Call to Engagement

"The convergence of movements in the information age is driven most powerfully by the nature of the problems themselves. When you look deeply and honestly at a real problem today, you see that i is part of a web work of unsolved problems reaching far and wide into a massive system... At this point in history, that system is the whole planet."

-Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson, The Cultural Creatives

New Life

new life

is rare, but blossoms everyday

I often ignore it, like the old lover dancing slowly in the dimly lit corners of the ballroom

pretending she does not notice me noticing her

evil, pain, and worry cannot be ignored

without the heart's slow and torturous atrophy

one can try, but it will find its way to burrow under our skin

like a leech drawn to the pulsing of our blood

but life can be ignored everyday

without a second thought

we are buried in routines, rush hour, paperwork, lectures, networking, dreams and ideals

we run circles in our brains, drill holes into our hearts

all in the name of progress and sufficiency.

Yet new life makes no epic demands for attention.

It is not in the earthquakes, tsunamis, the fires or the winds.

there is no breaking news or grand headline to announce its arrival or sustain our attention.

like the sparrows that dance around our feet on a sunny day,

like dandelion seeds floating high above the city towers,

like the first dance of a newly wed couple holding their breath in anticipation,

new life goes forth each day.

.. .

he cannot be ignored.

I notice every detail.

he swings his head, puckers his lips, rolls his eyes blindly.

he is everything I had never thought of.

small enough to hold with one arm,

yet heavy enough to demolish entire lives.

he suckles on his mother's breast in quiet peace,

he rests wrapped in animals and flora,

he discards what he does not need with tiny grunts,

he fears cold, nakedness, loneliness, and gasps in high pitched shrills,

he makes me want to sing, joyful nonsense pouring from my lips day and night.

the thousands of doubts and fears that stormed like a blizzard

burying my streets and windows under masses of frozen fear

melt, and I feel something soft, something warm.

it dyes the light like stained glass, adjusting the eyes to a new visual rhythm.

a faint and sleepy shimmer appears on the old, the unsaid, the forgotten.

it beckons me to polish and rediscover the beauty beneath the dust and ashes.

"what is this new place I am in?" he asks by way of a long and vocal sigh,

as he rests in my arms, cooing like a young dove.

a new spirit rests upon me.

here is my son, in whom I delight.

I try and decipher the grammar of creation once more.

I consider making things new again.

The Awful Rowing Toward God (by Anne Sexton)

I was stamped out like a Plymouth fender
into this world...

but I grew, I grew,
and Go was there like an island I had not rowed to...

I am rowing, I am rowing
though the oarlocks stick and are rusty
and the sea blinks and rolls
like a worried eyeball

but I am rowing, I am rowing
though the wind pushes me back
and I know that that island will not be perfect,
it will have the flaws of life,
the absurdities of the dinner table,
but there will be a door
and I will open it
and I will get rid of the rat inside me,
the gnawing pestilential rat.
God will take it with his two hands
and embrace it.

Thesus' Poetic Perspective

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The form of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them into shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name

-William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

Nothingness

"The temptation of Nothingness is enormous and omnipresent, and it has more and more to rest its case on, more to appeal to. Against it, man stands alone, weak and poorly armed, his position worse than ever before in history... The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less..."

-Vaclav Havel

My first prayer for him

Little baby boy,
be at rest, peace, and comfort.
rest your body against mine, feel the safety of home.
breath deep and make a joyful noise, loud enough to shake the city's streets

Dearest child,
play with curiosity and wonder
let beauty of mountains and towers spark the riches of your imagination
discover the rights and wrongs that make our world shimmer in light and shudder at night.

Young man,
work with purpose, hope, and love
consider the pain and questions of your time,
imagine the best image of yourself, in the fuzzy reflections of God upon the waters

My son,
you will be our most precious work of beauty and art
you will be our resistance against chaos and death
you will be our blessing of life for generations, a renewing flame to melt away the ice

My Resistance...

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given..." - Isaiah 9:6a

My wife and I are expecting our firstborn child, a son, in early March. We just bought ourselves a crib and stroller earlier today. As the house fills up with baby things, new feelings fear and excitement abounds.

This week's study of Isaiah has put a new praise in my heart. If, in fact, Isaiah literally beheld a young pregnant woman as a sign to the King that "God is with us," then it was the everyday being revealed as holy and full of hope, even in the darkest times. It would seem the king refused to take in the beauty of the sign. After all, are not women bearing children all the time? (Perhaps only a virgin birth is worth the praise of the world, a supernatural miracle).

No... every child is a miracle.

In another class, there was a discussion about whether it was worth having children in such an age of pain, chaos, and war. In the end, another classmate declared that, by having children, we declare hope for the future. We believe that our child will be part of a world worth living in.

Why have children?

To birth, raise, and send off a child into this world is humanity and nature's greatest shared form of resistance against the ever growing chaos of our expanding civilization. Children, cared for and empowered, are the loudest statement of faith and hope that can possibly be expressed by love incarnate.

I understand, Isaiah, I understand perfectly well what you mean. You showed the King the greatest image of hope one could hope to have. God is with us so long as we continue our hope in life.

In a month, I will have a son, and he shall be my resistance against the chaos.

A few verses later, the new crown prince of Judah is blessed with a hymn of thanksgiving, one meant for a king. Exactly how much time took place between the sign and this hymn, I wonder. In any case, the child prince was infused with the hope of the nation.

If only we would care for each of our children with the same hope and expectation. Perhaps they shall not be Jesus Christ, savior of all, but we are all called to be "little Christs" after all, reflecting his image.

From this day forward, the reading of Isaiah 9 shall not only be read a praise for Jesus, but a hopeful prayer for my son as well.