Coal

So, in a week I have to preach on 1 Corinthians 13. I'm dreading it. Don't get me wrong, I (along with most everyone for the last 2,000 years) think it's one of the most beautiful, comprehensive, poetic statements of the Christian faith we've been given. And that's just the problem. The passage is so complete, so concrete, so...self-contained. An image comes to mind (a strange one)- I imagine an egg, made of marble, and I see myself with a chisel, trying to crack it, trying to get inside it, or at the very least trying to carve something onto the surface. In my imagining, it's impossible. I don't succeed.

That this is my image of love- the concreteness and completeness of it, the body of it- it's unsettling. As if I'm being left out, it's something I can't get inside. As if it's a language I don't understand. And I guess it is, to an extent. The language of 1 Corinthians is...well, it's absolutely beautiful, but I find myself reading it from afar. I can't seem to look it square in the face. "Love is patient, love is kind...". I want it to be a cathedral, quiet and high-ceilinged- I want to walk into it and wander, I want to take each phrase as I would stained glass windows, following them down the long walls of the chapel, stopping for each one, admiring each chip of glass, alight in a different way. I'd like to look and look and see the face of Jesus, broken and glorified, looking back at me. I'd like to be inside that place, with the winds outside howling and pushing the careening trees.

There's no better way to realize how little you know, how little you are, than to prepare a sermon. There's nothing in the world to make you feel more inadequate and false. Each time you do it, you search for the face of God, for anything you can say about that beautiful, terrible face that will do it any justice at all. Our language is so small. Our lives are so messy, our thoughts are petty and our imaginations almost nonexistent. Sometimes you do find Him, or rather, you find words to express some small piece of Him, but not before you've laid all your shit bare.

Today I came across the passage from Isaiah 6, the one that begins with the epic proclamation: "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne..."- and I saw myself standing next to Isaiah, surrounded by earthquake shakes and wings and smoke- and I heard myself say with him, terrified and despairing: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts!". How I wish for that burning coal, pressed against my lips, burning away all my falseness and disorder and guilt! How I wish to be clean from the filth and drudgery of my life. Such a strange, terrible, comforting image, that coal touched to the lips. A gift and an invitation. The gift of forgiveness, an invitation to the freedom of love, the smolder starting at the lips and moving throughout, shining through skin like a flashlight.

We know partially, and we prophesy partially,
but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror,
but then face to face.
At present I know partially;
then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.
So faith, hope, love remain, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.

United We Stand

Today, while sitting at a red light behind a red pickup truck, my attention was drawn to a decal on its back window. It read 'United We Stand', and underneath the words was a polar bear surrounded by a pack of voracious dogs moving in for (what appeared to be) the kill.

I find a certain, strange pleasure in wondering about ambiguous bumper stickers, blinding billboards, effusive highway graffiti. I'm almost giddy when I come across one. Oh, the mystery! The hidden meanings! I'm mainly interested in the origins of such oddities, and the people passionate enough about any given topic to go to such great lengths to have their message heard. I'll give a few real-life examples, some of my favorites:

1. A billboard towering high above the interstate- wildly bright orange background, huge bold black letters reading, 'HAVING A HEART ATTACK? PULL OVER AND CALL 911.' Huh. My first thought is, well- my real first thought is- what kind of an idiot needs a billboard to remind him (or her) that he's having a heart attack? So, my second thought then: is this a memorial of some kind? Did someone die here from a heart attack? Was this put up by a loved one hoping to honor their fallen friend, as well as a preemptive warning for those yet to come?

2. Graffiti scrawled on an overpass- 'L, I LOVE YOU MORE THAN THE TREES- P'. I love it so much! Who is 'L'? And who is 'P'? What is the nature of their relationship? I love the poetic quality of this- this is no 'Kevin+Laquisha 4Ever'- this is whimsical, imaginative. And then there are the several possible meanings. Does P mean that he (or she) loves L more than he loves trees? Or does P mean he loves L more than the trees love L? Or maybe the trees are a metaphor for something?

3. A cute little message spray-painted in green cursive across my parents' garage in the middle of the night a few years ago: 'F*** YOU SHANYLE I F****** LOVE YOU!' (My censoring.) Now, my questions. Who the f*** is Shanyle, and what is the nature of her apparently polar relationship with this outraged, love-crazed lunatic of a boyfriend? Did he get the wrong house on accident? Or maybe she drives by everyday on her way to work...maybe we've even seen her. (All wonderings aside, I can only hope to one day drive by a random house and see a love letter of my very own: 'F*** you Hannah I f****** love you!')

Anyway. So, back to this particular bumper sticker. I have some questions. Assuming the 'We' is the United States of America: are we the polar bear, being savagely attacked by the rest of the ravenous world? Or, are we the pack of dogs, uniting behind the sacred cause of destroying and potentially devouring the polar bear? What does the polar bear represent?...

Unfortunately, the light turned green and the truck was off, leaving me in the wake and roar of it's exhausting broken muffler. For the rest of the day though, I'm left with this image: somewhere in the world, there is a factory cranking these bumper stickers out, maybe right now. Somewhere there is someone thinking these messages up and slapping them on adhesive. If I were to find this someone, I would ask him what it means, the polar bear and the dogs. Would he know?

Do I dare to eat a peach?

When it's 11:40pm on a Tuesday night and I am mulling things over, I often make promises I fully believe I'll keep, and hardly ever do. It never fails- after about 11pm on any given night, I come alive, and I start thinking things are possible, that I can live larger in the world, that tomorrow, tomorrow, I will be a more energetic, hopeful, helpful version of myself. I seem to come to the brink of myself that holds on to all the hurt and uncertainty, and I let go. And forgiveness feels possible. Freedom starts to seep in, like the source of a spring, and at some point I fall asleep in that freedom.

I never do learn my lesson. I can never quite give in to the empirical reality that I will wake up late tomorrow, that I'll spill a glass of water as I get up to leave, that I'll scramble around all day, forgetting to eat meals in the mayhem created by my expectation that I can get more done in a day than I can, that I can be more than I should be.

At 12:06am on this Tuesday night, I decide I will start blogging again, after,... I don't even remember when. Right now, I believe I can be a person who blogs. A person who is in such control of their life that they somehow have time to share that life with the world wide web. A person audacious enough to believe that her life is worth sharing. A person confident enough to air her dirty laundry. (Hm. I like that phrase- it gives me a very specific picture.)

In conclusion, just for a little flair: from the mouth of ol' J Alfred, the archetype of the struggle between hope and self-doubt.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—	40
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare	45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.