learn something new everyday...

We just got back from a new year's eve screening of a certain movie and I've made a few wise observations:

1) Never trust a guy that always talks about himself in the plural.
2) Heros, elves, and wizards always show up at the last minute.
3) Never, never piss off a tree!

secrets...

Despite my sincere belief in the importance of the catholic church universal, I wouldn't exactly call my self a Catholic in the denominational sense. And though I might have a theological point of departure (or three) to discuss with my Christian brother Pope John Paul II, I wish my own Baptist clan put as much importance on confession as our Roman counterparts. While I don't believe that confession to the parish priest is necessary for absolution, I do know that confession is quite good for the soul.

When I started this journal, I had a feeling it would become confessional. It's inevitable, really. If this is to be the place where I try to untangle a vine or two of green, then I'm bound to slip up and tell you too much about the darker side of being me... to slip and tell you about the things that have left these bruises and scars.

I read a blog post last night that scared me, made me angry. It disgusted me, not for having been told it happened, but because I know now that someone was hurt by a friend. It was the sort of hurt that I have no reference for empathy. I can't even begin to wonder how he felt then or feels now. I can only offer up my prayers, and make sure that "hey dude, I'll be praying about that" doesn't turn out as hollow as it sounds.

I think, though, the thing that really scared me was his willingness to share that much hurt with the world. The ability to open up and pour out a mass of teenage pain, confusion, and betrayal. He was able to open the closet door and let all the bones go spilling out into the floor, and that amazed me. I'm afraid I don't have that sort of courage. I'm afraid of my own skeletons. Afraid that they'll up and move on their own, open the closet door and run out into the world telling all my shameful secrets.

I keep hearing a line in my head "tell me your deep dark secret/and I will tell you mine./Is that your deep dark secret?/Oh well, nevermind." Guess I'm just not that brave. Guess I'll just keep holding back... for now.

light of the world...

I just finished reading a book for the second time. I only mention that it's the second time I�ve read this particular book because that's something that I so rarely do. This time, however, I figured since it took me over two months to read it the first time, it might be well served to take another month or so and wade through it again.The book was written by the man who is currently my favorite author of all time, G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton was an English writer who lived through the turn of the last century. He wrote Orthodoxy as an attempt to put into words the journey he made from agnostic, to atheist, and then back to orthodox Christianity and it's full of things I wish I had written. It's full of wisdom that I covet.

On the drive to north Alabama today, I got caught up thinking about one of these pearls that I must have missed the first time through. Chesterton talks in one chapter about the paradox of Christianity. many of you could probably think of two or three paradoxes and it's true what Steve Taylor said, "it's harder to believe than not to" sometimes. But the particular paradox that stuck itself in my mental craw right about the time we hit Eutaw, Al was the need to both hate and love a thing in order to make it better.

Chesterton said that for a man to make something better than it is, he must both love it enough to want to improve it and, in the same instance, hate what it is enough to see it destroyed and rebuilt. If I don't love something enough, I won't care enough to make the effort, to expend the time, talent, or treasure to improve it. But if I love a thing too much, if I don't in some sense hate what it is, then I would never want to change what it is, but tear down a home and build a mansion. (If you could see the state of these Alabama roads, you might understand better what he was trying to say.)

Amazing to me, is how Christmas is wrapped up in the whole love/hate paradox like the bright colored presents we tore into this afternoon. God must have hated the broken pieces of my heart a great deal to suffer so much trouble setting it right. God must have loved the little rude stable of my heart so much that He was willing to squeeze Himself into human skin to clean it Himself.

Merry Christmas.

postcards from the road...

Started out this morning on our annual Christmas tour of the great state of Alabama. (Man, is it ever hard to write with your wife looking over your shoulder.) anyway. You see a lot of things on the side of the road in a 700+ mile trip: wrecked and burned cars, giant water towers shaped like a peach (and looking much more like a giant orange posterior), yellow moon rise in your rearview mirror, dead ostrages. In the end, nothing nearly as intersting as the subtle changes you notice in the faces and places you once knew so well. They say that you can never go home again, and that's true, partly because it never looks the same as it did when you left it.

Sitting around with the family tonight, my grandmother handed me a giant pile of photographs she'd taken of me at various times over the past 30 years. Sifting through them was like looking at all the points of interest along the road I'd just traveled all at once. It was certainly a rush of emotion. Pictures of my and my brother before he could talk. Pictures of me pre and post buck teeth. Pictures that I wanted to burn and some I promise to scan and post asap. Posed and candid, action and still, they all had that same sort of quality as the historical markers posted around town, usually with one small sentence saying so and so lived and died here before your father was born.

Those pictures were the most surreal... photographs taken before I was born. To see the pictures of my father as an infant, as a young man, as a newlywed, as the expectant father and then to look over at the man lounging in the recliner across the room was to see some sort of picture of myself. It was like looking in a mirror that showed me what I will see once my half-exposed roll of film is finally developed.

worth a thousand words...

still a little worn out from last nights rant, so here's a few pictures of the recent ice storm to tide you over...

it was only a matter of time...

Sen. Lott Resigns As GOP Leader (washingtonpost.com)

"In the interest of pursuing the best possible agenda for the future of our country, I will not seek to remain as majority leader of the United States Senate for the 108th Congress, effective Jan. 6, 2003," Lott said in a written statement. "To all those who offered me their friendship, support and prayers, I will be eternally grateful. I will continue to serve the people of Mississippi in the United States Senate."

a slight rant

It seems i've been called a racist by the former president. Ok, so the esteemed senator from M-I-crooked letter-crooked leter-I-crooked letter-crooked leter-I-humpback-humpback-I (that's mis'sippy for those of you who can't spell)... Lott said something completely bone-headed. Personally, I believe him, i have no reason not too. Still not so sure I want him as majority leader, but we'll see what happens i guess.

the real problem here, at least for me, is that i've now become a target. Lott tries to complement an man so old he probably didn't even know why he was there and it backfires on him. Ok, political enemies found a weak spot and they're exploiting it. Fair enough. Politics is a rough game to play... granted. But now they're coming after me. I've been called a racist, simply because, as we all know, every white male republican from the south is a racist. Just ask Spike Lee, he'll tell you.

I've also been branded a spiritual racist (whatever that is) by the likes of Phil Donahue (a man about to have his show canceled for a second time). It's funny how everyone but the orthodox Christians can believe whatever they want, but suggest that Jesus might actually be our only hope of salvation and, well... you've just dropped yourself about two steps below the Taliban.

Look... you want to call me a racist? Fine. But first, I want you to show me one thing i've said or done in my adult life to prove that. You want to label me a spiritual bigot because I believe something you don't like? Fine. But i want you to look in the mirror to see what one looks like, you hypocrite.

By the way... Jesus loves you and so do I.

Anniversary

Up in the mountains, where the clouds cling to the ground like gray dragons hoarding over his mound of gold, everything feels slower. Maybe it�s the mountain air, thin and cool, that refreshes the brain; lets it work easier. As long as it seems to last, a weekend in Gatlinburg is always over too soon. This weekend was no exception.

Sure we�ve got souvenirs to remind us: moccasins, saltwater taffy, pottery, a ski lift ticket, the splint. But are these things the reason we went there? Are these trinkets worth the 600 miles, the sore knee, and a broken finger?

I think its more about the dinner last night. Maybe it was the richness of the mushrooms and plum steak sauce. Maybe it was the half drunk class of Pinot Noir, but I swear when her eyes caught the light of the fireplace and I saw past the surface again. Somewhere between the filet mignon and the crepes fitzgerald, God served up an epiphany and I saw back through the layers of arguments and laughter, of tears and triumphs. In that restaurant, in that moment, in her eyes, I saw the very beauty I saw so many years ago. It made me remember when I so desperately wanted to say the words �I do.�

speaking of college things...

here's a little poem i wrote back in college. an exercise in saying everything i could in a single sentence. i guess you can figure out which line made me think of it a couple days ago...

A Vague Sense of Something

The wet dog smell of the dog days of summer
The sobering revelation that Mr. Daniels and
   Comrade Smirnoff had nothing to do with
   the water of life
The social art of subtle rudeness
The mythical levels of hell and the parabolic
   equations that prove their relative temperatures
The oximoronic reality of user friendly or
   interest free
The ever-presence of kudzu, like a blanket of
   grace, growing green over every other thing
The debilitating fear of male pattern oldness
The thoughtless eyesore of cigarette butts and
   gum on the shoe
The child-like beauty of thanking God for wind.
The self-defeating purpose of section eight
   housing.
The nagging question of Christ.
If He were here, would I look for peace or a
   polaroid?

college...

had an english professor my first year in college that i enjoyed. i can't seem to remember his name, but i do remember seeing a picture of his daughter naked. it was supposed to be art, a naked woman in front of the university of alabama's unofficial official phallic symbol (denny chimes). it was just funny. sad.

anyway... he said a few things that i remember still. i remember he said that staring into the sunset and yelling "oh my God" at the beauty of isn't blasphemy... it's genuine prayer. i always thought your eyes had to be closed and your head bowed for it to be real prayer. it made me wonder which words i spoke God might actually be listening to and which were bouncing off the ceiling.

i remember beaming when i was the only one in class who got an A+ on an assignment. we had to write a paper on what a particular poem was saying. a week i worked on it. every day i would read it again... and again... and again... i knew that poem like it was my own. this was the semester i failed calculus for the first time and started to realize that engineering wasn't in my future.

i also remember him teaching us how to write. he said to pick a spot. pick a time. pick up a pen and write for exactly one hour. at the end of the hour, put down your pen and walk away. doesn't matter if you are in the middle of a sentence, you stop and go do something else and come back to it tomorrow.

guess that's what i'm doing now

journals...

i've tried this before, you know. i go out, buy the nice blank paged journal book... all artistic looking. i even buy a nice pen to use. it's always nicer to write on quality paper with a good fountain pen. hear the scratching of metal on paper. see the even flow of black ink.

i never seem to stay with them past week 3, however. i seem to stop them just short of that magic time when an activity goes from forced action to habitual inevitability.

here and now, there's no more journal books, no fine paper, no pen. technology lets me update this from anywhere. lets me throw down all my random thoughts throughout the day into one neat pile (much like the simi-clean clothes on the floor by the bed.)

more over, i get to share these thoughts with anyone willing to take a look.

as one who's grown up in (mostly) the southeast, i'm no stranger to kudzu. they say they brought it in from japan or somewhere. it was supposed to stop soil erosion on the sides of hills. well... it worked. now there's green vines growing up over everything. you don't have to drive far to find the vines covering plants, trees, telephone poles... everything. it chokes out the life of anything it covers, and you can't kill it. it's here to stay.

welcome to my tangled little patch of green.