I’m Not A Stranger…

As I type I am sitting in Vancouver International Airport waiting for my 15 hour flight to Sydney Australia. I believe this trip will be the capstone to a season of personal discovery for me. At the end of Summer, after the mass of long hours spent alone in the fields had dispensed its weight fully in my mind I asked my Lord to grant me a season of challenge and clarity, where I could be refined and placed singularly on the food of his grace and glory. This opportunity to spend three months in Australia is the third in a line of such experiences.

Since I haven’t posted anything in awhile, my thoughts are scattered, how about some bullet points…

+ Psalm 37:3&4 says: Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” and Ephesians 3:20&21 says:  “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”  What I have gleaned from these passages and my experience is that if we are those who seek him, who ask for good gifts, he is faithful to supply them beyond our frail and narrow imaginations.

+ When one travels, one learns a ton about himself. The mystery of identity is fascinating to me. We are a race of individuals who’s identity has (as far as I can tell) never been derived from our individuality. We are a collective, the people we come in contact with -our culture with it’s social institutions, laws, morals largely decides what we will become. Traveling is a challenge for it tears us away from what has (primarily) made us… us. I was warned by a mentor of mine not to lose myself in homesickness but instead to BE in Australia, and milk it for all it can give me.

+ Yet in the search for what makes up a man’s identity two quotes come to mind:  “One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego. The self is more distant than any star.”  -GK Chesterton and “I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I know as well” -Henry David Thoreau. How they interact with each other and what truth they reveal together is a mystery to me.

+ All I know is I am being molded, shaped, formed. The best quote to place here, to sum up what I feel is happening comes from Daniel Lanois’s The Maker: My body is bent and broken by long and dangerous sleep, but I can can the fields of Abraham and turn my head away, I’m not a stranger in the eyes of the Maker.

“When I lived in other places I looked on their evils with the curious eye of a traveler; I was not responsible for them; it cost me nothing to be a critic, for I had not been there long, and I did not feel that I would stay. But here, now that I am both native and citizen, there is no immunity to what is wrong. It is impossible to escape the sense that I am involved in history.”

-Wendell Berry

Coolness is Something You’re Born With.

I’ve known these kids since I was a wee little Dave. They’re some of the most talented, insane, chillaxed and photogenic folks I know.

Sunday night we decided to hit up the local mall. As we pulled into the parking lot, I turned to my friend Joanna and exclaimed “YOU! Since you’re a girl, you will help me pick out some clothes, because I have the fashion sense of a colorblind chimp!”

…and I really do. Also Joanna looked bored out her mind with three guys… and we all know that if kids start getting antsy you give them a pointless task.

Like moving rocks, or finding imaginary storehouses of candy or making them count the stars on a cloudy night, or picking out clothes for you.

After walking down the aisles of skate/surf/jobless-ruffian apparel for about half an hour I looked down to find this stylish hoodie…

PHOTOSHOOT!

There’s nothing wrong with being sexy

But can I Philosophize in it?

Blue Steel.

Halfway into the shoot, I realized that my fly was down…. Appropriate measures were taken.

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Bitterness

To One Steeped in Bitterness
By Denise Levertov

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Nail the rose

to your mind’s door
like a rat, a thwarted chickenhawk.
Yes, it has had its day.

And the water

poured for you
which you disdain to drink,
yes, throw it away.

Yet the fierce rose

stole nothing
from your cooped heart,
nor plucked your timid eye;

and from that inviolate rock

the liquid light
was drawn, that’s dusty now
and your lips dry.

I’ve Wondered

Walking the riverbank
of fine black silt.

Cottonwood shadows loaf
in red relief.

Scents reach me from the worked fields
-those supple thighs of  Earth laying on either bank,

appetent-

coyly suggesting fruitfulness.

River looks up to me, it seems.
The color of old sheep dog eyes,
blind, opaque and blue.
They turn to me anyway
in excitement.

Either from the rush of melting snow,
and simple, dumb science…

or because someone has noticed it.
I’ve noticed.

And much more: Wondered.

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Disgusting Blurriness

Much Happens

Much happens when we’re not there.
Many trees, not only that famous one, over and over,
fall in the forest. We don’t see, but something sees,
or someone, a different kind of someone,
a different molecular model, or entities
not made of molecules anyway; or nothing, no one:
but something has taken place, taken space,
been present, absent,
returned…

Denise Levertov,  “Window-Blind”