the artist

When I was young and tender, they brought me into a room of solid white walls. They said they loved me and were going to paint beauty and happiness for me. They gave me toys to play with and then they brought in the best artist money could afford. He silently began to paint the white walls in brilliant colors: sunsets, mountains, banquets full of rich food and drink, beautiful horses and dogs and cats. They must have bought this man’s soul because he stayed with me all day and all night painting scene after delightful scene. As I got older I began to talk to the artist, I asked him to paint me another horse, a black one please. He even let me help paint when I wanted to. He told me I was a budding artist. I smiled and I was proud. Then one day he painted a window on the wall. In the window he painted a dirty street with naked children and crumbling shacks. I stood back in reverence and shock as he painted the scene in the window with tears flowing down his cheeks. Suddenly, they came back. They saw what he had done and were very angry. They made him erase the window but it left a hole in the wall. I wondered why they were angry. I wondered why my artist cried. I asked him to paint me more pictures like the window. So at night he did. He painted pictures of war and famine. He would cry and I would sob. Yet before morning we would erase them, leaving another hole in the wall. Eventually, there were so many holes in the wall, we couldn’t see the sunsets and the mountains and the banquets or pets without also seeing the holes in the wall.

Then one day I asked the artist, why he had painted all these pictures. For the first time in my life, he spoke. He told me of the place he was born. He was the naked child in the dirty street. He was the soldier. He was the hunger stricken alien. He had sold himself to make my life a beautiful picture. I cried and I sobbed. I ranted and I raged. And in my anger I tore that room to shreds and set it on fire. Now I live in the dirty streets the artist once painted for me. The naked children play and fight in the streets outside my door. The bombs wake me up at night. I barely eat because of the famine. “They” are gone now. They never even visit. I never liked them for deceiving me anyway. The artist. I don’t know where he is either. He too surely was in on the plot. But every day I laugh as I remember. I am no longer a child. Now, I sit in the dirt and hang pretty pictures on the mud walls of a different room. No more am I deceived as I sit in the doorway of my hut overlooking a dusty, war torn, infested street. I laugh and tell stories like the artist did. Some come by to listen. Others pay me no mind. Mostly, I am happy with my walls of mud.

I would like some feedback on this parable.
Who is the artist to you? Who are "they"? What is the moral of this parable? What does it say to you about yourself/others?

my brother?...my enemy?

I’ve been reading some of Thomas Merton
Here’s an excerpt from No Man is an Island

Compassion teaches me that my brother and I are one. That if I love my brother, then my love benefits my own life as well, and if I hate my brother and seek to destroy him, I seek to destroy myself also. The desire to attack another with an ingot of red hot iron: I have to pick up the incandescent metal and burn my own hand while burning the other. Hate itself is the seed of death in my own heart, while it seeks the death of the other. Love is the seed of life in my own heart when it seeks the good of the other…
Violence rests on the assumption that the enemy and I are entirely different: the enemy is evil and I am good. The enemy must be destroyed but I must be saved. But love sees things differently. It sees that even the enemy sufferes from the same sorrows and limitations that I do. That we both have the same harmless human life. And that death is the same for both of us. Then love may perhaps show me that my brother is not really my enemy and that war is both his enemy and mine. War is our enemy. Then peace becomes possible.

living in the hood

I miss my “problem” neighbors.

About 4 years ago a large family from Chicago moved into the rental ½ block away. They told us everyone was getting shot in Chicago, so they had to get out to make a new start. My house church’s mission was based on Matthew 22: 37-40: love God and love your neighbor. We made an attempt at living this out, most literally. Then last winter, these neighbors had to move because the condition of their house was such that there was either no gas, electricity or running water—one or two of the three…I forget which. They are a large family. Ages ranging from 27 to 5 but then there were always cousins who were over, cousins, “aunts,” “uncles” and grandma…oh, boy!. Grandma was a trip! Even though there were the occasional cop call at their house all hours of the night and elaborate stories of domestic violence and stabbings, I miss them. Here’s what I miss about them.

1. I miss waking up some Saturday morning to my doorbell being pushed about a million times in a row.

2. I miss sitting on my doorstep cuddling with 2 or 3 kids, listening to animated story telling.

3. I miss little Derrick’s comedies and sassy story telling. As a four year old he was already a ham.

4. I miss watching these kids roll anything with wheels at top speed, down the street with the steep hill right by my house. One summer they even used a cooler till its wheels fell off.

5. I love it how my brother was the ultimate consultant of moral behavior. Most usually they asked him about whether or not certain items they had found were free for the taking. Once they even busted me for burning things in my back yard. “Are you supposed to be setting things on fire in your back yard? Does Tim know you are doing this?”

6. I miss having them ask me to water my flowers. And then sending them home drenched.

7. I miss coming home from work and having the entire four block area erupt in children screaming my name and running at me as I pulled up to my house.

8. I miss handing out apples and bananas and drinks of water.

9. I (almost) miss the steady stream of “uncles” who came over with the kids to sweet talk, smooth talk, or whatever… I liked the challenge of trying to outwit them and finding buttons to push.

10. I miss the sisters and brothers and their families who came to visit both our neighbors, as well as us. They expected us to show up at the gatherings at their house too and were mad at us when we got too busy.

11. I miss learning how to talk like a sassy black girl from the hood.

12. I loved having little companions for every home improvement project I embarked upon.

13. I liked the strait talking, no pretense, lifestyle and demeanor.

14. I loved the million and one questions the kids asked. Why don’t you make such and such your boyfriend? Why do white people not have babies? Why are you always working? Why do I have to wash my hands? Can you fix my bike? Can you put air in my tires? Can I have a ride in your truck? It’s my birthday. Can I have a birthday present? When are we going to have another party? Can I have a ride up the street to my friend’s house? Can I come into your house? Can I help you clean your house?

you think. I think. they think.

Descartes: I think, therefore I am.
Menno: We think, therefore we are.
me: I think of you, therefore you are.
devious thought: I wonder what would happen to you if I never thought about you? The government should paten this. Oops, did I say that out loud? People with guns are busting through the doors right now. Idiots! They don’t get it! Lock me up and I am. Forget about me and I dissipate.

little things I enjoy immensely about Spring.

1. sitting in a drenching rain, with upturned face
2. playing in the dirt—i.e. gardening
3. walking barefoot through grass
4. not wearing/washing socks for three to four months
5. napping in the sun
6. cutting lettuce and green onion out of my garden and eating it immediately
7. reading outside in a lawn chair
8. wearing less layers (until they turn on the air)
9. happy people everywhere
10. waking up to the sun on my face (instead of to an alarm clock)

looking for Peter

I'm looking for the ever disappearing Peter who has frequented this blog. I now finally have here written a response to the e-mail you sent. Yet I cannot send it to you and I am guessing you might not desire that I post it. Could you resurrect yourself so that I can send it through?

Pocahontas World turned Pollyanna

I was attempting to find some cheap entertainment this past week and in my movie rental process landed on a movie on a famous mythical story that I thought would perhaps provide me with some historical conquest action and inspirational cross-cultural overtones or depressing subjugation. The New World is none of that. It is perhaps the worst movie I have ever seen (the part of it that I did see, before ejecting the disc). It has no plot or semblance of a storyline. All it has is two hours of mystical maiden dancing and staring into Colin Farrell’s haunting, “love-struck”, dreamy eyes, which sacrilegiously reminds one of the white evangelical stereotype of Jesus. I recommend instead to my readers the following Brawnyman ad because it is of the same ilk as this movie and it takes much less time to watch it.
http://www.brawnyman.com/innocentescapes

The things I love about my job.

I am an administrative assistant to professors.

1. My supervisor is a reluctant supervisor. Thus, I determine the how and the wherefores of my daily grind.

2. The faculty I work for are always grateful and think I’m amazing when I know stuff they don’t know or help them with things they have difficulty with such as technology.

3. Professors naturally have distinct, unique and much more free-spirited personalities, making it much more interesting to work with them, giving me the same freedom as well.

4. The strange imbalance between being the student of these professors and then also herding them like kittens is completely uncomfortable and hilarious. I was once placed in a situation where I was the “instructor” at mandatory faculty meeting, presenting a newly created web based organizational tool. Essentially, I was telling them what they needed to do and in what time frame.

5. The biggest perk of my job is that I get handed projects that I have no idea how to accomplish but I get to go figure it out and then complete the task. Once, I had to process all the data and compile the schedule for a big national meeting for a professor who was also the president of the organization which organized its annual meeting. I had a space of about a month in which to learn how to use Access, enter all the data into it and get it to spit out the report which was the schedule for the annual meeting. Today, I got handed a book to edit and put into copy-ready status, for publication. I was telling the professor that I have never really done such a thing. I watched him react in a start but I am guessing he doesn’t have too many alternatives.

It makes me giggle to think that I got this job through reference of a friend who worked here, who knew I couldn’t type worth a darn and my computer savvy was minimal. But I certainly know how to type now.

a dream of a house…and a loose interpretational guide

Why I have come to give credence to dreams.
I used to be too logical to give credence to dreams, yet when my theology of God-the pusher-forward-of-creation changed to God the compeller and caller to his creation from the future, the pusher from the past the inside, outside and all around compulsion to life and vitality—I changed my mind and life. For if God compels us to move in a particular way. If he calls us and all his creation forward into his destiny, even the atoms under our fingernails are going to sense the call. Thus, it is no surprise that even our dreams will compel us to move, speaking to our spirits. Sometimes I’ve detected a multiplicity of relevance and description in dreams and parables. Such as the one below, it seems directly pertinent to a specific church/worship situation. It is also relevant to a movement currently happening with church/worship in our own socio-cultural context. The images simply switch point of application. I would even go so far as to say it applies to a global church/worship reality.

There were two houses on a small hill, connected by a walkway/screened in mud-room. Further down the sloping hill, were numerous adults, who were teenagers, playing with fire and explosive devices. The particular devices they had consisted of a square shaped piece of clay upon which they spit their chewing gum. The combination of clay and chewing gum was explosive and dangerous to those who were handling it. None-the-less the teen-adults were handling the explosives and standing perilously close to the fires that came out from these explosive mechanisms. Older individuals stood back much further from the fires.
Up at the house closest to the fires, the members of the household were de-cluttering and giving away a variety of board-games, which were piled onto their coffee-table. Upon entrance into the house, the narrator became interested in one of those games: the battleship board-game. Upon inspection of a game, she received a message in a phone call from an elderly leader from the other house, indicating that the battle call on the board-game was to put on the armor of God. Ephesians 6:11

house: place of worship
walkway–mud-room: the path of unification between the two houses is dirty and muddy, rendering all those who traversed by means of the walkway, with dirty feet.
dirty feet: soiled interaction/ “walk”
hill: the place of worship
teenage-adults: adults with developmental status of a teenager or adult with childlike qualities
older individuals: people/representatives of structures who are older, more matured, aged
fire: holy spirit, purging fire/damaging fire
square shaped piece of clay: a rendition of the Biblical meaning of potter(God) and clay (us/the church)
The clay piece represents traditional church
gum: the “new” clay
the clay/gum combination: explosive, symbolic of the old and the new mixing, resulting in the Holy Spirit’s work to purge or to destroy
the explosives/teenager combination: warning of peril to those who are not mature and are attempting to handle the fire of God
act of de-cluttering: throwing off excess baggage/old structures
coffee table: the table of meeting/fellowship
coffee table as opposed to a banquet table: indicated the table of fellowship and sustenance is small and limited in it menu/spiritual sustenance
board games: representative of the prepackaged systems of logic and social and spiritual interaction and strategy that “houses” generally use
The instruction to put on the armor: God’s directional call to specify use of a particular “board game” for purposeful strategy, in this situation. Spiritual warfare.

composure

A 26-year-old Iraqi man is brought to the emergency room of a county hospital by a co-worker, since he had been complaining of chest pain while at work. While waiting, the nurse checks his blood pressure and pulse, which are 150/98 mmHg and 110 beats per minute, respectively. She tells the man he should remove his shirt and lie down; he seems a bit nervous but complies. As she places cardiac monitor electrodes on his chest and begins connecting the monitor cables, she notices dime-size scars on his chest. The man breaks into a sweat and begins to tremble. Suddenly, he sits up suddenly and pulls off the electrodes, shouting, “No! No!” He grabs his shirt and runs out of the room. He attemps to compose himself, approaches his co-worker, telling him the doctor asked him to go home and rest. He attempts a calm, quick exit. The nurse and the ER security try to catch up with him to restrain him and reason with him. But reason and restraint aren’t enough.

Sometimes I read about victims of torture and feel like sobbing. The composed world of work and leisure mock the terror that was once poured into their body, soul and spirit. Their stories are not just their stories. They come to me as a parable of my own story. I too have walked into the emergency room under obligation of my employer—my means of survival and daily sustenance. My palms are sweaty. My heart is racing. I warn myself that I will be sent to the doctor for a more severe diagnosis if I don’t manage to fake normal. I wear my calm stoic face as I try to tell my heart to quit racing. I tell myself everything will be fine. My emotions refuse to comply. I search the nurse’s eyes. I hope and pray and plead for an ounce of understanding as she reads the results. Yet she purses her lips moving deftly onto the next procedure. The walls begin to spin. I don’t remember what happened next but it involved me and something I’d rather not talk about. I try to compose myself and approach my co-worker to go home. I can’t lie to her, so I say nothing. My shame increases as I see her skeptical look. The security guard and the nurse try to reason with me. I try to tell them my soul isn’t listening to reason right now. I can tell they don't understand.

longing

He wraps himself in spasticsybron as often as the moon changes. His face of tattered masks cover that which is beneath. His pixed words are twisted and tormented, inviting but terrifying. His spirit speaks as one I long for. Yet his eyes turn yellow. Life pulses in his veins, black and red. His deaths and resurrections are feigned. Oh, Lord, that you would bring forth the lion heart, the cloak of courage, the crown of glory. Lord, why do I wait in vain torment of heart and soul for this one? Why do I long so for this soul? Why does it hold onto the darkness so tenaciously?

site maintenance

Yo peeps!
Would those of you currently engaged in deleting your comments, please stop. I hate cleaning up after the mess it leaves. Additionally, it indicates a lack of being reflective, which means that I'll be inclined not to take your comments as seriously.

And, yes Peter, you are one of the persons this post is directed at. (True to my earlier promise to you, I am now posting something specially for you and indicating that to you so there are no ambiguities. Any other "insinuations" "detected" in previous posts are your imagination.) I have a very active life outside of my internet interactions. Thanks very much.

brothers and sisters in Christ

Blorge and I were i-messing the other day about various types of bonding relationships people can have. I as usual was bemoaning the lack of options mainstream culture offers for intimate and fulfilling types of relationships. Earlier I had mentioned how much I enjoyed C.S. Lewis’ commentary on his relationship with his wife after she died. He referred to her as his mother, his sister, his companion, his friend and mistress. He seemed to suggest strongly, if one could not at some point truly call his wife sister, he would be missing a deeply important aspect of relationship with one’s wife. We were discussing the concept of true brother sister relationships in the church and my own relationship with my brothers, who I had many fist fights with but loved them deeply and still do. Sibling rivalry is to be expected especially if one cares. Indifference would be the worst form of hate.

blorge: The culture says that the most intimate relationship you can have is with your spouse. Other cultures have thought differently (in the Ancient Roman world, it was with your blood brothers and sisters).

me: The culture knows nothing. (but it demands compliance at every turn)

But yeah, maybe I'm spitting into the wind in trying to initiate and maintain brother in Christ relationships

blorge: there's also the question of expectations. What does a brother mean to you? What does it mean to the English?

I wouldn't want to get into a fist-fight with you!

me: Cummon. It would be fun.

And then after it’s over--we would be better friends

blorge: it would be horrible

me: lol

blorge: it would be horrible, and damaging, and scarring, and I don’t think I'd ever see you the same way again.

I'm not kidding.

me: Seeing images of me pummeling blorge...(tears and laughing)... People are staring

blorge: at me?

me: At me, cause I’m laughing so hard (into my computer none-the-less)

blorge: that's great!

me: No, just at the oddity of this conversation

blorge: sometimes laughter is the only thing that makes me feel normal

this conversation may be odd to others, but I don't think it's odd to us

maybe that's a sign of our brotherhood/sisterhood.

me: What a fight would mean/symbolize is that we have overwhelming feelings for each other enough to get bent out of shape about.

blorge: no it would symbolize you taking advantage of me.

me: but then in the end--we are still family--we still own each other.

blorge: it would be violating it would be like some guy hissing at you and then wolf-whisteling

me: No!! you need to accept this as my act of love toward you

blorge: then accept some guy grabbing your *ahem* as his act of love toward you!

me: You don't know what love is if you don't

blorge: neither does he?

...the conversation falls appart in fits of laughter. The message communicates better than I had ever intended.

strawberries...a labor of love

Strawberry Patches are very labor intensive. Once you stake out a plot of land for a strawberry patch and purchase the starter plants, one has to determine where the rows of plants and the walkways for the harvesters should go. The starters are planted in the spring and by late summer to early fall there are at least 3-4 runners coming off of each plant. These must be guided into their rows so they don’t put down their roots into the walkways of the harvesters the next season. If the runners are allowed to put down root wherever they would, the harvesters will damage the plants, which spring up from the runners as well as the fruit from them. If no order is placed upon the patch the entire patch will be so over grown with strawberry plants and berries and weeds, the harvesters will not be able to harvest without trampling on the fruit for not being able to see the fruit hidden under the leaves, which serve as shade from the hot summer sun. Also, in the fall of that same year the farmer must put bedding under and around the plant, to protect the plant from the winter’s cold and to protect the fruit from becoming laden with dirt and mud during the rains throughout the following spring and summer. Now, the straw bedding is incredibly important to the strawberry—so important that the name of the berry was named after the type of bedding used for the plant. No other, fruit has been named after the bedding it takes. The bedding is about as essential as the fruit itself, for without it, there is no fruit, or there is unusable fruit.

However, straw bedding is sort of a catch twenty-two. If in the fall the farmer should happen to bed the patch with straw that happens to be from a weedy grain field, the whole patch will be choked up in weeds the following spring. Yet weedy straw that one buys from the market cannot be distinguished from non-weedy straw. The farmer has to either grow his own grain or treat the straw he purchases to kill the weed-seed before he lays it down as bedding for his strawberry patch. Yet even as great care is taken to keep weeds from choking the strawberry patch, it is very difficult to keep ahead of the weeds. My father was a strawberry farmer and has had numerous fields. Every single one of the fields he gave up on where due to the uncontrollable weed problem, which was complicated by the strawberry runners going everywhere. He couldn’t even keep up with the weeds by putting his wife and 10 children to work in them to root them out.

Once the rows are established and the runners have populated the number of plants sufficiently. It takes either 1 or 2 years after planting the starters to sufficiently populate an organized strawberry patch. During these 1-2 years the farmer does not allow the plants to produce berries. Thus he plucks off the flowers from every plant that blooms so the plant’s energy can be given to establishing a stable and well-rooted plant. The plants will then bear fruit for two to three years. Every year, much care must be given to bed the plants and keep them free of weeds. In my area of Minnesota there are numerous u-pick patches, there are very few patches for commercial use. The reasons u-pick patches are so popular is because (1) the people prefer the quality of the fruit grown and raised locally. Typically, those who buy u-pick berries never purchase them at the supermarket. They harvest during strawberry season and preserve their harvest, for use throughout the coming year. (2) The harvest process is kept manageable by u-pick patches. Since the berries ripen only during the month of June, the farmer would not be able to keep up with the harvesting unless he hired migrant workers. There are no harvesters invented for picking berries. They must all be picked by hand. The fruit is too tender and fragile to invent a machine that would take sufficient care in its handling. (3) The price of the fruit is kept affordable for the local people if they come to pick the berries themselves. (4) The farmer and then more efficiently focus on keeping the patch clean and organized for the people.

concerning plant rotation

Every 2-3 years, 4 years maximum, the farmer must rotate his plants. The best way to do that is to in the late summer when the plants are putting down their runners, rather than directing them in the rows of 3 and four and 1 yr. old plants, they are directed to root down in the patch’s walkways. The aim is to make the walkways into planted rows and then to till under the rows of old plants and make them into walkways. Before one can till under the old plants the new plants must be firmly established and even then the wiry runner lines hang tenaciously to the mother plants. Those runners need to be cut before the old plants are tilled under.

considering the pests that come to drink of the fruit before its time

In the spring of every year the patch must be fumigated just as the plants are about to bloom. There is a particular insect or bug, which enjoys the nectar of the flower. It bites the flower, and in the process stunts the development of the fruit, severely deforming the shape of the mature berry. We called these berries nubbies, separating them from the rest of the berries that were for sale, because they had a large undeveloped spot on them. Because we were frugal, we cleaned and ate the good part of the nubbied berries, but the nubbies were unpleasant to clean because it took extra work to cut out the nub.

concerning the manner in which the berries ripen

Strawberries ripen according to a particular pattern. First, a very large berry ripens. The first berries off of a plant are the cream of the crop. Everyone enjoys them immensely because they are the first-fruit of the season. They are also the largest berry of the season. The next to ripen are two more berries a little larger than half the size of the berry before it. The next berries are four, which are a little larger than half the size of the two previous berries. Finally, if there are any more ripening berries there will be eight, which are a little larger than half the size of the four. Usually, however, the plant terminates its production after the set of four.

warm, sunny, spring days

Nothing is better and more enjoyable than warm sunny spring Sundays. It doesn't matter what else is happening in life, the energy and happiness of everyone out walking and enjoying a warm sunny day after a cold winter is the most calming and liberating feeling in the world.

blog promotion

I grew up in the same community Dorcas Schmucker did. I understand, in context, most everything she writes about. Her blog often gives me a sense of being known via shared memory. And I relax and laugh hysterically sometimes when I read the observations she makes and the ordinary stories she tells. I especially like the Deutsch comments she and her readers banter with back and forth.

http://dorcassmucker.blogspot.com/

One very poingnant observation she makes …

"The worst thing about this Amish baggage of mine is that it makes it so hard to discern if this kind of behavior is actually wrong or just embarrassing."

For context—read the following.

http://dorcassmucker.blogspot.com/2005_04_24_dorcassmucker_archive.html

interpretation

Sometimes in my writing I like to play with the communication mechanism and medium. This is likely why it is a good thing that my readers usually are not relatives. Often my topics are spin-offs of topics that have entered my sphere through conversations with friends, acquaintances and incidents I run into. I’ve done my best to make this blog a smattering of random thoughts not directed by any one influence. The most well-organized thoughts make the cut. The one’s I find most intriguing make the cut. And then sometimes I try to experiment with medium and method. For instance, my latest parable I entitle love and marriage. The theme is really loose. I leave it up to the reader to determine the moral of the parable. The complete opposite of what I used to do. Although I say it, I am very detached from what it means. I know there is meaning somewhere but I don’t own it or want to find it and nail it in place with strong direct words. The topic itself is a line of thoughts removed from some conversations I’ve had with numerous people recently on marriage and who one should marry. I’m thinking of doing another “parable” where I just describe an object. I'm not sure how it will work but it will be intresting.

This is all a long way from where I used to be, laying things out in black and white, chronologically, rationally everything only having one meaning and one interpretation. I almost die of boredom thinking about how not interesting that was. I was trying to make the artist in me into a scientist. Maybe this new sort of expresion works. Maybe it doesn’t. It’s an experiment.

An aquaintance Dorcus Schmucker touches on the same topic.
http://dorcassmucker.blogspot.com/2006/04/misunderstood.html
(I especially like Arlene's comment,
Du aums ding!!!! Ich bin bat en brilla fa dich)

http://dorcassmucker.blogspot.com/2006_03_19_dorcassmucker_archive.html