in the pendulum’s embrace.

i have been a little concerned recently with this realization, that there is something about our generation that deems it necessary to “reinvent the wheel” when it comes to mankind’s relationship to/with G-D.  often i hear language that verges on relativistic and universalist coming from the mouths/blogs/whatever of my friends, seeking an alternative to the stale history of our faith.  i almost don’t blame them.  the past 150 years of christianity have been plagued by legalism and an abject loss of true RELATIONSHIP with the Father.  i have heard it said that we are in a time of “the church of laodaecia”; neither hot nor cold.

yet i think in our search for truth and meaning in a sea of corruption, we have so far flung ourselves to the other side that we cease to acknowledge our spiritual ancestry, and from it, glean the reality of G-D.  i think this is found in no better place than our varied definitions of the word “love”, and all it encompasses.  it also permeates our understanding of faith/heart vs. law/works, and we begin to embrace the concept of grace so readily as to neglect our responsibility to live lives that please the Lord.

we cannot neglect those saints that have come before us.  despite all the [many] dark moments in christian history, we strive to maintain our covenant with G-D, and we must look to those who have come before for their guidance.  faith matters, when coupled with the things that we do.  ”love” is a concrete term.  let’s begin to rework this search to be a search for TRUTH, devoid of reactionary spirit.  amen.

existential hypothetical.

three men come to a ravine. they need to cross to the other side. let’s say that two of the men decide to try to jump across. the first man jumps and misses it by three feet. the second man tries to jump, and misses the other side by three inches.

question one: who is the better man?

the third man looks around, and glimpses a small rope bridge a few hundred feet from where they were standing. he walks over to the bridge, crosses it, and comes to the other side of the ravine. he lives happily ever after.

question two: who is the better man of the three?

this man did not build the bridge. it has always been there, he just happened to be the one to see it. now, let’s consider that the third man is a serial killer.

question three: who is the better man now?

question four: can the third man consider himself a better person than the other two because he found the bridge?

please consider.

Sundaland

long time since i wrote anything in this space, so there is much to update in the way of music.

 

the new album is entitled “sundaland”, and i have the music just about finished.  there is a small tour in the works for mid-march, you can find all the info about that here.  in a nutshell, the album is a story of a robot who [for reasons i don't really care about] is thrust back in time about 13,000 years ago to the tiny island of flores, in the south pacific.  now, at this point in time there apparently existed a tiny race of people scientists are calling homo floresiensis, or “hobbits” for fun.  the story is about the interactions between these two entities, but i’m hoping it will explore a larger concept about what it is that makes us human, as seen through the eyes of two creatures at opposite ends of the argument.  i know i said i’d never do a concept record, but there you go.

i think what interests me about this fictional tale is the juxtaposition of the cold, singular future and the ancient, pre-societal interdependence that we have nearly lost.  even our ancestors and evolutionary cousins understood the necessity of  togetherness better than we do now.  i guess the question is, as we “advance” the race through technology, are we losing that very thing that makes us human?  are we losing the essence of what G-D called us to be?

plus, i really love robots.

anyway, this project has led to many great conversations with friends, a lot of fantastic reading and study [asimov, wikipedia, u.s. robotics, etc], and quite a bit of contemplation.  i believe that musically this is the best thing i have done yet.  i know, everybody says that about each new album, but even removed from the conceptual weight of the story, i think i am becoming a better musician in every aspect.  everything is demoed and set, next will be recording other instruments and people, which i haven’t done since “megafauna”, almost two years ago. there will be drums, guitar, choir, real piano, and whatever else might be lying around.  my friend luke is illustrating the album, which is a big deal considering i’ve done all my design in every band i’ve been in until now.  but he is absolutely incredible.  here’s the poster for the tour:

very excited.  anyway, much more to do.  G-D is good, the only pure goodness we have.  my love to you all.

ryan.

come, holy spirit!

Come, O true light!
Come, O eternal life!
Come, O hidden mystery!
Come, O indescribable treasure!
Come, O ineffable thing!
Come, O inconceivable person!
Come, O endless delight!
Come, O unsetting light!
Come, O true and fervent expectation
of all those who will be saved!
Come, O rising of those who lie down!
Come, O resurrection of the dead!
Come, O powerful one,
who always creates and re-creates and transforms
by your will alone!
Come, O invisible and totally intangible and untouchable!
Come, O you who always remain immobile
and at each moment move all,
and come to us, who lie in hades,
you who are above all heavens.
Come, O desirable and legendary name,
which is completely impossible for us
to express what you are or to know your nature.
Come, O eternal joy!
Come, O unwithering wreath!
Come, O purple of the great king our God!
Come, O crystalline cincture,
studded with precious stones!
Come, O inaccessible sandal!
Come, O royal robe
and truly imperial right hand!
Come, you whom my wretched soul
has desired and does desire!
Come, you who alone go to the lonely
for as you see I am lonely!
Come, you who have separated me from everything
and made me solitary in this world!
Come, you who have become yourself desire in me,
who have made me desire you,
the absolutely inaccessible one!
Come, O my breath and life!
Come, O consolation of my humble soul!
Come, O my joy, my glory, and my endless delight!
I thank you that you have become one spirit with me,
without confusion, without mutation,
without transformation, you the God of all;
and that you have become everything for me,
inexpressible and perfectly gratuitous nourishment,
which ever flows to the lips of my soul
and gushes out into the fountain of my heart,
dazzling garment which burns the demons,
purification which bathes me
with these imperishable and holy tears,
that your presence brings to those whom you visit.
I give you thanks that for me
you have become unsetting light
and non-declining sun;
for you who fill the universe with your glory
have nowhere to hide yourself.
No, you have never hidden yourself from anyone
but we are the ones who always hide from you,
by refusing to go to you;
but then, where would you hide,
you who nowhere find the place of your repose?
Why would you hide,
you who do not turn away from a single creature,
who do not reject a single one?
Today, then, O Master,
come pitch your tent with me;
until the end, make your home
and live continually, inseparably within me,
your slave, O most-kind one,
that I also may find myself again in you,
at my departure from this world
and after my departure may I reign with you,
O God who are above everything.
O Master, stay and do not leave me alone,
so that my enemies,
arriving unexpectedly,
they who are always seeking to devour my soul,
may find you living within me
and that they may take flight,
in defeat, powerless against me,
seeing you, O more powerful than everything,
installed interiorly in the home of my poor soul.
Yea, O Master, just as you remembered me,
when I was in the world
and, in the midst of my ignorance,
you chose me and separated me from this world
and set me before your glorious face,
so now keep me interiorly,
by your dwelling within me,
forever upright, resolute;
that by perpetually seeing you,
I, the corpse, may live;
that by possessing you,
I, the beggar, may always be rich,
richer than kings;
that by eating you and by drinking you,
by putting you on at each moment,
I go from delight to delight
in inexpressible blessings;
for it is You, who are all good and
all glory and all delight
and it is to you,
holy, consubstantial, and life-creating Trinity
that the glory belongs,
you whom all faithful venerate, confess, adore, and serve
in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Saint Symeon The New Theologian  (949- 1022)

ethics in design.

here’s an interesting article is came across while reading up on the new david byrne/brian eno collaboration cd (!) that’s due soon.  this guy is doing the designwork for the album, so i googled his name to find out what his aesthetics are like.  i came across this article:

 

In September design felt impotent and frivolous. There is nothing inherent in our profession that forces us to support worthy causes, to promote good things, to avoid visual pollution. There might be such a responsibility in us as people. In August, when thinking about my reasons for being alive, for getting out of bed in the morning, I would have written the following down.

1. Strive for happiness
2. Don’t hurt anybody
3. Help, others achieve the same

Now I would change that priority:

1. Help others
2. Don’t hurt anybody
3. Strive for happiness

My studio was engaged in cool projects, things designers like to do, like designing a cover for David Byrne

We had a good time designing them, and since the products and events these pieces promoted were fine, I don’t think we hurt anybody who bought them.

One of the many things I learned in my year without clients, a year I had put aside for experiments only, was that I’d like a part of my studio to move from creating cool things to significant things.

The 80s in graphic design were dominated by questions about the layout, by life style magazines, with Neville Brody’s Face seen as the big event. The 90s were dominated by questions about typography, readability, layering, with David Carson emerging as the dominant figure.

With prominent figures like Peter Saville recently talking about the crisis of the unnecessary and lamenting about the fact that our contemporary culture is monthly, there might now finally be room for content, for questions about what we do and for whom we are doing it. The incredible impact the First Things First manifesto had on my profession would certainly point in that direction.

The first sentence on page 1 of Victor Papanek’s “Design for the Real World” reads: “There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only very few of them. And possibly only one profession is phonier: Advertising design. In persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress others that don’t care, it is probably the phoniest field in existence today.”

I do know that bad design can harm our lives. From the problems this little piece of bad typography caused in Florida to unnecessary junk mail and overproduced packaging, bad design makes the world a more difficult place to live in.

 

At the same time, strong design for bad causes or products can hurt us even more.

Good design + bad cause = bad

Just consider this age old and powerful symbol symbol and its transformation into a very successful identity program by the Nazis.

 

Context is all-important: The Christian cross had one meaning in 16th century Europe and another one in 20th century India.

Bad design + good cause = good?

On the other hand, bad design for a good cause can still be a good thing. We designed the logo for The Concert for New York, a huge charity event for the fire and policeman in Madison Square Garden, involving among others Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, The Who.

 

From a design point of view, the statue of liberty playing a guitar is a trite cliché. I am not suggesting that the logo had much to do with the over $ 20 million raised for the Robin Hood Foundation, well, actually, a tiny portion was raised through the logo in the from of merchandize sales.

How to be good?

Well, does help by definition have to be selfless? Am I allowed to get something out of myself? If I do help, am I permitted to have fun while doing so?

I read an interview with an art director in England discussing his award winning campaign ad campaign for an association for the blind, featuring a striking image of a guide dog with human eyes stripped in.
He mentioned that he knew that a picture of a cute puppy would have raised more donations for the association, but was more interested in winning awards. He had no problems with this attitude.

When GE gives 10 million to the WTC victim families, is it ok for them to look good for doing so?

Or, a more extreme case: Is it ok for Philip Morris to go and give 60 million to help out various charities and then spend another 108 million promoting this good deed in magazine ads?

If you are homeless and you just got a hot meal from St. Johns in Brooklyn, one of the organizations the money went to, you don’t really give a shit if the people who gave it to you tout their own horn afterwards.

Even though it really is a ridiculous case, isn’t it still preferable to blowing the entire 168 million on a regular ad budget?

And: Why are so many celebrities involved in charities?
Five years ago, my feeling was they just wanted to promote their careers. Now I am somewhat less cynical. It is conceivable that many simply came to realize the pursuit of money/fame/success does not hold the contentment it promised and are on the lookout for more significance.

 

Poor Sting practically ruined his career with all his do gooding, transforming himself from the cool leader of the Police to just another sappy rain forest bard

 

Where do the critics come in? If I make fun of Sting, do I keep other celebrities from following his lead and therefore somehow contribute to the destruction of the rainforest? If I do criticize Sting, do I have to have a better idea to help the world?

When philosopher Edward DeBono talks about values, he puts them into four equally important sections:

Me-values: ego and pleasure
Mates-values: belonging to a group, not letting it down
Moral-values: religious values, general law, general values of a particular culture
Mankind-values: human rights, ecology

I often make the mistake of concentrating on just a couple of these values in my life. We all have heard of the philanthropist who gave away millions to charity and was a genuine asshole to all his friends. Or the guy who is totally devoted to his family and friends but hates himself, drives a Suburban and works for a Nuclear Missile Plant.
Or Mr. Bin Laden himself: I am sure he is totally devoted to his religious values as well as to the values of his own culture, but does not really care about human rights much.

For a full life I would have to be involved in all four.

I do think there is a role for everyone. It does not really matter if I am the Mayor of New York, or if I design the tourist brochures for New York or if I sweep the streets in New York. There is always room to be nice to a co-worker, to send a sweet letter to Mom, to love Anni.

Of course there are different degrees of separation. The rescue worker down at Ground Zero is directly involved, when I design a pin to raise money to help the rescue worker, I’m a couple of degrees further removed. But I might just function twice as effective as a designer than I would as a rescue worker.

Well, while pondering those questions half a year ago, I got invited to participate in a media design exhibition in Vienna, Austria. One of the perks that came with the exhibit was a free, full-page ad in Austria’s best newspaper, space I was free to fill with whatever I liked.

It’s an idea for a packaging that might be applied in zones of large catastrophes, earthquakes and such. At the time I was naively thinking of far away locations, India or Africa, not for a second conceiving that my hometown New York itself might be turned into the largest catastrophe zone.

It is basically a large, hollow Lego like block containing basic foods like milk powder, water, dried fish, rice. After the food has been consumed, the empty packaging can be filled with sand or dirt and used as an interlocking brick to build a shelter.

In the ad I explained the idea and asked other designers, packaging manufacturers and aid organizations to contribute.

Responses came into my laptop immediately. Many from students who just wanted to help, some from Austrian packaging companies interested in participating and many from designers and architects offering ideas.

Also, it was an opportunity to feel and look good myself: The caring designer.

Among all the positive responses was also a violently negative one;
- the writer stating that this is the absolute worst idea he ever saw in this context, that it’s a case of designing poverty, just plain ignorant and stupid.

I got really nervous. I am just not used to having my work hated that much. Maybe I should have stuck to CD covers.

The e-mail did prompt me to get quickly in contact with aid organizations and I had subsequently a discussion with the Director of Emergency Preparedness at CARE, the largest of them all.

It turns out that in emergency cases, Care tends to buy food whenever possible locally in bulk: That way they don’t have to package, there is less garbage, they avoid shipping problems and the food will be compatible with local tastes.

And similar thinking applies for shelter: It’s to everybody’s advantage to use as much local building material as possible. Care just supplies some additional resource materials like rolls of plastic or corrugated metal sheets and utilizes the ingenuity of the population. This results in sturdier, better-built shelter.

It turns out, my e-mail writer was right:
This is a stupid idea.

SO: I have to be part of an organization, part of a problem to be able to come up with a solution. Do-gooding from afar, as a tourist, won’t do.

In the meantime in New York I was also at the center of a disaster, I was not tourist anymore. One of the tasks at hand was the creation of a symbol that could also work as a fundraiser for various charities hit hard by current events.

Our idea was a pin, made of the rubble of the World trade Center, a piece of metal that refused to be destroyed.
After the WTC disaster over 1 000 000 tons of rubble was removed from the site and brought by truck and barge to the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island.

The plan here is to make this into a large-scale project. We can raise $ 1.5 million per 100 000 pins sold.

Good Design + Good Cause = Good

Most of current graphic design done by professional design companies is used to promote or sell, which is fine, but design can also do so much more.

Design can unify

Francis Hopkinson, a writer, artist and a signatory of the declaration of independence designed the American Flag (never got paid for it though).

Design can help us remember

The towers of light by Julian Laverdiere and Paul Myoda, at this moment proposed as a temporary memorial down at Ground Zero, are a beautiful emotional response. They are ghost limbs; we can feel them even though they are not there anymore.

Design can simplify our lives

Everybody who had to buy tokens in the New York subway system would agree that the Metro card eased the way we go around the city.

Design can make someone feel better

After we designed the CD cover for the Rolling Stones there was quite some press interest in Europe and a number of Austrian and German TV stations came to New York for an interview.
This was just around the time my Mom was celebrating her 70 Birthday. I made a T-shirt saying “Dear Mom! Have a great Birthday” and wore it during the interview. The Austrian station agreed to air the interviews exactly on her Birthday.
Mom felt better.

Design can make the world a safer place

Cipro comes with a complicated, difficult to understand information pamphlet. It could also inform quickly and efficiently about when and how to take it as well as side effects.

Design can help people rally behind a cause

Robbie Canals poster series wheat pasted all over New York in the 80-ies probably spoke to the already converted, but showed me there are other people out there who are not happy with the administration. I guess I picked these posters over the hundreds or thousands of posters designers created that would qualify as an example because I saw those actually pasted on the street.
There is this entire subsection in design, the peace or environmental poster, where only hundreds are actually printed, only dozens go up in the street and the rest is distributed to design competitions.
This of course does NOT help people rally behind a cause, it only helps the ego of the designer.

Design can inform and teach

From the abstract geometric signs and animals of the cave paintings to the graphs in the New York Times, designers give us a better understanding of the issues.

Design can raise money

As a stand in for all the promotions and ads that raised money for Non-Profit organizations I am showing here the Breast Cancer symbol which made a an impressive amount of money for cancer research.

Design can make us more tolerant

Russian designer Andrey Logvin simple poster called Troika speaks for itself.

Winter Sorbeck, design teacher and fictional main character in Chip Kidd’s new novel The Cheese Monkeys, says at one point: Uncle Sam is Commercial Art, the American Flag is graphic design. Commercial Art makes you BUY things, graphic Design GIVES you ideas.

If I’m able to do that, to give ideas, that WOULD be a good reason to get out of bed in the morning.

Presented at the AIGA National Conference in Washington on March 23, 2002, reprinted in I.D. Magazine April/May 2002

lazarus taxon.

hmmmm.  my goodness, how things slip from one’s mind.  i haven’t written a word in here in some time.

 

much has been happening, and continues to happen.  i shall remain committed, for the most part, to not just using this as an update on my own pathetic life, and i hold to that.

G-D is good.  HE shall increase, and i will decrease.  HE is showing me a lot, more and more all the time, which is what i came to nashville for, i suppose.  some things:

 

-i am broken in ways i thought i had fixed.  not so.  but i’ve been learning about healing.  and going through the process.  justice.  reclaiming parts of me that i had given away.

-G-D is real, regardless of whether i believe it or not.  HE is not a conditional god.

-friends at this point are not merely convenience.  they are a necessity.

-beehives.  root systems. community.

-Hebrews 3:13-14 ”But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.”

-if someone could just tell me what being a man is, i would appreciate it.  twelve steps?  no?  okay.

-grace.

-faith.

 

i’m floored by these past several months.  sometimes i feel like the boy in the violent bear it away, and any moment now the heavens are going to open up and a pillar of fire is going to descend and burn my soul clean.  yet i feel the old ways creeping up my spine constantly.  lethargy.  complacency.  lust.  jealousy.  i’m hoping this isn’t a situation where the pendulum is just swinging farther out each time.

 

 

father G-D, protect me and keep me.  show yourself to me.  let me here your voice, and KNOW that it’s you speaking.  amen.

 

oh, and this is done:

here’s a song that didn’t make it onto the record [right click to download]:

doxology

a psalm.

how wonderful, oh LORD, that i can find you in everything!

even when i sit in silence, reminders that you are here and alive are all around me;

they surround me and pass through me.

YOU are so very present that i cannot know what silence is.

the hum of the electric air!

the beating of my heart and the buzz of my nervous system!

we can’t engineer a space to to experience true silence without hearing YOU coursing through our veins or presenting YOURSELF in every spark of a nerve in our fingertips!

 

how lucky we are, dear FATHER, to be able to find YOU in everything.

to hear YOU in everything!

how gracious YOU are to show us we cannot live in silence, we shall never know pure darkness.

we can turn off the lights, close our eyes, but YOU show us all the same

that YOUR light shines through all deprivations of our senses.

 

precious G-D, let me always be aware

of you in what i perceive as pure silence,

what i think is total darkness.

 

YOU envelop me, surge through me, fill me up, make me YOUR own, your creation.

how wonderful, oh LORD, that i can find you in all things!

 

on the pure and muddied.

We are in a time of massive transition right now. Read any magazine or newspaper, turn on the television, log on to any blog you find, and the evidence is bubbling over at the brim. It’s all around us, and most of us are trying to just catch up with the zero’s and one’s in order to process all that is happening. The bottom line is that things are not what they were thirty, forty, fifty years ago, particularly in the realm of art. Those of us who inhabit both sides of the artist/consumer divide are having to reevaluate our roles in this massive cohesion of music, film, and the fine arts or fall by the wayside, a tired consumer in a hyper-consumerist world. The advent of the internet and the personal computer has blown the curtain away from that great mystery which, until very recently, has been the domain of the elite. If one were to take a gander backwards at the evolution of art, one would see the second half of the twentieth century as a dramatic shift from what had come before, not just in style, but in content. These past ten years, even, have seen more advances in the technology that enable us to create (for technology is really nothing more than a tool), which has put the destiny of the fine arts into the hands of the common man. Even I remember a time (and I am NOT that old) when recording an album at home that would be ready for mass distribution would be nearly unthinkable. When making home movies rarely branched beyond baby’s first steps or grandma’s 80 birthday. We are constantly hearing about the “demise of the record/entertainment industry” and how this is the end of music/film/art as we know it. But I see this as only a half-truth. It is the demise of something, indeed, but one should not confuse the “industry” with the art itself. These are two very distinct things. For example, and this is an example even I am tired of hearing about, the last Radiohead album showed what a band can do without a label at all. the success was such that the band made more on this single release than they did on their entire back catalog. The impact that online community sites like myspace have had on artists cannot be overstated. Youtube has done the same thing for aspiring filmmakers. We no longer need the support of multi-million dollar corporations to get our work out into the world. It’s already there. The reality is that the old ways are crumbling, and it’s time for new models to arise from the ashes.But what does all this mean for the world of art at large? We are at a point now where attainment of art is instantaneous. The newest films and unreleased albums are a mouse-click away. The scope, availability, and range of art that is now available due to the sudden influx in technology has inandated us with choices to the point of something akin to a wash of static noise, the inability to discern one waveform from another. As Thom Yorke calls it, “fridge buzz”. There is nothing bourgeois left in art anymore. And with more choice inevitably come an inconstitency in quality.If there is one thing that I’ve learned, it’s that everything has layers. Everything worth it’s weight in salt, anyway. There is this new anomaly that comes with the handing down of “art” to the proletariat, and that is the struggle to find worth in its existence. We have been given a great responsibility to carry the flame, but now we must prove ourselves worthy to carry it. Does that make sense to you? I think perhaps we, as the common artist, spend so much time on the “what”, the “who”, the “when”, and the “how”, that we rarely sit down and ask ourselves, “why”? Why are we doing what we are doing? Therein lies the definition of art.One of my professors in college posed this questions to our class one morning: “what is the difference between a ‘picture’ and a ‘work of art’”? An interesting, albeit brief, dialogue incurred between we students, but I’m sure many walked away from that initial conversation giving it no more thought than what they were going to have for lunch that day (after all, we ARE talking about a small liberal arts college in a surf town). Yet I wandered back to my dorm mortified. I had spent all this time aspiring to be a great artist without wondering why. What makes my work any different than a child’s drawing of her dog? After all, many of the great artists of the twentieth century produced these monumental works that sit in prestigious galleries around the world and have people stare at the thinking, “I could have done that.” It took me a full three years to come to terms with that initial question, and I came to the conclusion that all art hinges on three things: intention, intention, intention.It’s easy to figure out how and what you are going to say. It’s not so easy to figure out why. Art used to be more about telling a story or recording a life/event. But with the advent of the camera and the motion picture, the INTENTION began to change. This is perhaps when the true definition of “art” was really questioned. If it hangs in a museum, does that make it art? If it’s shown at a theatre that serves fancy cocktails and has red velvet everywhere, is it art? If it references the theories of John Cage or La Monte Young, is it art?What I’m attempting to convey is that one must be very clear on intention in order to create pure art. It is so easy to fall into the “I’m expressing myself” model for art without figuring out why. You’re expressing yourself, you say? Who gives a damn. Or perhaps you work so hard to illustrate your point that you cease creating art and start producing propaganda, be it for a political ideal, a religious belief, or just an advertisement for yourself. Art is not this insular act of ego-masturbation; it is a beacon with which to strike up a bond with your fellow man. It is how we communicate, and it is WHY we communicate. Everything I create, be it a song, a film, an installation, or a painting, I sit back and delve into the “why” of it. Those layers I referenced earlier, they are built into truly great works of art because one question inevitably leads to another which leads to another and so on and so on… until you arrive at some little nugget of truth tucked beneath the veils of color and light and sound. Anything else is just a doodle.

what pirates and indians bring to the surface.

i just finished reading an article in smithsonian magazine from 2004 about j.m. barrie and his literary creation, peter pan.  it’s been 104 years now since the play first debuted in london to rave reviews, and the story itself has enraptured audiences for just as long.  this article proposed the same theory as to why the tale of peter pan has lasted so long that i’ve read over and over again: the inevitable loss of childhood ways to the world of adulthood and responsibility.  we find a connection with peter’s desire to always remain a little boy and have fun, because at some point or another, we find that youthful mentality slipping through the cracks in our fingers.  it is a universal, inescapable rite of passage that everyone takes.  some make it eagerly, but i think many of us have a point at which we realize just what’s happening, and that there is no way to stop it.  i remember being thirteen or so (and i spoke of this in an earlier post, so i won’t tread upon old ground) and becoming aware of how the way i saw the world was changing, and it terrified me.  the film “finding neverland” did an excellent job of showing barrie struggle with this very transition through the lives of the llewelyn-davies boys, and to a certain extent, how he never really got over his own loss of innocence.  i’ll be twenty-four next month, and i STILL mourn my childhood.  i find it hard to accept that i cannot go back to the way things were, the metamorphoses into man is an irreconcilable one.  it is done, and i have to come to terms with that.  perhaps this is a yearning that we never lose.  i’ve also been thinking a lot recently about the verse in the Bible that speaks of having faith like a child, and how this might tie in to the story of peter pan.  my pastor even mentioned something about this verse on sunday, how a kindergardener can so easily understand the nature of G-D, much more readily than someone who has grown out of childish fancies and allowed their lives to become mired with the day-to-day of this life.  the disciples were asking jesus who was the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, an He replied like this:

2He called a little child and had him stand among them. 3And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18)

 

glory to G-D for His backwards logic!  what an incredibly difficult concept for us to wrap our minds around!  when i think about this, i have to REMEMBER what it was like to be a child; how everything looked, how it felt, the things that i believed.  i loved and relied on my parents so much that whatever they said was the truth.  i didn’t question it.  it’s this insane trust that is the best model for faith we have.  there is simply no reason to believe in what we do that can be proven by logic; it just is what it is.  this is how children operate.  they aren’t hardened to the words of others, they don’t analyze everything before making a decision, they don’t look at the world with years and years of skepticism encrusting their hearts.  they simply believe. this is the great challenge before us.  we have to hack away at those things that shield our hearts from accepting TRUTH. we have to make it so we can look upon the face of christ without the rules of this world yanking us back into what we so pathetically call “reality”.  and it’s not a one time excursion, either.  every moment there is something telling us we are fools, that what exists in the literal is real and tangible and the only thing worth seeking after.  it’s the only thing that is logical.  but our faith is not logical (i think i’ve said this before too, sorry).  so we much push past equations and proofs and charts and all the bile of earthly existence to reach G-D.  it will never be easy, and it SHOULD never be easy.  this is a process that will stand at our doorstep until our dying breath. 

 

 

 

there is sea salt in our hearts.

 note: another old post revitalized after a year and a half.  i’ve never really felt the connectedness that a lot of my friends feel to the ocean, particularly those who have lived near it their whole lives. its never been a huge part of my life. i mean, i spent my early years on an island half the size of west virginia, but i hardly recall dwelling in/on the ocean. the closest i got to the ocean when i lived in michigan was the great lakes, which on most shores one cannot see the other side. still, the ocean they ain’t. and virginia, i spent more time trudging around the appalachians than i did near any formidable body of water. when i moved to st. augustine, i almost never went to the beach, save the occasional nighttime journey to swim or wander up the coast. even after living here for five years, my recollections of actual ocean interaction are peppered with playing soccer on the beach with my roommates and pretending to be very loud, very raucous frenchmen on vacation. still, the ocean has always perplexed me. its shear size and the fact that it is so constant have been kind of unsettling to me. almost like fear, but more apprehension than anything. yet, recently, because now i live a block away, i find myself dandering down to the shoreline (again, usually at night) and just watching and listening. its a place separated from my life, and i like the solitude.
for me, right now, the ocean represents a great allegory about the nature of G-D. its something i’ve been very thirsty to discover; who exactly is this god that i am trying to devote my life to? i am firmly against the idea of pure blind faith; becoming complacent in one’s beliefs to the point of not analyzing them and scrutinizing the reasons for those ideas. a lot of times we speak of being on a “spiritual plateau”, meaning that we feel we are neither growing closer to G-D nor slipping away from him. but i feel that immobility in a relationship with G-D is impossible; we are always moving forward, or else we’re moving backwards. therefore it should be in our nature to constantly be searching for G-D in order to validate our faith. and i think that by attaching some of these ideas to the allegory of the ocean, i’ve been able to understand something of the nature of god.
how much do you know about the ocean? i mean REALLY know about it? you can read about it, talk to people about it, stand at its edge and look as far as you can, smell the salient air drifting inland, listen to the constant rolling waves, but you cannot know every inch of the ocean in this lifetime. when i go to the water, the ocean dominates everything else around it. every sense is caught up in that one thing. whatever idea i have in my head for “ocean” doesn’t quite fit the ENTIRE nature of what stretches out before me. its seems like its far more complex a concept than i can wrap my head around, but at the same time its far more simple. in a word i can reference this object, but i can’t truly describe it to you so you understand, which is fine, because i can’t really describe it to myself.
there’s a running theme in the monotheistic religions of “divine simplicity”, particularly in jewish and christian mysticism. the idea is that G-D is an incredibly simple being, more simple than we can wrap our minds around. thomas aquinas, a big player in christian history, writes that because G-D is infinitely simple, he can only appear to the finite mind as though he were infinitely complex. there aren’t parts to GOD; he can’t be subdivided into facets like the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual realms of our being. even the specific terms we use to describe god are broad: GOD is love, GOD is everywhere, GOD is all-powerful. try as we might, we cannot fathom HIS nature because we don’t have the tools to understand what exactly this means. we can only describe things by our senses, which are all confined by the nature of creation. yet GOD exists outside creation. the first line in the first chapter of the first book of the bible tells us this: “in the beginning G-D created the heavens and the earth” (genesis 1:1). HE exists outside of what we can smell, hear, touch, see, taste, conceive because HE is not confined by any of those temporal sensations. yet he also exists within all those things. so we are allowed to grasp at bits and pieces of the nature of G-D, but not the whole thing. if it weren’t for our ability to know a tiny portion of G-D’s being, we wouldn’t be able to have any experience of HIM.
i found this quote from a jewish rabbi:”God’s existence is absolutely simple, without combinations or additions of any kind. All perfections are found in Him in a perfectly simple manner. However, God does not entail separate domains … even though in truth there exist in God qualities which, within us, are separate… Indeed the true nature of His essence is that it is a single attribute, (yet) one that intrinsically encompasses everything that could be considered perfection. All perfection therefore exists in God, not as something added on to His existence, but as an integral part of His intrinsic identity… This is a concept that is very far from our ability to grasp and imagine..”
so, back to the ocean. it is so simple, yet so vast that i can’t comprehend it in its entirety. but there are things i can know about it from being in its presence. i can watch the waves, i can feel the water envelope me, i can smell the air that courses over it for miles, i can hear the neverending lull of the waves as they touch the land. all of these things lend to my understanding of what the ocean is, and i’m content with the experience that is available to me, though i can’t experience the entire ocean in one go. similarly, we can’t know everything about GOD, but what we can know is enough to keep us searching and yearning for the complete intimacy of full understanding. this is both encouraging and discouraging. its so hard to put all one’s faith in something that can’t be totally comprehended, but its so exciting to try. that’s the challenge that sits before us. very often i feel like giving up, because its too daunting a task. but there’s also something about what i know already, and what a difference that’s made to me, that i want to keep trying to understand the nature of HE who created me.


this is thomas aquinas’ doctrine of divine simplicity:http://www.homestead.com/philofreligion/files/Thomas3.html