The Courage to Dream: An Old Story of Rebirth

This is a talk I gave at Doxology this past Sunday (12/27/09).

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Our scripture reading today comes out of Paul's letter to the Galatians.

Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by our faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian. [...] But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if the child then also an heir, through God. [Gal. 3:23-25; 4:4-7]

Take a moment and imagine a book that you have read more times than you can count or a movie that you have seen so many times you can nearly quote the whole thing and yet somehow, this story doesn't ever get old. When you start reading it, you can't put it down and even though you know exactly what's going to happen, you're riveted. You're watching the movie, annoying everyone by quoting along with the characters, and then someone interrupts the movie and you want to say, "Shush! We're going to miss something!"

I think that watching a movie you truly love with someone who is watching it for the first time is a ridiculously stressful experience. I spend the whole time sneaking peaks to see if they are laughing at the right moments and looking appropriately dumbstruck at the shocking revelations and then they say something like, "Yeah, I figured it all out in the first 5 minutes," and I feel crushed.

The Christian calendar works very much like watching a movie that you love and know well. Every December, we pretend to be ancient Israelites; we put ourselves in the shoes of Abraham and Isaac and generations of people yearning for a Messiah to come save us. We get all giddy and excited and tell the kids and each other, "He's coming! Jesus is coming and he will wipe away every tear! The Messiah is coming!" We already know how the story ends and that it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better, but in December we groan with those who groan for the coming of a Savior.

Then on Christmas, we tell the story about how "the Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood." It really is an amazing part of the story, one of the most amazing parts of the story, and even though we know that it still isn't the end of the story, we rejoice that God has come down from Heaven to save us.

In a lot of ways, the day after Christmas feels a lot like the moment when I walked out of the first Lord of the Rings movie. It's awesome and we're so stoked, but at the same time, we're left hanging!

And in the Christian telling of the story, we're left hanging for 3 months until Easter! In those three months, we celebrate Lent and imagine ourselves tagging along with Jesus on his 40 days in the Wilderness, then every year in Passion Week, we retell the story of the final days of Jesus. We celebrate his last Passover Seder in communion. On Good Friday, we come together wearing black to mourn the death of the one who was supposed to save us. We know that it's totally worth it because we heard this same story last year, but for some reason, we come back again and mourn the death of a savior.

Then Easter and what a finale! He did it! The veil in the Temple is torn and now our sins do not separate us from God because Jesus conquered death! Except dang it! They left it open for a sequel and now the whole cycle starts over and we're back to waiting and yearning and groaning for a savior to come for us. This is the paradox of our faith: Christ was born. Christ has risen. Christ will come again. Jesus has made it possible for us to be in direct relationship with God and at the same time, we will not be in a direct relationship with God until Heaven.

The best stories are strange and complicated enough that every time you hear them, you are baffled again, and this is certainly a strange and complicated story.

So here we are: the first Sunday after Christmas, the end of the first act in this new story of grace. I am exhilarated that we worship a Creator who would enter His creation but at the same time, I am left hanging, wishing it was Easter already!

I have always felt that this is an interesting service in the Christian calendar. It seems that we have today every year the difficult task of both debriefing the end of the Advent season and looking forward to the new year that is rapidly approaching.

So Christ has come. Now what? Sure, it's a great story, but I am already thinking about New Year's Resolutions and wondering if maybe I will be a better person next year than I was last year, desperately hoping that the pain I caused and felt this year will not happen again next year, but I am afraid my odds are not very good. I look at the new year and think, "How many years have passed when I said it would be different next year?" It's easy, after Christmas is over, to doubt that the amazing story we tell every year was really that transformational because - bluntly - the world still sucks. We still suffer. We still cause suffering to those around us and we still don't really know why. But Christ has come.

So here we are, in the middle of our favorite story. We know how it ends and we know it's awesome, but right now, we're not sure because a lot is going wrong. As we enter this new year, let's take a moment and think about the END of the story, how incredible a story it is, about what it is Jesus did for us on the cross.

Earlier we read some of Galatians in the New Revised Standard Version. Let's take a look at the section in The Message.

23-24Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic law. The law was like those Greek tutors, with which you are familiar, who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for.

25-27But now you have arrived at your destination: By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start. It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe—Christ's life, the fulfillment of God's original promise.

28-29In Christ's family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ. Also, since you are Christ's family, then you are Abraham's famous "descendant," heirs according to the covenant promises.

1-3Let me show you the implications of this. As long as the heir is a minor, he has no advantage over the slave. Though legally he owns the entire inheritance, he is subject to tutors and administrators until whatever date the father has set for emancipation. That is the way it is with us: When we were minors, we were just like slaves ordered around by simple instructions (the tutors and administrators of this world), with no say in the conduct of our own lives.

4-7But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent his Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law so that he might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law. Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage. You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out, "Papa! Father!" Doesn't that privilege of intimate conversation with God make it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you're also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance.

Can you believe that? Really? I mean it sounds great to hear that I am not alone. That we are not alone in this suffering. It's quite a story, that our hope for salvation has come and it is a so much more than we expected, but is it true? C.S Lewis talked about the utter enormity of Jesus's message in God in the Dock. He said:

The things [Jesus] says are very different from what any other teacher has said. Others say "This is the truth about the Universe. This is the way you ought to go," but He says, "I am the Truth, the Way, and the Life." He says, "No man can reach absolute reality, except through Me. Try to retain your own life and you will be inevitably ruined. Give yourself away and you will be saved." He says, "If you are ashamed of Me, if when you hear this call, you turn the other way, I also will look the other way when I come again as God without disguise. If anything whatever is keeping you from God and from me, whatever it is, throw it away. If your eye, pull it out. If it is your hand, cut it off. If you put yourself first, you will be last. Come to Me everyone who is carrying a heavy load, I will set it right. Your sins, all of them, are wiped out, I can do that. I am Rebirth, I am Life. Eat Me, drink Me, I am your Food. And finally, do not be afraid, I will overcome the whole Universe." That is the issue.

In Advent, we hope through the despair. We look back at the suffering of our year, and our lives, and of humanity and then dare to hope despite the overwhelming odds.

Now we move on.

As C.S. Lewis made perfectly clear, Jesus was and is a big deal, more than just a good moral teacher. Jesus changes the equation, and once again, like every year, we recall that He has come down and entered the neighborhood. So now, our time of groanings is over.

The Messiah has come!

The story isn't finished, but the equation has changed and now we have this opportunity in the darkest days of winter to dream enormous impossible dreams of what things could be like.

If you're like me, it can be hard to forget that the days still are dark and cold. It's hard to look past the fact that there's still suffering in my life, that the story really hasn't ended. In some ways, this year I am especially prone to the cynical, to sneer at God and say, "We've gone through this hopeful dreaming thing for thousands of years and what difference has it made?" Part of me isn't ready to give up the groanings of Advent and wants to cry out for a savior to come rescue us. And why not? We're back to that old paradox of Christianity: Jesus has completed us, made things better, torn down the wall between us and our Daddy God. And at the same time, He is not yet finished completing us, and one day things will be right between us and God.

A part of me will always and should always live in the perpetual waiting for a savior for as long as there is that God-shaped hole in my soul.

But now is not the time for wallowing. It is a new year! So now we get to dream. G.K. Chesterton said the following in Orthodoxy:

"...to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that God makes all daisies alike; it may be that God made every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."

For we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. Let me introduce another part of the Christian story that we celebrate over and over and over again. In a word: rebirth. In Christianity, we participate in Christ's death and resurrection in baptism, and in that moment, we believe that we experience New Birth. John 3:1-8:

1-2 There was a man of the Pharisee sect, Nicodemus, a prominent leader among the Jews. Late one night he visited Jesus and said, "Rabbi, we all know you're a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the God-pointing, God-revealing acts you do if God weren't in on it."

3Jesus said, "You're absolutely right. Take it from me: Unless a person is born from above, it's not possible to see what I'm pointing to—to God's kingdom."

4"How can anyone," said Nicodemus, "be born who has already been born and grown up? You can't re-enter your mother's womb and be born again. What are you saying with this 'born-from-above' talk?"

5-6Jesus said, "You're not listening. Let me say it again. Unless a person submits to this original creation—the 'wind-hovering-over-the-water' creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—it's not possible to enter God's kingdom. When you look at a baby, it's just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can't see and touch—the Spirit—and becomes a living spirit.

7-8"So don't be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be 'born from above'—out of this world, so to speak. You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it's headed next. That's the way it is with everyone 'born from above' by the wind of God, the Spirit of God."

We also celebrate this new birth that Christ made possible throughout the year in Communion, metaphorically taking Christ's body and blood into our own, to become the tissue of our cells.

So you see how the story of Christianity, from Adam through Jesus, is one of those great stories that you just keep telling over and over again because you can't get enough of it. So today, as we look toward another year, we once again tell each other the story of a rebirth so that the cynicism and wounds of the past year can be healed.

Our sins are forgiven, we are reborn and have the chance to be like the children Chesterton spoke about, like our Father God. We get to look with child-like adoration at what Papa is doing in the world and say "Do it again!" with "the eternal appetite of infancy."

The prophet Joel spoke of that incredible moment after rebirth when all things are possible:

28-32 "And that's just the beginning: After that—

"I will pour out my Spirit
on every kind of people:
Your sons will prophesy,
also your daughters.
Your old men will dream,
your young men will see visions.
I'll even pour out my Spirit on the servants,
men and women both.
[...]
Whoever calls, 'Help, God!'
gets help.
On Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
there will be a great rescue—just as God said.
Included in the survivors
are those that God calls."

Two days ago we celebrated the arrival of that Great Rescue and now we get to be giddy and new. This reminds me of the scene in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe that we watched earlier, when finally Aslan comes back from death and roars through Narnia, breathing life into a long-frozen land. It's exciting!

We're about to enter Thin Space, which is a term from the ancient Celtic Christians that describes a moment in our daily lives when the veil between Heaven and Earth is thinnest, when we can most closely experience God. In other Christian traditions, these moments are called sacraments, and one of the sacraments of our new birth in Christ is Communion, which we will take in a few minutes to celebrate a new year, but first, I have a question for you:

If this were all true, if we serve a God who has cleaned us of the sin of being old too young, who gives us the wild exuberance of childhood, if you weren't afraid of all the things that have hurt you and pushed you down anymore, if today, you really were a new creation, what would you let yourself dream? What will you let yourself dream?

I am not looking for your New Year's Resolutions here. I am looking for your wildest dreams. I believe 2010 can be the year that old men dream dreams and young men will see visions if you let yourself see visions and dream dreams. How amazing could 2010 be? What passion is God laying on your heart for this year?

I sincerely believe that God does not want 2010 to be just another year for you. God doesn't want you to "get by" in 2010 and he doesn't want you to survive it. I believe that God wants this to be a year full of Thin Spaces, a year of dreaming big dreams, of being reborn daily in God's grace. In Habakuk 2:2-3, the prophet says,

2-3And then God answered: "Write this.
Write what you see.
Write it out in big block letters
so that it can be read on the run.
This vision-message is a witness
pointing to what's coming.
It aches for the coming—it can hardly wait!
And it doesn't lie.
If it seems slow in coming, wait.
It's on its way. It will come right on time.

Write your vision so big you can see it running!

So I have something for you to dream about. "In 2010, I imagine a church/family/marriage/friendship/job/city/nation/etc where..."

You see that we have on the back wall a long strip of butcher paper with those phrases written on it. We're going to play a worship song now and I encourage you to sit in silence for a time and allow yourself to imagine what rebirth means for you, what dreams God wants to give to you this year. When you are ready, I ask that you do three things.

First, come forward and celebrate your rebirth in Christ which allows us to cry Daddy, Father, to our God through Communion. Then, in keeping with Habukuk's command to write our vision in big block letters, I ask that you write your visions and dreams for 2010 on the paper, not in tiny letters in the corner, but in big letters you can see while you're running. Finally, celebrate! Come back together and worship our God who gives us dreams and passions. When we are through, we'll close in prayer.

In First Corinthians 11, Paul wrote:

23The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." 25In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." 26For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

So it's two days after the first act ended and we feel that something new is in the air, that Jesus is here among us, in the neighborhood, and in a few months, we will celebrate His death and resurrection. What an amazing story. So when you're ready, come be a part of it in communion and in dreaming.

Last Published, Feb 15, 2008

Blog disappear. Most of the internet is a string of ghosttowns, founded when it seemed like a good idea and abandoned when the the gold was better elsewhere. 60% of new Twitterers abandon their accounts within the first month.

I myself have left my own string of ghost websites and blogs and profiles. Recently, I decided to search the interwebs for myself. My feelings were mixed when I found that I do, in fact, have a bit of a record in Google: a MySpace profile, a Facebook profile, and a Xanga blog, among other things. Apparently, I registered a domain name (http://www.shartstories.org/) at some point in the past and hosted my portfolio there, but I have no recollection of doing so. The site is long-defunct but other links on the web still point to it.

At the most recent end of my abandoned digital life lies this blog. Started to pass the hours in a drug research study (thus the URL), this blog was a first attempt at some sort of blog that wasn't just a public journal. In reality, I'm still not sure what people talk about when they're not talking about themselves, but I sometimes tried to figure it out here.

So now, somehow, in the way that life on the web goes, a year has passed since I last posted here, and for some reason, I am ready to bring it back. I know, the election cycle would have been a great time to get back into blogging, while everyone was expressing their thoughts to anyone who would listen (and I did more than a little bit of that in Facebook notes). And while I didn't post then, the whole election has prompted me to be more adament and vocal about what I believe than I have ever been before in my life.

Until recently, my beliefs have been defined by what I don't believe. And when I had beliefs, I kept them close to the chest, believing loudly-spoken convictions do no one any good. For the most part, I still believe that people are too eager to preach and not eager enough to listen. I believe in questions and doubt and suspicion. I believe in seeking much more than I believe in finding.

But the simple fact I have come to believe is that there's something to be said for seeking together, for questioning together. And there's also something to be said for taking stands sometimes, together.

And a blog is a place to practice that. To start a dialog. To take stands and ask questions at the appropriate times.

So I'm going to write again!

The Emergence of Hope

For months now, I have said nearly every day that I should start blogging again. I have gotten up every morning, reflected on my coming day, and thought "Maybe today I'll get a chance to sit down and write something." Some days (many days) I have chuckled (audibly) at the ridiculous notion that even three entire minutes would coincide to be empty at the same time for a moment to write. Other days, the moment seems possible - even guaranteed - but somehow it slips through my fingers.

I quit writing because I felt like I had nothing to say that anyone would want to hear. I spent at least sixty hours in December walking and walking and walking; through the Christmas lights and along the railroad tracks, Riker and I walked the miles, watching the icy breath hang in front of our faces. Thinking. I was (and am) uncertain about my career goals and dreams (both immediate and long-term) so I spent a lot of time asking myself what I am passionate about.

Sometimes, on my walks, I listened only to the vast silence of a winter's night, but sometimes - in an effort to understand my passions - I listened on my iPod to lectures by Muhammad Yunus and others on ending world poverty and social entrepreneurship. (Yes, a dork, I know.) I have no answers for myself (I continue to fly by the seat of my pants.) but somehow, through my walks and the lectures and my reading, I find myself moving in a certain direction with a certain drive (though without a known goal).

What's the direction? Well, Wednesday night, I wrote the previous three paragraphs on a legal pad while sitting in on a panel on social entrepreneurship at an event called "Act Local, Think Global." I think UT may have hosted this event for a couple of years, but I - who am hard-pressed to go to any kind of event anytime - never felt any desire to go. And I was astounded at how many people were there!

The Texas Union Ballroom was completely packed with representatives from dozens of social action groups from Teach For America and the ONE Campaign down to Ten Thousand Villages and Eastside Community Connection. I'm now on a dozen mailing lists because I feel like I am entering a place in my life when it will be important to know what action is happening around the city.

The weird thing for me is that it seems like a lot of people I know are hitting this place; a lot of people I know are feeling this urge to stand up and say "This, I will not tolerate."

I went biking yesterday on the Greenbelt and it was the first time I've gone biking since before I posted last (which is probably not a coincidence) and I went partially because it was a beautiful day, but largely because it seemed like the RIGHT day. I had just finished reading Dervla Murphy's Full Tilt, about biking from Ireland to India and was feeling an extra-strong urge to knock off some miles, but for a while yesterday afternoon I sat on my couch almost paralyzed with indecision. I had homework that I really needed to be doing, and I was thinking about biking, but in that moment, what I really wanted to do more than anything else was take a nap. Earlier in the day, the desire to ride had been almost worth skipping class, but in that moment, I just wanted to sleep. I was sitting on my bed, pulling off my shoes for a nap, when something in me snapped, and I said, "To hell with this, I NEED to ride my bike today," and did it, and the trail really kicked my butt (quite literally) but it was as awesome as I knew it would be.

The amazing thing to me is how many other bikers were on the trail! I am not exaggerating when I say that I have never seen as many bikers on the Barton Creek Greenbelt as I saw yesterday. It seemed like every minute I was having to pull aside to give oncoming traffic the trail. (Why I always had to pull over is still beyond me.) At one point, I stopped to talk to a hiker who complained about the amount of bike traffic on the trail, and she agreed that she had never seen that many bikes either. Together, we tried to figure out what the deal was? "Were we all together?" No... "Is it the weather?" I've seen more pleasant days with few people. "Maybe people are getting in a ride before the cold front comes through tomorrow?" I said, What cold front? "Maybe it has something to do with Valentine's Day?" Maybe, though the thought never occurred to me.

The truth is that hundreds of individual bicyclists individually decided that yesterday was the RIGHT day to hit the trail, for their own reasons, and somehow, everyone chose the same day.

This kind of spontaneous random emergence is what I think of when I think of my own desire to act toward social justice in the world. It seems to me like the RIGHT time to act, just like yesterday was the RIGHT day for a ride, and somehow, many people I know and - I believe - many people around the country and around the world are also somehow deciding that now is the right time to act. It is not a generational thing or a class thing or a regional thing. This new hope thing is so much bigger than that, and - though I hesitate to presume - I think this is a God thing.

And so with this burning in my gut that isn't bad seafood and that needs somewhere to go, I am back to writing.

Also (though probably not unrelated), my dad has started blogging again the competitive side of me (the side that motivates so much of what I do) demands not to be left behind.

RE: "Is Sexism Less Offensive Than Racism in Politics?"

[THIS IS A COMMENT THAT I POSTED IN RESPONSE TO A CNN.COM ARTICLE ASKING WHETHER RACISM OR SEXISM IS WORSE IN THIS ELECTION. I LIKED IT ENOUGH TO SHARE.]

I agree that sexism and racism are both equally bad factors to use in deciding how to cast your ballot. It seems that the Democratic Party is in a place of wanting to right old injustices and start fresh by saying, "See? We are no longer white males only; in fact, we are willing to entrust our highest office to this once-oppressed group. Let's put that old day behind us." I think this is an incredibly powerful desire on the part of the American people. Electing a woman tells the world that we are willing to let a woman rule our country the same as electing a black man tells the world the same message.

However, without in any way discrediting the past and current injustices committed against women, no injustice has so torn our nation apart and threatened to destroy this country as the injustice committed against African-Americans, through slavery, during Reconstruction, and for the decades after. Nothing divides our nation now and disempowers the American people now as much as racism - both ongoing and its repercussions from two hundred years of blatant and destructive discrimination.

While that is the kind of statement that matters most as a declaration by the American people to itself, as a sign of unity behind an ideal, it is also worth thinking about how the rest of the world will view this election, and from that perspective, imagine what statement we give in a President Barack Hussein Obama. Our enemies gain credibility by describing America as a vanilla-white society who suppresses people different than ourselves whose goal is to homogenize the world under the banner of McDonald's. Obama is an American through-and-through and - though Christian - has a Muslim-sounding name. By electing a black man whose life story rings true with people from the very parts of the world who feel the most alienated by Americans we are not only healing the wounds of our own domestic injustices, we are showing the world what American democracy really truly is all about, and we are proving Osama bin Laden wrong and showing that we are more than our mistakes.

As a country, we are being put in an intimidating position of responsibility: choosing which wrong we want to right first. The injustices against women need addressing (as the blatantly sexist remarks this election season have proven) and I believe that a day is coming soon when these injustices will be addressed, but the defeat of the racism prevalent in this campaign is as significant a moment for democracy as Americans are ever likely to see.

Accepting the Discrepancy

I heard someone say recently that our fear of death motivates so much of what we do irrationally as people and that we can't really develop or move on until we learn to accept our own death. I heard this in a message about "radical acceptance" of the good and the bad elements of life.

Accepting the good and the bad elements of life has really been weighing on me a lot lately, because I've been trying to decide whether it's better to view life as basically bad and spoiled (with some positive surprises) or better to view life as basically good overall (with some negative surprises). I basically came to the conclusion that every single moment and aspect of life is filled with good things and bad things. I think that calling life good OR bad is creating an artificial image that isn't often (if ever) really true and it's an easy lie that we want to tell ourselves. Life sucks. Life is beautiful. We want to create that definition for life because it's easier and it's easier because if we can define life, then to some small extent, we are in control of life; we know what to expect, so we aren't quite so out of control. It is much harder to just accept every part of life that happens to you, and let it happen to you, recognizing that most things are really out of your control. It's harder, but I'm realizing that in the end, it's a much better life.

So I've been thinking a lot about this radical acceptance thing, and about looking every moment in the eye, good or bad, and letting myself really feel it and embrace it, and then give it to God.

In another talk this week, I heard someone talk about a sense of inner conflict that is almost an emotion, a not-rightness, and how this pain always comes from a real conflict - I think he used the word 'discrepancy' - so instead of complaining and bemoaning the melancholy and trying to fix the emotion, we should accept the emotion and take some time to sit down and ask ourselves what the discrepancy is.

I've been struggling with a strong, almost-overpowering sense of inner conflict for several months now. I have wondered if I am again dealing with depression, and I don't rule that out, so my response has been not to let myself slump, not to fall into myself, as it were. I tell myself that I have no reason to feel conflicted, because - in nearly every way - my life is better right now than it has been in a very long time. I'm doing what I want to be doing, and - though there is more financial frustration than I've ever had before - there is not really anything that I think, "If I could change this, I would be happy." So I've done exactly what maybe I shouldn't do, which is to combat the sense of melancholy without even stopping to ask the source of melancholy.

When the speaker talked about stopping to find the discrepancy that needs to be fixed, I did just that, and have spent the past three or four days trying to figure out what the discrepancy is, with no luck. Last night was particularly intense and unpleasant for me, so this morning, when I listened to a song by Joanna Newsom called "Monkey and Bear", I suddenly had a sense of what the discrepancy is, and I realized that they were right: fear of death - unwillingness to accept death - pervades everything, even if (like me) you don't really see yourself as afraid of death.

I haven't exactly figured out what the discrepancy is for me except that it has to do with fears so deep I almost can't touch them, so I think I want to just show you the lyrics to the song, which I transcribed as prose since I want to focus on the story of the song more than the lyricism or poetry of it.

I guess I had a moment when I thought, "I am Bear," and then a minute later, "I am Monkey," and a minute after that, "I am both Bear and Monkey," and a red light went off that said: discrepancy!

I guess for me, Bear is the beast who years to be wild and the artist and the believer, and Monkey is the pragmatist, who wants to be fed more than to be free. And yet it's not that simple, because freedom was Monkey's idea, and the story is told from his perspective, even though everyone dislikes Monkey and loves Bear. If I see myself as both Monkey and Bear, it is all directed at myself. My Monkey (that sounds hilarious) is enslaving my Bear, but it's all still me, all of it! And I'm afraid that Bear is dying...

So here I am feeling that. How do I accept that? Where do I go with that?

Down in the green hay, where Monkey and Bear usually lay, they woke from a stable-boy's cry.

He said, "Someone come quick! The horses got loose, got grass-sick! They'll founder! Fain, they'll die."

What is now known by the sorrel and the roan? By the chestnut, and the bay, and the gelding grey? It is: stay by the gate you are given, and remain in your place, for your season, and had the overfed dead but listened to that high-fence, horse-sense, wisdom...

"Did you hear that, Bear?" said Monkey, "We'll get out of here, fair and square. They've left the gate open wide! So, my bride, here is my hand, where is your paw? Try and understand my plan, Ursula. My heart is a furnace: full of love that's just, and earnest. Now you know that we must unlearn this allegiance to a life of service, and no longer answer to that heartless hay-monger nor be his accomplice. (That charlatan, with artless hustling!) But Ursula, we've got to eat something and earn our keep while still within the borders of the land that man has girded (All double-bolted and tight-fisted!) until we reach the open country, a-steeped in milk and honey.

"Will you keep your fancy clothes on, for me? Can you bear a little longer to wear that leash? My love, I swear by the air I breathe: sooner or later, you'll bare your teeth. But for now, just dance, darling. C'mon, will you dance, my darling? Darling, there's a place for us. Can we go, before I turn to dust? Oh my darling, there's a place for us. Oh darling, c'mon will you dance, my darling? Oh, the hills are groaning with excess like a table ceaselessly being set. Oh my darling, we will get there yet."

They trooped past the guards, past the coops, and the fields, and the farmyards, all night, until finally the space they gained grew much farther than the stone that Bear threw to mark where they'd stop for tea.

"But walk a little faster and don't look backwards. Your feast is to the East, which lies a little past the pasture. When the blackbirds hear tea whistling, they rise and clap, and their applause caws the kettle black, and we can't have none of that! Move along, Bear; there, there; that's that."

Though cast in plaster, our Ursala's heart beat faster than Monkey's ever will.

But still, they have got to pay the bills, hadn't they? That is what the monkey would say.

So, with the courage of a clown, or a cur, or a kite, jerking tight at its tether, in her dun-brown gown of fur, and her jerking of swansdown and leather, Bear would sway on her hind legs; the organ would grind dregs of song for the pleasure of the children, who would shriek, throwing coins at her feet then recoiling in terror.

"Sing, dance, darling. C'mon, will you dance, my darling? Oh darling, there's a place for us. Can we go, before I turn to dust? Oh my darling, there's a place for us. Oh darling, c'mon, will you dance, my darling? You keep your eyes fixed on the highest hill where you'll ever-after eat your fill. Oh my darling, dear, mine, if you dance I love you still."

Deep in the night shone a weak and miserly light where the monkey shouldered his lamp. Someone had told him the bear had been wandering a fair piece away from where they were camped. Someone had told him the bear had been sneaking away
To the seaside caverns to bathe. And the thought troubled the monkey for he was afraid of spelunking down in those caves. Also afraid what the village people would say if they saw the bear in that state: lolling and splashing obscenely. It seemed irrational, really, washing that face, washing that matted and flea-bit pelt in some sea-spit-shine, old kelp dripping with brine.

But monkey just laughed, and he muttered, "When she comes back, Ursala will be bursting with pride until I jump up, saying, 'You've been rolling in muck!' saying, 'You smell of garbage and grime!'"

But far out, by now, Bear ploughed because she would not drown: first the outside-legs of the bear up and fell down, in the water, like knobby garters. Then the outside-arms of the bear fell off, as easy as if sloughed from boiled tomatoes. Low'red in a genteel curtsy, Bear shed the mantle of her diluvian shoulders; and, with a sigh, she allowed the burden of belly to drop like an apron full of boulders.

If you could hold up her threadbare coat to the light where it is worn translucent in places, you would see spots where, almost every night of the year, Bear had been mending suspending that baseness. Now her coat drags through the water, bagging, with a life's-worth of hunger, limitless minnows.

In the magnetic embrace, balletic and glacial of Bear's insatiable shadow; left there! Left there! When Bear left Bear. Left there! Left there! When Bear stepped clear of Bear.

"Sooner or later you'll bury your teeth."

Dumbledore is Not Gay. Sorry.

I'm sorry, but I have to say something: it is not within J.K. Rowling's rights as an author to declare four months after the last Harry Potter book is published that Dumbledore is gay. I'm not talking about whether or not Dumbledore should be gay or has a right to be gay or even might possibly be gay, but the fact is that once a book leaves an author's hands, it is no longer her book! A writer gives birth to a book like a mother gives birth to a baby, and any writer is therefore intensely possessive of their book. But just as a mother cannot declare that her child is gay unless the child declares homosexuality first, an author cannot declare a character to be gay unless the book itself makes that same declaration.

I have no problem with Dumbledore being gay, except that it makes me wonder about Gandalf.... I heard in a history class once that some historians believe most priests and monks in the Middle Ages were actually gay. I've heard that homosexuality may have been something Paul struggled with. I've even heard it said that Jesus was gay. All of these are interesting to think about and worth pondering while you read church history or the New Testament or Lord of the Rings but in the end, it's all speculation, because it doesn't say that anywhere in there.

There is a reason that literature classes still read and dissect Shakespeare and Joyce and Cervantes, and it is that the text takes a life of its own outside of the writer. Maybe Shakespeare gave an interview in which he completely explained Hamlet, but if he did, we've long since lost it, and we've lost it because we don't care very much about what Shakespeare thought; we would prefer to wrestle with Hamlet ourselves because we know that - for ourselves - we can explain Hamlet's behavior better than anyone. We can explain it better because we are reading it, and the story is really half the writer's creation and half the reader's creation. I read it so it's my story as much as Shakespeare's (in a sense) so I can tell it how I want to. That's the beauty of literature and why we keep reading it.

Were Rowling to say at some point that she had always thought of Dumbledore as gay (but for whatever reason never chose to show directly that in the book) then I would be very interested in reading through Harry Potter and trying to get inside Dumbledore's head and figure out if I think he is gay. That's half the fun of reading, trying to figure out what is going on beneath what is happening on the surface. Of course, Harry Potter is not really that kind of book and its characters aren't really all that complex, so I do not think I would find any indications one way or the other as to Dumbledore's sexual tendencies.

Honestly, in my reading, Dumbledore has no sexuality, because Dumbledore is not a "real" character in that way. He is a hero, a distant idol, and even at the end - when Harry begins to doubt Dumbledore's sincerity - the wizard is still out there, away, not part of the action. He is therefore as sexless as McGonnagal or Gandalf or any other great austere saints. Sexuality is a significant and vital part of life, and I don't want to suggest that the really big important ones don't have it, but as long as they are portrayed as the really big important ones (off there somewhere, only stepping in to lend a hand to the little guy) then there is something good in recognizing that you can be somebody apart from your sex. That you can be Dumbledore and no one ever knows - or cares - whether you like men or women or don't even think about it at all.

J.K. Rowling was at a book signing when some kid asked her whether she thought "Dumbledore would ever find true love." This is a funny question to me since Dumbledore dies, and I would have replied "No, he died too soon," but Rowling replied "Dumbledore is gay," which is also funny because (a) Dumbledore is still dead and (b) it doesn't answer the question unless you assume homosexuals cannot find true love and (c) it seems like something a frustrated author would say to a stupid question.

I blame a media determined to be non-judgmental for picking up on this and declaring in headline after headline: Dumbledore is Gay.

So it is with a heavy heart that I have to break the news: I don't care what his mamma says, Dumbledore is not gay. I read the books. I never heard him say it. Sorry.

The Vastness of Open Plains and Grey Winters

I have changed my mind. I now believe that I thoroughly enjoy conversation. It has been two very long weeks since I wrote last, and if I were to summarize the best parts of the past two weeks, I could do it in a single word: conversation. A series of personal, face-to-face, one-on-one conversations has been all that kept me out of the pit of despair in the past several weeks.

In fact, the last two weeks might best be described as polarized: one moment of overwhelming chaos followed by one moment of intimacy followed by one moment of stress. More than once, my emotions shifted so suddenly and so extremely to leave me wondering if I might be bipolar. I guess it was last Monday that I was on the phone talking to a friend and almost literally felt a sense of despair hit me in the face. A sense of isolation. (The phone, by the way, is no longer my friend.) I jokingly said, "Well, I'm going to go shoot myself in the face. Have a great night," and my friend thought I was talking about homework I had to do, and I did nothing to correct the mistake. Somehow, the nameless and faceless despair stuck to me throughout the week.

In stark contrast with these dark moods stood the brief shining moments of real closeness with another person, and there were a surprising number of these. I went to the Renaissance Festival the weekend before last and was pretty unhappy to have to go, mostly because I was tired of always being out of town and felt overwhelmed by other stuff going on, but I ended up staying up late into Friday night having one conversation and spent Saturday lazing around the campsite talking with several other people! From my brief experience, the Renaissance Festival is okay, but the campground outside is pretty cool.

Sunday night, I was up until after 4 arguing the war in Iraq with my roommate. That was not exactly a good conversation, mostly because it felt so pointless. If you have ever seen Richard Linklater's films Slacker or Waking Life then you know what I'm talking about: conversations that sound profound and feel important, but really amount to random words thrown around like spaghetti in a food fight.
"The worst mistake that you can make is to think you're alive when really you're asleep in life's waiting room."
"I mean, I'm not saying that you don't know what you're talking about, but I don't know what you're talking about."
~Waking Life
However, despite the seeming pointlessness of these conversations, they mean something to me. It has been a long-standing practice for me not to talk openly about politics or religion, and I find myself more and more talking about both. My same highly-political roommate also asks a lot of questions about theology and what I believe, which - I'm embarrassed to say - are not questions I think about usually.

I do not like the idea of regularly staying up most of the night arguing about politics, but I am glad to have a roommate who disagrees almost across the board with everything I believe, with whom I can politely debate and against whom I can test my ideas and beliefs.

The alleged reason that Michael and I stayed up until 4 talking was to be awake when the cold front came through, which we thought would be at about midnight. So at about midnight we stepped outside and talked. Neither of us had a watch or a cellphone with us, and our conversation was so animated that we were surprised when the storm finally came through to find that four hours had passed.

The storm did finally come, however, and somewhere in the pounding rain and howling wind, winter fell on Austin. I like what Don Miller said in Blue Like Jazz about Texas winters:

"In Houston, where I grew up, the only change in the weather came in late October when cold is sent down from Canada. Weathermen in Dallas would call weathermen in Houston so people knew to bring their plants in and watch after their dogs. The cold came down the interstate, tall and blue, and made reflections in the mirrored windows of large buildings, moving over the Gulf of Mexico as if to prove that sky holds magnitude over water. In Houston, in October, everyone walks around with a certain energy as if they are going to be elected president the next day, as if they are going to get married.

"In the winter, it was easier for me to believe in God, and suppose it had to do with new weather, with the color of leaves clinging to trees, with the smoke in the fireplaces of big houses in opulent neighborhoods where I would ride my bike."

If you have not yet, go right now and read everything Don Miller has ever written.

I'll wait.

Okay, now that we're on the same page, I also love winter. I love the terrible, cold, rainy, grey days because the world seems so very immense and so very holy. I love the beautiful, bright, biting, cold days because the world seems so very small and people so alive. Either way, in Texas, you look up when it gets cold. You look at the sky and at the trees and at the faces of everyone around you. When its hot, you look down, shuffling, trying not to let the weight of the universe push you into the steaming ground. In the heat and humidity, the air is impossibly thick, too thick to reach through to another human.

I got locked out of my car yesterday for the first time since I bought this car. I bought new glasses and had an hour to kill while the glasses were made, so I went to a nearby theater hoping to sneak into the last 45 minutes of a movie. (I feel okay not paying if I'm only staying for part of the movie.) However, there was already someone checking tickets, so I turned around to find that I had left my keys in my car. Luckily, the rain had stopped, but it was still cold and windy, and I stood by my car, my hood pulled tight around my face like Kenny from South Park, and it was beautiful.

It was fiercely lonely, but a good lonely. Not a summer lonely, driven indoors into our artificial cool by the oppressive heat, nostalgically wishing for the days when summer was carefree and heat's cure was a packed swimming pool. Not the loneliness of a crowd, sitting alone in a crowded lecture hall, unknown and never to be known. Not a bedroom lonely or a television lonely, sitting or lying bored in a dark, silent room, praying to God that someone will call who wants to talk or (even better) wants to be with you, but knowing that call will never come. These are tragic, hopeless lonelinesses.

Leaning against the back of my car, bracing against this cold wind, this strange and unusual cold wind, staring at a vast gray sky, so gray that it turned the whole world gray... That loneliness is not a bad feeling, though it can hurt almost as much as the bad loneliness does. The loneliness of a grey winter day in Austin, Texas, is like the arctic wind sweeping down from Canada, across the vast white plains. See the Coen Brothers film, Fargo, for an example of this moment. The vast loneliness is like stopping for water while hiking into the Grand Canyon with my closest friends and catching my breath at the complete silence in the middle of that huge place. Vastness. It's like going to the Davis Mountains in West Texas, the darkest place in the Western Hemisphere, and staring at the sky and trying to wrap your mind around the immensity of an accelerating universe. Vastness.

Sometimes, even the good loneliness hurts like cold fire. In the bad loneliness, you feel like you should matter but for some reason, you don't seem to matter, and no one seems to care. In the good loneliness, you realize that you should not matter, and all evidence suggests that there is no way that you even begin to matter. ("By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." Genesis 319) Somehow, however, you feel - in the face of the odds - that you do matter. Maybe it is because you realize that nobody matters exactly and therefore we are all in this together. When the earth is so large compared to a human and yet the earth is so very small compared to the universe, you want to clump up with other dust mites. Maybe it is a sense of connectedness: the world is bigger than me, but - however small - I am a part of it, and on that scale, what makes Bob Dylan's accomplishments any more significant than my own?

Whatever the reason, the experience works something like this: Bam! Vast world. Right in my face. So much bigger than I am. So much older than I am. So much cooler than I am. And then an afterthought: but that's okay. That's holy.

So all of this to say that as I leaned against my car in the cold gray afternoon, waiting on a spare key, I was intensely alone and it way wonderful. I thought about what I want my life to be about. What meaning I do have. That was when I realized how much conversation has meant to me lately. I decided that I want to talk to people. And I want to convince them to talk back. I want to meet people at cafes for lunch and coffee shops at midnight and invite them to my house for dinner. And I want to spend all the time between conversations being completely lonely (in the good sense), wandering the streets and staring up at the stars and trying to wrap my mind around an immensity I do not understand and letting it change me. I short, I want to be the best kind of career slacker. So please let me know if anyone is hiring.

It is sunny now - the other kind of winter - and by afternoon it will warm up to autumn again, but that's okay. Honestly, how much vast lonely weather can a person take in one sitting? Especially right after a long summer.