I've Moved!

Hello dear friends! My blog has moved to a more comfortable home. Here's the new address!

I hope you can stop by for the house warming party!

Much Love,

David

Small Miracles

Today time opened up just enough for a small lull, and I had the opportunity to talk with a friend whose 93 year old grandfather just passed away. We'll call my friend Matthew. Matthew had just arrived back from the three-day funeral proceedings, chock full of rich Catholic tradition in the small town he comes from. Matthew isn't known for being super expressive with his emotions, but I could read in his face all the small ways he was changed. Mostly I saw signs of joy and love, mixed up beautifully with those of loss and grief. Come to think of it, I don't know if I've ever liked his face more than I did today, sharing this moment with him, listening as he spoke.

The funeral was wonderful, he said, with almost the entire family there. Being the small town that it was and his grandfather a well-liked man, much of the town had come to pay their respects. There was Catholic ritual galore, and the Rosary was recited many times. I asked how he was doing, how his family was doing, and offered my support should he need it. "No," he said, "I got most of it out at the funeral, I think," and I knew he was telling the truth. He felt lucky because the family had left a day before he did, and he got to spend a day with just his grandmother. They took a nap.

As I listened, I realized the speakers in the room were playing an incredible live version of Jeff Buckley's already entrancing take on "Hallelujah." And I thought to myself, how curious. Here I am, in this room of all rooms, on this day of all days, sharing so sweetly with this friend of all friends, hearing this song of all songs.

It smacked of God, friends. It tasted of miracle. A small respite during a busy work day, the sacred in the profane, a holy silence at the heart of a furious and buzzing building. This could all be coincidence, of course, and it is a trait unique (so far as we know) only to humans to superimpose meaning onto otherwise entirely natural phenomena.

But was it? Was it coincidence, that is? I don't know. I can't say for certain. But something in me finds that explanation, the scientific explanation, the numerical explanation so unsatisfying. If the events of our lives, large and small, can be chalked up to enough monkeys jumping on enough typewriters for enough millennia such that a Shakespearean sonnet eventually emerges, well...where does laughter come from? Where do the great, history-altering masterpieces of literature, art, music...where do they come from, truly? What compels us to create, to get out of bed each morning and greet the day, even when tragedy weighs heavy on our hearts and minds? And what allows us to wake up other times with the strangest echoes of joy and anticipation rattling about in our chests?

Sometimes I see it, feel it, flashes of it, in a look, or a spoken word, or a face, or a hug. And I have no name for it, but I can't help but believe in it, but love it, but commit myself to it yet again and ask it to take up residence, in my hands and feet and eyes and lungs and mouth, ask it to fill the hollow parts in me, to mend the broken ones, to soothe my wounds and to kiss my tears. And somehow I am content to have no answers and do only this. Somehow I feel full, and rich, and blessed, and important. Somehow I will see this day through, not knowing at all where it ends or if I will be falling asleep with a broken heart or a well of joy--or maybe both. And this is why I have faith, because, I have no answers yet feel strangely compelled to live this day through anyways. To do anything differently would go against everything inside that makes me me. So I breathe, and close my eyes, or bow my head to pray, or look up towards the sky and wonder at this curious miracle called life. And I am content to wonder.

Greetings!

Hello friends! After a long absence, I've been feeling inspired to write again on this little blog of mine. Given my inclinations towards the epic, I've found myself avoiding blogging unless I have some masterpiece to share, and rarely do I have the energy or time to generate that kind of output. Too much pressure! Too much commitment. However, reading the shorter but more frequent bloggings of my friends, I feel comfortable following suit and experimenting with the aforementioned format myself! And plus, if I ever hope to make anything of my ambitions to be a writer, I'd better start practicing. SO, here is post number one of what will hopefully be a much more active blog-o-sphere. What? Is that even a word?!

Ahem...Me me me me meee...

If grace lives anywhere, it lives in the public transit system. Not owning a car, I spend a respectable amount of time on the bus, riding back and forth between my condo and place of employment. Half the time on the bus I spend fighting back tears, or sometimes giving in entirely, but mostly with my head down, so as not to alarm anyone. It's a good place for thinking, the bus: the hum of the motor, the gentle passing of scenery out the window, and something that is all too rare in our agenda-driven culture of bigger-better-more-faster-now, the opportunity to do nothing and not feel guilty about it. After all there's no sense in stressing. The bus is on a schedule. You know (more or less) when you will be arriving at your destination. There's really no need to worry about a traffic accident because the behemoth that is my bus could pummel any puny sedan or sports car. Hell, it could give a heavy-weight SUV a run for it's money and drive away all but unscathed. And so I am left with...time. The sweet gift of being.

So why am I crying? It's hard to say really, but a writer I'm fond of once wrote that we would be wise to take note of the things that make us cry, because there is something eternal, sacred in them. Sometimes I read on the bus. Sometimes I just sit and watch the world go by. I always listen to music. Today I was reading a book that I'm on my second lap through, Alphabet of Grace by Frederick Buechner. It occupies a strange space between pamphlet and book, but this tiny little work speaks to my soul like no other book I've read and brings me to tears as I sit on the bus, flipping through its digital pages on my iPad.

Buechner is my favorite author, and I've been reading him almost exclusively lately, so much of my musings here will no doubt be inspired by him. Today, he was reflecting on his own experience with writing, using as an example his laborious crafting of a character in one of his novels, an old man. "Could anything be less important than the whereabouts of an imaginary old man in an imaginary wood, and yet my feet have taken me up the stairs to this room where his whereabouts are important. If anything is important, I must believe--for me, now--his whereabouts are important." Buechner struggles to describe what his legs look like as he sits in the grass. "I try five or six different translations, each time saying either too much or too little. Could anything matter less than how I say it? Could anything matter more?" Finally, he gets it. "I have made several unnecessary trips to the bathroom. But I know now how the old man's legs look. They look broken." He concludes, "Now will he know, I wonder, whoever reads this, if anybody does, picking it up maybe forty-five or fifty years from now in a second-hand book store or rummage sale--now will whoever reads this know what is going on inside the old man and outside too (he looks as though his legs have been broken) and will it make any difference to him to know it, whoever he turns out to be? O sweet Christ, does it make any difference to you with whose holy cross I have crossed myself? O Jane McWilliams, does it make any difference to you that his legs look broken? Is that why your trees are angry?"

And today, as I ride the bus to work, this brings me to tears. I wonder to myself, does it matter to anyone anywhere that I am on this bus right now, heading out to live, in the best and only way I know how, in the needs of this day, to make a living and joke around with friends and co-workers and hopefully make a few people's days a little bit better by helping them with their computer problems? Does any of this matter at all?! I feel like screaming it. Yet, along with Buechner, if anything is important, I must believe that somehow--for me, now-- my presence in this day is important.

I look up and see a harmless mad man a few seats in front of me. He's muttering to himself and rubbing his fingers together compulsively, as if trying to conjure up the feel of fabric from his childhood blankie, as if trying to remember what it felt like to feel safe and warm. I wonder to myself, "Is my life any more valuable than this man's? Any less? Does he even know where he is?" And the only answer evoking anything but panic in me is that, really, we are the same. We have to be the same. Insofar as we both carry in us the deep need for love, for caring attention and tenderness, the same capacity for atrocious thoughts and deeds, the same basic anatomy and needs for air, water, food, shelter, sex... I am breathing, beating flesh and so is he. Do I even know where I am?

I get off the bus and wait my turn to walk across a four-lane street. Sometimes I look directly into oncoming traffic and try to catch glimpses of faces...try to distill this mass of humanity into a few faces that I can hold on to, if only for a moment. But then I worry I'm going to cause a traffic accident and look away.

As I reach the other side of the street, I see two twenty-somethings walking towards me on the sidewalk. A boy and a girl. A love story. She is beaming, holding a single red rose between her two hands. From the looks of her solid black dress slacks and matching well-soled shoes, I assume she is getting off from work. And to greet her? A prince with a flower. To make her feel beautiful, and loved, and wanted, and paid attention to. She doesn't know it, but she has never been more beautiful than she is right now, beaming. And I appreciate the guy too, for being so thoughtful. A part of me wants to linger, to stop walking and stare awkwardly until they walk out of site or drive away or do whatever they were going to do, but I keep walking. And somehow I have to believe. I have to believe that this is important, this day I am in, this journey I am making that I have made many times before and will make many times again, the muttering mad man and the girl with the red rose. Somehow I have to believe that this is life, real life, right now. I could fall to my knees and wail joyously...but that might freak some people out. So instead I whisper a prayer in my mind. I can't remember the exact words, but it goes something like this: I see. I am listening. I am paying attention. This wonder, this miracle is not lost on me. I am grateful. Thank you. Thank you.