Childhood Closet

(I've been absent for a little bit, as I've been doing more personal journaling and creative writing exercises, but I want to share bits and pieces of what I write.)  

Here's one:

Our closet’s horrible creak was worth it.  The door would open to shelves full of our most prized toys.  Deep shelves would reveal treasures and we would revel in play.  

My brother and I were bound together in our delicious imaginations and adventures.  We became more than brothers, we became copilots, coexplorers and confidants.  Laughter and jokes as we dug into the shelves.  Action figures spilling out with weapons tiny weapons falling in cracks.  

What lies in those shelves still?  My mind is awash in the mystery of those deep shelves and the joys they held for us.   Remote control cars and model airplanes.  Home made rockets and stuffed animals.  

The door slid shut for inspection, only to be opened again for adventure.  Heart beat rising in anticipation of adventure.  It was our Narnian wardrobe to new worlds.  Through toys we lived lives we couldn’t.   We expected and reveled in our futures.  All the while knowing we were in the fortress of room, of house, surrounded by love.  

Those shelves had to be deep.  They contained more than dreams, containing hopes, and great passions.  Old projects left to fall apart were drawn out again with joy.  Always discovery and rediscovery, this was a joyous closet.  

Reaching back one might find amongst airplane models, dust bunnies, loose change and what-it toys that lit the brain with new possibilities, new places or fond forgotten joys ready to be re-explored.   My brother’s projects could be found here, making it a place where I could see and find his creativity.  

Slight guilt at looking through his stuff, but excitement at what toys of mine may resurface.  Chewbacca’s belt and !AHAH! all of our action figures weapons, stockpiled for a war-time need.  That’s where they’ve been!  The screech of that closet is unforgettable.  

Also it almost always came off the runners.  Its doors swung, and were made of cheap metal, but inside it was full of goodness.  

Writing

Why do I take myself so seriously?  I know I write a lot about me.  And I'm beginning to think that it's a little narcissistic.

Sure I like watching words flow across the page and all that.  But I hope I'm reaching deeper into the well of who I REALLY am and who God REALLY is as I write.

I believe I am.  And I'm excited to continue writing.  I feel compelled to write.  It's something I have to, if nothing else than to kill the editor/perfectionist/jerk within.

I've got to beat him.  I've got to be drawn into the world of the senses: sight, smell, sound, touch.  It's what writing for me is all about, getting dirty.

I want those grubby finger-nails I had as a kid again.  I want to scratch the surface of rich brown loamy dirt and come away uncovering treasures.  Writing is about exploring just that.  And hoping in that.  Is there treasure to be found?

Writing too represents freedom.  If I can't say something than I've got to ask why?  I've got to figure some stuff out, hash it out, have it out and take it to my God.

Writing is also about wisdom.  If I don't put stuff down, things don't quite lodge in my core.  Does that make sense?

I can't wait to become more proficient at this, and I know it will take hard work, but it's totally worth it.

It's worth escaping the prison of my mind and playing in the garden of God's rich treasures.

I've been listening to NPR a lot recently and they're obsessing on the election.  Some poor four-year-old  girl phoned in crying saying "I'm just so tired of hearing about Mitt Romney and Barack Obama."  I feel her pain.

If I don't write I'll get stuck just like NPR.  Obsessing on one thing with no-where to go.  So writing for me is a form of prayer as well.  It's basically me just crying out my big WAAH! to God.  I've got to let it out, or I'll get distended and bloated.

Sometimes I feel like a fool for pursuing this life of a writer.  It's scary sharing your secrets.  But if I don't share and others don't share, I feel like we'll literally (ha) suffocate in our isolated thoughts.  That's why I read as well.  I need to hear and find wisdom from others who are reaching out.

So in case you were wondering what keeps me going other than patent narcissism, there you go.  I hope you to can find a way to express your longings, desires and struggles as well.  Perhaps you could leave a comment :).  Something like "I read this."

Reaching

I feel like I have something to say so I'm writing.  I'm sort of going to let my brain wander, so if you're not interested you can move on to another post jerk (j/k).

I don't know much about me these days.  I'm hopelessly addicted to escape.  I like to ride my bike and jump it, buy bike stuff and dream of biking adventures.  Often I just wish I could bike all the time.

But then there's another part of me.  A place of shame.  A sadness I feel at all the trades I make.  Trading time as a father for biking.  Trading time with my spouse for biking.   Trading energy and joy for biking.  I'm finding that I'm getting a raw deal in my trades.

I think we all do this.  We sacrifice, in a sense, the good things in life for the not-so-good.  We sacrifice our real spouses for imaginary spouses, we sacrifice real parenting for imaginary parenting, we sacrifice and sacrifice and sacrifice.

God says he doesn't want these.  He's tired of them and so am I.  What he desires is a contrite heart.  Something like that.

He wants me to enjoy this whole comprehensive human flourishing thing.  Sure he wants me to mourn my broken desire to hold on to stuff, but he also wants me to lighten up, or rather let him lighten me up.

Satisfaction is too heavy a burden for me to carry.  I just can't attain it for more than a moment or a day.  And if I do find it, especially if it's in the wrong place, I feel less me, less real.

I feel like I become a ghost of who I am when I pursue life in the wrong place.  Hell, I feel like I'm less me all the time.

One day I will be me.  I will have union with the one who loves me so much and I love so little.  That will be a good day.

But for now I press on, trying not to give up hope, and embracing this God of a million-and-one chances.  He's not trying to get me to figure out this whole life thing, he's just asking me to come to him with my hunger, pain and restlessness.

Cambridge

I lived in Cambridge, England in the early 80's from the age of 4 to 9.  Here's a creative look at that wonderful place:

It’s a place so near to my heart it’s poking it.  Cambridge England, with smells of roasted bratwurst and tastes of Thornton’s chocolate lingering on my tongue it’s a place of history surrounded by rural beauty. 

What a place!  Bicycle rides with long flat stretches over greens beside the still moving waters of the Cam.  Cambridge is lush.  Cambridge is wet.  Cambridge is in my blood. 

It really is a part of me.  So much of me was shaped by this place.  And still is.  I can smell the musty books of my father’s trade.  I can hear my mom laugh and giggle as we tickle and play in our house off Marlow Road.  What a wonderful place to grow.  What a wonderful garden for human beings to thrive in. 

Time spent punting on the Cam didn’t really feel like time at all.  Cambridge is a place so rich in history time takes on a different quality there.  You can feel time slow when it’s set in the relief of the majestic.  

Bursars and robed professors and students hustling about the place.  Musicians plying their wears in the open market.  Busy streets with people flushed red with health. 

The Round Church, the colleges, the feel of stone, the echoes of Cathedrals and halls, libraries, chapels and the rich oak framing all.  The sound of dining hall dishes echoing off ancient walls.  The taste of five alive after church.  The mixture of old and new.  All seems to come together in this small place.

Going Hungry

Rather than hungering and thirsting for righteousness, I hunger and thirst for sin.  So I'm thinking what I need is to starve or at least go on a diet.

I’ve never completely made the connection between Adam’s temptation in the Garden and the idea of being hungry. 

It all sort of came together tonight as I was finishing up Lois Lowry’s The Giver series.  In the series she addresses a range of human characteristics like memory, pain, history, addiction and evil.  Over all it’s sort of a light-hearted romp. 

But [spoiler alert] she brings in the real goods at the end of the series in The Son.  It’s about a boy who chooses to go hungry rather than give in to his desires and in-so-doing defeats evil. 

It reminds me of Jesus in the desert.  Here he’s tempted with a number of things and chief among those is food.  He had to be starving.  And then it reminds me of Israel and Manna.  Man this just keeps going!

But it makes me wonder.  How can we rid ourselves of sin?  I know I’m sick of it.  I need to starve it.  And it is possible to cling to Jesus and go hungry. 

If I choose to feast on him and what he provides part of me dies.  But what does that even mean?  Sin selfishness is always in front of me.  I have to choose what I simply do not want.  And I have to face that I do not want God, but I desperately need him.

I know I don’t want God and I’m a Christian.  Sure there’s a deeper part of me, the blue-haired blonde-eyed Jesus (j/k), part that wants him, but my actions betray me.  Stupid actions.

I sound a little defeatist I know.  But only in Jesus can I have any victory over sin.  Only in having my very appetites changed.  Only in going hungry.

To ask that he enable me to hunger and thirst for righteousness is a good place to start I guess.  Plus I don’t like dieting.  

Words

I don't have long to post something, but as I'm learning brief and to the point is better.  At least that's what I'm banking on.  I'm also banking on having something to say.

But I have to admit, sometimes I just like seeing words scrolling across my blank page, and thinking "I made those words.  I played a part in their creation."

Not to be cheesy or over-spiritual, but my desire to create and produce is definitely connected to the God whose image I bare.

There is something magical about God speaking creation into place.  I believe it's the sort of deep magic that CS Lewis writes about.

I don't think God waved a wand when he made creation, and it was certainly infinitely more than watching words scroll across a page as his fingers made neat little clicking sounds on a keyboard.

But when I watch ideas take shape in the form of writing, it's a real thrill, and I know who I have to thank.

Molding

I can still picture my bedroom.  It was pretty bare save my bed, a super-bright light-bulb and curtains holding out the darkness.

As I remember it, I'd climb into bed and wiggle my toes deep under the chilly covers.

Then I would lay facing up, reveling in the warmth rising up around me.

Looking up I would notice the crown molding as if for the first time.  I gazed at its round smooth curves and enjoyed how creatively it brought wall and and ceiling together.

Some of my fondest memories come from staring at ceilings.  Times when my mind was at rest.

Sadly these days, my mind is rarely at rest.  I live a restless life.  I can blame it on a restless culture, but I know the restlessness begins with me.  I live detached, stumbling through dark rooms searching for I don't know what.

But a restful mind is a gift from God.  It is a mind that is free to notice reality, free to wonder and to wander.  It's free to notice the very good in God's creation.

And as I remember my bedroom, it was very good, until I remembered that I had to get out of bed to turn off the light.