Matthew 6

On my trip to Mongolia, one of the focuses for the students was “knowing what’s true, then acting on it.” On the high ropes course, we told them that the harness and safety rope were strong, and that they could trust them. I told a student that at the end of the day, sometimes we just have to make a decision to believe, because that’s what faith is.

In my narrow ways of thinking, I always try to figure out what percentage of an issue can be affected by a given factor. In this case, how much of our lives can simply be traced back to decisions we make? Can we, in fact, simply decide to move forward and count it as done?

I wish difficulties were simply speed bumps in the road; gather enough inertia to make a decision, then clench our teeth, close our eyes, yell at the top of our lungs and lunge forward before we change our minds, something like skydiving. But as if the willingness to make the decision itself isn’t difficult enough, one discovers that there is no free fall after the speed bump, but rather just the first in a series of obstacles on an uphill climb. When we lose the strength to move forward, the only direction to go is down, hitting every rock along the way.

“Simply” make a decision. Make a choice. Perform the action. The sentiments and feelings will follow the actions. Be like Joshua and Caleb; step into the river before it parts, and miracles of old will be performed. But what happens when the water simply turns our boots into sinking boats and the torrents continue as they always have? What happens when instead of parting, the waters sweep our feet from under us and mock us for thinking that a simple decision could stop the current that carved canyons from granite?

As an aspiring psychologist, I believe in self-fulfilling prophecies and the power of decisions and concepts like fictional finalism. As a Christian, perseverance trumps the culture of instant fixes. But in the end, I must recognize that the will of God trumps all, no matter what virtues I try to live. It’s not the first time I’ve tried to fashion my own deliverance with dismal results. When do our good ideas, insights and self-awareness turn into things that should be considered “shit” (that’s the Greek) compared to what the Lord intends to do?… a Lord that doesn’t always keep us on dry ground along our own trajectories but uses raging torrents to carry us places we could have never imagined.

I want to learn how to love the Lord and to seek the Kingdom, Matthew 6 style. I thought that other distractions needed to be weeded out before there was space to do so, as if I only had a certain amount of emotional and mental capacity, and that the sum expended energy was limited. That may or may not be true, but it seems that we are called to love and seek the Lord in spite of and in combination with everything else that demands our strength. There will forever be suffering, busy-ness, and needs. For as long as I have warmth in my veins, brokenness will masquerade as red blood cells. Perhaps it is in the midst of it or even through it, and not the removal thereof, that I must learn to love Him with all my heart, all my mind, and all my strength.

1/Midas

What we are called to, I don’t fit in.
My dreams have cataracts,
And deflated noise
Reverberates with far too much meaning.
I cheapen all that I touch.

There is a Kingdom closer than the hands in front of my face
And I can almost smell the grace it’s built upon
But my eyes, my eyes,
Cedar forests grow therein
And who needs demons when I have thoughts?

There has got to be more than hunches
Because premonitions have no grip.
Glimpses last as long as my eyes remain closed.
I’m here, but not yet.
You’re here, but not yet.
It’s here, but not yet.
What am I to think,
For surely,
Someone must be to blame for what is not.

老天津

Airports are existential places. They funnel the most eclectic and diverse people from around the world into one building, only to wait impatiently, sit awkwardly together for a few hours, mixed like a humanity cocktail. Then, just as randomly as they came, they are herded into airplanes like lemmings, and shot out to equally exotic places, to live our unimaginably disparate lives, never to interact again. On one hand, we are so minute, another face in a crowd of different shades. But the stories and lives behind the faces screams Imago Dei, and stands as a bulwark against dehumanization.

On the bus ride from the new Beijing airport (which is quite impressive, by the way) to Tianjin, I sat next to a man from Sierra Leone who worked for his country's Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, here to participate in a development seminar. He shared about the rebuilding of his country and African politics, and we lamented people like President Mugabe and histories like colonialism. I couldn't get diamonds, wars and child soldiers off my mind.

Unlike me, who squirmed for a mere 14 hours, it took him 3 days to get to China. He was so other to me, black as the night and wide-eyed in a city that was twice his country's population. And yet there we were, hamming it up, with him as a Brother as well.

Today, I will walk out onto the street and fill my lungs with pollution, order an egg inside a biscuit for breakfast, hug familiar friends at Fellowship, massage away the economy class aches, and find myself greeting the lamb-kabob chefs with an "Assalamu Alilkum," only to sit alone and continue entertaining the thoughts I had for 14 hours by myself in the sky.

Hello, Tianjin. It's good to be back.

My Muse is a Hag (Who Lives on Government Cheese)

If I didn’t know better
[Or if the world were like me]
I would think that artists learned to tickle the keys
To paint the notes they could not see
And puerile musicians with only 4 chords
Spilled the inkwell to blot out silence.
I’d think writers were poets
Who were packrats with words
And poets who attempted free verse as such
Were lazy and sucked at making thoughts rhyme
[So I slapped on a bumper sticker that screams:
Po-Mo! Creative! Unique!]

If painters were seraphim
And poets were saints,
I would be me.
Scraping month old paint chips off the palette
Closing my eyes to miss the sour keys
[If I hit them, it’s called Jazz.]
Telling myself that free verse has enough space
To let me act a fool.

My thoughts lean heavy against my eyes
And I can’t tell if it’s my soul or my gut that’s rotund and full.
Something heavy inside me churns like butter.
An ocean? A storm? (Dysentery?)
[No, pick some spiritual imagery.]
It’s the Holy Ghost haunting me, according to Over the Rhine.

Whatever notions, vague premonitions
Whatever desires to create like God
and speak existence into the unspoken,
All that is hope and frail and much broken,
Is but a spark caught flickering on an unfocused camera frame,
While the inferno dances out past the corner of my eye.