Jordan.

Today I am remembered.
All day long I feel created.
I want to be known, which requires honesty.
I dislike my propensity to self-edit to maintain an image
but it's uncomfortable at times to let one know what you've said to another.
Surely one will know me different than another.


An email I wrote on Monday night to a 71 year old man:

Sorry it took me all day to get back to you Pops. I don't want to be another non-responder. It was a good breakfast this Monday morning. I feel privileged to speak with you. I'm sorry I didn't come in to EA to meet your wife in the evening time. Perhaps I will meet her yet. Today was intense for me. Not in that I had much to accomplish. On the contrary, I was entirely unproductive, but there is much going on inside of me. I didn't produce, but I met old friends and made new ones. I loved, and I hugged. I affirmed and I encouraged. These things, I believe are just as valid as my doing the laundry and tidying the apartment. I'm a college dropout Jim. I'm no stranger to failure. There have been many days in a row, in the past, where I would sit paralyzed from doing anything productive. But truly, this past half year, I have worked with my hands and not my mind. This past half year, I've read little and written less. But most of my time is consumed with the act of being. I have learned to be content in each moment - not mourning over the past or waiting for the future to redeem me, but to be truly present in the moment, to those around me. This is my power. To be in the moment, and BE WITH the people right in front of me, and enjoy it. I have friends to consider and pray for. I am learning that my listening to their words and participation in their hurt, costs me. The Spirit moves me to will and to act according to mysterious purposes. There was little good reason for me to not go to work today, other than sleeping quite poorly. But through the whole day, I was a prayer. In my movements, in my breathing. I am ordinary. I am not spiritually accomplished by any means. I'm just a regular dude, trying to figure this life out, and mostly failing at it. But the truth spoken to me today is this, "We glorify ourselves too easily through taking pride in the accomplishments achieved in our strengths. God uses us to glorify himself, and bring us righteousness, by accomplishing his purposes through our weaknesses". If I am to become anything significant, or honorable, or accomplished, at least by this world's standards, I'd consider it a miracle cuz' I don't have the discipline, focus, patience, or care to succeed in attaining a BA. But Jim, my new friend, what's it worth? What is the College degree worth? It's through failing to attain it that I have finally understood the nature of God's love. I do not deserve this love and I cannot invoke it. It is His to give, and you cannot steal a gift. He is kind. Peace out.


And a response:

     Working like a horse but sleeping only five to six hours a night fills my lap with silence or hasty words. There is a transcendent worth we all want, but rarely inhabit. I don't bitch for not seeing it. I think it's up to me to open my eyes. But I dare say this only of my own experience, not yours.  I sit here in recognition of a struggle in my consciousness between the power to seek, and apathy. The simple tragedy of mediocrity is that it begins in tepid apathy. I haven't read my books for a week and a half so I am blank. Apathy and lethargy are my gutter. I see juggernauts of beauty, persons of tremendous worth around me everyday. I do these a disservice in my inattentiveness to their availability, their temporal human presence.  I feel regret at this, but not guilt. I know my limits. I can't always be fully present to those around me. But this tiredness, this simple lack of sleep, is a wall. Without rest we're bound to sloth, an ugly rest, my bane.

    A life barely prayed is blind to others. O my peers, those of youthful vitality, we must not go on being so absorbed with ourselves. Our individualism, is incongruous with our redemption. Our narcissism is our nausea. To not seek, to not even care, might be death. This illness is a misappropriation of glory. That which is God's we steal for ourselves. O Prometheus! You are us!  I can only write of these ugly things because I am them (I only recognize pride in others as much as it is present in me). We try to steal the gifts - our humanness-  and from the first thieving moment begins our careers in cynicism. The skeptics  tear to shreds the cogent, but do so by noble pursuit of the truth. A skeptic still wants to know. A cynic is merely shredding ideas and theologies, and maybe even people, for self satisfaction.  My mom says you can't be a cynic and a Christian at the same time. I always believed her. I am not my own... I mean, my habits, and how I choose to live, really do affect my affections, especially when trying to live in community. And ultimately how I treat others reflects upon my worship of Jesus. Lack of sleep hurts others. Such a simple thing as turning the lights out is an act of Christian Service.