peace

When faced with life-altering decisions, I always find myself expecting a lighted path, maybe some neon and flashers, pointing the way to the right choice. And I expect there to be an accompanying feeling of serenity that surrounds and imbues the decision, once made, with an aura of rightness.

I was faced with one of those decisions today, and I concentrated very hard in my mind to pick out the bright lights, recalling the psalmist David who once wrote, "You are a light to my path..." when reminding himself that God had a hand in this decision-making business. Ernest as I was, though, no illumination appeared. Instead, what I got was an image of me, on a bike, at a fork in the road, both paths obscured by deep fog. I pictured myself choosing the more exciting path to the right and sailing off into the fog, breathless and exhilirated, and then I pictured myself turning away from it and, suddenly on my feet, walking somberly into the fog on the left and into the less exciting but more stable decision.

Both paths carried with them unknown risks, unforeseen outcomes, hidden joys and sorrows. And I had no idea which one was the right path.

I finally chose the stable path into the unknown, and I think it was the right decision...for now. And now I'm wondering what peace feels like. If this is peace, it feels profound, like an amputation, only less painful in a way. It feels serious, like a prison sentence, but without the shame. And it feels hollow, like a little piece of my heart is gone, only without the ache. Maybe it's like the feeling of just having birthed a baby, when you realize that there's a huge part of you missing, only it's not missing at all, and you struggle to reconcile the bodily sensation of sudden vacancy to the spiritual feeling of overwhelming completion.

There weren't any attending angels holding lanterns over this foggy path I chose to tread today, but I think there was a peace, uneasy and awkward as it may be, and I think I can walk now into the shrouded unknown of a decision made and feel my footfalls landing softly on the quiet solid of my future.

--Teri.

3 days

Life,
like a promise,
broken--
torn from history
Word from page
Living Water
conscripted to stone.



grey dawning,
bereft as night
forgotten Key
fog on the Road.



impossible Dream --
sickened hearts
aFlame!
Fire
consuming marrow
burning ashes
night--
overcome.

something wrong with good

There's been a feeling creeping up the back of my mind for the last several years, lingering around that analytical part of my brain and tickling the bottoms of my sensibilities.

The feeling is this: Good Friday shouldn't be called 'Good' at all.

What was good about the leather and lead that took first flesh, then muscle, then tendon, then bone?
What good was there in thorny spikes invading that tender space between scalp and skull?
Was it good that a Man fell under the weight of His own death trap? Or that nails were driven through feet that had walked countless miles to give love and hands that had touched the untouchable?
What can we call good in the baseness of Roman soldiers who thought so little of killing that they played dice games while blood dripped?
What was good about that horrible day when the sky was a black funerary shroud and the earth convulsed in its grief?

I think they need to rename the day.

--Teri.

internal monologue of the elemental potato

We went for our first bike ride of the season yesterday. It was my first time on a bike since giving birth, and ultimately, I've decided that childbirth is quite a bit easier for me than pedaling a bike downtown and back. The following constitutes the thoughts that coursed through my mind as my body coursed down the bike trail on the back of my dear bike, the Chartreuse Caboose (named thusly because it's green, and you know where a caboose is always located in a train):

Mile 1: This seat is harder than I remember. A lot harder. Why does my calorie-o-meter only say that I've only burned 5 calories? I'm sure it's at least 75. Must need a new battery.

Mile 2: Ahh, I'm settling in. I feel so alive! I was born to bike! I think I'll sign up for a century (a hundred-mile ride) this year, just to give myself a challenge for the summer. Why do they make bike saddles so hard, anyway? Guess they know what they're doing.

Mile 3: Why does my odometer say that I've only gone 3 miles? I'm sure it's at least 6. Really must need a new battery. Biking is not for sissies, but it's cool, because I'm all over it.

Mile 4: Did they do something to the trail to increase the incline since last summer? Is there something wrong with just making the whole thing flat?? This is getting tougher, but I'm so thankful to have a husband who pushes me farther than I think I can go. He's awesome. My butt hurts. What a cool cyclist I am.

Mile 5: Why does my calorie-o-meter only read 250 calories?? Haven't I burnt at least 1000? Who in their right mind would even consider signing up for a stupid century ride? That's suicide! This whole 'sometimes-the-path-is-paved-and-sometimes-it's-gravel' thing is really not funny. Not funny, City of Colorado Springs! Oh, and my butt hurts. Do you hear that, City of Colorado Springs?? My butt hurts!!

Mile 6: My butt hurts. My butt hurts. My butt hurts.

Mile 7: Ahh, on the way home now. What the heck--where did that hill come from? It was downhill just a minute ago!! Did we get lost??

Mile 8: Dang right, calorie-o-meter--you just keep climbing. What is the deal with my husband? Why does he always push me way farther than I can go? Insensitive rogue.

Mile 9: What is UP with the the swordfish and the bloated dummy, anyway?

Mile 10: Curse you, all you naturally athletic types! If one more hippy-dippy cyclist passes me and says, "Good morning! How are ya?!" or is biking and juggling at the same time, I'm going to give new meaning to the phrase 'the wheel spoke'!

Mile 11: Killll meeeee. KIIIILLLL MMMMEEEE. My butt will never be the same. It's going to be a black-and-blue horror in about two minutes. I'm going to look like a baboon all week! My sadistic husband is going to be hearing about this every 4 minutes for at least a month.

Mile 12: What's the point in even trying to get home? If I make it into the driveway, I'll just collapse there for a day or two, and they can haul my blackened carcass into the house and to the couch where it belongs.

Mile 12.1: Look, butt! We're home! We made it! Butt?? Speak to me, butt! I'm sorry, butt. We'll just stay on the couch from now on, I promise. Some people were made to bike, others were made to hold the furniture down. We'll stay right here on the couch and write nasty letters to bike saddle manufacturers. Until next time.

--Teri. And Teri's Butt.

ubiquitousness

Every once in awhile I get a Providential reminder about humanity.

I forget sometimes that we're important, all of us. I go on my way, passing through my days like I hold the monopoly on soulful journeying, like I am special. And some days, the tables turn and I go through my days as though I'm just another cookie cut from a cosmic mold.

Thing is, I am special. And so are the 6.some-odd billion other divine sparks running around on this great ball. It's easy to slip into the not-so-clever lie that, because we are ubiquitous, we are therefore mundane. How can my story matter in the hugeness of life? How can yours? How can hers? The real question should be, "How can it not?" If we were not gifted with sentient souls, it might be easier to dismiss humanity as one more biological curiosity, though one could argue that we're all amazing just on the merits of our crazily complicated and unique biology alone.

But we each carry something much deeper and much higher than just the body, and it is because of this, if nothing else, that each story of each life bears such gravity and is so profoundly important. The old men in the parking lot yelling at each other over a dented car; the grumpy lady in the check-out line who couldn't get past being run into by a 5-year-old unsteadily wielding a cart; the orphan in Sudan dying of the same disease that took her parents; the Chinese miner who died along with 200 of his coworkers. We all matter.

It's a good idea to re-align our perspectives every once in awhile and refuse to be swallowed by the immensity of the importance of our humanity, don't you think?

--Teri.

there will be bored.

I don't know how I got on this kick, but evidently I'm on it now and can't get off. I'm questing for the perfect movie, one that will challenge me, reaffirm my love for humanity, make me think about things a little differently, make me laugh and then cry and then laugh some more, and that will be, of course, completely off the beaten path of Hollywood films.

Where, oh where, can this movie be?

I watched There Will Be Blood the other night with my hubby, thinking we'd spend a cultured evening watching a somewhat avant-garde character sketch and come away feeling, you know, artsy. My little big brother Matt raves about this film, and I've come to appreciate his taste in cinema; it was he, after all, who turned me on to Serenity, Gattaca, and Stardust, mostly against my will but with no regrets. So I figured that if he said that Daniel Day-Lewis was masterful in this performance, than this must be a film worth watching. Maybe even the film.

That said, at the risk of insulting my sibling's sensibilities, I hated this film. I hated the creepy, disjointed soundtrack that never, ever, ever matched the action and left me constantly on edge, thinking that some horrible creature of the damned would soon be dredged up from the oily depths of the earth. I hated Daniel Day-Lewis' character, an ambiguous man whose wildly spinning moral compass left not only everyone in the movie but also everyone in the audience (this audience, anyway) feeling confused, perplexed, alienated, and more than a little freaked out. I hated the plot, if indeed there was one beyond a strange man getting stranger. I hated the title, which caused me to continually half-expect Clint Eastwood to appear on the scene with a couple of six-shooters and a bad mood. I hated the other characters, a bunch of truly weird charismatic Christian freako hypocrites with a demented take on everything from family to power to, well, everything. Mostly, though, I hated wasting a perfectly good Friday night waiting on a movie to redeem itself, only to come to the twisted, bitter end and realize that it was a completely non-redemptive film. On purpose. This film was like a French western in the style of Quinten Tarantino with elements of Stanley Kubrick thrown in for effect.

If there's something in this film that I'm missing, like dynamic character development, subtle plot twists, irony, some sense of transcendent conflict, even tragedy, please, please clue me in.
In the meantime, I guess I'll just keep looking for the perfect film.

--Teri.

the hitler i wanted to meet

Hitler has been on my mind a lot lately. After all, who can erase from their imaginations that classic, horriblized face with the steely eyes and the iconic moustache? The world rightly remembers him as one of the worst scourges ever to be let loose upon humanity, though few stop to consider the causative circumstances in the young Adolph's life that led him to such a loss of self and ultimately to the megalithic horror we remember today. I think I would have liked to meet that young Adolph to better understand how a heart once touched by art and love became so barren and embittered.

Although common knowledge among historians, many laypeople don't realize that Hitler spent his childhood being beaten and terrorized by his bastard father (a mark of shame in his day and culture) and watching his beloved mother endure the same. He rebelled against his father by blowing off his schoolwork and so was considered failure, though he had been an excellent student and a leader earlier; later on, his mother--whom he evidently adored--died of cancer. Adolph developed a love of art and painting but was rejected from art school twice and redirected toward architecture, which he was interested in but lacked the formative education because of his earlier rebellion, and so that didn't work out, either. His life was plagued with failures and sadness.

Then Adolph fell in love. His niece Geli evidently captivated his heart, and though their relationship was unclear and strained, it is believed that they truly loved one another. She was found dead, shot through the head with Hitler's pistol, and this event marked a devastating change in his character and behavior; he became depressed and ever more violent and vitriolic. The rest is a grisly history ending in mass murder and eventually suicide.

I've no temptation to try and justify the atrocities spawned by Hitler's diabolical and twisted mind, or to over-simplify the causes of the ideology that proved fatal to millions. But perhaps it's a worthwhile exercise to think about the ways in which his family dynamic affected his heart, and to consider the connection between a wounded heart, a keen but unfulfilled mind, and a terrifying onslaught of violence. What would we think of Adolph as a child? What would we see in his youthful eyes that were already tortured and misunderstood? And what does that tell us about the importance of nurturing children and honoring the fragility of young spirits? The biggest question looming in my mind is what kind of intervention may have stemmed the tide of failure and brokenness and given hope to what looked like a doomed life. We've all heard stories of people who overcame horrible circumstances to live lives of joy and fulfillment, and stories of those who were overcome by those same circumstances and somehow drowned in the deluge, taking countless others down with them. What's the difference?
--Teri.

reign over me

I hate Adam Sandler. I hate movies with copious foul language. I hate Pearl Jam. And I especially hate movies with obtuse endings where you never know if it's going to turn out okay or not.

But I loved Reign Over Me. It was one of the most difficult films I've watched in a very long time, probably even harder than Schindler's List was. It wasn't funny, it was raw, it hurt to watch it. The pain of a man who lost his family in the September 11th attacks was almost too much to watch; I felt voyeuristic sitting through Charlie's utter inability to wrap his mind around his profound loss, and something close to obscene bearing witness to his intricate choreography of avoidance and denial.

This film was an uncomfortably close brush with the messiness of life and loss and a coarse rumination on the endurance of love way out past the tattered fringes of sanity. It was a sobering reminder that even these few years later, there are still scores of people suffering in their various ways from the consequences of that horrible day in September. It was a reminder that I needed, I think.
--Teri.

happy birthday, charles

As the world gears up for Darwin's birthday celebration, I'm finding myself niggled by the presuppositions of science in the past century or so and wishing that a civil discourse on the origins of life wasn't so difficult to achieve.

I have lost count of the number of times that any mention of intelligent design has provoked the heated and incredulous response, "Come on! Do you really believe that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago?!" Perhaps the better, fairer question would be, "Do you have any evidence to support that theory?" Is it possible that Darwinian evolution doesn't have the monopoly on good science, or that there may be evidence that contests or at least raises valid questions about the theory of evolution? Is it possible to discuss this evidence in a way that temporarily suspends the assumptions of biology and gives unbiased credence to both sides of the debate?

As an example, it's fairly well-known that the fossil beds of Montana have given up a T-rex skeleton, a femur of which appears to have red blood cells--marrow! Instead of challenging the notion that this tissue could possibly be as old as science assumes, the headlines read, "70 Million Year Old Bone Marrow Found!" If we're intellectually honest, is it really easier to suppose that blood cells could survive for 70 million years in the ground, than to raise the uncomfortable question of whether they're really that old?

Another issue that plagues my mind is the fact that biology was so unsophisticated in the 19th century, when it was assumed that, on a cellular level, structures were pretty simple and lacked the complexity of larger organisms. Darwin couldn't have imagined that, 200 years later, we'd be peering into the heart of the atom and being amazed to find still more levels of complexity and precision, something that likely wouldn't have fit well into the idea of macro-evolution. What will we find when we finally dismember a quark? My understanding here is vague at best and probably grossly under-informed at worst, but wasn't it Darwin's assertion that life arose out of simple structures and gradually became more sophisticated through selection, and that on a cellular level any organism would bear the imprint of its primitive self? As it turns out, pond scum is more complicated than we could possibly imagine, and the deeper we look, the more complicated it gets.

I realize that a good debate hardly ever changed anyone's mind, but I do believe that it's the spirit of informed, respectful dialogue that reveals the intellectual core of any system of thought. As much as I have a problem with half-cocked creationists dreaming up half-baked arguments to support their beliefs, I have an even bigger problem with self-assured Darwinian evolutionists smugly failing to ask honest questions. If one theory or the other is credible, it should be able to withstand the rigors of cross-examination, and I think it's only reasonable to assume there should be a reasonable discourse between the two.
--Teri.

voice

There's been a vague thought trying to surface in my mind for maybe years now, and it's only now becoming clear enough for me to identify the fuzzy edges of it and begin to see it taking form enough to make its way to my fingertips. I've been putting off writing in any appreciable way for years because I was afraid I didn't have anything to say, hadn't found my voice yet, I thought. But now that I'm in the thick of life and have arrived at the uncomfortable reality of being a real live grown-up adult person thing, it strikes me that I'm really afraid of losing my voice. I guess this means it must be in there somewhere already, waiting patiently to get out, not wanting to go away in the maelstrom of children and work and school and life and humanity.

I find myself thinking about the consequences of global events in terms of what'll happen to my voice if I'm caught up in it all--if the economy tanks and my family loses everything, what will become of my voice? Will I lose my voice if I have more children and end up drowning in homeschooling for 15 more years? If we move to a third-world country and become missionaries, will there be a place for my voice there?

Part of my reason for diving into blogging at long last, I guess, is really to give voice to, well, my voice. Maybe I should start capitalizing that, or give it a name, if it's going to become a friend of mine. For now, I'd like to introduce you to my voice; it's still young and somewhat timid, but I hope that my voice and your voice find something in common and find a nice place to get to know one another here.
--Teri.