raggle-taggle gypsy-o!

(please follow link above)

I have said goodbye to my senior friends;
Why would I stay when the homework ends?
I'm going where it's dry--
Oklahoma in July!
I'm away with a raggle-taggle gypsy-o!*

(*I have since nominated to road trip with a raggle-taggle grannie-O*. The gypsy is unavailable for comment.)

(*The similarity between Grannie-O's title and that of aforementioned gypsy is completely coincidental and does not infringe on any known copyright which may or may not be held by said gypsy*.)

(*statement made by Grannie-O*'s attorney, 5/5/10)

(*also known as Grandma.)

...

Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis is a beautifully crafted, deeply poetic, meditation on the glory that awaits all Christians in eternity.

Lewis describes glory as God's approval for us, because our deepest pleasure is found in making Him happy. (This is almost the reciprocal side of the WSC, "man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.") Because of Christ, God is infinitely pleased with us. His pleasure--this glory He gives us--climaxes in our oneness with Christ.

There is a beauty and glory shining through our life experiences (a song, a sunset, a movie), teasing us to become a part of it. Right now we cannot. Creation can only taunt us now. One day God's glory will beam through us more gloriously than anything we've ever sensed in the sunset or a song. He will say to us, "Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of my Lord."

"Am I a good actor?"

I called Christa on her birthday. Here are the topics of conversation, roughly in order:

1. visiting the local tick farm for her birthday date (actually, she hopes for Thai Cafe and the OKC zoo).

2. a discussion of the beloved Jack, Spot, and Racetrack, and whether any of them would taste good with pepper and a dash of lemon.

3. this morning Ruthie said, "Libby's on the phone" when it was really Mutti.

4. Chris beautifully delivered to me the way Mutti said "Hello? Is this Christa?"
(proof that she had indeed been tricked)

5. This led to other ideas. Chris had a long line of "people who wanted to talk to me," including brother Calvin and an anonymous Private Eye who found a body and wanted "The whole truth, ma'am."

Well, Christa, I have to go now. Happy birthday!

I love you Lib.

I love you too.

Hey, Libby?

yes?

Am I a good actor?

Crossfire

(for the people I've loved over the years who suffer from depression or something similar; if you don't like emo-style introspection, you need not read further)

I.
I did not want to exist, so I pretended you did not.

I took you down as I shot myself.

I cried out for help, but I could not find relief. I growled at you from the corner of my soul as I licked the gaping wounds.

I have returned; I am better.
Talk to me, friend, and stay a while.


II.
I was taken down in the crossfire; closed in by an airless, sullen void of burning grief.

I wanted to put an arm around you; but you refused. I wanted to take you out of the corner and into the light of day. The light of day was too terrible.

I can no longer be well; but I forgive you.
I need help, but not yours.
I offer love, but not mine.

heaven working backwards

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing...
Mere Christianity, on "Hope"

I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven,to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself.
Preface of The Great Divorce

Twig Adventure

I finally satisfied my curiosity about those sticks that covered the sidewalk last night. Sticks--you know, the thin, gnarly things scattered and clumped along the path as far as the eye can see. They appeared with the leaf-buds and the flowers that were torn from the trees by the hail and rain.

Let's say that you are walking down the sidewalk (or rather, running) in pouring rain, treading sticks and buds with your shoes. Out of the corner of your eye you see a stick begin to vaguely move and before you can stop yourself the same stick squishes under your shoe. You come to a halt right under the thickest part of the downpour and gradually realize that all the sticks and clumps of sticks on the sidewalk are in motion. They weren't going anywhere in particular until you sent them to stick heaven by trampling them underfoot. You curse the moment of insanity when you decided to wear your good running shoes for the entire day.

When an inanimate stick begins to move there are two (and only two) explanations:

(1) this is a new kind of stick that you've never seen on the sidewalk, in Audubon, or even on reality tv, and you are incredibly behind the times;
or (2) (most likely) you are crazy.

For most of us, regardless of the truth, (1) is the way to go. We simply have never encountered these delightful little things before. I've decided to call them rainworms because they magically disappear when the sun comes out.

Don't get your hopes up. There's little hope for sunshine any time soon. I have heard, however, that fish find rainworms incredibly tasty. Let's get some fishing line and head down to the river...

..On second thought, maybe we can just release some fish on the sidewalk instead.

Flowers in the Wind

I sat down at my desktop on a cold chilly morning, searching for immortality on a burgeoning sea of loneliness. Myself and a blank document. Life was, for the moment, quite empty. But my heart was full--full as an ancient bucket dipped in the lake, threatening to spill over or give way at any moment, a floodgate readily unleashed by the slightest jarring motion.

I started to write--every story I could ever remember, every feeling I called my own, every problem that had ever racked my brain. My fingers darted over the keys. They called into being mountains of suffering unsurpassed, wells of joy known to no one but myself, and glories untold. A swelling world emerged--a world more real than all else I knew. It grew and grew. A thousand pages. Five thousand. A hundred thousand. Still the mountains swelled; the wells deepened. Shadows and sunshine gathered over the landscape in sharpening points.

Presently the stories and feelings gave way to a greater consciousness: every poem I could remember, every verse of Scripture I learned as a child, every song I ever sung. I wrote them down--sometimes only three or four lines--the authentic cadence, the tune of my soul.
The words no longer flowed easily--I was grasping at any untold, unshared remnant of myself. I dutifully drilled out the dull statistics of my years, filling in the gaping chasms where my memory had nothing to offer. Academics. Work. Health, height and weight. Eyesight. Awards. Close calls and failures.

There the bucket emptied its last in an inglorious slow drip. The overflowing spring had at last run dry. My life was poured out in entirety. Every story I ever heard, every scene I remembered seeing, every deed I ever did, everything I believed, and every principle that I thought to make me who I was, now no more than a hundred thousand pages--a handful of dissonant themes sown again and again in careless haste until they could be sown no longer.

The Void returned--the great loneliness. I found that I had no desire to read what I had written. It was mere chaff; shed easily as straw in a south wind. I sat still, waiting for the change, the revelation of glory and purpose that I looked for within myself. Instead there was only silence.

Then the voice came, like a whispered poem on a breeze--like the shadow of a great rock under the scorching sun.

All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it;
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.