The Stillness of Drool

Whilst trying to relax on my porch tonight (I have to try, which is a problem right there), I observed a two-foot-long string of drool hanging down from my dog’s mouth as he stared blankly at something (or nothing?) out in the yard.  I watched the Labrador's cyclical drool cycle infinitely repeat itself: he would stare, salivate, allow gravity to snatch the saliva, and repeat.

A cool, quiet calm possessed my drooling canine and I silently marveled at him.  In that moment he existed outside of time and seemed so free.  He, unlike me, was able to sat still long enough for drool to formulate and dangle low enough until it snapped.  

100 lb. Quadroped: Master of Stillness

There I was, sitting impatiently trying to figure out ways I could relax (I’m really, really bad at taking the night off), while the dog – the master of stillness – just was.  

Sitting there watching him, I reflected upon a desire I had earlier in the day.  Somewhere around noon, I had been suddenly overcome by a compelling urge to go deep-sea fishing.  One of the problems with this plan, however, is that I don’t fish and I certainly never want to. My motive for doing so was not to actually fish, but to go with someone who wanted to fish so that I could be surrounded by an oceanic nothingness, to remove myself from all the noise of the world for a day. Problem number two: I thought the only way to experience peace was by surrounding myself with the idea of it. 

The smoke of my cigar slithered slowly into the air.  I watched the dog stare into the open space with a fearless abandon.  Just then I discovered that I never have to search for – or even move at all– in order to encounter the sort of peace that I craved from the ocean.  I realized that we are all free to practice stillness whenever we please. 

At any given moment, whether we're at a grocery store or a sandy beach, we can shut our egos down and allow ourselves to inhabit the stillness of the moment.  We can simplify and listen, because so much inside ourselves is worth listening to. 

This one doesn't even stress about long drives

Sometimes I try to forget who I am – I.E. my ego, filled with the identity culture has given me: my name, title, etc. and instead focus on what I am – a being interconnected to all other lifeforms on earth.  That, coupled by a fierce concentration on my breathing, always helps slip me into “the now.” When ideology and culture flee for a moment, I am nothing more than a creature who contributes to the energy of life on earth.  I am free. 

This kind of thought (or absence of thought) is stillness.  This is inhabiting the now.  While we search for ways to ease our stress or distract ourselves from our chaotic lifestyles for a time, we must remember that man-made entertainment is no match for our God-given inner tranquility.  We must simplify, let everything melt away, and slow ourselves down to practice stillness wherever we are.

Nothin like a bit of drool to insight some contemplative thought, right? 

Choosing Our Thoughts

Choosing our thoughts each day is a lot like choosing what outfit to wear.  We have total control over them, they both influence our behavior, and, though they are immensely personal, they both ultimately affect how others think of us and how we think of ourselves.

So if we choose all of our thoughts, we should always be happy. Easy!  Right?  

No. We allow circumstance to dominate our thoughts or allow something we hear to manipulate our minds all the time. Mastering our thoughts, in other words, is easy for no one.  

Letting circumstance govern our moods, however, is like letting our clothes tell us what to wear. It's like relinquishing our intellects and soaking ourselves in worldliness.  We all live like this to a certain extent, but I've seen people whose moods depend entirely on what's going on around them. We should stop allowing externalities dictate the way we think and feel.    

Our internal minds can shape the external so long as we have mental anchors.  We must first anchor our minds with truth in order to make them inpeneterable to circumstance.  Only then will nothing harm us.  Whatever your most fundamental life-truth may be, only with God as my achor can I ever hope to transcend circumstance.  

God has given me a pretty impressive deflective shield.  As God dwells inside me, certain things just ricochet off my inner shield with a meager little "Zing," and that's that.  I embrace and search for the good, I repel and bravely confront the bad.  

Our minds are totally free.  True, ideology and culture seem overwhelmingly inescapable, but nothing can ever enter into our minds and alter the way we think unless we allow it access.  If our minds are not fertile ground for manipulative externalities, then harmful seeds cannot grow. 

Self-actualization happens when we master our thoughts.  With it, we can transcend just about anything.  To get there, though, we must practice.  For someone as neurotic as I am, this means actively relinquishing control.  This means not acting as if I own time and space. 

We might get pissed off when someone interrupts our "quiet time," for example.  We might get frustrated when, after we've had a long day, someone unexpectedly shows up, wanting to connect a little bit before the day ends.  These situations are not aggrivating.  We are aggrivating.  We aggravate ourselves by acting as if time and space were ours to begin with.  We should never regard any moment, or any item, as "ours."  We should rid ourselves of this egotistical sense of possession and realize that each moment – and everything that fills each moment – is a gift.

Also, when something really annoying happens, or traffic delays our travel time by two hours, we shouldn't frustrate ourselves by asking the questions, "Why?" or "How?"  

We should, instead, only ask the question, "What now?"

At the very moment that anything occurs, all we can control is how we perceive the situation and the consequent actions we take as a result.  We should acknowledge that anything that falls outside our control really does fall outside our control. This simple truth really frees the mind, because excess worrying exhausts our energy.  Why bother?  Let's worry about only what we need to worry about.  Let's be completely in charge of our thoughts.  

Our clothes should never tell us what to wear.

The Vortex

A friend and I went for a run today on a new trail.  After a nice warm-up, we launched into some sprints.  Well he sprinted, at least – I’m not sure what you would call what I did.  For some reason, something in me hinders my ability to accelerate.  I never start tasks full-throttle or sprint fast initially.  He, on the other hand, ran as if he were sprinting over shards of glass.  

Even more peculiar than my pathetic lack of acceleration is the observation that we make on the way back to our “starting line.” We look back and notice that our gravelly foot prints seem to start very far apart until about halfway down the trail, when our prints curiously merged together.

Later, during our final sprint, I inadvertently tucked in right behind my friend as he sped off ahead of me, merging our trails once again.  

My speed-demon friend proceeds to give me a chemistry lesson.  He jokingly says that the wake of his lightning-speed running is like a vortex – like suction filtration.  Suction filtration is conducted when the force of water pulls air out of an apparatus creating a great deal of suction.

– It’s like Niagra falls, he says.  Ever been?

– Yep.

– Know how you just feel eerily drawn into toward the falls when your near them?  It’s the force of the water.  The vortex.  It sucks you in. 

Well of course, my tendency to over-analyze and produce metaphors kicks in.  Could we all live like the Niagra waterfalls?  Can we all produce so much energy – such power and force – because we harbor such passion for purpose that others will gravitate toward us because they’ve been inspired?  

My friend is pleased with his new nickname; I can tell.  “Vortex” is a cool name.  Sounds like a super-hero.  Just as he sucked me into his speed-wake, Vortex attracts people in all aspects of his life because he radiates with spirituality.  He is constantly aglow with love and generosity.   If we are passionate about something, others want to know what secret we have that they don’t.  If we live for something, our enthusiasm radiates.  We glisten with purpose.  

I don’t want to be lukewarm and drift through life.  I don’t want to be an algae-infested, stagnant pond.  I want to be passionate and commit fully to my life’s purpose.  I want to be Niagra falls. 

Solidify, Boil, and Flow

"Down here all the fish is happy, as off to the waves they roll.  The fish on the land ain't happy, they sad 'cause they in the bowl."

- Sebastian in The Little Mermaid

I'm almost certain that I'm only three-fourths human.  

If a mermaid is 1/2 fish and 1/2 human and I am 1/2 mermaid, that makes me 1/4 fish and 3/4 human. My parents like to deny that one of them secretly reproduced with a mermaid (or merman) to create yours truly, but I'm not stupid.  

Just as water makes up about 60% of my body, it'd be fairly accurate to say that water has consumed approximately 60% of my life as well.  If my mermaid theory proves false, then I theorize that I have an absurd affinity to water not because I've been surrounded by it all my life (as a swimmer, lifeguard, and coach), but because we are all natural aquatic-romantics.  We fall in love with water, especially when it suits our mood.  We relish in a perfect swim, a refreshing beverage, a romantic skate on a frozen pond. We also depend on it to survive.  In Moby Dick, Herman Melville writes, "As everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever."  The absence of all worry, the freedom of the mind, and the sublime serenity associated with meditation, in other words, can best be achieved through aquatic means.  

Last time I swam a workout, the pool-water shared some interesting metaphors with me. 

Water, for example, automatically conjures plenty of biblical images when I contemplate its value.  Baptism washes our sins away and we are reborn through Christ.  We are cleansed, and we are forgiven.  Water obviously connotes purity for many of us because liquid water cleanses.  But beyond these typical, powerful connections I usually make with water,  the great deep blue (of the 5 foot pool) revealed to me some truths that I'd never thought of as I invaded its substance with my flawless streamline.    

We like open water, for example, because it makes us feel free.  In his song Wildflowers, Tom Petty tells his lover, "you belong in a boat out at sea.  Sail away, kill off the hours… you belong somewhere you feel free."  Melville's narrator "loves to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts." The sheer enormity of the open water captures our intrigue.  Water "whets" our curiosity.  But ultimately, like our inescapable nature, the water we sail on must conform to whatever shape confines it.  Despite its versatility and "freedom," water must ultimately conform to whatever shape contains it.  

Similarly, though we may have the freedom of mind to make meaning for ourselves in life, we  ultimately can't ever escape ideology and circumstance. To put it another way, we exist within time and culture.  We cannot free ourselves of temporality anymore than we can free ourselves of cultural influence, as much as we may try.  Like the unlucky fish in Sebastian's disney tune, we're a bit "sad 'cause we're in the bowl." But this reality isn't sad unless we let it be.  Faith and criticality invigorate the fish bowl.   

On a lighter note, swimming is a weird sport.  Demetri Martin jokes, "To me swimming is a confusing sport.  Sometimes you do it for fun, but other times you do it to not die.  When I'm swimming sometimes I don't know which one it is. I gotta go by the outfit. Pants: uh oh.  Bathing suit: okay.  Naked:  we'll see."

But I really value teaching people to swim, whether I'm teaching them to use proper stroke technique in the water or just teaching them to not die when they land in it.  I believe in the water's ability to wash away inability and insecurity and to soak us, in place of these things, with self-reliance. 

Ben Franklin famously advocated for the autonomy with which water "refreshes" us.  Did you know Franklin was the only founding father in the swimming hall of fame?  He taught himself to swim in an age when swimming wasn't prevalent because he valued self-reliance and physical activity.  When I heard he was the first political figure to suggest that everybody should learn how to swim, I wanted to fist-pump him.  

Learning to swim means that we can remain "afloat" through adversity.  It means we don't sink.   It means we tread through turbulent waters and keep our heads above the surface when all we feel like doing is drowning.  

Water can solidify, boil, and flow.  It can toughen us, boil away fears and insecurities, and cleanse.  

Water whets our appetites for life.  

In or Out

The transformative powers of one particular life-simulating and rather archaic activity are immeasurable.  The allure of the game I speak of is so powerful that it causes people to emerge from all recesses of the earth to come join in, wherever it is played.  It surpasses all in simplicity, intensity, and charm.

Four-square.

Yes, four-square.  What else?

You know the rules.  Or if you don't, you did at one point, I'm sure. Anyone who needs four-square instructions can e-mail me immediately.  

You will love four-square.  Here's why.

I'm good at it.  In other words, the common man can excel at this game – everybody has a chance to be "king"for a time (spaces are labelled in a clockwise formation as a monarchial hierarchy).   It takes minimal skill but maximum focus to thrive in a four-square challenge. In fact, I've encountered more than a few adults who, in exasperation, have wondered aloud why little girls have been able to annihilate them on the court.

More importantly, though, we can find plenty of life-metaphors within the game.  Each one of us, for example, exists within our own little boxes – our own little life-squares.  We put up our walls and we try to keep others far, far away.  But ultimately, we need other players to join in the game.  Nobody wants to play one-square.

Also, like the basic reward/penalty system that drives the game, we certaintly value "staying in."  At least I want to stay in.  I don't want to check out, to view my life from the sidelines.  I want to live now, I want to be in-gaged. With God as my anchor, I can transcend the crumminess of everyday life yet remain grounded all at once.  I don't wanna get out.  I want to be fully engaged and embody each moment fully; I want to participate fully in every aspect of my life.  

And what of the unpredictability of the ball in four-square? Focused and ready, we never know which direction or velocity the ball will enter our square at.  We can never be totally ready for what comes our way – we can only ever adjust.  Sounds familiar.

Another exceptionally cool aspect of the game is the way the four chalk-boxes call forth the inner child within each of us.  I've conducted a mental experiment to verify the amount of time it takes someone to challenge another player about whether they are out or not.

Four minutes.  Fiery banter erupts on a four-square court in four minutes or less. The four-square court looks more like a Judge Judy court after only four minutes because nobody wants to relinquish their chance at becoming king.
We're survivors.  We're self-preservationalists.  When the ball hits a line, we leap at the possibility of a re-do.  When I make an error, my senses heighten and I fight for my life on the court.  In that moment, all that matters is staying in.  Getting "out" stings.

My favorite part of the game, though, is the merciful re-do.  How often to we come across second chances in our life-squares?  Or forgiveness?

You get to "re-do" the round if the ball hits the line, if it hits your feet (chicken feet), or if there's virtually any confusion at all as to what just occurred.  How cool? In four-square, we allow second chances.  We allow for imperfections.

Springtime ushers in new opportunities for outdoor entertainment.  Four squares await you.  Are you in or out?

The Shackled Ballerina

“The chains which have held us are only the chains which we’ve made"

 - Jewel

Sometimes language sucks.  It doesn’t always have the capacity to say what we really need to say.  It can be frustratingly insufficient.  

I'm going to attempt to use language to convey two ideas that have helped free my mind. To illustrate my claim, I’ve created a short fable.  You can read it, but you don’t have to.  I’ll explain its significance before you read it as an attempt to allay any hasty impressions that the fable is totally dense and weird (thought you're perfectly free to still think that even after I try to explain it). 

The ballerina in the fable frees herself from her chains simply by doing two things: suspending judgment and suspending telos.  To suspend judgment, one must recognize that we can only affirm the values that we believe in and realize that we have absolutely no right to judge another human, because we have not created them.  They must also realize that we have more in common than in difference with everyone we meet.  Telos is a greek term that means the end term of a goal-directed process.  In other words, telos is what we strive for.  A problem arises, however, when we forget to thrive while we strive.  A teleological suspension would thus mean fully embodying each moment to our fullest capabilities.  It would mean living for the present instead of living for the future.  

The ballerina (who has presumably lived a very light, easy, graceful life until she was cursed), has been shackled by her own tendencies to judge others and to live for the future. She frees herself from her first chain only when she pauses in front of a man whom she had always regarded as creepy and inferior, but finally recognizes herself in the man. A wind blows through both characters to suggest that the universal currents of life flow through us all, connecting us inseparably.  Tellingly, the man sells marbles, which have extremely dense histories and stories of their own that have led to their intricate designs. The ballerina realizes that beneath the quiet man’s crooked stare lies a story and a life, similar to the life of a marble, or, perhaps, to her own.  

Her final fetter (or shackle) self-combusts as she awakens to the present moment. Suddenly, she feels everything for the first time and stops going through the motions of her day just to desperately get to nighttime, when she can be alone with her music. The marble can be said to have caused this awakening, because often when we make one of these movements of faith (judgmental suspension vs. teleological suspension) it will cause us to naturally move onto the other as well. 

The ballerina’s kinetic freedom finally restored, she struggles at first to embrace it.  It takes time to train ourselves to suspend judgment and to stop living for an end result.  Initially, she manages to transcend, but clumsily stumbles her landing.  When she says yes, or when she affirms all life, she has finally transcended life but has figured out how to embrace ephemeral life simultaneously.  

Like the ballerina, we can free ourselves from the chains which we’ve made.

Enjoy the fable.

.....

There once was a ballerina who hated her chains.  Shackled by a curse, she lamented her fate.  By day, she drug herself to the bakery to buy her family a loaf of bread.  By night she locked herself in her chamber and freed her hair from its angry bun. Alone, she listened to old ballet tapes, allowing music to drown her sorrows.  Each day she lived only for night, when she could shut out the world and allow for a familiar song to conjure a pleasanter image in her mind.

Today the quiet man with the crooked stare looked especially perturbed as she spotted him from a distance.  As a reflex, her eyes shot to the ground for the approach , always careful to avoid his awkward, prickly gaze.  She was sure he stood behind his insipid booth selling his silly little marbles and staring as always.  Each day when she passed him en route to the bakery she cringed a little, thinking if anyone could be less than she, it was he.

Suddenly possessed by an inexplicable force of curiosity this day, however, she stopped in front of his booth. Her eyes, startled, found his, and detected a kindness in his gaze. 

A sharp wind jostled her from behind and blew through her skin as if she were stitched of an open weave.  She watched the quiet man with the crooked stare wobble, too, before she carefully laid her hand on his shoulder. He smiled a crooked smile, and handed her his most precious marble.  Black and silver danced across this objectm coalescing to produce a sickeningly cool species of design. Expressing her gratitude for the treat with a gentle squeeze of his arm, she carried herself  off to the bakery.  

Within several steps, one of her shackles burst and lie conquered on the gravel beneath her.  An enormous weight having been lifted, she proceeded rather lightly toward the bakery.  

The marble awakened the girl; its absurd design challenged her senses.  In the bakery, she felt the warmth of the bread, smelt its pleasing aroma and sighed.  Walking home, she felt the pebbles under her feet, embracing the sensation.   Immediately her second and final chain dismantled itself, abandoning her ankle once and for all.  

She danced to her tapes that night when she took down her hair.  At first she rejected the joy because couldn’t think what to do with it.  She leapt into the air and stumbled, landing awkwardly.  When she finally said yes, however, she leapt and landed gracefully on her toes, forever grounded and risen all at once.

....

The Richness of Life

"The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.  His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

After re-reading this entry, I feel obligated to forewarn: it gets happier as you read on.  

Uniformity, homogeneity, and hyper-consumerism have swallowed modernity.  We fail to even see the natural world in the midst of human-driven conformity; we see it only in terms how we can modify it to suit our needs. It’s interesting that we struggle as a species to work together anymore, but we successfully collaborate to annihilate the planet.  We have truly become self-destructive.

I think Rob Jackson, author of The Earth Remains Forever, uses a double-entendre in the title of his second chapter, “The Richness of Life,” that clearly illustrates our skewed priorities. In this chapter title, Jackson uses the word “richness” not only to highlight the value of biodiversity (which is, essentially, the theme of this chapter), but also to suggest the absurd dichotomy of human desire: instead of valuing richness of life – as in biodiversity, and the celebration of all biotic organisms – we often value richness only in terms of monetary success, or in terms of superficial gain.  Thus, he implicitly scorns us right from the start.  Jackson procedes to make a case for biodiversity in this second chapter.  He answers the question, how are we currently treating the diverse species that populate the earth? And why should we care?  Unfortunately, we fail to preserve diverse species because we deteriorate the planet’s ecosystems – no surprise there.  But if it’s no surprise by now, then why don’t we care?  In our apathy, we will perish.  Perhaps we already have.  We must discover the interrelatedness of all life and start preserving with our hearts instead of wasting with – or without, I suppose – our minds.  

Our current lack of biodiversity reflects our lack of social, economic, and linguistic diversity.  Jackson writes, “The world is becoming an increasingly homogenous place” (34).  To capitalize on our constant drive toward “sameness,” consider the American fast food industry.  The key word behind the creation of the fast food industry is “uniformity.”  Almost every aspect of American life has now been franchised or chained, a trend which more or less began with the fast food industry.  Fast food is a culture for Americans – one whose fundamental appeal is cheapness and convenience.  

We need not argue about the dangers of homogeneity if we simply recall the Irish potato famine, a horrible fungus-induced major crop devastation that destroyed over a million people in Ireland in the nineteenth-century.  Abundant, diverse life must exist.  If not because all biotic organisms serve a purpose and should be regarded as uniquely beautiful and sacred, then because we indubitably require most organisms to survive.  Jackson argues, “Plants, animals, and microbes are immensely useful to us – we are here because they are.  They provide the oxygen that we breathe and the food that we eat. They clothe us and shade us” (54). 

Moreover, these organisms help us discover medicines and other innovations which we would be at great “pains” to live without, like Aspirin and Penicillin.  Aside from valuing biodiversity from a utilitarian perspective, however (and I do realize this may be approaching an area of discomfort or disagreement for some readers), I'd like to make an ethical argument for biodiversity.  Why do we allow our intellect and ingenuity justify our constant subjugation of other creatures on Earth? Why are we the “chosen” ones?  If our intellects and our ability to plan and design projects enable us to do anything better than other species, it should enable us to better preserve the natural world, rather than to do more damage to it than is necessary.  If we cannot concede that the life of every creature inhabiting the Earth is just as important as a human life, we must at least acknowledge the sacrosanctity – the sacredness – of each living organism.  All species have value, else they should not have been created in the first place.  We cannot consider ourselves superior to the natural world.  We are not separate from nature; we must allow it to flow, unimpeded, through our hearts. 

To solve the issue of biotic homogeneity or scarce diversity, we should learn to use our resources sustainably and protect the ecosystem that species inhabit, rather than trying to save one particular species from going extinct. If we were to zoom in to what this may look like on a personal level, preserving ecosystems could just mean living as if we already have everything we need.   It could mean taking only what we need from nature and leaving the rest alone.  It could mean living simply.  

I recently read a tremendous article about a community who was fed up with the abuse that nature must perpetually endure with silent agony. “Miracle at Adobe Creek” is an inspiring tale about a teacher who, with his students, innovates a practical solution for the devastating disappearance of certain aquatic species in their area.  Littered and dying, a trout stream near their school was a casualty of modern life, so Tom Fuller and his students decide to resurrect it.  They make it an on-going project; Fuller turns it into a learning experience.  Furrer claims he remembers a time when the stream was beautiful and springing with life.  Now, he says humans have sucked the life out of the river in order to live the way they want to live.  However, instead of allowing the hopelessness to continue, he encourages his students to come together to take practical action and actually heal something. This is an excellent example of one community who took initiative to reconstruct an ecosystem that had deteriorated as a result of human action. We can all, at the very minimum, aim to protect and preserve our immediate environments.  

Let us launch away from “sameness.”  Can we look inside of ourselves, rediscover who we are, and ask ourselves why we make everything else in our lives a priority except the only thing that really matters – nurturing nature so that we can, in turn, be nurtured by her?  Let us remove the chains we’ve created for ourselves within society, let us break free and reconnect with the natural world.  Let us live simply, love deeply, and seek peace.  

Let us experience the true, unadulterated, “richness” of life.  

Electric Faith in an English Classroom

"Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek, 

I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;

I talk of love – a scholar's parrot may talk greek – 

But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin."

- C.S. Lewis facing himself, addressing his own depravity

WARNING:  This entry is heavily spiritual because I was asked to write a story of how I came to faith.  Entries are normally fairly secular.  

ACTUAL PHOTO OF OUR ENGLISH CLASS, DOING OUR "LIVE WITH FLAIR" SIGN.

 DR. H IS WOMAN IN BLUE ON RIGHT.  I AM IN CENTER DRESSED IN BLACK

– Maybe she’s on drugs. 

– Maybe she had a near-death experience?

– Maybe she’s just figured it out.  Maybe she knows how to live.  

It takes a lot to stall a socially-eager college sophomore from checking his or her cellular device immediately after class ends.  One day, however, our usual post-lecture routines – pencils down, coats on, check phone messages – are mystically interrupted by our reactions to another brilliant lecture taught by the famous, oh-so-ebullient Dr. Heather Holleman.

Dr. H remains at the front of the room (if setting or place could choose a mate, this particular setting would desire Heather Holleman most ardently) chatting with students about their papers while the rest of us slowly exit the classroom, digesting the day’s lesson and wondering whether we could get our hands on whatever Dr. H must eat for breakfast every day (in hopes that we could harness even 1/10th the amount of energy that she does).  

We left English class almost every day asking ourselves the same questions posed above, because we all worshipped Dr. H.  Here’s part of why Dr. H dazzled and delighted our class each day:

Professor Holleman encouraged our writing class to arrange the desks in a circle in order to facilitate discussion, embrace one another as equals, and eliminate the standard authority-centered classroom structure common to most educational programs (the almighty teacher at the front of the room, all desks facing her Highness and bolted to the floor).  She glorified each individual for their unique gifts and interest.  She began every lesson with a name-game in order to build community within her classroom.  Students were encouraged to think freely, to participate in discussions, and, most importantly, to celebrate who they are. 

Not knowing God can be a funny thing.  Probably because when I didn’t believe – when I couldn’t get myself to believe – I still felt so many deep, disturbing emotions.  Like guilt. And shame.  These are fascinating feelings when you think about it, and sometimes I wonder how they could exist independently of a relationship with God. And I always felt a hunger for spirituality – a sort of pull I couldn’t reasonably ignore.  God patiently chased me for so many years, but I only ever wanted to believe.  

Though it’s hard to describe, God had a presence in that English classroom.  Later I found out that Dr. H had blessed each seat before class, but it was more than her thoughtful prayers that jostled my fellow students and I as we entered the room each day.  There was a constant energy – a radiating glow – filling every square centimeter of that small, dinky little room in Willard.  We connected with one another, we loved each other, and we learned.  God’s loving palm gently caressed her students during class as it bridged the space between Dr. H’s sunny countenance and our blessed seats.    

As the semester concluded, we all were glum to part.  The rarity of developing such close relationships between classmates and teacher in a university classroom is very unfortunate, but we acknowledged this sad reality as we cherished our last few classes together.  

Though getting to know Jesus and accepting Him as my savior was a gradual, lengthy process, I believe God used Dr. H to light the fire I needed to begin walking in my faith.  I discovered, by developing an intimate relationship with Dr. H shortly after class had finished, that there really was no mystery behind her compassionate teaching and sunny demeanor: the secret was her relationship with God.  To be honest, I thought that if becoming a Christian meant nothing more than living like Dr. H did – living with joy and heart, and with Christian compassion, then that would be enough to convert me. I soon found out that it meant so much more, however.   

This thing with me and God is good now.  We got off to a rocky start, because I treated Jesus like a Sodoku puzzle.  Believing in God, I thought at first, felt a little bit like believing in an imaginary friend, and my family still sees it that way.  I wanted reason and logic to back me up; I had a Cartesian desire to prove Jesus was my savior with absolute certainty.   But once I abandoned my pride, once I acknowledged that I really need something so much bigger than this world to depend on, and once I stopped trying to solve the puzzle of God, I was free to believe. This is not to say that I chose Christianity against my reason, and it is not to suggest that I did so irrationally; on the contrary, I found that it would be irrational to defy Christianity after discovering so much evidence for it throughout my research.  I would even argue that someone would need to exercise more faith in order to be an atheist than a Christian.  

So God and I have really bonded lately.  And what do I find?  Joy.  I find joy in the mundane, in the exhaustion, in the excitement of every day life.  I am able to love others unconditionally in Christ’s name and to build community through Christ.  I’ve really been working to deaden myself and become alive in Christ – because I feel that many of our world’s problems are a result of self-absorption.  I still have my doubts, but I want to believe fully, and I still find myself not wanting to obey God in certain ways – so I just pray. I pray because I want to want these things.  And God answers – he really does. 

Leading by example, celebrating others, and shining a light into seemingly mundane situations can bring others to God.  Evangelism doesn’t have to mean walking up to strangers and sharing your spiritual beliefs with them (not that this is wrong).  It can mean allowing God’s grace to overwhelm you so that you become someone whom others admire or wish to emulate.  Passion and energy are absolutely contagious.  If someone bubbles with joy, or appears overwhelmingly passionate about something, others want a taste of it too.  

If God was able to work in our little classroom on the third floor of the Willard building, God can “work” in any professional setting.

Maybe she has figured it out.  Maybe she knows how to live because the Holy Spirit dances within her.  It sparks from within like electricity, lighting all encroaching darkness.  Maybe she’ll help others figure it out too.  If God has anymore say in it, she surely will.  

Oh, and Dr. H is definitely not on drugs.  

Getting Hit by a Car Never Tasted So Good

"Only in faith can we find for life a meaning and a possibility." 
– Tolstoy in My Confession

Got hit by a car today.  

Though I guess technically I rammed into her car, but I wasn't at fault.  

Let me backtrack a little first.  I’ve prayed lately to find a local dogsitting job because I’ve officially discovered that two things that make me happier than almost anything in the world:  little kids and dogs.   This is mostly because both these creatures don’t fear vulnerability.  They live life each day with undaunted zeal.  They are untainted by society’s curse and they love unconditionally; you’d actually have to labor to earn their disapproval.  Also our maturity levels are exactly the same.

I digress.  Today I receive a lesson in flat-tire changing 101 from a friend who shows me how to remove the sinister, punctured tube from my bike tire and replace it with another.  This is the same sinister tube that had disqualified me from my last triathlon because it ruptured as I trudged up a hill. 

Don’t worry, the tube suffered too. 

I proceed to violently strangle, curse out, and stomp on the punctured tube, because my dad and I theorize that some inanimate objects have lives and spirits and seek only to infuriate us; they deserve to be punished.  I then toss the tire into a volcano and watch it burn (just mentally, unfortunately).  

So I mount Marge (my trusty bike) for the first time in months, and rather irrationally decide not to wear a helmet for the commute to class.  Poor decision.  

I’m riding merrily down the bike path, when all of the sudden a woman rolls all-too-eagerly through a two-way stop sign to cross an intersection directly in front of me.  She is full steam ahead, and there is no way to avoid collision. 

CLONK!

I go down epically and lie in shock as the woman frantically scurries over from her car, asking if I’m okay.  I assure her I'm fine, jump up once some of the temporary shock abates, and check both vehicles for damage (there was none – though I expected to see a gaping Meghan-shaped hole in her automobile). As I’m scrutinizing the SUV’s black exterior,  I notice two furry creatures in her backseat.  I excitedly tell Veronica (we’re buddies by now) that she can redeem herself from hitting me with her car if she lets me play with her dogs.  She stares at me, blinking, asking me if I’m sure I’m okay.  I reassure her and ask if she needs a dog-sitter.  Conveniently, she tells me that her beloved dog-sitter has just moved to Florida and they’ve been searching for a new one. 

– I’m your girl, I tell her.  

– This is fate, she concedes.

We depart with a hug, and she tells me she’ll call me soon to watch her dogs.  

God practically stared me in the face during this experience.  He set up this uncanny answer to my prayers and literally runs me into a neighbor who can set me up with some cash and some puppies.  It’s like he’s saying, c’mon – what more do you need to believe?  If I’m reading this too spiritually and just choosing to construe it in a positive light, I don’t care.  I want to believe there's something supernatural lurking behind this experience.  Sure, most people would be pretty pissed off if a chick almost killed them as she blissfully blew through a stop sign, but I’d like to cook up a different meaning for it:  we both learned powerful lessons today. She realized she needed to drive with more caution and awareness, and I realized that helmets must ALWAYS lay atop my head when two wheels roll beneath me.  In fact I might even start wearing one in the car.  

Experiences are what you make of them.  Our present selves always have the freedom to manipulate (for better or for worse) what our past selves have done. 

The movie Memento explores this idea: the main character represents not a single, unified self that endures unbroken over time, but rather as a series of different selves. 

In the film, Leonard (Guy Pearce) has a condition that prevents him from making new memories, thus his short term memory is similar to that of a fish.  Every time he "wakes up," he is forced to live only with his present self, which he struggles with throughout the film.  His meaning in life is not based on a goal that he has chosen for himself, but is rather derived from a purpose or goal that he has inherited, or that has been implanted in him, from a previous self.  

A present self can have experiences and form new memories that will change one's seemingly fixed memories of  long-gone past. Thus the meaning of the past and the grip that it has on a person can be altered by the decisions one makes within one's present experience.  

In other words, one is inescapably responsible not only for the decisions one makes as a "present self," but also – indirectly – for the meanings one inherits from "past selves." Thus, we must always "wake up" with a past that gives meaning to our life.  We always have the freedom to transform the meaning of the past – and transform the hold that it has on us – through the decisions we make in the present.  This idea of discovering optimism by developing interpretation strategies is explored further in "Defamiliarizing the Familiar" as well: http://invigoratetheordinary.blogspot.com/2011/02/defamiliarizing-familiar.html .

So in choosing to view these events in both a didactic and rather fortunate light, I come to realize that I can extrapolate plenty of positivity from any experience.  Because of the bike accident, I will forever rock my stylish biker helmet,  I will be more cautious while riding a bike, and I will dogsit some of the cutest puppies I've seen in a while (and make a fortune doing so – she pays big $$).  

The flavor of every experience can taste terrific; it all depends on how you cook it up.  Inventing your life (and that's exactly what we're doing – inventing our experiences) by using poor ingredients or by failing to nurture it, as you should with any good meal, will produce disastrous results.  But spice things up with a zesty chipper outlook, and you have yourself a masterpiece.  Life instantly becomes delicious. 

Nothing but a potential mild concussion and an upper thigh abrasion can keep me from feeling like this whole thing happened for a very good reason; and I'm sure I entertained at least one person with this tale.  

I do believe that getting hit by a car never has tasted quite so good.