Herman Melville's Moby Dick doesn't have the greatest reputation, and that's a fact. It seems to have stumbled into the canon of classic literature more by accident than democratic vote, or at least that would appear to be the case from most highschoolers' reaction to it. Thankfully, broad swaths of public opinion do not a statement of truth make, or Moby Dick (and probably most of Melville's other works) would be sunk. Frankly, were it not for a brief, but memorable encounter with this particular story, I would probably never have given it another thought myself. Why read something so universally shunned?
Such were my thoughts, until a quiet evening during IE break, which I spent with my roommate and her family. Her father is the sort of person I would like to call a kindred spirit, although I'm not sure how true that holds. We certainly had a lot to talk about, from G. K. Chesterton to monasteries. And at one point, we stumbled on the topic of Melville. As it so happens, Moby Dick is one of Pastor Brown's favorite pieces of fiction, so he had a lot to say about it, but even that might not have been enough to convince me of its worth if it weren't for the fact that he actually hunted down his copy and began to read from it.
Sometimes to fall in love, we have to see the object of our love through another person's eyes. I confess, I still haven't read it three years later, but the impression remains, along with a determined mental "eventually." Because the way he read those opening first pages was as if, if it were the only story in the entire world, that might not be such a bad thing, and that's about the best introduction you can possibly want, if you ask me.
17.7.13
16.7.13
Tracing Paper
Very nearly cast off husk
Of an old hive once
Swarming
With life, old and new:
Now stirred only by the
Rattle and shake of a breeze
(So rare anymore,
This stagnant August).
You: mute master.
I: soft-skinned student do
Read the lines of your face
As the map to Heaven
Inlaid with sorrow, with joy.
You send me onward,
From life to life:
Breaking and unbroken.
Of an old hive once
Swarming
With life, old and new:
Now stirred only by the
Rattle and shake of a breeze
(So rare anymore,
This stagnant August).
You: mute master.
I: soft-skinned student do
Read the lines of your face
As the map to Heaven
Inlaid with sorrow, with joy.
You send me onward,
From life to life:
Breaking and unbroken.
3.7.13
Thoughts from the Morning Train
People aren't apathetic because they don't want to believe in something. Everybody wants to believe in something, even if it's just aliens or conspiracy theories. Rather, we choose apathy because truth demands a response out of us, and though we often acknowledge it guiltily and deep down, we are far less willing to make the requisite life changes that an open commitment would demand.
29.6.13
Towers of Babel
After an allusion to Babel, it seems a bit sacrilegious to begin with the great cathedrals of Europe, but if you'll pardon the poor transition, there's a point here.
When I first traveled to England, my friends and I had the opportunity to wander around the Durham Cathedral, a beautiful example of late Romanesque architecture that was built largely in the early 1100s and completed by 1135. Perhaps it is easy to criticize the medieval church-builders, who robbed parishioners of ludicrous sums of money in order to build unnecessarily massive structures with no function aside from community worship and the housing of relics. We certainly have little sympathy or understanding for the kind of mindset that produced the likes of this and other great European cathedrals. But at the same time, there is an undeniable beauty to the soaring heights of the nave with its massive pillars and ribbed vaulting, something that takes your breath away even as your soul takes flight on the heavenly sound of a chorus singing the evensong service. A moment's quiet contemplation reveals, as contemplation yields to exultation, why someone might go to the trouble of building such a gargantuan thing at such great cost.
Beauty almost always costs something. Things that last: they cost even more. The Durham Cathedral took 42 years to complete, and as building projects go, that's a fairly short time frame. The famed cathedral of Köln (that's Cologne, for you non-German speakers) was erected over the course of 250 years until building ceased in 1473. It was not completed until 1880. As noted earlier, not only time but also money was required for these projects - money that came out of the pockets of people who were pretty hard up to begin with. While, granted, they may not have shared the vision of their tax-collectors, their sacrifice contributed to the construction.
So what do medieval churches have to do with the tower of Babel?
I don't think that modern man could produce the likes of either those cathedrals or the Genesis tower. There are lots of reasons we could cite, starting with the prohibitive cost and moving on to the ways that religion is perceived and practiced (I will grant that there are modern churches that are ridiculously expensive, but they are rarely the product of years of work and painstaking effort, sacrificing form for function and expediency). But I don't think either of these possibilities really get to the heart of the matter, which is this: how many of us are actually willing to build toward a future that we may not get to see?
One of the most powerful concepts that I took away from my year at IMPACT was the idea of dash management. On your tombstone, there's a bare minimum of information. A name, two dates, and maybe an eloquent epitaph. Oh - and a dash. That's your entire life: a single two inch line carved in stone that will gradually wear away under the effects of storm and season. That's all the time you get in this world, so use it wisely.
But that's really hard advice to follow. We don't see our lives in terms of the dash. We see them in terms of the day to day. I'll be the first to admit that my projects are tiny. Most of the time, I'm lucky to get through the weekly chore of doing my laundry, so forget about planning a cathedral. If I can't even get my clothes onto hangers before the basket fills for the next round, I doubt I'm going to have the foresight to transcend my everyday life and enter the greater perspective of human history.
And yet, we're cheating ourselves out of so much if we get hung up on the small things. They're important too, don't get me wrong, but they're not necessarily ends in themselves. Their pleasure is fleeting, evanescent. The joy I take in steaming a perfect, velvety microfoam - and drinking the scrumptious latte that it goes into - is momentary and easily forgotten. We can and should submerge ourselves in these kinds of delights every now and again, but they can't be everything because ultimately, the foam dissipates and the mug is empty. They can't satisfy forever. And when we get stuck on the small things to the extent that we can't sacrifice their comfort anymore and can't see beyond them to the bigger picture, then we've lost something equally precious, which is the opportunity to contribute to and participate in something that will last beyond ourselves and our tiny moments, which, though lovely, are mere nanometers on an all-too-short dash.
I don't want to build a cathedral. But I hope that I don't get so wrapped up in little things that I never get to be part of something bigger than myself, something that might some day, hundreds of years from now, cause someone to pause and think, This is a good thing.
When I first traveled to England, my friends and I had the opportunity to wander around the Durham Cathedral, a beautiful example of late Romanesque architecture that was built largely in the early 1100s and completed by 1135. Perhaps it is easy to criticize the medieval church-builders, who robbed parishioners of ludicrous sums of money in order to build unnecessarily massive structures with no function aside from community worship and the housing of relics. We certainly have little sympathy or understanding for the kind of mindset that produced the likes of this and other great European cathedrals. But at the same time, there is an undeniable beauty to the soaring heights of the nave with its massive pillars and ribbed vaulting, something that takes your breath away even as your soul takes flight on the heavenly sound of a chorus singing the evensong service. A moment's quiet contemplation reveals, as contemplation yields to exultation, why someone might go to the trouble of building such a gargantuan thing at such great cost.
Beauty almost always costs something. Things that last: they cost even more. The Durham Cathedral took 42 years to complete, and as building projects go, that's a fairly short time frame. The famed cathedral of Köln (that's Cologne, for you non-German speakers) was erected over the course of 250 years until building ceased in 1473. It was not completed until 1880. As noted earlier, not only time but also money was required for these projects - money that came out of the pockets of people who were pretty hard up to begin with. While, granted, they may not have shared the vision of their tax-collectors, their sacrifice contributed to the construction.
So what do medieval churches have to do with the tower of Babel?
I don't think that modern man could produce the likes of either those cathedrals or the Genesis tower. There are lots of reasons we could cite, starting with the prohibitive cost and moving on to the ways that religion is perceived and practiced (I will grant that there are modern churches that are ridiculously expensive, but they are rarely the product of years of work and painstaking effort, sacrificing form for function and expediency). But I don't think either of these possibilities really get to the heart of the matter, which is this: how many of us are actually willing to build toward a future that we may not get to see?
One of the most powerful concepts that I took away from my year at IMPACT was the idea of dash management. On your tombstone, there's a bare minimum of information. A name, two dates, and maybe an eloquent epitaph. Oh - and a dash. That's your entire life: a single two inch line carved in stone that will gradually wear away under the effects of storm and season. That's all the time you get in this world, so use it wisely.
But that's really hard advice to follow. We don't see our lives in terms of the dash. We see them in terms of the day to day. I'll be the first to admit that my projects are tiny. Most of the time, I'm lucky to get through the weekly chore of doing my laundry, so forget about planning a cathedral. If I can't even get my clothes onto hangers before the basket fills for the next round, I doubt I'm going to have the foresight to transcend my everyday life and enter the greater perspective of human history.
And yet, we're cheating ourselves out of so much if we get hung up on the small things. They're important too, don't get me wrong, but they're not necessarily ends in themselves. Their pleasure is fleeting, evanescent. The joy I take in steaming a perfect, velvety microfoam - and drinking the scrumptious latte that it goes into - is momentary and easily forgotten. We can and should submerge ourselves in these kinds of delights every now and again, but they can't be everything because ultimately, the foam dissipates and the mug is empty. They can't satisfy forever. And when we get stuck on the small things to the extent that we can't sacrifice their comfort anymore and can't see beyond them to the bigger picture, then we've lost something equally precious, which is the opportunity to contribute to and participate in something that will last beyond ourselves and our tiny moments, which, though lovely, are mere nanometers on an all-too-short dash.
I don't want to build a cathedral. But I hope that I don't get so wrapped up in little things that I never get to be part of something bigger than myself, something that might some day, hundreds of years from now, cause someone to pause and think, This is a good thing.
25.6.13
Sunrise to Sunset
I have a confession.
(That's not the best beginning, as stories go, but work with me here)
Every so often, probably more often than I'd care to admit, I sit at my computer or stare at my phone and try desperately to come up with something witty or profound or snarky to post as a Facebook status. And sometimes, I'm even furiously jealous of my friends, who can say cool things about what they're doing in foreign countries or for internships or just at a big music festival... Y'know. Cool stuff.
*sigh*
It's true, they got me.
I have nothing original to say about the way that Facebook makes us celebrate trivial moments. All of that was said back in 2008 by people who are better with words than I am.
But it does make me wonder: what does it take to live in such a way that every moment is profound?
Does that make sense?
I want to live breathlessly, always on the edge of my seat, not because someone is always amping up the adrenaline-rushing adventure, but because I'm always discovering the wonder of the amazingly ordinary. I spend so much time looking forward: to the end of my shift, to a long-awaited reunion, to January when I leave for England. And that's not bad. We have to anticipate and hope for the future, or we start to wither and die in the present. But if that's all we're doing, it's not healthy either, because we're missing the good that is laid out before us.
I might be exhausted, sunburnt (more like sun-charred, at this point), frazzled, and uncomfortable, but what about the fact that I'm alive? What about the fact that I am typing (what does that even mean?) on a computer (slim, portable device capable of incredible feats based on some kind of basic language and lots of tiny pieces and even if I did know how it worked, it should still blow my mind) using language (we can communicate with other people in a massive way; words open a gateway between two or more minds, making so much possible, and if they break sometimes, well, their very existence is pretty marvelous, and we can't expect them to be perfect) to share an idea... Every single part of speech is an incredible thing. Verbs. Nouns. Articles and conjunctions, adverbs and adjectives. Paper: woven plants that absorb a sort of dye and transmit aforementioned words and ideas. Who knew a plant could be a sort of mental storage facility?
Living profoundly is living in wonder. In awe. Because every moment is incredibly unlikely, and every breath is the height of improbability. If we can look for just one moment beyond the daily concerns to recognize the marvel of having days and having something to be concerned about and, for that matter, having the ability to be concerned about something, then maybe we'll be a little closer to the heart of the child and the heart of God, who says every morning, "Again, again!" For though the sun is old, the dawn is new, and we know it only fleetingly before it ages to day. So open your eyes and be humble enough to be amazed, lest you lose the chance for good.
(That's not the best beginning, as stories go, but work with me here)
Every so often, probably more often than I'd care to admit, I sit at my computer or stare at my phone and try desperately to come up with something witty or profound or snarky to post as a Facebook status. And sometimes, I'm even furiously jealous of my friends, who can say cool things about what they're doing in foreign countries or for internships or just at a big music festival... Y'know. Cool stuff.
*sigh*
It's true, they got me.
I have nothing original to say about the way that Facebook makes us celebrate trivial moments. All of that was said back in 2008 by people who are better with words than I am.
But it does make me wonder: what does it take to live in such a way that every moment is profound?
Does that make sense?
I want to live breathlessly, always on the edge of my seat, not because someone is always amping up the adrenaline-rushing adventure, but because I'm always discovering the wonder of the amazingly ordinary. I spend so much time looking forward: to the end of my shift, to a long-awaited reunion, to January when I leave for England. And that's not bad. We have to anticipate and hope for the future, or we start to wither and die in the present. But if that's all we're doing, it's not healthy either, because we're missing the good that is laid out before us.
I might be exhausted, sunburnt (more like sun-charred, at this point), frazzled, and uncomfortable, but what about the fact that I'm alive? What about the fact that I am typing (what does that even mean?) on a computer (slim, portable device capable of incredible feats based on some kind of basic language and lots of tiny pieces and even if I did know how it worked, it should still blow my mind) using language (we can communicate with other people in a massive way; words open a gateway between two or more minds, making so much possible, and if they break sometimes, well, their very existence is pretty marvelous, and we can't expect them to be perfect) to share an idea... Every single part of speech is an incredible thing. Verbs. Nouns. Articles and conjunctions, adverbs and adjectives. Paper: woven plants that absorb a sort of dye and transmit aforementioned words and ideas. Who knew a plant could be a sort of mental storage facility?
Living profoundly is living in wonder. In awe. Because every moment is incredibly unlikely, and every breath is the height of improbability. If we can look for just one moment beyond the daily concerns to recognize the marvel of having days and having something to be concerned about and, for that matter, having the ability to be concerned about something, then maybe we'll be a little closer to the heart of the child and the heart of God, who says every morning, "Again, again!" For though the sun is old, the dawn is new, and we know it only fleetingly before it ages to day. So open your eyes and be humble enough to be amazed, lest you lose the chance for good.
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