(Note: I don't mean to inundate y'all with blog posts, and I would wait a few weeks to post this if it wasn't so very much of this precise moment. Anyways... here goes.)
Today it was supposed to rain. I like rain. Don’t get me wrong, I hate being wet. I don’t like it when my feet are moist for weeks on end, the only reprieve from damp socks being my daily shower. But, I do like rain. Rain cleans things. It’s nature’s maid. Rain sweeps all the cigarette butts into the storm drains, and transfigures dust into clay. This city always looks best in the rain. Every surface is shiny. Everything glistens. Hats come back in style, and umbrellas create little mobile pods of bearable sidewalk. There’s more of an excuse to stay inside, turn up the heat, turn down the lights, cocoon. And, it was supposed to rain today.
It didn’t. There were sprinkles here and there, but instead of the heavy washing that this city so desperately needs, the entire day has been filled with regular upward glances at a dark grey sky, pregnant with torrent, but refusing to push.
In my house in the weeks before a new baby comes it’s like Christmas. Not the day, the season. And the Christmas season sucks. The Church ladies organize who will bring the meals for the first weeks with the same Machiavellian tenacity they employ in casting the nativity play. The diapers are stacked by the bassinet with care in hopes that new life soon will be there. There is a glorious, wonderful, miraculous thing. And it’s coming. It’s coming, it really is. Now, go help your father test the baby monitors.
This city dies every summer. The grass goes away, and the tourists swarm like maggots over our overheated arterial routes. We live in a fever dream. Everything familiar dries up, and this city resembles itself the way a grape resembles a raisin. We stop taking vitamin D supplements. We sit outside on purpose, and we swim. In the Pacific Ocean. Like crazy people. This city loses its mind, its heart gets confused, and it dies.
When the baby is days away a certain kind of quiet settles in the house. It’s the quiet of a compressed spring; a cocked gun; a firecracker, wick lit. In these few days, emotions are closer to the surface. Little disruptions turn into World War Mom. Little absurdities produce giggling fits that last for an hour. Tears come easy. Every moment is overwhelming, but not quite real. The real thing is coming. So very soon.
When the fall comes, and the tourists leave, and the students come back, the city pauses and waits for the water to break. Who will we be this year? Will we band together over another Snowpocalypse? Will we find another reason to distrust our police? Will we finally admit that Portland is winning the great hipster war of the early 21st century? Our minds fill with expectant questions, and we begin to prepare. We close the flue. We put the storm windows back on. We bring the hats and coats out of the closet. Our ever-growing, beloved sweater collection once more sees the cloud-filtered light of day. We stop flirting with the various iced and blended coffee drinks and return to our staple lattés and americanos. We are waiting to be reborn in the rain.
It was supposed to happen today, but it didn’t. Maybe tomorrow.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
A Letter to Kimberly Smith (Assignment)
This letter was assigned as a response to this book:
The prompt was "Write a letter to Kimberly Smith, the author of Passport Through Darkness that reflects on what you have learned about faith, hope, and love through her story. It is meant to be a significant reflection on what this book compels you to consider about how one lives out faith, hope, and love and the cost for doing so."
Dear Kimberly Smith,
When I picked up your book, I was expecting to trudge through yet another artifact of Christian pulp. I was expecting to read stories about miraculous healings, knowing that the unhealed were omitted. I was expecting to find allusions to hardships, but nothing more emotionally difficult than I would find in my aunt’s Daily Inspiration for Christian Mothers devotional. I was very wrong. Before I continue any further I must apologize for judging your book based on my prejudices, and I must thank you for allowing me (along with however many other people have read this book) to follow along with you, vicariously encountering a kind of darkness that most of us have only heard of in whispered implications in newspaper headlines.
A bit of my story: I grew up wanting to be a missionary. This desire led to the consumption of enough Christian pulp novels to make a body sick. As I grew older I began to see a distinction between the stories that missionaries told in their books and powerpoint presentations, and the stories they told when you got them alone. In 2009 I was given the opportunity to interview a number of missionaries all around SE Asia, and my suspicions were confirmed. Suffering for Christ feels the same as suffering for anything else. Depression on the mission field is just as debilitating as depression at home. Thirst, hunger, grief, pain, death; these things do not become more bearable or less penetrating because a person carries a Christian standard. This is the secret that the missionaries imparted to me, and this is the secret that much of the Church simply isn’t interested in.
The Church wants those it sends out to come back with stories like the ones in Acts, which is to say stories they’ve heard before, stories that take place in a different kind of place and time entirely, stories that have already been interpreted by other people in ways that make us feel good, Christian pulp. And, although my cynicism must be coming through quite clearly, I cannot blame them. Although nothing in your book was new to me in a technical sense, it was a very hard thing to read. I live in the information age and my generation is especially awareness-minded. I knew what was out there in the darkness. Thing is, it’s much harder to know who is out there in the darkness. Not cognitively, but emotionally, relationally. It’s hard to see the faces of suffering innocents. It’s hard to hold someone else’s story and feel helpless.
The Church wants its Christian pulp because the truth is hard. We want our faith, hope, and love without the difficulty. We want the light of the world without the uncomprehending darkness. I really get it. Christ would be much easier to accept if he had expelled death and pain from existence, rather than dying painfully. Your story has reaffirmed what I have suspected about the truth of the Gospel. That it is a deadly thing; that the love of Christ, when lived into by Christians, can and will lead us to torture and death the same as it did Christ. Love drives us into the gates of Hell, or the darkness, or the depths of human suffering. Whatever you call it, we cannot go there voluntarily without the imperative of love. Once in the darkness, it seems like we are stripped of everything safe and comforting. All we have left are these ideals: the imperative of love, the bold foolishness of hope, the brief respite of faith.
If we are confronted with the true cost of our faith we must feel pain that is not our own and make it a part of ourselves. We must be confronted by faces that we spend so much energy hiding from and identify with their tears. Who in their right mind wants that? Who in their right mind willingly gives up comfort and wealth for pain and poverty? Who in their right mind hears a man say, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have eternal life” (John 6:54, New International Version) and bases a life on this man’s teaching? We people of faith, we are not in our right mind. “For the word of the cross is foolishness” (1 Corinthians 1:18)…
This may sound nihilistic. I do not intend it to be. If I do sound defeated it is only because, in light of the emotional impact of your book, I only continue because I believe that God is good. This truly is foolishness “to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God” (Ibid). Perhaps none of us can only truly live out a life worthy of the title “Christian” except exclusively by the power of God.
I do not know what to do with a story of such pain except to hold it. I do not know how to act out in love except by weeping. I do not know how to hope except by crying out against injustice. I do not know how to maintain my faith except by lamenting God’s inaction. And yet, I am inactive as anyone else. I find myself waiting for injustice to come into my world before I act. I can wait no longer. I must do something, I just don’t know what. In the meantime, I will read your story and I will cry. I will try to hold the pain that I see. I will try to hold tight to the faith, hope, and love that will kill me, as it killed my master. I will look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. This will sustain me, foolish though it may be.
Tyson J. Conner
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Dear Kimberly Smith,
When I picked up your book, I was expecting to trudge through yet another artifact of Christian pulp. I was expecting to read stories about miraculous healings, knowing that the unhealed were omitted. I was expecting to find allusions to hardships, but nothing more emotionally difficult than I would find in my aunt’s Daily Inspiration for Christian Mothers devotional. I was very wrong. Before I continue any further I must apologize for judging your book based on my prejudices, and I must thank you for allowing me (along with however many other people have read this book) to follow along with you, vicariously encountering a kind of darkness that most of us have only heard of in whispered implications in newspaper headlines.
A bit of my story: I grew up wanting to be a missionary. This desire led to the consumption of enough Christian pulp novels to make a body sick. As I grew older I began to see a distinction between the stories that missionaries told in their books and powerpoint presentations, and the stories they told when you got them alone. In 2009 I was given the opportunity to interview a number of missionaries all around SE Asia, and my suspicions were confirmed. Suffering for Christ feels the same as suffering for anything else. Depression on the mission field is just as debilitating as depression at home. Thirst, hunger, grief, pain, death; these things do not become more bearable or less penetrating because a person carries a Christian standard. This is the secret that the missionaries imparted to me, and this is the secret that much of the Church simply isn’t interested in.
The Church wants those it sends out to come back with stories like the ones in Acts, which is to say stories they’ve heard before, stories that take place in a different kind of place and time entirely, stories that have already been interpreted by other people in ways that make us feel good, Christian pulp. And, although my cynicism must be coming through quite clearly, I cannot blame them. Although nothing in your book was new to me in a technical sense, it was a very hard thing to read. I live in the information age and my generation is especially awareness-minded. I knew what was out there in the darkness. Thing is, it’s much harder to know who is out there in the darkness. Not cognitively, but emotionally, relationally. It’s hard to see the faces of suffering innocents. It’s hard to hold someone else’s story and feel helpless.
The Church wants its Christian pulp because the truth is hard. We want our faith, hope, and love without the difficulty. We want the light of the world without the uncomprehending darkness. I really get it. Christ would be much easier to accept if he had expelled death and pain from existence, rather than dying painfully. Your story has reaffirmed what I have suspected about the truth of the Gospel. That it is a deadly thing; that the love of Christ, when lived into by Christians, can and will lead us to torture and death the same as it did Christ. Love drives us into the gates of Hell, or the darkness, or the depths of human suffering. Whatever you call it, we cannot go there voluntarily without the imperative of love. Once in the darkness, it seems like we are stripped of everything safe and comforting. All we have left are these ideals: the imperative of love, the bold foolishness of hope, the brief respite of faith.
If we are confronted with the true cost of our faith we must feel pain that is not our own and make it a part of ourselves. We must be confronted by faces that we spend so much energy hiding from and identify with their tears. Who in their right mind wants that? Who in their right mind willingly gives up comfort and wealth for pain and poverty? Who in their right mind hears a man say, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have eternal life” (John 6:54, New International Version) and bases a life on this man’s teaching? We people of faith, we are not in our right mind. “For the word of the cross is foolishness” (1 Corinthians 1:18)…
This may sound nihilistic. I do not intend it to be. If I do sound defeated it is only because, in light of the emotional impact of your book, I only continue because I believe that God is good. This truly is foolishness “to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God” (Ibid). Perhaps none of us can only truly live out a life worthy of the title “Christian” except exclusively by the power of God.
I do not know what to do with a story of such pain except to hold it. I do not know how to act out in love except by weeping. I do not know how to hope except by crying out against injustice. I do not know how to maintain my faith except by lamenting God’s inaction. And yet, I am inactive as anyone else. I find myself waiting for injustice to come into my world before I act. I can wait no longer. I must do something, I just don’t know what. In the meantime, I will read your story and I will cry. I will try to hold the pain that I see. I will try to hold tight to the faith, hope, and love that will kill me, as it killed my master. I will look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. This will sustain me, foolish though it may be.
Tyson J. Conner
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Excerpt From My Class Notes
We were assigned to write out a "Psalm of Complaint" about something in particular that we wanted to lament to God.
Nothing is hidden from you, oh God. But, why do you hide the truth from your people? Why do you let lies spread like a blanket over a pile of shit? We can smell. We can remember it, but we cannot show it to the world.
Why does the despot retain his throne? You have taken the jewels from his crown, and most of his kingdom is scattered. But still he retains his castle. Still he presides over an impoverished and diseased realm.
Reveal the Truth! Overthrow the haughty scholar. I am daily reminded of their bold injustice. Remind them, my God, of me!
Do not let the tears of your children go untended. Do not let the blood of your daughter go unavenged. Remember us. Make them remember us.
Nothing is hidden from you, oh God. But, why do you hide the truth from your people? Why do you let lies spread like a blanket over a pile of shit? We can smell. We can remember it, but we cannot show it to the world.
Why does the despot retain his throne? You have taken the jewels from his crown, and most of his kingdom is scattered. But still he retains his castle. Still he presides over an impoverished and diseased realm.
Reveal the Truth! Overthrow the haughty scholar. I am daily reminded of their bold injustice. Remind them, my God, of me!
Do not let the tears of your children go untended. Do not let the blood of your daughter go unavenged. Remember us. Make them remember us.
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