Distracted

The first verse of Second Peter spoke to me in church today. Unfortunaltely, Pastor Matt's text was from Matthew. (Nope, just checked – the Gospel of John). Our church secretary killed my concentration by placing an illustration from the Malmesbury Bible on the bulletin cover. I should blame the weakness of my own flesh, not her.

A painting copy and pasted onto the bulletin may temporarily steal my attention as I glance over the composition and check to make sure its source has been cited. But I normally return as I assess whether it fits the program of readings and the sermon. If it's cheesy or superficial, I put it away quickly to avoid a critical spirit and aggravation. If it does fit, there's a devotional aspect that leads me naturally and pleasantly back into the sermon. While I may miss a sentence or two of exposition, I feel guiltless and satisfied with the tangent.

But a fragment of a medieval manuscript? She might as well have hired a naked woman to stand next Pastor Matt. Pornography has never interested me, but palaeography – eesh.

Immediately I could see from the lateral compression and the sharply broken bows of the Latin letters that the text is written in a Gothic script. The colors and flourishes in the initial illustration say Northern France or Southern English. I look closer at the ductus: hairline strokes, blunted cross-stroke on 'per', and the fluent execution suggest late fourteenth century; the diamond feet at the bottom of the letters show care and deliberation – Textualis Formata – an altar Bible.

Then I got completely lost in the details and in solving the contractions and ligatures. There was also the Mediterranean, almost Arabic influence in Peter's face. I tried twice to turn the bulletin over. As soon as I did, I would mentally answer a question that I needed to verify or ask one that I needed to examine further. Lord, help!

Painting Again

It's been a while since I've painted. I can be a bit of a perfectionist, so I get pretty bound up. This is true in several areas of my life: when it gets too tightly wound - when reality or execution don't match my vision or expectation, I get frustrated. Neurotically so sometimes - frequently. Sometimes, I let the thing go. Sometimes I pursue it with zeal until there is a breakthrough - or til I kill it. Sometimes I try to limit my scope (like my palette color choices, number of times I call, space between calls - - oh yea, I'm talking about painting!), to reduce the possibility for frustration and neurosis. This rarely works.


I read something about paint  that is helping me both unwind a little and go forward. Paint has the ability to do two things: to depict something (realistically, abstractly, whatever...), and to be paint. The second one is the place I'm working from right now. I have a lot of ideas for things I want to depict, but I'm not ready. The best thing for me to do right now is just to paint, to enjoy painting, to enjoy learning and screwing up, building, tearing down & proceeding.

I have three colors, and black. I'm learning the possibilities of these colors & "letting them speak for themselves" as I go. On the more mystical side, it's an act of poverty and faith. Poverty of color and of "saying something"; faith that there will be (money to buy) paint and canvas for the process & that when it's time to say something, I'll be ready.

Poem

Do you ever feel like life has piled too much on you for you to stand still - where the only movement you can make is to run? Where running til you defeat yourself seems like the only way to walk home? Here's a poem from this summer when I had a time like that. Exhausting myself couldn't alleviate my hurt or shame - or cool the residue of an inarticulate question that burned inside. But landing on a step in an embrace with a strung-out homeless girl brought me to a place of grace - us to a place of grace - of healing and rebuilding.

I am the mild madman artist
whose humming delusionary dreams
she wiped away with her porcelain hands,

whose life of poems and pennies
roads and flowers contrasts her made-up whirlwind
of a concrete life.

I am he whose fire burns myself out
as I run into the moon-ringed frantic of this hungry summer night.

Running past the lazy belch of gravelly laughter
my chucks splash flowing oil rainbows.
                 Puddled playlands disturbed,
                 rats' tails slip down
                 sunken stoops -
                 brownstones
                 scaffolded with fire escapes.

                 Where does fire escape?
                 Adrenaline, muscle and teary-eyed teeth
                 navigate constellations of electric stars,
                 pushing through,
                 pulsing through
                 the Lower East Side.

                 Anaerobic respiration
                 heightens desperation

                and a breathless clench-jawed prayer
                that I had wings of a dove -
                that a cellar door were a springboard catapult - and I,
                          grateful projectile,
                          in the dreamscape jump of freeflight explosion.

But I am a vacuum subdued with implosive fatigue
and the shrapnel of my thoughts
            sparkles on the sidewalk - letters that no longer spell -
            clinking into a pile of quiet, shiny confusion in Alphabet city

            where you slump to the ground,
            where you've written my heart on your cardboard: Please help.

            I am the brokenness
            in your bleary and sun-beaten eyes,
            in your Benzedrine and booze-soaked brain.

           Squat in your doorway;
           holding you in your Revlon drool,
           lollipop tattoo
           and uncovered bruise -
           I am the tenderness of every man who has held you huddled in a corner of shame.

           Squat in your doorway;
           in these whispered shudders
           of weeping -
           you are the return of one who walked away.

We are lost
but we are here,
and this is home -
where grace begins.

         


 

Impoverished

As a teenager I noticed how poverty brought certain benefits. People with money seemed rarely to notice small things and take joy in them. I decided at age 14 that no matter what, I wanted to cultivate a level of poverty that forced me to find joy on my path.

God has held me to that, calling me to ever-deepening levels of impoverishment.

Financial poverty is always uncomfortable as it creates anxieties about stability, provision, the ability to meet my responsibilities - let alone enjoyment and acceptance. But having grown up financially poor, and learning to appreciate its benefits has taught me to take all this in stride.

Lately God is asking me if I am willing to endure other types of poverty...

Poverty of place I need to let go of the possibility of travelling and living somewhere/anywhere else for a while. It's time to water the grass where I live, instead of looking for greener grass elsewhere.

Poverty of people In the same way, I need to invest in those around me. It's good to know that I have friends around the globe, but I can't chase after them at the expense of my neighbor who may need me here.

Poverty of impressiveness A stripping away is necessary to present a simplicity of person and purpose. I don't want who I am, or the level at which I operate, to be ambiguous to me or to anyone else. Crutches of achievement or apparent success need to go, or to be tempered with humility & unwillingness to be praised.

Poverty of will My prayers and desires need to be fully yielded to the God who knows me better than I know myself. He will meet my emotional and spiritual needs. This includes submitting to his will for other people as well, not holding on to them for my own purposes.

Poverty of wisdom I need to be more ready to listen than to offer advice. I need to be quiet. This includes spiritual poverty too - not thinking that my younger brothers and sisters, or unbelievers are on a lower rung of a ladder of spiritual achievement than I am by putting myself in the position of a guru instead of friend.

There needs to be a Poverty of ME.

Would God ask me to relinquish basic human needs in order to know him more fully and to find the small joys around me? Would he ask me to suffer the loss of accolades, relationships and identity in order to depend on him for one days' bread & to be found in him only?

"Blessed are the poor in spirit." ...May I enter the kingdom bereft of all but Christ.