Dear Father

I'm a broken man. My soul is a pile of splinters and shattered consciousness.

This world we have been born to is more terrible and beautiful than any imagination.

Why do we have eyes to see color? A brilliant palette with which all creation has been painted. And why should we see it? Drops of rain explode light into a rainbow bowed over the earth. Why? Why should this splendor be wasted on people too weak to trust you? What is the color of ultraviolet or infrared light? Our visible spectrum is just like our existence. It's a glimpse on the median of infinity. Looking either direction there are colors unimaginable. Evidence of an invisible God who has revealed himself in the small sliver of our existence, still too great and complex and patterned for our comprehension.

This life is just a sliver of light. A sliver of the true inexplicable magic of truth. An evidence that we can only dimly perceive. We translate that invisible spectrum into what we can see, as our gracious God translated himself into mankind; the word become flesh.

When one opens his eyes, everything is a reflection of the God. Mighty God. The best utterances of splendor we can only hope to lay like gravel at his feet to walk on. The thunderous utterance and fire and crackling smoke and tender whisper and weeping man. Resplendent. Everything is ordered, woven like a deep and unimaginable pattern.

Imagine peering through the eyepiece of a telescope, perceiving endless galaxies of scale beyond imagination. Then quickly take your eye of the telescope and place it over a microscope and witness the endless scale sink into infinity. There is no scope, no edge we can see. We are mankind on an island in infinity, loved by a God who met us here in our infirmity.

Why does a butterfly bat its wings when it lands on a flower? I suppose there is some reason? But why does it appear to me so lovely? A peaceful fanning of its colorful delicacy. There is no reason for me to care about it. No reason for me to take delight in the electric green bug crawling across the velvet brilliance of a zinnia. No reason for me to feel staggered by the dashes of red cardinals streaking across green grass and see tomatoes redden from a small green to a plump ruby color. To see a seed explode into leaves of okra and watch the flowering blossom of jalepenos emerge into the searing kiss of its fruit.

The universe is staggering. The deeper we peer, the more its complexity and beauty and elegance and richness unfold on itself like an undulating explosion. It never grows simpler, but reality endless outgrows our best metaphors and cleverest phrases. Our imitations of reality are broken and endlessly striving for the glory we know exists.

Why should blue be blue? Why should an atmosphere grow deep blue and grass rich greens? Why is it such a pleasant complement to the profusion of color we can behold? Why shouldn't our eyes have missed the color of the skies completely? We see more than we need to. We see less than we want to. Why this situation?

Dear God. This universe is more than I can imagine. It is beyond imagination. It has grown beyond our creativity. It has outpaced our science, infinitely expanding as it is.

Why have you given us this striking wonder? Dear Lord, we don't deserve it. Why have you given us this theater to exist in? Our endless rebellion and your endless pursuit? It is the same story, played by countless actors on a stage as wondrous as our aspirations. We long for your perfection. And on our better days, we glimpse it.

I am rubble and dust. You know my frame LORD. You scooped me from this dirt and mud and breathed in me life.

I don't even know what that means, exactly. But my, how I know it.

I did nothing to deserve this. Nothing.

One of my first experiences with despair

Was as a young child. I have no idea what movie it was... I think it starred that guy from The Mighty Ducks.

The premise was something to do with him adopting a kid? Honestly, I have no idea what the plot was. All I remember is one scene.

The man was drinking milk that had gone sour and was turned lumpy. He tried to pretend that it didn't bother him. He poured the lumpy milk into his Fruit Loops and sadly ate the milk with a face of determined satisfaction poorly veiling his misery.

For some reason, this struck me as infinitely painful. Something in his helplessness and being beyond all help, removed as he was in the film, tore my heart in two. It's a bizarre recollection, but one I have never forgotten and deeply effected me. It's the same agony I feel when I find my faith threatened.

This is an interesting thought. I see people who suffer and I want to help, but often I cannot. Is this scene of lumpy milk our lives? Our stout-hearted refusal to accept our sad situation my faith?

No, I don't think so. I think a life without faith is this scene of lumpy milk? But Christianity is the recognition of our soured milk and our helplessness. We have faith in a God who reveals our suffering to be a blessing for others, and promises a land flowing with (fresh) milk and honey.

It's not a cleverer theology. But it's the right one, I believe. That's the truth.

I am somewhat bewildered

By Marilynne Robinson's identification as a "mainline protestant."

"All of the traditions have their gift to give to the larger phenomenon of Christendom. But for the mainline Protestant tradition, intellectual culture is a huge part of it," is a statement I have no difficulty agreeing with. I identify myself as Lutheran, but I allow for error within this denomination as well as a particular strength it can offer. The fact that if falls within the larger umbrella of "Christendom" is essential. I do not, for example find other religions as satisfying to the necessary tenets of faith.

I mean that human sanctity is not the starting point. How could it be? By what authority can human life be possibly derived? It can only be found in Christ. In a God that loved us so deeply he gave His one and only son for our redemption. There isn't another religion- no other analogue- that so profoundly demands this sacrificial attitude as its only possibility of existing.

We are only Christian, only redeemed, only aware of this possibility, through a thoroughly unconditional sacrifice and revelation of that sacrifice.

What discomforts me about Marilynne Robinson's words are that she does not identify this as her starting point. For a person of faith, I can imagine no other beginning.

Science progresses and nothing is new under the sun.

Science that dabbles in the metaphysical and the untestable is inherently soft. It sticks more as a language or idiom that quickly or easily describes something, rather than a satisfactory explanation.

e.g. psychoanalysis. It's almost thoroughly discredited by now, yet persists. It lingers as a shorthand that can express facets of our existence. Everything from "Freudian slips" to "Oedipal complexes" and "Ego/Id" to the cryptic nature of dreams. It's convenient, and therefore works on some level. I would suggest it functions on the same level as the Middle Ages concept of the bodily humors. It's total bunk, but a colorful descriptor.

It's myth at its truest. A descriptor that is less concerned with truth (though it may indeed be true) than it is with being archetypally pleasing.

Perhaps this is increasingly true of nature/nurture and even evolutionary descriptors. Maybe there's a lot there. Maybe it's just very colorful.

A Fine Thing

It's a fine thing to become a worse poet and be given a new soul. Some have chosen to pass over acclaim for better things.

Weeds and Thorn

Take your staff in your hands tightly,

And on my word, strike it rightly.

On my word, and don't stray an inch,

Or we'll take this rope and with a cinch,

Arrest your freedom and all your hope,

We'll steal it, like thieves, with this rope.

On three, 1, 2- Now you've done it,

What'd I say? I warned you. Now get

You're hands behind you and your head turned low,

You sneered our help? We'll make your back glow,

With our lash's poisonous kiss,

Whispering in your ears a dreadful hiss.

3 days in this pit, now how do you feel?

Tell you what- listen, we'll cut you a deal.

Our orders are a burden we've carried by our backs,

Down to you, and we'd like to unload our packs.

So listen and obey, and I promise, we swear

We'll loosen our grip, give you some air.

Don't you know, we have masters too?

Something above us, we're not different than you.

A curse lingers on us all thick in our lungs,

We're all in a fight, ever since we were young,

To get to the top? For some, to do our job

To do what we feel. We must do our job.

So, enough child! Strap this yoke on and plow.

Heels in the earth, food by the sweat of your brow.

That's the way, good child. Fate carries the willing,

Drags the reluctant feet. That will fetch a nice shilling,

Good work. Persist and you soon may fasten your own

Fine yolks to others working the fields that you've sown.

Balance in your skull what I'm telling you,

We're all cursed, we have masters too.

Beacons of Science

Take up your pen, brother

And with your quill sting!

Don't mind the slow and rhythmic

Breath of the great Beast,

who's heart you've pierced

With the venomous ink

Dripped from your feathered fang!

You and I, brother, are a family

Of this great light, can't you see it?

You can't see it? It's the bright,

Shining truth we carry to

The pagans; darkened masses.

We are the trustees, stewards of

The gods: Mathematics and sensuality!

You and I, discovered in like fashion,

This great power! Like demigods of old,

We are made half-holy by this knowledge,

Precious to man. With lances

Of truths and breastplates of our

Self-righteousness, we impale!

Skewer the demagogues who sought gain.

We grasped this power like coal-miners,

Carved from dark earth, sooty

By our efforts. And like men,

Hold it in glory of our strength,

Take up your pen brother!

And wield that quill still!

Don't mind the quieter breath.

Like Achilles, in my rage

I rail against the falsehoods of men!

By my anger brought lowly

And writhing in the dust like

The ones I've slain, my soul quivers.

Sunk to the undergloom- one last truth:

Woe to the one whence judgement comes!