Fewer and further between, fewer and further between, yet life is giving me twice the content, it seems. Just not in the form of paper or post.

A moment: He stood there at the pulpit for the second time. Same message, different story. He stood there, an older man, clearly passionate about what he sought, almost desperate. He told us a story of a life he'd changed, just one, and how much it mattered. We all understood; yet somehow none of us could actually respond in the way he sought. "It's the soul of a person that matters," he exclaimed, "the soul!" His voice was hoarse. It had been so the last time as well, rough with the desperation of a message several thousand years old yet still unheard, a message whispered by that first breath into Adam's lungs. "There's all this talk about economies and bail outs," he said, his words pleading more attention than the hour he'd been alotted. "But that's not the point. It's the soul."
I remember thinking he was right. But I jotted a note down as a thought came: "True," it said, "but it's so much more complicated. When did it become this complicated?"
As he continued, my mind wandered back to childhood, when an afternoon with a book kept me happy, and when something so simple as jam on bread really did make my day. When the right thing to do seemed so clear cut and easy, and life seemed relatively unhindered. Now there was this nagging inadequacy; not just a personal one, a whole civilization thing. All the energy and time we spend--every day millions of alarm clocks alerting us of our turn on the hamster wheel, each evening millions of tv sets tuned in, awaiting orders like,"laugh" or "cry" or "gasp in disbelief", the emotional rollercoasters, the plateaus of ennui, millions of words uttered each day, millions of galons of fuel burned up to never return, roads filled with drivers, vast building projects, love given, tears shed, dreams dreamed, lived and forgotten; and for all of that, we're still trying to build that tower to the sky, to touch the face of heaven somehow, brick by brick, dollar by dollar, shilling by shilling, trying to reach that place that seems just out of range. Perhaps God put the stars so far up to show us how far we are from anything substantial, and that "up" is in fact the wrong direction. Touching the stars will only lead to a quicker burning. Prayer is not up. Relationship with God or fellow man is not really up. It's in a different dimensional direction altogether.
I returned to the man before us. He went from energized to tired. Tired to resolute. Someone needed to take over his work--not the work of a builder, or an economist, or the work of a world leader, but important work nonetheless. The work of loving and saving souls one at a time. Complicated. But then, maybe not so much.

A quick notion:
Living in the urban community, there is an elusive yet ubiquitous paranoia that follows me, a longing for significance and yet total anonymity, like a hidden genius or a sidewalk coffee shop philosopher who knows himself and knows all, and gladly tells all who actually find him what they need to know, but never writes books or anything public to evade the trappings of fame. A part of the paranoia involved in it is that perhaps I am somehow keeping an individual of significance bound up in my mundane existence, never to emerge, unknown to any except God.

The other part of the paranoia is that, in fact, though the longing is there, the person of significance is not, except in the dancing of shadows that do not belong to me on the cave wall. But when I finally face the living fire, perhaps I will find that all along there was someone making caricatures of human delusions behind me, like bait for a fish, just hoping I would bite and follow an unhaunted haunting my whole life so to speak.

This is all mad man's talk, I know; I hope it does not reek too much of ego centrism or delusions of grandeur. Perhaps I'm simply in need of a moment of inspiration and poetry in my life.

(Karen, this one is for you)
As I put on my coat and slung my bag over my shoulder at lunch time today, it suddenly struck me how much I looked like I was about to go to the airport. I liked it.
In truth, I was just going to my car to try to eat and escape my cubicle as much as possible in the 60 minutes I had, but the idea that I even looked like I was going somewhere of more consequence--that made me happy.
It's not that I need to get away (though I do), or that airports in particular are the place I would like to be right now. It was the possibility of action, the potential energy added to a person by a coat and a carry on. When my laptop is in the bag, the potential is increased tenfold. Today I only had books and a Gameboy Advance, but still, a sort of strange un-urban power surged within me.
Recently I've felt somewhat deflated by adult life, perhaps because of the cosmic parody of childhood it seems to be; dressing up like you've got somewhere to go, trying to look and sound as important as possible, like you've got connections or know-how. But the farther you go, the less hope there is that you truly are what you initially thought. Still, perhaps the parody is simply a challenge to overcome. The deep sense of inadequacy we sometimes feel often flows not from the reality of our situation, but rather from the daunting feeling of finally reaching a place where that power of action is put to the test. As a child one always imagines this power is mightier and more easily accesible than it is.
I do not want this thought to crash into anyone else's quandry and set them on a wrong path; I simply want to enhance this fact in life: I really could have gone to the airport today. I could've jumped on a plane and headed east, or pulled my car out and driven south. I could've written a song yesterday, or gone jogging. I could have walked along the shore or buried myself in the corner of a bookstore with some poetry or a book on physics. I could have written this blog right then. The coat and bag were always there in my closet. So was the pen, the running shoes, the fuel, even the music. All I lacked was execution. All I lacked was volition.
So today, take stock of your coats and bags, the nail and hammer you've left in the tool box, or the phone you haven't picked up. Take out the whole lot of them, if only mentally. Then do something. Don't put it off like I tend to; you might miss your flight.

From the Encyclopedia of Experience: Human Being (2)

Sitting in traffic today, I mulled over Longfellow’s “My Lost Youth”, thinking “long, long thoughts.” My mind wandered over a great many things; how beauty in images and words draws me deeper into myself, as if there were some dried up spring inside me that had just been refilled, and now I were drinking from it; how that spring must be in all people, to some extent, though perhaps not as deeply buried in some as in others; how we have lost in ourselves some understanding of what it means to live and, in turn, what it means to simply exist.

At that thought, my mind swam through the layers of who I am. There are thick veils that surround any person’s understanding of themselves and of the world—the time period in which we live, the level of civilization in which we are embedded, the technology which is prevalent, and so on, and so on. We’ve redefined what it means to be "poor", what it means to be “well off”, what matters in life. I thought of agriculture and how for many in first world countries now, it is an industry, not a means of feeding one’s family (in the direct sense). When I am hungry, I look at my purchasing power (or lack thereof, as I did today--oatmeal is a life saver), not what kind of food might grow in the surrounding environs.

My thought-train picked up the pace. Remember, man-child, remember. The world was once building-bare, the bones of earth reaching above ground unleveled, the roaming creatures uncaged; mountains had paths, not roads, valleys trapped nothing but river pools and fallen boulders; people ran with or without shoe-soles or sandals, and clothing was woven from freely grown greenery or tanned animal hides. Beauty meant something different, away from pixelated propaganda and insecurities; songs were about something different; dreams were about something different again; remember a time before academic institutions or civilized social-structures or money, or bullet shells, or pavement, or heart transplants, or nuclear…anything… Remember…remember?

My vision began to fade as I turned my 21^st century automobile into a 21^st century parking space (that’s how they’ll refer to them when human beings as we are exist only as the imaginings of a child some 500 years from now). The sun was in my eyes now, as blinding as the layers from under which I sought a glimpse of true existence. I suppose, on some level, being human means being temporally myopic. But, oh, to be more!

From the Encyclopedia of Experience: Human Being (1)

It strikes me as odd that we do not spend more time seeing people as the expression of a time line of being rather than a moment; the person who cuts me off in traffic or sits opposite me on the bus is a receptacle of childhood senses, smells, sounds, sights, songs, a soul that has been touched by certain people, shunned by others. They've seen or not seen an ocean, dreamed of fantastic creatures*, excavated cultural wealth from family poverty, or demolished what has come into their hands. They think thoughts in private that escape my wildest imagining, the joy, the horror. In secret, they talk to God, or try to ignore him.
From time to time I imagine what I do not know of the being manifested before me--what it sounded like when his mother called him in from playing with friends, what games she played when she was 4 and the world was young in her, full of mystery, full of possibility; who that first person was that encouraged him or her, what his or her hopes are now; what those hopes would have been, had everything gone as planned.
To see a person this way, though still only a guessing, is perhaps to see more clearly, to understand that behind each face are, in fact, a multitude; behind each gesture, a universe that only One in all existence can fathom. And though it may at times be overwhelming, impossible as it is to know a person's entirety, it is that entire universe I am called to love.

*I met a man and his wife once at a burger place. He asked me to convince his wife (who I had just met) that there are no mermaids in the Indian Ocean. He was completely serious.

Launch

Tonight’s writing is in retaliation

Against chains that slither between my creative limbs,

The humdrum mundane plodding that keeps my mind earthbound

And unfree, clips words’ wings from feather to fibula,

Or melts wing-wax to send me plummeting from the pinnacle of invention,

And I fall, fall, fall,

Into left-right-left certainty;

A cubicle,

A keyboard,

A phone,

And files;

So many files

Scattered beneath my elbows like the down of a plucked chicken,

The ignominy of bindings that were supposed to be loosed sometime ago;

And now I wonder if flight is even possible—

I take word wing and launch…

-js 5/6/07

There is little that haunts me more than death; not because death is ultimately in charge, or because there is a finality in death for the individual who is leaving this life. I know and believe firmly in the resurrection as Jesus taught it.
Still, there is a taunting that happens when you hear about a death. The height of the tide of terror that comes with being human rises before you. You're confronted with the infinite in light of your finiteness, the magnitude of the goals you had in light of the miniscule and microcosmic life you lead. There, as the broken creature looks back from the mirror, you are reminded of what it means to be lesser than something, powerless against something.
Today I found out that an old family friend had passed away. As I sat at my desk,I was unsure what to do. My mom's voice left the message on my voicemail like a take it or leave it offering. As I deleted the message, I realized that until recently I had not thought about the kindness with which I had been treated by that friend, all of this in my younger years, many of these kindnesses forgotten in the propulsion of time. I wanted to curse. I wanted to cry. Our friend will be in heaven--I know that I will meet with him again.
But to live out this life, to continue to bear a facade of fluency and control of the art of living--that is what troubled me. I cannot continue to pretend that all is under my feet and that I tread upon it with the light steps of a hero. A hero I am not.
As my mind struggled to swim through this troubled current of thought, words that I had quoted in a paper I was writing earlier today came back to me.
"I am the resurrection and the life...Do you believe this?"
Oh God, with every fiber of my being, I am trying to not only believe this, but to live like it is truth as well.

Okay, so here's what happened: Sunday in the late afternoon we went to the park where I first asked her out when we were in college. I brought along my box of memories from our relationship--cards, little things we made together, ticket stubs, etc. I had included with those things a DVD of the movie we watched on that first real date, The Wedding Planner. While there, we also looked at pictures from our dates and special days over the last 6 (yes, six) years.
From the park, we then went to Cafe Hidalgo, the restaurant at which we ate on our first date. The entire time, of course, she was so sure I would pop the question while we were at dinner. While she and I ate, my friend, brother, guardian angel Jeff set up a table for us on the balcony/terrace above the restaurant. When we had finished eating, and she had given up on the idea of me proposing, we left the restaurant, and took a detour via the stairs to the upper area of courtyard where we "happened upon" a beautiful table set up with candles, rose petals, martinellis and a couple of glasses. She immediately wondered whose table we had stumbled upon. I assured her it was ours, and had to show her the pictures and poetry I had written for her, spread across the table, to convince her; at this point, of course, she knew what was going on. Up there, I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me and she said yes through tears and laughter! :)
The entire time Jeff took pictures from a hidden location--if they turned out alright, and when I get a copy of them, I'll post them in my pictures section of my myspace page.
Needless to say, I've been smiling all morning!

Recently I’ve found myself longing for a certain sense of place and experience. Sitting in my cubicle at work, my mind draws me past the puce panels and ringing phones out front, to a place somewhere else. Yesterday, as I entered such a state of mental escape, I looked through some of the photographs from National Geographic’s Picture of the Day website, each image acting as a portal for me to jump from world to world; hot springs in Yellowstone, vast deserts in Egypt, the countryside in Iceland. None of these pictures were by themselves enough to detain me—I was searching for something different.

I’m sure you’ve had the experience at some point—you start off thinking it’s homesickness or that you need a vacation, but as you get home, or as you think of what you’d do with all that free time, you realize that there’s a chance fulfillment may not be guaranteed there; escape, yes, but the feeling that you have landed…

At the waning of the day, I sat in my car on the roof of a parking structure in Anaheim. I was waiting for someone, not just loitering, if you were wondering, but in a sense I was waiting for something else, rest or inspiration perhaps. Turning the pages of the book I’ve been reading, I found a travel marker left by Longinus:

Nature has appointed us men to be no base or ignoble animals; but when she ushers us into life and into the vast universe as into some great assembly, to be as it were spectators of the mighty whole and the keenest aspirants for honour, forthwith she implants in our souls the unconquerable love of whatever is elevated and more divine than we.

I wish I could tell you exactly what it is that I look for in the world, in life, in the pages of books or the flicker of film at the cinema. The comfort I find in Longinus' passage is that we as people have been trying to express it to each other from the beginning, and have even come quite close. Still, the war of minds and words rolls on. Each day I wake up and continue my search by God’s side, on some days more earnestly than others—by God’s side because I’m quite sure he’s the only one who knows what we search for through and through. I still haven’t landed. But I’ll let you know, my friends, when I have.

For the final days of 2006, after all the hullabaloo of Christmas had subsided, I spent most of my time wading through boxes of miscellaneous paraphernalia, packing, or whatever it is you call that lost wandering through your things right before you move to a new place. For those of you who didn’t know, I had to move at the end of the year due to health reasons. Without getting too much into that, I’ll say that period seems to be something of a foreshadowing regarding this coming year. A step ahead, two steps behind, I find myself entering this year frantically groping and fumbling toward transition. In a number of areas of my life, this will (hopefully) be a year of challenge and growth, as any other year would (hopefully) be. Still, this year, more than most in the past, promises to leave my life looking quite unpredictably different at its closing. Already, I live in a new place with people I met about a month ago, in a house I never really knew existed. I’ve already had surgery, bought and started reading a new book—I took a $2 chance on an African author of whom I had never heard. But I will not get too carried away with change.

So what will 2007 be about? When the clock struck midnight January 1^st, 2007, I was actually at church. I had been so engrossed in packing and cleaning up at the place in which I had lived for 3 years that I hadn’t really had time to think about resolutions. As I’ve often been challenged to do by my brother’s consistent example, I desperately searched my mind and hopes for inspiration. Then I was struck by what I was doing, in that particular moment, as well as in the few days I had off from work. I was trying to hurry transition. Obviously, the clock didn’t move any faster or slower than predicted, but my thoughts and efforts lurched toward 2007’s beginnings like a car threatening to stall and take off at the same time. My hurried packing and cleaning up was nearly causing me physical injury. Time to push down on that clutch.

So, then, 2007 will have to be about rethinking the way I do things—perhaps the “word” being “master plan”.

We’re two weeks in, but, hey, I’ve already moved and had my maxillary sinuses scraped out—what’s your excuse? As in any year, my friends, I do not dare to promise perfection by the year’s end, nor do I even dare to promise to be “accomplished” in this area of my life by the time next year rears its head. “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward…”

Here’s to 2007 and its master plan, and all the intrigue, suspense, and possible drama it may bring. More on how things are developing here soon, my friends.

Sigh. I now feel like I can actually begin the year.

How far is Bethlehem from here?
I sit awake tonight and wonder those kinds of things, things I probably should have already at least thought about or processed at some point, but have not for whatever reason. That is, not until a cough kept me up drinking tea and hunkering down under a blanket like a wise man or shepherd on a cold night near in Palestine. But even my archetypal, and now probably historically inaccurate, metaphor betrays me as one who has never really focused enough to wonder.
Just how far is it?
From anywhere, I mean. Geographically, I mean. Although, of course, that is followed by the next question; by the way, how far is it metaphysically?
At times like these I think about angels and prophets; dreams and visions; Mary and Joseph. I think about how they disappeared into the throng of my understanding; you know, that place where dates from history books and names like Sitting Bull go to be reconstructed into so much mnemonic knowledge without full comprehension. I know they existed, but understanding what they went through requires more than knowledge of facts. I read Mary's song, but do I see Mary singing it?
You know, a young woman who has been given not just a son, but the son of God (who, by the way, the entire Jewish community was anticipating) to raise as her own. And on not so wonderful terms--pregnancy out of wedlock (in a society that actually cared). Yet there is a point when someone sees her, not just as a scriptural reference or theologically debated conundrum, but as a real person who has been overshadowed by God. So she sings.
She sings. The baby cries. Or at least he must have. All that nonsense in the songs about "little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes"; I'm sorry, I just don't buy it. To buy it is to subscribe to a fictional notion of Bethlehem. I'm sure he cried, just like I'm sure the road to Bethlehem was hard (pregnant lady on a donkey--need I say more?), just like I'm sure the animals in the stable were not necessarily glowing with reverance and probably smelled bad to boot, just like I'm sure the baby had to be fed and changed, just like I'm sure the wise men probably stopped outside Joseph and Mary's place, (this is my rendition, of course) wondering at what they were doing. And they knocked at the door. The neighbors looked on. Joe and Mary (If I may call them that) had been having visitors for some time, some guests genuinely believing their story, some simply curious and nodding to each other knowingly(oh, you were overshadowed! Gotcha! *wink*). The young couple had finally gotten people to leave them alone, then these guys show up. It's the shepherds all over again.
They smile, gladly accept the gifts, invite the wise men to stay for dinner, have that awkward conversation that might occur between three (or however many) idealistic rich guys and a young couple who had a baby they claim is the son of God in a stable in a small palistinean town... how many miles from here?
Just how far is that place? I hope not too far from us all this December.

For your procrastinating pleasure
I'm supposed to be writing a paper right now. I thought grad school would be different from undergrad; I thought I'd be serious and focused and driven. Not that I was a complete slacker in my undergraduate years--I did my homework (generally), attended classes (as much as your average student does), and did not only graduate by the skin of my teeth.
Never-the-less, the procrastination has continued. The only difference is that now I'm usually a little more interested in what I'm supposed to be working hard on, so when I actually get to it, it's an hour or two before I find myself "taking a break".
In any event, here are a couple of things for your amusement from my "break":
1) I heard an interesting story on Studio 360 tonight about a guy who runs a talk show in the Halo 2 online environment. Yeah, I had the same reaction. Check it out here.
2) Apparently soccer fans aren't the only crazy ones. Sports, sports, sports.
Well, that's all for now. I'd better get back to being studious.
Hope the week goes well, people!

From the Encyclopedia of Experience: Perspective
It is an odd thing that I spend many of my days worrying about my belly, my budget, my bank account, when truly I'm not in that difficult of a position. Sure, there are bills I end up having to pay a little later, and there are times when I cannot afford what I would like to have, but that's just it: like to have. Many of us live in a microcosm where being "poor" refers to the fact that we cannot simply do as we please on a daily basis. It is not that God is not providing what we need; it's more that we're not getting what we want (and in our human way consider necessity). It may do us well to reflect, every once in a while, on the lives of those in other positions in life which are less advantageous than our own. So here's a start--a family in Malawi that lives on $1 a day.

Like anyone, I'm sure, there are things that keep me up at night. Sometimes I sit here in this room, the window to the balcony open, my blinds letting the soft metropolitan glow in through the space where one of them fell; long into the night, on nights like this one, I sit here and contemplate pointless things like how small my apartment is compared to the vast geography of the planet, or how small my focus is at times when juxtaposed with the breadth of life's spectrum.
I read a letter from a friend in China before I went to bed; I was greatly encouraged, as I always am when I read such letters about necessary work being done, and brave steps out into the wide world; all this, and it's being done by one of my friends. I think to myself, "I have walked among giants." Truly.
And I sit here in my room and contemplate how contained my life is at times, how...banal. It's odd; I don't feel this way most days; in fact sometimes I'm quite content. But, you see, you spend enough of your life following the trails of giants, and you begin to feel the effects of the fallen trees and leveled mountains. You start to see heaven and wonder if you're reaching out to it or if it's just floating unusually low today, almost within reach, and you look around at the trail and wonder if you had anything at all to do with the affected landscape.

Down the street, the California Transportation Authority is working on expanding the freeway. It's 12:47AM and usually the beeping of the heavy equipment and dinosaur like noises of metal scraping rock and the like would trouble me. But tonight, they float through my one blind space on a breeze like a lullaby. I may be the only person thinking about these things right now, and perhaps tomorrow I will regret posting these thoughts in a public place. But for now, I'm just glad I'm not the only one awake at this time of night.

From the Encyclopedia of Experience: Pomposity
Someone who works here drives a BMW Z4* with the license plate "Z4 PHD", also displaying their educational achievements (I assume--I don't know the person). I've walked passed the car many, many times, but today as I looked at it, I began to wonder why someone would put that on their license plate. Those are great achievements, yes, but still, why call attention to them? I mean, you've already got them, so they're not for you to set your goals by. So who are they for? And especially when you're working at a place like this, a private Christian university, the primary goals of which are to free people from feeling like their degree is simply intended to be a showpiece or resume entry?
Now I must reiterate, I do not know this individual; while the temptation to make certain assumptions about the person is there, he or she may very well be a very different kind of person.
But you've got to wonder, right?
We live in a world which will tell you the value of your job is reflected by how much you're paid or what you drive, that the value of your achievement is reflected by your net worth, that, once you've got your PhD or Doctorate of any kind, you've arrived and can now feel free to spend the remainder of your time on earth in pretentious bombasts. We live in a time when people hide their insecurities behind their financial net worth or the facade of a financial net worth. I'm not going to lie, I find myself doing that from time to time. (If I don't struggle with it as much, it's because of the lack of space to hide, not my perfection! :))
You're valuable, my friend, even if you don't have a degree yet. What you can do as you are is important. And I hope that when we finally get that PhD, or any degree for that matter, and the accompanying sports car that (apparently) goes with it, we can make more of it and of ourselves than a lot of hot air with which to fill our chests and brand our license plates.
____________________________________
*In case you feel like ogling and indulging the owner: http://www.bmwusa.com/vehicles/z4/30si/default

A postcard from dad; something I needed to hear today--perhaps it will encourage you. The image on the front is an elephant standing on its hind legs to reach a branch above, where it is seeking food.
Dear Jonathan,
We trust you are well. I thought you would enjoy this postcard. Ever thought an elephant could stand in that position? Well, we are capable of accomplishing more than we or other people think...Please keep believing in God for the impossible!
Dad

Keep hoping, my fellow elephants...

"If there's one thing that I'm pretty certain of that is paramount above everything else with regards to creating, if you are an artist, or an aspiring artist; open, be open,do whatever it takes to make you open. If you have to change your environment, change it, but just be open; because when you are open, that is when the real stuff comes through. That is when we experience that thing of almost not being in control. In what ways does one get open? The mexicans call it doing without doing, not focusing so much on trying to be open, or trying to write that song, but try to look for devices that will facilitate this openness that I'm talking about, i.e. go and have fun, or do something which is probably unrelated to music...the key thing, I think, is openness."
-Seal (the musician) on New Ground
I've been experiencing some (for lack of a better analogy) artistic constipation. Okay, maybe there's a better way of saying that, but point in case. It's far too easy to fill free time with empty busyness. Perhaps it's time for a hike.

After watching the Academy Awards tonight, I reflected a little on a theme that came up several times throughout the evening's proceedings.

We are creatures who thrive on stories.

From the small child who just wants someone, anyone, to tell them a story, whether they've heard it or not, to the elderly person whose life seems to continue its flow by the fuel of sharing his or her own stories; we all seek to connect somehow through the creative and re-creative imagination. It is not enough to see a person, or to tell them of the dreary facts of everyday. Throughout a person's life, one hears thousands of stories, parables, fables, narratives, biographies, even nursery rhymes, that allow us to for a moment become bigger than ourselves, to touch somethingI say this at riskuniversal.

When I come to stories, whether I am writing them or reading them, I find myself seeking those characters to whom I can connect.

These nonexistent beings of the imagination take on a living quality when I encounter them; they bring me to discover those parts of myself from which my commonalities with men and women throughout history spring, the parts that I yearn to magnify as I seek to identify my place and purpose in life.

In a different way, very special members of the gallery of story-lives bring to the surface those other parts of myself with which I am less acquainted; the dark secrets, forlorn longings, burning hope and desire, wild resilience, the most powerful of emotions. All of these discoveries seem to generate a new color in my life's tapestry; in fact, in truth they are actually generating a new color in the general tapestry of God's painting, which raises a thought:

We, as finite beings, will not, in this life, see or hear the entirety of the greatest motion picture in existence; we're not made to. But when we can connect to those parts of stories that truly bring out the nature of the thingthe parts that we play, the direction of the script we get a glimpse of what all the fuss is about in the recognition of any story, on any level. There's no word for it, not in human language. There's no color with which to paint it. But I think we all know of what I write. I think, if we look for it carefully enough, we will find that it is written on the back of our hearts, in the stories we live and breathe, celebrate and seek each day.

All the world's a stage

I've spent the last few days limping from place to place due to a basketball injury I got on Sunday. Trying to move to fast for my own good, I guess. The past couple of days I've been putting ice on it, heating it, stretching it, but it all seemed aimless--I would get up to walk around and find that I was still sore and unable to walk without a limp. But it made me think of David's "Cast Off Day" blog; we take our freedom of movement for granted so much.

Well, perhaps due to the effort of limping here and there, I've nothing too exciting to say today except that life still throws me beauty and mystery here and there, just to keep things interesting. This morning as I grunted and heaved my way out of my car, a bird overhead caught my eye; it was a raven carrying a branch. I'm sure there's significance in that somewhere; Noah probably would have laughed. Centuries too late my winged friend. The earth is dry, Ararat is forgotten, the ark has likely been stripped for firewood; we belong to times other than these. Still, at least you've not forgotten how to fly or build a nest.

A page in the encyclopedia of experience: Maneuver
The concept of maneuvering had not occurred to me at the time, though when it hits, it’s always an old new lesson. That I was doing my own maneuvering to keep up had in fact been on my mind for a while. And I felt badly about it—about myself, for being myself was something that by nature caused me to have to maneuver; being my friendly self led to my long conversations which made me come up short with regards to my time; being my generous self led to spontaneous, and sometimes unwise, giving, which in turn caused a shortage in my pocket book. Being my artistic self caused my disregard for the boundaries of life, the “rules” we’re supposed to live by, which in turn led to disarray—a cluttered desk, for example, or an unbalanced check book.
As I sat at the wedding reception dinner, chewing steak as I listened to my neighbor tell a portion of his story, it struck me. Here was a guy who was working hard, trying to make something of himself, but meeting obstacles all along the way, obstacles I had imagined one would not encounter if they just…I don’t know, maybe had the right job, or right upbringing. Yet he had the “right job”, and though his upbringing was unknown to me, the guy next to him had the “right upbringing” and the right job, and was clearly facing hurdles and circus rings in his own life. I mulled this over, and today digested it after talking to a friend at church. He too was struggling to make something of himself, though he had fewer resources than the two at the wedding, and was struggling to create the right occupation because no one would give him a job. He is “different”, and I understand and abhor the way people treat those who are “different”.
But the point is this: we all have to maneuver. The concept of it is that life itself requires movement and constant toil. It’s how we change, grow, evolve, if you will, from the babies we enter as, into the free spirits we’re supposed to be when we leave. You will never in your time on earth find a place that does not require some sort of acrobatics in some aspect, a place where you are truly at the end of the movie; the cameras never pan out as you walk off set, your lover in your arms, a knowing smile on your face, the score reaching a heart squeezing crescendo, and cut to credits. There’s always more to be done.
As this thought hit me, I smiled to myself. I was alone in my car, so I could get away with having a moment in the midst of my epiphany. I turned up my radio, caressed my momentary joy, imagined the camera panning out as I drove off set into the distance…
And prepared myself for more maneuvering up ahead.