in the calm eye
of my swirling self
i know
that wealth and health
are meaningless
but i live in the wall of wind
that bars the centre
where peace is a dream
and I…I am…
mocked by the surging storm
deafened by the roar of it all
a raging and ragged mute
seeking embrace
I am currently listening to a couple of older women sitting here in the café behind me speaking half in English and half in low-German about the evils of young women “falling into the arms of dark men” with the odd “Negro” thrown around for good measure.
It is awkward for me.
It is ridiculously racist and blended with bad theology.
I can’t decide if this is a chicken or egg issue…which came first the racism or the bad theology? Does it matter?
Part of me wants to turn around and tell them they are being racist and they should consider the good equality of all people and the image of God embedded within each one of us. Another part of me (a louder part) simply says “why bother…they will not change…they will simply be offended and get up and leave or tell me to mind my own business.”
The louder voice has won. They are well past racist themes and have moved on to other topics. There is no thread or direction to their conversation, merely random cluckings heading to no particular place. At this point they have probably even forgotten that part of the conversation.
Now I am wondering if I am a coward. Should I have more courage, after all its 2013, shouldn’t I turn around and challenge two old women on their racist attitudes?
It seems so strange and foreign to me that there are such broken assumptions and attitudes in this world. No matter how long I live I hope these casual conversations on why others are inferior to us white folk never fail to shock me.
Can I use that as an excuse? Maybe I was in shock. Maybe I was incapable of standing up and defending my brothers and sisters who happen to have a different skin colour because I was in shock. A poor excuse in the end.
I am saddened by the many costumes that hate wears. I want hate to be obvious. I want it to be the ugly, scarred obviously evil and angry man who is clearly an ignorant beast. I don’t want hate to be dressed up as a soft, prayerful, plump and pleasant grandmother with a gentle smile and comfortable shoes.
They’re still talking.
They have no idea I am sitting here writing about them in the next booth.
Now I feel guilty.
Maybe I am just as bad. Here I am writing to you about these people and their horrible nasty ideas like some shameless gossip – literally behind their backs. To them I am simply the back of some guy’s head…not an enemy…not a spy.
They have moved on to baptism now and the importance of their faith…my faith. How can we be so different if we share the same faith? Are we…am I so different? I caught them unawares. They felt safe to reveal a little of who they really are with one-another and I caught them like some shameless voyeur. What if that happened to me? What secret blackness would leak out of me in an unsuspecting moment into the ears or eyes of another that would shock them as much as these ladies have me?
I should pray for them…but now all of this introspection has me feeling like I need to pray for me just as much. That could be the point of this random encounter. There may be no point and I may be manufacturing reason where only day-to-day madness exists.
At this point their conversation has taken a wonderfully ironic turn. They are talking about how wasteful people are to go out for coffee instead of saving their money to stay home. Seriously this is quite wonderful. Since I have been here they have gotten up twice to re-purchase coffee and extra muffins. To be so oblivious to one’s own self.
Of course this just bounces back at me. When encountered by these things you just cannot help but wonder about your own blindness. Where am I laughably unaware of my own flawed self? That’s the problem with a lack of awareness – you need other’s to point it out…which brings us to the value of community and maybe back to why I couldn’t stand up and challenge their earlier racism.
I know that I would only take criticism seriously from people in deep and intentional loving relationship with me. Not some shmoe in another booth at the coffee shop…a mother or father; a brother or sister; a lover or a friend speaking purely out of concern and genuine compassion…not anger or judgement.
Evil can be most effectively challenged in the context of community; in the context of ekklesia. This requires relationship. This requires love.
I have to stop eavesdropping now…it is too hard. It keeps bouncing back at me.
this night world
the prairie world
away from metropolitan
away from civilization
as many would know it
it hums and buzzes
there are eternal wheels rolling
wearing down thin asphalt
while halogen lamps whine
to light this small darkness
there is no quiet place
no silent place
only a wavering sea of sound
ebbing waves pulled like sonic tides
by the sheer gravity of us
we towns and cities
we clustered and bound moons
across an eroding earth
sometimes the thread-bare tears
in this thin skin
make themselves known
in the strangest ways
like a light pierced shadow
or pain in the unexpected moments
a stopped heart beat
that weighs ache-hard inside
i would rather the wild wind
lift this frame – a kite lost to the skies
then blast through the holes
We are living in a centrifuge that is spinning increasingly faster as we move into the future.
You feel it don’t you?
It is harder and harder to stay in the centre…the centre of anything. Everyone is being pulled to an extreme…flung toward the outer darkness as it were.
It seems these days the centre of anything – any thought or concept – is not to be trusted and those that exert the effort to stay there (because it requires a greater effort than you would imagine) are also shady, undecided types to be avoided at all costs.
I tend to view everything through the lens of my faith which is so integrated into who I am as to be inseparable at this point. That is not to suggest I am a great person of faith – far from it…but it is still there informing everything and intertwined with my ongoing context, my past, my biology…nature and nurture etc. We are not simple creatures. I am not a simple creature.
There is a Dietrich Bonhoeffer book entitled “Christ the Centre” which I find fitting as to the title and where it suggests theology needs to be.
However if Christ is the centre how is it that he has become a dichotomy in the world? How has Christ managed to get himself torn in half by the centrifuge of our post-post-modern world?
Christ is no longer the centre – Christ is left or Christ is right and there is no bridge between them anymore.
Now it may be that Christ is viewed as the centre of those on the left and viewed as centre of those on the right but this is not the same as being THE CENTRE. Christ who cannot be divided is nonetheless split down the centre like an atom in a particle accelerator and having been split he has been lost to us as we fight over the ghosts of his remains interpreting the pieces like scattered tea leaves in the bottom of a cup.
How is it possible that we have developed so many extreme perspectives across theology, politics, culture etc. and have failed to recognize the wrongness of it?
There is no dialogue between extremes because the distance will not allow it. Where there is no dialogue there is no community and where there is no community there is no humanity.
What can we do except stretch arms out across the impossible divide growing between us and in humility pull one-another to the centre where gravity has no effect on us and we might break bread and seek understanding.
there but for the grace
go i go i go i go i
there but for the precious lives
that spin their brilliant silver webs
in my gharish gloom i sometimes spy
in my hoary heart and shuttered eye
there but for another’s light
do i keep my lamp burning bright
against this self-imposed, never-ending night
till dawn brings clear salvific sight
go i go i go i go i
Harnessing Chaos 