Progress

There is no progress if we aren't treating one another better.

English-teacher writing

      Just now I'm marking papers for an online class, and it's taking forever because I can't stop myself from writing comments.  Once I've made a correction, I have to explain why.  And before long, I've written a whole paragraph on why the writer meant to say "that is" instead of "with that said," or "born" instead of "birthed," or "chockfull" instead of "chocked full." (I had to look that last one up, actually; I've used it myself for years but had never thought about how it's spelled or where it came from.  It's pretty interesting.)
      I'm often asked whether I write anything myself.  Well, the answer I came up with a few years back still holds: "Yes, volumes--in the margins of my students' papers."
      For years my friends and family have heard me moan about having to "grade papers."  Just lately I've realized that though I do hate "grading"--putting a letter on them--I actually do enjoy commenting on them. What I hate is that there is never enough time to write all that I want to say.       
       My students have no idea how much I care that they become good writers.  They have no idea how much their ideas and even their mistakes inspire me to think and to look things up.  They have no idea how much writing goes on in my brain that never gets put down anywhere because I have to move on to the next comma splice. 
      And of course they have no idea how disappointed I am when I'm having to waste my life reading fluff or garbage that they spent ten minutes on (because I failed to inspire them with a topic they care about!), or when I see "separate" or "woman" or "Bible" misspelled for the billionth time, or--worst of all--when I discover that it's not even their own work but some essay from stealthisessay.com (why do they think I would want to grade someone else's work, who's not even in the class? Both of us are wasting our lives in that case. That's not what they're thinking, of course; in fact, they are not thinking at all). 
     But even as I whine right now, I'm having a good time.  I do love to write, and I do want to write more, even while I keep spewing details about semi-colons into their margins.

Forgive that? You must be kidding.

     I love how forgiveness gets handled:  we believers know we're to forgive, we know it is basic, and we know what the Lord's Prayer says.  Yes, forgive.  Sure.  And we all say we're ready to do it and certainly ready to tell others when they need to do it.
    And then something terrible--really terrible--happens to us in particular. "I mean, really--this is certainly not what Jesus meant.  I mean, I'll bet even He would have had a hard time forgiving this."
    Forgiveness doesn't mean much until it is about something that hurts.

Frustration is...

...wanting to post something on your blog but going to the site so rarely that you can never remember the password, and by the time you get a new one, you've lost the energy for blogging.  (It happens to me every time!)

The Artist in the Work

    A moment ago I said the artist won't be found in the work itself because the artist is separate from the work.  Hudson River artist what's-his-name painted himself into the corner of his landscapes. Cindy Sherman makes herself the subject of her works all the time. Woody Allen or Alfred Hitchcock put themselves into their movies. But we still would not say that they, the artists themselves, are actually in the work.  It is still just a two-dimensional image of them, on canvas or film.  And there are the moments in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when the filmmakers are being carted off by the police, if I'm remembering correctly.
   But then there is God, the artist, the maker of it all.  And he has a message for the work he's created.  And so he makes himself one of us, in every way--body and spirit, three-dimensionally us--in the form of the Son.  He is only here for a short time that way, but long enough to communicate what needs to be said and demonstrated.  Then he zooms away again.
    The Artist has visited his creation, lived among us, and shown us the way out.  :-)

just drifiting

I am overwhelmed by life.  I don't mean work, deadlines, surgeries, health insurance, the future--sure, I worry about those things, but they don't overwhelm me (except at 3 a.m. when I can't sleep).  But the idea that overwhelms me is the fact that we exist, that the earth exists, that the universe exists. 

We know we live on a rock in space.  We have seen the pictures--that gorgeous blue planet turning slowly on nothing, that gorgeous blue planet that is so different from every other rock in its solar system, or even the whole universe, so far as we've seen (which isn't very far, granted), that rock in space that is filled with water that doesn't slosh out into space, that rock in space that has a right-side- up and an upside-down. 

I mean, think about it--a huge rock with these huge gashes in it that are filled with water--water!  And the water stays put within very strict limits, even when there are huge tsunamis or hurricanes.  Okay, so gravity holds it all in place.  Yes, I know there is gravity.  It's keeping me in my chair right now.  But if gravity is so great, how come everything in the universe seems to be moving away from the earth (I heard an astrophysicist say that on NPR)?  I mean, really.  How come the earth attracts only the stuff it's supposed to?  Why isn't the whole universe being sucked into earth?  I know physicists can answer that very easily--at least I suppose they can--but it still overwhelms me.  All the forces that are at work on earth--this living rock, as it were--its magmas and oceans and atmospheres--and all of it inhabited by an infinity of creatures that astound the imagination--this whirling living zoo of the universe! It staggers me to think about.

Right now as I sit at this computer, I am on a rock in space, a rock that is turning around and sailing around in the midst of the blackness of what seems infinity. "The silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me"--is that a close approximation of Pascal's line?  I'm not terrified by it all, but I know what Pascal is getting at. 

It's not even the vastness of these infinite spaces that overwhelms me.  It is the idea of existence itself, not just the existence of my individual self, my little bitty soul, but the existence of all of us and of all of the universe.  "What am I that you are mindful of me?"  (And I am also fully aware that my amazement at it all would be greatly lessened if I were among the millions who have to suffer through life rather than getting to enjoy it as I do.  But I am among those who have the wherewithal to stop and look around and ponder it all.  It is absolutely amazing, and it is terrible that many people's lives are made so miserable by others or by circumstances that they don't have opportunity to appreciate this.)

I'm not terrified by it all because I know that Spaceship Earth does have a Pilot.  We cannot see him, but he has been there forever, and he oversees it all.  He knows where, and how, we are going.  I can enjoy the ride.  I'm still not signing on for a space flight, which is a slightly different matter: I might not be able to trust the maker and/or the pilot and/or myself in that case. But I am not afraid to be sailing through limitless space with absolutely no control over the ship of Earth because I know I can trust the Pilot.

the artist

Those of us who accept the existence of God or god, whatever he may be, generally accept the idea of the universe as his creation.  That is, God is the artist; the universe is his work, or one of them. 

So why do we think we should be able to find him by flying out into space or ascending up into the heavens? 

The artist can draw a picture of himself in his painting easily enough, but the artist cannot climb into the painting to exist there.  He is separate from his work, a different category of being altogether.  Duh. 

And the only way that I will get to meet him is to leave the work and enter his totally other realm of existence, of which this universe is just one little production in his gallery.  To do that, I must be as different as the walking-around human being is from the two-dimensional figure on the flat canvas in the gallery.  I must be as different as the seed is from the plant, as Paul would say. 

Jesus says he is the door. And when we die, he is the door into reality like we cannot imagine.