am enamored with his belief that, for whatever reason, he was built to do something amazing. I want to believe him...I still do believe him a bit, I think...there's something about the young guy that I see in these letters that makes me believe he may be the Owen Meany for his community...that he may be the guy who does something truly powerful. But I'm afraid for him, because he doesn't seem to get that as long he keeps trying to be that guy, he will fail. I want to grab him and shake him and say, "don't ever lose your belief that you will be amazing...but you HAVE to know that you cannot MAKE yourself amazing; you must choose to be thoroughly good, and you will be used for something amazing." Most of all, I want to remind him that he has everything left to learn...that he always will.

Of course, I would have learned nothing if I didn't sit in front of all those notes, looking back at that guy...and wondered what 32-year-old Justin would want to shake me and tell me right now.

Sigh.

Peace,
Justin

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Long time, no blog...sometimes it seems like life gets in the way of what I love and feel most alive doing.

For two years now, I've been working in a giant building with the layout of a high school and the color of weak chocolate milk...every day when I walk through the South entrance I see, etched into the wall of the building in lower-case Zurich, "small things done with great love will change the world." And I think I have always believed that...I think I believed it in the same way that I believe that God lives inside of us and that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen. I've never seen God in me...I've seen his dark counterpart, I think, but I have a hard time remembering when anything I've done has reflected the presence of The Author in me...I've never noticed the oxygen in my water sneaking out from behind its hydrogen curtain...but for some reason I think I believe both of these things. Likewise, it always made sense to me that, if we do enough small acts of kindness and TRULY do it out of love for humanity, we will eventually change the world. But I don't know that, since I've been here, I've experienced and internalized it well enough to REALLY know what it means.

...until this week...

This week, an entire small group from the Norwood area (and more than a few other Norwoodians I'm acquainted with) showed up at our new house, paintbrushes and rollers in hand, and spent the entire evening painting our little piece of the 'wood. We offered no money, our pizza selection was weak, and I'm not that good at expressing gratitude...but it didn't matter. They showed up because they wanted to love on us. We had two guys there who had never met us in their entire lives, but simply wanted to welcome a newcomer to Norwood. They worked their butts off...Mark painted the entire living room with a faux finish all by himself; Brooke, Angela and Sean got down on all fours and pulled at old rusty nails and staples in our floor until every one was gone (Brooke even sustained a puncture wound in the process), Matt and Angela sat in our hot upstairs and painted that same weak chocolate milk color on our hallway plaster, Aaron and Brooke cashmered the entire foyer, Dana taught us to paint, Donna and Leslie put a strong coat of Spanish Tile (Porter term for red) on our walls, Sean slaved on every nook in the kitchen...I'm sure I'm leaving more out...I'm overwhelmed as I think about it. This was no small thing...this was six hours spent in the hot confines of an old Norwood row house with oil paint and splintery dusty floors...but it was done with great love. No complaints...no bailing out...just hard work, done without boasting or apology. These people were SERVING selflessly, loving me and Stacy in a way that I'm not sure I understand, but I know I feel. It felt like God for a second...like Love incarnate, working itself out in front of me.

I didn't sleep well that night. It was an insomnia of gratitude and, more than that, total bewilderment. What do you do when you receive that kind of service, and you have done absolutely nothing to earn it? How do you process that? Our world is one based on the basic premise of cause and effect...even things we can't explain are chalked up to some sort of causual relationship that we simply haven't figured out yet...hence, the theory of evolution, the theory of the big bang, the theory of relativity. So, how do you accept it when you receive a gift that you can be certain you have done absolutely nothing to earn? It doesn't fit what I know, it doesn't fit what the world seems to operate on: it doesn't fit causality.

I don't understand it, but this week I've been trying to learn what a difference true selfless kindness makes. Small things done with great love really will change the world...I think I truly see that for the first time. The amazing thing about this whole concept of serving other people to introduce them to the Lavish Almighty is that the connection between experiencing the bewilderment of being served in a small way without earning it and being served in an eternal way without earning it is natural...almost innate. The story of Jesus makes more sense to me today than it did a week ago...the story of God's insanely persistent love for us makes more sense to me...because of paint, rollers, and the incredibly selfless six hours given me by a small group from Norwood.

This is a sleeplessness I will gladly endure.

Peace,
Justin

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

At the risk of getting all spiritual...

...I was proud of my church this weekend. The Cincy Vineyard took an entire celebration to invite people to be healed from any destruction in their lives relating to sex. That is to say, sexual abuse, sexual infidelity, lack of marital sex, fear of sex, abortion, homosexuality and pain related to the persecution of homosexuals, sexual addiction, pornographic addiction, etc. If you'd like to see it, check out vccproductions.com, and click on this weekend's date.

Sexuality is a tricky thing. Forgive the strange request...but try this: take your hand and put it flat on the computer desk in front of you. It's OK, lift the mousepad out of the way and put your dominant hand in the dustless rounded rectangle it leaves behind. Now, lift only your index finger. Put it back down. Now, while your mom's not looking, lift only your middle finger. Put it down, and try your thumb...then your pinky. Now...with all fingers down flat against the desk, lift your ring finger as high as you can. Weird, huh? It's not going to move much...I don't know why, in all of His infinite silliness, God chose to link that one to your hand more securely than the others...I don't know why He decided these metacarpals should be the ones most firmly connected to the carpals, but, man, they are. For whatever reason, and I'm not sure that I know what that reason is, it seems like God inexorably linked our sexuality to our souls in a similar way. Sex moves your soul, for better or for worse, in a way that your dreams do not...that your music, no matter how powerful it may be, does not...in a way that all of your possessions and your favorite wishes do not. Sex can elate you, it can drive you, it can ruin you. Sexual feelings prompt frenzy, murder, love, creativity, spite, shame, physical energy, superhuman endurance, art of all kinds; all the things that make being human so freaking human. At times, I wonder if it is our primary motivator...above religion, politics and money. All I know is that I've seen evidence of incredible sexual content in the greatest religious art I studied in college, and that even the most transcendental of Eastern religions we studied was ripe with human sexuality. It shows up in architecture, in academic scholarship, in the shape of our shampoo bottles, in the greatest books ever written, and in the papers every morning. Sex moves us, and I think it moves us because it's built to move us. Our souls are designed to be heavily shaped by sex, I think, and to shape sex in return.

That's where the problem comes. We tell each other that, with certain exceptions of age and mental capacity, it is our basic right to have sexual interaction whenever and however, as long as it is between consenting humans and does not adversely impact non-consentors nearby. (And, as far as government intervention is concerned, I agree). But, when you come down to it, your soul comes into play. I'm not talking about eternal damnation or the "condition of your soul" as Brother Jed at the corner of Patterson and Spring in Oxford might concern himself with...but rather, the health and well being of your very essence. If, indeed, there is a Sculptor who carved each of us out with a certain design, and if, indeed He designed our sexuality to be an intensely powerful means of uniting souls, then it behooves us to put one simple parameter on our sexuality: are we doing with it what the Sculptor designed it to do?

I can't answer that for others very well...I don't think I understand it well enough yet. But I know it well enough for myself. I know when I'm approaching my own sexuality wrong...it hurts, and it grinds menacingly at my soul like a clutch dropped on over-reved engine. Even better, I know when I'm doing it right...I know because nothing makes me feel more connected to Stacy. Nothing feels more right and nothing feels more powerful. That uniting of souls feels like everything I've ever loved in one perfect moment..sounds idyllic and silly, I guess...but I think there's something to the concept that enlightenment is acheived fleetingly at the moment of sexual climax...at least, when it's achieved by the design of the Sculptor.

I hope some folks were able to get some healing at VCC this weekend. I really hope so, in fact. I've been thinking about it for four days now...praying that those souls that still ache profoundly from some sexual wound would begin to feel relief. This stuff matters too much. It's too good; too powerful to be wrong for a lifetime.

Peace,
Justin

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

I had an idea this morning...

We should have an all car-accidents public television station. I know, it sounds morbid and exploitative, and it probably is, but we could have some rules about it. No blood. No serious injuries. No death. Just heavy-duty fender-benders. I know people would watch...in fact, advertising could be sold at a premium, and the money used to pay production costs. Non-profit here...it's all in the public interest. The benefits to society are many, but my top three are as follows:

1. It would put an end to "rubbernecking." This morning, on I-71, there was an accident on the Northbound side. Northbound traffic stopped for the most part, and for a good reason: there was a pile of car sitting in the center lane, later moved to the berm. The problem was that traffic also slowed, almost to a halt, on the Southbound side. Why? Because people wanted to see what a car accident looks like. Well, heck, man, let's show 'em! Once you've seen a few hundred on TV, you won't bother to slow down for the one on the road; it's probably not nearly as interesting as that five-car that aired last night!

2. It would dissuade drivers from driving recklessly. On a channel dedicated to car accidents, you're going to have plenty of time for commentary. Perhaps even play-by-play. "There she is, talking on her cell phone...she looks distracted...she's putting on some lipstick...and OH! OH MY GOODNESS! WOW, THE AIRBAGS WERE ALL OUT ON THAT ONE!" People will begin to see patterns. They'll notice the statistical correlative between eating lunch while driving and eating airbag. And, with time, people will begin to understand that you can't necessarily do your taxes and get your '98 Sunfire to work at the same time.

3. In the ever-growing quest to gather more and better video footage, cameras would be installed in busy intersections. These cameras would not be the type to catch speeders (let's face it, I'm no masochist), which require lightning-fast shutters and a dramatic zoom-in on the cars, but rather would be HD cameras, mounted, let's say, two per intersection, which track movement and follow cars, just waiting for their chance to capture that evening's prime-time moment. Why would this be a bonus to society? These cameras would provide very clear evidence in post-accident court proceedings, which would dramatically reduce the time and personell necessary to conduct these proceedings, saving tremendous amounts of resources for our already over-burdened court system. As a side-bonus, these cameras could also be used to track stolen cars, fleeing vehicles, and even spot panhandlers and grifters before they can hit their marks.

We're talking about cheap production, high-interest public television programming. Once you install the cameras and the monitoring system, hire a few monitors and an editor or two, you're almost finished. Car companies, brake companies, collision repair services would fall over each other to get time on this network. Each car would vie to be the "safest car on the road," with their accidents clearly showing their side-impact crumple zones, all-passenger airbags, and anti-lock anti-skid brakes. The ratings would be huge, the advertising lucrative, and the system would pay for itself.

This is the future of television.

Peace,
Justin

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

Here's a line from a poem that Edgar Allen Poe wrote...I quoted it in an earlier post, but it got stuck in my head this morning, so I'll quote it again to get it out...

"Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore..."

Say it out loud. Not just whispering it over the edge of your lips, as if just giving voice to the in-your-head reading...actually say it, as if you were telling the story of a bird whose very face turns your morose wonderings into a smile. Say it out loud again, and listen to the rythym of the thing...

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore...

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/ ... it's what the English majors call trochaic octameter (pronounced tro-KAY-ick ock-TAH-meh-ter). It rolls, it kinda chugs along, and almost seems to build up speed in that sentence.

BY the GRAVE and STERN deCORum OF the COUNTenANCE it WORE. It's a marching, driving rythym. It's eight beats, almost like the "four on the floor" (thanks, Robbie, for the term) kick drum driving through two rock-and-roll measures. You could set music to this...heck, you could almost set a clock to it.

Can you imagine if we spoke like this...if we argued like this, philosophised like this, ordered our pizzas like this?

STERNS: Time itself just marches onward, driving us a tad bit closer, leaving us a wee bit colder than ever we had been before.
FOSTER: But time alone defies the present, past is just a reminiscent light from all we wished that isn't ever as we'd wish it were.

COLLEGE GUY: Pizza guy, my cheese is melting, all the sausage looks so tempting, the ripe anchovies that you sent me send the great drift wafting o'er.
PIZZA GUY: Harry, man, I love to hear it but I cannot help but fear that you may in haste have come too near it, for it's inverted in your floor.

OK, so it's not Shakespeare, but it's fun. It makes me wonder about how we're built...how we're pieced together by the Great Author. Is it cultural that we're built ready for a 4/4 rythym or that the end of each line of trochaic octets makes your gut pull forward, expecting the next? Is it conditioning that, for whatever reason, makes the 7/8 meter seem unfinished, or the "near rhyme" largely unsatisfying? Is it years of plugging through Dr. Suess and Shel Silverstein that make internal rhyme appealing, but too much internal rhyme feel contrived (no matter how natural the phrasing is, it seems)? I dunno...I feel like we're just built for it. I feel like our words, our music, our buildings, our paintings aren't so much CREATING art as reflecting it, in all of its divine pre-existence. When I write even the silly lines of verse above, there's something inside of me that is deeply gratified by finishing each line, by clearing the rythym out so I can start over, by reading it out loud and, regardless of its meaning (or lack thereof), feeling it out as its organized color leaves my mouth and circles around to my ears.

But, I may just be in one of those artistic moods. Maybe tomorrow I'll be on a mathematical kick...or maybe just hungry for pizza.

Peace,
Justin