Tag Archives: God

April 23, 2013 · 7:33 am

Poetry Tuesday: “Love. What Is This Word?”

Latte Heart

Got your coffee?  A cup of tea?   Here we go.

So the conversation begins (see yesterday’s post) with a sampling of my tetrameter (eight syllables per line, roughly) musings, a discipline I’ve continued each morning for over a year now.   I’ve decided to ignore whether or not these writings can properly be called poetry.   They are what they are, and I’d love to publish a bunch of them someday.  We’ll see.

This from a few days ago (picked almost at random for this post, the riffing coming after I’d chosen it), reflecting on the way we use the words “love” and “hate” in our language.   I think it’s hard to hear what people mean by the words they use.    The lack of nuance in these English words provides enormous opportunity for misunderstanding, murky feeling and thinking, and sometimes, manipulation.    These days, when people use the words “love” and “hate” in popular culture and in social media, my radar tends to wobble over toward curiosity and suspicion, wondering just what they mean, and I’m often sad to realize “love” and “hate” are being used–sincerely, most of the time–strategically, as rhetorical devices in some sort of power battle over policy.  Who most persuasively defines the popular meanings of the word “love” and “hate” holds the moral high ground.

Love.
What is this word?
Swelling of  heart and tear ducts
When hunger looks at we well-fed
And we, full of pity, feel sad?
Or need we feel at all to love?
A hand offered in bitter hate,
The hate made all of feeling rage,
But the mind o’ercomes it and bends,
And the muscle of the hand moves,
Out stretches itself, and lifts up,
And love and hate live together,
And the lift is all that matters.
Is it true of all hating, too?
Such warmth in our breasts for poor folk,
But eat we on, the muscle staying put,
Nothing stretching out, not at all,
And the poor, so appreciative,
So respectful of our warm glow,
Die as we shake our heads, all sorrow.
What are feelings that they serve us?
Action is the coin of the realm.
The kingdom of God does not bend
To mere emotional sweat, but
Works day after day, in all hope,
Against despair–Oh, poor feeling, that–
Believing goodness and thick joy
Will one day stretch out like that hand,
That muscle, and we will no more be torn.
Love of heart and love of muscle,
Love of first move and love of work,
Love of touch and hand and kiss,
And love of giving up our lives,
Knowing  we cannot keep them.
To hold the fist tight is to lose,
To die, to forget, to never love.
How severed at heart and soul’s joint,
And only Easter seasons heal,
Though we won’t know it until then,
Until death rolls us in its grip
And we fly to whatever waits.

Empaths value feeling.   Workers value action.   Muscle and heart go together, don’t you think?   What we do is our heart, and if we say we love, describing sincere feeling, sincere inclination of the heart, and yet we do not love, at least as understood by the loved, then which is true?  Do we love or not?  Have we loved or not?  Who gets to say?

If you’re wondering what I meant when I said “love” in the sentences before this, you may be getting the point.

Why is this such a big deal?   Because “love” is at the core of things.   God is love, we say.   Oh, no, he’s not, say others.  This is love.  No, this is love. If you loved me, you would do this.  If you loved me, you would feel this.  You would do this to show me you felt this.   And if the notion of God loving us is the big idea behind so much religious thinking (not only in Christianity, but other faiths as well), it seems to me it matters what we mean.

And, I suppose, for me, in the end, sadness creeps in when I realize that folks who originally sought love, trying to understand at a deep level, often get lost and end up shouting and warring, metal and/or linguistic guns at the ready.   How odd that we must war for love.

How odd that we must war for love.  

And of course, if we must war, people who sit thinking about these things while the battle rages make for easy pickings.   “Nice guys finish last” comes to mind.

“Move soldier, there’s a war on.”   

 

 

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September 18, 2012 · 8:12 am

Poetry Tuesday: He Lifts The Elegant Lid

Poetry Tuesday…I’ve told a few people how I’ve been throwing down lines of tetrameter since Ash Wednesday.   What if Tuesdays here became “Poetry Tuesday”?  No comment, just some lines for the perusal of whoever wants to wander by?

Sure, why not?   The following was my entry from about three weeks ago.   Enjoy…

HE LIFTS THE ELEGANT LID

He lifts the elegant lid,

This one, he likes, especially,

Particular to its grasses.

Snow enchants him, and skiers too.

Gatherings of friends around fires,

Ant farms and farmers, and tall corn.

He wants a game to be played well,

Just for the hell of it, and more.

Laughter eases the suffering–

In fact, nothing else will do it.

Certain toddlers catch his eye,

Over and over he wants them,

To be with them, praying they’ll visit,

Spend time, perhaps even speak to him.

He’d love to tell them how much love

He has for thunder, rain, and storm,

How they thrill him in the morning.

He likes ice water, supple shadow,

And cotton curtains easing out,

Encouraged by afternoon breeze

To let in light, and simply breathe.

He likes lips, too, the feel of prayer

Moving across them, scent on skin.

Thoughts are not his favorite

But to see motion, muscling play,

Is to induce near giddiness,

Seraphs jumping, crying, “Holy!”

© 2012 Jeff Berryman

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September 17, 2012 · 9:53 am

Throwing in the Towel

I don’t want to talk about God anymore.

I don’t know how honest I can be here, but I resonate so much with Peter Rollins words in How (Not) To Speak of God.   In the introduction, he quotes Ludwig Wittgenstein: “What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence.”  He juxtaposes this notion with an idea that he took from his time in what he calls the evangelical charismatic movement.  “God is the one subject of whom we must never stop speaking.”   So he ends up with this mashup of thoughts:

That which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop speaking.  – Peter Rollins.   How (Not) To Speak of God

For whatever reason, thoughts of God run me over every day.

One of the actresses in a play I’m currently acting in, (Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers, the next play opening at Taproot Theatre) recently joined a long line of folks from my past when she reflected that almost anything was an opportunity for me to begin “waxing philosophical.”

Frankly, I’d just as soon stop.

Obviously, the previous sentence is a lie.

I’m throwing in the towel.

As I wrote about a month ago, the feeling of being overwhelmed has short-circuited the blog.  I’ve been spitting out unrhymed tetrameter ninety-to-nothing for months now, but when it came to constructing coherent, linear thoughts about the things that interest me in terms of spirituality, God, creation, art, and beauty, well…I’ve become far more reluctant to “wax philosophical” than I used to be.

I wonder what would happen if I just laid out the questions here.   Along with the admission that finding answers to them isn’t really the game anymore.   I can read C.S. Lewis and he’ll give me really good constructions and pretty amazing insights, as will N.T. Wright.   Have I got time to put those guys up against the Marcus Borg camp, and do I really think I have the intellectual tools to logic my way through the conundrums and baffling inconsistencies?  Does the deep mystery of life really yield to an Enlightenment reading of a Middle Eastern collection of sacred texts spun out over several thousand years?   And is all that what will determine how we find God in this life, what we mentally assent to, whether we buy it in the deepest bones we’ve got?

But I want to have conversation about this stuff.   To talk, to write, to wonder, to think.   My personal credo begins with “We are not alone.”  And I hold to that.  What is the nature of our togetherness, though, we and the One whose being and presence defines our “not-alone-ness”?   And here’s what I think I’ve finally figured out: sitting here thinking about it solves nothing, and yields less.

So here come the words.    Talking about God again, or the loss of Him (see Insurrection, Peter Rollings again), and hopefully, more about the world, and the sheer love of the place.

Sure, I’ve heard that before…

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August 11, 2012 · 4:31 pm

On Being Overwhelmed

I haven’t been blogging because I haven’t known what to say.

I still don’t.

There are multiple conversations in culture that demand attention (just cruise your Flipboard for awhile), and to most of them, I simply say this:  I don’t know the answers to the questions we’re facing.

But not long ago, I read a post over at Stephen Pressfield’s blog that accused folks like me of simple cowardice.  Ouch.  To be an artist is to choose a point of view and go after it.    To sit on the fence on anything is to have a yellow streak.  Choose what you think and get on with it.  The writer went on to say that if you don’t choose where you stand on issues, you won’t have anything to say. There’s also the famous enjoinder that reminds us that all it takes for evil to triumph in the world is for good people to do nothing.

And this blog has been silent.

****

I can’t tell if I’m experiencing a storm, a carnival, or some variation of the two.  A storm-like carnival, a carnival in a storm, or a carnival-like storm…who knows?  All I know is that there’s a lot of stuff—dark and beautiful—whirling around.  And we’re all pointing and saying, “Look at that!”  Not only “Look at that” but also, “Let me tell you the truth about that.”   I watch smart, articulate people I know hold court among friends conversing on a particular topic, and as they speak with conviction and clarity, I wonder, “Why aren’t you as overwhelmed as I am?”

****

Here’s what’s whirling in our carnival storm: theology, philosophy, biblical studies, world religion, archeology, symbology, psychology, biology, physics, economics, sociology, neurology and brain studies, sexuality, politics, issues of justice, entertainment, creativity, art, ecology, fiction and literature, poetry, theatre, music, popular mass media, media criticism, history, aesthetics, phenomenology, and…the list goes on.

To say it more simply, what’s whirling are our ideas about what it means to be human, and just what it is that constitutes “the good.”

 ****

A conversation with a very smart friend of mine recently reminded me that I have traveled further down the postmodern path than I ever thought I would.  He mused that perhaps the kind of Christian you became might depend on whether you read the book of Hebrews before you read the book of Romans, or the other way around.  We were talking about atonement theories (exactly how Christ’s crucifixion paves the way for reconciliation with God), and his simple statement reflected my current thinking that so much of what (and how) we think and feel is determined by more factors than we can get our heads around.   It can be as simple as the order in which you encounter bits of information that you eventually come to hold as your most sacred thoughts.

Genetics, the nurture of our family of origin, the specific time of history into which we are born, our economics, our social circles, our exposure to ideas in all domains of human learning and enterprise, our various degrees of intelligence and giftedness, our educational opportunities, our emotional structures and the various ways in which all these lenses are put together to create dynamically changing ways in which we see the world.   And finally, add to it the notion that we are story-telling creatures by nature, and that the brain may not care whether the stories are true or not, and suddenly, deciding where to put your feet down becomes a bit dicey.

All this is to say that the latest version of what one colleague once termed my “ongoing tortured self” (“If Jeff isn’t tortured about something, he isn’t Jeff”) feels more serious than most.   If all those categories of human activity and study listed above are thought of tectonic plates…well, you know what happens when tectonic plates start shifting.

At the end of the day, the starting place is simply this: we are limited, and what we know will always be dwarfed by what we don’t know.   There isn’t much to do about that.  It’s in the design of things.  That is not to say we can’t know anything—there are in fact, amazing things to know and be sure of, but that list of “knowable” things is, in itself, mysterious, and up for much debate.    Will I ever know anything with enough certainty that I will shout down those who disagree with veins popping in my neck?

I doubt it.

****

I begin each day with a meditation on the nature of God, and as Peter Rollins reflects on in How (Not) to Speak of God, I’ve ended up not wanting to say anything.  He quotes philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his introduction: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”   Sometimes the not speaking is about knowing your own ignorance, and sometimes its about awe, but either way, no words will come.

That being said, it’s time to start speaking again, though as always with me, it’s going to be mostly questions asked, not declarations made.

Wondering what inspiration means…

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January 23, 2012 · 11:12 am

Wes Odell (1949-2012)

When I got the word that Wes had slipped over to the other side of things  (one of the ways I like to think of death), the force with which my stomach leapt into my throat surprised me.  I haven’t talked to him in so long, but the tears came immediately, and I instantly remembered how much I cherished this man.

I remember so much of the kind of man he was: his spirit, his heart, his passion, his courage, his sense of humor, and his humility and kindness.   But the first thing that comes to mind is his infectious laugh.   Wes, my old friend, teacher, and mentor (though he probably didn’t know I still think of him that way) from Abilene, died last Friday, and as always in these kinds of moments, I’m just amazed that he’s gone.   I’ll miss him, though we weren’t close over the last decade.   Life has a way of moving on, and Wes and I fell had fallen out of contact, but as I said, when I got the news, his presence flooded into my awareness all over again.

Wes had passion, and open-heartedness that mixed with a crinkly, ever-bearded smile.   Witty, bawdy at times, and effervescent with mischief and good humor sure enough, “Mr. Odell” could be tough, anger flashing, backbone strong.   It was a good mix for a teacher, and as I read through his obituary this morning, it’s obvious that those skills kept serving young people in more recent years.   I took some sort of humanities class in high school from Mr. Odell, and I remember him encouraging and challenging us, somehow making room for us to do the work we were capable of.   Laughing one minute, fuming the next, it was obvious how deeply he cared about his students.

Later, I went to work for Wes at Child’s Play, an upscale children’s toy store with all sorts of educational and progressive goodies, and we got to know each better.  He moved from teacher to boss and then on to friend, and I increasingly began to look forward to the time we’d spend together stocking or doing inventory, putting together a swing-set at a customer’s home, setting up a large scale train around the base of a customer’s Christmas tree, or playing nerf basketball when customers weren’t around.   He told me jokes I remember to this day (one in particular that I just can’t bring myself to repeat out loud, but if I let Wes tell me again in my mind’s eye, I bust out laughing just like I did the first time he told it), but it wasn’t the jokes that struck me—it was always the delight he got in telling them.  (In my mind’s eye, we laugh together.)  I remember his remarkably small hands making the Baylor Bear claw, and the giggle that came right after the growl.   I remember his eyebrows rising when he became frustrated or angry—maybe sales were off for that month or one of the suppliers hadn’t delivered on time, and I remember so well the light that would come chasing back into those eyes the minute LeMoyne (his wife) or Ketrin or Lauren (his daughters) come through the door.   I came to cherish Wes enough that when it came time for Anjie and I to marry, I asked Wes to be one of my groomsmen, and he graciously accepted.   I was thrilled to have him standing with me that day.

And then there was his beautiful wife LeMoyne.   To this day, LeMoyne remains one of the most singularly delightful people I have ever known.    I loved her forthrightness, her doggedness, and her great energy and spirit, and from the few times we’ve spoken over the years since the days at Child’s Play, that spirit seems so resilient still.   These have no doubt been hard, hard days for LeMoyne (and Ketrin and Lauren), and that great spirit of hers is leaning in grief just now.   All of us who knew Wes are leaning under the weight of that grief alongside her.  The memorial service was this morning, and seeing that I was a couple of thousand miles away, I thought, I’ll just have my own little time of remembering, and write a bit about my friend Wes, and what he brought to my life.

The world will miss him.   We will miss what I call his Wes-ness.   That would make him laugh.  I can hear him now.

I trust the grace of God in these moments.  It’s’ all I know to do.   Trust.

Go in grace and peace, Wes.   Rest…

 

 

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