Fretting

I left a cryptic remark at the end of my last post, and I should explain it.

I haven’t much proof that my wife is breaking her promise to not contact this other man. I’m reluctant to push too hard because things are so fragile in our home and these are matters that will affect me, her, and my children a great deal for a very long time.

Sunday afternoon I went online and checked the local calls made on our phone. All the way back to July. I put them on a spreadsheet. Grouped them by numbers and bold faced the ones to where she used to work and his cell phone. Sorted them by date. Looked over the pattern of the calls.

The calls to his cell continued for a few months and stopped. So did the calls to where he worked. Until a couple of weeks ago.

Those few calls were brief, one or two minutes. Not enough time for a conversation, maybe voice mail.

I got a little ticked.

I kept my mouth shut.

Except on this blog. I added a little postscript at the bottom of the post I had written and fretted.

Now a couple of days have passed. What do I know? Not much.

That’s my current point.

Freaking out, confrontations, or cloak and dagger spying won’t change the reality of whatever the reality is.

Perhaps she has broken her word and is talking to him. Perhaps she was calling old coworkers looking for leads on her current job search.

If this is bad, then it will reveal itself. If it isn’t, well, that too will eventually show.

As this whole mess plays out I am increasingly unsure if I can return to a place in my heart where there is trust for her. That too is something I will one day learn. Another piece of the journey of self-discovery.

So... meanwhile... what do I do?

I try to control my heart, my mind, and especially my actions.

She is messed up.

So am I.

Perhaps I can help her heal, but not by making her heel.

I cannot control her and I don’t want to.

She is messed up.

So are we all.

Perhaps we can heal, but only through His grace.

I can be patient, at least long enough for this new counselor to make an attempt to show us a common ground for our marriage.

I just keep thinking that I am as sinful as any other person, as unworthy of forgiveness and grace as all of humanity.

In remembering that I am a fallen being, an immortal soul traveling in flawed mortal flesh.

So that’s what’s going on. As I wonder, and as I try to avoid wondering, I remember this passage:

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."
John 8:6-8

And that’s all I have to say about this today.

Doofus For Christ

Regular visitors to my blogs know I’m a rather strange guy. I write a lot of stuff about all sorts of topics, blending science and faith and technology and personal history with bizarre connections.

I’ve always been a little odd. I wasn’t the sort of teen my father thought I should be, I wasn’t the sort of student my instructors expected, and I’m not the usual sort of member of the congregation in my church.

I’m a doofus.

Just as I tripped over my suddenly too large feet as a teen I still trip over my words, my interactions with people, with ideas that don’t seem to fit in with how others see the world.

The best way to handle my social awkwardness is to keep my mouth shut. If I don’t say anything, if I smile and nod, then folks assume I agree with them and I don’t find myself attempting to defend the unorthodox views I hold.

For example, I embrace science and faith and have little difficulty in seeing how they blend smoothly together. But... many who share my faith bristle at notions of evolution, the Big Bang, quantum mechanics and the age of the universe. Likewise, my favorite magazine, Scientific American, occasionally prints opinion pieces about how foolish faith is in the light of scientific reason.

Parties from both camps will sometimes bait me, try to get me engaged in some silly debate, attempting to force me to defend one side or the other.

I do my best to slide away from such topics except with those I trust enough to share the real me.

I was in a little gathering today, a group discussing the book The Shack by William P. Young. It was suggested that one should approach the book in two ways. One should read it as a novel, just enjoy the plot, the spinning of a tale, and not take it too literally. Meanwhile, to compliment the first, do not accept all the ideas it presents without engaging the mind, comparing it to what our book of faith, The Bible, has to say. I added that there is a third way to approach the book as well, by reading it with the heart.

What I meant by that is the book attempts to describe the indescribable, and it may not hold up to our biblical scrutiny or our own visions and interpretations of God. But, the heart of what is being described, the feelings and emotions, the spiritual responses we might feel, should also be a component in our examination of the novel.

Some around the room smiled at that. Some looked confused. A few had that knowing look, the one that says, “Greenleaf is one strange guy.”

But that piece of literary advice I offered got me thinking.

I know I am a foolish man with foolish ideas. I know that in attempting to wrap my mind around truths as esoteric as the nature of the Creator and how the random workings of the quantum universe results in the apparent order in Newtonian Mechanics, I am playing with concepts and fantasies that I really know very little about. It’s a little like taking the kindergarten class finger-painting virtuoso and asking her to expound on the fine points of Jackson Pollack. Well... perhaps that is a bad example... maybe Salvador Dali... oh... er... Rembrandt, yeah, Rembrandt.

Sometimes I am embarrassed by how goofy I am. I regret that sometimes I make those around me feel awkward.

For example, in church today, I felt like being demonstrative in my worship. I usually don’t let anything hinder me, but today, I knew that my wife would feel awkward if I raised my hands too high, if I shed a tear, or bowed low. So, twice I slipped off to the back of the sanctuary and worshiped where no one was watching. Just because I am a doofus doesn’t mean others need to see it.

But sometimes it is OK to be a doofus.

King David was sometimes a doofus...

David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the LORD with all his might, while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouts and the sound of trumpets.

As the ark of the LORD was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart.
2 Samuel 6:14-16

(If this is a little confusing, an ephod was a type of apron, and the implication here is that King David was wearing ONLY that.)

He was acting a little bit like a doofus.

But, he was acting that way because he didn’t care what anyone else thought, he wanted to dance and sing and love God with abandon.

I think the apostle Peter might have been a doofus at times.

He lept out of a boat to meet Jesus walking on the water... Of course, miracle though it was, he grew afraid and began to sink. Matthew 14:29-31

His heart was bigger than his abilities.

He once said that Jesus would not, should not, die and rise again. He really put his foot in his mouth there. I think he was trying to say, from his own inferior perspective, that Jesus would never die. But he got slapped down pretty hard for telling the Son of God what He would or should do.

He also had other times he put his foot in his mouth. He said he would die for and with Jesus. Jesus told him otherwise.

Later he opposed Paul, and subsequently realized he was wrong.

Peter was a big guy, with a big heart, and often a big mouth. A kind of doofus for God.

I have a lot of failings. I’ve often made a mess of my life. I’ve made mistakes in my marriage, in my parenting, in my employment, in just about everything I have tried.

I am full of strange ideas, and sometimes I open my mouth and tickle my tonsils with my toes.

I recognize many of the wondrous gifts God has given me, but too often I take false pride in them. Silly man who feels special because of a few talents he did not create on his own. Sort of like running around and shouting to the world that the Lord God has given me an... ARM! Uh, yeah.

I try to balance pride with self-knowledge, false modesty with humility, but I fail at it constantly.

The point I’m trying to make is that I am afraid. I really believe my marriage is about to fail for good. Though I have tried to hold it together, to do what I cannot, be more than I am capable of being.

I look in despair at my wife’s heart and I don’t know what to say, how to help her.

And I am realizing this: I’m a silly man, suddenly older than he thought he was, and unable to control what he thought he could, and thinks about things that are almost certainly completely in error... but... I love God with all of my heart. I screw up in following Him properly all the time. But, I am unashamed of my faith, and I think that though I am such a screw up in so many ways, I think that God is pleased with my heart.

So... I may stumble over my own feet, over my own tongue, but that is OK.

I’m a doofus for Christ.

...................................

(Personal note: things have gotten rough folks. I need to write to sort it out... but I went ahead and tossed this silly post on the blog fire anyway. I have evidence she has called HIM in the last few weeks. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy. I don't know what to do. Give me courage. Give me strength. Give me wisdom. Today is Jeremiah's birthday. Thursday is our first real joint counseling session together.)

Leap Year Day

I went to the counselor yesterday. Alone.

Brenda went on Monday, was asked to return next Monday. The following Thursday will be the two of us, but yesterday it was just me. Just this new counselor could hear my story.

I took a Xanax on the way. I was anxious and I didn't want to get too emotional about the mess we are in.

It started off easy enough. She let me talk about whatever I wanted. I started with my position on our marriage. My desire to preserve our marriage, if it is possible. My resolve to end it if it becomes clear that it cannot be saved.

When those issues were covered well enough she started the probing questions, and songs from an album I listen to (Turbulent Indigo by Joni Mitchell) when I am feel a little sad started playing in my head.


I spoke about my faith. I spoke about how central it is to my life.

I spoke about my dreams, how I remember them very clearly. I told how my dreams come in four types:

There are the ones that are simply flotsam and jetsam from my life, dreams that are simply working through the events of my life, sorting them out.

I described the ones from my subconscious, the ones that are a part of me trying to tell me about myself.

I shared of the rare dreams I have, especially when I was younger, which I could guide, the ones I knew were dreams while I was having them and could do things voluntarily, make myself fly, walk through walls, do things I simply wanted to try.

And I told her about the very rare ones that are completely different. The ones where God speaks to me.

She asked me to talk about Willy, about the death of the infant in my care at 10:30 a.m. December 15, 1992. I gave her the background about my dreams to explain how I was told to adopt that child.

In a voice that thickened, trembled, I spoke about the dream.

There was darkness and a growing pool of light. In it was an empty treasure chest. The sort you see in pirate movies. I watched it fill with gold. Right to the top it filled with gold coins. And when it was full, paper currency floated down and covered all the gold. The dream ended.

I explained to her that I had prayed the night before for an answer to the question of whether or not we should adopt Willy. There was a teen girl who would give us that child the day he was born. It would be the next morning that we would see a lawyer about it, begin spending money we didn’t have, to make the child soon to be born our own.

I explained to her that some would see that as a simple dream, but there were things about it that made it different.

First, it had a quality about it that was far different than other dreams. There was a focus to it, a sense of importance, that made it a powerful vision, of communication. It was a clear message. And there was a sound, sort of. It was sort of orchestral/choirish sort of sound, but without clear notes, without clear words, almost a sound that could be felt. The darkness surrounding the dream seemed to thrum with presence, almost clear singing, that said LIFE, LOVE, POWER, HOPE, GLORY. And lastly, when I awoke there was a clear interpretation of the dream in my mind.

The emptiness of our lives, the lack of the children we wanted so badly, would be given to us. The treasure we hoped for would fill us up. And as for our concern about paying for it, our worries about all the bills, would not be an issue. It would all be covered.

I explained to her that my faith is a very large part of my life, and that I have had many experiences which, for me, speak to the reality of God, though they would not be evidence for someone else.

I had sidestepped the real discussion about Willy’s death.

She drove straight at it.

“Tell me about Willy’s death.”

My throat tightened, my heart rate went up.

“That was bad,” I said in a choked whisper.

A line came to mind from one of the songs of that album...

...Six hundred thousand doctors
Are putting on rubber gloves
And they're poking
At the miseries made of love...
“Not to Blame”

I answered her. I talked about taking that three and a half month old child in his car seat to cut down a Christmas tree. About laying him on his tummy to give him a chance to push and kick with his arms and legs, a step toward learning to crawl. How I knew that he was mad, he wanted me to rock him in my arms, the way I always let him fall asleep. I worried about having him fall asleep on his stomach because there is supposedly an increased risk of S.I.D.S. in sleeping that way (but I told myself I would turn him as soon as he fell asleep, that first sleep without the rocking of parental arms.). I talked about the diminshing progression of his complaints, his angry crying, and his sobbing, and his whimpering, and his quiet, sad moaning for me, and his silence as he drifted off to sleep, drifted off into eternity.

I spoke of how I waited a few minutes and went to check on him... finding him blue.

I spoke of my panic. Of calling 911. Of thumping on his little chest with my finger tips, of gently blowing into his mouth, of standing at the end of the drive waiting for help to arrive, of seeing the flashing red and blue lights, hearing the siren, completely freaking out because though the ambulance appeared to be flying to my rescue, our rescue, it seemed to just hang in the distance without moving.

I spoke to her about my love for my child and how the following year was an awful year that had my heart beating in my chest like some razor sharp spiky thing tearing me apart. I spoke about seeing him naked on a metal table at the hospital. I spoke about the horror of looking at tiny caskets waiting for people like me to place tiny bodies in. I spoke about clutching my son at the funeral home, smudging the makeup that made him appear warm, alive. I spoke about landing on my chest in the dirt, in my good clothes, so I could reach far down into that hole in the earth to put that simple box with my treasure where he would rest until judgment day.

Another part of another song from that same album came to mind...

...What have I done to you?
That you make everything I dread
and everything I fear come true?...
“Sire of Sorrow (Job’s Sad Song)”

After that painful exposition of the most dreadful moments of my life we went on to the most recent and the more distant moments of my life that have damaged, yet strengthened me. The dangers my father placed me in. The unfaithfulness of those I trust.

I shared how imperfect I am. How miserable the world can be, and how unfair... but how I love it and those in it.

Another song from that album came to mind... about young girls working hard in laundries in convents because they were “wayward” girls, and how their suffering was compounded by those who should have loved them, showed them mercy, helped them from the hurts they had suffered from men...


...I was an unmarried girl
I'd just turned twenty-seven
When they sent me to the sisters
For the way men looked at me
Branded as a jezebel
I knew I was not bound for Heaven
I'd be cast in shame
Into the Magdalene laundries...

...These bloodless brides of Jesus
If they had just once glimpsed their groom
Concealed behind their rosaries

Then they'd know,
and they'd drop the stones
They wilt the grass they walk upon
They leech the light out of a room
They'd like to drive us down the drain
At the Magdalene laundries...
“The Magdalene Laundries”


So, I spilled out the things which hurt, as well as the hopes for my future. I spoke of my strengths and gifts. I talked about my weaknesses and failures, as well as my determination to divorce this woman I love if one of two things occur:

1. She continues contact with this other man.
2. Or I become convinced that there is no saving our marriage.

Our time came to an end.

I drove home.

I picked up a bouquet of tulips, and a card for Brenda. Tomorrow I will have known Brenda 28 years. I met her on Leap Year Day 1980.

So... I go back to work... anxious about my life though my Lord tells me not to be. I think about the life we have had, nearly three decades. I think about how loyal I am to those I love. That I love my children and regardless of what they may do, regardless of what kind of burden they may be in the future. That I want to restore my wife, to build her up, to help her love herself, help her to love those who love her.

I have many flaws. I have many weaknesses. But...

I am not the man my wife complains about, the one of a quarter century ago.

I am not responsible for her happiness. I am not responsible for her actions or her thoughts or her self esteem. I want to fix those things, but they are not my responsibilities.

So... it is Leap Year Day... an extra day slipped into every fourth year to keep our poor man-made calendar in step with the God-made lap our little world makes as it races around the sun.

I’ve made 28 of those laps with her. I will run the next one as best I can. Perhaps she will be there still when it makes its circuit once more.

And Now For Something Completely Different

OK. I would say that my previous post was a little manic. (Or was it depressive?) Either way, I figured it would do me good to write something about something completely different.

So... I am going to take a perpendicular tangent to what I’ve been writing on and see where things go (picture me sticking out out my right leg and sharply turning 90 degrees).

There is a cool article, “The End of Cosmology”, in the latest Scientific American about the disappearing evidence for The Big Bang. I was excited to see the blurb on the cover because so many of my Christian friends feel the theory attacks our faith, and the blurb could be interpreted to mean that new discoveries may have the theory in question. But it doesn’t and that is exciting (at least for me) as well.

The article was really about the expansion of the universe. Now, as I’m sure most of you have heard, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (except for the “information” in tangled photon pairs which crops up in quantum mechanics and has me completely, enthusiastically, confused).

However, though nothing travels faster than the speed of light, there is a strange effect of the increasing expansion of the universe. Though everything in the universe is traveling well under light speed, the cumulative effect of all those things moving further apart makes the overall expansion of the entire universe spreading out at speeds well above the speed of light!

Wow!

Imagine that. Locally we have such structures as the Andromeda Galaxy, the Greater and Smaller Magellanic clouds, all moving toward us (due to gravity interactions) everything else, and I mean everything, all the billions of galaxies with their billions of stars, are moving farther away, with the furthest accelerating away at ever increasing speeds. And if one pretends that we are at the center of things (a common homocentric view) the furthest reaches in each direction are receding at speeds that will increasingly speed them away at a perceived speeds greater than the speed of light.

Amazing! As the universe ages beings of the distant future will see fewer and fewer other galaxies until, 100 billion years from now, only our galaxy (well, our galaxy mixed with the local group of galaxies, forming a supergalaxy) will be the only thing in sight. We won’t be able to imagine anything like: “Long, Long Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far away” because we will have long forgotten that there are other galaxies.


I lost you, didn’t I?

OK, let’s change the subject.

How about a theological approach to the concept that there are other dimensions? I’m going to jog around the topic of other physical dimensions (which are obviously there, but where I am headed is even more fun).

Let’s start with this premise: God is omniscient.

Hmmm... all knowing.

Well, in terms of time alone, that would mean that He already knows everything that has and will happen.

We can’t. We can’t see the future. We can’t observe the past.

What if there was another dimension to time, just as we can easily imagine two dimensions of space (like the surface of a sheet of paper). If the time we experience is a point on a line dragging us ever “forward,” then if one could move to the right or left, or in any direction other than along the line, we could visit any time in all of creation!

Perhaps that is what Heaven is. Eternity would instantly exist if one were not bound to the movement of time dragging us ever in the direction of entropy. One could step aside and simply stay in one place, continue forever in a single instant. One could also move in any of the two directions of time and be able to go forward backward, beside it. If that is so, then I would imagine the Crucifixion to be the most viewed, the most experienced event in all of creation, God, in human form, experiencing death, in place for us all. One would be able to simply be at any instant of that event and stay there for an infinite amount of “time”.

Did I lose you? I hope not, because there’s more! If I did lose you, just think of eternity as being something not confined to being dragged forward. One could simply experience what would look like an instant of time frozen forever, or fast forward, or reverse, or skip to a whole other part of the story just as one can do in the “Scene Selection” of a DVD menu.

But... that is still not omniscience. It is the ability to view, to learn, to gather all the information throughout all of creation, but it is not the same as being able to contain it all at once.

To be able to be omniscient one would have to be able to lift off the two dimensions of time and be able to discern it as a whole.

It would be like a cartoon drawing on a sheet of paper being able to suddenly grow a third dimension and step away from the sheet of paper and be able to hold the paper in its hands.

Ah... here we are getting close to omniscience. If there were a third dimension of time then all of creation, from the Big Bang to far beyond the loss of all energy (perhaps trillions of years into a future when all energy drops away and therefore all information is lost) could be held as an “object” by such a being who could know it intimately, being completely outside of all its experience, as well within it.

So... This strange little rabbit trail of thought, or as Einstein might have been kind enough to extend his term... “thought experiment,” would mean the following:

1. We are beings of a single dimension of time.
2. Beings of two dimensions of time would be eternal and able to view all of eternity but would not all at once.
3. Beings of three dimensions of time would be omniscient, being able to view, to know, to see, and to hold all of time as a whole.

You still with me?

Before I close, you should know the following:

1. I’m a strange human being with odd thoughts.
2. Of all the things I think about and think I know, I am almost certainly wrong about nearly all of them.
3. It is a relief to write about something different today.

The Note

We’ve got a diet contest going on at work. We are two weeks into it and I’ve lost 12 pounds.

Lunch has been a rather light meal. Brenda packs a Lean Cuisine, a piece of fruit, a yoghurt, and a juice in each lunch. I eat the yoghurt first thing in the morning, and all but the fruit at 10:30.

There was something extra in my lunch bag this morning:


A nice note.

I had conflicting feelings about it. It was nice. It was kind. It was hopeful. But, I also thought, is she trying to throw me off? Is this an attempt at redirecting my suspicions? Is this just a note to make me feel better and has nothing at all to do with us as a couple? Is she planning something and this is a way to assuage her guilt?

What a load! I hate the fact that I can’t even get a simple note from my wife of 27 years without feeling turmoil in my heart! Am I losing my mind? How can I be so suspicious of my circumstances that she can’t even leave a note that uses the word “love” without my getting all wigged out over it?

I’m tired of this whole thing. I’m tired of writing about it, talking about it, going to counselors about it, attending Al Anon meetings about it, pretending to others that things aren’t coming apart. I’m tired of praying about it. I’m tired of looking at her and wondering, having conversations with her that are like walking through a verbal minefield.

And I’m tired of being tired. I’m tired of months with less sleep than I need. I’m tired of holding things together, my relationship with my kids, with my wife, even the walks with the dog seem to be some sort of shared responsibility with her that has implications.

I’m tired of pulling myself together each day and putting so much energy into being what should come natural, being a teacher. I’m tired of working so hard to force my mind to concentrate on my students and praise them when they do good, instruct them when they are confused, and get them back to work when they are off task. This is a job I love. It shouldn’t be this much work. I’m simply too distracted!!!!!

Being hungry is a way of pulling my mind off this mess.

But how much longer can this go on? It has been since early August!!!!!!!!!

I’m going nuts. And today, a simple little note that says I am loved is throwing me into confusion.

Literary Tourette’s

I’m not sure why I come so often to this glowing plastic screen to expound on my life.

Between this and my Job’s Tale blog I would guess I have written hundreds of thousands of words.

I write of the mundane, and of the spiritual. This keyboard has clicked and clacked its way through scientificially-prompted musings to outbursts of emotional angst.

It seems I can’t help but turn to writing to work through my thoughts and feelings.

And when I write I make wild jumps from one topic to another, connecting them in some unlikely fashion like some writerly form of a mental illness:

Today I tackled the messy TRIUNE pile of wood and FAITH debris that has lain in the corner of our back UNFAITHFUL yard. There were still remnants of a dog CARPENTER house and a PRAYER rabbit cage from CHURCH over a dozen MARRIAGE years ago. There were rotting pieces of fire TRUST wood slowly turning into QUANTUM PHYSICS soil around a broken SHEPHERD wheelbarrow.

Brenda had taken the dog SLEEPLESS for a walk and I worked my XANAX way through the pile, sorting TEACHING good boards from SELF ESTEEM broken ones, burnable firewood PRAYER ROOM from rotting ones. I built a composting box in SPECIAL NEEDS the furthest corner FIRE and raked the loose dirt and rotting wood CREATOR into it. She returned in time to MOON HOWLIN’ help me restack it and it HOSEA looks pretty CEMETERY good.

It felt odd working OWL together after DIVORCE the conversation we DIVORCE DIVORCE had this morning. We talked about CRAP splitting up. It was the CROSS same conversation we JESUS have had before UNFAITHFUL with a little more JOB edge to it.

She said that she PRAY was just a bad person. That I was ANGRY a good person. And that good is boring TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS.

Now I’m writing HOLY again trying to make INCARNATION sense of things.

Somewhere along the way GALACTIC SUPERCLUSTERS my little ramblings run out of FATHER steam and I bring the whole thing back to some point I had started at. Like this post INFINITECHRIST here.

I started feeling INSOMNIA depressed yesterday afterCOUNSELINGnoon and had a fitful night. And when I LOVE am confused, inspired, or just thoughtful, MARRIAGE I turn to writing.

Right now I feel little BRENDA hope for our UNFAITHFUL marriage. It makes my chest feel CREATOR tight and my breath SAVIOR short. So I tap away FRIEND at this keyboard, and feel gratitude SIN for those FORGIVE who visit and CRUCIFIED read and DEPRESSION pray. It is an outlet I GOD can’t DIMENSIONS stop doing.

It’s like I have literary Tourette’s or something.

Amortal

I’ve said it before... I’m an idiot.

I am very confused about many things. My relationships have been changing and I’m finding that the world ruled by Newtonian physics can be as strange and random as the world of quantum physics.

I have no idea where I am in my relationship with my wife. There has been some tense moments lately, and there have been times when we laughed, we worked together, we made decisions together.

During one of the tense moments I told her that if I became convinced that our marriage cannot be repaired, I would divorce her. Her eyes widened a little. From anger or surprise, I'm not sure.

Other relationships have been changing as well. I have a friend I work with who does his best to cheer me up, encourage me with the joys of our shared profession.

Several good friends have been keeping in touch, knowing that I am struggling in some way, and drawing near to let me know I am appreciated, cared for. These have been changes which have helped me.

My relationship with my faith, with my God, has also been changing.

Over the last six months there has been a progression in my prayer life:
* Specific requests for help, blessings, to general requests...
* General requests for wisdom, perseverance, strength, patience...
* To numb quiet... just walking, thinking...
* To a sort of seeking friendship, searching for the Carpenter who would be my friend as well as my God.

Last night there was an eclipse of the moon. The bright full moon darkened, the edges of the Earth’s shadow glowing red from the ring of sunsets and sunrises shining from our world onto that one.



I watched the darkening moon sitting in my van, the engine running, the lights out. My wife’s car was parked on the other side of the lot in front of the drug store where she was picking up a prescription for her mother. (As Imentioned before, I'm an idiot.)

A shadow had crossed my heart. The eclipse of what is good in my heart was shadowed by the specter of something else, someone else, reddened on its edges by the embers of anger and jealousy.

She pulled out of the parking lot, turning southwest toward the area where she said her AA meeting was, not southeast to where I know he lives.

I turned on my lights and followed anyway. (Idiot.)

I let her stay about a half mile ahead of me, the running lights on the left side a little dimmer than the right because I had removed one of them before she left.

She went where she said she would.

I felt like an ass.

She went into her meeting, sitting beside a couple of women, showing them the sweater she is knitting, laughing.

I went to her car, fixed the taillight. Slunk off to the van, drove home, watching the darkened moon drift over my small town, my home.

I brought the boys out to look at it, I took a fuzzy picture of it with my digital camera.

Crawled into bed.

I thought about my weaknesses. About my failures.

I thought about the mystery of being a mortal with aspirations for immortality.

I thought about what it means to be born in a body that ages and will eventually decay, and the mind it carries, the one that can think such bizarre thoughts and contemplate such saddening ideas that it pulls my spirit down to dark places. I thought about my spirit which lives beyond the confines of this animated 200 pounds of flesh, the spirit which will carry that mind into eternity and joy.

I thought about the reverse. About the all powerful, the immortal, slipping into this world into the tiny helpless flesh of an infant, so He can share in the experience of mortality. I thought about how He will carry the wounds of His mortality throughout eternity. I thought about how the moment when His death intersected the timeline of the universe it altered (alters... time has no meaning in this discussion) fundamental relationships between these four dimensions and the eight or so we can not see. I thought about how He will be an eternally immortal mortal, eons beyond the time we slip from our own mortality into immortality.

I thought about how such concepts do not seem to have proper words in our language.

Christ was, is, both. He was mortal. He lived, He died. Christ was, is, will be, immortal. He is both and neither. Jesus, my friend the Carpenter, my Lord and master, my Shepherd, is amortal. Death simply isn’t within the framework of who He is. It is, and it isn’t and it matters more than any other death, for it makes all death meaningful and meaningless.

I have no clue what I’m talking about... what I’m trying to say.

I just know that my heart is shaken (and stirred) and I’m just rambling...

I'm an idiot.