BUZZ. Buzz. Buzz.

The world makes insistent demands. Maybe alarm clocks must BUZZ – BUZZ – BUZZ over and over again to wake us from the free-association world of dreams in order to lay a sense of foreshadowing across all that is to come in the day ahead.

Because what will come will be the same thing over and over again.

BUZZ. Buzz. buzz.

I went to Michigan’s Adventure Land with my brother, the bishop yesterday, and spent most of the day riding carnivals of circles and speed and mountains of height and neck snaps along with a thousand other middle class sensualists.

As we took an umbrella stroller full of bags, backpacks, swimming suits, towels & a video camera back to our matching minivans in the parking lot (stuffed full of more twin minis), his cell phone rang.

It was our brother-in-law Ryan, who lives nextdoor to David in the postwar suburb full of carefully maintained cape cods, square lawns and cascading Home Depot mulch bed gardens.

Emily had escaped again.

Emily is the family beagle whose breed, apparently, predisposes her to escape from home and to run away. For two summers past, thought their backyard had been an Eden grand enough for her liking. But this summer….she has fallen from her idyllic original state-of-grace.

Every day there is a call or a chase or a penitent Emily awaiting them outside of the fence in the driveway as they return home.

How does our world come to torture us in these random, uncontrollable plagues?

We choose love and life. Emily, the beautiful, mild and faithful beagle.

Love and life is full and beautiful for a season – some seasons long, some short. Emily’s perfection lasted two years.

And then from nowhere – certainly not from our decisions – certainly not from our expectations – feasibly, but outlandishly possibly from the inheritance of Beagle Breeding and Neighborhood Fences – but who could know that such benign and recessive predestinations could so persecute us eventually?

Emily is exploring another point of weakness in the white picket fence right now – what are you up to? Buying a beagle? Building a fence?

Enjoy the temporary –

Peace~

highs and lows

in michigan on vacation (high)

too many roles / expectations to juggle on vacation (family celebrations / building a fence / telecommuting to work / finishing a script / devoting time to family) -- (low)

almost finally sold house yesterday (high)

deal fell completely through (low)

reading good books (high)

too many good books in the world (low)

I guess overall -- I'm high.

peace~

“Do Not Writhe on the Skewer of Indecision.”

A teacher from my past, given to axiomatic instruction, chided me with these words.

Today we may be engaging in a series of house transactions that we’ve been working on for a long time. When in the midst of such interactions there are many choices to make, and Lynn and I are committed to making them together.

Making decisions together is one of the more difficult features of being human. Consensus becomes truer and truer the longer you know one another, and the longer you talk about any issue. Unfortunately, it also becomes more difficult.

In our case, since we’ve made these decisions together before, and because we like each other a lot – we know that there are unique features of each-other’s take on things that are really valuable. But what we don’t know is which feature of which person’s personhood is going to end up mattering in the story we tell ourselves about this decision AFTER its made and completed.

We're writhing together.

My teacher used to bellow the title of this blog in the Imperative Tone – Amped Up On Steroids.

And there’s something about the level of confidence with which one says something that actually weights the credibility of the statement beyond its own merits.

Tammie has started pointing out to me that my years of debate have lent me just such a blustery tone of surety which often is attached to statements which are at best – probabilities and at worst – subjective perspectives.

Brendon and Janson and I, when we stayed up til three and four in the morning in Lawlor Hall debating the morality of going 57 in a 55 – employed this tactic of false surety with all sorts of permutations:

I read somewhere that…
There’s been research done…
It’s been proven…

And the best is always when you include a statistic with a very specific and esoteric number.

The truth is (note the surety in my tone) that indecision is not just a skewer –

It’s actually a pretty fertile ground where relationships may grow…

It’s a rupture in the sometimes stifling surety which we rely upon in the quotidian flow…

Looking for a new axiom, I invent:

Exult on the rope swing of indecision…

Dance through the gloam of indecision…

Jump into the pool of indecision…

Coast on the surf of indecision…

…if only they didn’t want landings and sunset and the solid ground of dry land…

may your indecision be full of…

peace~

“What is the bravest thing that you have ever done?”

Before Jaelyn was born our lawyers advised us not to bring her home until after the forty-eight hours of maternal consent had passed. Too many custody cases that they had seen, too many broken hearted adoptive parents, too much risk – they said – to take her home after the 12 hour wait that the hospital mandated.

In _The Great Divorce_, the narrator talks about all the reasons that humans choose to turn back to the small dark dingy city that they came from instead of growing into and up-in and through live in the dangerously beautiful new world. One of the stories he tells is of a mother who is so wrapped up in the lives of her children that she cannot bear to let go of them so that she may enter the Great New World.

Parental love, like all the greatest parts of being human seems like one of the most dangerous and difficult endeavors. How do we love without strings attached? How can we possibly invest every hope and dream into these people and then love them just as fully when they need to choose dreams that we can’t understand? I see this question being struggled through by college students who are on the receiving end of constricting love.

So we decided to bring her home anyway. Those 36 hours felt like one of the top 5 most courageous moments in my life. After a two month wait for her, after a miscarriage and all the brokenness that that brings, after two years of infertility.

I read this blog that inspired me. The question:

“What is the bravest thing that you have ever done?”

Seems like one of those questions that push us to tell some of our best stories – look for what we admire mostin each other – and become something more courageous than we are…

peace~