It’s weird to be in a place where 9/11 and all it means doesn’t mean anything at all.
:/
pain
Randall on cancer
Wow. Not a lot of words come to mind right now.
http://xkcd.com/931/
Forgive an idiot
I was thinking about the times forgiveness and I have crossed paths, when was it easy and when was it not.
Entirely buttfuzz-in-the-teacup backwards of what would make sense, the toughest for me is to forgive is the idiot. The person who really had malice in their heart is easier to forgive. (Well, it could also be that I’m confusing forgiveness with willed forgetfulness)
One idea: maybe because there’s a good feeling to forgiving the bad person, kinda like being a martyr or giving money when folks are watching, but not quite.
I’m editing this draft from a few months ago, and having thought about it more, here’s another thing I think: the idiot who won’t admit (to others or themself) they’ve been an idiot is the really hard one to forgive.
Human life
This one day I went with some of the healthcare admin folks who had 8 communities to visit. It was a long day: we started at six in the morning. I only went along for one community where we have some sponsored kids that needed shoes and backpacks–the rest of the time was tag-along. Close to the end of the day the healthcare folks had one community left to visit but got a call to go pick up an emergency–thankfully by chance a nurse was along with us. He’ll be working in one of the communities soon and wanted to visit it to see what was in store for him.
We arrived at the end of the road, the community where the emergency was is a steep half-hour walk. We waited there for a few minutes at the end of the road, and the contact who’d called us, the community healthcare-facilitator, arrived and said it’d be half an hour until the woman arrived. The emergency was a woman who’d begun labor earlier in the day and something wasn’t going right.
She arrived on a board being carried by half a dozen of the men from the community. The baby was already dead and the mother in severe condition. The dead baby’s father, grandmother and some of us who were in the pickup all climbed into the back and Don Checo put the pedal to the metal over a horrible road. It was an hour’s trip back to the hospital in Barillas. The whole time I didn’t see a single tear from any of the family members, not the grandmother nor the father. Things are like that often here, and I got to thinking about it. Maybe in country where there is so much death and pain, life has somehow a lesser felt value. I didn’t like that idea because it just seems so wrong, but nonetheless I thought it. I thought about my brothers and their wives and my parents and what it would be like if a child died in birth.
We got to the hospital where a nurse was standing outside to meet us–she placed an IV quickly and began checking vitals. The woman had begun to cry out in pain. I had already climbed out of the back of the truck–I thought about taking pictures of the nurse working, but out of respect or cowardice couldn’t bring myself to do it. As I turned to walk up to the office I glanced back at the grandmother and she was sobbing. In a moment I didn’t see her but I saw my mom and I broke down.
By twos
Two things I hate:
1. Hurtful words; straight up my friend, I hate these.
2. “What could’ve been;” the quotation marks are important here…I have never seen good of any form come from “what could’ve been,” and I know a lot of bad of all sorts that’s come from it.
Two pieces of wisdom from a dayhike to Camp Muir:
1. Put on sunblock the second time. Always; period.
2. As calories begin to seem positively delicious entirely because they simply are calories, so does any/all food begin to seem positively delicious. Finishing a long hike at 5:00pm = hello you beautiful lukewarm Burger King Sausage Biscuit that I left on the dashboard 11 hours prior. Mmmmmm.
Two aspirations:
1. Have a porch and make real nice wooden chairs for it.
2. Tend a small garden, and keep a planter box (for the aforenoted porch) of flowers; I think they’d be Carnations.
Memorial Day
We people like to remember stuff about our big accomplishments, especially lasts. I had a cool job last summer; I was given a big project and got to drive around a cool car. That’s a good feeling. I don’t recall my first day on the job, but I do very well recall my last day. I had some final stuff to do: tie up loose ends in my company email account, finish a final status report for my supervisor to use, get all my company equipment together, clean out the aforementioned cool car, et cetera. But that is not all. That last day is forever etched deep into my heart. My friend died.
At around 8:30am, I got a call; it was my older brother Jason. I stepped outside.
Hey Jason, what’s up?
Uh–Dave–just…something to pray for…
His voice wavered and was slightly gravely. Something was wrong…something was very, very wrong. A horrid cold fear set in; my mind flew: what happened? The first thing I wondered was what could’ve happened to his girlfriend/fiance, Meggan. I knew they couldn’t have broken up. Fear set harder in my bones; maybe Meggan was injured or worse, dead. Jason spoke again after a brief silence, before I had time to think any more; his voice cracked badly as he spoke.
Joe White died in Afghanistan
There was a silence on both ends. We each knew there was nothing else to say;
OK–bye Jason.
Bye Dave.
I hung up. The horrid fear in my bones, realized, curdled to shock. I forgot to breathe for a bit, then took breaths, slow shallow breaths. I prayed, but I can’t remember what I prayed.
I stood outside the office. I don’t remember hearing any noises from the shop or the yard or the freeway. Nothing. Deathly still. I walked over to a rock wall, set down, and cried and cried and cried; I don’t know how long I cried for. I called a few friends to ask for prayers for Joe’s family, but realized I couldn’t make it through a call like that. I called a few other close friends, but sent text messages to the rest. I sat down again and cried more. All at the same time I could not get my mind around it and it hurt like hell and I was cold and numb. I prayed more as I cried; I don’t recall what I prayed then either.
My friend had died in war serving his country; he left behind his newlywed wife and brothers and sisters and mother and father and many dear friends. He left behind a church and youth group that loved him. He left a gaping hole in countless hearts and knit communities. He died a soldier at war for his country.
Joe, I hope you can see this; today so many of us down here remember you, love you, miss you, and weep for you; I hope you can hear it all, or even just a little bit of it; Joe, I don’t feel worthy to say it, but if you can read this, thank you.
U.S. Army Specialist Joseph V. White was born on July 24th 1988 and killed in action in Afghanistan on September 24th 2009; husband, brother, son, friend, good man, follower of God, paintball and ultimate frisbee extraordinaire. He was Airborne certified and loved to jump out of planes.
Faith
Tuesday May 25 3:30am
Could God be real?
Could love, pain and beauty, true and deep and human, be real?
I sit outside on the last stair down from the back porch to the yard. A light breeze (the type that sets a sailboat to drifting almost-imperceptibly on a glassy-calm bay at night) rustles through the leaves of nearby Cottonwoods. Inhaling deeply I smell a mix of rain, dew, fragrant flowers, and fresh cut grass–it’s May. Looking to the East I can barely make out the faint orange glow of dawn coming, only an hour or so away. Grandma’s gone now, my buddy Joe has been gone for just over 8 months. My oldest brother is joyfully wedded to the love of his life, and my other brother is near there.
Is jesus christ real?
Are love, pain and beauty real?
Storm is wild enough for sailing
Bridge is weak enough to cross
This body frail enough for fighting
I’m home enough to know I’m lost
Land unfit enough for planting
Barren enough to conceive
Poor enough to gain the treasure
Enough a cynic to believe
Advent
Advent
Two thousand years go by while while on the Cross
Our Lord is suffering still–there is no end
Of pain: the spear pierces, nails rend–
And we below with Mary weep our loss.
The chilling edge of night crawls round the earth;
At every second of the centuries,
The dark comes somewhere down, with dreadful ease
Slaying the sun, denying light’s rebirth.
But if the agony and death go on,
Our Lady’s tears, Our Lord’s most mortal cry,
So, too, the timeless lovely birth again–
And the forsaken tomb. Today: the dawn
That never ended and can never die
In breaking glory ushers in the slain.
Sheldon Vanauken
God why? Oh God, why?
“My God, why have you forsaken me?!” he cried out, a dying man. His blood was running out–the wood had opened the gashes on his back, from flogging that had nearly claimed his life earlier that day. After the long hours of hanging by nails through his wrists, his lungs had nearly filled with mucus and fluid. They offered him some sour wine. He cried out again, with a loud voice, and yielded his spirit.
So Jesus died, in more excruciating physical, emotional, and above all spiritual pain than any one of us can grasp.
His mother and brothers watched him die. That pain I can begin to try to grasp; I think of my loved ones, and tears fill my eyes. I wonder about the pain his mother experienced, and it shakes me to the core. How did it not break her soul? The single most painful moment of my life was at my friends funeral, seeing his mother weep. I think that pain is etched into my heart and soul for as long as I will be. How did Mary’s soul not break? Maybe it did, come to think about it; maybe it did and was healed. That would surely take a miracle.
I turn, and I look up at God.
“Why did you make me like this? Why do I do evil? And even more, why would you forgive me? Forgive a better man! I’m a horrible person God, maybe you’ll change your mind if I tell you about me, the hurt I’ve done to others…and you love them too!…just by being selfish and prideful me.”
He smiles a little smile, shakes his head, and sighs a bit.
“I love you, child.”
“Well sure, but I screw up! I hurt other people that you love! What about them? What about the relationships I have with others, that I’ve ruined? What about you? I haven’t done a very good job of getting to know you, I usually spend more time doing homework than with you. Not only do I screw up and hurt people, I screw up and hurt you! Some days I wonder if I’m even sane to believe that you’re here!”
He nodded his head, still smiling a little bit.
“Yeah, you do screw up a lot, but don’t worry about that for the moment. I made you to richly, deeply, truly be, son. That means relationships, and relationships in a world where everything’s perfect…well, think about it. It would be a rehearsed act, lip syncing. Relationships are meaningless without right, and downright horrible when there is complete lack of peace. Right needs law and peace needs justice. My relationship with you, above all, is like that.”
“But can’t you just somehow make it right? I would take anything…just…can’t things be right and good for a little while Couldn’t I just be punished? Wouldn’t that make things right?”
“I love you, child. I don’t want to have to punish you for all you’ve done, I’d like there to be another way. Remember the good friend you hurt the other year, and you cried? When I saw your pain, I cried.”
“But…God…can’t you do something?! Anything?”
“I did, my child, I did. Ask Christ about it, he’ll tell you more.”
He still smiled a little bit, and gave me a big hug as I began to sob.
What happened?
I was riding a late bus home this evening, and I overheard a (loud) conversation: a young woman was telling a young man about an ordeal of her weekend: shopping for a wedding dress with her mom.
Her mom is getting married for the 7th time.
I tried and tried, but for the rest of the bus ride I could not focus on studying.
Brokenness.