Edge of a Horizon

Darkness is an Outsider

Hello, world.

It’s been awhile since we last talked. I feel awkward even stating that since it seems that our relationship has been defined already. I don’t know if you even care to hear my rambling this time. Much like a Wes Anderson film, you might think it’s the same problem, same talk, with different words. Watch harder, look more carefully. Each is unique, all have heart.

I don’t know where to begin. Should I even? If you only want to know that my life has been dark as of late, then there you go. Take what I’ve said and leave. You won’t want to actually understand; I don’t even know if I want to. But I have no choice to see myself. You get me externally, I have to have me internally. This is why I have more friends than I deserve. This is also why know one will ever know me. If you are still reading this, then I will do my best to paint a window for you. You’re not allowed in; but look through if you will.

Some say that the Holy Spirit shows us ourselves. That may be true. I think it’s more true to simply treat yourself as a roommate, a boyfriend/girlfriend, an inseparable spouse (which is how it should be understood). Much like a relationship, you will know them over time. I am an introvert. I’m closer to me than most people are with themselves. Much like a friend you choose not to see or hear from anymore, you forget the good times. You stopped the relationship (or they with you) because the bad outweighed the good. Do you remember the good anymore? I don’t. I look at me and frustrate myself. I am my own worst enemy. “Keep your friends close and your enemy closer” could not be a truer understanding of this relationship. But the trouble here is I can’t stop the relationship. I cannot divorce myself from me. Much like marriages, I have to find a way to make it work, “until death do us part.”

Death. Why do people grieve over death? Why are people afraid? Loss of love? Selfish. Destruction of Beauty? Inevitable. All is entropy. All is vanity. Death is the end of a book; the curtain of a play; the fade-to-black of a film. So why must we fear the end? Breathe. It’s coming.

Morbid? Demented? Sick in the head? Am I really? Then yet again, I’m on the outside. Death is an outsider. But God is one as well. Humanity separated from God, taking community, the “in” crowd, with them. Elitests. God became man to relate to us, to try to find his way “in”. Yet he refused to compromise who he was for it. Someone sniffed a rat. They killed him. Khattam-Shud. The end. Death.

I get that I cannot be a part of anything. I understand that my own culture is against me. I also understand that my cowardice will get the best of me. God promised hope to the outsiders, even to the people who aren’t outsiders yet. Read his word carefully, because you have to be an outsider to get “in”. Here’s the question for myself though: can I ever be “in” even with the outsiders? Is God’s hope legitimate or a ruse? Will I only ever be alone?

Everything I’ve written has been good food for thought. I wish I could stop the message here. To tell you that I’m stuck in these questions, confusion. I guess there is still hope for me, since part of me is still stuck in questions. But to question creates a fork in the road of “faith”. And the other part of me is walking down a path. I feel condemned already by the outsiders, by “Christians”, for questioning. Not by all, but a general feeling. Could be real, could just be voices in my head. But I need to make a choice. People want me on one road, others on the other. Why can’t I choose for myself? Why can’t I be respected in that? Loved in that? Why do I even care what you think at all?

I don’t fit in with the world. I’m beginning to no longer fit in with the Church either. So where is my place? I don’t know. I truly don’t. I’m an outlaw, always on the run. A lone ranger. But I’m no Batman. I bear a dragon tattoo. I want justice, but can’t achieve it. Maybe I’m just a pathetic, insane taxi driver. I’m a lamb. And Nietzsche, be proud that I’ve claimed it and have chosen to sauté myself for the birds.

Melancholia is an angel of Death. It looms over me like a plague, yet is the vision by which I see. Do I walk with eyes open in the dark? Or closed, blind? Faith is blind. That scares me more than death. How can I walk my whole life blind? I’d rather reach infinitum nihil looking into its face than walk blindly towards it, hoping for more. And that’s where I ask God, the outsider, how he can say that he and I are alike. How can I choose his “hope” of no longer ever being alone by means of blindness? Is “redeeming” faith truly blind? Or is it more than knowledge, more than sight? There’s the Matrix, blind to reality. Neo takes the red pill. He opens his eyes to see the truth. I’ve taken the red pill too. Though I may only be touching a liquid mirror, I see the world more than just a Matrix. But at what point does Neo realize that what he thinks is reality is still only just a movie? When does he truly see what’s more real than real? (Death fades the movie to black, doesn’t it?)

People walk around blind, hoping that when they open their eyes they will see light. I’m opening mine. There isn’t. Maybe there will be in the future. But there isn’t now. It’s dark. It’s lonely. And my path is my own. Not my family’s. Not my friends’. Mine. Maybe God will show up, maybe he won’t. Some people have the opportunity to watch me walk my path. Let me. Speak wisdom, but more importantly speak love. I won’t have anything else. I don’t know where I’m going. The words you say to me, the actions you do towards me, I take on my journey. Are you making it harder? Or are you trying to lighten the load? You can’t carry it with me, but you can prevent adding more.

I don’t know what else to give you at this time. There’s more, there always is. Nothing is simple, which is why minimalism in art is more of a hope than a reality. It’s fantasy, a fairy tale. Don’t cheapen the mind, the art, the soul, in all its complexities. Nothing awaits us at death. Everything awaits us at death. It doesn’t matter what path you take. Just run towards truth. You must seek it; it won’t seek you. God is coming, and truth will follow, revealing itself. What do you want to see there? Do you think you’ll like what you see? Even if you don’t, it doesn’t matter. God is God, truth is truth, you are you, and darkness is an outsider. So let him in.

Transition Back Home

Every story involves a hero’s journey home from the special world where he/she changed. But the hero is never the same when he/she re-enters “home”. This transition time back home from the journey can either be wonderful and joyous, or it can be dreary and painful. Again, the hero is never the same.

EDGE Project in Altea, Spain was my journey, my adventure. I met friends, I met internal stuggles all heroes face in their stories, and I was guided by God to love and build community with all the wonderful people He brought in my life. But I write not about the journey I had; instead I write about the time home, the aftermath, what I must have walked away with from my story in Spain.

I left behind problems and pain when I first left for Spain; and truth be told, those problems coming home grew in monsters, pain grew into grief. My first week back I felt rejuvinated, invigorated, wide-eyed about people, culture, and life. I experienced culture shock, afterall America is very different than Spain. I sought to bring the pleasantries of Spain into my home culture, into my workplace, into my relationships.

My monsters have harassed me and hurt me. My pain has festered and bled. But though my monsters have grown, I am not left defenseless, without the means to put up a fight. Spain prepared me in ways I didn’t even know or realize until the moment they were needed. In the face of monsters, what do you all heroes have? Courage, boldness. As I face beast after beast, I feel a sense of courage to face them head on. Praise God.

Though the monsters are many, and God knows what else will be in store, I can rest in the truth that Spain has empowered me to face them, to fight them, and to beat them.

Altea

Pursuit. A striving after wind,
with the hope of it being found;
the spirit of relationship between beauty & me,
a stretch of something profound.

In America, I caught a glimpse
of people & places wanting more,
constant activity of beautification,
inviting beauty to dwell on our shores.

Presently I’m overseas
witnessing a new kind of union,
where beauty invites man
to an incredible transformation.

Instead of pursuing, people are dwelling
with a place present in beauty;
my soul is in disbelief,
somebody must be trying to fool me.

Instead of strife, I see breath,
an embracement of the pleasurable;
joy exudes in a place having reached where others reach,
truly the love of God for believers and the unbelieving is immeasurable.

And I have barely experienced but a day here,
an uncomfortably blissful, yet joyous store;
to know I can see beauty already and this is just the beginning,
I cannot imagine what mystery lies in store.

Lost Time

To anyone who reads this post or even cares,

I have not written a blog in a good number of months. And aside from my sparse number of tweets, and by the off chance you even get 15 minutes with me over coffee, you probably are wondering what’s happened. Have I stopped caring about sharing my thoughts with the world? Am I just lazy? Have I died? Surely, all three have a bit of truth to them.

My life in the last several months has been anything but simple, easy, or helpful. Honestly I won’t be sharing everything with you, so don’t go on reading this expecting to figure out what’s wrong with me. Frankly, I don’t know myself. All I know is that I have the hardest time receiving anything: be it love, encouragement, criticism, money, affection, conviction, a hug, etc. And this is really hard when you call yourself a friend, a son, a student, and an image of God.

What does it mean to receive something? How does one receive? You, reader, might be asking me: how do you NOT receive? I can tell you this much: I comprehend my unworthiness. The more I grow in knowledge attending a Bible college, the more I see God and Beauty truthfully AS WELL AS my own depravity and sinfulness. You cannot eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil expecting only one or the other.

The more I see Beauty, the more I am in love with Her. And if in my seeing more of Her I catch a glimpse of myself, I writhe and collapse the more. This cycle has gone on in my life for years. Call it a battle between light and dark, me and myself, God and the devil, you could even try labeling it a bipolar disorder; regardless it is the cycle. Good gets more good over time, evil gets more evil likewise.

With all that to say, I’m currently dealing with the burden of darkness which has reached such a level of darkness it’s crippling me. I’m stuck. Emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, I’m exhausted. I’ve stalled out. I just can’t keep up.

Here’s where the problem lies: God has been SO present in this time, so near to me, so close I can practically hear Him whisper to me. And yet, where He wants nothing more than to drown me in His grace and His love, I cannot receive it. I turn it away. I’m unworthy of it. I know it, He even knows it; yet He still gives. It’s in His nature.

I don’t know what to do with grace. I don’t know what to do with God. I deserve Hell, I deserve to be unhappy, I deserve justice. And He comes to me bearing the greatest gift of all: Himself.

Lord, I don’t know how to receive You. I don’t know why you would give me anything. Why waste Your time with me? Life would be so easy without grace. But You are less likely to let up than me. I’m stubborn, but You’re more stubborn with me. I know my perspective will change again. I know I’ll catch another glimpse of Beauty without myself sneaking into view. And I know it will cause me to fall back in love. May You graciously guide me to that place. And may You help me to open my heart to You, to my family, to my friends, to the world that needs me.

Thank you, reader. You’ve witnessed a deep glimmer of one of the hardest wars I’ve had to endure. Be patient with me. I love you, I promise. I love you enough to share myself with you. And though I may never see Beauty in my own words, may She appear clearly to you. That is my hope.

Ta ta for now.

The Tree of Life - A Review

Very few films in cinema history have attempted to define human existence and nature. With 2001: A Space Odyssey as arguably the last film to do so, Terrence Malick’s latest philosophical treasure is The Tree of Life. The film opens with a verse from the book of Job saying, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?…When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38:4,7). Immediately following this verse is an abstract light refraction with the sound of waves on a beach. We then hear the now famous words, “The nuns taught us there are two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace.” And from this point onward through the film, Malick has us wrestle with these two “ways,” amongst a plethora of other themes, through visuals. Now it has been debated amongst critics, viewers, students, and even other filmmakers whether the film communicates this or anything at all; if it does, how does the viewer experience these things; if nothing, then what was the point of sitting through gorgeous pictures for two and a half hours? Clearly the movie is attempting something bigger and grander than pretty much any other film in existence. But it is the communicative nature of the film that has everyone in an uproar. I would argue that this is the single most beautiful film ever made. It is universally agreed that the movie’s visuals are spectacular. But when I talk about its beauty, I mean even more than just visuals. Coming from my own Platonic view of beauty and art, I feel a sense of the film’s pursuit towards something grand. I see an almost reaching out to God through art. But even past my own understanding, there is another element of beauty in the film that I think Malick is attempting to say.

I once heard it said that “beauty is in relationships,” and I think Malick might agree. The subject that I feel the film most expresses and is least obvious is relationships: relationships between us and God, us and nature, us and others, our relationship with ourselves, nature with nature, God with nature, color with color, shot with shot, movie with audience, emotion with logic, nature with grace, etc. Tree of Life is an ambitious movie all around, but one specifically about relationships. The opening verse in context is of God finally coming to Job and speaking out against his lack of understanding of God. It reveals God’s relationship with Job; and even in the latter part of the verse, a sort of community-oriented relationship among people, who are called sons of God, which even implies a belonging to the Father; another relationship. The mother and father’s grievance toward their dead son exist because of a loss of relationship. The mother sings out the same cries of Job, and the audience is thrown out into the cosmos, seeing things on a macro level; then trust back to things like childbirth, bubbles, and butterflies, now seeing things on a micro level. God is in all things, grace is in all things (we even see this in the relationship between a prehistoric predator leaving wounded prey alone, without a kill; an act of grace in nature). The majority of the film is focused on the eldest son’s relationship to the world around him: his brothers, mother, father, job, friends, himself, and even God.

Emmanuel Lubezki, the cinematographer, also took Malick’s theme to an artistic level, as well as Malick’s five editors. To accentuate the macro and micro level of God’s transcendence and imminence in human life, we are shown cosmic shots followed immediately by shots of cells forming biological life resembling planets. Lubezki keeps the level of relationships deep by using a variety of shots (the ground, the horizon, and the sky) as our points of view on life; it is all around us, above and below, not just straight ahead. The nonlinear storyline speaks to our relationship with our past and present. The ending sequence, with Sean Penn walking around the desert finding himself later on a beach with everyone from his life, could be the relationship we have with our future, albeit an abstract one at that. And with this scene we even get the poignant reminder that relationships are what matter. The mother’s voice-over says at the end, “The only way to be happy is to love. Unless you love, your life will flash by. Do good to them. Wonder. Hope.” These powerful last words in the film open us up to experiencing relationships to their fullest. Loving one another grows our relationships with each other more deeply. Remembering to always wonder at the beauty that surrounds us will further our relationship to the world God created for us, by His perfectly skilled hands. Hoping in God allow all of this to be possible, to trust that everything is in His hands. Lastly I think Malick is reminding us about the verse, “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him’” (Genesis 2:18). We were created to have relationship. This is our existence. So has Tree of Life succeeded in capturing the greatest, grandest idea of human existence and life? It this film the most beautiful ever made? I think so.

The Task Ahead

Friends are a blessing,
complex and knowable;

Through the good times and the bad,
You hold it all together;
friends would not be friends if You weren’t there.

Conflict is a component of nature,
but should pain be?

Even if things are to get better,
pain is sometimes a necessity.

The story goes that two friends wrong each other,
they no longer talk, and when they do tension rises;

When one attempts to get over the other,
the other accuses the one of wrongdoing,
the fire burns brighter.

As the fire burns and the smoke settles,
one thing remained clear:
You were the healer to fix the two.

I talk with one and embrace the other,
my hope that You shine through.

I understand the task at hand,
as one grows with friends,
the other needs me, to need You.

Take me, Lord,
move through me,
pour Your grace out of me.

Lord, may I be a cistern,
but may I hold You in no more;

She needs you more than ever,
and I need You to be the One,
the One to heal it all,
the One to be praised through the good and the bad.

The journey ahead is a rough one,
but I know You hold my hand,
now, O Lord, I grip it tightly.