almost thanksgiving

I have just finished the dishes and the rotini, and I should probably turn down Frank Sinatra a little. In an oddly riotous mood. Thanksgiving is nearly twenty-four hours away, and home almost as close - perhaps that has something to do with it. :) Or maybe I'm just starting to un-knit my eyebrows after an overwhelming, frightening, beautiful weekend. Oh, and the responsibility still turns heavy between my hands, but I'm regarding it objectively now. Maybe.

(This is the point where I insert a disclaimer - I'm assuming that anyone who still reads this blog kind of cares about me, and half-expected that I'd talk about myself. :D If you really just want to be entertained, try engrishfunny.com. The word nerd in me never fails to be amused.)

I have an opportunity to participate just a little in a crazy work God's doing in North Africa next May. I've known about it since October, and been completely gung-ho if a little intimidated by the preparation. Part of that preparation entailed attending the National Missionary Convention in Lexington last weekend. I expected the workshops; I'd heard of the keynote speakers. The exhibit hall was full of Bible colleges and campus ministries, including my own. It was good, and I learned and had thought-provoking conversations.

But...oh, how do I say this? I had never before sat in a stadium with four thousand people and listened to them sing Revelation Song, sing it as it will be sung around the throne, in a hundred different shades and accents from hearts that have been both emptied and filled. And I cannot comprehend the amount of other voices around the throne who will have been brought there by that four thousand. I was surrounded by people who were giving their lives for the words of that song. And was I?

A few hours later I found myself in a private debrief-and-praise meeting for everyone who had birthed or somehow touched the North African ministry. I felt like I'd been invited into a family reunion - no one actually recognized me, they just assumed I was a second cousin they'd never met. A few key people shared the events of the past year (and God really is doing some crazy things, things that haven't happened in other countries) along with prayer requests for the next. They thanked us all for our fervent prayers over the past eight years, blessed our faithfulness, fed our visionary dreams that have propelled all the impossibilities.

I did not stand up. I did not shout across the room that I struggle with focus, love, nerve, and a very lot of apathy. They do not know that I usually pray for about twenty minutes a day, most of which is in the shower. Or that I know all the correct phrases because I was raised in a good family, not because I have dogged them from the page on my own. I would sooner be comfortable than meet someone else's needs. And I love Jesus because He takes care of me, not for His incredible goodness and glory.

I did not leave, and I will stick with this and work for it, but...I am very much humbled by this weekend. Still thinking.

G'night, all...I'll be back on Thanksgiving.

Vitriolic U

The Shield is significantly worse this week...for your consideration --

(Disclaimer: all below is transcribed sic.)

The defense of 'True' Science

By Ian Burleson, Staff writer

Part One

Imagine if someone today were to deny the existence of germs, the roundness of the earth, or the heliocentricity of our solar system. Suppose this person denied the credibility of science, which purports these theories, and that "true" science proves the opposite.

Would you be skeptical of this person?

Would it be consoling to know that she has a single book to back up her claims that germs do not exist, that the earth is flat, and that the sun revolves around us? Her book has not been, nor will it ever be, updated to fit our current scientific conception of how the universe works.

Does the fact that the book's teachings are eternally unchangeable ease your skepticism?

Most people these days will answer no it does not. In fact, most would--or at least should--consider the mentioned claims to be outlandish, beyond incredulous.

Interestingly, some of this debate still continues to this day among the fringe of the fringe: The Flat Earth Society and the first annual Catholic Conference on Geocentrism entitled "Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right" in South Bend, Indiana near Notre Dame University which took place last Saturday.

What have we learned from instances in history when the obviously false was Biblical doctrine. If not that we must update our model of reality in light of scientific evidence on a constant basis if we are to ever understand it?

Now fast forward a few hundred years, and the new "debate" in the forefront is between the same historical opposition: scientific evidence vs. a literal interpretation of Biblical scripture.

In our case, the theory of evolution is the subject.

The theory, as science understands it today, maintains that evolution is a natural occurrence whereby all species of life developed their vast diversity and complexity from a common single-celled ancestor through an ongoing process of genetic natural selection. Creationism asserts that an intelligent, supernatural being had to have made all things in the universe because evolutionary theory cannot account for the diversity and complexity we observe--it must have been intelligently designed.

USI has been graced by the presence of one such fellow, Marlin Goebel, who argues for the latter, claiming that true science defends the Bible--that's his slogan anyway.

Let us put aside the fact that he has no training in biology, no experience in a laboratory or in the field, and further he has no official theological tutelage. He owns his own real estate company called Goebel Commercial Reality, Inc., and so he is, in a word, a businessman.

He is here--by invitation and sponsorship from Chi Alpha--for a series of lectures to inform us that mainstream scientists have got it all wrong: the answers are in the Bible.

Does this kind of rhetoric not sound hauntingly familiar? The examples presented earlier were based on the same mode of logic.

The Bible never once mentions the existence of germs, rather it explains in Luke 13:11-13, among a long list of verses, that disease is caused by evil spirits. The Bible never once mentions the roundness of the earth, rather it explains in Daniel 4:10-11 that a sufficiently tall tree can be seen from "the earth's farthest bounds," clearly implying that the surface of the earth is flat. The Bible never once mentions that the earth orbits the sun, rather it explains in Psalm 104:5 and I Chronicles 16:30 that the earth is permanently immovable and stable in its position.

Of course these are factually incorrect statements, so it's reasonable to say that if we based our scientific knowledge on them, then we couldn't have vaccines, antibiotics, satellites or an understanding of why something as fundamental as changing seasons, or retrograde motion of other planets in the night sky, occurs.

In short, if we take the Bible at its word on issues like physics, chemistry and biology, we'd be vastly ignorant to how reality operates, and we would not have the technology and medical advances that have made our lives as relatively safe and simple as they are today.

The same applies to the theory of evolution.

As the Russian Orthodox Christian evolutionary biologist once quipped, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution."

If we blind ourselves to the reality of evolution, then explaining the foundations of biology go out the window in favor of a book which teaches us that disease is a spiritual matter, the earth is flat, and the sun revolves around us.

Part Two

We enjoy the life that scientific progress has afforded us. Taking away the fundamental pillars that allowed the progress to flourish as it did is to return us to a primitive state of ignorance.

Perhaps it's just me, but Mr. Goebel's series seems like a sully insult to the biologists and scientists on this campus who spend an enormous amount of their professional life studying all the research, theories and debate that go in their scientific domains.

In none of these domains is anything like creation even a legitimate option, not because of some gung-ho crusade against theological explanations that scientists have (indeed many of them are Christians themselves), but because none of the evidence actually points to such explanations as being the right ones.

Despite the fact that the germ theory is "just a theory," no one seems to be stripping it down, tarring and feathering it in favor of the evil spirit theory as described in the Bible. Despite the fact that even before we went to space, we verily knew that the earth must be round because of incredibly compelling experimental evidence from what was then "just a theory." We often scoff today at those who believed something so simplistic as a flat earth. Despite the fact that some were tortured and even executed for dissenting against the Church's geocentric doctrine for "just a theory" of heliocentrism--a theory first formulated in 260 BCE by Aristarchus, but was truly solidified by Copernicus in 1551 CE--we again wonder how anyone could have been so malevolently fatuous to have taken the Bible so literally in spite of the clearly presented scientific evidence.

And yet, a few hundred years later, we have a man on our campus promoting the same kind of message: couching literal Bible interpretation as "true" science, and lambasting the scientific theories which contradict the Bible as essentially works of the devil, and scientists as heretics.

I for one find it truly amazing how far we've come in terms of scientific knowledge, yet how short we've come in terms of educating our nation about how science actually works and the indispensability of the theories it often produces--such as the theory of evolution--to our everyday lives.

The consolation I find in this situation is the fact that no matter how hard the church has tried to suppress scientific knowledge in favor of literal Biblical interpretation, science has won out in the end.

I suspect Mr. Goebel's presentations are the contemporary countenance of history's long-fought battle between science and Biblical-literalism. His stance is one that our descendants will look back on with the same shameful guffaw we have when discussing the literalists of our scientifically ignorant past.

Can't we just evolve already?

insomniacal chatter

...I've been meaning to write lately - really, I have. I've started a post two nights out of the past six, only to end in a fatalistic growl. I can't write presentably when I'm tired. But I'm somehow wide awake tonight, and feeling chatty. Consider yourself warned.

Alright, I'm actually up because my stomach hurts, and I couldn't sleep anyways. It hasn't done this in a year and I've lost all my coping strategies...yes, a year! Isn't it crazy? November is my ebenezer month, in more ways than one...but that is a different conversation. Which will happen before or around Thanksgiving, I promise.

-- God is just so sweet, though! I have to say something...He's given me so much good this year. I've met many, many good people, iron-on-iron people, and then a couple of crazy people of the sort you have to keep -- you know what I mean. They are the ones who you find on a bus you walked onto by accident, the ones who you meet for coffee the next day for largely indefinable reasons. And in the middle of the second or third hour of conversation, they say something that makes you glance over quickly, skeptically, because you've been waiting forever for someone else to say that. Those people. Reasonably, we only come across a handful of those people our entire lives, and I've met a few this year, and always when I needed them. God most definitely loves us through people.

But that's another post! I'll stop now... :)

And I'm starting to tire out. So by way of summary --

Lately I've been pondering just how vocal I should be -- perhaps the lack of belligerent professors this semester has given me a little bit more distance to think. But when is it necessary to put a word in for truth, and where would I do no good and only come across as another pugnacious Christian? (I'm always surprised at their numbers and tenacity, actually...and their acute lack of love. A rant for another night.) More specifically...

I have been a faithful reader of the USI Shield since last January. It makes me feel more connected to the culture of the campus, yes, but I think I've started this new habit chiefly as a twisted, autophobic way of motivating myself in my English studies. By the time I've sloughed through the whole thing and shaken the remains of the grammatical bloodbath from my feet, I feel that it is practically my moral duty to become an English teacher, or at least circulate more coherent prose. (I don't mean to sound condescending -- the Shield has made great improvements over the past semester, expanding their content and columnists, and they do offer an accurate cross-section of USI -- they just have no grammar Nazis on staff.) I've debated writing to the editor before over some very silly opinion pieces, but an article of an entirely different nature popped up yesterday and I don't know what to do with it.

Essentially, it's a critique of a lecture series on creationism that a campus ministry, Chi Alpha, hosted over the past two months. The article is from a staff writer, highly factually inaccurate, and poorly and nastily written. (I can tack up the text if anyone wants to read it.) Part two of the article will be published next Thursday, and it may moderate this week's installment, but still -- should I write in anything? Since this is the Midwest, I imagine the Shield will receive multiple letters about these articles -- the argument itself is inevitable. But should I say something, and argue well in the firestorm, or stay out of it entirely? When am I talking for the sake of doing some good, and when am I just snapping back in offense?

Motives are so hard to decipher. (Does anyone else struggle with that?) I've been poking at mine concerning a few big decisions over the past month, and I finally came to a truce -- if I'm bathing it in prayer and constantly dialogging with the Spirit, it's alright to move ahead and do things that I know are inherently good, even if I might have selfish reasons tacked onto them. I will never know exactly what my heart wants; it's a petulant, mad mess, prone to change its mind the minute I have pinned it down. And it's hard to fix, or reason into behaving. But it is possible to just tie it to the Word and make it follow along, and then life becomes much simpler.

...it's now 3:30. I do have to work tomorrow, so I think I've written enough for tonight. It's nice to be scribbling again. :) I'll be back soon...I need to explain a few things, a few of the crazy things I love that I've been scaring everyone with lately. 'Til then.

I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, or his children begging for bread.

Psalm 37:25

Life is good, but God is better. :)

Benevolence

Sorry about the lack of new material lately -- class assignments have become slower, and the last few poems have been icky, personal things I don't want to subject you to. But I do have something new today -- I wrote this two weeks ago, in a twenty-minute exercise. It's the Lloyd Expressway. ;)

(By the way, this should be on USI's creative writing department website by the end of the week, under Best of the Workshops for April. http://www.usi.edu/libarts/english/creative.asp Exciting!)



Benevolence



You have seen them, in their old white
Neons and bulging Caravans, throttling past you
And throwing Cheerios or Ke$ha on your windshield.

You have fought them where the highway squeezes
Itself around men in orange with Plexiglas heads, where the fast
Lane is elbowed into yours twenty yards after the stoplight.

You have waited nicely
While they pitch forward, wiggling past and then rolling
Back into your bumper, tapping the brake righteously:

Their child is on the honor roll. They must obey the speed limit.
And you have thought, haven’t you,
Of tooling beside them cheerfully instead,

Window to window, and waving
Them into the fluorescent barrels, listening
For the crunch of axle on humpbacked median.

Perhaps you would stop and hold their hands afterwards,
Let them use your phone, and you should –
They are the golden retrievers of the world,

So firmly assured in the inherent goodness of man
That they don’t check the mirrors before sliding in front of you;
They leave the windows down and sing loudly like children.

So you sit at the stoplight, singsonging I can’t see you
Because they’ve plastered two hands over their eyes,
Or throwing the tennis ball again and again, and smiling.

Baggage

There was a free duffel bag

With a bank logo on the side under her bed;

Every few weeks she would pull it out

And threaten my mother with it:

Take me to the station in Fulda! I'm going

Home to Chicago on the next train!

She filled the bag with newspapers

And soft, fibrous photographs from the thirties; later that night,

When she unpacked, she was twenty years younger, visiting friends,

And greeted us graciously.

My great-grandmother would talk

To my brothers and I if we brought her pictures

Or found the concertina case in the closet. She had run

To Chicago when the Midwestern farms dried up;

She worked in a factory and spun

Wheels of meter with tap shoes each night.

Once she and her twin sister rolled out of a car

And into a ditch after they were picked up

By the mafia. We only heard stories

About the pretty lady in the sparkly dress;

I knew nothing of the man on the badge

In her drawer, Anthony Chmela, Supervisor,

The charming man who she married

After he gave her a baby, a baby who withered

Between them a few months later.

I was allowed to play her piano, stumbling after

LEDs above the forty-something plastic keys

That taught chords and melody to eight

Pre-programmed songs. She knew the words

And sang them on clear days, I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles

Or When the Saints Go Marching In. She sang another,

About a dear Augustine, in German, and I asked her

To teach me the words in English for a long time.

But she always finished the chorus back in her own language;

She would not remember anything else.

It frightened me then, the loss of control;

I never could tell her the train station was gone.

But she had the gift to sort through all the pieces

Of memory and choose which she wanted

And which to leave in the shoe box. I wish I had

That mercy time gives, wish I could only sing about

Her voice, reaching into the well-grooved German.

I cannot repack my bags to my liking yet.

Earthworks

I'm definitely unsure on the title...I hate titles!
Turned this in today -- I'll probably know what everyone thinks by next Tuesday. Good reviews on Antecedent!


Earthworks


I was seven when my cat died.
He was a werewolf, hunting
In his lunacy for a chunk of days,
Then returning to sleep on my lap
For a week. I read him Where the Wild Things Are.
One October he came from the woods
Dragging his dead hind legs, meowling.
I touched his head, terrified; he growled.
We bolstered him in rugs on the garage floor, left
Tins of vinegar-sweet canned meat
Beside his thrashing slow-mo head.
I stood on a bucket outside the window to watch
So I could not smell him rotting from the spine out.
We buried him in a paper grocery sack
That proclaimed its own virtue – No need
For double bagging! But we did
Anyways, wrapped his coffin a second time,
And my dad took it out to the woods with a shovel.
I followed warily from my room with binoculars, a blanket
Buffering my face.

Two months ago, in the rain, I saw
The face of a girl on a billboard, a girl
Someone had missed. She was beautiful.
I sat in my car at the stoplight and stared
At her set dimples and washed-out blond eyebrows.
She perched outside my windshield, smiling
As she did for all the Dateline specials, in the perpetually knelling
Too-personal slideshows – senior portrait, with infant daughter, last Thanksgiving.
She left in a provocative neon fade
Like a pomegranate thrown against the wall,
Sliding down smooth and terrible color, its own
Purple blood dropping slowly, delectable, on its head.

My wipers started, a horn barked, and I touched
The gas pedal. As the glass was mopped clear, I rolled
Under her face and glanced up again. I only smelled
Formaldehyde, and clicked the wipers off
To let the rain ebb between us.

Socialist U

...or just indignant naivety. Here, from this week's edition of the USI student newspaper --

"...today's companies and corporations are using [the economy] to their advantage to swiftly and carelessly 'screw' over their lower level employees."

"It's still every man for himself out there, and it's taking the good will towards our fellow man out of the concept for a healthy society."

"Let's not focus so much on profit as much as we do on actually working towards a better future for everyone and letting our services and employees both be the best they possibly can be, as we always hear from said small businesses, but never really see."


...and this from the pen of a staff writer, not a letter to the editor. I could make a comment on how vague, PC, anemic writers have bleak prospects in any free market society (and the USI Shield certainly could use a steroid shot or two), but I won't be petty...just thought it was funny, and likely accurate. This is the way my generation thinks. Comments, anyone?

sounding

Hey, Joel. I'm finally posting the poetry for you. :)

This is the piece I wrote last Wednesday -- I ought to be churning one out per week from prompts in our textbook. The subject we were nudged towards was (guess!) family, and I had no trouble with that, but I'm not utterly happy with the quality...it was too easy. Read it aloud, and tell me if you can hear it. Or perhaps it's just incomplete -- when I planned it out, this was only the intro, but I ran too long-winded. I have so many things to write on, but they don't fit on a single page!

Oh -- and in class, I got an idea for an amazing piece on Grandma Linda, and an image of her stuffing five-year-old newspapers to take home to Chicago -- remember that? Couldn't that make something nearly as pathetic and dully horrifying as dementia? Maybe next week...



Antecedent


She catches me in a moment of quiet, wanders
Carelessly in from the kitchen to snatch
A seat next to me. She plants a coffee cup claim on the table
Like a flag; I start at the bright black clink and glance up at my grandmother.
She smiles down to me.

She sends me unwinding about roommates and ethics and algebra,
Leaning one elbow among plates
Still globbed with Wal-Mart-blue icing and half-burnt candles.
Her age-purpled eyes flutter off to another room, where the voices
Of five children wheel in ribbons, dancing and dizzying each other
Until they collapse onto the floor, breathless from sugar-spangled happiness.

The youngest sings out, “Chocolate cake is
Superior!” and vaults over the couch arm.
She laughs, low and quick as pebbles
In a jar. When she turns back to me,
Her eyes are twined up at the corners;
They pat my hand, wile words from my mouth. My face
Mirrors hers, all hills and valleys, with the same sudden
Open-arms reflex, the same gratuitous love
Blinking out. My nose crinkles, too;
I smile up to her.



Then this next is from two weeks ago...if the metaphor/subject matter confuses you, just go upstairs and open my closet door. And come back and read it again -- it'll all make sense. Or, rather, it'll all make sense except the title -- I don't really like it, either. I apologize for that, and the point of the poem, too...but it's exorcism, and it does help...



Staking Out


I am cleaning house, sweeping
My life into Rubbermaid buckets
To carry elsewhere. Dusting.
There are fountains of dead
Flowers along the cedar chest; the sharp petals
Of a chrysanthemum have dropped, remembered
Like teeth after a fist. They gum to the dust.
I scrape it all into my hand,
Brushing shards off over the trash can. Some vases
I set by the door to throw out; others
Will sit on the closet shelf until I come back,
Sit in front of the picture frames. If I am thorough
In my journey, when I return,
I will only find topsoil.



...love you, brother! And I promise to attempt to make this a regular thing...just keep reminding me.
(And if anyone else actually reads this [Bryce?], I appreciate your time, too!)