on what i have to say after two months of not saying much

Now that I have been away for nine weeks, which is a not that long time; I mean, six months of displacement is not that long. I had this conversation with my co-worker that I have so little time. I think that I still have that very American impulse to contain within myself all the knowledge of a moment--that I will understand everything, language and culture and all differences all at the same time because I have to know! know! know!

But, the unknown–I think that is where the Word becomes flesh. I think that the Incarnation becomes a part of the act of not-knowing. In all its intercessary distance, the Incarnation passes through the unknown. And, that leap of faith at the bottom of everything, at the end of all knowledge, that jump from known–empirically known and tangibly experienced–to unknown has already been performed.

On Thursday, I attended a teaching session by Bishop Zac Niringye, the passage over which he taught was Romans 5. And, what struck me aside from his hypnotic teaching method and the way I was drawn into it, was that he called the act of salvation an act outside the self. That to be saved is to be in the midst of being saved, that the act of salvation is ongoing, but it has already been done! Christ died once for all–something we, Americans, have buried under a mountain of cliché comprised of song and t-shirt and institutionalized religion–and the act of salvation is about what has been done for you not what you have done.

In that, I recall the prayer of salvation I prayed as a child in the aftermath of a particularly frightening Sunday School lesson about the afterlife; I remember timidly repeating the words of the ABC prayer: Admitting that I was a sinner, Believing that Jesus was who He said He was and that He died for me, and Committing my life to Him in return. And, I think about the oddity of a seven year old committing his life to Christ. When, for a seven-year-old, the passage of a month comprises a considerable amount of his life, I wonder what a lifetime looks like to my former self. I wonder if I imagined myself as an old man, gray-haired and all, making morning prayers when I made a commitment at seven-years-old.

Of course not; it is a foregone conclusion. But, that doesn't discredit that it was the beginning. It was the beginning of the practice of standing in grace, and I with all my wobbling seven-year-old knees began crawling until I could come to a day when as a twenty-two year old, I begin standing. Yes, I live a life of beginnings. And, I require all the intercessary distance of Word become flesh to make a stand into a leap–one that has been taken.

And, these are all the conclusions of one displaced and there, wrapped in the cloth of uncertainty. They mingle with the unknown, and it is the task of all my poetry, prose and daily routine to stand and to leap over great distance.

on the changing weather and my disposition

I don't take much pride in the fact that the weather, especially days like today, the unexpected snow during the first week of April, directly influence my state of mind. What a shitty day. The clouds have conspired against the sun and the ground is freezing cold. It is as though April never showed at all ... save Monday when it was 60 degrees and quite nice.

I have never longed for Monday before. Not once, and this entry will be the first time I long for a day such as Monday. Mondays are reminders that we repeat instead of progress. I spend so much energy longing that I can't adequately make myself present. I sense that acute longing when I look at this campus or when I walk in between the aisles of a supermarket or when I wait in line behind someone at an ATM or when I hear someone's music from two cars over at a stoplight. We are all groping against it, and we can't quite articulate what to call it.

And, when we can't name it, we can't claim it. To name is to call into existence, because language–it will save us. The Word become flesh, and a bevy of phrases come to mind: the Incarnation! The Incarnation? To call it a name, to believe, to long, to look with expectation, these are things we call the human impulse. Language doesn't suffice. So, why would we pull the Word into the world of language and make language to suit the Word?

When I can't find the language, the words, the phrases to match my disappointment in a world that requires war–where men kill men and women, I doubt it–all of it–so profoundly that I let it disappear into concretions and only concretions: a woman riding a bike, a table holding a plate full of spaghetti, a book made from the widdling away of trees, a fingernail clipping that can be divided into molecules and particles then quarks until we are all comprised of energy, a space in which we exchange symbols–crude representations of what we mean.

But, the Word! What does He do? What does the Incarnation mean to peace? to meaning? to equillibrium? All things moving toward some good? Those who love him?

There: community. All things moving toward community; being known and being loved, it must be where we are going.

on the incarnation of Him, a Savior!

"Merry Christmas," I say to you, reader.

I think now about the nature of the Incarnation, that God saw fit to manifest His Grace on the world. God did, in all his fullness, in all his mercy, come among us once--beginning in Bethlehem, and on to Nazareth, and on and on until Springboro, Ohio to now as I type, each flick of my finger is drenched in the grace of a God who saw fit to send His Son.

And, I write in the moments beyond Bethlehem with the same hope of Czeslaw Milosz, that the word and the thing will someday become one and I will know that I have defended the great hope of the Incarnation.

"Oh, what a glorious revelation that will be," I say. But, I imagine it won't take the form we anticipate--that LaHaye-Jenkins sort of a trendy apocalypse full of tanks and colorfully woven world-wide governmental organizations. No, what a different form it will be!

Then, we'll really sing--we will liberate our voices from the three-part harmonies of a church service in favor of a cacophony of sound that will deafen our ears and bloody our noses.

A mixing of blood and song.