ruby

I have long berated emotions for being inefficient, and for nearly that same amount of time I have wondered what real purpose they serve. They are a large part of why I do not really believe in macro-evolution. Emotions do not aid the survival of the fittest mentality, stereotypical or not. They are deceptive and impractical more often than not.

It was easy to come up with half-answers that were never satisfying, but were enough to pacify. Things like, "they are what make us human" or "to keep us from being fake" and other explanations were in no way false...but they did not seem to be solid defense.

Maybe what I have found will only pacify any other person, but it is the answer I have found satisfaction in. Emotions force us to need the people around us. They make life about more than just getting by on our own and totally destroy the lone ranger. People are not made to be alone and we feel it more than the most perfect empirical science. This life thing, whatever else it is, is dependent on other people. We can take on other people's pain in a way that is uniquely human, even if we do not know them.

Feeling is what binds us together. And it is pain and happiness...and both of those in strange and unexpected mixtures. We need people to help us heal. We need people we can trust to help us be who we were made to...It does not work any other way. There are no exceptions or loopholes. It is horrible and dangerous and painfully clumsy work because none of us know what we are doing. More than that, we wont know what we are doing until we have done it, probably wrong, at least once. All of us clueless people trying to make sense of what we have been given. But it is poetry, or art, or music...and we cannot stop to consider our audience or we will never finish. Because if we lose ourselves to the rules of beauty that other people make we will never wade through those tears or walk deep enough into unknown darkness to feel the weight of the worth of what we are making.

Quite simply, we are making ourselves a life.

summer sky blue

Home smells like ponderosa

baked into tall grasses

with all the warmth

of a summer oven.

And it looks like wildflowers

--flax and lupine,

paintbrush and snap dragons--

scattered everywhere

with strangely majestic thistles in between.

Did you know

that thistles smell

milky and sweet and musty

all at the same time?

And home has so many sounds:

The rumbling of dirt roads

and dashing of deer and grasshoppers.

Crickets and wind and old things

that are too tired, or too loved, to wear out.

I cannot forget this giant theater sky

with its many, many moods

playing and yelling

and whispering so many secrets.

And it does not matter

how long I am away.
I will always have sap

folded into my skin,

baked into my hands.

I may have many more homes

but I will never really wash

this dust from my hair

or this sky from my eyes.

yellow

I have reached a point in my belief in Christianity and faith in God where I have to admit that it's not what it used to be. I still believe the same core things, but the externals are changing, well, have been changing for awhile. I am only now able to attempt to see what they might become. I was brought up on a hot and contradictory mixture of fiery pentecostalism and timid reformed presbyterianism (if I may coin the terms) and both of those juxtaposed the deep New Age of my father's house. It wasn't long before the passion of the pentecostals became my own. I wanted to be radical. I thought I could change the world if I tried hard enough, was righteous enough or something.

High standards are my specialty. I have grace enough for everyone but me. But you can't make a life out of it and that has become my test: Can I build a life on this? Unreachable goals will either be abandoned or else they will destroy some part of you. I had to leave them eventually. I needed healing and I would not find it by always striving for the impossible. I do not want to be a radical Christian anymore. While that sounds horrible, I will stand by it. It is the radicals that my coworkers abhor for their arrogance, hypocrisy, and other flaws. There must be a better way. Can quiet lives shout? How radical was Jesus?

He paid his taxes, went to weddings, drank wine and ate dinner with sinners, he told stories... Yes, he cleansed the temple, calmed storms, and put the pharisees in their place. Still, his life seems markedly different than our modern zealots. In our effort to make him relevant, to communicate how extraordinary he was, we have made him something he never really was and still is not. And I find that comforting because I can't be that anymore. I can love God. I can love people. When I think about it, those were the two greatest commandments anyway. Those are strong enough to build my life on.

I don't want to change the world. There are 6 billion people on this planet and I wont meet them all. Besides, the Bible doesn't preach revolution and revival the way many of today's churches do. It prophesies hardship and a worsening of times...animosity for God and everything, everyone, associated. And we will be known by our love, because that is something that can't be faked, wont go out of style, and will always be needed. Most people don't need to know that they aren't perfect (even when they act like it), they need to know that they are loved.

electric grays

In the last month or so I have established two things: 1. man was made for more than to just work whatever job is handed him until he dies. There is something distinct inside of man that whithers when the desire for a purpose at a core level is ignored. 2. and part of the glory of man is that he will hurt those he loves. It is inescapable. No matter how intentional you are and how good you try to be, you will fail, horrendously, at some point.

And that is ok.

It is not right or good, but there is life afterwards. And sometimes, that is all we can ask for. At some point, we need to sift through cliches that we have heard all of our lives and decide what they mean and what they are worth with flesh on them. Things like, "nobody's perfect" and such. If they are true, we can build on them. And that is why I believe in truth, both static and flexible. Not all truth applies everywhere to everyone equally. But there are rules and no matter how you try to flee limitations and laws, as a member of the human race they fall just the same throughout the years on you and everyone.

To refuse to believe in absolutes and yet attempt to build a life at all makes no sense. We don't want the judgments and accountability of absolutes like right and wrong, but we want the security of believing the sun will come up and gravity will continue. But what if ethics is really more of a science than we ever thought? What if the laws of physics and the laws of morality were brothers from the same beginning?

Time

I can live through most goodbyes and I even enjoy stories where things do not end perfectly. (I prefer them most days actually.)But I hate watching things wear out. Beautiful buildings, favorite clothes, old art...I hate how beauty never seems to endure. Time is relentless and it races on at a breath taking rate.

I have caught myself searching, in every new place I go, for some sign that wherever I have arrived is outside of the weight and wear of time. I want so badly for the beauty to endure. I think this is what is meant when it is said that God has written eternity on the hearts of men. Outside of that explanation, the human race makes no sense. We want to hang onto so many things but we have never been told that anything will last. There is no evidence of anything that has lasted forever...but we have an understanding that there is such a thing as 'forever'. At least, we have a word for it.

I do not know what this means for my plan to find out what it means to be human. It looks like it means that we are doomed to long for what we do not know...even as we fear the unknown above all else. We are delicate, fragile, and temporary but we long for strength and immortality. And while we are so temporary, we are capable of so much. The strength of the human spirit is unmatched. There is an undeniable will to live even when there does not seem to be reason to. For me, this leads past wonder and makes me believe in the immortality of the human soul. Where else did this idea come from? Why can we talk about a forever none of us have ever known? Why do we look to eternity? Are we really so lost in delusions of hope? Maybe. But if the hope is real, it changes everything.

Mike and Lucky

This is homeless man named Mike and his dog, Lucky. I believe I mentioned him before. Over the course of several months I got to know him as I began to paint in the park that he frequented and more or less occupied. He was the among most encouraging people during that project. Mostly, he was lonely and I didn't mind letting him talk about art or the cops in the area or his homemade tattoo set. I don't really know why I liked talking to him so much, but I did. It always made the day better. He always provided very much needed perspective on everything from what a bad day is to what my faith is worth.

It is easy to get swept away in all sorts of theology and philosophy, especially in the culture I was living in at the time when I met Mike. He was a constant reminder that nothing that I believed mattered on a working and practical level if it could not offer him love and hope. That is important to remember as I think about what it means to be human. Whatever truth I find only has value if a life can be built on it. That is my presupposition, I guess. I believe that there is intrinsic value in life and living and just being. I guess I believe that because I believe that man is made and not abandoned.

Human

I am discovering something, or rather a lack of something: I do not actually know what it means to be human...and for myself, what it means to be a woman. What is more unsettling to me is that I do not think that this is just the age I am at or where I live or even just who I am right now. I do not think there is any rule that says, "You will eventually figure this out." As best as I can tell, we are too often a species content with not knowing. I really hate it when it is not comforting to not be alone.

I want to know. I do believe that I need to know if I am to build the sort of life that I want. I have a lot of cheap answers and maybe even some good ones but nothing has been sorted. This is not the kind of thing that will resolve itself without at least the small effort of seeking. And I am excited, at least, in part. It is my project for the summer. It may last longer, I can hardly hope to know that this will all be wrapped up beautifully at the end of the about 70 or so days I have left of summer before I am back into classes and routine and schedules.

People do not usually make sense, but I have long justified this by saying that I do not know enough about them...that I am merely reading them out of context. But now, I want to know what it is that we are...and what we should be...and if there is any hope of bridging whatever gap there may be.

I believe that people have the right to be themselves. As a whole, we are not honest enough or secure enough most days. Too many of us are who we think we should be without a clear idea of where these standards came from or why. But I think it is important to be different...not for different's sake, but for honesty and beauty and all the makings of art that somehow pour out of the souls and minds of men and women. There is a way to see our similarities without laying aside what makes us different and unique.

Doubtlessly, I am a product of Western society; but I hope that I am not so entrenched in culture so as to never meet with Truth. I am what I am, and I cannot pretend to be anything else. We will see what this search brings. As I said, I am excited. I am also a little be wary of finding what I do not want to know--but more than anything I am curious. There is a life that I am looking for, and I will give up so many things to have it; but how will I know it if I do not even know who it is I should be?