Thursday, June 30, 2005

Wasting Away in Menardville

On Sunday, I weighed 190 pounds. This morning, I weighed myself on the same scales and was exactly 175 pounds. For those of you who don't want to do the math, that’s a difference of 15 pounds lost in four days.

I haven’t been dieting. I was wearing just boxers both times. The boxers were different, but they were the same brand and the same weight. I haven’t been sick. All downstairs plumbing has been working just fine. Not too little, not too much. I’ve been eating regularly. I’ve eaten quite a few fattening foods. I had showered just before weighing both times. I haven’t had a haircut. I have done no drugs, illegal or legal (though I did have one of Mom’s calcium candy bar things). I don’t smoke. My Mom has been cooking most of my meals. She has nothing against me that I know of against me. I have not been exercising. I’ve even had less mowing jobs than normal.

It’s just strange, that’s all…

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Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Reminder #3

Don't listen to anything Tom Cruise says.

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Friday, June 24, 2005

Reminder #2

When a wasp has gotten into your bedroom and you are trying to kill it, put clothes on.

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Thursday, June 23, 2005

A Little Foolishness

A few days ago, I posted a poem on here and said I was going to write a little bit about it. There are a lot of wonderful things to write about in Wendell Berry’s poem, but I’ll just write about the initial thing that struck me when I read it (you can scroll down and read it if you want).

Primarily, I love that poem because it reminds me of something that I need to be reminded of (whether I want to be or not). That is, I am complicit in perhaps (to my mind) the church’s gravest failing; we’ve become boring. This poem points out something that I certainly (and I think many other Christians as well) forget so often. That is, we Christians forget that if we are going to be serious about following and imitating that Jesus fellow, we’re going to have to do some wild and crazy things. Because that Jesus character, that Man of Sorrows and Divine Comedian all in one, was a madman.

He’s the fellow who went around saying that he was God, saying that he could forgive sins, saying that he could raise people from the dead, saying he was going to be raised from the dead himself. All that stuff he says is crazy. And it’s even crazier when it turns out it’s true.

It almost goes without saying that if He showed up saying those sorts of things today, we’d institutionalize him (or give him a lethal injection or something). We’d not listen anyway.

I don’t think we’re listening now. We Christians so often tend to be some of the more boring people in the world (the url “sharetheboredom” is more of an acknowledgement of my complicity in this perpetuation of boredom than it is indicative of my view of the world—I’m not a bored person, though I am a pretty boring one). And we’re awfully easy to peg (particularly if you look at how easily manipulated we are by our politicians).

And we shouldn’t be that way. We should be just as elusive and mysterious as our Messiah is. Because if we do what He did and do what He said to do, we just won’t quite fit in the world. We won’t compute. We’ll be sort of like a resistance movement during an occupation, constantly fighting against those forces of death and oblivion and soulnessness that rule here. We’ll be Christian fools and will certainly never be normal or boring.

“Your are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again?”


There’s certainly no new ideas here (I haven't had one (at least not a good one) yet). St Philip Neri said way back in the sixteenth century, “If a thing is dull it is not Christian.” And the scriptural Jesus, with all that wit and those dramatics, can’t be seen as boring. But I guess that finding out that the Christian story is something new and something adventuresome to be lived is something each Christian must discover and must remember. That’s why I love that Wendell Berry poem. Our words and our world sometimes seem so old, and Berry’s poem makes them seem new to me again. And it reminds me that resurrecting old, dusty words and an old, broken world is our job.

Monday, June 20, 2005

Reminder #1

Don’t eat a combination of guacamole, chips, and Sunkist for supper. This makes for little sleep at night and unpleasant smells in the morning.

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Sunday, June 19, 2005

Today was just a pleasant day. I just thought I would write that. I tend to use my blog to complain about things (which makes for terrible reading). My blog is usually where I vent when I need to vent. I’m not really all that negative a person, though still, I probably shouldn’t need to vent as much as I do. And I should definitely be more thankful for everything I’ve got.

Anyway, it was a nice day. I woke up, and we gave Dad his gifts for Father’s Day. I got him a subscription to Sojourner’s Magazine, so I didn’t have an actual gift there to give him, but he had a few things from Mom and Kalyn to open that were nice.

Of course, what Dad really wanted was food. And we knew that. There’s not much that Dad loves more than food, so we let him choose where to eat. Normally, there’s no such thing as a choice of where to eat in Menard on Sundays (with only one restaurant open), but we needed to do some errands in Brady, so he got to choose from the Brady restaurants also. He went for the real gourmet cuisine—Kentucky Fried Chicken. So, after church we drove over to Brady, ate, did the errands, ate some more (I bought everyone ice-cream), and came back home. Along the way, we talked some, read some, and I bothered Kalyn just like always (pinching your sister’s nose while she’s trying to swallow a drink of her milkshake works every time). And Mom and Dad got onto us just like they always have. This consists of Mom flippantly telling Dad, “Get onto your son,” and Dad halfheartedly saying to both of us, “Now, y’all’r going to get hurt” and not even looking in the backseat. They were always terrible at disciplining us (which I think helped me out a lot more than it did Kalyn).

Then, we all got home and took naps. That was probably the best part of the day.

Later, Mom and Dad took the pickup over to Eden to see Grandma and get a barbeque cooker from her. While they were gone, I snuck down to the bank that Dad and I mow, and mowed it all. It was sort of a Father’s Day gift, getting the mowing done before Dad got back, but it really wasn’t much of one. I love mowing, and enjoyed it all today. It’s the perfect excuse to get some thinking out of the way (in other words, to daydream).

Then, the Spurs came on, and it was one of the best basketball games I think I’ve ever watched. I love watching both of these teams play, and I particularly like seeing the Spurs win. And the way they won it!!! (I never exclamation marks, so that should tell you something) Ol’ Big Shot Bob as always (though I didn’t much like his heroics when he was playing for the Lakers) made the last-second shot in overtime to pull out the win. I can’t wait until the next game on Tuesday.

And then, the day was done. And it was good. And I think I’ll sleep well tonight.

Friday, June 17, 2005

Well, I made that recent resolution to blog just about everyday. That gives me about five minutes to get something posted (I’ve had a busy day and just got in from San Angelo, and I have to get up early to go work with Dad), so I’m going to take the easy way out and just post an excellent poem written by Wendell Berry (that happens to already be typed on my computer) for your reading enjoyment. Wendell Berry is one of my top two or three living poets. He’s something else. A true outsider, a radical Christian/farmer/poet, who sees things the rest of us (or at least I) missed. I think that tomorrow I will try to explain something about why I find the poem so meaningful (if I feel like doing so). Anyway, enjoy. And read it closely. It’s just crazy enough to change things.

From Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias….
Listen to carrion—put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts….
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is highest in your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Thursday, June 16, 2005

One thing has stuck in my mind from that funeral last week, and I keep coming back to it because it troubled me quite a bit.

The thing that bothered me was how all of those who attended reacted…or, more to the point, what it was that brought about a reaction.

You see, my uncle had an extraordinary life. When he was eight, his mother committed suicide, and by the time he was eleven, he was totally on his own. And this was during the Great Depression. I don’t know all of the stories about how he survived, but the ones I know are fascinating. For instance, I know that at the age of twelve, he bought a hog in Eden, and carried it on foot for twenty-two miles to Menard to sell it. That money from the sale provided his a few weeks in meals.

My uncle’s struggle to survive in such a difficult time was particularly damaging for his spiritual life. Eventually, his primary means of living during those early years was as the helper to his crooked uncle. His uncle was a bootlegger, a gambler, and a professional wrestler, and my uncle’s youth proved to be an asset in helping out in the bootlegging operation and in helping my great uncle to cheat at cards. This spiritually depraved part of his life culminated in my uncle’s entering the army. That was a place where his skills of surviving at any cost would be rewarded. He thrived in the army, and to all accounts, he came out of the service a cold, sometimes cruel, and spiritually empty man.

And then he became redeemed. This came about as a result of God working through the wonderful woman he married, the family he raised, and the church he joined. The man of the last forty years wasn’t the same man who would do anything he could to survive. The man who died last week was no longer the rigid, depraved man of his youth and was instead a strong moral person and a caring family man.

And that’s the story that I heard at the funeral. The preacher who did the funeral was excellent. He told about the terrible years of my uncle’s youth, and he told about the redeemed family man that developed.

And here’s the problem…nobody cared about that story of my uncle’s spiritual redemption. This was sort of a textbook example of Christian redemption, a powerful example God’s grace working to better a man’s life. But as I watched the people at the funeral when the preacher was telling about my uncle’s sacred journey through life, I saw only one reaction. With just few exceptions, the Christian interpretation of my uncle’s story only invoked boredom. As the preacher told personal stories about my uncle and as the preacher read appropriate scriptures, I looked around and saw that almost nobody was really paying attention. Eyes were glazed over and directed out the windows. The preacher’s efforts to show that my uncle’s life had such spiritual significance were futile. The Christian meaning of my uncle’s life actually had no meaning for the people gathered there. They had heard those words before, and they didn’t sound true anymore.

Perhaps more depressing was what followed. After the funeral, we went to the graveside service. The preacher read the twenty-third psalm, and he said a prayer, and once again, I don’t think anybody was listening. But then, as soon as he was finished, a person from the local American Legion stepped forward and began to speak. And to his words, the people listened. I was still watching everyone, and as soon as the man with an Army uniform stepped forward, the eyes of the crowd became unglazed, the focus turned from the ground to the words this man in uniform was speaking about. And he didn’t speak about my uncle’s love for God. He spoke about my uncle’s love for America. And for his “comrades.” And he said that it is the veterans greatest dream to “go to sleep” while hearing “Taps” played. So, of course, an old bugler played taps, and they did the twenty-one gun salute, and they presented my aunt with a flag. And that was the only time in the whole day that I saw people crying. And with that flag presentation, the funeral was over.

And that’s what bothers me. Almost nobody in this one-hundred-percent Christian crowd cared anything about my uncle’s Christian journey. They didn’t show to care about the sacrifices my uncle had made for God. They cared about the two years he spent driving a bulldozer in Alaska during the Korean War during the darkest period of his life. They didn’t care anything about the way God had led my uncle out from the valley of the shadow of death. They cared about how my uncle was being “put to rest” while hearing “Taps.”

That’s what bothers me. Even for Christians, Christianity no longer seems to have power to render life sacred, to make life meaningful. Allegiance to America, though, does have that power at the moment.

Funerals exist, in large part, so that we can convince ourselves that, no matter how absurd all this life seems, particularly at its end, it was worth living. To remind ourselves that this life that always ends in tragedy has meaning after all; there was something in this life worth dying for. I’m awfully worried, though, about where we are deriving that meaning from. It seems to me, more and more, that we are more American than we are Christian.

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Wednesday, June 15, 2005

I Have a Tick in My A**.

It sucks.

The other day, I was taking my afternoon shower when something just wasn't right. I had been scrubbing my backside with the rag when I felt something tug. Usually, there are hairs that will pull a little bit, but this was something a little worse. So, I felt back there, and I knew exactly what it was. For decades (two of them), I have been plagued by ticks. I don't get them often because Menard isn't that bad about ticks, but when I get them, they're in the worst places. Believe me, finding a tick in my buttocks was not the worst place I've ever found a tick (though I'll not tell that story).

Anyway, removing it wasn't going to be easy. If it were in just the top part, it would have been like getting a shot, and I would have sought out help. It wasn't in the top part, though, and I was definitely not going to get help. Nobody was going to touch this place but me (and I would definitely rather not).

So, I went to my room, and I collected all the equipment I needed to get rid of the tick. I set up an elaborate system of mirrors, cotton balls, rubbing alcohol, a few pulleys and rope, and a single pair of tweezers. Then, I went to work.

I will leave out the details of the struggle that took place that day, but I will say that it wasn't pretty. And it was very painful, and I'm hoping that I can soon block this whole episode out of my mind. But after about twenty minutes, the first battle was over, and it was declared a draw. The tick fought valiantly and lost its life, but despite it all, he did not die in vain. I didn't get the tick's head out. If I don't get something like Lyme's disease or Rocky Mountain fever, I'm guessing I'm the winner. But for now, the fight goes on. I'll keep you informed on how it turns out.

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Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Well, I've obviously not gotten going on that steady blogging I was talking about. This has happened for about three reasons.

1. I'm in Menard, and because of this, the internet isn't very helpful.

2. Despite being in Menard, I've been rather busy. We're in charge of two reunions this summer, and I've done some work on those. My parents have about twenty extra jobs they do (cleaning and mowing mainly), and I've been helping with them. Also, my uncle up in Kansas passed away last week, and so, Dad, Uncle Bill, and I drove up to Kansas for the funeral. All in all, blogging hasn't been a priority lately.

3. I haven't been able to think well or, at least, write recently. It sounds crazy, and if I weren't me, I would think I was being rather whiney, but I think I was really burned out from writing after my last few semesters. I've needed to rest. And I think I have now.

I have been thinking about my blog though, particularly on my trip when I was just sitting in the back of the car staring out the window at Oklahoma (nothing to look at=plenty of time to think). I've got a few things to write about, if I can make myself just do it. Even though I've had this blog for a while, I'm still pretty intimidated by it. Writing is such an arrogant and humbling act. A few times I've cringed at my own arrogance for putting a few of my (often ill-thought-out) opinions in writing for others to read (though, thank God, so few do), and I've even taken a few posts down. Of course, you can lean the other way too far also and not have the confidence to say anything. That's probably why I talk in class so little (quite the problem for an English grad student). I'm a man of few words (at least when I'm not around family) because I don't think I have much to say worth saying. Making myself blog more, starting now, will probably be good for me. That'll be my halfway through the year resolution. Forgive me if I write anything stupid.

Monday, June 13, 2005

Yesterday, Bush came out to say that the allegation that the US prison at Guantanamo is the modern-day gulag is "absurd."

Who should I believe? Should it be (1) the Nobel Peace Prize winning organization Amnesty International or (2) the guy who said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? This is also the guy who has allowed for the US to begin developing nuclear weapons again, who okayed torture, and who allowed Karla Fay Tucker to die and then mocked her afterward.

I think I’ll take number one.

It will always baffle me that Christians continually act with so little mercy, with so much cruelty, and with so little regard for the truth. And I still don't know what to do with this type of behavior from Christian leaders. How, under the Christian banner, does one go about changing things? It’s difficult to remain under that same banner when it’s those people waving the Christian banner most highly who seem to be the trouble? How do you maintain fellowship with people that you disagree with so fundamentally? I’m still trying to figure this one out.