Soul Graffiti

Some Graffiti straight from the streets of Strakonice courtesy of my favorite socially conscious, intellectual, and delinquent friend, Marcel and other unknown rebel artists. 

List #1: Things I Miss

1) Driving

2) Eavesdropping, or rather understanding the language around me

3) Used bookstores

4) Bookstores that sell books in English

5) My books that are in a box in my parent's garage

6) Going to class (That's right, I said it.)

7) Mexican food: El Guerro Canello, late night Los Betos, and Lerua's Green Corn Tamales

8) Teriyaki sauce 

9) Caramel Lattes at Espresso Art

10) Coffee dates with friends

11) Mid-week brunches at Blue Willow with Michelle

12) Having money to buy new music

13) Hanging out at friend's homes for no reason

14) Pool hopping

15) Monsoons

16) Tucson, especially 4th Ave., downtown, and South Tucson

17) Hiking on Mt. Lemmon

18) Shopping at 17th Street International Market

19) Arguing with Jenna about Economics

20) Talking with Michelle about anything and everything, especially poverty and the disabled

21) Intellectual conversations

22) Newspapers in English

23) Knowing what is going on in my own country

24) Feeling self sufficient

25) to be continued...

A Lust for Lists

I realized something today. I really like making lists. I make them for just about everything. Half of my day is spent making lists, on paper, in my mind, on my computer. The other half if usually spent trying to complete the tasks on that list. That is if the list is my "To Do" list. I think I make about two or three a day. I make grocery lists, lists of memories, favorite moments, I make play lists, book lists, lists of things I can't forget to tell people, lists of things I wish I could forget, lists of things I want to do, lists of dreams, lists of places I want to go, lists of things I love and hate, and lists of things I miss. Don't ask me why. I really don't know. Lists seem so counter to my personality that dislikes order and predictability, but somehow it is my way of summarizing what my mind says to myself in many words, but what I convey in just a few, possibly even just one. When I get frustrated about not being able to explain something, I write a list. Somethings require explanation, but others...

1) Well, 

2) they

3) can 

4) be 

5) summarized

6) with 

7) one

8) word.

9) One

10)word

11) that

12) explains

13) what 

14) possibly

15) many 

16) simply

17) could 

18) not 

19) do

20) in 

21) any 

22) better

23) way. 

This blog will be one more place for lists. Those things I want to say, but can't explain, or don't need to. A way to log my thoughts and organize the chaos in my mind. 

Living Stones

"As you come to him, the living Stone, rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Chris. For in Scripture it says:

'See I lay a stone in Zion,

a chosen and precious cornerstone,

and the one who trusts in him 

will never be put to shame.'

Now to you who believe, this stone is precious...You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:4-10)

What a strange and peculiar concept, to be a living stone. There are times that I read verses like these and I wonder what such imagery could really have to do with me. I mean, what does it really mean to be a "living stone". How could anything, being by definition inanimate, without life, be living? It seems a bit oxymoronic to me. Here are some observations I have compiled in the catalogue of my mind about stones: 

1) While stones themselves are not living and have little purpose on their own, together stones comprise things in which life dwells, things that encourage and support the survival of human beings and society. They form apartments, arenas, government buildings, houses, walls, streets, monuments. Essentially life lives within the community of stones, the cooperation of stones, each serving their purpose, fitting into their place, and joining together to be a part of something bigger. As each stone takes its place upon the foundation, fitting themselves to the cornerstone they create a place for life to dwell. Life is in the community. Life is in the building, the temple, if you will. 

2) Stones cane be molded. Though they appear unchangeable and firmly established, they can be altered, can be chipped away at, can be transformed. Take sculptures for example. All sculptures began as mere blocks of stone, plain, simple, lacking any beauty, and definitely absent of life. But have you ever spent time really looking at a sculpture? When I was in Italy I stood before one of the most famous sculptures in the world, the David. I can tell you one thing for sure. That sculpture was not stone, it was life. No one looks at a sculpture like that one and sees a stone. They look at a sculpture and they see life, they see art, they see emotion, passion, and movement. The thing that amazed me most about the David was his eyes. People always say that you can see into a person's soul through their eyes and that is exactly what I felt like when I looked into David's. I know, it is just a sculpture, but in its eyes was captured the very emotion of the moment it was carved to represent. Those eyes had life. The important thing to note though is that a stone only becomes a sculpture when the creator has chiseled away all the useless and excess parts of stone. Only after the sculptor has spent hours, days, months, sometimes years carefully making life out of death, movement out of stiff solidity, form out of rigidity. A stone only has life in regards to its sculptor, its creator. A block of stone is simply that, but once the hands a creator, a sculptor, painstakingly makes his marks upon it, life is breathed into it and it become a representation of a beauty that is not its own. It is a reflection of the one who created it. It in itself is nothing. 

3) Stones are only useful in the construction of something if they are molded and fitted to the cornerstone. Stones do not determine the shape of the cornerstone, the foundation, they are fit to it. 

So what does this all mean? Well, I can only say what significance it has to me. We, as living stones, were created to be part of something larger than ourselves, a community, a chosen people, a royal priesthood. Apart form each other we simply stumbling blocks. Together we are the church in which life dwells. Not simply a building, a physical construction, but a spiritual dwelling place where life resides, where Christ resides. As living stones we are only useful to this community, we only have life to give to this community after life has been sculpted into us by the removing of our death, the chiseling off of all our useless and ignoble extremities that cover and hide the life within. Only the sculptor can give us live. A stone cannot carve itself. As we are carved we are molded to fit the cornerstone, who is Christ. If we resist being fit to the cornerstone we will weaken the building, the temple, and we will make it susceptible to all forces of destruction.  All living stones are most importantly founded upon the living stone, the living cornerstone. May we as living stones, be unified to be a dwelling in which life is found, founded upon the cornerstone, Christ. This is the church, this is the body, this is the bride. 

Something Worth Understanding

"For when he who doubts can only say 'I do not understand,' it is true that he who knows can only reply or repeat 'You do not understand.' And under that rebuke there is always a sudden hope in the heart; and the sense of something that would be worth understanding." 

- G.K. Chesterton

The Everlasting Man

I finally did it! I completed a journal. It actually has writing on it from the first page to the very last. I am no Anne Frank or anything yet, but it is a start. To many of you this may seem like a small accomplishment, but if you knew me you would know the significance. You see, I have in my possession, well, actually in my parent's basement, at least six half finished journals. Though it is one of my greatest strengths, I have never been fond of writing. Maybe it is that my mind works faster than my hands can record my thoughts, or that my handwriting is typically illegible by the untrained human eye, or that I have just been too lazy to collect my thoughts in written word, or possibly it is the fact that I am a horrific speller (thank you Lord for the blessing of Spell Check). For whatever reason, I have never been fond of actually using my journal for its intended purpose. Yes, I have ceremoniously toted it around with me to provide my Bible with the companionship of another paper based product, disguising my lack of enthusiasm for writing by furiously filling its pages with quotes and song lyrics. Don't the words of artists much greater than I express more perfectly the emotion and experience of the heart? Surely this is true. Well, partially at least. However, it has been my habit to avoid actually writing down any of my own thoughts. Of course I have never been short on words, that is, spoken ones. In speaking words I feel a freedom. No one records your spoken words, you can alter, refine, and correct your spoken words. You can say 'surely I did not say that' or 'you misunderstood what I said' and so, like a poetic chameleon of sorts, adjust and suit your words to the situation, to the interpretation, to the audience.  Spoken words do not remain solidified in memory and time as written words do. No one can go back and read them. No one can mark them with corrections as a grade school teacher does to a child's homework, taking her dreadfully infamous red pen and dramatically circling all the faults and mistakes. You get the point. Of course this argument has its faults. Actually, the truth is that I can remember with painful exactitude many of the words that have been spoken to me over the years. They burn in my mind sometimes like haunting melodies of truths I would rather forget. However, the illusion remains: if I don't write them they won't be permanent. 

My journal is currently sitting on my book self. As if it even deserved a position next to the words of Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Between the purple leather cover lay pages of words, my words. No they are not as elegant as those of other greater authors, but they are mine. They are honest. Possibly it is because I find few other forums to express my thoughts, being a foreigner in a country whose language I do not speak with few friends with attentive ears, that I have taken to writing them down. Or maybe I have finally stumbled upon a truth that I should have realized a long time ago. I think what scares me most about a journal is not the fact that my words are placed permanently on a page, but that in writing them down there is a certain expectation that in them will be found some hidden wisdom, an answer to the question or problem that first propelled me to begin an entry. However, what I find most often is that what I am left with is more questions. While I write, my ideas don't get narrower, they expand, they become greater, they become questions themselves. I think that sometimes questions scare me. Having a question means that there is something that needs clarification, something that I don't understand. In the past I have prided myself on understanding, on feeling like I have some insight or wisdom. I now see that this was all a matter of immaturity. You see, the closer I come to know God, the more I experience in my life, the more books I read, the more people I speak to, the more I seek understanding, the more questions I have. Maybe the difference now is not that having questions doesn't scare me, but that I don't see questions as negative things. In fact, I think I should be more concerned for not having questions, for believing falsely that I have it figured out. In reality what wisdom can I boast of? As I encounter God I don't see him as smaller, I see him as greater than I ever did before. If as we got closer to God, if as we studied what the Bible says about him, if as we prayed and searched we found our searching leading to something, or rather, someone more reasonable, more recognizable, more able to compact and to summarize then I think that I would rather give up searching now. What value is there in believing in something that is no greater than our own imagination, than our own limited knowledge? Sure it would be safe, it would be easy, it would leave us feeling comfortably in control, but it would have no real power, no mystery. I don't know if you would agree, but I find that the things that scare me the most are those that are actually worth giving my life to. I don't mean that we cannot open wide our mouths, or rather minds, in search of truth and not find something solid to close them down upon. God has made himself knowable to us, he has revealed himself that we might come to know him and in him have true life. Life with mystery, with questions, with a recognition of a truth that, while at the same time being too great for us, encompasses and expresses all our human experience. I agree with A.W. Tozer. He explains, "To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned by the too-easily satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart." How I love that description, "children of the burning heart". How I long to be one myself. I think coming to terms with having questions is the beginning. 

So, yes, I finished a journal. I have the temptation to look into it hoping to find myself at some greater point of wisdom and understanding than when I began, but I know that is not what I would discover. Rather, I have something greater. I have questions. Questions that serve as evidence that, yes, I am am a "child of the burning heart", a child that is not satisfied with simplicity and wisdom that I can safely understand. How funny it is that Jesus calls for us to come to him as children. I think I understand a little bit more what he meant when he said that. Maybe in coming to God what we really need to to is express 'I do not understand' and in that utterance come to recognize that what we don't understand is all the more worth the pursuit for that fact. Most books, if they are truly good, if they really say anything of value, leave their reader not with a conclusion, but with a question. Not that I am comparing my journal to such a great book, or to any book at all, but I think the same thinking applies. I finally found the value of journaling, of why we bother making our thoughts into written word. Because writing is a form of searching. In it we find some answers, but even more so, we benefit from unearthing questions. Writing is a way of me saying 'Lord, I do not know' and a way of my hearing God reply 'You do not know'. Yes, this that I do not understand, this alone, is worth understanding.