This is the verse I read when I feel that God is impossible to know.

Isaiah 45:19

I have not spoken in secret,
from somewhere in a land of darkness;
I have not said to Jacob’s descendants,
‘Seek me in vain.’
I, the LORD, speak the truth;
I declare what is right.

Today I feel like I don’t believe in God.

(I wish it was because I was doing the “Temporary Atheist” challenge at The Embassy, but I don’t need a challenge to wrestle with this right now.)

Faith is like breathing sometimes. It seems so natural, loving God, loving the Church…but not today, not this week, not this month.

(A bubble’s burst, and I’m just sitting in the mess it left behind.)

The history of the church is horrible, disgusting, disappointing, surprising, and confusing.

I feel like I should know this by now. I’ve gone to church my whole life, I spent seven years in a Christian school. I feel a bit angry that it’s not part of my faith tradition to engage with two thousand years worth of dialogue and debate and philosophy.

I’ve been placed in a bubble, a Sunday morning, youth group, stand and sing, sit and listen, bubble. No past, no future. Only the present. Only this month’s sermon series, only next week’s event. I don’t think I’m the only one suffering from “Protestant Amnesia”, as my friend called it. Part of me thinks our churches are too scared to address these issues. The scary questions about where we are, and why. To ask, what if what I believe is wrong? A necessary question.

At first it’s terrifying. Christianity seems to be a religion that seems too human, finger prints all over it. The Greeko-Roman philosophers, middle-class America, Constantine, George W. Bush, this pope, that bishop, me. Nothing seems to be left untouched, untainted. Nothing that looks like the uninhibited voice of God.

I’m certainly still falling apart, but I’ve stopped being scared today. Walking through Waterloo Park, the snow and the woods calmed me down. I certainly don’t expect to have any answers anytime soon, but I know this is a necessary place. Probably even given to me by the God I’ve ceased to understand. A God that loves me even in my unbelief, and my forgetfulness.

This is the song I listen to that makes me feel like I’m not the only one.

The Pearl

O the dragons are gonna fly tonight
They’re circling low and inside tonight
It’s another round in the losing fight
Out along the great divide tonight

We are aging soldiers in an ancient war
Seeking out some half remembered shore
We drink our fill and still we thirst for more
Asking if there’s no heaven what is this hunger for?

Our path is worn our feet are poorly shod
We lift up our prayer against the odds
And fear the silence is the voice of God

And we cry Allelujah Allelujah
We cry Allelujah

Sorrow is constant and the joys are brief
The seasons come and bring no sweet relief
Time is a brutal but a careless theif
Who takes our lot but leaves behind the grief

It is the heart that kills us in the end
Just one more old broken bone that cannot mend
As it was now and ever shall be amen

And we cry Allelujah Allelujah
We cry Allelujah

So there’ll be no guiding light for you and me
We are not sailors lost out on the sea
We were always headed toward eternity
Hoping for a glimpse of Gaililee

Like falling stars from the universe we are hurled
Down through the long loneliness of the world
Until we behold the pain become the pearl

Cryin´ Allelujah Allelujah
We cry Allelujah

Non-Dramatic British Literature of the 17th Century. Who would have thought it was such a funny class? Or that studying “Paradise Lost” for an entire semester would continue to be interesting?

“Honey, you have a gaping hole inside of you, I see that- but don’t’ worry- there’ll be kids, there’ll be wallpaper, and, and…soccer games.”

-Professor Acheson’s rendering of Adam’s comfort to Eve (upon her coming to terms with being last in the hierarchy of heaven.) in Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”

Funny thing is, I feel like the church has told me this, a lot.

the newest waitress at “All About Crepes” in Waterloo Town Square. I got the call at 4 o’clock yesterday, was at work by 5 o’clock, and worked five hours just to top it off.

I didn’t actually apply here, but the owners of a cafe that I applied to hired me for their restuarant instead and just sort of let me know as an after throught. That was kinda funny. I didn’t really want a waitressing job, it’s quite stressful. It seems to be that on most days there is only one waitress working, who gets to serve all nine tables, figure out take out, and make sure the dishes are getting run through the dish washer! Eek.

But the place is pretty darn cute. The girl that trained me was very nice. I think I’m going to like working there.

A couple months ago I posted some black and white photographs that I had discovered on a website devoted to lost film. In December Keith found a suitcase full of photographs on Flikr.

Keith and I came up with the idea of writing stories for these lost photographs to be compiled in a “chap book” which will be part of our final portfolio for our Creative Writing class, and which will hopefully be submitted to the university to see if they’ll select it to cover the binding fees.

We’ve got copyright permission and have started submitting our stories to be workshopped in that class as we write them, so they are still in the revision process. Comments and ideas are great.

This is Keith’s first submission, and mine is below (being less computer/website savy and unable to figure out how I’d link my pdf file.) Enjoy. (There are many more to come.)

dusty wings

That summer you thought you had wings. This lasted til fall. You must have got the idea from the dozen chickens that lived in the cinderblock and cracking plywood coop, hard to tell apart from our own one bedroom home.

The chickens would peck and scratch their way along the gravel, where you played, bobbing their reptilian heads. The dirt and gravel skinned your knees, so you would play carefully alongside them.

When my brother came to visit us, he took your picture. You stood there with your wings. I saw them, tissue paper, folded carefully against your back, visible only when they caught the sun.

After that I always imagined your wings. It wasn’t hard to believe; you never seemed like something that could have come from me. You were mysterious, too beautiful. I was simple; my mouse brown hair pulled tightly away from my angular face, one of my grey eyes offset.
Only the lights of a sleazy bar could convince anyone otherwise. I suppose that means you looked like your father, but I didn’t know him long enough to tell.

If I had not endured eighteen hours of labour on that July day that blew dust into every aching pour, and made the midwife’s face look ghostly white, I would have believed that you had simply wandered out of the wheat field one day.

There was only one bed in that house, and after a long absence you’d crawl into it with me. I’d be careful not to move. If I held you I would have crumpled your wings into dust; I kept my distance. But the truth is I was too selfish to hold you. I knew what happened to the chickens you played alongside (their necks cracking back, raptor legs scratching). I knew you’d notice; I didn’t want you to.

Somehow you must have realized by fall that you did not have wings because you didn’t fly away. Or maybe you didn’t know your wings were made for flying.

moth

That love was like a moth, fluttering excitement of wings taking off into the night, into something she’d never seen before. She knew love was meant for spring, but this felt nearly perfect in autumn. When he wasn’t around, her eyes were full of something more than happiness, a bit of pain. Deepness, that ran like the river in fall, black and bottomless, the river where he asked her an earnest question.

She didn’t marry him.

She doesn’t know why. She likes to imagine that he still regrets that, but the truth is, he died happy, twenty years ago. She’ll still carry the photograph for three decades, through her marriage to Jack, through the birth of her five children. She’ll long for another chance, a casual glance across a restaurant, a brush against him on the dance floor, an affair to make life worth living.

Maybe she’ll realize the truth while cleaning the window sill of the old house, when she’ll see the crumpled moth lying beside the stained glass window, sprinkled with dust’s ashes. The truth, that she just didn’t know him long enough to hate him too, because the person she was meant to love, left long ago.

cherry tree

Your beloved cherry tree didn’t blossom that spring. What you did not know was I had poisoned it the previous winter.

I had found the photograph in January, in the top drawer of your desk, placed beneath telephone directory, unopened envelopes and the green book labelled, “Ledger”. I thought I’d do you a favour, clean your office, surprise you.

You’d never mentioned her to me and I didn’t want to know why you’d kept it all this time. Maybe it was because you were young, and so was she. Your smile was like the summer you said you loved me. I believed you, and then, after thirty years of marriage, I stopped. It’s not pleasant to think your life was a lie. That’s why I poisoned the tree. I never said a word to you.

That night, I stared out the open window into the rain. The freezing water splashed onto me, off the window sill.

“Close the window, come to bed,” you said, but you shut the window yourself, and I eventually crawled into bed.

I told someone once that if I could have any super power I’d have the power to have music follow me around everywhere I went, like a movie soundtrack. So when I saw this I knew I’d have to give it a try.

Here’s how it works: Just put your itunes on shuffle and fill in the songs that come up. It’s pretty fun, especially for those of us that love to procrastinate.

So here are my results:

1. Opening Credits: Stolen by Dashboard Confessional

“And from the ballroom floor we are in celebration”

2. Waking Up: Santa Monica by Bedouin Soundclash

” You use to say that you want a revolution”

3. First Day At School: Could We by Cat Power

“Have a talk alone in the afternoon”

4.Falling In Love: Brightly Wound by Eisley

“It’s happening all the time, when I open my eyes. I’m still taken by surprise.”

5.Fight Song: Lonelily by Damien Rice

“You let me down, it’s no use deceiving”

6.Breaking up: The One You Knew by Joshua Radin

“I’m leaving but don’t worry I’ll be back again.”

7. Prom: Your Nervous Heart by Rhett Miller

“Maybe you went running as the sky just sort of fell”

8. Life: From the Inside Out by Hillsong United

“A thousand times I’ve failed still Your mercy remainsAnd should I stumble again I’m caught in Your grace.”

9. Mental Breakdown: Sons and Daughters by The Decemberists

“We’ll leave our tracks untraceable now”

10. Driving: Orphan Girl by Gillian Welch

“I am an orphan on God’s highway but I’ll share my troubles if you go my way

11. Flashback: Here It Is by Over the Rhine

“I cried when I wrote this, I’ll always remember”

12. Getting back together: Beneath the Balcony by Iron and Wine

“Let’s go out and dance, darling, the last of our days.”

13. Wedding: Etcetera Whatever by Over the Rhine

“I will stumble there with you and you’ll be laughing close with me, trying not to make a scene.”

14. Birth of Child : What A Wonderful World by Innocence Mission

“I hear babies crying, I watch them grow. They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know”

15. Final Battle: Waiting for My Real Life to Begin by Colin Hay

“On a clear day, I can see, see a very long way.”

16. Funeral Song: Closer by Joshua Radin

“walk me down your broken line, all you have to do is cry” 

17. End Credits: Leaves the are Green by Simon and Garfunkel

“and the leaves that are green turned to brown”

Sounds good to me! Whose going to write the screenplay?

I read this sentence in my first year of university in the novel Their Eyes were Watching God. (This is a rough paraphrase, since the entire book is written in dialect.) At the time this seemed to be completely true, and also a complete paradox. Today it still seems that way to me. How can such a simple statement summarize exactly what I believe about life, and also stand in complete contradiction? I find it very hard to bring these two things together, and yet somehow I believe that they are both essential. A person needs to bring themselves fully before God, and learn to live for themselves. But I’m still thinking through this.

I suppose the immediate response of most Christians to the statement we have to learn to live for ourselves would probably be: But aren’t we supposed to live for God? Of course. I certainly believe that a relationship with God is what makes a person complete.

I’m reading Milton’s Paradise Lost right now. It’s such a weird dynamic listening to an agnostic (and hilariously cynical) professor talk about the characters and plot of a book that embodies so much of the theology of redemption and grace. It’s bizarre to displace yourself from the religion, and examine the book as literature. It’s so weird talking about this God and this Jesus, who are just characters in a book, and writing papers about whether I think they are “boring.”

Part of this weird dynamic is having the professor say truly profound things, but just referring to them in the context of the book. The other day we were examining the fall of Satan, and the professor described Satan as melancholy. The difference between mourning and being melancholy is the inability to understand what is causing your grief. Therefore, we mourn for a time, but our whole lives can be consumed by a melancholy that cannot be placed. The professor said that Satan is melancholy because he has fallen from the presence of God. Then she said, “Without that relationship there is a constant state of loss, even when they do not know what they are grieving.” I’d have to agree with this, even if she doesn’t.

Therefore, when talking about living for yourself, I am not talking about living apart from God, or in any way ignoring the most important and consistent relationship you can ever have. By all means! If God tells you to do something, you better flipping do it.

However, I don’t believe that God necessarily has a special plan for my life. I don’t believe that God has created a connect-the-dot life that I must follow. I don’t think I need to tip-toe along in the hope that I won’t step off the line and forever miss the life that God wanted for me. Where is the grace or freedom in that? I’d rather imagine that God walks with each of us, giving us the wisdom and means to journey through life. Its like he’s passed us the brush and the paint to make our lives a piece of art that he will love. I like to hope that my life would surprise God, if that were possible. That it would put a smile on his face. That it could be something he’d step back at the end, just to look at it and enjoy.

For me, this freedom to choose one’s life is where living for yourself comes in. I know, now your thinking. No, Maria, you are supposed to live for others. Isn’t that what being a Christian is about? Maybe.

I’ll continue to think, and write.

Well surprisingly I’m still around. My writing has certainly been neglected over the past month or so, but with a new semester, routine and year I’m sure things will improve. I’ve actually been writing something for a couple weeks now, but its just still sitting at the tip of my tongue. It’ll fall off one of these days, which will be a nice relief I think.

In other news:

• Its a new year, and a new semester. It’s good to be back at school. When it comes down to it I like school, although I forget from time to time. The line up for this semester is: Creative Writing Part II (hooray!), History of Christianity, Classical Rhetorical Theory, Seventeenth Century Literature and Criticism II. Admittedly not the most exciting semester, but maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
• New Years resolution: to do three hours of homework everyday (except Tuesday and Thursday when I go to class). This would be the biggest thing that has ever happened in my life, so wish me luck. Historically, I do very very little homework. But I’ve realized that although I’ve done well in all my classes, I’ve really not learned a whole lot since high school, and have decided to take a more active role in my education. Yes, sir. I’m going to be a nerd this semester and see where it takes me. Watch out!
• I’m going to start looking for a job this weekend, that’ll be something new.
• I wrote a poem today. I had to have one for my first class in Creative Writing. (It’s really exciting to be in this class, since only fifteen people in the university get in and you have to get the professor’s approval. I’m completely intimidated, but I’m going to make the most of it.)
• I realized that my poems are like my children. (Not that I have any children…but say if I did.) When it comes down to it, I love them because they are a part of me. However, like children, they definitely have their moments when they: annoy, upset, embarrass, anger and torture me.

I’ll leave you with my poem. Please comment if you would like. I like comments and criticism and even cussing. I havn’t had anyone try to make sense of it, and I have a strong conviction that it is impossible to understand. ;) I’m still learning what it means, but class is in an hour. I realize it’s quite newborn. But I hope it’ll grow into something good.

you wanted me to wear happiness

Happiness didn’t seem to fit so I
slipped back into misery’s dress,
silk blue and perfect for waltzing, alone
between the naked walls of an abandoned farmhouse that
stands white in the winter’s moonlight, like a
forgotten bride, alone
before the night sky, her discontented lover,
littered with paper stars,
that will carelessly fall and dissolve on my tongue
so I’ll taste the bitterness of this cold.

I will leave your party lights and
walk through the park to
write all those recycled love songs
on the sheets of snow.
No, I won’t.
I will just speak those unsettling words
to the night in foreign languages that
I do not understand, like
Milton’s daughters’ speaking
Hebrew and Latin to a blind man,
uttering sounds of words
they would never really read.

Maria Vermeer